After a hurried run to Switzerland I reached Paris in time to witness the celebration of the imperial birthday and to see Louis Napoleon review the splendid army of Italy with great pomp, on the Champs des Mars.  It was a magnificent spectacle.  That day Mr. Slidell, the representative of the Southern Confederacy, hung on the front of his house an immense white canvas on which was inscribed:  “Jefferson Davis, the First President of the Confederate States of America.”  Our ambassador, Hon. William L. Dayton, was a relative of mine, and I had several conversations with him about the perilous situation of affairs at home.  Dayton said:  “Our prospects are dark enough.  All the monarchs and aristocracies are against us; all the cotton and commercial interests are against us.  Emperor Louis Napoleon is a sphinx, but he would like to help to acknowledge the Southern Confederacy.  If he does so Belgium and other powers will join him; they will break the blockade; they will supply the Confederates with arms and then we must fight Europe as well as the Southern States.  Our only real friends are men like John Bright, and those who believe that we are fighting for freedom as well as for our National Union.  Mr. Lincoln must declare for emancipation and unless he does it within thirty days, I have written to Mr. Seward that our cause is lost.”

I returned to London with a heavy heart; all of our friends there with whom I conversed echoed the sentiments of Mr. Dayton.  One of them said to me:  “Earl Russell has no especial love for your Union, but he abominates negro slavery, and is very reluctant to acknowledge a new slave-owning government.  Prince Albert and the Queen are friendly to you, but you must emancipate the slaves.”

My return passage from Liverpool was on board the Asia, and Captain Anderson commanded her for that voyage.  When we reached Boston, we heard the distressing news of the second Battle of Bull Run, and our prospects were black as midnight.  Captain Anderson remarked to me, in a compassionate tone:  “Well, Mr. Cuyler, you Yankees had better give it up now.”  “Never, never,” I replied to him.  “You will live to see the Union restored and slavery extinguished.”  He laughed at me and bid me “good-bye.”  A few years afterwards, I laughed back again when I met him in New York.

On Sunday evening, September 7, I addressed a vast crowd in my own Lafayette Avenue Church, and told them frankly, that our only hope was in a proclamation for freedom by President Lincoln.  Henry Ward Beecher invited me to repeat my address on the next Sunday evening in Plymouth Church.  I did so and the house was packed clear out to the sidewalk.  At the end of my address Mr. Beecher leaned over and said:  “The Lord helped you to-night.”  When the meeting closed Mr. Henry C. Bowen said, “Will you and Mr. Beecher not start for Washington to-morrow morning to urge Mr. Lincoln to proclaim emancipation?” We both agreed to go before the week was over, but