In regard to this meeting at Edinburgh, there was a ridiculous story circulated and variously commented on in certain newspapers of the United States, that the American flag was there exhibited, insulted, torn, and mutilated. Certain religious papers took the lead in propagating the slander, which, so for as I know or can learn, had no foundation, unless it be that, in the arranging of the flag around its staff, the stars might have been more distinctly visible than the stripes. The walls were profusely adorned with drapery, and there were numerous flags disposed in festoons. Truly a wonderful thing to make a story of, and then parade it in the newspapers from Maine to Texas, beginning in Philadelphia!
Public Meeting In AberdeenApril 21
Address Of The Citizens.
Mrs H. Beecher Stowe.
Madam: The citizens of Aberdeen have much pleasure in embracing the opportunity now afforded them of expressing at once their esteem for yourself personally, and their interest in the cause of which you have been the distinguished advocate.
While they would, not render a blind homage to mere genius, however exalted, they consider genius such as yours, directed by Christian principle, as that which, for the welfare of humanity, cannot be too highly or too fervently honored.
Without depreciating the labors of the various advocates of slave emancipation who have appeared from time to time on both sides of the Atlantic, they may conscientiously award to you the praise of having brought about the present universal and enthusiastic sentiment in regard to the slavery which exists in America.
The galvanic battery may be arranged and charged, every plate, wire, and fluid being in its appropriate place; but, until some hand shall bring together the extremities of the conducting medium, in vain might we expect to elicit the latent fire.
Every heart may throb with the feeling of benevolence, and every mind respond to the sentiment that man, in regard to man, should be free and equal; but it is the province of genius such as yours to give unity to the universal, and find utterance for the felt.
When society has been prepared for some momentous movement or moral reformation, so that the hidden thoughts of the people want only an interpreter, the thinking community an organ, and suffering humanity a champion, distinguished is the honor belonging to the individual in whom all these requisites are found combined.
To you has been assigned by Providence the important task of educing the latent emotions of humanity, and waking the music that slumbered in the chords of the universal human heart, till it has pealed forth in one deep far rolling and harmonious anthem, of which the heavenly burden is, "Liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound!"
The production of your accomplished pen, which has already called forth such unqualified eulogy from almost every land where Anglo-Saxon literature finds access, and created so sudden and fervent an excitement on the momentous subject of American slavery, has nowhere been hailed with a more cordial welcome, or produced more salutary effects, than in the city of Aberdeen.
Though long ago imbued, with antislavery principles and interested in the progress of liberty in every part of the world, our community, like many others, required such information, suggestions, and appeals as your valuable work contains in one great department of slavery, in order that their interest might be turned into a specific direction, and their principles reduced, to combined practical effort.
Already they have esteemed it a privilege to engage with some activity in the promotion of the interests of the fugitive slave; and they shall henceforth regard with a deeper interest than ever the movements of their American brethren in this matter, until there exists among them no slavery from which to flee.
While they participate in your abhorrence of slavery in the American states, they trust they need scarcely assure you that they participate also in your love for the American people.
It is in proportion as they love that nation, attached to them by so many ties, that they lament the existence of a system which, so long as it exists, must bring odium upon the national character, as it cannot fail to enfeeble and impair their best social institutions.
They believe it to be a maxim that man cannot hold his fellow-man in slavery without being himself to some extent enslaved. And of this the censorship of the press, together with the expurgatorial indices of various religious societies in the Southern States of America, furnish ample corroboration.
It is hoped that your own nation may speedily be directed to recognize you as its best friend, for having stood forth in the spirit of true patriotism to advocate the claims of a large portion of your countrymen, and to seek the removal of an evil which has done much to neutralize the moral influence of your country's best (and otherwise free) institutions.
Accept, then, from the community of Aberdeen their congratulations on the high literary fame which you have by a single effort so deservedly acquired, and their grateful acknowledgments for your advocacy of a cause in which the best interests of humanity are involved.
Signed in name and by appointment of a public meeting of the citizens of Aberdeen within the County Buildings, this 21st April, 1853, A.D.
Geo. Hessay,Provost of Aberdeen.Public Meeting In DundeeApril 22
Mr. Gilfillan, who was received with great applause, said he had been intrusted by the Committee of the Ladies' Antislavery Association to present the following address to Mrs. Stowe, which he would read to the meeting:
"Madam: We, the ladies of the Dundee Antislavery Association, desire to add our feeble voices to the acclamations of a world, conscious that your fame and character need no testimony from us. We are less anxious to honor you than to prove that our appreciation and respect are no less sincere and no less profound than those of the millions in other places and other lands, whom you have instructed, improved, delighted, and thrilled. We beg permission to lay before you the expressions of a gratitude and an enthusiasm in some measure commensurate with your transcendent literary merit and moral worth. We congratulate you on the success of the chef-d'oeuvre of your genius, a success altogether unparalleled, and in all probability never to be paralleled in the history of literature. We congratulate you still more warmly on that nobility and benevolence of nature which made you from childhood the friend of the unhappy slave, and led you to accumulate unconsciously the materials for the immortal tale of Uncle Tom's Cabin. We congratulate you in having in that tale supported with matchless eloquence and pathos the cause of the crushed, the forgotten, the injured, of those who had no help of man at all, and who had even been blasphemously taught by professed ministers of the gospel of mercy that Heaven too was opposed to their liberation, and had blotted them out from the catalogue of man. We recognize, too, with delight, the spirit of enlightened and evangelical piety which breathes through your work, and serves to confute the calumny that none but infidels are interested in the cause of abolitiona calumny which cuts at Christianity with a yet sharper edge than at abolition, but which you have proved to be a foul and malignant falsehood. We congratulate you not only on the richness of the laurels which you have won, but on the dignity, the meekness, and the magnanimity with which these laurels have been worn. We hail in you our most gifted sister in the great cause of libertywe bid you warmly welcome to our city, and we pray Almighty God, the God of the oppressed, to pour his selectest blessings on your head, and to spare your invaluable life, till yours, and ours, and others' efforts for the cause of abolition are crowned with success, and till the shouts of a universal jubilee shall proclaim that in all quarters of the globe the African is free."