This “Reply” she wrote far more boldly and confidently than would have been possible if she had not talked with the President. She courteously acknowledged the compliment of the “Address” and its great weight with her and with the American people. She spoke of its influence upon north and upon south; and then she recounted the history of affairs in this country up to the Proclamation of Emancipation which was to take effect in the following January. She spoke frankly of the things that were filling her with pain and solicitude, especially of the lack of English sympathy toward us in our struggle for union. “Alas, then, is it so? In this day of great deeds and great heroisms ... do we hear such voices from England?” She went on to tell the story of the Jubilee she had witnessed the day before and of the psalm of the modern exodus, “Go down, Moses,” sung by that strange company with all the barbaric fire of the Marseillaise and the religious fervor of the old Hebrew prophet. Giving free rein to her impassioned eloquence, she said: “Sisters (in your ‘Address’), you have spoken well; we have heard you; we have heeded; we have striven in the cause, even unto death. We have sealed our devotion by desolate hearths and darkened homesteads, by the blood of sons, husbands and fathers.... Now we beg leave in solemn sadness to return to you your own words: we appeal to you, as sisters, as wives, as mothers, to raise your voices to your fellow-citizens and your prayers to God, for the removal of this affliction and disgrace from the Christian world.” Mrs. Stowe’s “Reply” was published widely in Great Britain, and was one of the most powerful agents in changing the public sentiment from a hostile to a friendly attitude. Meetings were held all over England and the tone of the speeches and of the newspapers and of the discussions in Parliament was no longer favorable to the division of our country into two separate governments, a north and a south, but was for union and abolition. John Bright wrote to Mrs. Stowe stating that such had been the happy result of the outspoken and appealing home-thrust in her “Reply.” All this, we must remember, happened before the Battle of Gettysburg, which was the crisis following the 1862 phase of the war. This assistance that Harriet Beecher Stowe was so fortunate as to be able to give in one of the epoch-making crises of our history, was one of her great services to our country. In the next chapter we are to see how she performed another real service, for which we owe her another debt of gratitude. CHAPTER XX WRITING STORIES OF OLD NEW ENGLAND LIFE