In June, 1863, he sought to find, in a brief visit to England, rest and recuperation for bodily and mental powers exhausted by the strain they had endured. Those were the darkest days of the war. Two years of campaigning, and vast expenditures of blood and treasure, had done little or nothing to break down the rebellion. Vicksburg was defying the desperate efforts of Grant, while in the East Lee, at the head of his veteran army, was pressing forward to invade Pennsylvania and outflank Washington. All the world looked upon the United States as on the eve of splitting asunder. In England the sympathy of the laboring men was with the North, but the upper social and official classes were solidly on the other side. Even such a man as Gladstone declared that “Jefferson Davis had created a nation,” and only a few tribunes of the people like John Bright and Richard Cobden publicly pleaded the cause of freedom. With his love of battling against unjust opposition, it is not strange that Beecher was drawn into a crusade against the prejudices that he found prevalent in England—a crusade undertaken without premeditation, but one whose results proved it to be one of his most notable services to his country. It was begun in the Free Trade Hall at Manchester, where he faced a great and hostile assemblage, secured a hearing by sheer pluck and persistence, and then, by his magnificent oratorical power and the conscious justice of his cause, won a victory that was afterward repeated in the other chief cities of England and Scotland. His speeches turned the balance of British sentiment, and warned the government from the path that might have led to intervention in the struggle. “I believe I did some good,” Beecher himself said, in speaking of his missionary work in England. A New York journal of that time put it more strongly. “The administration at Washington,” it remarked, “has sent abroad more than one man to represent the cause of the North and press it upon the minds of foreign courts and citizens; but here is a person who goes abroad without official prestige, on a mere private mission to recruit his health, and yet we doubt whether his speeches in England have not done more for us by their frank and manly exposition of our principles, our purposes, and our hopes, than all the other agencies employed.” The value of Beecher’s work in England was fully recognized by President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton. With these leaders, whom he had never hesitated to criticise when he believed it his duty to do so, he now entered into warm relations. It was he who was invited to deliver the address at the raising of the old flag over the regained Fort Sumter. His active participation in public affairs continued up to his death. His part in the election of 1884 is of course fresh in the memory of readers—so fresh, indeed, that it can hardly be reviewed without intrenching upon the prejudices of present day partisanship.