From the beginning of the secession movement the central aim of the Federal government and of the loyal people of the United States was to preserve the Union. It was the principle of union which had brought the American colonies together and enabled them to establish their independence. It was only after a “more perfect union” had been formed that prosperity and power at home and influence abroad had come to the United States as a nation. It was clearly seen that, if the principle of secession were once established, there would be nothing to prevent the great American commonwealth from crumbling into fragments. The honorable position of the United States among the nations of the world, as well as all of the good results at home which had been gained by more than three-quarters of a century of union, would be irretrievably lost. But these were not the only bad effects likely to follow successful secession. It was the avowed intention of the leaders of this movement to establish in the southern states a republic whose very corner-stone was slavery. With an immense slave population, with almost absolute control of the cotton supply of the world, with a people that took pride in the military art, with able and experienced leaders, the founding and future success of such a republic would have been attended by evil consequences which no one could foretell.

For these reasons the government and loyal people of the United States earnestly hoped that the secession movement would not receive any support or encouragement from foreign nations, especially from England. The members of the English cabinet at that time were all bitterly opposed to slavery and had been in full sympathy with the great movements which had utterly destroyed it within the limits of the empire.

The existence of slavery in the South had caused much annoyance to the English government and people. Negro subjects of the queen were being constantly kidnapped in southern ports and sold into slavery. To obtain redress in such cases was impossible. The escape of fugitive slaves into British territory was another cause of much trouble. Only a short time before the secession movement began all England had been shocked by the report that a British captain had been tarred and feathered at Charleston for allowing a negro to sit down at the table with him in his own vessel. All of these matters, however, were quickly forgotten. From the very beginning it was evident that English sympathy was with the South. It was apparently forgotten that such a course meant support and encouragement for human slavery—that institution which was so abhorred by the people and statesmen of England. Consistency in this matter alone would seem to indicate that the British government and people could not afford to sympathize with any sort of movement which had for its principal object the founding of a new republic especially to perpetuate and extend slavery. None of these considerations, however, seemed to exert any influence. With rare exceptions, the press, the people, and the government were heart and soul with the South in its efforts for the dismemberment of the American commonwealth. Mr. Justin McCarthy says: “The vast majority of what are called the governing classes were on the side of the South. London club life was virtually all southern. The most powerful papers in London, and the most popular papers as well, were open partisans of the southern confederation.”⁠[1] A writer in the Atlantic Monthly for November, 1861, says: “We have read at least three English newspapers for each week that has passed since our troubles began; we have been a reader of these papers for a series of years. In not one of them have we met the sentence or the line which pronounces hopefully, with bold assurance for the renewed life of our Union. In by far the most of them there is reiterated the most positive and dogged averment that there is no future for us.”

Even the great and conservative English quarterlies aided the newspapers in their efforts to encourage and justify the secession movement. A writer in the Edinburgh Review discussed the situation in the United States. His ability to do this may be readily inferred from his assertion that, “under the existing constitution of the United States which the freemen of the North are in arms now to defend, slavery must be considered to form a part and parcel of the law of the Union.” To establish this proposition he then quoted from an amendment to the constitution which, he said, provided that that instrument could never in future be so amended as to give congress power to abolish or interfere with slavery in any state. This, the writer said, was “the very last amendment or addition to the constitution passed on the 3d March of this year, that is, on the eve of President Lincoln’s inauguration.” In reviewing the condition of the people of the North he said: “They are fighting for territorial dominion.” In defining for his readers just what was meant by “territorial dominion,” he proceeded to tell them that it was “the power to enforce the will of the North over the South by superior force—to compel the minority, which is a local majority, to submit, in a word, to command the country and to subdue the people. If this be not the object for which the Americans of the Union are contending against the disunionists, we confess our inability to apprehend it, for no lesser object could justify a war conducted on such a scale.”⁠[2]

A writer in the Quarterly Review said: “We believe the conquest of the South to be a hopeless dream, and the reunion of the states in one all-powerful republic an impossibility.

“There is verge and room enough on the vast continent of America for two or three, or even more, powerful republics, and each may flourish undisturbed, if so inclined, without being a source of disquiet to its neighbors. There will be no loss of anything which conduces to the general happiness of mankind. For the contest on the part of the North now is undisguisedly for empire.

“As to the attempt to subjugate the Confederate States, supposing it succeeded, what then? Is the North prepared to hold the South by the same tenure that Austria holds Venetia? And is there a statesman in the Union who believes that in future it could be held in any other way?

“But the idea of a federal republic of which the one-half is in deadly hostility to the other, and coerced into a hateful partnership, involves a practical contradiction. It would no longer be the union of free states but a tyranny.”⁠[3] The same writer confidently predicted secession among the northern states on account of excessive taxation and the hardships incident to war.

A writer in the Westminster Review said: “The North is fighting to defend an abstraction—the constitution—the South to defend his home, his wife and his children.

“Without nicely balancing the virtues of the contending parties, they (Englishmen) can not help believing that moderation, justice and national honor will find ampler development in a divided republic.”⁠[4]

Early in 1861 a prominent Englishman of Liverpool published a book designed to inform the British public concerning the American situation. This book was extensively circulated and did much to influence public opinion in England. The most extreme views of the secessionists were upheld and defended. The attempt to restore the Union was denounced as a lamentable delusion which had been undertaken as a result of excitement in the North. The author’s position is well stated in the following quotation: “Secession is a just and clear constitutional right of the states, and no violation of any enactment of the Federal compact.”⁠[5]

The queen in her speech from the throne, February 5, 1861, referred to American affairs and expressed a conventional wish that the “differences might be susceptible of a satisfactory adjustment.” Concerning this expression Mr. Toumlin Smith soon afterward said: “Those last loose words are characteristic of the very loose notions that are common in England on the subject of what used to be the United States of North America. It is, from the very nature of the facts, no other than impossible that the ‘differences’ can be ‘susceptible’ (whatever that means) of satisfactory adjustment.”⁠[6]

Such expressions of opinion from these various sources, advanced so early in the great struggle and uttered with such confidence, were on many accounts most unwarranted and mischievous. The press was a most powerful factor in molding and directing English public opinion in favor of the Confederacy. Its course also tended to prejudice the Union cause in the eyes of the world and, at the same time, to establish the insurgent cause as a just one. This produced a corresponding degree of discouragement among the friends of the Union.

A very large majority of the most prominent public men of England never lost an opportunity to express unfavorable opinions concerning the northern cause. The following quotations are indicative of the sentiment which prevailed among them:

Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton: “I venture to predict that the younger men here present will live to see not two, but at least four, separate and sovereign commonwealths arising out of those populations which a year ago united their legislation under one president and carried their merchandise under one flag. I believe that such separation will be attended with happy results to the safety of Europe and the development of American civilization. If it could have been possible that as population and wealth increased all the vast continent of America, with her mighty sea-board and the fleets which her increasing ambition as well as her extending commerce would have formed and armed, could have remained under one form of government, in which the executive has little or no control over a populace exceedingly adventurous and excitable, why, then America would have hung over Europe like a gathering and destructive thunder cloud. No single kingdom in Europe could have been strong enough to maintain itself against a nation that had consolidated the gigantic resources of a quarter of the globe.”⁠[7]

Lord John Russell: “The struggle is on the one side for empire, and on the other for power.”⁠[8] On another occasion he said: “On the one hand, President Lincoln, in behalf of the northern portion of the late United States, has issued a proclamation declaratory of an intention to subject the ports of the southern portion of the late Union to a vigorous blockade,”⁠[9] etc.

The Earl of Shrewsbury: “I see in America the trial of democracy and its failure. I believe that the dissolution of the Union is inevitable, and that men now before me will live to see an aristocracy established in America.”⁠[10]

Sir John Pakington, M. P.: “From President Lincoln downward there is not a man in America who will venture to tell us that he really thinks it possible that by the force of circumstances the North can hope to compel the South to again join them in constituting the United States.”

Right Honorable William E. Gladstone, chancellor of the exchequer: “The Federal government can never succeed in putting down the rebellion. If it should, it would only be the preface and introduction of political difficulties far greater than the war itself.”⁠[11] On another and later occasion he said that the president of the Southern Confederacy, Mr. Jefferson Davis, “had made an army, had made a navy and, more than that, had made a nation.”⁠[12]

In a speech delivered at Dover, in the autumn of 1861, Lord Palmerston, the English premier, spoke in a taunting manner of the “fast running which signalized the battle of Bull Run.”⁠[13]

Soon after the beginning of the American civil war, Edward A. Freeman, the distinguished English historian, published a noted work, the title page of which reads as follows: “History of federal government from the foundation of the Achaian League to the disruption of the United States.” A list of examples of federal government is given. One of them is, “The United States, A. D. 1778-1862.”

These expressions from the leading public men of England leave no doubt as to the sentiments of the influential classes in that country. They hoped for the triumph of slavery, the success of the secession principle, and the division and ruin of the great American commonwealth. Such sentiments were, doubtless, inspired by jealousy and hatred of America, and by the thought that English commercial and other interests would be greatly advanced by the success of the Confederacy.

AUTHORITIES AND REFERENCES.

1. Atlantic Monthly, November, 1861.

2. Blaine, James G.: Twenty Years of Congress.

3. De Gasparin: L’Amérique devant l’Europe.

4. Edinburgh Review, October, 1861.

5. Freeman, E. A.: History of Federal Government.

6. London Quarterly Review, No. 221.

7. Lossing, B. J.: Civil War in America.

8. McCarthy, Justin: History of Our Own Times.

9. Parliamentary Papers, 1862, Vol. LXVII

10. Russell’s Life of Gladstone.

11. Spence, Jas.: The American Union.

12. Westminster Review, Vol. XXI.