The
British saw the quarrel between North and South for what it truly was,
and were not swayed by the high-sounding morality of abolitionists --
most of them sons of New England slave-traders and mill owners who grew
rich from slave labor on cotton plantations. They also learned from
Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward that Canada was to be a
target of seizure after the South was subjugated.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Mere Lust of Dominion and Empire the Cause of War:
“The
London Economist was of the opinion at this time [in early 1862] that
[James] Spence’s book [The American Union] had done more “to mould into
definite form the floating mass of public opinion on the right and wrong
doing of the Southern States in the matter of secession” than any other
work of its kind. In his book Spence had convincingly argued the
sovereign nature of the American States and their constitutional right
to secede.
With
even greater force he placed before the English the fundamental
difference between the North and the South which made the secession of
the South inescapable. The North was industrial, powerful and constantly
threatening the less powerful, rural and agricultural South. But the
thing which created the deepest impression was not so much the economic
differences between the two sections as the racial.
The
North, according to Spence, was composed of a conglomerate, unfused
mass of nationalities – Irish, German, Swiss, Swedish, Danish, Italian,
Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Jewish, Roumanian, and Turkish – an
inferior, mongrel people, while the South was almost pure British. This
idea stuck – and even today sticks in the British mind – and the
majority of the British soon felt a racial sympathy with the South which
they did not have for the North. Henceforth, the bragging, swaggering,
dishonest American with the nasal twang came from north of the Mason and
Dixon Line.
The
initial sympathy of the British people for the North because of the
belief that the South had seceded to set up a slave state and that the
North stood for the freedom of the slave was soon destroyed, and a
strong conviction arose that the freedom of the slave was not an issue
in the war. One can hardly escape the logic of events which forced this
conclusion upon the British mind. During the winter of 1861….numerous
compromises of the American troubles were discussed, the most important
of which was the Crittenden compromise conceding a permanent share in
the territories to slavery.
The
[London] Economist upon hearing of such proposals spoke of the measures
as iniquitous, and was not willing to believe that Lincoln would yield
to them. But the final disillusionment came when in his inaugural
address Lincoln said: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to
interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it
exists,…..I believe I have no lawful right to do so and have no
intention to do so.”
This
was, in truth, the death knell of British sympathy based upon the moral
righteousness of the northern cause. If freedom was not the cause [of
the North], then what was it?
The
Economist late in the summer of 1861 pronounced….[the war] was not for
freeing the slaves on the part of the North or preserving slavery on the
part of the South, but was for dominion and power on the part of the
one and the right of self government of the other. The inevitable
conclusion was that the war was “a war of conquest and not of
philanthropy”…..and after all the South was “only fighting for that
right to choose their government.” All were now conscious that no really
noble or soul-stirring cause was in any way at issue, since the
abolition sentiment had “nothing to do with the quarrel and the
protective tariff a great deal and the mere lust of dominion and empire
more than either.”
Then
if the freedom of the slave was not the issue, asked the Economist, “on
what other ground can we be fairly be called upon to sympathize so
warmly with the Federal cause?”
(King
Cotton Diplomacy, Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of
America, Frank Lawrence Owsley, University of Chicago Press, 1931, pp.
172-173; 186-188)
