advocacy of the Northern cause, was at first lukewarm in comment,
regarding the 1860 election, while fought on the slavery issue, as in
reality a mere contest between parties for political power[38].

Such was the initial attitude of the English press. Each press issue
for several weeks harped on the same chord, though sounding varying
notes. If the South really means forcible resistance, said the _Times_,
it is doomed to quick suppression. "A few hundred thousand slave-owners,
trembling nightly with visions of murder and pillage, backed by a
dissolute population of 'poor whites,' are no match for the hardy and
resolute populations of the Free States[39]," and if the South hoped for
foreign aid it should be undeceived promptly: "Can any sane man believe
that England and France will consent, as is now suggested, to stultify
the policy of half a century for the sake of an extended cotton trade,
and to purchase the favours of Charleston and Milledgeville by
recognizing what has been called 'the isothermal law, which impels
African labour toward the tropics' on the other side of the
Atlantic[40]?" Moreover all Americans ought to understand clearly that
British respect for the United States "was not due to the attitude of
the South with its ruffian demonstrations in Congress.... All that is
noble and venerable in the United States is associated with its Federal
Constitution[41]."

Did the British public hold these same opinions? There is no direct
evidence available in sufficient quantity in autobiography or letters
upon which to base a conclusion. Such works are silent on the struggle
in America for the first few months and presumably public opinion, less
informed even than the press, received its impressions from the journals
customarily read. Both at this period and all through the war, also, it
should be remembered, clearly, that most newspapers, all the reviews, in