strict
non-intervention.

After each marked southern success, would come some revival of
recognition rumors; but these were ever coupled, now, with an important
"if!" If New Orleans had not fallen; if we had won Antietam; if
Gettysburg had been a victory--then we _might_ have been welcomed
into the family of nations. But over the mass of thinkers settled the
dark conviction that Europe saw her best interest, in standing by to
watch the sections rend and tear each other to the utmost. Every fiber
either lost was so much subtraction from that balance of power,
threatening to pass across the Atlantic. The greater the straits to
which we reduce each other, said the South, the better will it please
Europe; and the only faith in her at last, was that she hoped to see
the breach permanent and irreconcilable, and with it all hopes of rival
power die!

If the theory be correct, that it was the intent of the Great Powers to
foster the chance of two rival governments on this continent, it seems
short-sighted in one regard. For--had they really recognized the dire
extremity, to which the South was at last brought, they should either
have furnished her means, directly or indirectly, to prolong the
strife; or should have intervened and established a broken and
shattered duality, in place of the stable and recemented Union.

Nor can thinkers, on either side, cavil at Europe's policy during that
war; calculating, selfish and cruel as it may seem to the
sentimentalist. If corporations really have no bowels, governments can
not be looked to for nerves. Interest is the life blood of their
systems; and interest was doubtless best subserved by the course of the
Great Powers. For the rumors of destitution and of disaffection in
France and England--caused by the blockade-begotten "cotton
famine"--that crept through the Chinese wall, were absurdly magnified,
both as to their proportions and their results. And the sequel proved
that it was far cheaper for either nation to feed a few thousand idle
operatives--or to quell a few incipient bread riots--than to unsettle a
fixed policy, and that at the risk of a costly foreign war.

There was bitter disappointment in the South, immediately succeeding
dissipation of these rosy, but nebulous, hopes in the kingship of
cotton. Then reaction came--strong, general and fruitful. Sturdy
"Johnny Reb" yearned for British rifles, shoes, blankets and bacon; but
he wanted them most of all, to _win_ his own i