r broke out, the sympathies of Canadians were
overwhelmingly on the side of the North. The railway and freer trade had
been bringing the two peoples closer together, and time was healing old
sores. Slavery was held to be the real issue, and on that issue there
were scarcely two opinions in the British Provinces.

Yet in a few months sympathy had given way to angry and suspicious
bickering, and the possibility of invasion of Canada by the Northern
forces was vigorously debated. This sudden shift of opinion and the
danger in which it involved the provinces were both incidents in the
quarrel which sprang up between the United States and Great Britain. In
Britain as in Canada, opinion, so far as it found open expression, was
at first not unfriendly to the North. Then came the anger of the North
at Great Britain's legitimate and necessary, though perhaps precipitate,
action in acknowledging the South as a belligerent. This action ran
counter to the official Northern theory that the revolt of the Southern
States was a local riot, of merely domestic concern, and was held to
foreshadow a recognition of the independence of the Confederacy. The
angry taunts were soon returned. The ruling classes in Great Britain
made the discovery that the war was a struggle between chivalrous
gentlemen and mercenary counterhoppers and cherished the hope that the
failure of the North would discredit, the world over, the democracy
which was making uncomfortable claims in England itself. The English
trading classes resented the shortage of cotton and the high duties
which the protectionist North was imposing. With the defeat of the Union
forces at Bull Run the prudent hesitancy of aristocrat and merchant in
expressing their views disappeared. The responsible statesmen of both
countries, especially Lincoln and Lord John Russell, refused to be
stampeded, but unfortunately the leading newspapers served them ill.
The "Times", with its constant sneers and its still more irritating
patronizing advice, and the New York "Herald", bragging and blustering
in the frank hope of forcing a war with Britain and France which would
reunite South and North and subordinate the slavery issue, did more than
any other factors to bring the two countries to the verge of war.

In Canada the tendency in some quarters to reflect English opinion,
the disappointment in others that the abolition of slavery was not
explicitly pledged by the North, and above all resentment agains