a greased
cartridge, which had to be bitten off before being rammed down.

To the Hindu the fat of cattle or swine is an abomination, and his
religion forbids his tasting it. An attempt on the part of the
British Government to enforce the use of the new cartridge brought on
a general mutiny among three hundred thousand Sepoys. During the
revolt the native troops perpetrated the most horrible atrocitise on
the English women and children who fell into their hands. When the
insurrection was finally quelled under Havelock and Campbell, the
English soldiers retaliated by binding numbers of prisoners to the
mouths of cannon and blowing them to shreds. At the close of the
rebellion, the government of India was wholly transferred to the
Crown, and later the Queen received the title of "Empress of India"
(1876).

598. Death of Prince Albert; the American Civil War, 1861.

Not long after the Sepoy rebellion was quelled, Prince Albert (S589)
died suddenly (1861). In him the nation lost an earnest promoter of
social, educational, and industrial reforms, and the United States a
true and judicious friend, who, at a most critical period in the Civil
War, used his influence to maintain peace between the two countries.

After his death the Queen held no court for many years, and so
complete was her seclusion that Sir Charles Dilke, a well-known
Radical, suggested in Parliament (1868) that her Majesty be invited to
abdicate or choose a regent. The suggestion was indignantly rejected;
but it revealed the feeling, which quite generally existed, that "the
real Queen died with her husband," and that only her shadow remained.

In the spring of the year 1861, in which Prince Albert died, the
American Civil War broke out between the Northern and Southern
States. Lord Palmerston, the Liberal Prime Minister, preferred to be
considered the minister of the nation rather than the head of a
political party. At the beginning of the war he was in favor of the
North. As the conflict threatened to be bitter the Queen issued a
proclamation declaring her "determination to maintain a strict and
impartial neutrality in the contest between the said contending
parties." The rights of belligerents--in other words, all the rights
of war according to the law of nations--were granted to the South
equally with the North; and her Majesty's subjects were warned against
aiding either side in the conflict.

The progress of the war caused terrible distre