and his previous victories,
the almost uniform success that had attended his earlier movements, made
his Pennsylvania reverses all the more grave in the estimation of
foreigners. Immediately after news was sent abroad of his defeat and
retreat, tidings came to us, and soon were spread over the world, that
the Rebels had experienced the most terrible disasters in the Southwest,
whereby the so-called Confederacy had been cut in two. These facts gave
pause to those intentions of acknowledgment which had undoubtedly been
entertained in European courts and cabinets; and nothing afterward
occurred, down to the day of Chickamauga, which was calculated to effect
a change in the minds of the rulers of the Old World. But when
intelligence of Chickamauga reached Europe, England had taken a position
so determinedly hostile to intervention in any of its many forms and
stages that even a much greater disaster than that could have produced
no evil to our cause abroad. For it is to be remembered that the whole
business of intervention has lain from the beginning in the bosom of
England, and that, if she had chosen to act against us in force, she
could have done so with the strongest hope of success, if merely our
humiliation, or even our destruction, had been her object, and without
any immediate danger threatening herself as the consequence of her
hostile action. The French Government, not France, or any considerable
portion of the French people, has been ready to interfere in behalf of
the Rebels for more than two years, and would have entered upon the
process of intervention long since, if it had not been held back by the
obstinate refusal of England to unite with her in that pro-slavery
crusade which, it is with regret we say it, the French Emperor has so
much at heart; and without the aid and assistance of England, the ruler
of France could not and durst not move an inch against us. Not the
least, nor least strange, of the changes of this mutable world is to be
seen in the circumstance that France should be restrained from undoing
the work of the Bourbons and of Napoleon I. by England's firm opposition
to the wishes and purposes of Napoleon III. The Bourbon policy, as well
in Spain as in France, brought about the early overthrow of England's
rule over the territory of the old United States; and the first Napoleon
sold Louisiana to us for a song, because he was convinced, that, by so
doing, he should aid to build up a formidable nava