retort for his country. He might say
the South is proud, and of nothing more proud than this--not
that she has slaves, but that she has treated them as slaves
never were treated before, that she has used power as no
nation ever used it under similar circumstances, and that she
has solved mercifully and humanely a most difficult problem
which has elsewhere defied solution save in blood. Or he
might use the unspoken reflection of an honest Southerner at
hearing much said of 'the foul blot': 'It was indeed a dark
and damnable blot that England left us with, and it required
all the efforts of Southern Christianity to pale it as it now
is[1200].'"

In 1862 and to the fall of 1863, _The Index_ had declared that slavery
was not an issue in the war; now its defence of the "domestic
institution" of the South, repeatedly made in varying forms, was
evidence of the great effect in England of Lincoln's emancipation
edicts. _The Index_ could not keep away from the subject. In March,
quotations were given from the _Reader_, with adverse comments, upon a
report of a controversy aroused in scientific circles by a paper read
before the Anthropological Society of London. James Hunt was the author
and the paper, entitled "The Negro's Place in Nature," aroused the
contempt of Huxley who criticized it at the meeting as unscientific and
placed upon it the "stigma of public condemnation." The result was a
fine controversy among the scientists which could only serve to
emphasize the belief that slavery was indeed an issue in the American
War and that the South was on the defensive. Winding up a newspaper duel
with Hunt who emerged rather badly mauled, Huxley asserted "the North is
justified in any expenditure of blood or treasure which shall eradicate
a system hopelessly inconsistent with the moral elevation, the political
freedom, or the economical progress of the American people[1201]...."

Embarrassment caused by the "Foul Blot" issue, the impossibility to many
sincere Southern friends of accepting the view-point of _The Index_,
acted as a check upon the holding of public meetings and prevented the
carrying out of that intensive public campaign launched by Spence and
intended to be fostered by the Southern Independence Association. By the
end of June, 1864, there was almost a complete cessation of Southern
meetings, not thereafter renewed, except spasmodically for a brief
period in th