ruary 10,
1860, and in succeeding issues.]

[Footnote 30: Senior, _American Slavery_, p. 68.]

CHAPTER II

FIRST KNOWLEDGE OF IMPENDING CONFLICT, 1860-61.

It has been remarked by the American historian, Schouler, that
immediately before the outbreak of the Civil War, diplomatic
controversies between England and America had largely been settled, and
that England, pressed from point to point, had "sullenly" yielded under
American demands. This generalization, as applied to what were, after
all, minor controversies, is in great measure true. In larger questions
of policy, as regards spheres of influence or developing power, or
principles of trade, there was difference, but no longer any essential
opposition or declared rivalry[31]. In theories of government there was
sharp divergence, clearly appreciated, however, only in governing-class
Britain. This sense of divergence, even of a certain threat from America
to British political institutions, united with an established opinion
that slavery was permanently fixed in the United States to reinforce
governmental indifference, sometimes even hostility, to America. The
British public, also, was largely hopeless of any change in the
institution of slavery, and its own active humanitarian interest was
waning, though still dormant--not dead. Yet the two nations, to a degree
not true of any other two world-powers, were of the same race, had
similar basic laws, read the same books, and were held in close touch at
many points by the steady flow of British emigration to the
United States.

When, after the election of Lincoln to the Presidency, in November,
1860, the storm-clouds of civil strife rapidly gathered, the situation
took both British Government and people by surprise. There was not any
clear understanding either of American political conditions, or of the
intensity of feeling now aroused over the question of the extension of
slave territory. The most recent descriptions of America had agreed in
assertion that at some future time there would take place, in all
probability, a dissolution of the Union, on lines of diverging economic
interests, but also stated that there was nothing in the American
situation to indicate immediate progress in this direction. Grattan, a
long-time resident in America as British Consul at Boston, wrote:

"The day must no doubt come when clashing objects will break
the ties of common interest which now preserve the Union. But