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GLADSTONE, COBDEN, AND BRIGHT ON THE WAR.

the dictation, of the French Emperor and his advisers. In 1863, however, two Confederate iron rams were almost ready to be launched from one of our dockyards for the purpose of forcing an entrance to the Southern ports. Again Mr. Adams urgently called the attention of the government to the matter. Again there was delay, until at length, on the 5th of September, just as they were ready to slip off as the Alabama had done, the American minister wrote another letter, in which he said plainly, "It would be superfluous in me to point out to your lordship that this is war." Undoubtedly to connive by negligence and indifference to the issue of armed vessels of war to be used against a friendly state or after neutrality had been declared would surely be as near to war as anything short of actual hostilities; but the law was still uncertain, and Lord Russell was still balanced on the edge of a technical razor. But the two ironclads were detained. "I should have ordered the prosecution of the owners of the vessel," wrote Earl Russell in his Recollections, eleven years afterwards, "had not the principal law officer of the crown given me reason to think that it would fail in an English court of justice. I therefore obtained the sanction of the cabinet to purchase the two 'rams,' as they were called, which were intended for hostile purposes against the United States." So it would seem that instead of being prosecuted the builders of these ships, who had committed a national though a questionably illegal offence, made a good thing of it after all, and instead of being punished by the confiscation or the destruction of the vessels, profited handsomely by the speculation.

It happened not long after the completion of the Alabama that Mr. Gladstone, in speaking after a political banquet at Newcastle, expressed an opinion that Jefferson Davis had really succeeded in making the South an independent nation. It shows how much importance must have been attached to his utterances, that even at a time when armed Confederate ships were being built in English-dockyards this remark should have caused considerable comment and no little excitement. Perhaps

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another statesman, though he might have been a cabinet minister, could have said it with comparatively little notice, but every opinion of the chancellor of the exchequer was regarded as being of grave import.

The notion that the South would succeed in separating itself into an independent state was general. Almost everybody shared it except Mr. Bright and a very small knot of men who thought with him. Even Mr. Cobden held that opinion for some time, and Mr. Bright had a good deal of trouble to convince him to the contrary, and almost quarrelled with him because he was unable at first to yield to repeated arguments. In January, 1862, Cobden wrote to a correspondent, Mr. Paulton, who, with some others of his friends, did not sympathize with the Union:

"I can't see my way through the American business. I don't believe the North and South can ever lie in the same bed again. Nor do I see how the military operations can be carried into the South, so as to inflict a crushing defeat. Unless something of the kind takes place, I predict that Europe will recognize the independence of the South. I tell Sumner this, and tell him that his only chance, if he wants time to fight it out, is to raise the blockade of the Mississippi voluntarily, and then Europe might look on.

"But our friend Bright will not hear of anything against the claims of the North. I admire his pluck, for when he goes with a side it is always to win. I tell him that it is possible to wish well to a cause without being sure that it will be successful. However, he will soon find in the house that we shall be on this question, as we were on China, Crimean, and Greek Pacifico wars, quite in a minority! There is no harm in that if you are right, but it is useless to deceive ourselves about the issue. Three-fourths of the house will be glad to find an excuse for voting for the dismemberment of the great Republic.”

Cobden had already been in communication with Mr. Sumner, and his letters probably did much to mitigate any apparent tendency of the Federal government to reflect the suspicion and animosity displayed by the violent opponents of England in America. His letters

are very interesting; in one of them upon the affair of the Trent he says:

"Though I said in my other letter that I shall never care to utter a word about the merits of a war after it has begun, I do not the less feel it my duty to try to prevent hostilities occurring. Let me here remark, that I cannot understand how you should have thought it worth your while at Washington to have reopened this question of the right of search, by claiming to exercise it in a doubtful case and a doubtful manner, under circumstances which could be of so little advantage, and to have incurred the risk of greater disadvantages. The capture of Mason and Slidell can have little effect in discouraging the South, compared with the indirect encouragement and hope it may hold out to them of embroiling your government with England. Your newspapers will not drive us

into war. But when grave men (or men that should be grave), holding the highest posts in your cultivated State of Massachusetts, compliment Captain Wilkes for having given an affront to the British lion, it makes it very hard for Bright and me to contend against the 'British lion party' in this country. All I can say is that I hope you have taken Bright's advice, and offered unconditional arbitration. With that offer publicly made, the friends of peace could prevent our fireeaters from assaulting you, always providing that your public speakers do not put it out of our power to keep the peace. I was sorry to see a report of an anti-English speech by your colleague at New York. Honestly speaking, and with no blind patriotism to mislead me, I don't think the nation here behaved badly under the terrible evil of loss of trade and danger of starving under your blockade. Of course all privileged classes and aristocracies hate your institutions-that is natural enough; but the mass of the people never went with the South. I am not pleased with your project of sinking stones to block up ports. That is barbarism. It is quite natural that, smarting as you do under an unprovoked aggression from the slave-owners, you should even be willing to smother them like hornets in their nest. But don't forget the outside world, and

especially don't forget that the millions in Europe are more interested even than their princes in preserving the future commerce with the vast region of the Confederate States."

In January, 1862, he wrote:-"Be assured if you had offered to refer the question to arbitration, there could not have been a meeting called in England that would not have endorsed it. The only question was whether we ought to be the first to offer arbitration. I mean this was the only doubt in the popular mind. As regards our government, they are, of course, feeling the tendency of public opinion. A friend of mine in London, a little behind the scenes, wrote to me:-"They are busy at the Foreign Office hunting up precedents for arbitration, very much against their will.' I write all this because I wish you to know that we are not quite so bad as appeared at first on the surface."

In the following July, a month before Mr. Gladstone had made the remark about the probable independence of the South, which caused so much perturbation among the friends of, and believers in the North, Cobden, writing again to Mr. Sumner, said :

:

"There is an all but unanimous belief that you cannot subject the South to the Union. Even they who are your partisans and advocates cannot see their way to any such issue. It is necessary that you should understand that this opinion is so widely and honestly entertained, because it is the key to the expression of views which might otherwise not be quite intelligible. Among some of the governing class in Europe the wish is father to this thought. But it is not so with the mass of the people. Nor is it so with our own government entirely. I know that Gladstone would restore your Union to-morrow if he could; yet he has steadily maintained from the first that unless there was a strong Union sentiment, it is impossible that the South cau be subdued. Now the belief is all but universal that there is no Union feeling in the South; and this is founded latterly upon the fact that no cotton comes from New Orleans. It is said that if the instinct of gain, with cotton at double its usual price, do not induce the people to sell, it is a proof beyond dispute

PROCLAMATION OF NEGRO FREEDOM.

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that the political resentment is overwhelming ward in putting in looms and preparation. and unconquerable."

It was not very remarkable that Mr. Gladstone should in August, 1862, have spoken of the Southern States as though they were already independent. Injudicious it might have been, but it was an indiscretion shared with the great majority of the most prominent men of the country, and, as he explained five years afterwards, though he confessed that he was wrong and took too much upon himself in expressing such an opinion, the motive was not bad. His sympathies were with the whole American people. He probably, like many Europeans, did not understand the nature and working of the American Union. He had imbibed conscientiously, if erroneously, an opinion that twenty or twenty-five millions would be happier and would be stronger (of course assuming that they would hold together) without the South than with it, and also that the negroes would be much nearer to emancipation under a Southern government than under the old system of the Union, which had not at that time been abandoned, and which always appeared to him to place the whole power of the North at the command of the slaveholding interests of the South. As far as regarded the special or separate interest of England, he had always contended that it was best for our interest that the Union should be kept entire.

Mr. Cobden's letters to Mr. Sumner may be taken fairly to represent the prevailing feeling in England, and to indicate the growing disposition to recognize the true position of the Federal government, though, as he pointed out, there were considerable interests in favour of supporting the demands of the South in the early period of the struggle. A writer in a trade journal has recently stated that traditions yet linger in our manufacturing towns of the days when any speculative builder would run up a weaving-shed for Dick, Tom, or Harry, who had, or said he had, the slightest knowledge of manufacturing, or for any grocer, draper, currier, shoemaker, or publican who had saved up a couple of hundred pounds. Having become the tenant of a shed, machinists were never back

Profits were known to be so great that both landlords and machinists could wait without anxiety for the first twelve months, knowing that much of their debts would be paid out of profits in that space of time. Having hired a shed and received credit for his looms, any penniless man could then go with assurance upon the Manchester exchange; and in the days when "long terms" were accorded to all who asked for them, could buy his yarns, take orders for cloth, make, deliver and get paid for it in time to meet his accounts, and this without much difficulty. In a couple of years a manufacturer commencing thus would often be clear of all liabilities, and on the highway to making a fortune.

These remarks refer to the decade from 1850 to 1860, and that state of things was, it is said, almost entirely changed, and the small manufacturers swept away by the cotton famine. Without entirely endorsing such representations it may safely be said that not only did the large mill-owners suffer deeply, but that the business of many of them was crippled for years afterwards, while the struggling men were ruined and the whole population of operatives might have perished but for the energetic action of those who administered the relief funds, or organized schemes for providing sewing for the women and other occupations for large numbers of the men.

Meanwhile the war continued. It was evident that the battle would be fought out to the bitter end, for the issues of it had changed; and though the Confederates continued to defeat the Federal troops, the determination of the North was aroused, and people began to discern that the result of the conflict was only a matter of endurance and of superior resources. The Northern troops soon began to acquire, by experience, the knowledge and the firmness which was necessary to enable them to cope with antagonists, considerable bodies of whom had entered on the first campaign already well drilled and accustomed to act together at the word of command.

On the 22d of January, 1862, President Lincoln had issued a proclamation that at the next meeting of congress he would recommend

a bill enacting that on and after the 1st of January, 1863, all persons held as slaves within any state the people whereof should be in rebellion against the United States, should be thenceforward and for ever free, and the proclamation added that the executive would, in due time, recommend that all citizens of the United States who should have remained loyal thereto throughout the rebellion should, upon the restoration of peace, be compensated for all losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves.

On the 1st of January, 1863, it was proclaimed that all persons held as slaves within the Confederate States should thenceforward be free, and that the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, would recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons. The people so declared to be free were enjoined to abstain from violence, unless in necessary self-defence, and were recommended in all cases where they were allowed, to labour faithfully for reasonable wages. At the same time it was declared that such persons, of suitable condition, would be received into the armed service of the United States, to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts. Upon this, which he declared was sincerely believed to to be an act of justice warranted by the constitution upon military necessity, the president invoked the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favour of Almighty God.

Results showed that this was in effect an abolition of slavery throughout the States, but only the Confederate States were mentioned, and the declaration was received with dismay. Earl Russell pointed out to Lord Lyons, our representative at Washington, that the proclamation professed to emancipate all slaves in places where the United States could not exercise any jurisdiction or make emancipation a reality, but did not decree emancipation of slaves in any states or parts of states occupied by Federal troops and subject to United States jurisdiction, and where, therefore, emancipation might be carried out. There seemed to be no declaration of a prin

ciple adverse to slavery, and Earl Russell therefore said he did not think it could or should satisfy the friends of abolition, who looked for total and impartial freedom for the slave, and not for vengeance on the slave

Owner.

The fear with many was that such a proclamation would cause a slave insurrection and the horrors that might accompany it if the negroes sought revenge and plunder as well as liberty, or if attempts were made to suppress any efforts to escape. The proclamation expressly deprecated any acts of violence, but what was the value of such deprecation where it could not be followed by legal restraint? These anticipations were not realized, and probably it was known on both sides that no general insurrection or attempts to make reprisals on the owners of slaves would be made. In numerous instances, it was said, the negroes remained to work on the estates, sometimes because they had been kindly treated, and were not indisposed to wait till terms of wages could be adjusted in case of the termination of the war, and in some cases because they were ignorant what steps to take to make use of their freedom, and preferred remaining where they were for a time, tolerably certain of food and clothes and shelter, to running to unknown troubles and vicissitudes in the border states, or joining the Federal army to fight against their old masters. At all events there was little disposition to armed and violent revolt, and though, of course, a large number of able-bodied negroes entered the Federal service, and a multitude of men, women, and children eventually found their way north, the fact that there was so frequently a strong desire to remain was afterwards cited, and in some respects was fairly cited, by the Southern planters as a proof that the atrocities with which the slave-owners were charged were not even general, much less universal.

That they had existed in too many instances was, however, capable of proof, and that they might exist without any real redress for the victim was argument enough against the perpetuation or the continued existence of the system.

EFFORTS OF THE NORTHERN STATES-GRANT.

The proclamation of emancipation, defective as it was in its expression of intention, was a serious blow to the South. It changed the aspect of the war from that of an effort on the part of the North to maintain the Union to that of a struggle by the South to maintain negro slavery, and it can scarcely be denied that this was the true origin of the conflict. A new element of enthusiasm seemed to have been roused among the Federals, at the same time that they were profiting by the reverses that had been inflicted on them by the superior military skill of their opponents; while the South was already preparing for efforts which would necessitate the abandonment of the plantations from which they had derived their wealth, and the slave labourers on which, were now invited by the Federal government to migrate into free states, or to refuse to work except under entirely new conditions.

On the 10th of April (1863) Jefferson Davis issued a manifesto warning the people of the Confederate States against too sedulously cultivating their usually valuable cotton crops; to lay aside thoughts of gain and to devote themselves to securing their liberties, without which those gains would be valueless. The wheat harvest, which would be gathered in the following month, promised an abundant yield; but even if that promise should be fulfilled, the difficulty of transportation, enhanced by the previous rainy winter, would embarrass military operations and cause suffering among the people should the crops in the middle and northern portions of the Confederacy prove deficient. No uneasiness might be felt in regard to a mere supply of bread for men. It was to the supply of the large amount of corn and forage for live stock, and for the animals used in military operations that efforts should be directed. The fields should be devoted exclusively to the production of food for man and beast, and corn should be sown broadcast in proximity to canals, rivers, and railroads, while every endeavour should be directed to the prompt supply of districts where the armies were operating.

The Confederates were already beginning to feel that all their determination and courage would be needed to sustain the struggle against

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the enormous resources and the numerical superiority of the North. A few months afterwards they also became aware that the Federal government was discovering the weak points of its military organization, and had appointed more efficient generals to take command of its forces. Early in 1862 the large army which General M'Clellan had been occupied in organizing and disciplining was making ready to advance, and some successes had attended the Federals-one of them being the important operations of Commodore Farragut on the Mississippi, which led to the surrender of New Orleans, but in the first considerable battle General Sidney Johnston succeeded in surprising and defeating the Federal General Grant at Pittsburg Landing. Grant had, with his army and river fleet, taken some forts, and though he was beaten and a part of his camp was captured, he was able to hold his own by the assistance of some gun-boats which forced the Confederates to retire to their lines after losing their general. For some time after this a series of disasters occurred, apparently the result of the timidity and incompetency of some of the Federal commanders, and though some advantages were gained and the Confederates evidently could not hold the line of the Ohio, and on the Mississippi retained only the strong position of Vicksburg, the balance of the actual war appeared to be against the North, even their naval superiority having been rendered doubtful by the exploits of the Confederate Merrimac, a vessel which had been coated with iron rails and re-named the Virginia. This vessel destroyed two or three wooden men-of-war, scattered terror into a fleet of transport and store-ships, and threw shells into the lines of the Federal army in the neighbourhood of Norfolk. Being met by the iron-clad Monitor, which arrived on the scene of action from New York, a naval duel ensued, both vessels had to retire to repair damages, and the Virginia was so much injured that she was abandoned and blown up by her

crew.

The efforts of the Federals were directed to the capture of Richmond, the Confederate capital, but the delays of General M'Clellan and the inefficiency of General Pope enabled

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