Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/403

 AMERICA, AUSTRALASIA, AFRICA, AND ASIA 391 The war was waged with all the bitterness which generally marks civil broils. At the outset the southerners proved them- selves superior in military skill, but the strength of numbers lay with the north. Capable leaders came to the victory of front as the fight went stubbornly on — the north Federalism, directed by the great President Abraham Lincoln. At last the tide turned in favour of the north, with which in the end the victory lay decisively. The cause of union had won, and with it the cause of slave emancipation. The great negro-slave population received freedom, though the race-antagonism between the black and the white citizens of the United States became no less acute than the antagonism between black slaves and white masters. Great Britain's severance from the thirteen colonies did not destroy her colonial power; it did not even cut her off from America. Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and 3. The British Canada held to the British connection. Many Empire, loyalists emigrated from the new American republic into Canada, so as to remain under the British flag. Thus in course of time friction developed between the old French population and the increasing numbers of the British, and between both and the home government which continued to control the administration. A revolt in 1837 led to a reorganisation of the whole system. Canada had been divided into two ; the two parts now became self-governing provinces of one colonial state, something like the separate states of the American union. In 1840 the mother country was waking up to the fact that great colonies with a future of expansion before them might well claim for themselves the constitutional liberties which English and Scots had won at home a century and a half before — the ' Responsible ' Govern- ment, which means that the will of the elected legislative assemblies controls the appointment and the dismissal of the administrative officers. From that time the principle has pre- vailed of granting to every British colony responsible ' govern- ment as soon as it has a population sufficiently advanced and sufficiently organised to conduct the management of its own affairs. As with the United States the lands westward to the