Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/153

 practical question very forcibly home to us; and though Englishmen almost unanimously, within the limits of my reading and hearing, protested a rupture with the United States would be formidable and disabling only to that belligerent, (a point on which I ventured to fancy that British self-confidence might not have fathomed all the possibilities of Providence,) the crisis did not the less tend to rouse all our defensive and some of our aggressive instincts, and to weight the scales of public feeling against the North. The question of perils from American power then passed out of the region of mere theory, and became practical and imminent. The danger itself dispersed, indeed, as suddenly as it had come, but the impression remained.

Another motive for siding against the North was the abstract hatred of war, which has grown to be a very widespread and genuine feeling in England—and, in my humble opinion, a most befitting and praiseworthy one,—active whenever we are in the position of outsiders, and overborne only when our own passions and real or supposed interests are involved. The great majority of the nation plunged headlong into the Russian War, and the grip of the British bull-dog's teeth upon his opponent was not easily loosed, even when good cause for loosing it appeared. We had no more notion of retiring from India in 1857, when the Indian mutineers used some cogency of material argument to make us do so, than we should have of retiring from Ireland, if a new Irish rebellion occurred; but when the question was merely that of breaking up a vast republic beyond the Atlantic in the interests of negro slavery, the horrors and wickedness of war were obvious and impressive to us. That historical phrase of General Scott's, "Wayward sisters, go in peace!" was very generally, and I think rightly, regarded as expressing one of the points of view which might with honor, caution, and consistency have been acted upon, when the tremendous decision between peace and war had to be made. The opposite point of view was also tenable: it was adopted with overwhelming impulse by the Federal Government and the loyal States; and, having been carried out to a triumphant conclusion, may be admitted to have been the wisest and most patriotic, even by persons who (and I will not deny having been one of them from time to time during the war) were induced to doubt whether any cause, however equitable, and any object, however righteous and great, sufficed to justify the frightful devastation and carnage which their prosecution involved. If such doubts beset the adherents of the North, of course the view of the matter entertained by opponents of war in the abstract, who were also on the side of the South, was incomparably stronger in reprobation of this particular war. True, it might be urged, that the South, and not the North, both furnished the casus belli, and began the actual hostilities by the assault upon Fort Sumter; but it was not upon the cue of Southern partisans to admit that this internal action of certain sovereign States of the Union was of a nature to justify a coercive war on the part of the North, while the fact that it rested with the North to decline or accept the challenge was patent to the friends of both belligerents. Thus, when the enormous magnitude and horrors of the war startled English onlookers, the odium, in the opinion of many, attached to the North: a view which, though it might not stand the test of strict investigation, or of a severe discussion of principles and provocations, was superficially maintainable, and not to be anyhow argued out of all plausibility. "The South is defensive, and the North aggressive," one disputant might say. "Yes," would be the reply, "at this stage of the contest; but ascend a step higher, and it is the South which made an aggression on the Union, and the North is defending that." "Still, the North might have abstained from defending it, and might have said, 'Wayward sisters, go in peace!'" "It might; but it saw good reason for saying the reverse." "Still, it might."