[Sidenote:  Hopes of the Southerners.]

404.  The Confederacy, Great Britain, and France.—­From the beginning of the contest the Confederate leaders believed that the British and the French would interfere to aid them.  “Cotton is king,” they said.  Unless there were a regular supply of cotton, the mills of England and of France must stop.  Thousands of mill hands—­men, women, and children—­would soon be starving.  The French and the British governments would raise the blockade.  Perhaps they would even force the United States to acknowledge the independence of the Confederate states.  There was a good deal of truth in this belief.  For the British and French governments dreaded the growing power of the American republic and would gladly have seen it broken to pieces.  But events fell out far otherwise than the Southern leaders had calculated.  Before the supply of American cotton in England was used up, new supplies began to come in from India and from Egypt.  The Union armies occupied portions of the cotton belt early in 1862, and American cotton was again exported.  But more than all else, the English mill operatives, in all their hardships, would not ask their government to interfere.  They saw clearly enough that the North was fighting for the rights of free labor.  At times it seemed, however, as if Great Britain or France would interfere.

[Sidenote:  Southern agents sent to Europe.]

[Sidenote:  Removed from the Trent.]

[Sidenote:  Lincoln’s opinion.]

[Sidenote:  Action of Great Britain.]

405.  The Trent Affair, 1861.—­As soon as the blockade was established, the British and French governments gave the Confederates the same rights in their ports as the United States had.  The Southerners then sent two agents, Mason and Slidell, to Europe to ask the foreign governments to recognize the independence of the Confederate states.  Captain Wilkes of the United States ship San Jacinto took these agents from the British steamer Trent.  But Lincoln at once said that Wilkes had done to the British the very thing which we had fought the War of 1812 to prevent the British doing to us.  “We must stick to American principles,” said the President, “and restore the prisoners.”  They were given up.  But the British government, without waiting to see what Lincoln would do, had gone actively to work to prepare for war.  This seemed so little friendly that the people of the United States were greatly irritated.

[Sidenote:  The war powers of the President.]

[Sidenote:  Lincoln follows Northern sentiment.]

406.  Lincoln and Slavery.—­It will be remembered that the Republican party had denied again and again that it had any intention to interfere with slavery in the states.  As long as peace lasted the Federal government could not interfere with slavery in the states.  But when war broke out, the President, as commander-in-chief, could do anything to distress and weaken the enemy.  If freeing the slaves in the seceded states would injure the secessionists, he had a perfect right to do it.  But Lincoln knew that public opinion in the North would not approve this action.  He would follow Northern sentiment in this matter, and not force it.