The burning question of slavery was undoubtedly at the bottom of this contest, which has been truly described as a struggle for life between the “peculiar institution” and the principles of modern society.  The nobler and more enthusiastic spirits in the Northern States beheld in it a strife between Michael and Satan, the Spirit of Darkness hurling himself against the Spirit of Light in a vain and presumptuous hope to overpower him; and their irritation was great when an eminent English man of letters was found describing it scornfully as “the burning of a dirty chimney,” and when English opinion, speaking through very many journalists and public men, appeared half hostile to the Northern cause.  Indeed, it might have been thought that opinion in England—­England, which at a great cost had freed its own slaves, and which had never ceased by word and deed to attack slavery and the slave-trade—­would not have faltered for a moment as to the party it would favour, but would have declared itself massively against the slave-holding South.  But the contest at its outset was made to wear so doubtful an aspect that it was possible, unhappily possible, for many Englishmen of distinction to close their eyes to the great evils championed by the Southern troops.  The war was not avowedly made by the North for the suppression of slavery, but to prevent the Southern States from withdrawing themselves from the Union:  the Southerners on their side claimed a constitutional right so to withdraw if it pleased them, and denounced the attempt to retain them forcibly as a tyranny.

[Illustration:  Abraham Lincoln and his son.]

This false colouring at first given to the contest had mischievous results.  English feeling was embittered by the great distress in our manufacturing districts, directly caused up the action of the Northern States in blockading the Southern ports, and thus cutting off our supply of raw material in the shape of cotton.  On its side the North, which had calculated securely on English sympathy and respect, and was profoundly irritated by the many displays of a contrary feeling; and the exasperation on both sides more than once reached a point which made war appear almost inevitable—­a war above all others to be deprecated.  First came the affair of the Trent—­the English mail-steamer from which two Southern envoys were carried off by an American naval commander, in contempt of the protection of the British flag.  The action was technically illegal, and on the demand of the English Government its illegality was acknowledged, and the captives were restored; but the warlike and threatening tone of England on this occasion was bitterly resented at the North, and this resentment was greatly increased when it became known that various armed cruisers, in particular the notorious Alabama, designed to prey on the Northern commerce, were being built and fitted by English shipbuilders in English dockyards under the direction of the Southern foe,