State founded on the doctrines of liberty and equality than the invention of shifts and devices to perpetuate servitude; and we hear in this great protest of American freedom the tardy echo of those humane doctrines to which England has so long become a convert.”

Other leading journals, though with less of patronizing self-complacency, struck the same note as the Times.  The Economist attributed Lincoln’s election to a shift in the sympathies of the “lower orders” in the electorate who had now deserted their former leaders, the slave-owning aristocracy of the South, and allied themselves with the refined and wise leaders of the North.  Lincoln, it argued, was not an extremist in any sense.  His plan of action lay within the limits of statesmanlike moderation[36].  The Saturday Review was less sure that England should rejoice with the North.  British self-esteem had suffered some hard blows at the hands of the Democratic party in America, but at least England knew where Democrats stood, and could count on no more discourtesy or injustice than that inflicted in the past.  The Republican party, however, had no policy, except that of its leader, Seward, and from him might be expected extreme insolence[37].  This was a very early judgment of Seward, and one upon which the Saturday Review preened itself later, as wholly justified.  The Spectator, the only one of the four journals thus far considered which ultimately remained constant in advocacy of the Northern cause, was at first lukewarm in comment, regarding the 1860 election, while fought on the slavery issue, as in reality a mere contest between parties for political power[38].

Such was the initial attitude of the English press.  Each press issue for several weeks harped on the same chord, though sounding varying notes.  If the South really means forcible resistance, said the Times, it is doomed to quick suppression.  “A few hundred thousand slave-owners, trembling nightly with visions of murder and pillage, backed by a dissolute population of ‘poor whites,’ are no match for the hardy and resolute populations of the Free States[39],” and if the South hoped for foreign aid it should be undeceived promptly:  “Can any sane man believe that England and France will consent, as is now suggested, to stultify the policy of half a century for the sake of an extended cotton trade, and to purchase the favours of Charleston and Milledgeville by recognizing what has been called ’the isothermal law, which impels African labour toward the tropics’ on the other side of the Atlantic[40]?” Moreover all Americans ought to understand clearly that British respect for the United States “was not due to the attitude of the South with its ruffian demonstrations in Congress....  All that is noble and venerable in the United States is associated with its Federal Constitution[41].”