Thus a servile insurrection was early and frequently an argument which pro-Northern friends were compelled to meet.  In truth the bulk of the British press was constant in holding up this bogie to its readers, even going to the point of weakening its argument of the impossibility of a Northern conquest of the South by appealing to history to show that England in her two wars with America had had a comparatively easy time in the South, thus postulating the real danger of some “negro Garibaldi calling his countrymen to arms[859].”  Nor was this fear merely a pretended one.  It affected all classes and partisans of both sides.  Even official England shared in it; January 20, 1862, Lyons wrote, “The question is rapidly tending towards the issue either of peace and a recognition of the separation, or a Proclamation of Emancipation and the raising of a servile insurrection[860].”  At nearly the same time Russell, returning to Gladstone a letter from Sumner to Cobden, expressed his sorrow “that the President intends a war of emancipation, meaning thereby, I fear, a war of greater desolation than has been since the revival of letters[861].”  John Stuart Mill, with that clear logic which appealed to the more intelligent reader, in an able examination of the underlying causes and probable results of the American conflict, excused the Northern leaders for early denial of a purpose to attack slavery, but expressed complete confidence that even these leaders by now understood the “almost certain results of success in the present conflict” (the extinction of slavery) and prophesied that “if the writers who so severely criticize the present moderation of the Free-soilers are desirous to see the war become an abolition war, it is probable that if the war lasts long enough they will be gratified[862].”  John Bright, reaching a wider public, in speech after speech, expressed faith that the people of the North were “marching on, as I believe, to its [slavery’s] entire abolition[863].”

Pro-Southern Englishmen pictured the horrors of an “abolition war,” and believed the picture true; strict neutrals, like Lyons, feared the same development; friends of the North pushed aside the thought of a “negro terror,” yet even while hoping and declaring that the war would destroy slavery, could not escape from apprehensions of an event that appeared inevitable.  Everywhere, to the British mind, it seemed that emancipation was necessarily a provocative to servile insurrection, and this belief largely affected the reception of the emancipation proclamation—­a fact almost wholly lost sight of in historical writing.