There is no doubt that nearly every Northern American had believed in 1860, that anti-slavery England would sympathize strongly with the North.  The event did not prove this to be the case, nor could the North justly complain in the face of administration denials of an anti-slavery purpose.  The English Government therefore was widely upheld by British opinion in regarding the struggle from the point of view of British interests.  Yet any Northern step antagonistic to the institution of slavery compelled British governmental consideration.  As early as December, 1860, before the war began, Bunch, at Charleston, had reported a conversation with Rhett, in which the latter frankly declared that the South would expect to revive the African Slave Trade[876].  This was limited in the constitution later adopted by the Confederacy which in substance left the matter to the individual states—­a condition that Southern agents in England found it hard to explain[877].  As already noted, the ardent friends of the North continued to insist, even after Lincoln’s denial, that slavery was the real cause of the American rupture[878].  By September, 1861, John Bright was writing to his friend Sumner that, all indications to the contrary, England would warmly support the North if only it could be shown that emancipation was an object[879].  Again and again he urged, it is interesting to note, just those ideals of gradual and compensated emancipation which were so strongly held by Lincoln.  In this same month the Spectator thought it was “idle to strive to ignore the very centre and spring of all disunion,” and advised a “prudent audacity in striking at the cause rather than at the effect[880].”  Three weeks later the Spectator, reviewing general British press comments, summed them up as follows: 

“If you make it a war of emancipation we shall think you madmen, and tell you so, though the ignorant instincts of Englishmen will support you.  And if you follow our counsel in holding a tight rein on the Abolitionists, we shall applaud your worldly wisdom so far; but shall deem it our duty to set forth continually that you have forfeited all claim to the popular sympathy of England.”

This, said the Spectator, had been stated in the most objectionable style by the Times in particular, which, editorially, had alleged that “the North has now lost the chance of establishing a high moral superiority by a declaration against slavery.”  To all this the Spectator declared that the North must adopt the bold course and make clear that restoration of the Union was not intended with the old canker at its roots[881].