The public meetings in England raised high the hope in America that governmental England would show some evidence of a more friendly attitude.  Lincoln himself drafted a resolution embodying the ideas he thought it would be wise for the public meetings to adopt.  It read: 

“Whereas, while heretofore States, and Nations, have tolerated slavery, recently, for the first time in the world, an attempt has been made to construct a new Nation, upon the basis of, and with the primary, and fundamental object to maintain, enlarge, and perpetuate human slavery, therefore,

Resolved:  that no such embryo State should ever be recognized by, or admitted into, the family of Christian and civilized nations; and that all Christian and civilized men everywhere should, by all lawful means, resist to the utmost, such recognition or admission[964].”

This American hope much disturbed Lyons.  On his return to Washington, in November, 1862, he had regarded the emancipation proclamation as a political manoeuvre purely and an unsuccessful one.  The administration he thought was losing ground and the people tired of the war.  This was the burden of his private letters to Russell up to March, 1863, but does not appear in his official despatches in which there was nothing to give offence to Northern statesmen.  But in March, Lyons began to doubt the correctness of these judgments.  He notes a renewed Northern enthusiasm leading to the conferring of extreme powers—­the so-called “dictatorship measures”—­upon Lincoln.  Wise as Lyons ordinarily was he was bound by the social and educational traditions of his class, and had at first not the slightest conception of the force or effect of emancipation upon the public in middle-class England.  He feared an American reaction against England when it was understood that popular meetings would have no influence on the British Government.

“Mr. Seward and the whole Party calculate immensely on the effects of the anti-slavery meetings in England, and seem to fancy that public feeling in England is coming so completely round to the North that the Government will be obliged to favour the North in all ways, even if it be disinclined to do so.  This notion is unlucky, as it makes those who hold it, unreasonable and presumptuous in dealing with us[965].”

* * * * *

Lincoln’s plan of emancipation and his first proclamation had little relation to American foreign policy.  Seward’s attitude toward emancipation was that the threat of it and of a possible servile war might be useful in deterring foreign nations, especially Great Britain, from intervening.  But he objected to the carrying of emancipation into effect because he feared it would induce intervention.  Servile war, in part by Seward’s own efforts, in part because of earlier British newspaper speculations, was strongly associated with emancipation, in the