Nevertheless the vigorous action of South Carolina, soon followed by other Southern States, made a deep impression on Russell, especially when compared with the uncertainty and irresolution manifested in the attempted compromise measures of Northern statesmen.  In a private letter to Lyons, January 10, 1861, he wrote “I do not see how the United States can be cobbled together again by any compromise....  I cannot see any mode of reconciling such parties as these.  The best thing now would be that the right to secede should be acknowledged....  I hope sensible men will take this view....  But above all I hope no force will be used[69].”  And again twelve days later, “I suppose the break-up of the Union is now inevitable[70].”  To Russell, as to most foreign observers, it seemed that if the South with its great wealth, its enormous extent of territory, and its five and one-half millions of population, were determined to leave the Union, no force whatever could compel a return.  History failed to record any revolution on so large a scale which had not succeeded.  His desire, therefore, was that the North would yield to the inevitable, and would not plunge into a useless civil war disastrous alike to the prosperity of America and of foreign nations.  Russell’s first hope was that the South would forgo secession; his second, this accomplished, that there would be no war, and in this sense he instructed Lyons.  The latter, less expectant of peaceful separation, and more aware of the latent power of the North, maintained throughout his entire service at Washington that there was at least a chance that the North could subdue the South by might of arms[71], but he also, looking to British interests, saw his early duty, before war broke, in cautious suggestions against forcible Northern action.  Thus from January to March, 1861, British effort and indirect advice were based on the hope that British trade interests might escape the tribulations inevitable from a civil conflict in America.  Beyond that point there was no grasp of the complications likely to arise in case of war, and no clear formulation of British policy[72].

In fact up to the middle of March, 1861, both public and official British opinion discounted armed conflict, or at least any determined Northern effort to recover the South.  Early British attitude was, therefore, based on a misconception.  As this became clear, public opinion began to break from a united humanitarian pro-Northern sentiment and to show, in some quarters, quite another face.  Even as early as January the Economist expressed wonder that the Northern States had not availed themselves gladly of the chance to “shake off such an incubus, and to purify themselves of such a stain[73].” and a month later professed to believe that Great Britain would willingly permit the North to secure compensation for loss of territory by annexing Canada—­provided the Canadians themselves desired it.  This, it