With the ruling classes it was far otherwise.  Napoleon III, the Emperor of the French, was eager to help in disrupting the American republic; if he could have won England’s support, he would have carried out his designs.  As it turned out he found plenty of sympathy across the Channel but not open and official cooeperation.  According to the eminent historian, Rhodes, “four-fifths of the British House of Lords and most members of the House of Commons were favorable to the Confederacy and anxious for its triumph.”  Late in 1862 the British ministers, thus sustained, were on the point of recognizing the independence of the Confederacy.  Had it not been for their extreme caution, for the constant and harassing criticism by English friends of the United States—­like John Bright—­and for the victories of Vicksburg and Gettysburg, both England and France would have doubtless declared the Confederacy to be one of the independent powers of the earth.

[Illustration:  JOHN BRIGHT]

While stopping short of recognizing its independence, England and France took several steps that were in favor of the South.  In proclaiming neutrality, they early accepted the Confederates as “belligerents” and accorded them the rights of people at war—­a measure which aroused anger in the North at first but was later admitted to be sound.  Otherwise Confederates taken in battle would have been regarded as “rebels” or “traitors” to be hanged or shot.  Napoleon III proposed to Russia in 1861 a coalition of powers against the North, only to meet a firm refusal.  The next year he suggested intervention to Great Britain, encountering this time a conditional rejection of his plans.  In 1863, not daunted by rebuffs, he offered his services to Lincoln as a mediator, receiving in reply a polite letter declining his proposal and a sharp resolution from Congress suggesting that he attend to his own affairs.

In both England and France the governments pursued a policy of friendliness to the Confederate agents.  The British ministry, with indifference if not connivance, permitted rams and ships to be built in British docks and allowed them to escape to play havoc under the Confederate flag with American commerce.  One of them, the Alabama, built in Liverpool by a British firm and paid for by bonds sold in England, ran an extraordinary career and threatened to break the blockade.  The course followed by the British government, against the protests of the American minister in London, was later regretted.  By an award of a tribunal of arbitration at Geneva in 1872, Great Britain was required to pay the huge sum of $15,500,000 to cover the damages wrought by Confederate cruisers fitted out in England.

[Illustration:  WILLIAM H. SEWARD]