f
indignation which followed the attack on Sumter could have set her
afloat again, while prominent men and journals of the Democratic party
hastened to assure the Rebels, not only of approval, but of active
physical assistance. England, with indecent eagerness, proclaimed a
neutrality which secured belligerent rights to a conspiracy that was
never to become a nation, and thus enabled members of Parliament to fit
out privateers to prey with impunity on the commerce of a friendly
power. The wily Napoleon followed, after an interval long enough to
throw all responsibility for the measure, and to direct all the natural
irritation it excited in this country, upon his neighbor over the way.
England is now endeavoring to evade the consequences of her hasty
proclamation and her jaunty indifference to the enforcement of it upon
her own subjects. The principle of international law involved is a most
important one; but it was not so much the act itself, or the pecuniary
damage resulting from it, as the _animus_ that so plainly prompted it,
which Americans find it hard to forgive.

[8] Mr. A. H. Stephens, Vice-President of the late Confederacy,
attributed the Secession movement to disappointed ambition.

It would be unwise in us to forget that independence was a merely
secondary and incidental consideration with the Southern conspirators
at the beginning of the Rebellion, however they may have thought it
wise to put it in the front, both for the sake of their foreign
abettors who were squeamish about seeming, though quite indifferent
about being, false to their own professions and the higher interests of
their country, and also for the sake of its traditionary influence
among the Southern people. Some, it is true, were bold enough or
logical enough to advocate barbarism as a good in itself; and in
estimating the influences which have rendered some minds, if not
friendly to the Rebellion, at least indifferent to the success of the
Union, we should not forget that reaction against the softening and
humanizing effect of modern civilization, led by such men as Carlyle,
and joined in by a multitude whose intellectual and moral fibre is too
much unstrung to be excited by anything less pungent than paradox.
Protestants against the religion which sacrifices to the polished idol
of Decorum and translates Jehovah by _Comme-il-faut_, they find even
the divine manhood of Christ too tame for them, and transfer their
allegiance to