Neither
party thoroughly realized the horror of the work before them, though
every day made it more clearly apparent. Until then the United
States was the only organized government on our soil known to
England, and with it she had for three-quarters of a century
maintained commercial and political relations which had grown closer
and more friendly every year. The vital element of that government
was Union. Whatever might be the complicated relations of their
domestic law, to the world and to themselves the United States of
America was the indivisible government. This instinct of union
had gathered them together as colonies, had formed them into an
imperfect confederation, had matured them under a National
Constitution. It gave them their vigor at home, their power and
influence abroad. To destroy their union was to resolve them into
worse than colonial disintegration.

But the separation of the States was more than the dissolution of
the Union. For, treating with all due respect the conviction of
the Southern States as to the violation of their constitutional
rights, no fair-minded man can deny that the central idea of the
secession movement was the establishment of a great slave-holding
empire around the Gulf of Mexico. It was a bold and imperial
conception. With an abounding soil, with millions of trained and
patient laborers, with a proud and martial people, with leaders
used to power and skilled in government, controlling some of the
greatest and most necessary of the commercial staples of the world,
the haughty oligarchy of the South would have founded a slave
republic which, in its successful development, would have changed
the future of this continent and of the world. When English
statesmen were called upon to deal with such a crisis, the United
States had a right to expect, if not active sympathy, at least that
neutrality which would confine itself within the strict limit of
international obligation, and would not withhold friendly wishes
for the preservation of the Union.

RELATIONS OF ENGLAND AND THE UNION.

England had tested slowly but surely the worth of the American
Union. As the United States had extended its territory, had
developed in wealth, had increased in population, richer and richer
had become the returns to England's merchants and manufacturers;
question after question of angry controversy had been amicably
settled by the conviction of mut