e was
moulded on a system that held labour in contempt, that kept the labourer
in ignorance and cruel bondage, that demanded a vigilant censorship of the
press and an army of watchmen and spies. And this barbaric state was to
set itself up on the border of a great nation, founded on free industry,
political equality, diffused knowledge, energetic progress. Such was the
meaning of secession. "The rebellion," as Charles Sumner well said to Mr.
Gladstone in 1864, "is slavery in arms, revolting, indecent, imperious."
Therefore those who fought against secession fought against slavery and
all that was involved in that dark burden, and whatever their motives may
at different times have been, they rendered an immortal service to
humanity.(49)

(M25) At a very early period Mr. Gladstone formed the opinion that the
attempt to restore the Union by force would and must fail. "As far as the
_controversy_ between North and South," he wrote to the Duchess of
Sutherland (May 29, 1861) "is a controversy on the principle announced by
the vice-president of the South, viz. that which asserts the superiority
of the white man, and therewith founds on it his right to hold the black
in slavery, I think that principle detestable, and I am wholly with the
opponents of it.... No distinction can in my eyes be broader than the
distinction between the question whether the Southern ideas of slavery are
right, and the question whether they can justifiably be put down by war
from the North." To Cyrus Field he wrote (Nov. 27, 1862): "Your frightful
conflict may be regarded from many points of view. The competency of the
Southern states to secede; the rightfulness of their conduct in seceding
(two matters wholly distinct and a great deal too much confounded); the
natural reluctance of Northern Americans to acquiesce in the severance of
the union, and the apparent loss of strength and glory to their country;
the bearing of the separation on the real interests and on the moral
character of the North; again, for an Englishman, its bearing with respect
to British interests;--all these are texts of which any one affords ample
matter for reflection, but I will only state as regards the last of them,
that I for one have never hesitated to maintain that, in my opinion, the
separate and special interests of England were all on the side of the
maintenance of the old union, and if I were to look at those interests
alone, and had the power of choosing in what way th