violence, as may be the fate of any state, whether kingdom or
republic, but which is false to the people if it does not its best to
preserve them from the horrors of anarchy, even at the cost of blood."

Motley denied any _right_ of _peaceful_ secession, and his
constitutional argument presented adequately the Northern view. But he
was compelled also to refer to slavery and did so in the sense of
Lincoln's inaugural, asserting that the North had no purpose of
emancipating the slaves. "It was no question at all that slavery within
a state was sacred from all interference by the general government, or
by the free states, or by individuals in those states; and the Chicago
Convention [which nominated Lincoln] strenuously asserted that
doctrine." Coming at the moment when the British press and public were
seeking ground for a shift from earlier pro-Northern expressions of
sympathy to some justification for the South, it may be doubted whether
Motley's letter did not do more harm than good to the Northern cause.
His denial of a Northern anti-slavery purpose gave excuse for a,
professedly, more calm and judicial examination of the claimed
_Southern right_ of secession, and his legal argument could be met, and
was met, with equally logical, apparently, pro-Southern argument as to
the nature of the American constitution. Thus early did the necessity of
Lincoln's "border state policy"--a policy which extended even to
warnings from Seward to American diplomats abroad not to bring into
consideration the future of slavery--give ground for foreign denial that
there were any great moral principles at stake in the American conflict.

In the meantime the two sections in America were busily preparing for a
test of strength, and for that test the British press, reporting
preparations, waited with interest. It came on July 21 in the first
battle of Bull Run, when approximately equal forces of raw levies,
30,000 each, met in the first pitched battle of the war, and where the
Northern army, after an initial success, ultimately fled in disgraceful
rout. Before Bull Run the few British papers early taking strong ground
for the North had pictured Lincoln's preparations as so tremendous as
inevitably destined to crush, quickly, all Southern resistance. The
_Daily News_ lauded Lincoln's message to Congress as the speech of a
great leader, and asserted that the issue in America was for all free
people a question of upholding the eternal principle