most of my
countrymen that the dominant party at the North was genuinely
antagonistic to slavery; that, as long as the South did not violate the
Federal Constitution, the North was trammelled from interfering with
slavery as already established by law in certain States; that the duty
immediately imposed upon the North and the Government by the act of
Secession was one and undivided,--the maintenance of the Constitution
and of the Union; but that, in proportion to the obstinacy of Southern
resistance, the antagonism to slavery would obtain free play in the
North, the slavery question would assume greater and greater prominence
as the _nexus_ of the whole debate, and those who had at first been
bound to make a stand for an extant Union and compromise would be
impelled and more than willing to fight on for reunion and abolition.
But this view of the matter was consistently distorted. The
constitutionalism and nationalism of the North figured in argument as
indifference to slavery, the steps taken towards, the emancipation of
slaves as mere hypocritical stratagems of war, and the climax of
disingenuousness was reached when the anti-conscription and anti-negro
riots of New York were fastened upon that very war-party against which
they had been levelled. Systematic misrepresentations of this nature,
invidious glosses and plausible misconstructions, did undoubtedly
conspire with the really complicated conditions of the case and the
undisputed fact of certain antipathies of race (predicable as truly of
the Northern States as of any other part of the world) to persuade very
many Englishmen that the North was not sincerely hostile to slavery, but
used the Anti-slavery or the Abolition cry as a mere feint to disguise
the lust of domination. Those who liked to be persuaded of this were
persuaded with the utmost ease; and even among men who considered the
subject without bias, many were confused and shaken.

3d. The party which cared only for the anti-slavery aspect of the
contest was large. Their attitude is to a certain extent indicated in
what has just been said. One and not an insignificant section of them
would have sided frankly with the North, if satisfied that the Northern
triumph would be an anti-slavery triumph; but, talked as they were, or
talking themselves, into the belief that slavery had little more to fear
from the North than the South, they remained, at least during the
earlier part of the war, indifferent or indig