to be a very widespread and genuine feeling in
England,--and, in my humble opinion, a most befitting and praiseworthy
one,--active whenever we are in the position of outsiders, and overborne
only when our own passions and real or supposed interests are involved.
The great majority of the nation plunged headlong into the Russian War,
and the grip of the British bull-dog's teeth upon his opponent was not
easily loosed, even when good cause for loosing it appeared. We had no
more notion of retiring from India in 1857, when the Indian mutineers
used some cogency of material argument to make us do so, than we should
have of retiring from Ireland, if a new Irish rebellion occurred; but
when the question was merely that of breaking up a vast republic beyond
the Atlantic in the interests of negro slavery, the horrors and
wickedness of war were obvious and impressive to us. That historical
phrase of General Scott's, "Wayward sisters, go in peace!" was very
generally, and I think rightly, regarded as expressing one of the points
of view which might with honor, caution, and consistency have been acted
upon, when the tremendous decision between peace and war had to be made.
The opposite point of view was also tenable: it was adopted with
overwhelming impulse by the Federal Government and the loyal States;
and, having been carried out to a triumphant conclusion, may be admitted
to have been the wisest and most patriotic, even by persons who (and I
will not deny having been one of them from time to time during the war)
were induced to doubt whether any cause, however equitable, and any
object, however righteous and great, sufficed to justify the frightful
devastation and carnage which their prosecution involved. If such doubts
beset the adherents of the North, of course the view of the matter
entertained by opponents of war in the abstract, who were also on the
side of the South, was incomparably stronger in reprobation of this
particular war. True, it might be urged, that the South, and not the
North, both furnished the _casus belli_, and began the actual
hostilities by the assault upon Fort Sumter; but it was not the cue of
Southern partisans to admit that this internal action of certain
sovereign States of the Union was of a nature to justify coercive war on
the part of the North, while the fact that it rested with the North to
decline or accept the challenge was patent to the friends of both
belligerents. Thus, when the enormous m