Anti-Intervention Feeling (1862)

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Liverpool’s commercial greatness derives its origin from the slave trade. The sole contributions with which Liverpool has enriched the poetic literature of England are odes to the slave trade. Fifty years ago Wilberforce could set foot on Liverpool soil only at the risk of his life. As in the preceding century the slave trade, so in the present century the trade in the product of slavery— cotton—formed the material basis of Liverpool’s greatness. No wonder, therefore, that Liverpool is the center of the English friends of secession. It is in fact the sole city in the United Kingdom where during the recent crisis it was possible to organize a quasi-public meeting in favor of a war with the United States. And what does Liverpool say now? Let us hearken to one of its great daily organs, the Daily Post.

In a leading article entitled “The Cute Yankees” it is stated among other things:

The Yankees, with their usual adroitness, contrived to convert a loss into a gain. In point of fact they have so managed affairs as to make England subservient to their advantage.… Great Britain has the advantage of displaying her power … (but to what end?) The Yankees were always in favor of the unlimited privilege of neutrals, but Great Britain was opposed to it (this privilege was contested to the limit during the Anti-Jacobin War, the Anglo-American War of 1812 to 1814, and again, more recently, in 1842, during the negotiations between Lord Ashburton and the Secretary of State, Daniel Webster). Now our opposition must cease. The Yankee principle is virtually recognized. Mr. Seward establishes the fact … (declares that England has given way in principle and that through the Trent case the United States have obtained a concession to secure which they had hitherto exhausted every means of diplomacy and of war in vain).

More important still is the Daily Post’s admission of the revulsion in public feeling, even in Liverpool.

The Confederates—it says—have certainly done nothing to forfeit the good opinion entertained of them. Quite the contrary. They have fought manfully and made dreadful sacrifices. If they do not obtain their independence every one must admit that they deserve it.… Public opinion, however, has now run counter to their claims. They are no longer the fine fellows they were six months ago. They are pronounced by implication to be a very sorry set.

… A reaction has in fact set in. The anti-slavery people, who, to use a vulgarism, shrunk in their shoes in the presence of popular excitement, now come forth to thunder big words against man-selling and the slave-owners of the Southern states.… The walls of the town were yesterday posted with a great placard full of denunciation and angry invective, and a London evening paper, the Sun, remembered something to Mr. Mason’s disadvantage … “the author of the accursed Fugitive Slave Law …” The Confederates have lost by the Trent affair. It was to be their gain; it has turned out to be their ruin. The sympathy of this country will be withdrawn from them and they will have to realize as soon as possible their peculiar situation. They have been very ill-used but they will have no redress.

After this admission by such a friend of secession as the Liverpool daily paper it is easy to explain the altered language that some important organs of Palmerston now suddenly make use of before the opening of Parliament. Thus The Economist of last Saturday has an article entitled, “Shall the Blockade be Respected?”

It proceeds in the first place from the axiom that the blockade is a mere paper blockade and that its violation is therefore permitted by international law. France demanded the blockade’s forcible removal. The practical decision of the question lay accordingly in the hands of England, who had a great and pressing motive for such a step. In particular she was in need of American cotton. One may remark incidentally that it is not quite clear how a “mere paper blockade” can prevent the shipping of cotton.

“But nevertheless,” cries The Economist, “England must respect the blockade.” Having motivated this judgment with a series of sophisms, it finally comes to the gist of the matter.

It would be undesirable in a case of this kind—it says—for our government to take any steps or to enter any course of action in which they would not carry the whole country cordially and spontaneously with them.… Now we doubt whether the great body of the British people are yet prepared for any interposition which would even have the semblance of siding with, or aiding the establishment of, a slave republic. The social system of the Confederate states is based on slavery; the Federalists have done what they could … to persuade us that slavery lay at the root of the Secession movement, and that they, the Federalists, were hostile to slavery;—and slavery is our especial horror and detestation.… But the real error of the popular movement is here:—… it is the Restoration and not the Dissolution of the Union that would be the consolidation and perpetuation of Negro servitude, and that it is in the independence of the South and not in her defeat, that we can alone look with confidence for the early amelioration and ultimate extinction of the slavery we abhor.… We hope soon to make this clear to our readers. But it is not clear yet.

The majority of Englishmen still think otherwise; and as long as they do, any intervention on the part of our government which should place us in a position of actual opposition to the North, and inferential alliance with the South, would scarcely be supported by the hearty cooperation of the British nation.

In other words: the attempt at such intervention would cause the downfall of the ministry. And this also explains why The Times pronounces itself so decidedly against any intervention and for England’s neutrality.