. There is
no present danger to the Union, and the violent expressions
to which over-ardent politicians of the North and South
sometimes give vent have no real meaning. The 'Great West,'
as it is fondly called, is in the position even now to
arbitrate between North and South, should the quarrel stretch
beyond words, or should anti-slavery or any other question
succeed in throwing any difference between them which it
would take revolvers and rifles rather than speeches and
votes to put an end to[33]."
The slavery controversy in America had, in short, come to be regarded in
England as a constant quarrel between North and South, but of no
immediate danger to the Union. Each outbreak of violent American
controversy produced a British comment sympathetic with the North. The
turmoil preceding and following the election of Lincoln in 1860, on the
platform of "no extension of slavery," was very generally noted by the
British press and public, as a sign favourable to the cause of
anti-slavery, but with no understanding that Southern threat would at
last be realized in definite action. Herbert Spencer, in a letter of May
15, 1862, to his American friend, Yeomans, wrote, "As far as I had the
means of judging, the feeling here was at first _very decidedly_ on the
side of the North[34] .
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