Harriet Martineau further aided the _Daily News_ by
contributing pro-Northern articles, and was a power in Radical
circles[115]. But literary England in general, was slow to express
itself with conviction, though Robert Browning, by April, 1861, was
firmly determined in his pro-Northern sentiment. In August he was
writing in letters of the "good cause[116]." But Browning was a rare
exception and it was not until the Civil War had been under way for many
months that men of talent in the non-political world were drawn to make
comment or to take sides. Their influence at the outset was
negligible[117].
In spite of press utterances, or literary silence, alike indicative of
a widespread conviction that Southern independence was assured, there
still remained both in those circles where anti-slavery sentiment was
strong, and in others more neutral in sympathy, a distaste for the
newly-born State as the embodiment of a degrading institution. Lincoln's
inaugural address denying an intention to interfere with slavery was a
weapon for the friends of the South, but it could not wholly still that
issue. Even in the _Times_, through the medium of W.H. Russell's
descriptive letters, there appeared caustic criticisms. He wrote in his
"Diary," "I declare that to me the more orderly, methodical, and perfect
the arrangements for economizing slave labour .
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