GIFT OF 
 MICHAEL REESE 
 
TRANS ATLANTIC HISTORICAL 
 SOLIDARITY 
 
TRANS-ATLANTIC 
 HISTORICAL SOLIDARITY 
 
 LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD IN EASTER 
 
 AND TRINITY TERMS 1913 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 
 1913 
 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK 
 
 TORONTO MELBOURNE BOMBAY 
 
 HUMPHREY MILFOED 
 
 PUBLISHER TO THE UMVERSITT 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY .... 9 
 
 I. PRINCIPIA .25 
 
 II. THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN, LANCASHIRE, 
 
 1861-62 .... ... 55 
 
 III. Dis ALITER VISUM 85 
 
 IV 7 A GREAT HISTORICAL CHARACTER AND VAE VICTIS 131 
 INDEX . 181 
 
 285500 
 
There is apparently much truth in the belief that the 
 wonderful progress of the United States, as well as the 
 character of the people, are the results of natural selection ; 
 for the more energetic, restless, and courageous men from all 
 parts of Europe have emigrated during the last ten or twelve 
 generations to that great country, and have there succeeded 
 best. Looking to the distant future, I do not think that the 
 Rev. Mr. Zincke takes an exaggerated view when he says : 
 "All other series of events as that which resulted in the 
 culture of mind in Greece, and that which resulted in the 
 empire of Rome only appear to have purpose and value 
 when viewed in connexion with, or rather as subsidiary 
 to ... the great stream of Anglo-Saxon emigration to the 
 west. " DARWIN, The Descent of Man, Chapter V. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 THE Annual Lectures, of which the following is 
 the Second Course, were only recently provided for, 
 largely through the influence of Oxford professors 
 and instructors who, in pursuance of their calling, had 
 on invitation visited America. They are an outcome 
 of the great Rhodes Scholarship Foundation. Last 
 year Mr. James Ford Rhodes, the well-known 
 American historian, bearing the same patronymic 
 but in no way connected with the South African 
 notability, was selected and most properly selected 
 to initiate the Lectureship. This he did, delivering 
 three lectures, since published in book form. 2 When 
 invited to deliver the course in succession to 
 Mr. Rhodes, I was informed that the number of 
 lectures was a matter resting with me, with a single 
 limitation : I was not to discourse on history in the 
 abstract, or on historical themes in general, but 
 confine myself to American history or American 
 historical topics ; a restriction which wholly com 
 mended itself to my own judgement. After giving 
 the matter as careful consideration as was then in my 
 power, I decided on a course of four lectures. I did 
 not see how in any less space I could deal properly 
 
 1 From the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 
 for June, 1913. Vol. 46, pp. 432-40. 
 
 2 Lectures on the American Civil War. The Macmillan Com 
 pany, 1913. 
 
 1593 B 
 
10 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 with the topics which suggested themselves ; in fact, 
 as the result showed, six or seven or even eight 
 lectures would have scarcely sufficed for their proper 
 treatment. 
 
 Naturally, during the winter of 1912-13, between 
 the acceptance of the invitation and my sailing for 
 England, the subject was more or less constantly in 
 my mind. Passing the season in Washington, it was, 
 also, my fortune to see a good deal of Mr. James 
 Bryce, then British Ambassador. Mr. Bryce, more 
 over, evinced a very considerable interest in my 
 proposed course, having for many years been himself 
 an Oxford lecturer. One day, when taking a long 
 stroll together through the streets of Washington, he 
 took occasion to inquire as to the topics with which 
 I proposed to deal, and my method of treatment. 
 I at once told him that my main thesis would be 
 certain phases of what we in America term The 
 Civil War that is, the struggle which, convulsing 
 the United States, attracted the attention of the whole 
 civilized world during the four years between April, 
 1861, and April, 1865. I was surprised, and some 
 what taken aback by what followed. In the gentlest 
 possible way most diplomatically, I might say 
 Mr. Bryce proceeded to intimate that I would pro 
 bably find an English audience of the present 
 generation, especially an Oxford lecture audience, 
 quite uninformed on everything connected with our 
 Civil War ; which, indeed, had now become to the 
 people of Great Britain somewhat remotely historical. 
 In other words, it was implied that our great 
 
INTHODUCTOHY 11 
 
 American conflict of half a century back, which 
 looms so large in American memory, had quite passed 
 out of English recollection, and there takes its place 
 with other episodes of a character more or less 
 important which have since occupied, and, at the 
 moment, perhaps engrossed public attention. Occur 
 ring at different times and in many countries, these, 
 Mr. Bryce intimated, had now followed each other 
 into oblivion ; and our great ordeal had proved no 
 exception to the general rule. 
 
 Time hath, my lord, a wallet on his back, 
 Wherein he puts alms for oblivion ; 
 
 and, so far as an Oxford audience was concerned, to 
 Time s wallet I found my topic by high authority 
 comfortably assigned. 
 
 While, however, conveying to me in guarded terms 
 this not altogether palatable intimation, Mr. Bryce 
 added the qualifying remark that at the time that 
 is, during the period between 1861 and 1865, he then 
 being a recent Oxford graduate the incidents of the 
 struggle as it progressed had excited deeper interest in 
 England, especially in social and political circles in 
 London and Oxford, than any event of a similar 
 character which has since occurred. He even went so 
 far as to say that so intense was the interest felt over 
 that struggle, the numerous partisans of the South 
 arraying themselves against the few who sympathized 
 with the North, that discussions were discouraged. 
 At the dinner table, for instance, passages occurred 
 marked by acrimony and even rudeness. The ordi 
 nary social amenities were altogether too frequently 
 
12 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 disregarded. l This he distinctly recalled ; and what 
 he said confirmed my own personal, and in some 
 connexions my own irritating, recollection. 
 
 There was, however, another observation of Mr. 
 Bryce, made by him on the same or some similar 
 occasion, to which also I must now refer. He inti 
 mated, again in diplomatic fashion, a decided doubt 
 whether the conflict in question would, as an historical 
 episode and incident in the great evolutionary record, 
 hereafter loomup in the same large proportions it always 
 must bear in the minds of those of the American gen 
 eration directly concerned in it the generation to 
 which I personally belong. The issues, he more than 
 hinted, were in his judgement either of no great funda 
 mental importance, or, in the case of slavery, already 
 foregone conclusions ; and the personages who figured 
 in the struggle would, he thought, become less and less 
 considered with the lapse of time. Finally, he more 
 than implied a personal belief that the memorials we 
 had created to them would not infrequently call for 
 explanation. 
 
 This was to me a novel point of view ; and then, 
 and subsequently while preparing my lectures in 
 London, I gave no inconsiderable thought to it. After 
 all, might it not be as Mr. Bryce said ? Nations, like 
 individuals, are always prone to magnify themselves 
 and the importance of events in which they have been 
 concerned. Above all, going to Oxford to deliver 
 a course of lectures, to a degree international in 
 character, it behoved me to avoid anything which 
 1 See Note 1, p. 18. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 13 
 
 might seem grandiose the eagle must emit no 
 semblance even of a scream ! On this score, therefore, 
 Mr. Bryce s intimations gave rise in me to no little 
 perplexity, and, subsequently, imposed a very con 
 siderable amount of labour, revisionary in character. 
 In fact, I threw aside nearly all the material prepared 
 in America, and, starting afresh, groped my way, so to 
 speak, as I went on, all the while studying a British 
 environment. As finally delivered, therefore, my 
 lectures were in purport altogether different from those 
 I had proposed to deliver. Still, in the close I wholly 
 failed in one respect to concur in Mr. Bryce s judge 
 ment ; for the more I reflected on the matter from the 
 point of view he had suggested, the more I felt con 
 vinced that, as the years rolled by and the generations 
 passed on, the conflict he had referred to as now 
 forgotten in Europe would assume ever larger world- 
 proportions and become matter of more careful general 
 study. In a word, our American Civil War would, 
 when the final verdict is rendered, loom large, and 
 become an accepted episode of first-class and world 
 wide moment. Its broad dramatic features will also 
 be recognized. 
 
 This spirit more and more possessing me, I prepared 
 the following lectures in the course of their delivery. 
 So far as the issues involved in our struggle, and in 
 some cases therein decided, were concerned, I felt 
 I was teaching school. Of those issues I found my 
 self impelled to emphasize at least three. First was 
 the process and consummation of a national crystal 
 lization. The formal entry on the world-stage of 
 
14 INTKODUCTOEY 
 
 a power admittedly of the first class whether 
 Prussia, Italy, Germany or the United States is not, 
 I submit, an incident of secondary historical impor 
 tance. It is not likely to be ignored by the historian, 
 much less forgotten. Such, however, was the direct 
 outcome of our American War. The next issue of 
 importance decided in that conflict Chattel Human 
 ity was also a world-issue, which goes back to the 
 very beginning literally, to the Book of Genesis ; 
 for, to any one at all acquainted with even scriptural 
 narrative, the fact that human servitude has existed 
 from the commencement admits of no question. That 
 in 1860 slavery as an institution was becoming subject 
 to greater and greater recognized limitations is indis 
 putable ; as also that among the nations of the world 
 of more advanced civilization it had ceased to exist. 
 That it was then a doomed system we now see. So 
 far as the African was concerned, however, down to 
 1862 negro slavery was a recognized and accepted 
 institution, certain exceptional countries alone having 
 outlawed it. Lincoln s Proclamation of Emancipation, 
 one of the most dramatic acts in the history of man 
 kind, thus literally struck from man the shackles of 
 chattelism, irrespective of race or hue. This I submit 
 was another by no means inconsiderable outcome, and 
 one not likely to be permanently forgotten. 2 
 
 Nor was the next issue of less importance than 
 those already specified : I refer to the world- 
 movement towards what is now known as Democracy. 
 That issue was very directly involved in our struggle. 
 
 2 See Note 2, p. 19. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 15 
 
 This no more admits of denial than that Democracy 
 is an issue now much in evidence in European as well 
 as American political activities, and more especially 
 in those of Great Britain. It may be described in 
 fact as the political issue of to-day, tending toward 
 Collectivism, as it is called, and through that to 
 Socialism. That this tendency received a pronounced 
 impetus as one of the outcomes of our war, I take to 
 be so indisputable as to call merely for mention. 3 
 Posterity will probably have occasion to bear the fact 
 freshly in mind. 
 
 Thus, Mr. Bryce to the contrary notwithstanding, 
 as I meditated the matter in London no less than 
 three issues of Trans- Atlantic Historical Solidarity of 
 first-class historical significance suggested themselves 
 for my Oxford course ; first, United States nationality ; 
 second, the end of slavery, or property in man ; third, 
 the evolution, if it may be so called, of Democracy. 
 These, moreover, were what may be described as civil 
 issues only. But when it came to military and naval 
 considerations, the importance of the struggle was no 
 less marked. In fact, it there assumed largest im 
 mediate proportions and an emphasis most drama 
 tically pronounced ; for, whether by sea or by land, it 
 revolutionized warfare. As respects maritime opera 
 tions, this admitted of no sort of question. The 
 British navy of the Crimean war passed out of 
 existence, and was consigned, so to speak, to the junk 
 heap, when the old-style United States 40-gun steam 
 frigate Merrimac, crudely remodelled into a nonde- 
 3 See Note 3, p. 21. 
 
16 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 script iron-shedded Confederate floating battery and 
 steam-ram, now called the Virginia, made its way 
 from Norfolk to Fortress Monroe in early March, 
 1862, there unexpectedly encountering the newly 
 devised armoured and turreted United States steam- 
 battery Monitor. Before that aifair the navies of the 
 world were made up of wooden sailing-ships with, 
 perhaps, auxiliary steam-power; out of it emerged 
 the super-Dreadnought. A revolution in naval archi 
 tecture and tactics had in a single day been 
 worked no less radical than that brought about 
 by Drake and the British mariners through their 
 windward manoeuvring in the conflict with the 
 Spanish Armada three hundred years before. It is 
 no exaggeration to say that the action in Hampton 
 Roads in March, 1862, bore the same relation to 
 the attack of the combined British-French fleets on 
 the defences of Sebastopol in October, 1854, that the 
 destruction of the Armada in 1588 bore to the battle 
 of Lepanto in 1571. 
 
 It was, moreover, the same in military operations. 
 During our war, as other nations have since learned, 
 the discovery and application of the breechloader and 
 magazine gun rendered frontal attacks, assuming 
 opponents in some degree equally matched, impossible 
 of success. The tactics of Napoleon were remitted to 
 the past of Alexander. 
 
 Thus, in spite of the doubts suggested by Mr. 
 Bryce, my more mature reflection satisfied me that it 
 was fairly a matter of question whether any conflict 
 ever waged between men on earth had been more 
 
INTEODUCTOEY 17 
 
 momentous, and fruitful of results both immediate 
 and remote, than that in which, between 1861 and 
 1865, it had been given me to participate. 
 
 It was with this conviction I warmed to my work, 
 feeling my way, so to speak, as I went along; for 
 after reaching London it was forced upon me that 
 I was addressing an audience quite uninformed on the 
 subjects with which I was to deal, and little interested 
 therein. Historically and otherwise the minds of 
 those composing it were intent on events either of 
 the more remote past or now elsewhere in progress. 
 Their faces were turned to the East. In a word, so 
 far as the prescribed subject of my course was con 
 cerned, my listeners had to be educated, starting with 
 the elementary. 
 
 My effort, therefore, throughout was to develop the 
 close, at times the dramatic, connexion of the events 
 with which I dealt with the history proper of those 
 I addressed, or with history at the moment making. 
 I selected accordingly ; with what degree of success 
 remains to be passed upon by others. The ordeal, 
 I freely confess, I had not anticipated ; nor would I 
 care to be called upon again to face one similar. In 
 passing through it, moreover, I found myself com 
 pelled to omit, as impossible of condensation and use 
 within the time allotted me, a large amount of 
 material very necessary, from my point of view, to 
 a correct understanding of the topics with which I 
 dealt. The matter thus put aside was indeed fully 
 equal in amount to that used. A portion of it is in 
 cluded in the present publication. My object has 
 
18 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 been to impress such as may study this, the second 
 course in the Oxford American Lectureship, with 
 a sense not only of the importance of our American 
 history in connexion with that of Great Britain, of 
 Europe, and of mankind, but of the far-reaching 
 world- wide influence it both has already exerted and 
 is manifestly destined hereafter to exert. 
 
 NOTE 1, PAGE 12. 
 
 There was a time when, in the great American Civil War, 
 the sympathies of the English upper classes went with 
 slavery, and when the North had scant justice and no mercy 
 at their hands. I have myself seen that most distinguished 
 man, Charles Francis Adams, subjected in society to treat 
 ment which, if he had resented it, might have seriously 
 imperilled the relations of the two countries ; and which 
 nothing but the wonderful self-command of a very strong 
 man. and his resolute determination to stifle all personal 
 feeling, and to consider himself only as the Minister of 
 a great country, enabled him to treat, as he did, with mute 
 disdain. But in this critical state of things in and out of 
 Parliament, Mr. Disraeli and Sir Stafford Northcotc on one 
 side, and the Duke of Argyll and Sir George Cornewall 
 Lewis on the other, mainly contributed to keep this country 
 neutral, and to save us from the ruinous mistake of taking 
 part with the South. (Quoted in Andrew Lang s Life, 
 Letters, and Diaries of tiir Stafford Northcote, First Earl of 
 Iddelsleiyh, p. 113, from an article by Lord Chief Justice 
 Coleridge in Macmillaris Magazine, January, 1888.) 
 
 Assuming, however, that they did understand this, there 
 is still a good deal to be explained about the state of English 
 opinion which it is rather hard to put plainly to them. 
 I really don t know how to translate into civil language what 
 I have heard a thousand times over in England that both 
 sides are such a set of snobs and blackguards that we only 
 
INTRODUCTORY 19 
 
 wish they could both be licked ; or that their armies are the 
 scum of the earth, and the war got up by contractors ; or that 
 the race is altogether degenerate and demoralized, and it is 
 pleasant to see such a set of bullies have a fall. I really 
 can t tell them all these little compliments, which I have 
 heard in private conversation word for word, and which are 
 a free translation of Times and Saturday Review, even 
 if I introduce them with [the] apology (though it is a really 
 genuine apology) that we know nothing at all about them." 
 (From a letter to his mother, Lady Stephen, written by 
 Leslie Stephen from Washington, in September, 1863. 
 Quoted by Prof. Maitland in the Life and Letters of Leslie 
 , p. 12.2.) 
 
 NOTE 2, PAGE 14. 
 
 The issue of Fraser s Magazine for February, 1862, 
 contained (pp. 257-68) a paper by John Stuart Mill 
 entitled The Contest in America . It is to be borne 
 in mind that Mr. Mill in preparing this paper wrote 
 eight months before President Lincoln made the 
 earliest announcement of his intention to issue a Pro 
 clamation of Emancipation, and at a time when a large 
 and influential party in Great Britain insisted upon it 
 that neither slavery nor the emancipation of the slave 
 in any way entered as a considerable factor into the 
 struggle then going on in America. With singular 
 foresight and sagacity, and a remarkable insight into 
 the American situation, Mr. Mill observed in this 
 paper : 
 
 But the parties in a protracted civil war almost invariably 
 end by taking more extreme, not to say higher grounds of 
 principle, than they began with. Middle parties and friends 
 of compromise are soon left behind ; and if the writers who so 
 
20 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 severely criticize the present moderation of the Free-soilers 
 are desirous to see the war become an abolition war, it is 
 probable that if the war lasts long enough they will be 
 gratified. Without the smallest pretension to see farther into 
 futurity than other people, I at least have foreseen and fore 
 told from the first, that if the South were not promptly put 
 down, the contest would become distinctly an anti-slavery 
 one; nor do I believe that any person, accustomed to reflect 
 on the course of human affairs in troubled times, can expect 
 anything else. Those who have read, even cursorily, the 
 most valuable testimony to which the English public have 
 access, concerning the real state of affairs in America the 
 letters of the Times correspondent, Mr. Russell must have 
 observed how early and rapidly he arrived at the same con 
 clusion, and with what increasing emphasis he now continually 
 reiterates it. In one of his recent letters he names the end 
 of next summer as the period by which, if the war has not 
 sooner terminated, it will have assumed a complete anti-slavery 
 character. So early a term exceeds, I confess, my most 
 sanguine hopes ; but if Mr. Russell be right, heaven forbid 
 that the war should cease sooner, for if it lasts till then it is 
 quite possible that it will regenerate the American people. . . . 
 As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their 
 ever- renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, 
 human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for 
 the one against the other. I am far from saying that the 
 present struggle, on the part of the Northern Americans, 
 is wholly of this exalted character ; that it has arrived at the 
 stage of being altogether a war for justice, a war of principle. 
 But there was from the beginning, and now is, a large 
 infusion of that element in it; and this is increasing, will 
 increase, and if the war lasts, will in the end predominate. 
 Should that time come, not only will the greatest enormity 
 which still exists among mankind as an institution receive 
 far earlier its coup de grace than there has ever, until now, 
 appeared any probability of; but in effecting this the Free 
 States will have raised themselves to that elevated position in 
 the scale of morality and dignity, which is derived from great 
 
INTBODUCTORY 21 
 
 sacrifices consciously made in a virtuous cause, and the sense 
 of an inestimable benefit to all future ages, brought about by 
 their own voluntary efforts. 
 
 NOTE 3, PAGE 15. 
 
 In the early months of 1863, following the Pro 
 clamation of Emancipation and the disasters suffered 
 by the Army of the Potomac while under the com 
 mand of General Burnside, who had replaced General 
 MClellan, there was a reactionary wave of Con 
 servatism in Great Britain. This movement and 
 its connexion with events in America was editorially 
 referred to in Blackwood s Edinburgh Magazine for Feb 
 ruary, 1863, as follows : 
 
 It is a not less remarkable feature of the times that in 
 politics also all England now is nearly of one mind. ... It is 
 a mistake to attribute this universal Conservatism to the 
 breakdown of democratic institutions in America. The 
 " Conservative reaction ", to adopt the common but exception 
 able phrase, had unmistakably manifested itself before a single 
 shot had been fired in America before the bloodless bom 
 bardment of Fort Sumter announced the approach of that 
 deplorable conflict which has served to expose Democracy in 
 its worst and most contemptible form, and to reveal, in the 
 bosom of republican America, a mass of corruption, imbeci 
 lity, meanness, and malignity, which, taken together, have 
 never been equalled in the whole world. But if a Conserva 
 tive feeling had been steadily growing up in England before 
 the " bursting of the American bubble ", it is equally true that 
 that great collapse of Democracy has done much to give 
 to that feeling its present universality. Abstract reasoning 
 cannot affect mankind with the same force as actual experi 
 ment and practical demonstration. Every sensible man in 
 this country now acknowledges what nearly all sensible 
 
22 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 men for some years past felt, but lacked the courage to say 
 that we have already gone as far towards Democracy as it is 
 safe to go, and that another step like that proposed by Lord 
 Russell would have carried us irretrievably over the precipice. 
 This is the great moral benefit which we have derived from 
 the events in America. 
 
 . . . This is a free country, and a few eloquent or blustering 
 Radicals serve to " let off the steam " of their class, and serve 
 to remind the sober-minded portion of the community what 
 a very mad and drunken thing Radicalism is. Mr. Bright 
 and his followers may hold a place in political England as 
 usefully as the drunken Helots did in the social usages of 
 Sparta. But though we have no great zeal for the con 
 version of the Abbot of Unreason and his motley followers, 
 we think the country will agree with us that they ought 
 not to be taken by the hand by those in high places, and 
 allowed to play their pranks in the government of the 
 country. (Blacku ood s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. XCIII, 
 pp. 247-49). 
 
 As indicative of the feeling of instinctive appre 
 hension, not to say vague dread, with which the rise 
 of the new Democracy was regarded in the middle 
 Victorian period, the following from the correspon 
 dence of the Prince Consort is significant. Referring 
 to a talk with Lord Derby, then Premier, in March 
 1852, the Prince noted a remark of Derby s to the 
 effect that the leading Whigs were very much dis 
 satisfied with the company they found themselves 
 thrown into, and alarmed at the progress of Demo 
 cracy . And nine months later the Prince again 
 noted with evident satisfaction a further assurance 
 from the same source that the Tory leader, then about 
 to resign, was ready to support as far as he could, 
 any administration which was sincerely anxious to 
 
INTRODUCTORY 23 
 
 check the growth of Democracy. (Queen Victorias 
 Letters, Vol. II, pp. 66, 500.) 
 
 Sixty years afterwards this < Democracy was de 
 fined by the Duke of Northumberland in debate in 
 the Lords as simply that kind of government 
 which invariably prevails in one form or another in 
 the decay of a State . (House of Lords, May 16 
 1911.) 
 
I 
 PRINCIPIA 
 
 1) 
 
PRINCIPIA 
 
 SUCH of you as chance to be more careful newspaper 
 readers may not improbably have noticed within the 
 last few days a series of cable messages from America 
 relating to a difficulty now assuming a shape more or 
 less ominous of trouble between the United States 
 and Japan. Actuated by a strong racial prejudice, 
 and, as they assert, moral and other considerations, 
 the Legislature of the State of California is considering, 
 and seems about to enact, some very drastic measures 
 of legislation generally anti-Asiatic in character, but 
 in their operation distinctly aimed at immigration from 
 Japan. This State legislation, it is alleged, is in mani 
 fest contravention of our treaty obligations with Japan, 
 and may, if passed, involve the national Government 
 in serious Eastern complications. The action referred 
 to is taken under cover and by virtue of what we in 
 America know as State Sovereignty ; and those who 
 have followed the course of events as day by day 
 developed in the cable dispatches may have noticed, 
 not perhaps without surprise and even a sense of 
 bewilderment, that our newly elected President, just 
 installed in his high office, is greatly perturbed over 
 the outlook. To such a degree indeed is he per 
 turbed that he has not only addressed a formal 
 remonstrance to the California State authorities against 
 
28 PRINCIPIA 
 
 the passage of the enactments in question, but he, 
 head of the nation, is about to send his newly 
 appointed Secretary of State the first member of his 
 Cabinet across the continent to secure at least 
 a modification, should the enactment of some legisla 
 tion of the character referred to be insisted upon. 
 Certainly, this is a most unusual proceeding a pro 
 ceeding indeed wholly unprecedented in American 
 annals, and to foreign nations altogether incompre 
 hensible. On the other hand, the dispatches tell us 
 that the entire State of California is in arms against 
 the Japanese settlers, the sentiment being general that 
 they should be driven out. The President also is, we 
 are assured by the same authority, advised that the 
 anti-American feeling in Japan is growing rapidly, 
 and that Japan considers the issue presented one of 
 national honour. 1 
 
 Here is a new international complication, involving 
 not impossibly serious social issues. It arises out of 
 the exercise of what we in America know as the power 
 
 1 The situation at the close of the month of April, 1913, was 
 as above set forth. Subsequently, the mission of Mr. Bryan, the 
 Secretary of State, proved futile. The Californian Legislature 
 insisted upon the passage of the enactments proposed, without 
 modification ; and the measure received the signature of the 
 Governor of the State, regardless of the remonstrances of the 
 President expressed through the Secretary of State. Public 
 meetings denunciatory of this legislation, and indicating a strong 
 popular feeling, were subsequently held at Tokio and else 
 where in Japan. A diplomatic correspondence ensued, with 
 a request on the part of Japan that the point at issue be referred 
 to arbitration. At this time (July, 1913) no definite agreement 
 has been reached. 
 
PRINCIPIA 29 
 
 of State Sovereignty. With the issue thus presented 
 as an international complication, I here and now have 
 nothing to do ; there is, however, from the historic 
 point of view, much to be said on State Sovereignty 
 as it exists as part of the United States governmental 
 system. This is germane to my course, and the present 
 is a very opportune time to enlarge upon it ; for one 
 of the leading London journals was the other day not 
 far from the truth when it editorially said : Mr. 
 Woodrow Wilson. has not been long in discovering 
 that doctrines that seem excellent in theory are often 
 inconvenient in practice. One of the first requisites 
 of the democratic faith is the sovereignty of the 
 separate States of the Union. It has always been the 
 tradition of the party to which President Wilson be 
 longs to resist any extension of the authority of the 
 Federal Government. The topic here alluded to, if 
 properly handled, while not without its dramatic 
 features, has a decided historical interest. I now 
 address myself to it ; it involves the growth of a 
 people, the crystallization of a nationality. 
 
 From its inception in the earliest stages of your 
 own Great Rebellion, to its consummation in the out 
 come of our Civil War, this growth in the case of the 
 United States covered a period of approximately two 
 hundred years. It is not my purpose, neither indeed, 
 in the time at my disposal, would it be possible, to 
 enter in any detail into the history either of the entire 
 period or of the later struggle, to which I have just 
 referred, which closed it ; and, moreover, that later 
 and final struggle has recently been sufficiently here 
 
30 PRINCIPIA 
 
 traversed ] by another more competent than I. My 
 plan, therefore, is to deal in this course only with 
 certain phases of the general history and the more 
 recent conflict, or some aspects of both which hitherto 
 have either wholly escaped the notice of the historian 
 or have in my opinion been insufficiently dealt with. 
 
 Historical parallels and generalizations are things 
 dangerous to indulge in ; often deceptive, they are 
 always open to criticism. With us of the English- 
 speaking race, however, that date, the year of grace 
 1642 and the seventeenth of the reign of Charles I, 
 challenges both parallelism and generalization ; it was, 
 in short, epochal. For, in the closing half of 1642 and in 
 the early months of the year next ensuing, began on 
 both sides of the Atlantic concurrent and interacting 
 processes, slow of movement at times and at times 
 rapid, which in America worked to a final result in 
 April, 1865, and which in Great Britain are to-day 
 producing changes as pronounced as they are un 
 mistakable in fact, revolutionary. Witness your so- 
 called Parliament Act of 1911. In America a Nation 
 ality resulted ; in Great Britain, Democracy. 
 
 Let me particularize. It was in June, 1642, that 
 supremacy in the State was first claimed by Parlia 
 ment the Long Parliament. Practically, sovereignty 
 was then assumed, it might be said arrogated to itself, 
 by the House of Commons ; for the proclamation of 
 King Charles, forbidding the muster of the militia, 
 
 1 Lectures on the American Civil War, delivered before the 
 University of Oxford in the Easter and Trinity Terms, 1912. 
 By James Ford Rhodes. The Macmillan Company, 1918. 
 
PRINCIPIA 31 
 
 was then answered by a formal parliamentary declara 
 tion, carrying the stamp of royal authority, although 
 his Majesty in his proper person might, as he did, 
 disavow and oppose the same. A month later the 
 first blood of Civil War the War of the Common 
 wealth was shed at Manchester ; and on the 22nd of 
 the following month the staff from which the royal 
 standard flew was fixed in the ground here in Oxford, 
 under circumstances so picturesquely described in 
 Clarendon s stately narrative. In the language of the 
 last and most thorough historian of the period, Eng 
 land was about to learn through suffering that wisdom 
 which is to be found in neither of the opposing ranks. 
 From that day to this the lesson referred to has been 
 wellnigh continuous. So far, England. 
 
 Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic our 
 side a more peaceful but not less momentous event 
 was occurring. All through the latter months of 
 1642 the period following Edgehill in England a 
 confederation of the English settlements east of the 
 Hudson river was under constant consideration. 
 Finally, 011 May 19th, 1643, according to the calendar 
 then in use equivalent now to the 29th of the 
 month articles of union were signed by commis 
 sioners representing the colonies of the Massachu 
 setts Bay, of Connecticut and of New Haven, in 
 which the Plymouth Plantation joined in the follow 
 ing August. Entered upon under the hegemony of 
 the Massachusetts Bay, it was the first example of 
 coalition in colonial history, and constituted the germ 
 that in the fruition of the following century became 
 
32 PRINCIPIA 
 
 the union of the States. In other words, the step 
 taken May 29th, 1643, initiated a process finally 
 consummated on the 9th of April, 1865 Appomattox- 
 day, as we in America call it that day on which 
 General Lee surrendered the Confederate Army of 
 Northern Virginia to the Army of the Union under 
 the command of General Grant. 
 
 Our American orators, historical writers, and 
 historians have since in all possible detail dealt with 
 periods and phases of this process, such as what is 
 known as our Revolutionary War more properly, 
 the War of Independence our Civil War, as they 
 have termed the War of Secession, or the framing of 
 our famous Federal Constitution ; but these, one and 
 all, were merely incidents, or at most episodes in the 
 process of nation-building, which, begun in May, 1643, 
 closed in April, 1865. Subsequently to the first 
 Articles of Confederation, those of 1643, and prior to 
 the Federal Constitution of 1787, a succession of 
 attempts at closer or more comprehensive confedera 
 tion were made some theoretical and abortive, others 
 practical and operative each marking an advance on 
 what went before, a striving towards the goal, an 
 aspiration to a fuller nationality ; these, however, 
 were but phases of the process irresistibly, though for 
 long periods imperceptibly, proceeding. At first, and 
 for long, the movement was slow. At the close, it went 
 on with startling swiftness to the Appomattox climax. 
 
 Condensed, the story is one of absorbing interest ; 
 and intelligently read it conveys also more than 
 one political lesson of general as well as practical 
 
PRINCIPIA 33 
 
 import lessons, when properly studied, not with 
 out significance, possibly, to the England of to- day. 
 I will endeavour briefly to summarize the process, 
 avoiding details and yet trying to make clear what 
 have ever seemed stumblingblocks or foolishness to 
 those not to the manner born. 
 
 Every tolerably read Englishman or American is 
 acquainted with Burke s famous vision of Lord 
 Bathurst in his speech on conciliation with America. 
 Burke there, you will remember, pictures the angel 
 of this auspicious youth opening to him a boyhood 
 vision. The time was supposed to be 1714, the year 
 of the death of Queen Anne, and the accession of 
 King George I. Drawing the curtain which con 
 cealed the future, Burke s angel first unfolded the 
 rising glories of England ; and while the youthful 
 Bathurst was gazing with admiration on the then 
 commercial grandeur of England , the genius, it is sup 
 posed, points out to him a little speck, scarce visible in 
 the mass of the national interest, a small seminal prin 
 ciple, rather than a formed body, and in so doing, says : 
 Young man, there is America which at this day 
 serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of 
 savage men and uncouth manners ; yet shall, before 
 you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of 
 that commerce which now attracts the envy of the 
 world. Whatever England has been growing to by a 
 progressive increase of improvement, brought in by 
 varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests 
 and civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen 
 hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by 
 
34 PKINCIPIA 
 
 America in the course of a single life ! If this state 
 of his country had been foretold to him, would it not 
 require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the 
 fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it? 
 Fortunate man, he has lived to see it ! Burke then 
 proceeds in another burst of rhetoric to call attention 
 to the fact that all this has been accomplished by a 
 people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and 
 not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I 
 contemplate these things/ he adds, when I know that 
 the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care 
 of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy 
 form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious 
 government, but that through a wise and salutary 
 neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take 
 her own way to perfection ; when I reflect upon these 
 effects, when I see how profitable they have been to 
 us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presump 
 tion in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and 
 die away within me. My rigour relents. I pardon 
 something to the spirit of liberty. 
 
 If the long and memorable record of English parlia 
 mentary utterance, unique in history and educational 
 importance, contains a finer rhetorical outburst than 
 the foregoing, I can only say I am not acquainted 
 with it. This alone would justify quotation ; the pas 
 sage is, however, also very opportune in the present 
 connexion. With that inimitable happiness of speech 
 peculiar to himself, Burke referred to the l small 
 seminal principles rather than formed bodies dotted 
 in 1704 along the fifteen hundred miles of North 
 
PRINCIPIA 3g 
 
 American Atlantic seaboard, which seventy years 
 later, at the time Burke spoke, had by a process of 
 natural growth become i a people still, as it were, but 
 in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of 
 manhood . But the tropes and forms of speech in 
 which he then clad his thought are to the American 
 investigator of the present time curiously significant 
 they seem inspired. l My pride of power sinks . . . 
 all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivance 
 melts ... * I pardon something to the spirit of 
 liberty/ Power ! , i Human contrivances ! , * Spirit 
 of liberty ! In these phrases was hidden the mystery 
 of America s situation, the problem of America s 
 future, then matter of infinite question. Indeed, the 
 chances of fate inclined distinctly towards disaster; 
 for the spirit of liberty prevailed at that juncture in 
 excess ; power was deficient ; the human con 
 trivances essential to a successful solution of the 
 problem remained to be devised. The situation, at 
 best critical, was on any doctrine of chance fairly 
 appalling. The question of man s capacity for self- 
 government through representation based on general 
 suffrage, was at issue. Would the provinces, freed 
 from foreign guidance and motherly control, prove 
 equal to the occasion? 
 
 As what ensued that process of hardening from the 
 gristle of colonialism to the bone of nationality is 
 familiar history, it will not here bear repetition ; so 
 I shall now condense volumes into a single page. 
 The issue was two-fold : would the thirteen indepen 
 dent colonial offshoots develop among them leaders 
 
36 PEINCIPIA 
 
 of the matured public spirit and ( 
 lity adequate for the work in hai 
 that work being a practical schem 
 government? and, this leadership 
 ability assumed, would the popular ] 
 leadership prove sufficiently advan 
 education to accept the results tin 
 acquiesce therein? It was the old 
 and the Achaian League over 
 thousand years of human evolution intervening. 
 What, if anything, had mankind learned in the 
 interim? The world, and with cause, was very in 
 credulous as to the answer this query was about to 
 receive. Would an ordered nationality, or would 
 a condition of chronic anarchy, emerge? The odds 
 stood heavy in favour of the latter. 
 
 So far as leadership and constructive ability were con 
 cerned, the struggle for American independence had 
 in its outcome been conclusive. They were there. 
 Chatham, with the practised eye of a statesman an 
 eye both natural and trained early recognized this 
 fact, and bore witness of record to it. Such individu 
 alities as Washington and Franklin were conclusive as 
 to leadership ; while, as respects constructive ability, 
 Massachusetts and Virginia took the lead. The latter 
 evolved the Declaration of Independence ; the former 
 its written constitution of 1782, in the constructive 
 aspect infinitely the more important production of 
 the two. But, though the leadership was there, the 
 question whether its teachings would not in practical 
 working prove caviare to the general remained to be 
 
PEINCIPIA 37 
 
 seen. Were the rank and file of those then inhabiting 
 the thirteen provinces to be depended on to follow the 
 leaders, and accept their conclusions? if not, those 
 leaders were after all but voices crying in the wilder 
 ness. The world in such case would then but witness 
 a repetition of Achaian experiences. 
 
 The ordeal was successfully met ; but that final pro 
 cess of crystallization into a constitutional and con 
 firmed nationality occupied close upon a century. 
 Begun in 1776, it stood completed in 1865. 
 
 It was, and still is, fairly open to question whether the 
 method of solving the problem adopted by the fathers in 
 1787 could not most fitly as well as accurately be 
 described as a clever political trick, rather than an 
 inspiration. It certainly would have been a trick, so far 
 as the mass of those interested in the outcome were 
 concerned, had the leaders in the constructive work 
 then done themselves suspected what shape that out 
 come was to take. They most assuredly did not. 
 Building better than they knew, they deceived them 
 selves. They actually had faith in the metaphysical 
 abstractions to which they had recourse ! Time, out 
 side pressure, and the rapid development of the re 
 sources of nature, then wholly undreamed of, did the 
 rest. The study of what, step by step, occurred in the 
 process is most interesting and, as respects the future, 
 suggestive. 
 
 The obstacle in the way of crystallization lay in an 
 excess of that spirit of liberty to which Burke pro 
 nounced himself so tolerant ; and in an absence of 
 that * power to coerce in presence of which his pride 
 
38 PKINCIPIA 
 
 insensibly sank. The spirit of liberty in America, as 
 before in Greece, asserted itself in a pronounced cling 
 ing to independence local independence. An inde 
 pendence which bore a resemblance unpleasantly 
 suggestive of licence. Each one of the thirteen 
 original provinces asserted its sovereignty loudly 
 proclaimed itself a nation. The provincialism was 
 intense ; the mutual jealousies, dislikes, and aversions 
 only short of racial, were quite as pronounced as those 
 which formerly led to the downfall of the Achaian 
 League, or as more recently existed in the four 
 British nationalities ; for Saxon never disliked or 
 despised Gael or Celt more than did Carolinians the 
 Yankee. As well attempt to crystallize oil and water ! 
 Under such conditions the problem which taxed the 
 constructive ingenuity of the leaders, after the conflict 
 with Great Britain was over and outside pressure 
 withdrawn, was to devise a deception a nationality 
 which should not be a sovereignty ; and they actually 
 accomplished that feat, persuading others by first 
 thoroughly deceiving themselves. 
 
 To bring the result about they had recourse to what 
 I have already referred to as a metaphysical ab 
 straction they invented, what in perfect good faith 
 they proclaimed as divided sovereignty ; but which 
 in reality was a most ingenious and deceptive 
 temporary modus Vivendi. The proposition, in the 
 nature of a compromise, recommended itself to the 
 general popular mind ; that compromises of this sort 
 are apt so to recommend themselves is matter of 
 common observation. The situation as then (1789) 
 
PEINCIPIA 39 
 
 existing in the general public understanding, North 
 and South, has been not unfairly stated in the 
 recent publication of a Confederate, still, half a cen 
 tury after Appomattox, quite i unreconstructed , as we 
 phrase it ; that is, a belated survivor of the Lost 
 Cause , one now in America occupying politically 
 much the position occupied here by a confirmed 
 Jacobite two centuries ago, or in France at present by 
 a dyed-in-the-wool Bourbonist. Eeferring to our War 
 of Independence, the writer from whom I quote says : 
 1 At no time during the rebellion [that is, the War of 
 Independence] did the American nations act as 
 a single nation. A treaty was entered into by them 
 on November 15, 1777, the treaty being known as 
 Articles of Confederation. . . . This was the first 
 governmental union made by the American nations 
 for purposes other than war, and the object of this 
 union was to wage war successfully. The nations 
 parties to the compact each continued to exercise full 
 powers of sovereignty ; and, when they disapproved 
 any provision of the Confederation, such provision was 
 disregarded by them. 
 
 Fired with that local spirit of liberty to which 
 Burke was so forgiving, this somewhat anarchistic 
 state of affairs seems yet to commend itself as ideal 
 to the judgement of this writer. In other words, the 
 thirteen * nations , which would now have increased 
 in number to forty-eight, then dwelt together in amity, 
 or otherwise, as the case might be, under a compact ; 
 obeying the decrees of a central council when it was 
 agreeable for them so to do, and paying no attention 
 
40 PEINCIPIA 
 
 to them if not agreeable. Yet this writer, represent 
 ing very fairly the liberty extremists, goes on to say 
 that when the Federal Constitution was framed, 
 Few of the American nations, if any, were willing 
 to become parties to the written agreement until they 
 had been assured that it should not be construed to 
 affect their sovereignty in the least. They were will 
 ing to delegate specified powers to a holding company 
 such as the federal agents would make for each 
 nation would have the right to take back the powers 
 so delegated. 
 
 As I have said, this is the extreme States-right 
 view of results brought about through the famous 
 Federal Constitution of 1789. Historically, however, 
 it can equally well be maintained that the Constitution 
 was framed on the principle of a nationality that is, 
 Congress and the National Executive, as well as the 
 State Legislature and the State Executive, acted 
 directly on the citizen. Each having jurisdiction, the 
 enactments and authority of each, within certain 
 limits, applied to the individual, and he was thus 
 subjected to a double or divided, and hence possibly 
 conflicting, allegiance. The question, in fact, was 
 whether the national powers thus delegated were ir 
 revocable, or could at any time be recalled by the 
 constituent State. 
 
 Such a system, which historically and beyond ques 
 tion was that which did exist in the early days of the 
 Eepublic, constituted, though we were not conscious of 
 the fact, a phase in a process of evolution a transitory 
 phase which might result in almost anything segrega- 
 
PBINCIPIA 41 
 
 tion, consolidated nationality, not impossibly chronic 
 anarchy. Meanwhile as a transitory phase a condi 
 tion of, so to speak, unstable equilibrium it was 
 marked by continual dispute and ill-feeling. This 
 was true at nearly all times, and in separate sections 
 of the country at different times. For example, within 
 ten years of the adoption of the Federal Constitution, 
 the National Government, confronted by a supposed 
 political emergency, undertook to assert its sovereignty 
 through the passage of statutes known as the Alien 
 and Sedition Laws. Though the wisdom of the legis 
 lation was questionable, that its enactment was within 
 the province of any nationality possessing sovereignty 
 would at once to-day be admitted. It was, however, 
 immediately and peremptorily challenged by the party 
 of States-rights, Thomas Jefferson himself drawing 
 up votes of nullification passed by the Legislatures of 
 three States. Those enactments are now known in 
 history as the i Kentucky Kesolutions of 1798 . Thus 
 early was foreshadowed the secession ordinances 
 of sixty years later. Again, early in the following 
 century the adherents of Jefferson, now President, 
 being in political control, the four States then con 
 stituting the New England portion of the United States, 
 disliking an embargo at that time imposed by the 
 National Government in restraint of foreign commerce, 
 gravely considered a withdrawal from the Union, 
 though no overt act to that end was actually committed. 
 As then presented, the issue was based exclusively on 
 commercial considerations. A few years later, in 1820, 
 the slavery question came to the front, there to remain 
 
 1593 F 
 
42 PEINCIPIA 
 
 until actual battle was joined ; and, in the angry 
 discussion which arose in connexion with new States 
 about to be organized, threats of disunion through 
 secession were freely made. The tariff was next the 
 source of sectional strife, a system of agriculture 
 based on slavery being the underlying cause of 
 trouble. In this case one of the States South 
 Carolina undertook to nullify , as it was termed, an 
 enactment of Congress, declaring it inoperative with 
 in South Carolina s boundaries. The National Govern 
 ment was set at open defiance. This time the issue 
 was compromised and temporarily adjourned, only pre 
 sently to assert itself anew, slavery being again the 
 underlying cause, primarily in connexion with the 
 annexation to the United States of Texas, an inde 
 pendent republic. And now, once more, the State 
 of Massachusetts, again committing no overt act, 
 pronounced the violation of the Constitution so gross 
 that a secession from the Union, though not actually 
 attempted, might be considered justifiable. From 
 this time on, and for fifteen years, slavery was 
 continually at issue, with the menace of disunion 
 for ever impending. A withdrawal was widely and 
 loudly advocated at the South by the believers in 
 an industrial system based on African slave labour ; 
 while in the North a peaceable dissolution was urged 
 on the ground that, because of its recognition of 
 slavery, the Federal Constitution was a compact with 
 hell. 
 
 If ever a topic of contention was thoroughly thrashed 
 out so thrashed out, in fact, as to offer no possible 
 
PEINCIPIA 43 
 
 gleaning of novelty it might be inferred that among 
 us in America this Divided Sovereignty conception 
 had been subjected to that process. Yet years ago 
 I ventured the opinion that such was not altogether 
 the case ; and to that opinion I still adhere. To my 
 mind, the difficulty with the discussion has always 
 been that throughout, extending as it has over the 
 lives of three generations, it has in essence been too 
 abstract, legal and technical in a word, academic 
 and not sufficiently historical, sociological and psycho 
 logical ; in another word, human. It has been made to 
 turn on the wording of certain written instruments. 
 Yet those instruments were in themselves confessedly 
 not explicit ; and, when discussing them, far too little 
 regard was paid to traditions, local ties, and inherited 
 prejudices. As matter of fact, however, actual men 
 as they live, move, and have their being, care little for 
 acts of parliaments or theories, but they are the 
 creatures of heredity : respecting local attachments, 
 they yield obedience to custom. Especially is this 
 true of those of the Anglo-Saxon breed ; and it hence 
 ensued that when the American Federal Constitution 
 was framed, and a year later adopted that is, in 
 1787-89 the dangerous question of ultimate sove 
 reignty was instinctively avoided treated as if its 
 settlement was in no way imperative. The Federal 
 Constitution, consequently, was both theoretically and 
 avowedly based on a metaphysical abstraction the 
 idea of a divided sovereignty in utter disregard of 
 the fact that, when a final issue is presented when, 
 so to speak, the push-of-pike comes sovereignty does 
 
44: PRINCIPIA 
 
 not admit of division. It then rests in might. It 
 always has so rested ; and, in the nature of things, 
 there rest it always must. 
 
 Yet even this last proposition, basic as it is, I have 
 frequently heard denied. It is in argument replied 
 that, as matter of fact, sovereignty is divided, and 
 almost habitually divided divided in family life, 
 divided in the apportionment of the functions of 
 government. Those thus arguing, however, do so 
 confusedly. They confound sovereignty with an 
 agreed, but artificial, modus vivendi. The Constitution 
 of the United States, was, in fact, just that a modus 
 vivendi ; ingenious, unquestionably, but still a modus 
 vivendi. Under the circumstances, it was a most 
 happy expedient for overcoming an obstacle in the 
 way of nationality, otherwise insurmountable. To 
 accomplish the end they had in view, the framers, 
 deceiving themselves, had recourse to a highly decep 
 tive device, under which it was left to time and the 
 individual to decide, when the final issue should arise, 
 if it ever did arise and they all devoutly hoped it 
 never would arise where sovereignty, and conse 
 quently allegiance, lay. From the historical point of 
 view there is indeed nothing in connexion with the 
 history of American development more interesting 
 than the growth and gradual evolution of this spirit of 
 federal nationality. Slowly and imperceptibly sup 
 planting State pride, it finally carried with it, as it 
 inevitably must, sovereignty and allegiance. The 
 process and outcome were long treated in a purely 
 legal and technical way it was a question of the 
 
PEINCIPIA 45 
 
 verbal construction of an instrument. I, in all confi 
 dence, maintain that it was in reality at once a prac 
 tical issue and an historical sequence. Treated as 
 a practical issue, and not as a merely technical point 
 in controversy, it was in the course of American 
 history decided, and, moreover, correctly decided, both 
 ways at different times in different sections, and, at 
 different times, in opposite ways in the same section. 
 
 This sounds paradoxical to the Confederate a 
 stumblingblock, to the European foolishness. And yet 
 the case is necessarily as stated. For, as development 
 progressed on various lines in different times and 
 localities, the sense of allegiance shifted. Two whole 
 generations passed away between the adoption of the 
 Federal Constitution in 1789 and the War of Secession 
 in 1861. When that war broke out, the last of the 
 framers of the Constitution had been a score of years 
 in his grave. Evidence, however, is conclusive that, 
 until the decennium between 1830 and 1840, the 
 belief was nearly universal that in case of a final, 
 unavoidable issue, sovereignty resided in the State, 
 and to the State its citizens allegiance was due. 
 
 The technical argument the logic of the proposi 
 tion seems plain ; in fact, unanswerable. The 
 original sovereignty was indisputably in the State ; in 
 order to establish a nationality certain attributes of 
 sovereignty were ceded by the several States to a com 
 mon central organization what Jefferson described as 
 a Department of Foreign Affairs ; all attributes not 
 thus specifically conceded were reserved to the States ; 
 and no attributes of moment were to be included by 
 
46 PEINCIPIA 
 
 construction. Yet no attribute is so important as 
 allegiance, citizenship. So far all is elementary, in 
 disputable. And now we come to the crux of the 
 proposition. Not only was all allegiance the right 
 to define and establish citizenship not among the 
 attributes specifically conceded by the several States 
 to the central nationality, but, on the contrary, it was 
 explicitly reserved. The instrument definitely de 
 clared that the citizens of each State should be 
 entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens 
 in the several States . This, and, as respects citizen 
 ship, nothing more. Ultimate allegiance was, there 
 fore, due to the State which defined and conferred 
 citizenship, not to the central organization which 
 accepted as citizens whomsoever a State pronounced 
 to be such. 
 
 Thus far the situation is historical ; nor does there 
 seem any escape from the logical deduction to be drawn 
 from it. Citizenship, originating with the several 
 States, of course involved allegiance to the State. 
 But, speaking historically, and in a philosophical 
 rather than a legal spirit, it is little more than a com 
 monplace to assert that one great safeguard of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race what might almost be termed its 
 political palladium has ever been that hard, if at 
 times illogical, common-sense, which, recognizing 
 established custom as a binding rule of action, found 
 its embodiment in what we are wont with pride to 
 term the Common Law. Now, just as there can, 
 I think, be no question as to the source of our 
 American citizenship, and, consequently, as to 
 
PEINCIPIA 47 
 
 ultimate sovereignty when in 1789 the Constitution 
 was originally adopted, there can be equally little 
 question that during the lives of the two succeeding 
 generations a custom, so to speak, of nationality grew 
 up which became the accepted Common Law of the 
 land, and practically binding as such. 1 This was true 
 in the South as well as the North, though the 
 custom was more hardened into accepted law in the 
 latter than in the former ; but the growth and accept 
 ance as law of the custom of nationality even in the 
 South were incontrovertibly shown in the very act of 
 secession the seceding States at once crystallizing 
 into a Confederacy. Nationality in some form was 
 assumed as a thing of course ; and Nationality must 
 involve Allegiance. 
 
 But the metaphysical abstraction of a divided sove 
 reignty, none the less, bridged a dangerous chasm. As 
 a modus vivendi it did its work ; and did it well, because, 
 finally, it worked into Might. Illogical, it was inevit 
 ably fraught with possible disputes and consequent 
 dangers ; but it naturally came to pass that in many of 
 the States a generation grew up, dating from the 
 second of our wars with Great Britain that known 
 as the War of 1812 a generation which, gravitating 
 steadily, and more and more strongly, to nationality, 
 took an altogether different view of allegiance. Those 
 of this generation were, moreover, wholly within their 
 right. The sovereignty was confessedly divided ; and 
 it was for those of the new generation to elect. The 
 movements of both science and civilization were 
 1 See note 1, p. 53. 
 
48 PRINCIPIA 
 
 behind the Nationalists. The railroad obliterated State 
 lines, while it unified the nation. What did the 
 foreign immigrants, now swarming across the ocean, 
 care for States ? They knew only the nation which 
 adopted and protected them. Brought up in Europe, 
 the talk of State Sovereignty was to them foolishness. 
 Its alphabet even was incomprehensible. In a word, 
 it, too, was i caviare to the general . 
 
 Then the issue, from the beginning inevitable, at last 
 arose ; arose over African slavery. Slavery was 
 sectional. Because of it, as a domestic institution of 
 theirs, the States south of a given line were arrayed 
 against the States north of that line. Owing largely 
 to slavery, and the practical exclusion of foreign im 
 migrants because thereof, the States of the South 
 had- never undergone nationalization at all to the 
 extent those of the North had undergone it. The 
 growing influence and power of the National Govern 
 ment, the sentiment inspired by the wars in which 
 the nation had been engaged, the rapidly improv 
 ing means of communication and intercourse, had 
 produced their effect in the South ; but in degree far 
 less than in the North, Thus the curious result was 
 brought about that when, at last, the long-deferred issue 
 confronted the country, and the modus vivendi of two 
 generations was brought to a close, those who believed 
 in national sovereignty the North constituted the 
 conservative majority, striving for the preservation 
 of what then was, the existing nineteenth-century 
 Nation ; while those who passionately adhered to State 
 Sovereignty the South treading in the footsteps of 
 
PRINCIPIA 49 
 
 the fathers, had become eighteenth-century reactionists. 
 Legally, each had right on his side. The theory of 
 a divided sovereignty had worked itself out to its 
 logical consequence. Under which king, Bezonian ? 
 
 and every man had to speak or die . 
 
 In the North the situation was simple. State and 
 Nation stood together. The question of allegiance did 
 not present itself, for the two sovereignties were merged 
 
 the greater had, by a natural process, absorbed the 
 less. It was otherwise in the South ; and there the 
 question became, not legal or constitutional, but senti 
 mental and practical. The life of the nation had 
 endured so long, the ties and ligaments had become so 
 numerous and interwoven, that, all theories to the 
 contrary notwithstanding, a peaceable secession from 
 the Union the actual exercise of State Sovereignty 
 had become impossible. If those composing the 
 several dissatisfied communities would only keep their 
 tempers under restraint, and exercise an almost 
 unlimited patience, a theoretical divided sovereignty, 
 maintained through the agency and intervention of the 
 Supreme Court in other words, the perpetuation of 
 the modus vivendi was altogether practicable ; and 
 probably this was what the framers had in mind under 
 such a contingency as had now arisen. But that, after 
 seventy years of union and nationalization, a peace 
 able and friendly taking to pieces was possible, is now, 
 as then it was, scarcely thinkable. Certainly, with 
 a most vivid recollection of the state of sectional feeling 
 which then existed, I do not believe there was in 1861 
 a man in the United States I am confident there was 
 
50 PBINCIPIA 
 
 not a woman in the South who fostered self-delusion 
 to the extent of believing that the change was to come 
 about without a recourse to force. In other words, 
 practical secession was revolution theoretically legal. 
 Why waste time and breath in discussion ! The situ 
 ation became manifestly impossible of continuance 
 when the issue between heated men, with weapons 
 handy, was over a metaphysical distinction involving 
 vast material and moral consequences. 
 
 Historically, such were the conditions to which 
 natural processes of development had brought the com 
 mon country at the mid-decennium of the century. 
 People had to elect ; the modus vivendi was at an end. 
 Was the State sovereign? or was the Nation sove 
 reign ? And it thus came about that when, in that 
 stormy April of 1861, the cry at last went forth, To 
 your tents, O Israel ! it mattered not at all whether 
 the issue over which battle was joined loomed large or 
 seemed small whether it was a straw or an empire, 
 an abstraction or the servitude of a race. In point 
 of fact, Burke s little specks scarce visible/ those 
 * small seminal principles rather than formed bodies 
 of 1714, had assumed organic shape ; the long period 
 of gestation was over ; it was the final birth-throe of a 
 perfected nationality. And yet foreign communities 
 you here in Great Britain watched the tragedy in 
 bewildered amazement, innocently asking what it was 
 all about anyhow, and did it signify anything ! 
 
 In this, the first lecture of my course, I have thus 
 attempted to deal with the growth of Nationality in 
 
PKINCIPIA 51 
 
 the United States ; but, obviously, the query at once 
 suggests itself, if this is so, and, as the outcome of the 
 Civil War, nationality stands established, how explain 
 the position of California, referred to in my opening ? 
 How can a State, no longer sovereign, legislate in 
 contravention of the treaty obligations of the nation 
 ality of which it is a part ? A contradiction in terms 
 is implied. The answer is, however, simple. State 
 Sovereignty exists still in theory, but it is no longer 
 accompanied by the claim to any right of its enforce 
 ment through secession. That issue was fought out, 
 and, in 1865, decided for all time to come. State 
 Sovereignty in America is now admittedly limited to 
 an arbitrament by a final judicial tribunal the 
 Supreme Court of the United States passing, and 
 passing without a right of further appeal, on any 
 concrete issue which may be raised by an Act of local 
 legislation. Under our written Constitution, treaties 
 entered into by the National Government with foreign 
 powers are the supreme law of the land, overriding all 
 contravening domestic enactments. State Sovereignty 
 is thus strictly limited ; nationality has superseded it. 
 It is obvious and undeniable that serious complica 
 tions, both domestic and involving foreign nations, 
 may in future arise from this somewhat anomalous 
 feature in our political system a feature which 
 foreigners find it so difficult to understand, involving 
 as it does an imperium in imperio. Into that branch of 
 the subject I do not here enter ; though it too has its 
 history, and of it I shall have more to say on a future 
 occasion. Now, I confine myself to a narrative sketch 
 
52 PEINCIPIA 
 
 of the origin of State Sovereignty in our system ; to 
 a brief reference to its logical outcome ; and, finally, to 
 a statement of the limitation placed upon it by the 
 development of nationality recognized as supremely 
 sovereign. A clear grasp of these fundamental pro 
 positions and their historical development is necessary 
 to any intelligent comprehension of American history. 
 With us, as with Great Britain, it has all been a pro 
 cess of slow growth ; and in 110 respect an extempo 
 rized and ingenious invention. 
 
 In my next, or second, lecture I shall describe what 
 my own investigation has led me to consider the crisis 
 in the fierce struggle at the close of a two-century 
 process that inner impulse which then rent the veil 
 of the old husk the deciding battle of underlying 
 antagonistic forces. The field of that battle was not, 
 as I see it, at Washington, or at Gettysburg, nor 
 indeed in America at all ; it was here in England 
 here in your Lancashire cotton-spinning district and 
 in Downing Street. About it too there was some 
 thing Homeric. A struggle, not of arms but of 
 industry and ideals ; it was decided on no vulgar 
 field of fight. In it the Confederacy sustained what 
 proved, in the end, its fatal overthrow ; and in it figured 
 historical characters very familiar to English ears 
 Palmerston and Cobden, Bright and Gladstone, Napo 
 leon III and Abraham Lincoln. Great forces were 
 also there aligned forces moral as well as material, of 
 which history must now take cognizance and with 
 them reckon. Taken altogether and viewed in a half 
 century s perspective, though as yet unnoticed by any 
 
PKINCIPIA 53 
 
 historian with whose pages I am familiar, my topic for 
 next Wednesday constitutes an episode in nineteenth- 
 century history than which none is either more 
 dramatic or more pregnant with consequences of 
 world-wide future significance. 
 
 NOTE 1, PAGE 47. 
 
 The question of national citizenship under the 
 Federal Constitution, and irrespective of the States, 
 is interesting, and, in the course of adjudication, has 
 been much discussed. It was finally provided for 
 by the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the 
 Federal Constitution, one of the sequences of the 
 Civil War, adopted in 1868. Prior to the incorpo 
 ration of that amendment, there was no constitutional, 
 much less any statutory, provision covering the case ; 
 and if national citizenship, apart from citizenship of 
 a State, existed at all, and it undoubtedly did exist, 
 it could only have been through custom meeting an 
 exigency, and hardening into common, or judge-made, 
 law. On this point a high, though lay, authority has 
 recently thus expressed himself : 
 
 It may, however, be said that those who totally deny the 
 possession by the United States of any common law would 
 confer a favour upon us if they would indicate from what 
 other source citizenship of the United States by birth was, 
 prior to the Fourteenth Amendment, universally derived. 
 Citizenship by naturalization was a constitutional status, for 
 Congress was expressly authorized to prescribe a uniform 
 rule of naturalization ; but prior to the Fourteenth Amend 
 ment, which declared all persons born ... in the United 
 States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, to be citizens 
 
54 PEINCIPIA 
 
 of the United States , there was no constitutional definition 
 of national citizenship by birth. Mr. Justice Curtis, in his 
 dissenting opinion in the Dred Scott case, argued that the 
 Constitution adopted as native American citizens such persons 
 as were by birth citizens of the several States ; but this 
 theory failed to account for the fact that persons born on 
 territory within the jurisdiction of the United States, but 
 not within the jurisdiction of any State, were also regarded 
 as citizens of the United States. We seem indeed to be 
 driven to accept as correct the declaration of the Supreme 
 Court, in 1898 (United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U. S. 649, 
 675), that beyond doubt birth within the sovereignty of 
 the United States created, by virtue of the rule of the 
 common law operating thereunder, national citizenship. 
 John Bassett Moore, Four Phases of American Development 
 (1912), pp. 58-9. 
 
II 
 
 THE CONFEDERATE COTTON 
 CAMPAIGN 
 
 LANCASHIRE, 1861-1862 
 
II 
 
 THE CONFEDERATE COTTON 
 CAMPAIGN 
 
 LANCASHIBE, 1861-1862 
 
 GENERAL FRIEDRICH VON BERNHARDI is a distin 
 guished Prussian army officer, ranking high as a mili 
 tary authority. As such he not long ago published 
 a volume which, translated into English, has excited 
 notice, and some newspaper and other criticisms. 
 Written out of the fullness of my Germanic heart , as 
 the author asseverates, it records matured convictions. 
 With those convictions almost needless to say belli 
 cose in the extreme I here have nothing to do ; but 
 in the volume I find two historical references which 
 afford what may serve as a text for this the second 
 lecture of my course. In Chapter V of General Bern- 
 hardi s work, a chapter entitled * World-Power or 
 Downfall , is the following : Since England com 
 mitted the unpardonable blunder, from her point of 
 view, of not supporting the Southern States in the 
 American War of Secession, a rival to England s 
 world-wide Empire has appeared on the other side of 
 the Atlantic in the form of the United States of North 
 America, which are a grave menace to England s 
 fortunes. The keenest competition conceivable now 
 exists between the two countries. 5 
 
 1593 H 
 
58 THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 
 
 Again, in a subsequent chapter (XII), a chapter 
 entitled Preparation for the Next War , General 
 Bernhardi reverts to this topic, once more forcibly 
 recording therein his i Germanic heart conviction. 
 Referring to Germany s present naval policy, and 
 what he terms i peace and renunciation , he here says : 
 This policy somewhat resembles the supineness for 
 which England has herself to blame, when she refused 
 her assistance to the Southern States in the American 
 War of Secession, and thus allowed a power to arise 
 in the form of the United States of North America 
 which already, although barely fifty years have elapsed, 
 threatens England s own position as a World-Power. 
 
 That the struggle which this author designates, and 
 in my opinion very correctly designates, as the 
 American War of Secession more commonly by us 
 in America called the Civil War, as if no other civil 
 war had ever been waged that this struggle, covering 
 in American history the four years between April 
 1861 and April 1865, does not loom up in such large 
 proportions in the British memory as in ours I am 
 well aware. Here in Great Britain now practically for 
 gotten, at the time, as I had occasion to observe in my 
 previous lecture, its developments were watched with 
 the deepest interest by all classes. They excited, an 
 intensity of feeling at present not easy to realize. ^The 
 entire community was in fact divided into partisans of 
 one side of the conflict or of the other, the cause of 
 the Confederacy enlisting in its support a large pre 
 ponderance of those then constituting what were 
 known as the English governing classes, 
 
THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 59 
 
 This, however, was fifty years ago, and the genera 
 tion which, observing the conflict thus divided over 
 it, has passed from the stage. Oilier and equally 
 momentous struggles more immediately affecting 
 British interests and much nearer home the Franco- 
 Prussian War of 1870, with its capitulation of Sedan 
 and siege of Paris ; the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, 
 with its story of Plevna ; your South African War of 
 1898 ; the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 all these have 
 since occurred, each for the time engrossing attention. 
 So far as our Civil War of half a century ago is con 
 cerned, these I am well aware have operated on the 
 public memory here much as a succession of tides on 
 the sands of one of your ocean beaches. Through 
 their action and agency previous footprints have been 
 effaced. 
 
 It is apt to be so ; and yet this rule also has its 
 exceptions. Take, for instance, the so-called Wars of 
 Napoleon the life-and-death struggle which, following 
 the outbreak of the French Revolution, lasted almost 
 continuously from 1792 to 1815; in spite of all that 
 has since occurred, that conflict of peoples and of 
 giants, looming ever larger in history, dominates the 
 literature of to-day. 
 
 I am, therefore, by no means prepared here to 
 suggest that our American Civil War, however con 
 siderable in its proportions or momentous in results, 
 exceeded in its tragic elements or equalled in historic 
 significance other experiences of the last century, 
 much less those of all recorded times. Occurring 
 fifty years since, as respects the dramatic element, 
 
60 THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 
 
 while, as I shall presently show, by no means devoid 
 thereof and that in a large way, it will in no wise 
 bear comparison with another and earlier experience 
 the Napoleonic drama, working rapidly out of its 
 tragic Russian phase to its close at Waterloo exactly 
 a century ago. 
 
 And yet premising all this, here is a German utter 
 ance of to-day referring to our struggle as one of 
 world-moment, characterizing the British policy 
 then pursued as an l unpardonable blunder involving 
 to-day l grave menaces to England s fortunes, even 
 threatening England s position as a World-Power . 
 And this utterance suggests material more than 
 sufficient for an hour s discourse, So to-day I propose 
 to recall the events of a most critical as well as dra 
 matic situation, and to lay bare, if I can, the hidden 
 motives which then influenced, and in the end 
 controlled, the momentous policy pursued by the 
 British Government. An interesting as well as 
 highly suggestive page of history, it is as yet un- 
 handled in any narrative. 
 
 To make plain the situation it is necessary to refer 
 in a certain detail to events and personages now in 
 a great degree forgotten, but which, recalled, still 
 possess interest. 
 
 At the close of my last lecture, it will be remem 
 bered, I referred to the formal secession from the 
 American Union of eleven of the States so-called 
 sovereign, and their organization into a new nation 
 ality calling itself the Confederate States of America. 
 This occurred during the winter and spring months 
 
THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 61 
 
 of 1861, and led to an immediate outbreak of hostili 
 ties between the two organizations the Union, con 
 sisting of the States which remained loyal to the 
 National Government, and, on the other hand, the 
 Confederacy. The issue of nationality was thus at last 
 squarely presented : it was, as I said in my last 
 lecture, more, far more, than a question of constitu 
 tional law and the construction either in language or 
 in spirit to be given to any parchment. Immediate 
 material results, or even the question of human servi 
 tude, were in the conflict ensuing minor considerations. 
 What was then in process, as I a week ago pointed 
 out, far transcended all this it was in fact the final 
 birth-throe which preceded the appearance on this 
 planet of a consolidated nationality a new World- 
 Power of the first magnitude. 
 
 It is proverbially easy to be wise after the event ; 
 and to the modern investigator, especially if European, 
 the cause of the American Civil War is now deemed 
 obvious ; and, in view of the immense preponderance 
 of strength and resources men, money, munitions 
 indisputably, and from the beginning, enjoyed by one 
 of the parties in the strife, its outcome was inevitable. 
 These discrepancies considered, the only real occasion 
 for surprise, it is now alleged, was that the weaker 
 party ever challenged the conflict ; and the conclusion 
 finally reached is that, under the circumstances, the 
 length to which the hopeless conflict was protracted 
 was not over and above creditable to the party finally 
 triumphant. 
 
 With a plausible sound, this is a very shallow 
 
62 THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 
 
 generalization. Nor is it in accordance with facts ; 
 for it so chanced that in 1861, when the slowly gather 
 ing tempest broke, a census of the entire United 
 States had just been taken, and every figure now open 
 to the investigator was then published. The public men 
 and journalists of the South had studied the tables of 
 the census ; Europe had free access to them. And 
 yet in the spring of 1861 and during three of the four 
 years of following strife no Southern man felt a doubt 
 as to the final result, and no unprejudiced observer any 
 where believed that the subjugation of the Confederacy 
 was probable. The restoration of the old Union was 
 considered, humanly speaking, an impossibility. The 
 Confederacy numbered eight millions. No community 
 numbering eight millions as well organized and com 
 bative as the Confederacy, ever yet had been overcome 
 in the outcome of a civil war, nor was there any 
 sufficient reason for supposing that the present case 
 would prove an exception to a rule hitherto without 
 exceptions. Such was the belief currently entertained. 
 Moreover, it is a well-established historical fact that 
 every single representative of a foreign nation then 
 resident in Washington, in 1861 and 1862 regarded 
 the division of the American Union as practically 
 accomplished ; they all took for granted the conclusion 
 later expressed by Mr. Gladstone, that the success of 
 the Southern States, so far as regarded their sepa 
 ration from the States of the North, was an event 
 as certain as any event yet future and contingent 
 could be. 
 
 Neither is it true that the outcome of the struggle 
 
THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 63 
 
 was from its commencement inevitable. On the con 
 trary, I with confidence maintain that the result was 
 in the beginning to the last degree doubtful ; and, 
 indeed, throughout the entire first half of the con 
 flict that is, until the summer of 1863 the chances 
 largely favoured the Confederacy. Finally, its failure 
 was due to contingencies not possible to forecast, 
 and against which no human sagacity could have 
 provided. 
 
 In the first place, as respects the cause of the con 
 flict and the parties to it. And here I must severely 
 condense. The slave-owning States constituted in 
 1860 a geographical section occupied by a community 
 almost exclusively devoted to agricultural pursuits, 
 and leading to a certain extent a patriarchal existence. 
 Contented with their lot, they neither desired nor 
 countenanced change. Intensely provincial, as is the 
 wont of all agricultural and patriarchal communities, 
 they looked upon the diversified industrial com 
 munities of the North, their partners in the common 
 country, with a contempt they felt no call to conceal. 
 Believing themselves to be in all respects a superior 
 race, they were, moreover, persuaded that the world 
 and its future were theirs. In view of what sub 
 sequently occurred this sounds absurd. I have no 
 time in which to marshal evidence of the truth of 
 what I have said ; but listen to a few of their utter 
 ances. J. H. Hammond, an ex-Governor of South 
 Carolina, a Senator of the United States upon whom 
 had fallen the mantle of Calhoun, was a representative 
 Southern man. As such men went, he was thoughtful 
 
64: THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 
 
 and observant. Writing in April preceding by a year 
 the breaking out of the Civil War, Mr. Hammond 
 thus expressed himself: I firmly believe that the 
 slave-holding South is now the controlling power of 
 the world ; that no other power would face us in hos 
 tility. This will be demonstrated if we come to the 
 ultimate. I have no wish to bring it about, yet I am 
 perfectly ready if others do. There might be with us 
 commotion for a time ; but cotton, rice, tobacco and 
 naval stores command the world ; and we have sense 
 enough to know it, and are sufficiently Teutonic to 
 carry it out successfully. The North, without us, 
 would be a motherless calf, bleating about, and die of 
 mange and starvation. 1 
 
 Thus the Confederacy did not go into the conflict of 
 1861 unadvisedly. On the contrary, its leaders gave 
 what at the time they considered full consideration 
 to all the factors on either side essential to success. 
 They reckoned without their host ; but, none the less, 
 they did reckon. For instance, take the matter of the 
 blockade, an inevitable incident to the struggle should 
 it come about, and, finally, when it did come about, 
 the controlling factor in its outcome. The very James 
 H. Hammond, from a letter of whom I have just 
 quoted, thus, in a speech delivered in the United States 
 Senate Chamber in 1858, which I shall again have oc 
 casion to refer to, summarily and contemptuously dis 
 missed as an absurdity the idea of an effective blockade 
 of the Confederate coasts in case of war. He said : 
 We have 3,000 miles of continental sea-shore line 
 so indented with bays and crowded with islands 
 
THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 65 
 
 that when their shore-lines are added, we have 12,000 
 miles . . . Can you hem in such a territory as that ? 
 You talk of putting up a wall of fire around 850,000 
 square miles so situated ! How absurd ! As respects 
 the undervaluation of the prospective opponent, the 
 mental condition of the South in 1861 was well calcu 
 lated to excite subsequent historic doubt ; for, curious 
 as it sounds in view of the ultimate outcome of the 
 struggle, there is no exaggeration in the statement 
 that in the first flush of war the masses of the South 
 really believed that one Southerner could whip a 
 half-dozen Yankees and not half try . 
 
 /As respects that factor of self-deception, the well- 
 nigh inconceivable overvaluation of itself by the South 
 as a commercial world-power, the mere mention of 
 the delusion recalls to every American s memory the 
 once familiar, now forgotten, postulate, i Cotton is 
 King ! / Inconceivable, meaningless now to the 
 European, to the South its infatuation on this point 
 was in 1860 the fruitful mother of calamity ; for the 
 commercial supremacy of cotton, accepted as a 
 fundamental truth, was made the basis of political 
 action. The statement of the unquestioning faith 
 in which that patriarchal community cherished 
 this belief, now passed out of memory, savours of 
 exaggeration. As a matter of fact, it does not ad 
 mit of overstatement. For instance, what modern 
 historical presentation could be so framed as to 
 exceed in strength, broadness and colour the 
 following from the speech just referred to as de 
 livered, March 4, 1858, by James H. Hammond, 
 
 1593 I 
 
66 THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 
 
 representing and voicing South Carolina. Senator 
 Hammond then said : 
 
 But if there were no other reason why we should never 
 have war, would any sane nation make war on cotton ? 
 Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they 
 make war on us we could bring the whole world to our feet. 
 The South is perfectly competent to go on one, two, or three 
 years without planting a seed of cotton. . . . What would 
 happen if no cotton was furnished for three years ? I will 
 not stop to depict what every one can imagine, but this 
 is certain : England would topple headlong and carry the 
 whole civilized world with her, save the South. No, you 
 dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares 
 to make war upon it. Cotton is King. Until lately the 
 Bank of England was king, but she tried to put her screws 
 as usual, the fall before the last, upon the cotton crop, and 
 was utterly vanquished. The last power has been conquered. 
 Who can doubt, that has looked at recent events, that cotton 
 is supreme ? l 
 
 Thus, in complete provincialism and childlike faith, 
 a community was willing to venture, and actually 
 did venture, life, fortune and sacred honour on its 
 contempt for those composing the largest part of 
 the community of which they were themselves but 
 a minority. They staked their all on the soundness 
 of a commercial theory politically applied. 
 
 But perhaps the curious and complete state of 
 misapprehension, material and moral, then pervading 
 the Southern community has best been described by 
 a Southerner who himself at the time shared in it to 
 the full extent. Writing nearly fifty years later, he 
 
 1 Selections from the Letters and Speeches of James H. Hammond 
 (New York, 1866), pp. 316, 317. 
 
THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 67 
 
 said: Two ideas, however, seemed [in 1861] to 
 pervade all classes. One was that keystone dogma 
 of secession, " Cotton is King ! " the other that the 
 war did one come could not last over three months. 
 The man who ventured to dissent from either idea, 
 back it by what logic he might, was looked upon as 
 an idiot, if his disloyalty was not broadly hinted 
 at. l 
 
 Had the theory as respects the potency of cotton on 
 which the South went into the war been sound, the 
 blockade would have proved the Confederacy s most 
 effective ally ; for the blockade shut off from Europe 
 its supply of cotton as it could have been shut off by 
 no other possible agency. The Government of the 
 Union in so far played the game of the Confederacy, 
 and played it effectively. In the early days of the 
 struggle, they even in their self-delusion talked at 
 Richmond of an export duty on their one great staple, 
 and of inhibiting its out-go altogether; but the blockade 
 made quite unnecessary any action of that nature. 
 Through the blockade the cotton-screw, so to speak, 
 was applied to the fullest possible extent. Nor was 
 the overthrow of the potentate easily brought about. 
 Well entrenched, dethroning him entailed on the 
 commercial world one of the most severe trials it has 
 ever been called upon to pass through. Not all that 
 Mr. Hammond predicted, or that the Confederate 
 leaders confidently looked to see happen, actually did 
 happen ; but, none the less, the overthrow of the 
 
 1 T. C. De Leon, Belles, Beaux, and Brains of the 60s (1907), 
 p. 50. 
 
68 THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 
 
 Confederate Cotton idol involved a commercial and 
 industrial disturbance of the first magnitude . 
 
 In addition to being titanic, it was also in the 
 highest degree dramatic, for it involved nationalities, 
 governments, and financial interests. All forgotten 
 now, passed wholly from memory, it was at the time 
 of a magnitude, interest and pathos not easy to exag 
 gerate. It had in it an element of the Homeric ; and, 
 to the participants, it sometimes so appeared. Thus, 
 for example, in glancing not long ago over a recently 
 published biography of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
 the author of Uncle Tom s Ccibin, of which I shall pre 
 sently have more to say, I came across this contempo 
 raneous reference : Even the Greek mind never 
 conceived a tragedy more terrible than the war 
 between the States of North America. This was not 
 by Mrs. Stowe ; it is an extract from a letter written 
 by a dying Confederate soldier to his mother from the 
 field of battle. A young man about to enter the Pres 
 byterian ministry, he had joined the army of the South 
 in a true crusading spirit, and the whole tone of what 
 he wrote breathed satisfaction that it had been given 
 him to lay down his life for the cause of God and Truth 
 as he saw it, as against injustice and oppression. The 
 instance was not otherwise than typica]. 
 
 Lancashire was the scene of conflict, and I have 
 referred to the powers, potentates and principalities 
 directly and indirectly participants in the battle 
 there waged. Let me briefly marshal the two arrays. 
 Here, alone, as you will presently see, is the material 
 for an entire course of lectures, not one of which would 
 
THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 69 
 
 be lacking in interest, especially in Oxford ; and this 
 I must compress into a few brief paragraphs. I will 
 endeavour to do so. 
 
 In the assemblage of conflicting forces, those mar 
 shalled on behalf of the Confederacy vastly and in 
 every respect preponderated ; they did so, indeed, 
 to a degree which now, viewed historically, should, 
 judging by the test of all human experiences, have been 
 conclusive of the outcome. It was suggestive of Pope s 
 enumeration of the Homeric heavenly allies of Troy 
 in his versified but most un-Homeric rendering of the 
 Iliad : 
 
 In aid of Troy Minerva, Phoebus came, 
 Mars fiery helmed, the laughter-loving dame, 
 Zanthus, whose streams in golden currents flow, 
 And the chaste goddess of the silver bow. 
 
 So now, in aid of the defiant, slave-holding Con 
 federacy came, first, the great British and Continental 
 commercial, financial, and cotton-spinning interests, 
 with their far-reaching political influence ; next, the 
 suffering textile operatives, not only of Lancashire but 
 wherever throughout other countries cotton was woven 
 into cloth they numbered millions ; third, the entire 
 governing classes, as they then were, of Great Britain, 
 including the great landed interest. These last also 
 were voiced, and most persistently as well as power 
 fully voiced, by the London Times, known as The 
 Thunderer , at the acme of its great and memorable 
 career. Finally, the French Emperor ; for Napoleon 
 III, now at the height of his prestige, for reasons of 
 state to which I shall presently make brief reference, 
 
70 THE CONFEDEKATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 
 
 was disposed to put forth on behalf of the Confederacy 
 all the influence he could exert. A powerful combina 
 tion, it was one, in a worldly and political sense, well- 
 nigh irresistible. 
 
 Opposed to it was an array so apparently meagre as 
 to be almost pitiable; and if the alliance of forces 
 I have just described recalled Homer, that set over 
 against it was not less suggestive biblically it was 
 David again confronting Goliath. Strange, wellnigh 
 inconceivable, when now asserted in the full light of 
 the event, that opposing array consisted simply of 
 John Bright, the Tribune in Great Britain of Political 
 and Industrial Democracy, and behind him a little 
 bit of a woman , as she at that time described herself, 
 1 just as thin and dry as a pinch of snuff, holding in 
 her hand a book : but the woman was Harriet Beecher 
 Stowe, and the book was entitled Uncle Tom s Cabin; 
 or, Life among the Lowly. 
 
 As I make this statement present that contrast 
 I know well enough not a few of those listening will 
 smile in a spirit inwardly derisive. Setting it down 
 to the account of exaggeration, they will dismiss my 
 marshalling of forces as an attempt at the picturesque 
 in speech. I none the less adhere to what I have said 
 as a correct historic presentation ; and, did time permit, 
 I would undertake to prove it such. But, for so doing, 
 one lecture would not suffice ; four lectures might. 
 In fewest words possible I will set forth the facts. 
 
 In contrasting the two arrays on that Lancashire 
 field of battle, I enumerated five separate factors, each 
 powerful, all working unitedly to promote the cause 
 
THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 71 
 
 of the Confederacy. First, and most potent, among 
 these were the British and Continental commercial, 
 financial, and cotton-manufacturing interests. Upon 
 them I need not dwell. Their all-pervading influence 
 is too well known to make enlargement thereon need 
 ful. They represent the pocket nerve; and, when 
 that is touched, as we all know, the system vibrates 
 through all its parts. So let them pass. 
 
 Next came the textile operatives, the cotton spin 
 ners, whether of Lancashire or in France. With them 
 it was a question of bread, rent and raiment ; and on 
 them the screws were put. In their case, cotton 
 scarcity was synonymous with famine. The fore 
 ordained victims of that encounter, how would they, 
 a mighty multitude, bear themselves in the cruel 
 ordeal? We will presently see how they did bear 
 themselves. Then followed the aristocracy and gentry 
 of England ; the landed and governmental interests of 
 Great Britain and France. These, at that day the 
 controlling factor in politics, were lined up almost 
 solidly on behalf of the Confederacy. It was with 
 them a matter of instinct quickened into action by self- 
 interest; but, as your recent political outcome has 
 clearly shown, that instinct then inspired and impelled 
 a class not less truly than on a well-known occasion 
 the instinct of Sir John Falstaff acted, according to his 
 own asseveration, in restraining his valour. Tennyson 
 in his Locksley Hall, printed a score of years before, had 
 prefigured it all foreshadowed it on the Future s wall : 
 
 Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher, 
 Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire. 
 
72 THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 
 
 The hungry people in this case was simply 
 Democracy, so phrased; and in 1862 the spectre 
 Democracy was, in the English mind, typified in the 
 trans-Atlantic English-speaking Republic. It was 
 typified, too, in a way singularly contradictory. On 
 the one side was a truly Democratic community, 
 living under a republican form of government ; and, 
 on the other, developing itself in that same nation 
 ality, was a social and industrial organization with 
 slavery as its admitted basis. That such a condition 
 of affairs invited criticism was natural. That it had 
 received it from English observers, travellers and 
 writers and that in a way which certainly did not 
 lack in outspoken frankness is matter of record ; 
 read now, for instance, Charles Dickens s American 
 Notes. Meanwhile, a world-process plainly indicative 
 of an advancing stage of moral development had been 
 going on, not without its distinct manifestations in 
 Great Britain. While the dislike and fear of De 
 mocracy were pronounced in one most influential 
 portion of the community the nobility and landed 
 gentry, and upper-middle class in those same classes, 
 and yet more below in the great sleeping but seething 
 mass of the community, the feeling against African 
 slavery as it had existed in the West Indian Islands, 
 and still did exist in the United States, had become 
 a cult. True, among the more comfortably placed and 
 materially well-to-do it had long since degenerated, as 
 cults will, into a Pharisaic better-than-thou cant ; but 
 there was no question it still had a strong hold on 
 the public mind and conscience. 
 
THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 73 
 
 This, however, notwithstanding, class feeling, class 
 interests and social prestige overwhelmingly carried 
 the day ; and it is susceptible of historic proof that in 
 1862 at least nine out of ten of those constituting the 
 classes referred to, sympathizing with the Slave-holding 
 Confederacy, exerted their whole influence to forward 
 its interests. They fully believed also that its success 
 was assured. 
 
 Next in the array on the side of the Confederacy 
 I have named The Thunderer the London Times 
 newspaper of that mid-century period. But here, on 
 the threshold of a most tempting topic, I must hold 
 my hand. To that subject justice could not possibly 
 be done in the fragment of an hour, and to that my 
 time is limited. Suffice it therefore to say that, now, 
 the Times is a journal of very considerable influence ; 
 but in comparison with what it was fifty years ago, 
 and during our Civil War, it is but the shadow of its 
 former self. This topic, here summarized in a single 
 paragraph, would in itself afford the material for 
 an entire lecture, and a most interesting as well as 
 instructive lecture ; one, too, not without its dis 
 tinctly humorous side. 
 
 ^Never perhaps on this earth has any public organ 
 occupied the position the Times held during the period 
 referred to, or possessed the same journalistic power. 
 In America especially The Thunderer loomed very 
 large ; and a carefully studied review of the policy as 
 respects American affairs pursued by it during those 
 eventful years a review prepared without temper 
 and in a purely judicial and investigating spirit would 
 
74 THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 
 
 constitute a truly valuable historical contribution, 
 especially if seasoned with a restrained sarcasm and 
 strictly subdued sense of the ridiculous. The language 
 as respects American men and events then habitually 
 indulged in on the Times editorial page seems now 
 inconceivable ; its arrogance knew no bounds, and the 
 scorn it expressed for those of the Free States was 
 limited only by its command of speech at once vitu 
 perative and contemptuous : we were a degenerate 
 and insensate people braggart, vulgar, sordid, cor 
 rupt and cowardly ; blindly striving for an impos 
 sible result, in that we would persist in our attempt 
 1 to conquer a nation, to escape whose victorious arms 
 is the only triumph their [our] generals seemed capable 
 of gaining . Abraham Lincoln was the especial object 
 of its disdain ; and as long ago as 1867 an English 
 contributor to the North American Revietv, remarking 
 on our misconceptions of English public men and 
 events, philosophically and truly observed in con 
 clusion : But they have never so misconceived a 
 British statesman as, four years ago, we misconceived 
 Mr. Lincoln, or gone so far astray in regard to any 
 crisis of our history as we did in reference to the 
 moving springs and results of their civil war. And in 
 this misconception and going astray l The Thunderer 
 blazed and made broad the path. In wrong-headed- 
 ness it fairly bore the palm. 
 
 /Thus the Times was probably the most influential 
 single factor in the formidable pro-Confederate array on 
 that Lancashire field of battled Its utterances, more 
 over, not only expressed what was passing in the minds 
 
THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 75 
 
 of its great and influential constituency, but to a large 
 extent foreshadowed during the year 1862 the Cabinet 
 action and foreign policy of Great Britain. This, at 
 the time surmised, we now know. Palmerstoii confi 
 dentially inspired Delane. 
 
 The fourth and final factor in the strange combina 
 tion I am describing was the French emperor last 
 mentioned, in influence by no means least. In 1862, 
 the period under consideration, Napoleon III was 
 at the climax of his imperial career. Closing the 
 Crimean War by the Treaty of Paris in 1855, four 
 years later he had emerged from the Italian campaign 
 through the Peace of Villa Franca, if not in a blaze of 
 glory, at least with credit. France posed as the 
 arbiter of Europe ; Great Britain was its ally. Emperor 
 in fact as well as in name, no forecast of the fate not 
 remotely in store for his dynasty and for the country 
 he ruled had yet dawned on the somewhat grotesque 
 prisoner of Ham, much less was it imagined by the 
 world. In appearance not less firmly fixed on the 
 imperial throne than his uncle after Tilsit, Louis 
 Napoleon was already entered on the first stage of that 
 policy which, eight years later, led to his downfall. 
 He had entered upon it also in a way which directly 
 involved him in American complications. 
 
 As we now know, Napoleon III was a dreamer, 
 a visionary ; but at the time with which I am dealing 
 he was not so considered. Looked upon as a sagacious, 
 far-seeing political schemer, he had recently as a man 
 of action twice involved Europe in war ; and few 
 doubted his power or readiness again so to do if the 
 
76 THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 
 
 furtherance of hidden policies might thereby be 
 promoted. That the French taste for the grandiose 
 and scenic must periodically be gratified was moreover 
 fundamental in the Napoleonic legend. Accordingly 
 one of the somewhat Argonautic dreams in which the 
 Emperor indulged was that of a renewal of the French 
 trans-Atlantic dominion, lost in one region when in 
 1765 Wolfe scaled the heights of Quebec, and again 
 sacrificed in another for a mere mess of pottage when 
 in 1803 the first Napoleon made over the vast Louis 
 iana domain to the United States. In 1861 the 
 occasion seemed opportune. The American political 
 waters were sorely troubled, and, angling in them, 
 Napoleon thought to please France by restoring to it 
 trans- Atlantic dominion under the guise of a Latin 
 sphere of French influence. And, curiously enough, in 
 this, historically adjudged the wildest and most vision 
 ary of his projects, Louis Napoleon did in fact but 
 anticipate a future not then remote. For in 1860 it is 
 to be remembered the Manchester School, so called, 
 was dominant in England politically, and the 
 Manchester School never wearied of preaching the 
 homely domestic virtues ; for a nation like an indivi 
 dual to stay at home and mind its own business, setting 
 an example in this respect to every other community, 
 was a cardinal article of Manchester faith. Accord 
 ingly the colonial systems and foreign spheres of 
 influence, now considered so necessary to national 
 development, were looked upon as burdens. Disraeli, 
 for instance, talked of our wretched dependencies , 
 and Gladstone accepted this idea to the extent that he 
 
THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 77 
 
 was willing in every way to facilitate the separation 
 of the oversea British dependencies from the Mother 
 Country. The extent to which the opposite policy now 
 prevails need not be dwelt upon. That it is just as 
 dangerous for a statesman to whom is entrusted the 
 policy of a great empire to be in advance of the fad of 
 the times as it is to be behind it, is a familiar common 
 place. And thus it so chanced that Louis Napoleon, 
 in the matter of oversea spheres of influence, was 
 merely fifty years in advance of the age that now is. 
 
 Nevertheless, this policy, whether visionary or only 
 premature, radically affected the views entertained 
 by the French emperor as to American politics. The 
 breaking up of the Union was essential to the success 
 of his Mexican plans ; and as I have already said, the 
 cotton famine afforded most opportune occasion for 
 the exercise of influence to that end. So the emperor 
 thought to pose before France as the friend and bene 
 factor of the idle and hungry operative. The efforts 
 of the Imperial Government were, accordingly, now 
 directed towards bringing about a joint intervention 
 of Great Britain and France in our American conflict ; 
 which intervention could hardly have failed to result 
 in a breaking of the blockade of the Confederacy sea- 
 coast, and the consequent division of the Union. The 
 adoption of this policy by the Palmerston-Eussell 
 Government was the only thing necessary to success. 
 
 On the other hand, arrayed against the combination 
 I have described, was simply one English public man, 
 the recognized head of the dreaded and ever encroach 
 ing Democracy ; and, as she portrayed herself in words 
 
78 THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 
 
 I have already quoted, i a little bit of a woman . . . just 
 as thin and dry as a pinch of snuff, holding in her 
 hand a printed book ! 
 
 Of these, the oddly assorted champions of that 
 momentous far-reaching combat, time again will not 
 suffice to enable me adequately to speak ; neither would 
 it be right for an instant to suggest that John Bright 
 was the single advocate in Great Britain of the com 
 bined cause of the African slave and American 
 nationality. Others, some in the Ministry and even in 
 the Cabinet W. E. Forster, Milner Gibson, the Duke 
 of Argyll acted with him. Outspoken, whether in 
 Parliament or Exeter Hall, were also Thomas Bayley 
 Potter, the organizer of the Cobden Club ; and, after 
 the first few months of the struggle, Richard Cobden 
 himself. With them were John Stuart Mill, Thomas 
 Hughes, and, above all in University circles, Professor 
 Goldwin Smith, then a comparatively young man. 
 It is nevertheless, speaking within bounds, to say that, 
 when it came to the working-man, the operative, John 
 Bright at that time of crisis voiced the British Demo 
 cracy at large. Like the Times with its constituency, 
 he gave utterance to what was passing in the mind and 
 breast of the wage-earner. Then at the acme of his 
 great odium among those who constituted English social 
 life, Bright had recently been characterized by Tenny 
 son in Maud, his latest poem, and in every one s hands, 
 
 as 
 
 This broad-brim d hawker of holy thiogs ; 
 
 but he none the less, sympathizing with those of it, 
 gave fearless utterance to the sentiments of the great, 
 
THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 79 
 
 if otherwise largely inarticulate class in the community 
 whose action in this particular contingency was to 
 prove decisive of results. It is, therefore, only fair 
 and historically reasonable to embody in the person 
 and voice of John Bright that position I have assigned 
 him. The English Gracchus, he was also the David 
 in the forefront of the opposing Lancashire array. 
 
 I now, however, pass on to Mrs. Harriet Beecher 
 Stowe and Uncle Tom s Cabin ; and here again the 
 time at my disposal is provokingly insufficient for any 
 proper presentation of a topic singularly dramatic and 
 altogether instructive : to those of the present genera 
 tion, novel also. For, speaking generally, I think it 
 may not unsafely be said that the book known as 
 Uncle Tom s Cabin ; or Life among the Lowly, published 
 in 1852, exercised, largely from fortuitous circum 
 stances, a more immediate, considerable and dramatic 
 world-influence than any other book ever printed. 
 
 Superlatives are dangerous. I do not like them ; 
 and I am conscious that I am now indulging in super 
 latives. Let me, therefore, call attention to the limit 
 ations here imposed. Mrs. Stowe s book, I say, ex 
 ercised a more immediate, considerable and dramatic 
 world-influence than any other book ever printed, 
 I do not say that the influence referred to was more 
 profound, subtle, lasting, or extensive. I do not think 
 it was, even confining the comparison to contempo 
 raneous publications. For instance, Darwin s Origin 
 of Species appeared (1859) a few years only after Uncle 
 Tom s Cabin (1852) ; and it has unquestionably exercised 
 a far more profound and lasting influence : but that 
 
80 THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 
 
 influence was neither so dramatic, nor so immediately 
 considerable. And so of any other book which might 
 be named. Upon this theme I now propose briefly 
 to dilate. 
 
 In literature as in finance and business, in science 
 and mechanics, everything depends upon appropriate 
 ness of time, place and condition. A word, like an 
 invention, a discovery, or a person, must happen 
 right. Coming at any other period, Peter the Her 
 mit would have been a cowled crank, crying aloud 
 from church steps a message to which no one gave 
 ear. The world now is, as it always has been, full 
 of such ; but of them all Peter alone chanced ex 
 actly right. Rousseau was another case in point. 
 His experience resembled more closely that of 
 Mrs. Stowe; but the Social Contract (1762) preceded 
 by thirty years that French Revolution it voiced, and 
 which it so potently promoted. La Nouvelle Heloise 
 and Emile are, I fancy, not much read to-day, even in 
 France ; while I am informed that, in America at least, 
 Uncle Tom s Cabin is still one of the books in greatest 
 demand at the counters of our Public Libraries. And 
 yet as a work of fiction I do not suppose that 
 to-day Mrs. Stowe s story would be rated high ; it was 
 in no respect a literary masterpiece. Defective in 
 construction, it was local in its incident, and, in 
 its treatment, crude. No i Uncle Tom ever existed ; 
 and, moreover, had he existed, there would have 
 been much truth in an observation attributed to 
 Robert Toombs of Georgia. A leading Confederate 
 notable orator and politician Mr. Toombs, while 
 
THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 81 
 
 wholly denying the actual incarnation ever of any 
 such African apostle and martyr to ideals as Uncle 
 Tom , was accustomed to asseverate that, if such 
 an exemplar of the higher Christianity had existed 
 indeed, he would have furnished the most com 
 plete possible vindication of American African 
 slavery. What other industrial system or social 
 organization could point to a fetich-worshipping 
 Congo savage developed in three generations into an 
 altruistic saint ? The tree is known by its fruits ! 
 Nevertheless, all this to the contrary notwithstanding, 
 it so chanced that Uncle Tom hit the world, so to 
 speak, between wind and water. Composed at ex 
 actly the right time, it came out under conditions 
 which made possible its altogether exceptional vogue. 
 And in this connexion it is necessary to remem 
 ber that in the mid-Victorian period the day of caste 
 was only just outlived ; and, so far as human servi 
 tude was concerned that is, property in man the 
 world had then newly reached a curiously responsive 
 stage. This was so not only in America but through 
 out Europe. Generally, mankind was asserting, or 
 ready to assert, man s claim for recognition as Man. 
 The word had only to be spoken ; and it chanced to 
 Harriet Beecher Stowe to speak it. The weak spot in 
 the system then prevailing, and which had prevailed 
 from the beginning, lay in African servitude in 
 America. Ethnological principles were not under 
 stood in 1850 as they now are ; those principles had 
 in fact not yet been reduced to a scientific basis. 
 While Darwin had not spoken, Mr. Disraeli oratoric- 
 
82 THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 
 
 ally arrayed himself l on the side of the angels . 
 Nevertheless, conditions were ripe, and circumstances 
 combined. So, to the utter amazement of Mrs. Stowe, 
 her book on its appearance was as a live ember 
 dropped in a field of dry stubble almost as a torch 
 flung into a magazine of combustibles. Like the rising 
 of mighty winds, like the rushing of many waters, 
 almost immediately following the publication of the 
 story there came up from the earth a tumult of human 
 voices, expressing themselves in every known tongue. 
 Above all was the note of sympathetic weeping, and 
 the cry of those who said, Can nothing be done to 
 banish this accursed thing from off the face of the 
 earth? Not only was Uncle Tom s Cabin universally 
 read, having been translated, it is said, into over twenty 
 foreign languages and sold by the million, but even 
 in those parts of it which challenged question and 
 inquiry it was taken so seriously and so accepted as 
 truth as to become a great political and moral force 
 throughout the world of thought and sentiment. 
 A sermon against a great moral evil, it was altogether 
 a homiletic exception, for it was a sermon every one 
 read. It was again curiously suggestive that after the 
 English sale of the book had run to over a hundred 
 thousand copies a reaction set in ; and that reaction 
 was led off by the London Times. Yet, when a year 
 or two later Mrs. Stowe landed in Liverpool from the 
 steamer, she noticed a great throng gathered for some 
 reason on the dock. Was it always so on the arrival 
 of an American packet? It did not occur to that 
 particular Yankee l school-marm that the pier was 
 
THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 83 
 
 thronged with the plain people, eager to see her and 
 touch her raiment. It had never dawned upon her 
 that she was a person of importance ; and yet on the 
 occasion of her going out sight-seeing at Edinburgh 
 a few days later, she wrote : As I saw the way to 
 the cathedral blocked up by a throng of people that 
 had come out to see me, I could not help saying, 
 " What went ye out for to see : a reed shaken with 
 the wind?" As she drove through Scotland the 
 butcher came out of his stall, the baker from his shop 
 to welcome her ; the miller dusty with flour, the bloom 
 ing comely young mother with her baby in her arms, 
 bore witness, all smiling and bowing, with that 
 hearty, intelligent, friendly look as if they knew the 
 American authoress would be glad to see them, plain 
 people though they also were. When they instinc 
 tively greeted her as their friend, it was the chord of 
 universal and human tenderness she had struck so 
 opportunely in her book that was ringing in their 
 hearts. Then came the royal reception given her by 
 the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland at Stafford 
 House, where Lord Shaftesbury presented her on be 
 half of the women of England generally an address of 
 welcome and appreciation. It was the same every 
 where on the Continent in France, in Switzerland, 
 in Norway ; and when her subsequent book Dred 
 appeared, so inferior in character and interest that it 
 is now forgotten, one hundred thousand copies were 
 sold in four weeks. It is, however, unnecessary to 
 enter into further detail. As I have already said, it 
 would certainly be very difficult, I think it would be 
 
84 THE CONFEDERATE COTTON CAMPAIGN 
 
 impossible, to name any book ever published which led 
 so immediately to such momentous consequences. 
 
 The opposing forces arrayed in Lancashire in 1862 
 were, therefore, not so altogether unevenly matched as 
 would have been supposed. For John Bright, the 
 Tribune of British Democracy, represented and gave 
 voice to a great moral movement aroused to white 
 heat by Harriet Beecher Stowe ten years before, and 
 then moving onward with a world-momentum ever 
 increasing. 
 
 To put it another way, so far as the formidable 
 combination of interests advocating the cause of the 
 Confederacy was concerned, the situation was sugges 
 tive of Browning s lines in his short and familiar lyric 
 Instans Tyrannus : 
 
 Do you see ? Just my vengeance complete, 
 The man sprang to his feet, 
 Stood erect, caught at God s skirts, and prayed ! 
 So, 7 was afraid ! 
 
Ill 
 
 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
Ill 
 
 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 MY last lecture came to a somewhat abrupt close. 
 In it I had described the opposing 1 arrays on the 
 Lancashire field of conflict in 1862 that field selected 
 by the leaders of the Confederacy. Staking their all 
 on the issue there joined, they challenged a trial of 
 strength. Cotton they had proclaimed King ; and 
 they were now prepared to demonstrate its world- 
 sovereignty. Their confidence in the outcome was 
 unquestioning ; and of the opposing arrays theirs in 
 every way distinctly preponderated. 
 
 In that terrible summer of 1862, the situation here 
 as well as in America was in the highest degree 
 dramatic ; and, while with us the contending armies 
 swayed to and fro in life-and-death grapple, what 
 proved in the end the controlling decision was reached 
 in England. But before a decision was reached, 
 cotton unmistakably asserted its power. And that 
 assertion of power, its intensity and the outcome of 
 the effort put forth, is my theme to-day. 
 
 While well aware that the conditions then existing 
 are now largely forgotten, I have neither time to enter 
 into details, nor to attempt to recount, however 
 briefly, a twice-told tale. I must assume a degree of 
 general information. Suffice it then to say that, 
 through the ingenuity of two Englishmen and one 
 
88 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 American Richard Arkwright, James Hargreaves, 
 and Eli Whitney, the earliest of their inventions 
 dating from about 1760 the weaving of cotton into 
 cloth had a century later become one of the leading 
 and most vital industries of the world; and, for 
 reasons a knowledge of which must again be assumed, 
 the States included in the Southern Confederacy 
 enjoyed what they were fully convinced was an 
 unshakable monopoly in the production of the indis 
 pensable staple. It was theirs through soil, climate, 
 and an industrial system believed to be essential to its 
 successful production. The complete dependence of 
 this great and still rapidly expanding interest on one 
 source for its supply of raw material had to the more 
 far-sighted Englishmen long been occasion for solici 
 tude ; and, as early as 1847, John Bright had pro 
 phesied that an American industrial disturbance 
 because of African slavery would some day seriously 
 interfere with Lancashire s supply of raw material. 
 As usual, no heed was given to the voice of warning ; 
 now, the contingency presented itself. 
 
 The American crop of 1860 had been the largest 
 then recorded, aggregating nearly 4,000,000 bales. 
 It had gone forward in the regular way, and, affording 
 employment to a vast fleet of carriers, it fed innumer 
 able looms. The foreign shipments some 3.500,000 
 bales were practically complete when in April, 1861, 
 a blockade of the Confederate coast was suddenly 
 declared by the Washington Government, following 
 hard on the outbreak of active hostilities heralded by 
 the bombardment and fall of Fort Sumter. A year 
 
DIS ALITEE VISUM 89 
 
 later the supply of unmanufactured cotton in European 
 ports was running ominously low ; though the Con 
 federate leaders loudly insisted upon it that the 
 blockade was a mere paper fulmination, and that, so 
 far as Confederate ports were concerned, both ingress 
 and egress were practically unobstructed. The cotton 
 shipment, they claimed, was withheld, to establish 
 once for all Cotton World-mastery. In point of fact, 
 while in May, 1861, the European supply of the staple 
 was estimated at nearly 1,500,000 bales, during the 
 same month a year later it had become reduced to 
 a third of that amount. Liverpool then was, as it now 
 is, the great cotton market of the world ; and in 
 Liverpool the stock had shrunk from close upon 
 1,000,000 to a little more than 360,000 bales ; while 
 the price per pound had risen from sevenpence to 
 thirteen pence. The effect of the stoppage, to what 
 ever cause due, was thus read in the market quota 
 tions ; for, during the previous six months the 
 quantity of cotton received from America had been 
 hardly more than nominal a mere 11,500 bales- 
 while in the corresponding months of the previous 
 year it had been 1,500,000 bales. In other words, 
 the shipments for the half year ending in May, 1862, 
 were less than one per cent, of the shipments during 
 the same period of the previous year. The arm of 
 industry was paralysed ; and, throughout Lancashire, 
 the distress already indisputably great was obviously 
 increasing. One half of the spindles were idle ; 
 and, in the towns of Blackburn and Preston alone, 
 over 20,000 persons were dependent on parochial 
 
 1593 M 
 
90 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 aid. The newspapers teemed with pitiable cases of 
 individual destitution ; and the local strain on the 
 poor laws was so severe that Parliament considered 
 their modification. Meanwhile the period of six 
 months, originally assigned by the Confederate eco 
 nomic authorities as the extreme limit of European 
 endurance, was long exceeded. The pressure was 
 great ; the consequent suffering manifest. A further 
 application of the screws would surely produce the 
 desired effect. And, during the following months, the 
 situation in the manufacturing districts under that 
 freshly applied pressure grew rapidly worse, became 
 in fact wellnigh unendurable. The looms which 
 a year before had consumed on an average 40,000 
 bales of American cotton a week, now might count 
 on receiving perhaps 4,000. On the other hand, 
 the unprecedented price could not at once bring 
 into the market anything even approaching an ade 
 quate supply from other countries. The receipts 
 from Asiatic sources rose, for instance, from 174,000 
 bales in 1860 to nearly 700,000 in 1862 and close 
 upon 900,000 a year later : but the staple was of 
 inferior quality, and the Asiatic bale weighed materi 
 ally less [10 per cent.] than the American. The real 
 trouble, however, lay in the fact that the East India 
 cotton as ,a manufacturing staple was at best a most 
 unsatisfactory substitute for the American. Destruc 
 tive to the machinery, it was hardly less hurtful to the 
 hands and patience of the operative ; and, while the 
 spinners had been forced to buy the East India product, 
 and adapt their machinery to it, yet the very first 
 
DIS ALITER VISUM 91 
 
 opportunity was seized to remit it again to the back 
 ground. Experience confirmed prejudice, showing 
 unmistakably that, unless the Indian staple were 
 greatly improved, the demand for Surats , as it was 
 denominated, would again fall to its former low 
 estate. 
 
 And of this wholly artificial state of affairs the 
 market quotations afforded convincing evidence. In 
 May, 1862, American cotton ruled in Liverpool at 
 thirteen pence per pound. It continued at about that 
 price until July, when it rose to seventeen pence ; and 
 thence, in August, it crept on first to twenty pence, 
 and afterwards by speculative leaps and bounds it 
 went up and up until at last, on September 3, it was 
 quoted at half a crown a pound. Under modern con 
 ditions, such figures were unheard of : but, a little later 
 in the month even these figures were exceeded. The 
 price of thirty-one pence a pound was recorded. 
 
 Cotton had thus become a speculative commodity. 
 Too costly to manufacture into cloth at prices then 
 ruling, and rapidly enhancing in value, it was, when 
 not sold for export, held for yet further advance. 1 
 So by the end of September, out of 80,000 operatives 
 in five localities in Lancashire only 14,000 were 
 working full time, while the remaining 66,000 were 
 about equally divided between those working on 
 short time and those wholly idle. In twenty -four 
 unions, 156,000 persons were represented as receiv 
 ing poor relief; and yet the number was increasing 
 at the rate of 1,000 per day. This was very bad; 
 1 See Note 1, p. 122. 
 
92 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 but, before the end of October, conditions were appre 
 ciably worse. In the same number of unions, 176,000 
 persons were receiving relief. In six succeeding 
 weeks 35,000 persons had become paupers, while the 
 wholly unemployed exceeded those working on full 
 time by nearly two to one. An ex-Premier, the 
 Earl of Derby, now speaking as Chairman of the 
 Executive Committee of the General Relief Asso 
 ciation, made the statement that at one period over 
 430,000 persons out of two millions, or nearly 22 
 per cent, of the whole population, were dependent 
 for their daily existence either upon parochial relief 
 or public charity 5 . The loss of wages for each 
 working day was at the same time stated by Mr. 
 Cobden to be in excess of 22,000. 
 
 Under such circumstances, the local resources, 
 municipal and voluntary, were exhausted or manifestly 
 inadequate for the work of necessary relief, and 
 a call for aid went forth. Into the results of that call 
 I have not time to enter. Suffice it to say all classes 
 and the whole world responded. This, your University 
 of Oxford, for instance, contributed 4,000 from its 
 corporate funds. As the authoress of Mary Barton, 
 not unfamiliar with previous periods of distress in the 
 manufacturing districts, at the time expressed it, the 
 supreme torture now applied was the one absorbing 
 topic, l literally haunting us in our sleep, as well as 
 being the first thoughts in waking and the last at 
 night. Within thirteen months private charity pro 
 vided nearly two millions sterling for the relief of 
 distress ; but the loss of wages during the same period 
 
DIS ALITER VISUM 93 
 
 was computed by Mr. Gladstone as being in excess of 
 8,000,000. 
 
 The extraordinary fact in the situation was, how 
 ever, the patience of the victims ; and the official organ 
 of the Confederacy published in London, the Index 
 newspaper, noted with surprise and unconcealed dis 
 may the absence of political demonstrations to urge 
 upon what it termed l a neglectful Government its 
 duty towards its suffering subjects . 
 
 A distinctly audible whine was perceptible in its 
 utterances. One of them ran thus, i It is the great 
 peculiarity of England that the heart of the country 
 is thoroughly religious ; and, speaking editorially, the 
 writer then went on to assert that the prominence 
 given to the slave question by American writers and 
 preachers was hypocritical, and intended especially 
 for the religious public in England. l And well had it 
 answered its purpose. To this very hour the great 
 mass of the people have no other terms to express the 
 nature of the conflict. It is to no purpose that argu 
 ment, fact, and experience have shown the utter 
 indifference of the North to the welfare of the negro ; 
 the complete appreciation by the slaves themselves of 
 the sham friendship offered them. . . . The emancipation 
 of the negro from the slavery of Mrs. Beecher Stowe s 
 heroes is the one idea of the millions of British who 
 know no better, and do not care to know. The funda 
 mental sin of the Confederacy had in truth found it 
 out. Literally, the curse of the bondsman was on it ; 
 and perhaps never has there been witnessed in the 
 history of mankind a more creditable exhibition of 
 
94 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 human sympathy, and what is known as altruism, 
 than that then in Lancashire enacted. The common 
 folk of a great English district, Abraham Lincoln s 
 plain people , workless, cold and hungry, felt, what 
 the wealthier class refused to believe, that the cause 
 at issue in America was the right of a working-man to 
 his own share in the results of his toil, to the bread 
 earned by the sweat of his brow. That cause, they 
 instinctively knew, was somehow their cause ; and 
 they would not betray it. So, no organized cry went 
 up from suffering Lancashire to break the blockade 
 which, while it shut up Cotton, was throttling Slavery. 
 Touching evidence on this head, not without its comic 
 features, was from time to time afforded. For in 
 stance, at the most intense period of distress, when 
 the cotton-workers in Rochdale were starving in 
 enforced idleness, a meeting was called in the town 
 by a Liverpool association of Southern sympathizers, 
 formed to promote the breaking of the blockade. The 
 lecturer delivered his address ; and those composing 
 the meeting then passed a resolution censuring him 
 for endeavouring to mislead them ! 
 
 The situation was suggestive of a closely beleaguered 
 city some modern Haarlem representative of a 
 common cause, one in which the entire community 
 was heart and soul enlisted. This, one incident signally 
 illustrated. When the Lancashire distress was most 
 pronounced, news came there that sympathizers in 
 the loyal portion of the American Union, though 
 having at that juncture heavy burdens of their own 
 to bear, yet felt moved to contribute to the relief of 
 
DIS ALITEE VISUM 95 
 
 a foreign pressure. A subscription, originating with 
 a sympathetic merchant of New York, had been filled 
 up by many contributors, and a ship named after him, 
 the George Griswold, had been freighted with food for 
 the relief of suffering Lancashire. When the George 
 Griswold arrived in Liverpool, the Custom House 
 officials had learned from the Government that they 
 had no duties to perform on board ; the Liverpool 
 authorities declined to receive dock or town dues ; 
 and everybody engaged, down to the dock porters and 
 landing waiters, alike refused to be paid for their 
 services. In this the railway companies joined, carry 
 ing the cargo free of cost ; while the captain of the 
 ship was made the guest of the Corporation of Liver 
 pool. In New York, stevedores, tug-boats, pilots, 
 shipping-masters, all contributed their services. On 
 his arrival at Liverpool the captain declared he found 
 the steam companies * vying with each other to tow 
 my ship to port free of charge . 
 
 Thus it was as if in time of war a convoy bringing 
 relief had been thrown into a sorely pressed and starv 
 ing town. The manifestations of gratitude could not 
 have been more pronounced. 
 
 Under such circumstances, Eichard Cobden was 
 justified in declaring that the case was totally excep 
 tional. The state of affairs , he said, l has no parallel 
 in all history. It is impossible you could point out to me 
 another case in which, in a limited sphere, such as we 
 have in Lancashire, and in the course of a few months, 
 there has been a cessation of employment at the rate 
 of 7,000,000 sterling per annum in wages. There 
 
96 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 has been nothing like it in the history of the world 
 for its suddenness, for the impossibility of dealing with 
 it, or managing it in the way of an effective remedy. 
 
 Not until the close of 1862 did the distress show 
 signs of abatement ; then, slowly, natural causes 
 brought about a gradual measure of relief. In early 
 December of that year the maximum pressure upon 
 the relief committees was reached. The returns for 
 the last week of December showed 485,434 persons in 
 receipt of aid. The public waited with eager anxiety 
 and with trembling hope for the January return, and 
 when that showed only 451,343 recipients, the re 
 joicing was mingled with fear lest some mistake 
 should have crept into the figures. The news was 
 thought too good to be true ; for there was no visible 
 circumstance to account for the change. Neverthe 
 less, the February report showed a yet farther de 
 crease of about 19,000 dependents. The rejoicing 
 now became earnest. It was as if a pestilence was 
 abating, and men shook hands heartily with each other. 
 Instead of the usual empty references to the weather, 
 mutual congratulations were in order to the effect that 
 1 the worst was past 5 . Though 6,000 persons had been 
 reduced from full to short time since January, the 
 March return showed a further decrease of some 
 12,000 recipients. April indicated a further and 
 larger decrease of some 58,000; and when June 
 came, the portentous aggregate of those receiving 
 relief had fallen to 256,000. At the end of 1863 it 
 was 180,000. By that time, though still great, the 
 crisis had ceased to be acute. 
 
DIS ALITER VISUM 97 
 
 Things had adjusted themselves^/ptaking his whole 
 foreign policy upon a single issue, on that issue the 
 Slave-holder had lost. >Yet his failure was due to no 
 sudden contingencies lying beyond the ken of human 
 prevision ; it was, on the contrary, a complete case 
 of miscalculating over-confidence unquestioning reli 
 ance on a means inadequate to the attainment of the 
 end proposed. Pressure had been mercilessly applied 
 to the full extent possible, every condition contributing 
 to its severity. The Confederacy had meanwhile held 
 its enemy at arm s length during five times the period 
 every Southern authority had fixed upon as ample in 
 which to establish King Cotton s supremacy. Nothing 
 sufficed. The alleged dynasty was fairly and com 
 pletely dethroned. The bondsman and the growing 
 spirit of nineteenth century self-sacrifice had not been 
 sufficiently taken into account. Conscience had carried 
 it over Cotton ; in the jargon of the prize ring Uncle 
 Tom had bested Simon Legree. 2 
 
 It was, however, during the latter half of 1862 
 those months during which, as has just been seen, the 
 weekly returns of the dependent poonjii Lancashire 
 were watched as the bills of mortality iii a time of 
 plague it was during this period when cotton touched 
 thirty pence a pound, that the governmental crisis 
 presented itself.N Whether in the American histories 
 of our Civil War, or in the British lives of individuals 
 or general narratives, the story of what then occurred 
 has never received adequate treatment. Passing it 
 over in a way to the last degree superficial, the 
 2 See note 2, p. 124. 
 
 1B93 N 
 
98 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 American authorities have devoted much time and 
 almost unlimited space to an account of indecisive 
 military operations and drawn battles badly fought, 
 utterly ignoring the conflict on the issue of which the 
 struggle at the stage it had then reached virtually 
 depended. The English writers, on the other hand, in 
 a somewhat indifferent spirit, allow a paragraph per 
 haps for a perfunctory reference to what was in reality 
 for Great Britain s largest textile industry nothing less 
 than a war of emancipation. I propose to-day to fill 
 the historic void, explaining events which in the 
 sequence led to results which are now much in 
 evidence on both sides of the Atlantic ; though 
 possibly not exactly in the shape assumed in the 
 outpourings of General Bernhardi s Germanic 
 heart . 
 
 In October, 1862, the Queen, widowed only eight 
 months before, had gone over to Germany, and was 
 for a time at Gotha. Earl Russell, the Foreign Secre 
 tary, was in attendance upon her. The crisis in 
 American affairs so far as European intervention was 
 concerned now came to a head. 
 
 Military operations in America had from the Union 
 point of view then for some time been going steadily 
 from bad to worse. The Confederacy was, on the 
 field of battle, distinctly getting the best of it. So 
 now, referring to the outcome of the so-called i Pope , 
 or second Bull Run campaign, carried on almost 
 within sight of Washington in August, 1862 those 
 operations in the course of which Lee and Stonewall 
 Jackson so distinguished themselves Lord Palmer- 
 
DIS ALITER VISUM 99 
 
 ston, then Premier, wrote (September 14th) to Earl 
 Russell at Gotha, suggesting that the time was now 
 come for us to consider whether, in such a state of 
 things, England and France might not address the 
 contending parties and recommend an arrangement 
 upon the basis of separation . This suggestion 
 strongly commended itself to the Foreign Secretary, 
 who immediately replied (September 17th) that he 
 was decidedly of the same mind as the Premier : I 
 agree with you that the time is come for offering 
 mediation to the United States Government, with 
 a view to the recognition of the independence of the 
 Confederates. I agree further that, in case of failure, we 
 ought ourselves to recognize the Southern States as an 
 independent State. For the purpose of taking so im 
 portant a step, I think we must have a meeting of the 
 Cabinet. The 23rd or 20th [October] would suit me 
 for the meeting. To this very emphatic acquiescence 
 in his views Lord Palmerston, six days later, on the 
 23rd September, wrote back : Your plan of pro 
 ceedings . . . seems to be excellent. ... As to the 
 time of making the offer [of mediation], if France and 
 Russia agree and France, we know, is quite ready 
 and only waiting for our concurrence events may be 
 taking place which might render it desirable that the 
 offer should be made before the middle of October. 5 
 
 The course of concurrent events here referred to 
 can be briefly outlined. As I have just said, through 
 out the months of July and August, 1862, the cause of 
 the Union, east and west, had sustained a series, 
 almost unbroken, of reverses. The Confederacy had 
 
100 DIS ALITEE VISUM 
 
 not only made good its right to be recognized as 
 a belligerent, but it was a victorious belligerent. Not 
 a single armed Union soldier remained in Virginia 
 outside of the defences of Washington ; the war had 
 been carried across the Potomac into Maryland ; the 
 national capital itself stood apparently in imminent 
 danger of capture. On the other hand, the Mexican 
 expedition of the French emperor having overrun that 
 country, Napoleon III was urging upon the British 
 Cabinet an aggressive attitude towards the United 
 States ; an attitude which would inevitably have 
 proved the first step toward a direct armed interven 
 tion. The breaking of the blockade and a renewal of 
 cotton shipments would have followed. ^Meanwhile 
 the situation in Lancashire seemed fast getting beyond 
 control. If in New York gold stood at a premium of 
 50, cotton in Liverpool stood at one of 200 ; / The 
 looms, French as well as English, were idle, and 
 a long and sustained wail, a wail of pitiable agony, 
 went up from crowded districts. Whether the fact 
 was then realized in America or not, or has since 
 been recognized by the historian, the hour of crisis 
 was at hand ; and the issue was to be settled not on 
 the banks of the Potomac, as generally assumed, but 
 in Downing Street, London. x > 
 
 The Foreign Secretary at this juncture left Gotha, 
 returning to England and his office, where the next 
 two weeks were utilized by him in the preparation of 
 an elaborate, though confidential, Cabinet circular in 
 direct furtherance of the mediation programme. In 
 this circular the question was plainly put to those 
 
DIS ALITER VISUM 101 
 
 composing the Cabinet, whether in the light of what 
 had taken place in America and the condition of 
 distress prevailing throughout the manufacturing dis 
 tricts of England and France, it was not the duty of 
 Europe * to ask both parties, in the most friendly and 
 conciliatory terms, to agree to a suspension of arms 
 for the purpose of weighing calmly the advantages of 
 peace and so forth and so on, in the somewhat 
 unctuous phraseology usual with philanthropic but 
 interested neutrals in times of war-generated stress. 
 
 Next to the Premier, Lord Palmerston, and the 
 Foreign Secretary, Earl Russell, Mr. Gladstone, the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, was the most influential 
 member of the Cabinet. Consulted as to the proposed 
 programme, he now gave to it his emphatic approval. 
 It entirely coincided with the views he at that time 
 entertained, nor had hesitated to express. The cry of 
 agony coming up from the cotton-spinning districts 
 appealed to his strong humanitarian sympathies ; he, 
 like Lord Palmerston, was fully convinced that a re- 
 establishment of the Union was impossible as well as 
 undesirable ; finally, by that subtle process of reason 
 ing always characteristic of him, Mr. Gladstone had 
 persuaded himself that the victory of the slave-owner 
 would ultimately but surely result in the downfall of 
 slavery. He in fact saw, or thought he saw, into the 
 millstone future a little too far. It proved in the. 
 result not to be so transparent as he confidently be 
 lieved it to be. 
 
 The concurrence of Mr. Gladstone in the proposed 
 programme rendered assurance doubly sure ; for, as 
 
102 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 Lord Granville had a few months before, and in an 
 other connexion, written to Lord Canning, He [Glad 
 stone], Johnny [Eussell], and Pam [Palmerston] are 
 a formidable phalanx when they are united in opposi 
 tion to the whole Cabinet in foreign matters. Not only 
 was this so, but in the present case a large majority 
 of the Cabinet were with the formidable phalanx . 
 
 Now it was that the wholly unforeseeable, the 
 strangely unexpected, occurred. The meeting of the 
 Cabinet was fixed for the 23rd of October. Mr. Adams, 
 the American Minister to Great Britain, got an inkling 
 of what was on foot. He was sorely disturbed. 
 4 For a fortnight , he wrote, my mind has been run 
 ning so strongly on all this night and day that it seems 
 almost to threaten my life. For his anxiety, however 
 extreme, he had grounds. The tension was becoming 
 strained to the extent that something, it would seem, 
 must break ; and that soon. For, weeks previously, 
 apprehending just such an emergency as was now im 
 pending, Mr. Adams had written home asking for speci 
 fic instructions for his guidance if what he apprehended 
 should speedily occur. Those instructions he had in 
 due time received from Secretary Seward ; they were 
 explicit. To make the narrative intelligible, and fully 
 set forth the extreme character of the crisis then im 
 pending, these instructions should be read ; but, though 
 not long, I have not time here and now to read them 
 in full. Suffice it to say that, carrying the standard en 
 trusted to him high and with a firm hand, the Ameri 
 can Secretary then in that hour of darkness, defeat 
 and discouragement bore himself in a way of which 
 
DIS ALITER VISUM 103 
 
 his country had cause to be proud. The paper read 
 in part as follows : 
 
 If, contrary to our expectations, the British Government, 
 either alone or in combination with any other Government, 
 should acknowledge the insurgents, while you are remaining 
 without further instructions from this Government concerning 
 that event, you will immediately suspend the exercise of your 
 functions. ... I have now in behalf of the United States, 
 and by the authority of their chief executive magistrate, 
 performed an important duty. Its possible consequences have 
 been weighed, and its solemnity is therefore felt and freely 
 acknowledged. This duty has brought us to meet and con 
 front the danger of a war with Great Britain and other States 
 allied with the insurgents who are in arms for the overthrow 
 of the American Union. You will perceive that we have 
 approached the contemplation of that crisis with the caution 
 which great reluctance has inspired. But I trust that you 
 will also have perceived that the crisis has not appalled us. 
 
 It was with these ringing instructions before him 
 that Mr. Adams, with such fortitude as he could com 
 mand, now awaited the outcome he was powerless in 
 any material way to affect. The special Cabinet meet 
 ing was called for the 23rd of October ; to all outward 
 appearance and in all human probability that was the 
 fateful day ; the ordeal must then be faced. The order 
 of exercises was arranged. 
 
 The day came ; and passed. Upon it nothing hap 
 pened. The wholly unexpected had again occurred. 
 
 What had taken place? Why was the carefully 
 prepared programme, so far-reaching, so world-momen 
 tous, suddenly, quietly, postponed ostensibly aban 
 doned ? It is a curious story ; in diplomatic annals 
 scarce any more so. It was, it will be remembered 
 
104: DIS ALITEE VISUM 
 
 for dates in this connexion are all-important the 
 23rd of October that had been assigned for the special 
 Cabinet meeting. Now it so chanced that sixteen 
 days before, on the 7th of that month, Mr. Gladstone 
 delivered himself of that famous Newcastle speech, 
 still remembered, in which he declared that Jefferson 
 Davis had made a nation , and that the independence 
 of the Confederacy and dissolution of the American 
 Union were as certain as any event yet future and 
 contingent could be . That speech, a marvel of indis 
 cretion or, as Mr. Gladstone himself subsequently 
 expressed it, a mistake of incredible grossness 
 though at the moment it caused in the mind of 
 Mr. Adams a feeling akin to despair, in reality saved 
 the situation for him and the country he represented. 
 It was for the American Union a large cash prize 
 drawn in Fortune s lottery. 
 
 Speaking for himself playing off his own bat/ as 
 Lord Palmerston would have expressed it Mr. Glad 
 stone had foreshadowed a ministerial policy. The 
 utterance was inspired ; in venturing on it Mr. Glad 
 stone unquestionably supposed, as he had good cause 
 to know, he spoke the minds of both Lord Palmerston 
 and Lord Eussell. The principle of the so-called 
 collectivity of the British Cabinet has been often 
 discussed, and the rule is well established that minis 
 ters are in no wise free to put forward each l his own 
 views at large public meetings and elsewhere . This 
 Mr. Gladstone had now done. Moreover, it was noto 
 rious in ministerial circles that the Prime Minister and 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Palmerston 
 
DLS ALITER VISUM 105 
 
 and Mr. Gladstone were not in general harmony. 
 On the contrary, Lord Palmerston disliked and habit 
 ually thwarted Mr. Gladstone ; and Mr. Gladstone 
 instinctively distrusted Lord Palmerston. A year 
 before, the two had been l in violent antagonism on 
 financial questions. For two months/ Lord Granville, 
 himself a member of the Cabinet, had written, Glad 
 stone had been on half-cock of resignation. . . . Palmer 
 ston has tried him hard once or twice by speeches and 
 Cabinet minutes, and says that the only way to deal 
 with him is to bully him a little ; and Palmerston , 
 Granville then went on to say, * appears to be in the 
 right. 
 
 A species of Cabinet modus Vivendi was then arrived 
 at, and had since been more or less observed ; but the 
 two men were by nature antagonistic. Built on 
 wholly different models, they instinctively disliked 
 each other. Politically, Gladstone, then a man of 
 fifty-four and in the full maturity of his great powers, 
 was plainly the coming man ; but Palmerston, so to 
 speak, though a veteran close on fourscore, held the 
 fort ; nor did he propose to vacate it in Gladstone s 
 favour. On the contrary, reading the future not 
 incorrectly, he had been known to say : Gladstone 
 will soon have it all his own way ; and whenever he 
 gets my place we shall have strange doings. It was 
 a case of armed Cabinet observation. 
 
 Under these circumstances, the Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer had in the autumn of 1862 gone on what 
 proved to be a sort of triumphal progress through the 
 northern counties. It amounted to a popular ovation ; 
 
106 BIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 and not unnaturally his colleagues, especially his 
 chief, took cognizance of it. Then came the Newcastle 
 speech. From his long-subsequent published diary 
 entries, it appears that what Mr. Gladstone there said 
 was no hasty, impromptu utterance ; it had, on the 
 contrary, been long and well considered. The infer 
 ence was unavoidable. Distrusting the fixity of the 
 Premier s purpose, the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 intended to force his hand, thus clinching the thing. 
 In so purposing, Mr. Gladstone had, as a member of 
 the Government, committed an offence against official 
 propriety again to use his own incomparably forcible 
 characterization, he had been guilty of a mistake 
 of incredible grossness. Apparently it did not 
 take the Premier long to make up his mind that 
 the offender must be disciplined, and that severely ; 
 not at all improbably he was glad to avail himself of 
 the opportunity. So he proceeded at once to intimate 
 to Sir George Cornewall Lewis, also a member of the 
 Cabinet and Gladstone s parliamentary rival as the 
 coming man, that if he (Lewis) did not feel disposed 
 to assume this function himself, it must devolve on 
 the head of the Government in person. On the 14th 
 of October, therefore, Sir George Lewis, speaking at 
 Hereford, very pointedly controverted the position 
 taken by his colleague one week before at Newcastle. 
 The hand of the Premier was on the Cabinet lever. 
 The blind goddess had at the critical moment inter 
 vened for the preservation of the American Union, 
 and to bring about in ripeness of time the downfall 
 of the Confederacy. On the part of those immediately 
 
DIS ALITEB VISUM 107 
 
 concerned as actors it was moreover all undesigned. 
 Pure chance ! 
 
 The Cabinet meeting called for the 23rd of October, 
 the outcome of which had been settled by the con 
 currence of the Premier, the Foreign Secretary, and 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer Palmerston, Kus- 
 sell and Gladstone was for the nonce necessarily 
 postponed ; nor was it ever afterwards notified ! 
 Mr. Gladstone had been called down . He having 
 received a distinct intimation that he was neither the 
 Ministry nor yet its accredited mouthpiece, explana 
 tions on his part were in order. None the less, as 
 the secret working of the springs and wires which 
 brought this result about have since been disclosed, 
 the magnitude and imminence of the danger at that 
 juncture threatening the cause of the American Union 
 are revealed. It was a case of touch-and-go. 
 
 The hesitation and postponement brought about by 
 Lord Palmerston in consequence of Mr. Gladstone s 
 Newcastle speech thus saved the situation. The 
 veteran Premier at the moment apparently looked 
 upon it merely as action deferred, probably for a fort 
 night or a month, more or less. Within that space of 
 time, as events then indicated, he confidently believed 
 some definite military result would be reached in 
 America. Under the vigorous lead of Lee and Stone 
 wall Jackson, the Confederate army might not impro 
 bably occupy Washington. And within the period 
 assigned something did happen ! but not what the 
 British Premier had anticipated. At just that critical 
 juncture, and by the merest chance as to time, one of 
 
108 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 the great events of the nineteenth century took place 
 in America. On September 22, while the Prime Min 
 ister and the Foreign Secretary were corresponding 
 with a view to the immediate recognition of the slave- 
 holding Confederacy, the Emancipation Proclamation 
 of President Lincoln had been made public. That 
 African servitude was an issue in the American struggle 
 could 110 longer be denied ; the attitude of the national 
 administration could not be ignored. From that time 
 the success of the Union cause meant the freedom of 
 the slave. A conflict of Titans, in the conflict, wholly 
 regardless of the influence it would have on the 
 immediate European situation, the quondam Illinois 
 rail-splitter, by force of circumstances, and quite uncon 
 sciously to himself, become transfigured into a 
 trans- Atlantic Jove, had launched an unmistakable 
 thunderbolt. 
 
 c At first, in Europe, and more especially in Great 
 Britain, the proclamation was not taken seriously ; dazed, 
 apparently, men seem in no way to have realized its 
 import!) On the contrary, it excited scorn and derision. 
 I have not time here to give sufficing passages from 
 the speeches of British public men and the newspaper 
 editorials of the period ; though they to-day read 
 curiously. I must confine myself to a few brief 
 extracts. Mr. Beresford-Hope, for instance, a highly 
 respectable member of Parliament, energetically cha 
 racterized the proclamation as This slavish type of 
 weak yet demoniacal spite, the most unparalleled last 
 card ever played by a reckless gambler . And a 
 Mr. Peacock, the member for North Essex, at a great 
 
DIS ALITEE VISUM 109 
 
 Conservative demonstration at Colchester towards the 
 close of October, declared that if the proclamation was 
 i worth anything more than the paper on which it was 
 inscribed, and if the four millions of blacks were really 
 to be emancipated on January 1st [then two months only 
 distant], we should be prepared to witness a carnage 
 so bloody as that even the horrors of the Jacquerie 
 and the massacres of Cawnpore would wax pale in 
 comparison and so forth and so on. Furthermore, the 
 proclamation, he declared, was one of the most devil 
 ish acts of fiendish malignity which the wickedness 
 of man could ever have conceived . And the London 
 organ of the Confederacy spoke within limits when it 
 declared that while * every organ of a considerable 
 party pronounced the edict infamous , a l similar 
 opinion of it was entertained by every educated and 
 nearly every uneducated Englishman. 
 
 Viewed in the cool, clear perspective of history and 
 through the half-century vista of subsequent events, 
 there is indeed now something distinctly humorous in 
 the simple and honest, but altogether complete self- 
 deception in which the educated Englishman then 
 nursed himself. What he really objected to, and for 
 the best of reasons from his point of view, was the 
 onward movement towards Democracy that he 
 felt in the very marrow of his bones ; but he voiced it 
 as follows, the speaker in this case being Mr. G. W. 
 Bentinck, then representing in Parliament West Nor 
 folk. Addressing his constituents at King s Lynn 
 upon American affairs immediately after the appear 
 ance of the proclamation, Mr. Bentinck began by 
 
110 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 denouncing slavery in general, and American African 
 servitude in particular. Having set himself perfectly 
 right by a process of generalization on that point, he 
 proceeded as follows : * Why is it that wherever one 
 goes in all parts of England one always finds 
 thoroughly as I believe the institution of slavery is 
 detested in this country every man sympathizing 
 strongly with the Southerners, and wishing them all 
 success ? We do so for this reason . . . Englishmen 
 love liberty, and the Southerner is fighting, not only 
 for his life, but for that which is dearer than life, for 
 liberty ; he is fighting against one of the most grind 
 ing, one of the most galling, one of the most irritating 
 attempts to establish tyrannical government that ever 
 disgraced the history of the world. And this was 
 the view of the Proclamation of Emancipation and 
 its purport almost universally held at the moment 
 by the class of which Mr. Bentinck was representa 
 tive. It was, as the leading London organ of that 
 class expressed it, an i atrocious manifesto . Thus 
 evoked from the grave to stand a witness in the 
 strong light of what subsequently occurred, Mr. G. W. 
 Bentinck is chiefly useful as furnishing additional 
 evidence of the extreme unwisdom, even in the case 
 of educated gentlemen , of reaching absolute con 
 clusions and expressing fixed opinions upon subjects 
 in regard to which, where not misinformed, one hap 
 pens to be altogether uninformed. 
 
 So loud, however, and universal was the denuncia 
 tion of Lincoln s epoch-marking manifesto so over 
 whelming its volume that, for the moment and 
 
DIS ALITER VISUM 111 
 
 at first, it silenced opposition. The voice of protest 
 even was dumb. In the entire metropolitan press of 
 that day one paper only the Daily News was con 
 sistently friendly in tone to the Union side ; and even 
 the News now for a time seemed dazed and daunted. 
 It referred to the proclamation apologetically, pro 
 nouncing it i feeble and halting , and in no respect 
 possessing the importance which some persons in 
 England are disposed to attach to it . Needless to 
 say, history has not confirmed this contemporaneous 
 judgement ; nor at the moment did it commend itself 
 to John Bright. He, and he first, so far as appears, 
 rose to the level of the occasion. His attitude was 
 characteristic ; and, fifty years later, commands that 
 admiration which at the moment it did not elicit. 
 Calmly defiant, he faced the storm ; he, almost alone, 
 seeing beneath the surface and reading correctly what 
 was passing in the awakened but as yet inarticulate 
 conscience of England. Wholly uncalled upon to 
 pronounce himself, he now took immediate advan 
 tage of a chance occasion, and uttered the words : 
 I applaud the proclamation of the President. It 
 was certainly very fine ; fine in its courage, it was 
 finer yet in its simplicity. In the utterance there was 
 no bombast, no pose, no attitudinizing or declama 
 tion. It went at once to the point. The dignity of 
 the great drama was sustained. 
 
 Curiously enough, and by strange coincidence, the 
 proclamation and the Newcastle speech of Mr. Glad 
 stone were simultaneous so much so that they ap 
 peared and were commented on in the London journals 
 
112 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 of the same week, that closing October 11. Then 
 came the storm of bitter denunciation of the former ; 
 followed shortly by the still, calm words I applaud 
 the proclamation of the President/ 
 
 Though the suffrage had not then been enlarged to 
 reach the labouring classes, Her Majesty s Governments 
 of that period were, as is well known, scarcely less 
 respectful of their wishes on that account ; especially 
 when, as in this instance, a deep-seated moral issue 
 was plainly involved. So a few weeks later Eichard 
 Cobden wrote to Charles Sumner as follows : I now 
 write to assure you that no unfriendly act on the part 
 of our Government, no matter which of our aristocratic 
 parties is in power, towards your cause has yet been 
 broached. If an attempt were made by the Govern 
 ment in any way to commit us to the South, the 
 spirit would instantly be aroused which would drive 
 that Government from power/ Like the stone from 
 the sling of the son of Jesse, the trans-Atlantic thunder 
 bolt had done its work. 
 
 I have thus set forth, I hope in no unnecessary or 
 uninteresting detail, the influences and course of 
 events which led to what General Bernhardi has, fifty 
 years later in the work I have cited, characterized as 
 the unpardonable [British] blunder of not supporting 
 the Southern States in the American War of Seces 
 sion ; and also as the supineness of England when 
 ( she refused her assistance to the Southern States and 
 thus allowed a power to arise in the form of the United 
 States of North America, which now fifty years later 
 threatens , according to this authority, England s 
 
DIS ALITER VISUM 113 
 
 own position as a World-Power 5 . I have explained 
 how it all chanced ; and, as the secret working of the 
 hidden springs and wires which at the time brought 
 about the final result as now recorded in history have, 
 one by one, been disclosed, the magnitude and inten 
 sity of the drama are apparent. It involved at once 
 the discontinuance of human servitude among the 
 civilized, and the continuance of the great English- 
 speaking trans- Atlantic nationality. As respects both, 
 it was a very narrow chance. 
 
 The German authority I have quoted asserts that 
 those in charge of Great Britain s interests were then 
 guilty of a blunder, irreparable. To what was their 
 action due? 
 
 It was due, I confidently assert, to human causes. 
 Great interests and issues it is true were then in 
 volved ; great forces were arrayed. England, acting 
 in concert with France, a willing ally in the matter at 
 issue, was master of the situation. Holding indisput 
 ably in its hands the mastery of the sea, it had but to 
 say the word and do the deed, and the situation 
 settled itself, the problem was solved. Those re 
 sponsible for the course of events decided to say the 
 word, and do the deed ; yet the word remained 
 unsaid, the deed undone. The course of events then 
 ensued otherwise than it would have been made to 
 ensue. Why was this thus ? It was thus, I submit, 
 solely from adventitious causes. A veteran states 
 man, nearing eighty, was at the critical moment at 
 the head of Her Majesty s Government; himself 
 strongly favouring the success of the insurgent party 
 
DIS ALITEK VISUM 
 
 in the trans- Atlantic conflict, he fully believed that 
 the success he desired was in any event assured. In 
 his conjecture, it was but a question of time and of 
 the exhaustion of the combatants. Believing that the 
 hour of crisis had come, he decided on an aggressive 
 policy, an intervention. Just then an impetuous col 
 league he did not like undertook to force his hand. 
 This he resented ; and action was accordingly defer 
 red. In his belief it did not matter much ; the 
 American issue was already decided, and decided in 
 favour of the party he wished to see successful. The 
 unexpected then occurred. A proclamation ending 
 human slavery was promulgated ; a moral issue pre 
 sented itself. The parliamentary majority sustaining 
 the veteran s Government was narrow, and he did not 
 wish to face a division which could equally well be 
 avoided. If let alone, the thing was pretty sure satis 
 factorily to settle itself; then why provoke an un 
 necessary home contest ? why rouse a sleeping dog ? 
 the dog in question chancing in this case to be the 
 British conscience. 
 
 Simply, Palmerston misapprehended the situation 
 was wrong in his understanding of the facts, and his 
 anticipation of what was soon to transpire. In other 
 words, once more the altogether unexpected by him 
 actually occurred. Hence, and by that mere chance, 
 the course of subsequent events. None the less, as I 
 have already said, it was a case of a turn of Fortune s 
 wheel, with mighty consequences involved. 
 
 And such is history ! And yet they tell us history 
 can be reduced to a science. I, on the contrary, hold 
 
DIS ALITER YISUM 115 
 
 that in it chance and the personal equation remain 
 always to be reckoned with. Themistocles at Salamis, 
 close upon twenty-four centuries back, susceptibly in 
 fluenced by his personality events to-day transpiring 
 in the Balkans ; and Harriet Beecher Stowe and 
 Abraham Lincoln in like manner affected for all 
 time what occurred in your Lancashire and Downing 
 Street in 1862. In other words, though the ways of 
 what we are pleased to designate as Providence are 
 mysterious and altogether past finding out, they, all 
 the same, constitute what we call History. If studied 
 in the reverential spirit and with a seeing eye, that 
 History, none the less, has in it, now as then, all the 
 elements of the Greek Tragedy. 
 
 Having said thus much, I am loath to run the risk 
 of what may seem to be an anti-climax. Before bring 
 ing this lecture to a close, however, one more word. 
 It relates to a great English historical personality 
 the most notable personality perhaps of the later Vic 
 torian period. 
 
 The course pursued by Mr. Gladstone, both during 
 the transpiring of the events which have been de 
 scribed and subsequent thereto, was characteristic of 
 the man. Taken altogether also, they were, in my 
 judgement, when not highly creditable to him, not 
 otherwise than creditable. Large by nature, and 
 easily stirred by suffering and wrong, especially when 
 passing directly before his eyes, Mr. Gladstone s 
 course, both in 1862 when Chancellor of the Ex 
 chequer and six years later when Prime Minister, 
 
116 DIS ALITEE VISUM 
 
 though utterly inconsistent, was as respects American 
 affairs, even in its inconsistency, characteristic. During 
 the earlier period, witnessing and sympathizing in 
 tensely in the sufferings and distress of his fellow 
 country-people in Lancashire, altogether premature in 
 his conclusions as to the outcome of our trans- Atlantic 
 struggle, Mr. Gladstone had persuaded himself that, 
 from every point of view, a division of the American 
 Union and the establishment of an independent 
 nationality based on African slavery were desirable. 
 Accordingly, he seems at this juncture to have thrown 
 himself into the support of the proposed Palmerston- 
 Eussell programme with that fervour of sympathetic 
 conviction peculiarly his. Nor was he chary, much 
 less cautious of utterance, as he afterwards, in the 
 day of his sackcloth and ashes, had good cause to 
 remember and admit. For instance, at the critical 
 period in 1862, he thus wrote in reply to a letter from 
 an American correspondent, in terms unmistakably 
 Gladstonese, setting forth the heavy responsibility 
 you [Americans of the North] incur in persevering 
 with this destructive and hopeless war, at the cost of 
 such dangers and evils to yourselves, to say nothing of 
 your adversaries, or of an amount of misery inflicted 
 upon Europe such as no other civil war in the history 
 of man has ever brought upon those beyond its 
 immediate range . The Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 then went on thus to set forth the wickedness of 
 any further continuance of the efforts towards a re- 
 establishment of the Union : The impossibility of 
 success in a war of conquest of itself suffices to make 
 
DLS ALITEE VISUM 117 
 
 it unjust. When that impossibility is reasonably 
 proved, all the horror, all the bloodshed, all the evil 
 passions, all the dangers to liberty and order with 
 which such a war abounds, come to lie at the door of 
 the party which refuses to hold its hand and let its 
 neighbour be. You know that in the opinion of 
 Europe that impossibility has [in the present case] 
 been proved. 
 
 Nevertheless, as we have seen, General Bernhardi 
 now firmly believes, in view of the existing new- 
 century later conditions, that in 1862 Mr. Gladstone 
 was guided by intuitive wisdom in advocating the policy 
 at one time decided upon but subsequently not pursued. 
 Urging intervention in our Civil War, he stood ready 
 to accept every consequence intervention implied. 
 From his point of view, General Bernhardi possibly 
 has grounds for his belief ; for it is always impossible 
 to say what would have resulted had something 
 occurred in the progress of human affairs which it so 
 chanced did not occur. It is useless, therefore, now 
 to enter into surmises as to what would, or might, 
 have happened had the American Union divided in 
 1862, and the Slave-owning Confederacy established 
 itself in the face of a growing world-sentiment bound 
 in the end to make human servitude impossible. We 
 can only discuss the question with a Dis Aliter 
 Visum ! Mr. Gladstone, however, in reaching his 
 conclusions in 1862 was, if judged by the actual out 
 come of events, wrong at every point. That which he 
 had characterized as most improbable, if not altogether 
 impossible , actually occurred ; and through the tempo- 
 
118 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 rary if acute suffering of the population of Lancashire 
 the world emancipated itself from the dominion of an 
 industrial staple. That these were both benefits to 
 the human race no one probably will now deny. They 
 even justified the great price paid. Mr. Gladstone, 
 however, as the years passed on, found himself in 
 a difficult position. It came about in this wise : All 
 that Lord Palmerston anticipated happened. When 
 Palmerston had been five years in his grave, Gladstone 
 was in his place as Premier ; and in England Glad 
 stone now had it all his own way . But meanwhile 
 the Franco-Prussian War had brought on the Napo 
 leonic debacle ; the position of Great Britain was 
 critical ; America was a menace, at once sullen and 
 portentous. So that Newcastle utterance of Gladstone 
 in September, 1862, remained to plague him in 1870 ; 
 it would not away ! True, it was but one of many 
 similar utterances of that time, and by no means of 
 the more offensive sort. But, as respects the utter 
 ances of public men, no rule obtains, especially with 
 Democracies. Proverbially ungrateful, when memory 
 is concerned they are capricious. This was noticeably 
 the case with us Americans as respects foreign 
 utterances during our time of tribulation, the wounds 
 of which were in 1870 still green. The effusions of 
 the London Post, for instance, or the Saturday Review, 
 or Bhchvood 3 , venomous beyond credence, had made no 
 impression. Idle, as well as flying words, they passed 
 into early oblivion. Not so in the case of the Times. 
 The editorials of The Thunderer carried a sting, 
 3 See Note 3, p. 126. 
 
DIS ALITER VISUM 119 
 
 and the memory of them was stored away to await a 
 day of reckoning. Later, they furnished at Geneva 
 a basis for articles of indictment drawn against a whole 
 people. It was the same with individuals. Displays 
 of temper, ignorance and vindictiveness on the part 
 of Mr. Beresford-Hope, or Mr. Peacock, or Mr. W. G. 
 Bentinck were of no moment ; very respectable no 
 doubt after their kind, they, one and all, were men of 
 no particular calibre, and what they might say, one 
 way or the other, mattered not at all. It was not 
 otherwise with Lord Brougham, then in his garrulous 
 dotage ; nor with the Brummagem Brougham/ as 
 John Bright happily denominated him, the egotistical, 
 spiteful, cross-grained John Arthur Roebuck ; nor, 
 going higher up, did Lord Wolseley constitute an 
 exception, harping at one period, unhappily for him 
 self, on * General Lee and Mr. Grant ; nor again, 
 higher yet, did it greatly matter that the oracular 
 sage of Chelsea epigrammatically dismissed it all in 
 characteristic fashion in the phrase l a foul chimney 
 burned out , or delivered himself of an Ilias Americana 
 in Nuce. If men, really eminent, take occasion now 
 and again to make records for themselves which 
 they afterwards would fain have comfortably and 
 kindly forgotten, there is no principle of law, whether 
 statute or international, violated by their so doing. 
 Later, no one, not even the unfortunate transgressor 
 himself, is held to a very grave account. But it was 
 otherwise in Mr. Gladstone s case. Belonging to 
 a totally different class, what he publicly said needed 
 to be well considered, and a Nationality could be 
 
120 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 held to account for it. So it in due time followed that 
 among all the utterances of English journalists and 
 British public men in that period of voluble utterance, 
 that Newcastle speech of his, then Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer but now Premier, was retained most freshly 
 in American memory. 4 An envenomed barb, it pene 
 trated deep and rankled sorely. By it he had made 
 himself, if not actually odious, at least suspect in the 
 American mind ; and the insensate and degenerate 
 people of the Times had now become that same journal s 
 mighty Republic beyond the sea. There is equally 
 little question that America subsequently to 1865 held 
 itself ready when occasion offered, and it was sure to 
 offer, to apply to Great Britain that rule of action which 
 in its hour of stress had been applied to it. So, 
 when Great Britain stood face to face with foreign 
 complications directly following the outbreak of the 
 Franco-German War, had things gone a step further, 
 resulting in declared hostilities, the ocean might readily 
 have been covered with commerce-destroyers A labamas 
 emerging from American ports. 
 
 An ordinary public man, especially perhaps an 
 ordinary English public man, would, under these 
 circumstances, have been naturally inclined to stand 
 by his record ; as he had put himself in the wrong, he 
 would have stayed in the wrong, challenging conse 
 quences. Mr. Gladstone was by nature and training 
 quite above this small consistency so dear to little 
 minds. He consequently met the contingency, when 
 it presented itself during his first period of responsi- 
 4 See Note 4, p. 128. 
 
DIS ALITER VISUM 121 
 
 bility in a large way ; and, absolutely reversing his 
 earlier course and utterances, recognizing as such his 
 mistake of incredible grossness , he accomplished one 
 of the largest results, if not on the whole the largest 
 and most valuable result, of his public life, at once so 
 memorable and in results so fruitful. He restored, in 
 the only way in which it could be restored, mutual 
 goodwill and friendly feeling between the two great 
 English-speaking communities. I refer, of course, to 
 the Treaty of Washington, negotiated in 1870, and the 
 Geneva arbitration, which in pursuance of its pro 
 visions sat in 1872. Up to the time of the negotia 
 tion of the Treaty of Washington it is not too much 
 to say that a feeling of bitter animosity towards Great 
 Britain prevailed in both the loyal portion of the 
 American Union and in that which had once been the 
 Confederacy. Both sides, and especially that element 
 in each of the two sides which represented the military 
 life of the War of Secession, looked forward to a severe 
 retribution as sure, in the not remote future, to fall to 
 the lot of Great Britain. This feeling Mr. Gladstone 
 met and overcame. Also, he did so, I again say, in 
 a very large way, the only way possible. And, so 
 carrying himself, he re-established friendly feeling on 
 the opposite sides of the Atlantic. On the basis then 
 reached this feeling of kindly kinship has now held 
 for nearly half a century, and we have sufficient reason 
 to hope that it will continue to hold. 
 
 This last is, however, a larger topic, and, as respects 
 it, I shall in my present course confine myself to this 
 passing reference. 
 
122 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 NOTE 1, PAGE 91. 
 
 The following extracts from Watts s Fads of the 
 Cotton Famine sufficiently illustrate the fluctuations in 
 the price of cotton and in the fortunes of those trading 
 in it fluctuations almost continuous throughout this 
 period : 
 
 In September [1863] discounts again advanced to eight or 
 nine per cent ; middling Orleans was at thirty-one pence, and 
 shirtings were thirty-three pence per pound ; and again 
 employment decreased. But another and a more powerful 
 cause than the price of discounts was now at work. For 
 three and a half years had the terrible American struggle 
 gone on with the usual varying fortunes of war, and trade 
 was gradually accommodating itself to war prices, when 
 a rumour crossed the Atlantic that men were meeting at 
 Niagara Falls to try to arrange the terms of peace. Straight 
 way men, instead of shaking hands and throwing up their 
 hats in thankfulness that the mutual slaughter of their 
 American brethren was at an end, looked into each other s 
 faces with blank despair, as if peace, instead of war, was the 
 greatest curse upon earth. Nor was it without reason that 
 this fear and terror was felt and expressed. Middling Orleans 
 cotton fell from thirty-one pence to twenty-three pence half 
 penny, and shirtings from thirty-three pence to twenty-four 
 pence per pound ; and men who held largely of cotton, twist 
 or cloth, found their fortunes vanished in a night at the 
 breath of this rumour. All trade arrangements were again 
 in chaos. . . . 
 
 ... In the beginning of the year 1865 the Bombay corre 
 spondent of The Times wrote to the following effect : Up to 
 1860 the sum paid by Europe for the whole cotton export of 
 India was not above seven millions sterling annually. In 
 1860-1 the import of bullion into Bombay alone was six and 
 one-third millions sterling, chiefly in payment for cotton. 
 But in the three following years, Europe paid to India nearly 
 
DIS ALITER VISUM 123 
 
 forty millions sterling per annum, one half of which was in 
 bullion. In Calcutta the trade is almost entirely in the hands 
 of Europeans, the Bengal ese playing but a subordinate part. 
 But in Bombay the trade is largely in the hands of the caste- 
 less native Parsees ; and many of them, and a smaller number 
 of Scotchmen, who a few years ago were petty brokers, are 
 now millionaires. A Hindoo, named Premchund Roychund, 
 lately a subordinate clerk in an English house on 30 a year, has 
 by daring speculation amassed two millions sterling. Rustonjee, 
 the second son of the late Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, who 
 inherited but a moderate fortune, has become the millionaire 
 of Bombay, his capital being reckoned at two and a half 
 millions sterling. Twenty such cases could be mentioned. . . . 
 . . . Mr. Henry Ashworth, speaking at the annual meeting 
 of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, 30th January, 1865, 
 said : The quantity of cotton consumed in 1860 was valued 
 at 34,000,000. Last year (1 864), for a quantity probably not 
 exceeding one-half what we received in 1860, we had to pay, 
 in round numbers, 80,000,000. In 1860 our consumption 
 was one billion eighty- three million pounds. In 1864 it was 
 five hundred and sixty-one million pounds, or about fifty-one 
 per cent, of the former year. But the inferiority of the 
 material required much more labour ; hence the fifty-one 
 per cent, of cotton consumed required from sixty to seventy 
 per cent, of the hands to work it up. In 1860 American 
 cotton furnished five days labour out of six in every week ; 
 in 1864 it did not furnish enough for half a day per week. 
 In 1860 we paid for Indian cotton 3,500,000, and in 1864 
 nearly 40,000,000. The quantity had increased two and 
 a half times (from two hundred and fourteen million pounds 
 to five hundred and thirteen million pounds), and the price 
 had increased ten or eleven times. 
 
 The highest point reached by cotton in America 
 was on August 23, 1864, when, in the greatly depre 
 ciated paper currency then in use, middling upland 
 sold for $1.89 per pound on the New York market, 
 
124 DIS ALITER VLSUM 
 
 and for $1.95 in Boston. Eight months later the price 
 fell to 35 cents. 
 
 NOTE 2, PAGE 97. 
 
 The view in these lectures advanced as to the 
 origin of the American Civil War, the theories, 
 economical and otherwise, upon which those con 
 stituting the Confederacy challenged the trial of 
 strength, and the influence of Uncle Tom s Cabin upon 
 public opinion, were at the time appreciated in Europe 
 and distinctly stated. For example, a French writer, 
 Eugene Pelletan, thus expressed himself upon these 
 points, somewhat theatrically addressing his paper 
 to the potentate then, as in these lectures, commonly 
 designated as l King Cotton : 
 
 But one day an honest man named John Brown tried to 
 discover whether there were any pulsation left beneath the 
 negro s cotton shirt. This was an error, I admit. You 
 seized the noble champion of humanity, you tried him, and 
 you hung him. Bravo, sir, I recognize you by this act of 
 clemency, for you could have burnt him alive at the stake ! 
 But when he was executed a great shudder swept through 
 the North of America. Thenceforth the sacred cause of Abo 
 litionism was invested with the halo of martyrdom. 
 
 It had already sounded its tocsin, in the shape of a paltry 
 little book written by a woman ; and it was less than a book, 
 it was a novel. You smiled compassionately at it, did you 
 not? Your children may cry over it for a long while. 
 America read Mrs. Stowe s elegy and bewailed her state ; and 
 the presidency of Abraham Lincoln sprang from the presidency 
 of Uncle Tom. 
 
 I breathe again. I have rid me of a nightmare, for the 
 time for justice had arrived : right is not a lie. Scarcety had 
 the South learned the election of Lincoln before with their 
 
DIS ALITEE VISUM 125 
 
 impious hand, already polluted with the blood of the slave, 
 they dared to strike their mother, to strangle the Constitu 
 tion, throwing to the winds the common glory of their common 
 country, telling the Union their intention to walk thence 
 forward independently with the negro trampled beneath their 
 feet. 
 
 You, sire, and you alone, without provocation or excuse, 
 have broken the compact which you signed and swore to 
 keep. In your rebellious folly you said to yourself, What 
 have I to fear from the North, from the lovers of peace and 
 dollars ? Will they dare to raise an army for the abstract 
 satisfaction of unity ? And supposing that they dare, I need 
 only hold fast to my bales of cotton. At one blow I can 
 cause a famine in all the markets of Europe, and array all 
 the spindles and looms of Manchester and Mulhouse against 
 these fanatical Yankees and their Constitution. Then England 
 and France must of necessity either jointly or separately 
 intervene in favour of slavery in order to save their cotton. 
 
 And if they hesitate, if they shrink from armed mediation, 
 what will they do with their disbanded hosts of cotton- 
 spinners? Will they be allowed to wander at random, pale 
 and ragged, like the spectres of famine, about the extinguished 
 furnaces and silent factories, until at last, tired of suffering, 
 they make one desperate effort and throw themselves upon 
 the bayonets of their countrymen ? Certainly not ; France as 
 well as England must prefer to open the Southern markets 
 at any cost, even by force of shot and shell. 
 
 This is the impious calculation you made when you rebelled 
 against the Constitution. You condemned the poorer classes 
 of Europe to want for work, in other words, to a slow death, 
 so as to preserve slavery in all its purity ; after adding 
 another crime to your list, you hauled down the federal flag 
 waving over Fort Sumter. 
 
 An Address to King Cotton. By Eugene Pelletan. Loyal 
 Pub. Socy., No. 12, 1863. 
 
126 DLS ALITER VISUM 
 
 NOTE 3, PAGE 118. 
 
 Extracts from an editorial paper in BlackwoocTs 
 Edinburgh Magazine for November, 1863, Vol. 
 XCIY :- 
 
 If we were required to specify the most prominent and 
 characteristic feature exhibited in common by the Govern 
 ment, press, and people of Federal America, we should say 
 it was shameless impudence impudence which tramples on 
 consistency and derides confutation. It has appeared in 
 every pretence they have put forward for the justification of 
 the war. Something more than chance seems to have guided 
 them in their unerring choice of arguments that never deviate 
 into plausibility, and assertions that never stumble on the 
 truth. . . . They profess that what has more than anything 
 raised the indignation of their guileless and virtuous citizens 
 is the treachery with which secession was accomplished as if 
 the most characteristic and most applauded feature in Fede 
 ral diplomacy had not always been triumphant chicanery. 
 Ignorant alike of the foundation and the value of their liberty, 
 and ready to sacrifice at the shrine of any detestable and 
 ridiculous idol that chances to govern the hour, they persist in 
 proclaiming their effort to enslave the South as a battle for 
 freedom. . . . Manifestly, the element visible in all this is 
 impudence, pure and simple. There is no plausibility in 
 these utterances no consistency, no faith on the part of the 
 utterers. The matter being what we have said, there is 
 certainly nothing in the manner which should render them 
 more acceptable. Whether they proceed from clergymen, 
 or senators, or stump-orators, from press or people, they are 
 equally distinguished by repulsive coarseness, vulgarity, and 
 inconsequence. ... If [the States composing the Confederacy] 
 ever had a talent for bombast and boasting, they appeared 
 to have lost that useful faculty when they seceded from the 
 Union, leaving the North to enjoy the double share. All 
 their appeals have been made rather by acts and demeanour 
 than words. Dignity in misfortune, modesty and moderation 
 
DIS ALITER VISUM 127 
 
 in success ; conduct in council, bravery in the Held ; the 
 exhibition, in a struggle for that independence which free 
 nations have always professed most to value, of a constancy 
 and heroism almost unequalled ; the endurance of uncommon 
 calamities with cheerfulness, and the absence of vindictiveness 
 under the most hideous provocation ; such are the demands 
 the South makes on us and the results are not encouraging 
 to the heroic virtues. ... If the North had little claim on our 
 forbearance at the outset of the quarrel, it has far less now. 
 It is generally agreed in England that this power which we 
 so scrupulously refrain from embarrassing is persisting in 
 a hopeless war from the basest motives, and conducting it in 
 a way that casts mankind back two centuries towards barbar 
 ism. We say, then, that if, by joining France in intervention, 
 we should raise the blockade, relieve our starving population, 
 and break up the political system which is a standing menace 
 to us through the weak point of Canada, we should be not 
 only acting in consonance with right, but fulfilling an obvious 
 duty to ourselves. 
 
 The following is from the issue for January, 1863 : - 
 
 We will not follow Mr. Cobden s hypothetical view of what 
 would be done if in America there were now * men of the 
 grasp of mind of a Franklin, a Jefferson, an Adams, or 
 a Washington . No such men exist nowadays. Those men 
 were all of them trained as British subjects. We have now 
 before us the result of a democratic training, and it speaks 
 for itself. Our business is to deal not with the departed, but 
 the present rulers of that distracted country. 
 
 So in the May number of the same magazine the 
 United States is thus referred to : the system, be it 
 remembered, whose inevitable results have been to 
 make a Lincoln the chief magistrate, and a Seward 
 the chief minister a system which has for years been 
 the most corrupt ever known, and the inability of 
 
128 DIS ALITER VISUM 
 
 which to produce any kind of political merit is one of 
 the wonders of the world. 
 
 NOTE 4, PAGE 120. 
 
 Writing thirty-four years later, Mr. Gladstone thus, 
 again characteristically, referred to this experience, of 
 which, in the language of Lord Morley, his biographer, 
 i he was destined never to hear the last : 
 
 I have yet to record, he writes (July, 1896), in the frag 
 ment already more than once mentioned, an undoubted error, 
 the most singular and palpable, I may add the least excusable 
 of them all, especially since it was committed so late as in the 
 year 1852, when I had outlived half a century. In the 
 autumn of that year, and in a speech delivered after a public 
 dinner at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, I declared in the heat of the 
 American struggle that Jefferson Davis had made a nation ; 
 that is to say, that the division of the American Republic by 
 the establishment of a Southern or Secession State was an 
 accomplished fact. Strange to say, this declaration, most 
 unwarrantable to be made by a Minister of the Crown with 
 no authority other than his own, was not due to any feeling 
 of partisanship for the South or hostility to the North. . . . 
 Not only was this a misjudgement of the case, but, even if 
 it had been otherwise, I was not the person to make the 
 declaration. I really, though most strangely, believed that it 
 was an act of friendliness to all America to recognize that the 
 struggle was virtually at an end. I was not one of those 
 who on the ground of British interests desired a division of 
 the American Union. My view was distinctly opposite. 
 I thought that while the Union continued it never could 
 exercise any dangerous pressure upon Canada to estrange 
 it from the empire our honour, as I thought, rather than 
 our interest forbidding its surrender. But were the Union 
 split, the North, no longer checked by the jealousies of slave- 
 power, would seek a partial compensation for its loss in 
 
DIS ALITER VISUM 129 
 
 annexing, or trying to annex, British North America. Lord 
 Palmerston desired the severance as a diminution of a dan 
 gerous power, but prudently held his tongue. 
 
 That my opinion was founded upon a false estimate of the 
 facts was the very least part of my fault. I did not perceive 
 the gross impropriety of such an utterance from a Cabinet 
 Minister of a power allied in blood and language, and bound 
 to loyal neutrality. . . . My offence was indeed only a mistake, 
 but one of incredible grossness, and with such consequences 
 of offence and alarm attached to it that my failing to perceive 
 them justly exposed me to very severe blame. It illustrates 
 vividly that incapacity which my mind so long retained, and 
 perhaps still exhibits, an incapacity of viewing subjects all 
 round, in their extraneous as well as in their internal pro 
 perties, and thereby of knowing when to be silent and when 
 to speak. Morley, Life of Gladstone, Vol. II, pp. 81-82. 
 
 R 
 
IV 
 A GREAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 AND 
 
 VAE VICTIS 
 
IV 
 A GREAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 AND 
 
 VAE VICTIS 
 
 IN the course of his memorable, and still remem 
 bered, speech on American taxation, delivered in the 
 House of Commons in 1774, Edmund Burke made use 
 of this expression, i Great men are the guideposts 
 and landmarks in the State. In no way original or 
 profound, the figure of speech is none the less peculiar 
 to him who then made use of it it bears Burke s 
 unmistakable mint-mark. But the question next na 
 turally arises as to those fairly entitled to be classed 
 as great men . Posterity has a way in such cases of 
 calling for credentials : which, on inspection, are not 
 infrequently pronounced defective and insufficient. 
 In the case, for instance, of those by name passed on 
 by Burke in the speech referred to George Grenville, 
 Charles Townshend and the rest not one is to-day 
 recalled as great . Gone from memory, they abide 
 only as names attached to shades lurking amid the 
 urns and sepulchres of the parliamentary graveyard. 
 Among the wellnigh innumerable public characters 
 of that somewhat commonplace period Burke himself 
 was great ; so also was Chatham. The rest, con 
 spicuous enough in their day, when not completely 
 forgotten are at best but vaguely recalled. 
 
134 A GREAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 American history now covers four centuries. Reach 
 ing back to the first Tudor, four centuries constitute 
 a very respectable antiquity. During those centuries, 
 how many world celebrities those entitled to be 
 classed among the really great has America pro 
 duced? Three might, I suppose, be very generally 
 accepted the credentials of Washington, Franklin, 
 and Lincoln bear closest scrutiny. All others would, 
 I fancy, be challenged. Of the three I have named 
 enough has, however, been said. They are thrice-told 
 tales ; so to-day it is my purpose to examine another 
 set of credentials, seeking to learn why the bearer of 
 them should not also be classified among the great , 
 completing an American quartette, so to speak our 
 constellation. 
 
 Among those inhabiting the region once calling 
 itself the Confederate States of America there is no 
 question that Robert Edward Lee is the ideal, the 
 memory most cherished. In him, more than in any 
 other one man, is personified what throughout a large 
 and now wholly loyal section is still referred to as 
 The Lost Cause . 
 
 In connexion with it, he stands much as Hannibal 
 stands in his connexion with another no less lost 
 cause twenty-one centuries before. In a recent care 
 ful study of Lee, by one who has given to his subject 
 much thought and thorough inquiry, I find it asserted 
 that I individually have by my utterances surely 
 done more than any one else to help Lee on to the 
 national glory which is his due/ Whether this be so 
 or not, to-day, and Oxford here is a sufficiently appro- 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 135 
 
 priate arena for the purpose, I propose to essay a more 
 ambitious flight. The authority I have just quoted 
 spoke of t national glory . I ambition a larger theme, 
 world fame. It so chances, however, that Lee sug 
 gests himself just now in a way most opportune with 
 these lectures of mine ; for he illustrates, as no other 
 does or could, certain of the historical features con 
 nected with our American development which I have 
 endeavoured to emphasize and explain. And, first, 
 State Sovereignty. 
 
 I do not propose here and now to enter into any 
 eulogium of General Lee, to recount the incidents of 
 his career, or to estimate the place finally to be 
 assigned him among great military commanders. 
 This has been sufficiently done by others far better 
 qualified than I for the task. I shall also assume on 
 the part of my audience a certain general acquaintance 
 with essential historic facts. Coming then directly to 
 the matter in hand, my own observation tells me that 
 the charge still most commonly made against Lee in 
 that section of my own country to which I belong 
 and with which I sympathize is that, in plain lan 
 guage, he was false to his flag. Educated at the 
 national military academy, subsequently an officer 
 of the United States Army, he abjured his alle 
 giance and bore arms against the Government 
 he had sworn to uphold. In other words, he was 
 a military traitor. I state the charge in the tersest 
 language possible ; and the facts are as stated ! 
 Having done so, and, for the purpose of the present 
 occasion, admitting the facts, I add as the result 
 
136 A GEEAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 of mature reflection, that under exactly similar con 
 ditions I would myself have done as Lee did. In fact, 
 I do not see how, placed as he was placed, any other 
 course was, humanly speaking, open to him. 
 
 And now, fairly entered on the first phase of my 
 theme, I must hurry on ; for I have much ground to 
 cover, and scant time in which to cover it. I must be 
 concise, but must not fail to be explicit. And first as 
 to the right or wrong of secession, this theoretically. 
 
 State Sovereignty, so called, as a feature in the 
 development of American nationality, I discussed, 
 sufficiently I hope, in the initial lecture of the present 
 course. In any event, I do not propose to repeat what 
 I then said, thus twice going over the same ground. 
 
 Coming directly to the point, my contention, it will 
 be remembered, was that every man in the eleven 
 States seceding from the Union had in 1861, whether 
 he would or no, to decide for himself whether to 
 adhere to his State or to the Nation ; and finally 
 I asserted that, whichever way he decided, if only 
 he decided honestly, putting self-interest behind him, 
 he decided right. 
 
 This to foreign ears sounds, I know, like a contradic 
 tion in terms ; none the less it was indisputably so. It 
 was a question of sovereignty, and consequent alle 
 giance State or National ; and from a decision of that 
 question there was in a seceded State escape for no man. 
 
 Starting from this as a premise, I pass on to Lee s 
 individual case. Lee was not a Secessionist ; and he did 
 hold a commission in the United States Army. A man 
 of fifty-four, he had in March, 1861, become colonel of 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 137 
 
 the 1st Cavalry. Though a Virginian, he had, with 
 intuitive common sense, at the outset struck the 
 nail squarely on the head, when amid the Babel of 
 discordant voices heralding the outbreak of active 
 hostilities he wrote to his son, i It is idle to talk of 
 secession ; the national government, as it had then got 
 to be, l can only be dissolved by revolution. This puts 
 the case in a nutshell ; and the human, the individual 
 element now entered as a dominant factor, indeed the 
 controlling factor, in its solution. 
 
 People had to elect ; the modus vivendi was at an end. 
 Was the State sovereign; or was the Nation sovereign? 
 And, with a shock of genuine surprise that any doubt 
 should exist on that head, eleven States arrayed them 
 selves on the side of the sovereignty of the State, and 
 claimed the unquestioning allegiance of their citizens ; 
 and I think it not unsafe to assert that nowhere did 
 the original spirit of State Sovereignty and allegiance 
 to the State then survive in greater intensity and more 
 unquestioning form than in Virginia the * Old Domi 
 nion the mother of States and of Presidents. And 
 here I approach a sociological factor in the problem, 
 more subtle, and also more potent, than any legal con 
 sideration. It has no standing in court ; but the 
 historian may not ignore it: while, with the biographer 
 of Lee, it is crucial. Upon it judgement hinges. I have 
 not time to consider how or why such a result came 
 about, but of the fact there can, I hold, be no question 
 State pride, a sense of individuality, has immemo- 
 rially entered more largely and more intensely into 
 Virginia and Virginians than into any other section or 
 
138 A GEEAT HISTOKIC CHAEACTEE 
 
 community of the United States. Only in South Caro 
 lina and among Carolinians, on the trans- Atlantic con 
 tinent, was a somewhat similar sense of locality and 
 obligation of descent to be found. There was in it a 
 flavour of the Hidalgo, or of the pride which the Mac- 
 Gregors and Campbells took in their clan and country. 
 In other words, the Virginian and Carolinian had in 
 the middle of the last century not, to any appreci 
 able extent, undergone nationalization. 
 
 But this, it will be replied, though true of the 
 ordinary man and citizen, should not have been true 
 of the graduate of the military academy the officer 
 of the Army of the United States. Winfield Scott and 
 George H. Thomas both Virginians, both in 1861 
 holding commissions in the national army, and the 
 last named not only a graduate of the military 
 academy in the same class with Lee, but in 1861 
 an officer in the same regiment Lieutenant-General 
 Winfield Scott and Major, afterwards Major-General 
 George H. Thomas, did not so construe their allegi 
 ance ; when the issue was presented, they remained 
 true to their flag and to their oaths. Eobert E. Lee, 
 false to his oath and flag, was a renegade ! And, as 
 a rule, renegades are not included among the truly 
 great of the world. The answer is brief and to the 
 point : the conditions in the several cases cited were 
 not the same neither Scott nor Thomas was Lee. 
 It was our Boston Dr. Holmes, the freshly remem 
 bered Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, who long ago 
 declared that the child s education begins about one 
 hundred and fifty years before it is born ; and it is 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 139 
 
 quite impossible to separate any man least of all, 
 perhaps, a full-blooded Virginian from his pre-natal 
 conditions and living environment. From them he 
 drew his being ; in them he exists. Robert E. Lee 
 was the embodiment of those conditions, the creature 
 of that environment a Virginian of Virginians. His 
 father was * Light-Horse Harry Lee, a devoted follower 
 of Washington; but in January, 1792, Light-Horse 
 Harry wrote to Mr. Madison, No consideration on 
 earth could induce me to act a part, however gratifying 
 to me, which could be construed into disregard of, or 
 faithlessness to, this Commonwealth ; and later, when 
 in 1798 those Virginia and Kentucky resolutions to 
 which I have in these lectures already referred as 
 first embodying the principle of secession when, 
 I say, these fateful resolutions were in 1798 under 
 discussion in the legislature of Virginia, so-called, 
 * Light-Horse Harry exclaimed in words, so far as 
 his son was concerned, ominously prophetic, Virginia 
 is my country ; her will I obey, however lamentable 
 the fate to which it may subject me. Born in this 
 environment, nurtured in these traditions, to ask 
 Lee to raise his hand against Virginia was like ask 
 ing Montrose or the MacCallum More to lead a force 
 designed for the subjection of the Highlands and the 
 destruction of the clans. Where such a stern election 
 is forced upon a man as then confronted Lee, the 
 single thing the fair-minded investigator has to take 
 into account is the loyalty, the single-mindedness of 
 the election. Was it devoid of selfishness ? Was it 
 free from any baser and more worldly motive ? Was 
 
140 A GREAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 ambition, pride, jealousy, revenge, or self-interest 
 eliminated ? To these questions there can, in the case 
 of Lee, be but one answer. 
 
 One April night in 1861 he paced the floor at 
 Arlington, the lights of Washington gleaming in the 
 distance across the broad Potomac, and then, after 
 long and trying mental wrestling, he threw in his fate 
 with Virginia. In doing so he knowingly sacrificed 
 everything which man prizes most, his dearly beloved 
 home, his means of support, his professional standing, 
 his associates, a brilliant future assured him. Born 
 a slaveholder in a race of slaveholders, he was him 
 self no defender, much less an advocate of slavery ; 
 on the contrary, in his place he did not hesitate to 
 pronounce it * a moral and political evil . Later, he 
 manumitted his bondsmen. He did not believe in 
 secession ; as a right reserved under the Constitution 
 he pronounced it idle talk : but, as a Virginian, he 
 also added, if the Government is disrupted, I shall 
 return to my native State and share the miseries of 
 my people, and save in defence will draw my sword 
 on none/ Next to his high sense of allegiance to 
 Virginia was Lee s pride in his profession. He was 
 a soldier ; as such rank, and the possibility of high 
 command and great achievement, were very dear to 
 him. His choice put rank and command behind him. 
 He quietly and silently made the greatest sacrifice 
 a soldier can be asked to make. With war plainly 
 impending, the foremost place in the army of which 
 he was an officer was now tendered him ; his answer 
 was to lay down the commission he already held. 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 141 
 
 Virginia had been drawn into the struggle ; and, 
 though he recognized no necessity for the state of 
 affairs, in my own person/ he wrote, I had to meet 
 the question whether I should take part against my 
 native State ; I have not been able to make up my 
 mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my chil 
 dren, my home. It may have been treason to take 
 this position ; the man who took it, uttering these 
 words and sacrificing as he sacrificed, may have been 
 technically a renegade to his flag if you please, false 
 to his allegiance : but he stands awaiting sentence 
 at the bar of history in very respectable company 
 for instance, in that of William of Orange, known 
 as The Silent. Those composing it were, one and 
 all, in the sense referred to, false to their oaths for 
 sworn. 
 
 In Virginia, Lee was MacGregor ; and, where Mac- 
 Gregor sits, there is the head of the table. 
 
 Into Lee s subsequent career, I can here only very 
 briefly enter ; nor shall I undertake to compare him 
 with other great military characters, whether contem 
 poraneous or of all time. Not only has the topic been 
 discussed by others 1 , not always to my mind with 
 either judgement or good taste, but the space limitation 
 here again confronts me. I must press on. Suffice it 
 for me, as one of those then opposed in arms to Lee, 
 
 1 Lord Acton pronounced Lee the greatest general the world 
 has ever seen, with the possible exception of Napoleon . Writing 
 sixteen years after the occurrence, he used the expression that he 
 rejoiced in a certain event more than I have been able to feel 
 at any public event ever since I broke my heart over the surrender 
 of Lee . 
 
142 A GEEAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 in however subordinate a capacity, to admit at once 
 that, as a leader, he conducted operations on the high 
 est plane. Whether acting on the defensive upon the 
 soil of his native State, or leading his army into the 
 enemy s country, he was humane, self-restrained, and 
 strictly observant of the most advanced rules of civi 
 lized warfare. He respected the non-combatant ; nor 
 did he ever permit the wanton destruction of private 
 property. 
 
 But though avoiding any critical discussion, I will 
 generally say that, to my mind and in my judgement, 
 Lee s first was his most brilliant campaign ; indeed 
 I do not see why it will not bear comparison with the 
 most brilliant of historic campaigns under the greatest 
 commanders. It was in July, 1862. When at that 
 time suddenly placed in command of a large army, 
 face to face with an enemy of greatly superior force, 
 Lee was a man of fifty-five ; almost exactly the age 
 of Marlborough when he assumed his first large com 
 mand in the Blenheim campaign. Never before at the 
 head of any considerable force, Lee was then acting 
 as military adviser of Jefferson Davis, President of the 
 Confederacy. In those days the present elaborate 
 general staff organizations were undreamed of, the 
 traditions and organizations of the Napoleonic period 
 and the Crimea still prevailing. Himself a graduate 
 of the national military academy, and not without 
 active military experience, President Davis divined 
 Lee s capacity, and looked to him largely for advice, 
 and the confirmation, or otherwise, of his own con 
 clusions. Just at this juncture General Joseph E. 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 143 
 
 Johnston, in command of the Confederate forces de 
 fending Eichmond, was incapacitated by injuries 
 received in battle, and Davis at once designated Lee 
 to succeed him. 
 
 When, in those fierce contesting days of 1862, 
 Lee thus, while the battle was in progress, assumed 
 command, the armies of the Union of the North as 
 it was called were pressing hard on the Confederate 
 capital. Though they did not realize the fact, and 
 immensely exaggerated the number and equipment of 
 those opposed to them, they were to their enemy at 
 least as two or three to one : but, badly commanded, 
 they were operating as at least four separate organ 
 izations, advancing by different lines on a common 
 objective, while yet carefully covering Washington, 
 whence they received directions. As a military 
 situation, it was open to criticism at every point. 
 With what then ensued, you here in England are not 
 unacquainted. Colonel Henderson s Life of Stonewall* 
 Jackson is a text-book at Sandhurst ; and Kobert E. 
 Lee s name is almost a household word in Great 
 Britain. Suffice it to say that, knowing the country 
 well and superbly supported by his lieutenants and 
 the unsurpassed fighting material of which his army 
 was composed, throwing his force first in one direc 
 tion and then in another, always outnumbering his 
 antagonists at the immediate critical point, in less 
 than sixty days from his taking command Lee had 
 completely cleared Virginia of its enemies, and was 
 himself carrying the war into the enemy s country. 
 Washington, not Eichmond, was in danger of capture. 
 
A GEEAT HISTORIC CHARACTEE 
 
 It was a great military achievement. Taking all the 
 circumstances of the case into consideration, I know 
 of none more brilliant ; though, of course, many have 
 been both more considerable, and some, perhaps, 
 more dramatic. In effective completeness, however, 
 it will compare with any ; for it was perfect in its 
 kind. Lee had everything except mere numbers in 
 his favour; and he availed himself boldly and skil 
 fully of his advantages. Napoleon did no more in 
 Italy in 1796 ; or Wellington in the Peninsula in 
 1813. 
 
 Of Lee s two succeeding campaigns, that of Frede- 
 ricksburg in the closing weeks of 1862, and that of 
 Chancellorsville in the April following, I have not time 
 to speak ; nor do I wish to talk, or even think, of them. 
 I participated, of course on the Union side, in both ; 
 and their memory is still very bitter to me. It recalls 
 hardship, failure, and the useless loss of precious 
 lives. The Fredericksburg folly should never have 
 been entered upon ; the campaign of Chancellorsville 
 should have been for us a brilliant success. In both 
 cases the Union army was wretchedly handled ; and 
 Lee proved equal to the occasion. The Army of the 
 Potomac sustained two severe repulses, involving 
 terrible loss of both life and prestige. 
 
 But why enlarge? Comparisons are always invi 
 dious, and I feel no disposition here to institute them : 
 but some things are too obvious to admit of denial. 
 Almost every military aphorism is as a matter of 
 course attributed to Napoleon ; and so Napoleon is 
 alleged first to have remarked that In war men are 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 145 
 
 nothing, a man is everything . 1 And, as formerly 
 a soldier of the Army of the Potomac, I now stand 
 appalled at the risk I unconsciously ran anterior to 
 July, 1863, when confronting the Army of Northern 
 Virginia, commanded as it then was and as we were. 
 The situation was in fact as bad with us in the Army 
 of the Potomac as it was with the Confederates in 
 the south-west. There the unfortunate Pemberton 
 simply was not in the same class as Grant and Sher 
 man, to whom he found himself opposed. Kesults 
 followed accordingly. Vicksburg fell ; the Mississippi 
 flowed free to the sea ; the Confederacy was cut in 
 twain. So in Virginia, Lee, Jackson and Longstreet 
 constituted together a most exceptional combination. 
 They outclassed M c Clellan and Burnside, Pope and 
 Hooker, in quick succession our commanders; out 
 classed them sometimes terribly, sometimes ludi 
 crously, always hopelessly : and again results followed 
 accordingly. That we were not utterly destroyed 
 affords a marked and, for us, most creditable exception 
 to the general truth of Napoleon s aphorism. 
 
 Though fifty years have since elapsed, well do I 
 remember the feeling of relief, almost of exultation, 
 I individually felt when one April day the rumour 
 spread through our crestfallen camp at Acquia Creek, 
 opposite Fredericksburg, that Stonewall Jackson 
 was dead a victim of wounds received in the battle 
 which had just been fought ; and, by us, lost. After 
 all it had been a victory ; for Jackson s foot-cavalry 
 
 1 A la guerre les homines ne sent rien, c est un homme qui 
 est tout. 
 
146 A GEEAT HISTOKIC CHAEACTER 
 
 would not again come yelling and volleying around our 
 uncovered flank. 
 
 The Gettysburg campaign followed close on the 
 heels of that of Chancellorsville ; it opened before 
 Jackson had been a month in his grave. Gettysburg 
 marked the turning-point in the military fate of the 
 Confederacy. From that day (July 4, 1863) its star 
 began to descend, to sink for ever below the horizon 
 just twenty-one months later (April 9, 1865). That 
 Gettysburg campaign is burned very deep into my 
 memory as an active participant therein, and the 
 views I entertain of it are not in all respects those 
 generally held ; so I cannot dismiss it with mention 
 only. 
 
 Studied in the light of results, Lee s action in that 
 campaign has been criticized : his crucial attack on 
 Gettysburg s third day has been pronounced a mur 
 derous persistence in a misconception ; and, among 
 Confederate writers especially, the effort has been to 
 relieve him of responsibility for final miscarriage, 
 transferring it to his lieutenants. As a result reached 
 from participation in those events and subsequent 
 study of them, briefly let me say I concur in none of 
 these conclusions. Taking the necessary chances 
 incident to all warfare on a large scale into considera 
 tion, the Gettysburg campaign was on the Confederate 
 part in my opinion timely, admirably designed, ener 
 getically executed, and brought to a close with con 
 summate military skill. A well-considered offensive 
 thrust of the most deadly character, intelligently 
 aimed at the opponent s heart, its failure was of the 
 
AND VAE VICTIS H7 
 
 narrowest ; and the disaster to the defeated side 
 which that failure might readily have involved was 
 no less skilfully than successfully averted. 
 
 I cannot here and now enter into details. But I 
 hold that credit, and the consequent measure of 
 applause, in the outcome of that campaign belong to 
 Lee s opponent and not to him. All the chances 
 were in Lee s favour, and he should have won a great 
 victory ; while Meade should have sustained a decisive 
 defeat. As it was, Meade triumphantly held his 
 ground ; Lee suffered a terrible repulse. His deadly 
 thrust was foiled ; his campaign was a failure. 
 
 But, so far as Lee s general plan of operations, and 
 the movements which culminated in the battle of 
 Gettysburg, were concerned, be it always and ever 
 remembered, a leader must, in war, take some chances, 
 and mistakes will occur ; but the mistakes are rarely, 
 if ever, all on one side. They tend to counterbalance 
 each other ; and, commanders and commanded being 
 at all equal, not unseldom it is the balance of miscon 
 ceptions, shortcomings, miscarriages, and the generally 
 unforeseen, and indeed unforeseeable, which tips the 
 scale to victory or defeat. 
 
 In the Gettysburg campaign and I actually parti 
 cipated in it from its opening to its close every 
 personal recollection of what then occurred, as well as 
 my study of it since, lead me to believe that in its 
 earlier stages the preponderance of the accidental was 
 distinctly in Lee s favour. On any fair weighing of 
 chances, he should have won a decisive victory ; as 
 matter of actual outcome, he and his army ought to 
 
148 A GEEAT HISTOKIC CHARACTER 
 
 have been destroyed. As usual, on that theatre of 
 war at that time, neither result came about. 
 
 First, as to the chapter of accidents the misconcep 
 tions, miscarriages and shortcomings. If, as has been 
 alleged, an essential portion of Lee s force was at one 
 time out of reach and touch, and if, at the critical 
 moment, a lieutenant was not promptly in place at 
 a given hour, on the Union side an unforeseen change 
 of supreme command went into effect when battle was 
 already joined, and the newly appointed commander 
 had no organized staff; his army was not concen 
 trated ; his strongest corps was over thirty miles from 
 the point of conflict ; and the two corps immediately 
 engaged should have been destroyed in detail before 
 reinforcements could have reached them. In addition 
 to all this superadded thereto the most skilful gen 
 eral and perhaps the fiercest fighter on the Union side 
 was killed at the outset. Later, and at a most critical 
 moment, Meade s line of battle was almost fatally dis 
 ordered by the misconception of a corps commander. 
 The chapter of accidents thus reads all in Lee s favour. 
 But, while Lee on any fair weighing of chances stands 
 in my judgement more than justified both in his con 
 ception of the campaign and in every material strategic 
 move made in it, he none the less fundamentally mis 
 conceived the situation, with consequences which 
 should have been fatal both to him and to his com 
 mand. Frederick did the same at Kunersdorf ; Napo 
 leon at Waterloo. In the first place, Lee had at that 
 time supreme confidence in his command ; and he had 
 sufficient ground therefor. As he himself then wrote, 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 149 
 
 1 There never were such men in any army before. 
 They will go anywhere and do anything, if properly 
 led. And, for myself, I do not think the estimate 
 thus expressed was exaggerated ; speaking deliberately, 
 having faced some portions of the Army of Northern 
 Virginia at the time, and having reflected much on the 
 occurrences of that momentous period, I do not believe 
 that any more formidable or better organized and ani 
 mated force was ever set in motion than that which 
 Lee led across the Potomac in the early summer of 
 1863. It was essentially an army of fighters men 
 who, individually or in the mass, could be depended 
 on for any feat of arms in the power of mere mortals 
 to accomplish. They would blanch at no danger. 
 This Lee from experience knew. He had tested 
 them ; they had implicit confidence in him. He also 
 thought he understood his opponent ; for he had faced 
 him recently at Chancellorsville. Meade had not yet 
 succeeded Hooker. 
 
 The disasters which had befallen the Confederates 
 in the south-west in the spring and early summer of 
 1863 had to find compensation in the east. The ex 
 igencies of warfare necessitated it. Some risk must 
 be incurred. So Lee determined to assume the offen 
 sive, to carry the war into the enemy s country. Then 
 came the rapid, aggressive move; and the long, 
 desperately contested struggle of Gettysburg, cul 
 minating in that historic charge of Pickett s Virginia 
 division. Paradoxical as it may sound in view of the 
 result, that charge what those men did justified 
 Lee. True, those who made the charge did not 
 
150 A GKEAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 accomplish the impossible ; but towards it they did 
 all that mortal men could do. But it is urged that 
 Lee should have recognized the impossible when face 
 to face with it, and not have directed brave men to 
 lay down their lives in the vain effort to accomplish 
 what, humanly speaking, could not be done. That 
 is true ; and, as Lee is said to have once remarked in 
 another connexion, Even as poor a soldier as I am 
 can generally discover mistakes after it is all over . 
 After Gettysburg was over, like Frederick at Ku- 
 nersdorf and Napoleon at Waterloo, Lee doubtless 
 discovered his mistake. It was a very simple one : he 
 undervalued his opponent. The temper of his own 
 weapon he knew ; he made no mistake there. His 
 mistake lay in his estimate of his antagonist : but that 
 estimate again was based on his own recent experience 
 elsewhere. 
 
 On the other hand, from the day I rode over the 
 field of Gettysburg immediately following the fight to 
 that which now is, I have fully and most potently 
 believed that only some disorganized fragments of 
 Lee s army should after that battle have found their 
 way back to Virginia. The war should have collapsed 
 within sixty days thereafter. For eighteen hours after 
 the repulse of Pickett s division, I have always felt, 
 and now feel, the fate of the Army of Virginia was as 
 much in General Meade s hands as was the fate of the 
 army led by Napoleon in the hands of Blucher on the 
 night of Waterloo. As an aggressive force, the Con 
 federate army was fought out. It might yet put forth 
 a fierce defensive effort ; it was sure to die game : but 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 151 
 
 it was impotent for attack. Meade had one entire 
 corps perhaps his best the Sixth, commanded by 
 Sedgwick, intact. Held in reserve, it had been 
 divided in support of points deemed weak in the line 
 of battle. Its reconcentration under its proper com 
 mander would at most, however, have been but a 
 matter of hours. By the early morn of the morrow 
 following Pickett s repulse, Sedgwick at the head of 
 a reunited command could have been pressing hard 
 on the heels of the cavalry, endangering Lee s line of 
 retreat. The true counter-movement for the fourth 
 day of continuous fighting would then on Meade s part 
 have been an exact reversal of Lee s own plan of 
 battle for the third day. That plan, as described by 
 Fitzhugh Lee, was simple. His (Lee s) purpose was 
 to turn the enemy s left flank with his First Corps, 
 and, after the work began there, to demonstrate 
 against his lines with the others in order to prevent 
 the threatened flank from being reinforced ; these 
 demonstrations to be converted into a real attack as 
 the flanking wave of battle rolled over the troops in 
 their front. What Lee thus proposed for Meade s 
 army on the third day, Meade should unquestionably 
 have returned on Lee s army upon the fourth day. 
 Sedgwick s corps, following close on a concentrated 
 cavalry advance, should then have assailed Lee s right 
 and rear. I once, long afterwards, asked a leading 
 Confederate general l , who had been in the very thick 
 of it on Gettysburg s crucial third day, what would 
 
 1 General E. P. Alexander, Chief of Artillery of the corps 
 commanded by General Longstreet. 
 
152 A GEEAT HISTOEIC CHAEACTEE 
 
 have been the outcome had Meade, within two hours 
 of the repulse of Pickett, ordered Sedgwick to get his 
 corps together, and, as soon as he could so do, to 
 move off to the left, occupying Lee s line of retreat. 
 The Confederate right being thus threatened, a general 
 advance would have been in order. The answer I re 
 ceived was immediate : Without question we would 
 have been destroyed. We all that night fully ex 
 pected it ; and could not understand next day why we 
 were unmolested. My ammunition for he was an 
 officer of artillery l would have sufficed but for one 
 short day s fighting more. 
 
 But in all this, as in every speculation of the sort 
 and the history of warfare is replete with them the 
 1 if is much in evidence ; as much in evidence, indeed, 
 as it is in a certain familiar Shakespearian disquisition. 
 I here introduce what I have said on this topic simply 
 to illustrate what may be described as the balance of 
 miscarriages inseparable from warfare. On the other 
 hand, the manner in which Lee met disaster at 
 Gettysburg the combination of serene courage and 
 consequent skill with which he extricated his army 
 from its critical situation, commands admiration. I 
 would here say nothing depreciatory of General Meade. 
 He was an accomplished officer as well as a brave 
 soldier. Placed suddenly in a most trying position 
 assigned to chief command when battle was already 
 joined untried in his new sphere of action, and caught 
 unprepared, he fought at Gettysburg a stubborn, gallant 
 fight. A good soldier and a skilful commander, a man 
 of character, after he assumed command of the Army 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 153 
 
 of the Potomac, though confronted by its old op 
 ponent, serious disaster did not again befall it. Sub 
 sequently, he deserved more considerate treatment 
 than he received. With chances at the beginning 
 heavily against him, he saved the crucial day : none 
 the less, as I have already pointed out, I fully believe 
 that, on the fourth of July at Gettysburg, Meade 
 had but firmly to close his hand, and the Army of 
 Northern Virginia was crushed. Perhaps under all 
 the circumstances it was too much to have expected 
 of him ; certainly it was not done. Then Lee in 
 turn did avail himself of his opportunity. Skilfully, 
 proudly though sullenly, preserving an unbroken 
 front, he withdrew to Virginia. That withdrawal 
 was masterly. 
 
 Of the subsequent campaign, Lee s last that carried 
 on in the Virginian Wilderness and before and around 
 Eichmond during the terrible months between April 
 1864 and April 1865, of that campaign I do not, 
 a participant in it, like to talk. It is a hideous and 
 heart-rending memory. I will only say that, con 
 tending, with ever diminishing resources both of men 
 and munitions, including food and clothing, against a 
 vastly superior force, Lee fully sustained the great repu 
 tation he before had won. Far more successful than 
 Napoleon in his campaign of 1813, and fully as much 
 outnumbered, striking terrible aggressive blows and 
 then, on the defensive, foiling every counter-move of his 
 unrelenting opponent, he there did I believe all that 
 was possible with such means as were at his command. 
 Of the strategy and tactics of those opposed to him in 
 
 1593 U 
 
154 A GREAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 that titanic grapple I have expressed myself else 
 where, and shall not here speak. Suffice it to say, 
 Lee held his opponent far more successfully at bay 
 than did Napoleon the allies before and at Leipsic in 
 1813, and during the succeeding months which wit 
 nessed the closing in upon him at Paris. 
 
 Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victum Catoni. 
 
 The personal equation here also must be taken into 
 the account remains always to be reckoned with. 
 Lee, it must be remembered, when, at Chancellors- 
 ville, Jackson fell, lost his right arm in battle. That 
 loss never was made good. Thereafter he remained 
 maimed. To what extent results would have been 
 affected, and proved other than history has recorded, 
 had i Stonewall been at Lee s side in the Gettysburg 
 campaign and in the Wilderness, it would be idle to con 
 sider. As a participant on the ultimately winning side, 
 I can only say I am now glad that thunderbolt of war 
 was then no longer at Lee s command. I can bear 
 witness that on one momentous occasion at least, had 
 t Stonewall been there in place of him who succeeded to 
 Stonewall s command, I have never been able to see 
 how a great and apparently irreparable disaster to the 
 Union cause could have been averted. But I cannot 
 here enter into details ; the incident is of record. 
 I can only say it was bad enough as it was ; and the 
 individual factor absent ! 
 
 Narrowly escaping destruction at Gettysburg, my 
 next contention is that Lee and the Army of Northern 
 Virginia never sustained defeat. Finally, it is true, 
 succumbing to exhaustion, to the end they were not 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 155 
 
 overthrown in fight. And here I approach a large 
 topic, but one closely interwoven with Lee s military 
 career ; in fact, as I see it, the explanation of what 
 finally occurred. What then was it that brought about 
 the collapse of the Army of Northern Virginia, and the 
 consequent downfall of the Confederacy ? The litera 
 ture of the War of Secession now constitutes a library 
 in itself. Especially is this true of it in its military 
 aspects. The shelves are crowded with memoirs and 
 biographies of its generals, the stories of its campaigns, 
 the records and achievements of its armies, its army 
 corps, and its regiments. Yet I make bold to say that 
 no well and philosophically considered narrative of the 
 struggle has yet appeared ; nor has any satisfactory or 
 comprehensive explanation been given of its extra 
 ordinary and unanticipated outcome. Let me briefly 
 set it forth as I see it ; only by so doing can I explain 
 what I mean. 
 
 Tersely put, dealing only with outlines, the Southern 
 community in 1861 precipitated a conflict on the 
 slavery issue, in implicit reliance on its own warlike 
 capacity and resources, the extent and very defensible 
 character of its territory, and, above all, on its com 
 plete control of cotton as the great staple textile fabric 
 of modern civilization. But with this topic I have 
 sufficiently dealt in a previous lecture. 
 
 As to a maritime blockade of the South, shutting it 
 up to die of inanition, the idea was believed to be 
 chimerical. That no such feat of maritime force ever 
 had been accomplished, was incontrovertible ; nor was 
 it deemed possible of accomplishment now. I have 
 
156 A GEE AT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 quoted Confederate utterances of high authority to 
 this effect. To talk of putting up a wall of fire 
 around eight hundred and fifty thousand square 
 miles , situated as the Confederacy was, with its twelve 
 thousand miles of sea-coast, was pronounced too 
 1 absurd for serious discussion. But, even supposing 
 it were possible of accomplishment, the doing it 
 would but the more effectively play the Confederate 
 game. It would compel intervention. As well shut 
 off bread from the manufacturing centres of Europe 
 as stop their supply of cotton. In any or either 
 event, and in any contingency which might arise, 
 the victory of the Confederacy was assured. And 
 this theory of the situation and its outcome was, as 
 I have already pointed out, accepted by the Southern 
 community as indisputable. 
 
 What occurred ? In each case that which had been 
 pronounced impossible of occurrence. On land the 
 Confederacy had an ample force of men ; they swarmed 
 to the standards ; and no better or more reliable 
 fighting material was ever gathered together. Well 
 and skilfully marshalled, the Confederate soldier did 
 on the march and in battle all that needed to be done. 
 Nor, so far as the land array was concerned, were 
 the two sides unequally matched. As Lee with his 
 instinctive military sense put it, even in the closing 
 stages of the struggle the proportion of experienced 
 troops is larger in our army than in that of the enemy, 
 while his numbers exceed our own. And in warfare 
 experience, combined with an advantageous defensive, 
 counts for a great deal. This was so throughout the 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 157 
 
 conflict ; and yet the Confederate cause sank in failure. 
 It did so, moreover, to the complete surprise of a bewil 
 dered world. How was this wholly unexpected actual 
 outcome brought about ? The simple answer is : The 
 Confederacy collapsed from inanition ! Suffering such 
 occasional reverses and defeats as are incidental to all 
 warfare, it was never crushed in battle or on the field 
 at large until its strength was sapped away by want 
 of food. It died of exhaustion starved and gasping ! 
 
 Take a living organism, whatever it may be, place it 
 in a vessel hermetically sealed, and attach to that 
 vessel an air-pump. Set that pump in action ; you 
 know what follows. It is needless to describe it. 
 No matter how strong or fierce or self-confident it 
 may be, the victim dies ; growing weaker by degrees, 
 it finally collapses. That was the exact condition and 
 fate of the Confederacy. What had been confidently 
 pronounced impossible was done. Steam put in its 
 work, and the Confederacy was sealed up within 
 itself by the blockade. Operations in the field then 
 acted as an air-pump, the exhausting character of 
 which could not be exceeded. On the other hand, 
 the wellnigh complete exclusion of Southern cotton 
 from the manufacturing centres of Europe did not 
 cause revolution there, nor compel intervention here. 
 Man s foresight once more came to grief. As is apt 
 to be the case, the unexpected occurred. 
 
 Thus the two decisive defeats of the Confederacy 
 those which really brought about its downfall and 
 compelled Lee to surrender the army under his com 
 mand were inflicted not before Vicksburg, nor yet in 
 
158 A GREAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 Virginia, not in the field at all : they were sustained, 
 the one, almost by default, on the ocean ; the other, 
 most fatal of all, after sharpest struggle in Lancashire. 
 
 The supremacy of the Union on the ocean was in 
 volved in the issue of the Lancashire struggle ; and 
 upon ocean supremacy depended every considerable 
 land operation of the Union armies : the retention 
 by the National Government of New Orleans, when 
 once captured, and the consequent control of the Mis 
 sissippi ; Sherman s great march to the sea ; his sub 
 sequent movement through the Carolinas ; Grant s 
 operations before Petersburg; generally, the main 
 tenance of the national armies in the field. It is in 
 fact no exaggeration to assert that both the conception 
 and the carrying out of every large Union operation 
 of the war, without a single exception, hinged and 
 depended on complete national maritime or water 
 supremacy. It is equally indisputable that the struggle 
 in Lancashire was decisive of that supremacy. As 
 Lee himself asserted in the death agony of the Con 
 federacy, he had never believed it could in the long 
 run make good its independence unless foreign 
 powers should, directly or indirectly, assist it in so 
 doing. Thus, strange as it sounds, it follows as 
 a logical consequence that Lee and his Army of 
 Northern Virginia were first reduced to inanition, 
 and finally compelled to succumb, as the result of 
 events on the other side of the Atlantic, largely 
 stimulated by a moral impulse they were powerless 
 to counteract. 
 
 It is curious, at times almost comical, to trace histo- 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 159 
 
 rical parallels. Plutarch is, of course, the standard 
 exemplar of that sort of treatment. Among other 
 great careers, Plutarch, as every college boy knows, 
 tells the story of King Pyrrhus, the Epirot. A great 
 captain, Pyrrhus devised a military formation which 
 his opponents could not successfully face, and his 
 career was consequently one of victory. But at last 
 he met his fate. Assaulting the town of Argos, he 
 became entangled in its streets ; and, fighting his way 
 out, he was killed, struck down by a tile thrown from 
 a house-top by an Argive woman. 1 The Confederacy, 
 and through the Confederacy Lee, underwent a not 
 dissimilar fate ; for, as an historical fact, it was a 
 missile from a woman s hand which was decisive 
 of that Lancashire conflict, and so doomed the Con 
 federacy. Though one was a fragment of roofing and 
 the other a book, the missiles were equally fatal. 
 
 1 An almost identical experience is recounted in scriptural 
 narrative as having fallen to the lot of Abimelech, son of Gideon, 
 in his assault upon Thebez : 
 
 51 But there was a strong tower within the city, and thither 
 fled all the men and women, and all they of the city, and shut it 
 to them, and gat them up to the top of the tower. 
 
 52 And Abimelech came unto the tower, and fought against it, 
 and went hard unto the door of the tower to burn it with fire. 
 
 53 And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon 
 Abimelech s head, and all to brake his skull. 
 
 54 Then he called hastily unto the young man his armour- 
 bearer, and said unto him, Draw thy sword, and slay me, that 
 men say not of me, A woman slew him. And his young man 
 thrust him through, and he died. 
 
 55 And when the men of Israel saw that Abimelech was dead, 
 they departed every man unto his place. 
 
 Judges ix. 
 
160 A GREAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 The difference was of time, and changed conditions. 
 There elapsed between the two events two thousand 
 one hundred and thirty years, during which the world 
 had moved considerably. 
 
 Foreign intervention being thus withheld, and the 
 control of the sea by the Union made absolute, the 
 blockade was gradually perfected. The fateful process 
 then went steadily on. Armies might be resisted in 
 the field ; the working of the air-pump could not be 
 stopped. And, clay and night, season after season, 
 the air-pump worked. So the atmosphere of the 
 Confederacy became more and more attenuated ; 
 respiration sensibly harder. Air-hole on air-hole was 
 closed. First, New Orleans fell ; then Vicksburg, 
 and the Mississippi flowed free; next, Sherman, 
 securely counting on the control of the sea as a base of 
 new operations on land, penetrated the vitals of the 
 Confederacy ; then, relying still on maritime co-opera 
 tion, he pursued his almost unopposed way through 
 the Carolinas : while Grant, with his base secure upon 
 the James river and Fortress Monroe, beleagured 
 Richmond. Lee with his Army of Northern Virginia 
 calmly, but watchfully and resolutely, confronted him. 
 The Confederate lines were long and thin, guarded by 
 poorly clad and half-fed men. But, veterans, they 
 held their assailants firmly at bay. As Lee, however, 
 fully realized, it was only a question of time. The 
 working of the air-pump was beyond his sphere either 
 of influence or operations. Nothing could stop it. 
 
 Viewed in a half-century s perspective, the situation 
 was simply and manifestly impossible of continuance. 
 
AND YAE VICTIS 161 
 
 To it there could be but one outcome. Wilmington, 
 the single sea-port of North Carolina, was also the last 
 haven remaining to the blockade-runner. Fort Fisher, 
 constructed as Wilmington s harbour defence, com 
 manded its approach. On January 16, 1865, the 
 telegraph flashed tidings that, as the result of combined 
 naval and military Union operations, Fort Fisher had 
 fallen. Its fall thus closed the South s single remaining 
 air-hole. But though the sealing was now hermetical, 
 the air-pump still kept on in its deadly, silent work. 
 
 Three months later the long-delayed inevitable 
 occurred. The collapse came. The only legitimate 
 cause of surprise is, that under such conditions it 
 should have been so long deferred. That adversity 
 is the test of man is a commonplace ; that Lee and his 
 Army of Northern Virginia were during the long, 
 dragging winter of 1864-5 most direfully subjected 
 to that test, need not here be said, any more than it 
 is needful to say that they bore the test manfully. 
 But the handwriting was on the wall ; the men were 
 taxed beyond the limits of human endurance. And 
 Lee knew it. Yesterday, the most inclement day of 
 the winter, he reported on February 8, 1865, the 
 right wing of his army l had to be retained in line of 
 battle, having been in the same condition the two pre 
 vious days and nights. . . . Under these circumstances, 
 heightened by assaults and fire of the enemy, some of 
 the men had been without meat for three days, and 
 all were suffering from reduced rations and scant 
 clothing, exposure to battle, cold, hail, and sleet. . . . 
 The physical strength of the men, if their courage 
 
162 A GREAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 survives, must fail under this treatment/ If it was so 
 with the men, with the animals it was even worse. 
 Our cavalry , he added, i has to be dispersed for 
 want of forage/ Even thus Lee s army faced an oppo 
 nent vastly superior in numbers, whose ranks were 
 being constantly replenished; a force armed, clothed, 
 equipped, fed and sheltered as no similar force in the 
 world s history had ever been before. I state only in 
 disputable facts. Lee proved equal to even this 
 occasion. Bearing a bold, confident front, he was 
 serene and outwardly calm ; alert, resourceful, for 
 midable to the last, individually he showed no sign of 
 weakness, not even occasional petulance. Inspired by 
 his example, the whole South seemed to lean up against 
 him in implicit, loving reliance. The tribute was 
 superlative. 
 
 Finally, when in April the summons to conflict 
 came, the Army of Northern Virginia, the single 
 remaining considerable organized force of the Con 
 federacy, seemed to stagger to its feet; and, gaunt 
 and grim, shivering with cold and emaciated with 
 hunger, worn down by hard unceasing attrition, it 
 faced its enemy, formidable still. As I have since 
 studied that situation, listened to the accounts of Con 
 federate officers active in the closing movements, and 
 read the letters written me by those of the rank and 
 file, it has seemed as if Lee s command then cohered 
 and moved by mere force of habit. Those composing 
 it failed to realize the utter hopelessness of the situa 
 tion the disparity of the conflict. I am sure Jeffer 
 son Davis failed to realize it ; so, I think, in less 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 163 
 
 degree, did Lee. They talked, for instance, of re 
 cruits, and of a levy in mass. Lee counselled the 
 arming of the slaves ; and when, after Lee had 
 surrendered, Davis on the 10th of April, 1865, held 
 his last war conference at Greensboro , he was still 
 confident he would in a few weeks have another army 
 in the field, and did not hesitate to express his faith 
 that we can whip the enemy yet, if our people will 
 turn out. I have often pondered over what Davis 
 had in mind when he ventured this opinion : or what 
 led Lee to advocate the enlistment of negroes. Both 
 were soldiers ; and, besides being great in his pro 
 fession, Lee was more familiar than any other man 
 alive with actual conditions then existing in the Con 
 federate camps. Both Davis and Lee, therefore, must 
 have known that, in those final stages of the conflict, 
 if the stamp of a foot upon the ground would have 
 brought a million men into the field, the cause of the 
 Confederacy would thereby have been in no wise 
 strengthened ; on the contrary, what was already bad 
 would have been made much worse. For, to be effec 
 tive in warfare, men must be fed and clothed and 
 armed. Organized in commands, they must have 
 rations as well as ammunition, commissary and 
 quartermaster trains, artillery horses and forage. In 
 the closing months of the Civil War both Lee and 
 Davis knew perfectly well that they could not arm, 
 nor feed, nor clothe, nor transport the forces already 
 in the field; they were without money, and the 
 soldiers most inadequately supplied with arms, cloth 
 ing, quartermaster or medical supplies, commissariat 
 
164 A GREAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 or ammunition. Notoriously, those then on the 
 muster-rolls were going home, or deserting to the 
 enemy, as the one alternative to death from privation 
 hunger and cold. If then, a million, or even only 
 a poor hundred thousand fresh recruits had in answer 
 to the summons swarmed to the lines around Rich 
 mond, how would it have bettered the situation? 
 An organized army is a mighty consumer of food 
 and material ; and food and material have to be served 
 out to it every day. They must be supplied as regu 
 larly as the sun rises and sets. And the organized 
 resources of the Confederacy were exhausted ; its ports 
 were in the hands of the enemy or hermetically sealed ; 
 its granaries Georgia and the valley of the She- 
 nandoah were notoriously devastated and desolate; 
 its lines of communication and supply were cut, or in 
 the hands of the invader. 
 
 Realizing this, Lee, when the time was ripe, rose to 
 the full height of the great occasion. The value of 
 Character made itself felt. The service Lee now 
 rendered to the common country, the obligation under 
 which he placed his fellow countrymen, whether of 
 the North or South, has not, I think, been always 
 appreciated ; and to overstate it would be difficult. 
 
 That the situation in the Confederacy was at that 
 juncture to the last degree critical is matter of history. 
 Further organized resistance was impossible. The 
 means for it did not exist ; could not be had. Cut off 
 completely from the outer world, the South had con 
 sumed itself, its vitals were impaired. The single alter 
 native to surrender was disbandment and irregular 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 165 
 
 warfare. As General Joseph E. Johnston, at the close 
 of the war esteemed, next to Lee, the ablest Confede 
 rate commander, subsequently wrote, i Without the 
 means of purchasing supplies of any kind, or procur 
 ing or repairing arms, we could continue the war only 
 as robbers or guerillas. 5 But that it should be so 
 continued was wholly possible ; nay more, it was in 
 the line of precedent it had been done before, and 
 more than once. It has since been done, notably in 
 South Africa. It was, moreover, the course advocated 
 by many Southern participants in the struggle as that 
 proper to be pursued ; and that it would be pursued 
 was accepted as of course by all foreign observers and 
 by the organ of the Confederacy in London. A 
 strenuous resistance and not surrender , the Index 
 declared, was the unalterable determination of the 
 Confederate authorities. 
 
 Indeed, had the veil over the immediate future then 
 been lifted, the outrages, and humiliations worse than 
 outrage, of the period of so-called reconstruction but 
 actual servile domination, now to ensue, revealed 
 itself, no room for doubt exists that the dread alter 
 native would have been adopted. Even as it was, the 
 scales hung trembling. Anything or everything was 
 possible ; even that pistol shot of the crazed theatrical 
 fool which five days after the meeting of Grant and 
 Lee at Appomattox so irretrievably complicated a 
 delicate and dangerous situation. None the less, what 
 Lee and Grant had done on April 9th could not be 
 wholly undone even by the deed in Ford s theatre of 
 April 14th. Much had been secured. Of that April 9 
 
166 A GEEAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 and what then occurred, I do not care to speak ; for 
 I feel I could not speak adequately or in words suffi 
 ciently simple. But, in my judgement, there is not in 
 our American history any incident more creditable to 
 our manhood, or so indicative of a racial possession of 
 Character. Marked throughout by a straightforward 
 dignity of personal bearing and responsibility in action, 
 Appomattox was marred by no touch of the theatrical, 
 no effort at posturing. I know not to which of the two 
 leaders, there face to face, preference should be given. 
 They were thoroughly typical ; the one of Illinois and 
 the New West, the other of Virginia and the Old 
 Dominion. Grant was considerate and magnanimous 
 restrained in victory ; Lee, dignified in defeat, carried 
 himself with that simple fitness which compelled 
 respect. Verily, he that ruleth his spirit is better 
 than he that taketh a city ! 
 
 The lead that day given by Lee proved decisive of 
 the course to be pursued by his Confederate fellows in 
 arms. At first, and for a brief space, there was in the 
 councils of the Southern leaders much diversity of 
 opinion as to what should or could be done. Calm 
 and dignified in presence of overwhelming disaster, 
 the voice of Jefferson Davis was that of Milton s 
 Scepter d king , My sentence is for open war! 
 Lee was not there ; none the less, Lee, absent, pre 
 vailed over Davis. The sober second thought satisfied 
 all but the most extreme that what Lee had done they 
 best might do. Thus the die was cast. And now, 
 forty-eight years after the event, it is appalling to 
 reflect what in all human probability would have re- 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 167 
 
 suited had the election then been other than it was had 
 Lee s personality and character not intervened. The 
 struggle had lasted four full years ; the assassination 
 of Lincoln was as oil on the Union fire. With a mil 
 lion men, inured to war, on the national muster rolls, 
 men impatient of further resistance, accustomed to 
 licence and now educated up to the belief that Wai- 
 was Hell, and that the best way to bring it to 
 a close was to intensify Hell with such a force as this 
 to reckon with, made more reckless in brutality by the 
 assassin s senseless shot, the Confederacy need have 
 looked for no consideration, no mercy. Visited by 
 the besom of destruction, it would have been harried 
 out of existence. Fire and sword sweeping over it, 
 what the sword spared the fire would have consumed. 
 Whether such an outcome of a prolonged conflict a 
 conflict prolonged as more recently was that in South 
 Africa would in its result have been more morally in 
 jurious to the North than it would have been destructive 
 materially to the South, is not now to be considered. It 
 would, however, assuredly have come about. 
 
 From that crown of sorrows Lee saved the common 
 country. He was the one man in the Confederacy 
 who could exercise decisive influence. It was the 
 night of the 8th of April, lacking ten days only of 
 exactly four full years years very full for us who lived 
 through them since the not dissimilar night when 
 Lee had paced the floor at Arlington. Then, he was 
 communing with himself over the fateful issue be 
 tween State and Nation, an issue forced upon him. 
 A decision of even greater import was now to be 
 
168 A GREAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 reached, and reached by him. A commander of the 
 usual cast would under such circumstances have sought 
 advice perhaps support; at least, a divided responsi 
 bility. Even though himself by nature and habit 
 a masterful man and one accustomed to direct, 
 he would have called a council, and hearkened to those 
 composing it. This Lee did not do. Singularly self- 
 poised, he sought no external aid ; but, sitting before 
 his bivouac fire at Appomattox, he reviewed the situa 
 tion. Doing so, as before at Arlington, he reached 
 his own conclusion. That conclusion he himself at 
 the time expressed in words, brief, indeed, but vibrat 
 ing with moral triumph : The question is Is it right 
 to surrender this army? If it is right, then I will 
 take all the responsibility. The conclusion reached 
 at Arlington in the April night of 1861 to some seems 
 to have been wrong, inexcusable even ; all concur in 
 that reached before the Appomattox camp-fire in the 
 April vigils of 1865. Lee then a second time decided ; 
 and he decided right. 
 
 His work was done ; but from failure he plucked 
 triumph. Thenceforth Lee wore defeat as twere 
 a laurel crown. A few days later a small group of 
 horsemen appeared in the morning hours on the 
 farther side of the Richmond pontoons across the 
 James. By some strange intuition it became known 
 that General Lee was of the party ; and, silent and 
 uncovered, a crowd Virginians all gathered along 
 the route the horsemen would take. There was no 
 excitement, no hurrahing; but as the great chief 
 passed, a deep, loving murmur, greater than these, 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 169 
 
 rose from the very hearts of the crowd. Taking off 
 his hat, and simply bowing his head, the man great in 
 adversity passed silently to his own door ; it closed 
 upon him, and his people had seen him for the last 
 time in his battle harness. 5 
 
 From the day that he affixed his signature to those 
 9th of April terms of surrender submitted to him by 
 Grant at Appomattox to the day five years later when 
 he last drew breath at Lexington, Lee s subsequent 
 course was consistent. In his case there was no vacil 
 lation, no regretful glances backward thrown. 
 
 Five years of life and active usefulness yet re 
 mained years in my judgement most creditable to 
 Lee, the most useful to his country of his whole life 
 for, during them, he set to Virginia and his own 
 people a high example, an example of lofty character 
 and simple dignified bearing. Uttering no complaints, 
 entering into no controversies, he was as one, in 
 suffering all, that suffers nothing. Blood and judge 
 ment were in his case also well commingled ; and it 
 so fell out that he accepted Fortune s buffets and re 
 wards with equal thanks. His record and appearance 
 during those final years are pleasant to dwell upon. 
 They reflect honour on American manhood. Turning 
 his face courageously to the future, he uttered no word 
 of repining over the past. Yet his occupation also was 
 gone 
 
 The royal banner, and all quality, 
 
 Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war ! 
 
 But with Lee this did not imply, as with the noble Moor, 
 Farewell the tranquil mind ! farewell content. 
 
170 A GREAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 Far from it ; for as the gates closed on the old occupa 
 tion, they opened on a new. And it was an occupa 
 tion through which he gave to his country, north and 
 south, a priceless gift. 
 
 Indifferent to wealth, he was scrupulous as respects 
 those money dealings a carelessness in regard to 
 which has embittered the lives of so many public 
 men, as not infrequently it has tarnished their fame. 
 Lee s whole career will be scrutinized in vain for 
 a suggestion even of the sordid, or of an obligation he 
 failed to meet. He was nothing if not self-respecting. 
 He once wrote to a member of his family, "vile 
 dross " has never been a drug with me/ yet his gene 
 rosity as a giver from his narrow means was limited 
 only by his resources. Restricting his own wants to 
 necessities, he contributed, to an extent which excites 
 surprise, to both public calls and private needs. But 
 the most priceless of those contributions were con 
 tained in the precepts he in those closing years incul 
 cated, and in the unconscious example he set. 
 
 And at this point I for the present part with Lee ; 
 but in so doing I revert to Burke s words : * Great 
 men are the guideposts and landmarks in the State . 
 Is Lee entitled to be numbered among the American 
 World-Great ? to constitute an additional star in that 
 as yet not numerous galaxy ? General, Educator, Vir 
 ginian, by some of my countrymen Lee is still looked 
 upon as a traitor and denounced as a renegade ; by 
 yet others he is venerated and loved I might even 
 say idolized. Here in Oxford, that ancient seat of old- 
 world learning, I, an American, am simply presenting 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 171 
 
 Lee s credentials on which to base his possible admis 
 sion among the World s Great one more American 
 Immortal. In the case of Lee, as in that of Verulam, 
 to pass finally upon this is a function reserved to 
 foreign nations and the next ages . 
 
 My course of lectures now draws to its appointed 
 end. Before closing it, however, I propose to de 
 vote the few minutes remaining to another subject, 
 one very cognate to Lee and the attitude assumed by 
 him at the close of the war in which he bore so con 
 spicuous a part. And here, as an American speaking 
 under the auspices of a British University, and that 
 University Oxford, I am conscious of entering on 
 somewhat delicate, perhaps I might even say dan 
 gerous ground. Nevertheless, the topic, one of great 
 historical interest, has, also, a very immediate con 
 nexion with a process of historic development of 
 which I treated in my first lecture I refer of course 
 to that American form of local self-government known 
 by us as State Sovereignty. 
 
 You here in Great Britain have for years, I might 
 even say for generations, been wrestling with what 
 you call the Irish Question ; for, as we in America 
 have sufficient cause to realize, Ireland has through 
 centuries been a restless, discontented, and at times 
 unruly portion of the United Kingdom. It is so still ; 
 and you are now considering, and propose apparently 
 soon to enact into your constitutional law a measure 
 of what you designate Home Eule. Now, at the outset, 
 let me say I am not here to discuss situations I at best 
 
172 A GEEAT HISTOEIC CHAEACTEE 
 
 only very imperfectly understand, or to hold myself 
 out as one either qualified or disposed to instruct 
 Englishmen, much less Irishmen, on their interests, 
 their policies, or the principles of sound polity or con 
 stitutional law and usage involved in the issues now 
 in debate. I fully appreciate the fact that institutions 
 differ; and the experience of one community may 
 have no application to conditions existing in another, 
 even though the two may speak the same tongue and 
 trace a common descent. Moreover, in the case of 
 nationalities as in that of individuals, the pathological 
 fact holds true that what is food to the one may be 
 poison to the other. All this I premise ; and so, what 
 I have now to say may or may not be applicable to 
 the situation by which you find yourselves confronted ; 
 nevertheless our recent experience bears some resem 
 blance to your present situation, and may be worth 
 considering in connexion therewith. For we too at 
 the close of our Civil War found ourselves with a race 
 issue on our hands and a section of our common 
 country seething with discontent in a word, per 
 plexed in the extreme by a condition of great unrest. 
 
 Our War of Secession closed in April, 1865, with 
 the complete submission of the States which had com 
 posed the Confederacy. Falling by the hand of an 
 assassin in the very hour of victory, Abraham Lincoln 
 had been succeeded in the presidential chair by Andrew 
 Johnson. Verily, a most unfortunate substitution ! 
 Of neither is it necessary for me to speak ; but, 
 historically, there followed a period on the events and 
 outcome of which Americans do not like to dwell. 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 173 
 
 Properly and intelligently studied, however, it conveys 
 a lesson possibly a lesson applicable in some degree 
 to your British conditions of to-day. 
 
 Because, as the outcome of our War of Secession, 
 and as penalty for what was done by individuals 
 in the course thereof, no blood flowed on the scaffold 
 and no confiscations of houses or lands marked the 
 close of the struggle, it has always been assumed by us 
 of the victorious party that extreme, indeed unprece 
 dented, clemency was shown to the vanquished ; and 
 that, subsequently, they had no good ground of com 
 plaint or sufficient cause for restiveness. That history 
 will accord assent to this somewhat self-complacent 
 conviction is open to question. On the contrary, it 
 may not unfairly be doubted whether a people prostrate 
 after civil conflict has often received severer measure 
 than was dealt out to the so-called reconstructed Con 
 federate States during the years immediately succeed 
 ing the close of strife. Adam Smith somewhere defined 
 rebels and heretics as those unlucky persons who, 
 when things have come to a certain degree of violence, 
 have the misfortune to be of the weaker party. 
 Spoliation and physical suffering have immemorially 
 been their lot. The Confederate, it is true, when he 
 ceased to resist, escaped this visitation in its usual and 
 time-approved form. Nevertheless, he was by no 
 means exempt from it. In the matter of confiscation, 
 it has been computed that the freeing of the slaves by 
 act of war swept out of existence property valued 
 at some four hundred millions sterling ; while, over and 
 above this, a system of simultaneous reconstruction 
 
174 A GREAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 subjected the disfranchised master to the rule of the 
 enfranchised bondsman. For a community conspi 
 cuously masterful, and notoriously quick to resent 
 affront, to be thus placed by alien force under the civil 
 rule of those of a different and distinctly inferior race, 
 only lately their bondsmen and property, is not 
 physical torment, it is true, but that it is mild or 
 considerate treatment can hardly be contended. Yet 
 this slave confiscation and reconstruction under 
 African rule was the war penalty imposed on the 
 States of the Confederacy. That the policy inspired 
 at the time a feeling of bitter resentment in the South 
 was no cause for wonder. Upon it time has already 
 recorded a verdict. Following the high precedent set 
 at Appomattox, it was distinctly unworthy. Conceived 
 in passion, it ignored both science and the philosophy 
 of statesmanship ; worse yet, it was ungenerous. 
 Lee, for instance, again setting the example, applied 
 formally for amnesty and a restoration of civil rights 
 within two months of his surrender. His application 
 was silently ignored ; while he died a prisoner on 
 parole , the suffrage denied him was conferred on his 
 manumitted slaves. Verily, it was not alone the 
 base Judian of the olden time who threw a pearl 
 away richer than all his tribe ! 
 
 The course thus adopted led to its natural results - 
 a deep feeling of wrong, of deprivation and resentment 
 pervaded the entire region which had constituted the 
 Confederacy. It manifested itself in a spirit of rest 
 lessness, in acts of violence, and in outrages on indivi 
 duals. This was only some forty years ago; to-day 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 175 
 
 peace, concord, and good-fellowship reign throughout 
 the common country. Slavery has ceased to exist ; 
 the Lost Cause is a cherished memory a sentiment : 
 there is no more loyal and contented portion of the 
 Union than those States which fifty years back consti 
 tuted the Confederacy. Through what means was 
 this extraordinary transmutation worked ? By what 
 process was it brought about ? 
 
 Strange indeed as it sounds, the remedy for the ills 
 consequent to the war was found in a recourse to the 
 system which had caused it. As I endeavoured to 
 point out in the first lecture of my course, the prin 
 ciple of State Sovereignty applied in its extreme form 
 in practice led to the trouble ; but, fifteen years later, 
 that same principle of State Sovereignty in its proper 
 form, now known as Local Self-Government, or, in 
 other words, Home Eule, brought to a close the unrest 
 and disturbance which naturally ensued from the 
 strife. Operating as a charm, it worked a miracle. 
 
 In this result, historically complete in our case, is 
 there a lesson beneficially to be studied by Great 
 Britain in disposing of the issues long and still con 
 fronting it in Ireland ? I do not know ; nor would it 
 be for me to express an opinion on that head did I 
 hold one. But, of course, it would at once be objected 
 that with us no racial question embittered the debate, 
 or was involved in the solution of the problem no 
 Celt was arrayed against Saxon. Perhaps not ; but, 
 on the other hand, evidence of eminent foreign 
 witnesses stands recorded among others that of 
 Lord Wolseley, and that of Eussell, your Times 
 
176 A GREAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 Crimean War correspondent, both speaking from careful 
 personal observation that the hate of Celt to Saxon, 
 and the contempt of Saxon for Celt, simply paled and 
 grew expressionless when compared with the con 
 tempt and hate felt by the Southron towards the 
 Yankee anterior to our Civil War and while it 
 was in progress. No Houyhnhnms ever looked on 
 Yahoo with greater aversion ; better, far better death 
 than further contamination through political associa 
 tion. This was only fifty years since ; it is all over 
 now, ancient and forgotten history; even discredited 
 as such, pronounced unveracious ! Yet it is suscept 
 ible of proof. 
 
 But again it will obviously be objected that we of 
 the North did not have in the Confederacy a colony, 
 settlement, or community of our own people whom it 
 would be a baseness to desert in fact, a Southern 
 Ulster. But this again is hardly so we did have 
 such a community, and it numbered millions ; the 
 Africans, once slaves, we had emancipated and were 
 in honour bound to protect. And this argument was 
 used to its full extent passionately even, and for 
 a time effectively, in opposition to the growing senti 
 ment in favour of local self-government, a recurrence 
 to State Sovereignty. None the less, the thing ulti 
 mately came about ; wearied with unrest, complete 
 Home Rule was in 1877, twelve years after the close 
 of the war, conceded to South Carolina, the prolific 
 mother of discord, and last of the Confederacy to 
 have statehood restored to it. 
 
 What resulted? Every political issue, every step 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 177 
 
 in the process of political evolution, be the same 
 upward or downward, is a question of pro and con, 
 a balancing of advantages. Sometimes, and not in 
 frequently as we all know, it of necessity becomes 
 a balancing of public and general good against private 
 hardship and individual wrong. As an abstract pro 
 position, however, subject of course to proper limita 
 tions, the general public good is the end to be kept in 
 view. Applying now this principle to the concrete 
 case of the emancipated African our Ulster there 
 is no question he suffered hardship when Home Kule 
 was restored to the States once constituting the Con 
 federacy. Deprived of the franchise in open disregard 
 of the fundamental law enacted for his protection in 
 it, throughout large sections of the common country 
 he was not, nor is he now, practically the equal of the 
 white in presence of the law. I state the case to its 
 full extent, and in the baldest way. But, on the other 
 hand, general peace, goodwill and loyalty were re 
 stored ; throughout the land unrest ceased. Where 
 under such circumstances do we look for the balance 
 in the weighing of the pros and cons ? 
 
 But on this head I wish to be more than fair ; so I 
 will state the Ulster argument, the wanton if you 
 desire so to stigmatize it abandonment to a cruel 
 oppressor of those we were bound to protect. As 
 a nation we were under the deepest obligations to the 
 Afro-American. I do not care again to summon from 
 his forgotten grave Mr. Peacock, once member of Par 
 liament for North Essex, with his confident visions of 
 Jacqueries and massacres of Cawnpore surely to result 
 
 1593 
 
178 A GREAT HISTORIC CHARACTER 
 
 from any attempt to make effective Lincoln s Pro 
 clamation of Emancipation. A very foolish man, let 
 him and the many who talked as he talked rest in 
 their wonted oblivion. To exhume and gibbet them 
 now would be ungenerous ; almost cruel, it savours of 
 the ghoulish, The plain historic truth, however, is 
 that African slavery, as it existed in the United States 
 anterior to 1862, an evil institution at best, yet con 
 stituted a mild form of servitude, as servitude then 
 existed and immemorially had almost everywhere 
 existed. And this was incontrovertibly proven by 
 the course of events subsequent to the issue of the 
 Proclamation. Before 1862, it was confidently be 
 lieved that any open social agitation within, or violent 
 disturbance from without, would inevitably lead to 
 a Southern servile insurrection. As I have already 
 elsewhere shown, the Proclamation when first issued 
 was denounced almost universally and in no measured 
 terms. It was stigmatized as a measure unwarranted 
 in warfare. From its practical operation unimagin 
 able horrors would surely ensue. 
 
 What actually occurred is now historic. The confi 
 dent anticipations of our English brethren were, not 
 for the first time, negatived ; nor is there any page in 
 our American record more creditable to those con 
 cerned, than the attitude held by the African during 
 the fierce internecine struggle which prevailed between 
 April, 1861, and April, 1865. In it there is scarcely 
 a trace, if indeed there is any trace at all, of such a con 
 dition of affairs as had developed in the Antilles in 1790 
 and iii Hindustan in 1850. The attitude of the African 
 
AND VAE VICTIS 179 
 
 towards his Confederate owner was submissive and 
 kindly. Although the armed and masterful domestic 
 protector was at the front and engaged in deadly, all- 
 absorbing conflict, yet the women and children of the 
 Southern plantation, with unbarred doors, slept free 
 from apprehension, much more from molestation. 
 This record certainly entitled the emancipated bonds 
 man to much consideration at the hands of those 
 who had emancipated him. An obligation had been 
 assumed. Yet it is an undeniable historical fact that 
 before the memories of the Civil War had yet ceased 
 to be vivid, the emancipated Afro- American was, under 
 the operation of a restored State Sovereignty as you 
 would call it, Home Rule left to the far from tender 
 mercies of his quondam owner. It certainly looked 
 bad. The possible outcome of such a proceeding was 
 foreseen, and to a very considerable extent it came 
 about. Yet, in the not remote close the Afro- American 
 himself was greatly benefited. Ceasing to be a bone 
 of contention and an object of political dislike in 
 a word, a scape-goat he shared not least of all in the 
 results of a restored good feeling. In other words, 
 left alone he found his place, and, in a measure, 
 learned to protect himself. The problem of the 
 advance and present condition of those of the African 
 race in what was once their land of bondage is with 
 us in America much debated and involved in doubt. 
 Into it, though most interesting, I do not propose 
 here to enter. It is unquestionably one of the 
 numerous great issues, as yet only partially solved 
 and not become historical, resulting from the outcome 
 
180 A GREAT HISTORIC CHARACTER, ETC. 
 
 of our War of Secession. On one point, however, no 
 question remains : it has passed out of the forum of 
 political discussion. There is an ancient and not 
 altogether savoury precept as to the cure to be attained 
 by the ministering to a patient of a hair of the dog 
 that bit him ; and so in America, looking fifty years 
 later at the ultimate solution of the troubles incident 
 to the outcome of our civil strife and they were many 
 and great no question exists, North or South, among 
 white or black as to the balance of advantage or dis 
 advantage resulting from the restoration after the 
 close of our contest of Home Rule, under the guise of 
 a limited State Sovereignty, to the several communities 
 once composing the Confederate States of America. 
 In all the United States not one man, I make bold to 
 assert, could be found gravely and dispassionately 
 to advocate a recurrence to the policy of force and 
 repression to which a mistaken recourse was had 
 during the brief and discredited decennium between 
 1866 and 1876. 
 
 Is it not within the bounds of possibility that, 
 intelligently observed and dispassionately studied, 
 there might here again be found for Great Britain 
 of to-day a suggestive moral derivable from trans- 
 Atlantic historical solidarity? 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abimelech, death of, 159 11. 
 
 Achaian league, 36. 
 
 Acton, John Emerich Ward Dai- 
 berg, Baron, on Lee, 141. 
 
 Adams, Charles Francis, self-com 
 mand as American Minister, 18 ; 
 anxieties, 102, 104. 
 
 Air-pump, blockade as, 157, 160. 
 
 Albert, Francis Charles Augustus 
 Emmanuel, Prince Consort, fear 
 of Democracy, 22. 
 
 Alexander, E. P., 151. 
 
 Alien and sedition laws. 41. 
 
 Allegiance, 46 ; Lee and, 136. 
 
 America, Burke on, 33 ; celebrities, 
 134. 
 
 Appomattox. 32 ; surrender of Lee, 
 165. 
 
 Arbitration, Geneva, 121. 
 
 Argyll, Duke of, 18, 78 
 
 Armada, Spanish, 16. 
 
 Army, Southern, 156 ; of Virginia, 
 last stand, 161. 
 
 Articles of Confederation, 39. 
 
 Ash worth, Henry, on cost of cotton, 
 123. 
 
 Asia, cotton of, 90, 122. 
 
 Bacon, Francis, Lord, 171. 
 
 Bank of England and cotton, 66. 
 
 Bathurst, Henry, Burke s vision, 
 33. 
 
 Bentinck, G. W., on Democracy, 109. 
 
 Beresford-Hope, Alexander James, 
 on Proclamation of Emancipa 
 tion, 108. 
 
 Bernhardi, Friedrich von, on Eng 
 lish policy in American War, 57, 
 112,117. 
 
 Blackburn, cotton famine, 89. 
 
 Blackwootfa Edinburgh Magazine, 
 on Conservatism, 21 ; on Ameri 
 can characteristic, 126. 
 
 Blockade of South, believed impos 
 sible, 64; and cotton, 67, 88; 
 effective, 155. 
 
 Bright, John, Democrat, 22; sup 
 
 ports the north, 70, 77, 84 ; influ 
 ence, 78 ; prophecy, 88 ; Procla 
 mation of Emancipation, 111. 
 
 Brougham, Henry, Lord, 119. 
 
 Browning, Robert, 84. 
 
 Bryan, William Jennings, 28. 
 
 Bryce, James, on American War of 
 Secession, 10. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, vision of America, 
 33 ; on great men, 133. 
 
 Burnside, Ambrose Everett, 21, 145. 
 
 Cabinet, British, meeting on medi 
 ation, 99, 103, 107 ; collectivity. 
 104. 
 
 California, legislation against Asi 
 atics, 27, 51. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 119. 
 
 Chancellorsville, 144. 
 
 Charles T, 30. 
 
 Chatham, Earl of, 36. 
 
 Chattel-humanity, end of, 14. 
 
 Churchill, John, Duke of Marl- 
 borough, 142. 
 
 Citizenship, 46, 53. 
 
 Cobden, Richard, 78, 92 ; on Lanca 
 shire, 95; assurance against in 
 tervention, 112. 
 
 Coleridge, John Taylor, Great Bri 
 tain in American War of Seces 
 sion, 18. 
 
 Collectivism, 15. 
 
 Colonies discredited, 76. 
 
 Common law, 46. 
 
 Compromise in Federal Constitu 
 tion, 38. 
 
 Confederacy, Southern, collapse of, 
 157. 
 
 Confederation, New England, 31. 
 
 Conservatism, reaction to, in Great 
 Britain, 21. 
 
 Constitution, United States, fram 
 ing of, 37 ; sovereignty under, 43. 
 
 Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Earl of 
 Shaftesbury, 83. 
 
 Cotton, supremacy of, 65, 97, 124 ; 
 and blockade, 67 ; crisis, 87, 100, 
 
182 
 
 INDEX 
 
 122; American crop, 1860, 88; 
 Asiatic, 90 ; prices, 91, 122. 
 Crimea, War of the, 15. 
 
 Daily Neivs on Proclamation of 
 
 Emancipation, 111. 
 Darwin, Charles, 79. 
 Davis, Jefferson, 142 ; desires to 
 
 continue war, 163, 166. 
 Declaration of Independence, 36. 
 Delane, John Thacleus, 75. 
 De Leon, T. C., 67. 
 Democracy, movement toward, 14 ; 
 
 collapse of, 21 ; fear of, 72, 109 ; 
 
 training, 127. 
 Derby, Earl of, 92. 
 Dickens, Charles, 72. 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Bea- 
 
 consfield, 18, 81 ; on colonies, 76. 
 Drake, Sir Francis, 16. 
 Dred, Mrs. Stowe s, 83. 
 
 Fisher, Fort, 161. 
 
 Forster, William Edward,_78. 
 
 France, American possessions, 76; 
 
 mediation, 99. 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 36. 
 Fredericksburg, 144. 
 
 Geneva, arbitration, 121. 
 
 Geon/e Grincold, relief ship, 95. 
 
 Gettysburg campaign, 146. 
 
 Gibson, Thomas Milner, 78. 
 
 Gladstone, William Ewart, 93; on 
 American Union, 62, 116; medi 
 ation, 101, 117; Newcastle speech, 
 104, 128 ; distrust of Palmerston, 
 105; after the war, 115; utter 
 ance remembered, 118; Treaty 
 of Washington, 121. 
 
 Grant, Ulysses Simpson, 145, 158; 
 at A.ppomattox, 166. 
 
 Granville, George Leveson-Gower, 
 Earl, 102; on Gladstone and 
 Palmerston, 105. 
 
 Great Britain, opinion on American 
 War, 11, 18, 58, 69, 71; on De 
 mocracy, 21, Great Rebellion, 29 ; 
 Bernhardi on, 57. 
 
 Griswold, George, 95. 
 
 Guns, breechloading and magazine, 
 16. 
 
 Hammond, James Henry, power of 
 
 South, 63; on blockade, 64; 
 
 cotton supremacy, 66. 
 History as a science, 114. 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 138. 
 Home Rule in Ireland, 171. 
 Hooker, Joseph, 145, 149. 
 Hughes, Thomas, 78. 
 Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, 
 
 30. 
 
 Index, on cotton crisis, 93 ; Procla 
 mation of Emancipation, 109 ; 
 no surrender, 165. 
 
 India, cotton fortunes, 122. 
 
 Intervention, proposed French, 77, 
 127 ; Palmerston, 99. 
 
 Ireland, Home Rule in, 171. 
 
 Jackson, Thomas Jonathan ( Stone 
 wall ), 143, 145, 154. 
 
 Japan, legislation of California, 27. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, 41, 45. 
 
 Johnson, Andrew, 172. 
 
 Johnston, Joseph Eccleston, 142, 
 165. 
 
 Kentucky Resolutions, 1798, 41, 
 139. 
 
 Lancashire, 68, 70, 158 ; cotton 
 supply, 89; labour in, 91 ; patient 
 endurance, 93 ; relief returns, 96. 
 
 Leadership in War of Indepen 
 dence, 36. 
 
 Lee, Henry, and Virginia, 139. 
 
 Lee, Robert Edward, greatness of, 
 134, 170; charges against, 135, 
 138 ; State influence, 137 ; choice 
 to follow State, 140; as general, 
 142 ; Gettysburg campaign, 146 ; 
 confidence in army, 149 ; final 
 campaign, 153, 160 ; last stand, 
 161 ; to arm slaves, 163 ; surren 
 ders, 166 ; after the war, 168 ; in 
 difference to wealth, 170; denied 
 suffrage, 174. 
 
 Lepanto, battle of, 16. 
 
 Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 18 ; 
 reply to Gladstone, 106. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 127; Procla 
 mation of Emancipation, 14, 19, 
 108 ; Time* on, 74 ; assassination, 
 165. 
 
 Long Parliament, 30. 
 
 Longstreet, James, 145. 
 
 Louisiana, sale by France, 76. 
 
INDEX 
 
 183 
 
 M c Clellan, George Bhnton, 21, 145. 
 Manchester school, 76. 
 Massachusetts, Constitution of, 36 ; 
 
 Texas, 42. 
 Meade, George Gordon, 147, 149, 
 
 152. 
 
 Mediation, proposed, 100. 
 Merrimac, 15. 
 Mill, John Stuart, 78 ; on War of 
 
 Secession, 19. 
 
 Mississippi, control of, 158. 
 Monitor, 16. 
 Moore, John Bassett, 53. 
 
 Napoleon I, military aphorism, 
 144. 
 
 Napoleon III, 69 ; favours South, 
 75 ; American ambitions, 76 ; in 
 tervention in American war, 77, 
 100. 
 
 Nationality, American, 29 ; not 
 sovereign, 38 ; historical deve 
 lopment, 44. 
 
 Navy, in War of Secession, 15. 
 
 New England Confederation, 1643. 
 31 ; and embargo, 41. 
 
 New Orleans, 158. 
 
 North, the, and nationality, 49. 
 
 Northcote, Sir Stafford, 18. 
 
 Northumberland on Democracy, 23. 
 
 Nullification in South Carolina, 42. 
 
 Ocean, control of the, 158. 
 Oxford University, American Lec 
 tures, 9 ; cotton relief, 92. 
 
 Palmerston, see Temple. 
 
 Peacock, , on Proclamation of 
 Emancipation, 108. 
 
 Pclletan, Eugene, on cotton supre 
 macy, 124. 
 
 Pemberton, John Clifford, 145. 
 
 Peter the Hermit, 80. 
 
 Petersburg, Va., 158. 
 
 Plutarch, history of Pyrrhus, 159. 
 
 Pope, John, 145. 
 
 1 Pope campaign, 98. 
 
 Potter, Thomas Bayley, 78. 
 
 Preston, cotton famine, 89. 
 
 Proclamation of Emancipation, 14, 
 19 ; issue of, 108 ; comments on, 
 108, 178. 
 
 Pyrrhus, death of, 159. 
 
 Race hatreds, 175. 
 
 Recognition of South proposed, 99. 
 
 Reconstruction in South, 165, 173. 
 
 Rhodes, James Ford, 9. 
 
 Rochdale, meeting in, 94. 
 
 Roebuck, John Arthur, 119. 
 
 Rousseau, James Jacques, 80. 
 
 Russell, John, Earl, 22, 98; on 
 recognition of South, 99 ; circu 
 lar to Cabinet, 100. 
 
 Russell, William Howard, 20, 175. 
 
 Russia, mediation, 99. 
 
 Saturday Review, 19. 
 
 Scotland and Mrs. Stowe, 83. 
 
 Scott, Winfield, 138. 
 
 Sebastopol, naval operations, 16. 
 
 Secession, War of, begun 61 ; Lee 
 on, 137. 
 
 Sedgwick, John, 151. 
 
 Seward, William Henry, 127 ; in 
 structions to Adams, 102. 
 
 Sherman, William Tecumseh, 145, 
 158. 
 
 Slavery, end of human, 14 ; in 
 1820, 41 ; and sovereignty, 48 ; 
 British against, 72 ; disappear 
 ing, 81. 
 
 Slavery, in War of Secession, 20. 
 
 Slaves, protection of, 176 ; conduct 
 in war, 178. 
 
 Smith, Adam, on rebels and here 
 tics, 173. 
 
 Smith, Goldwin, 78. 
 
 Socialism, 15. 
 
 South Carolina and nullification, 
 42 ; State s rights, 138. 
 
 South, the, and State Sovereignty, 
 49; resources, 62, 69; confidence, 
 63 ; foreign support, 69 ; cotton, 
 88. 
 
 Sovereignty. State, 96, 186 ; divid 
 ed, 43, 47 ; and slavery, 48. 
 
 Stanley, Edward George Geoffrey 
 Smith, Earl of Derby, fear of 
 Democracy, 22. 
 
 State Sovereignty, 29, 45 ; and 
 Home Rule, 171 ; in South, 174. 
 
 State s rights, 40. 
 
 Stephen, Leslie, English opinion of 
 America, 18. 
 
 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 68, 77, 93 ; 
 Uncle Tom s Calm, 70, 79, 124; 
 European greetings, 82; Dred, 
 83. 
 
 Suffrage, under reconstruction, 174. 
 
184 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Sutherland, Duke and Duchess of, [ 
 83. 
 
 Temple, Henry John, Viscount 
 Palmerston, and Delane, 75; 
 proposes intervention, 99, 129 ; 
 dislike of Gladstone, 105; to j 
 await issue, 107 ; misappre- ! 
 hends situation, 114. 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 71 ; on 
 Bright, 78. 
 
 Texas, annexation, 42. 
 
 Thomas, George Henry, 138. 
 
 Timeliness, important, 80. 
 
 Times, London, 19; supports the 
 South, 69 ; influence of, 73 ; lan 
 guage of, 74 ; Uncle Tonis Cabin, 
 82. 
 
 Toombs, Robert, on Uncle Tom , 
 80. 
 
 Treaties, standing of, 51. 
 
 Treaty of Washington, 121. 
 
 Ulster, 177. 
 
 Uncle Tom s Cabin, influence of, 
 79, 82, 124, 159. 
 
 Union, dissolution of the, 42, 62. 
 
 United States, War of Secession, 
 Bryce on, 10 ; important results, 
 13 ; Mill on, 19 ; memory of, 59. 
 
 Vicksburg, fall of, 145. 
 
 Victoria, Queen, 98. 
 
 Virginia and State s rights, 137; 
 
 resolutions, 139. 
 Virginia, 16. 
 
 Washington, George, 36. , 
 
 Washington, Treaty of, 121. 
 Wilderness, campaign in, 153. 
 William of Orange, 141. 
 Wilmington, N. C., 161. 
 Wilson, Woodrow, President, 27. 
 Wolseley, Garnet, Lord, 119, 175. 
 
 Oxford : Printed at the Clarendon Press by Horace Hart 
 
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