Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866

The collapse of the South came at last; and nearly at the same moment came the murder of a man whose modesty, integrity, firmness, single-minded persistency, unresentfulness, and substantial truth of judgment have been invested by his fate with an almost sacred depth of interest and significance,—President Lincoln. Amid the many momentous bearings of these events, it is for me to note only one of comparative unimportance,—the effect which they produced upon English public opinion. There was, I think, a certain good-fortune for Southern sympathizers, in the fact that the announcement of Lincoln's death almost synchronized with that of the surrender of the Confederate armies. After so many confident anticipations and loud predictions of a Southern triumph, so many denunciations of the policy, acts, and leaders of the North, these sympathizers found themselves in a sort of cul-de-sac when Richmond had been taken. Lee had yielded, Johnston was yielding, and the very same "butcher" Grant, "ruthless" Sherman, and "Yahoo" Lincoln, whose savageries and imbecilities had been the theme of annual moral-pointing, were reading the world a lesson of moderation and self-forgetfulness in victory, such as almost seemed to shrink from the plentitude of a triumph which was a humiliation to some of their countrymen. The sympathizers found that they were and had long been of the party in evil odor with that modern "Providence which sides with the stronger battalions," not to speak of the older "God of Battles." They were pulled up sharp in the direction they had been going in, and the alternative of turning right round and retracing their steps was a very awkward and unwelcome one. The assassination of Lincoln came to their relief. They could join, without insincerity, in the burst of public feeling which that terrible deed excited; could merge their protests against Lincoln in the established unwillingness to say evil of the dead; could give momentary pause to national and political considerations, beside the grave of one preëminent citizen; and could start afresh afterwards, with a new situation, and a new chief figure in it to contemplate. President Johnson had taken the place of President Lincoln, and had, at the hands of many of Lincoln's vituperators, succeeded to an inheritance of the abuse lavished upon him. Neither caution nor moderation had been learned by some, suitable as were the circumstances of Lincoln's death for teaching the lesson. Of late, however, I have observed symptoms of a decided change in this respect: the policy of President Johnson being recognized as broad, generous, resolute, and auspicious of the best results. I think this feeling, and a general sentiment of respect and good-will for the United States, promise to grow rapidly and powerfully among my countrymen,—who, true once again to their conservative instincts, will look with a certain regard upon a nation which can show those elements of solidity and "respectability," a tremendous past war, and a heavy national debt, with augmented authority in the central government. John Bull's ill-humor against the "Yankees" has been in vigorous exercise these four years, and has assumed fair latitude for growling itself out: it has been palpably wrong in some of its inferences; for the bubble of Democracy has not burst, nor the Republic been split up into two or three federations, nor the abolition of slavery been a mere pretext and hypocrisy. Englishmen, with their practical turn, and candid frankness towards those to whom they have done less than right, may be expected in the future to look upon the States with a degree of confidence and cordiality long deplorably absent. The events of the war have, in the long run, compelled even the hostile party to respect the Unionists and their government: the plague of slavery is fast going, and, with its disappearance, will relieve Englishmen from either (as they used to do) reprobating the Americans as abettors of and trucklers to the barbaric institution, or else (as they have been doing of late) from inventing half-sincere excuses for that same institution, to subserve partisan feelings. As matters stand at present in the United States, there appears to be only one contingency which would again rouse into a fierce flame the glowing embers of pro-Southern sentiment among Englishmen, and restore Southerners to the position of angels of light, and Northerners to that of angels of darkness, in British imaginations. This contingency is harshness in the treatment and trial of ex-President Davis, and more especially his execution as a traitor. Southern sympathizers declare that such a proceeding would be an abominable crime: the steadiest, most thorough, and most confiding adherents of the North believe, that, whatever else it might be, it would, at any rate, be most deplorable,—an ugly blight-spot upon laurels won arduously and gloriously, and as yet nobly worn.

I have now, in however cursory or limping a mode, gone over the ground I proposed to cover. The main conclusion of all may be summarized in the briefest terms thus. A slight majority of the whole British nation probably sided with the North, and that chiefly on anti-slavery grounds: a great majority of the more influential classes, certainly, sided with the South, and that chiefly on general grounds of antagonism to the United States. For anything I have said which may possibly sound egotistic or intrusive,—still more for anything erroneous or unfair in my statements or point of view,—I must commit myself to the candid construction of my reader, be he American or English, be he on the same side of the question as myself, or on the opposite one.