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Calhoun in 1837 formally accepted slavery, saying that the South should no longer apologize for it; and the whole argument from the standpoint of expediency received eloquent expression in the Senate of the United States from no less a man than Henry Clay, who more and more appears in the perspective as a pro-Southern advocate. Said he: "I am no friend of slavery.
Following the example of California, representatives of the new government asked for prompt admission to the Union. The Southerners had never recognized California as properly within the Union, and the pro-Southern party in Kansas made open war upon the Topeka party in December.
This fact alone, if correctly alleged, furnishes tolerable evidence of the persistency and influence of pro-Southern papers and partisans, and their ingenuity in so misreading the facts, "Chè il no e il sì nel capo ci tenzona." The event has proved that the chances of success were really very much on the side of the North.
There was widespread opposition to the annexation of new territory, especially pro-Southern territory, by the new method. Joint resolutions in State legislatures that were evenly divided were not unknown; but for Congress to evade a plain rule of the Constitution requiring two thirds of the Senate by a mere majority of both houses was denounced as the rankest usurpation.
Since the Senate was Democratic and pro-Southern, and the House Republican and pro-Northern, a decision was impossible. The Topeka constitution was supported by the House, and even the fair and reasonable bill of the Senate offered by Toombs in 1856 was rejected. This called for a submission of both parties in Kansas to an election safeguarded against unlawful interference from any source.
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.
The sudden rise of the Republican party in protest against it, and the promise of Northern control of the Federal Government, heartened them to the great struggle of 1856. But the failure to win the populous States of Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, and the solid front of the South, the compact pro-Southern Senate, and the moral effect of the Dred Scott decision discouraged them.
Foreseeing from the first this double set of consequences from the success or failure of the rebellion, it may be imagined with what feelings I contemplated the rush of nearly the whole upper and middle classes of my own country even those who passed for Liberals, into a furious pro-Southern partisanship: the working classes, and some of the literary and scientific men, being almost the sole exceptions to the general frenzy.
More than this, the possession of Boonville struck a fatal blow at Confederate recruiting and organization throughout the whole of that strategic area; for Boonville was the center to which pro-Southern Missourians were flocking.
In England the classes continued to be pro-Southern in sympathy, but the masses, in spite of cotton famines, held resolutely to their faith in the cause of freedom. After Lincoln's emancipation of the slaves, the view of the English middle classes more and more became the view of the nation.
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