1 66 THROUGH THREEFOLD TENSION 



the suggestion of a readiness on the part of 

 Great Britain, in conjunction with her good 

 ally Napoleon III, to undertake a guarantee of 

 the threatened regions against the filibusters 

 was peremptorily repelled by the United States. 

 This much of interest in the subject by Great 

 Britain only confirmed, however, the appre 

 hensions of the extreme pro-slavery partisans 

 in the South, to whom the avowed abolitionism 

 of the British was an ever-present terror. 



Internal party politics in the middle fifties 

 contributed singularly to confirm the Amer 

 ican manifestations of anti-British feeling. 

 After 1852 the Democratic Party controlled 

 the government. The strength of this party 

 consisted largely of the slaveholders of the South 

 and the masses of Irish immigrants in the 

 North. Enmity toward all things British was 

 a dominant passion in both these classes. That 

 the administrations of Pierce and Buchanan 

 should, under the circumstances, have pre 

 served amity with Great Britain, is a tribute to 

 the diplomatic correctness of statesmen whose 

 reputations have been dimmed by the malev 

 olence of later political events. 



What was probably the most serious situation 

 during the period we are discussing was pro- 



