THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 205 



solution; but there was no sympathy with the 

 suggestion of permanent utility in slavery and 

 of a revival of the African slave-trade, nor was 

 there any approval of the idea that the main 

 tenance of slavery was in itself a sufficient jus 

 tification of secession by the South. Hence 

 the unceasing vigilance of the most acute South 

 ern leaders to avoid all discussion of the slavery 

 question and to put the case of the South on the 

 other grounds. This policy received much sup 

 port from the Northern government itself in 

 the early days of the war; for out of regard for 

 sentiment in the non-seceded slave States Pres 

 ident Lincoln s administration systematically 

 kept abolitionist doctrine in the background, 

 and based its appeal for support on the su 

 premacy of the nation over the State. It is 

 not at all surprising that foreign governments 

 adopted at the outset the view that slavery 

 was involved only incidentally in the quarrels 

 of the sections. 



One powerful element of public opinion in 

 Great Britain adopted very early the view that 

 slavery was the real cause of the war and that 

 it was the duty of good people, therefore, to 

 give their sympathy to the North. Such was 

 the conviction reached by Cobden, Bright, 



