ENGLAND AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR [To the Editor of
the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—Will you allow me to suggest to Mr. J. Frederick FAsary; and to any other' Americans who may be interested, that they should read what Herbert Spencer wrote in his autobiography about the attitude of English people towards the American Civil War ?
In a letter prepared for a New York newspaper Spencer produced incontestable proof from English newspaper cuttings that in the beginning the sympathy of England was with the North. He quoted, for example, the Spectator, which stated on January 5th, 1861: " The Southerners . . . are fighting, not to be left alone, but for the preservation and maintenance of the slave system, to which everything must be subordinated." In this letter, which was prepared in 1869, Spencer wrote : " Not a single expression of sympathy with the South has been discovered in the course of the examination." For reasons not creditable to America, the letter was not published then, but appeared sonic years later in The New York Tribune.
According to Spencer, public opinion in this country veered' round because of the abuse showered on us by the North. He wrote : " It has been said of me by some of your (American) writers that I am in feeling more an American than an Englishman . . " nevertheless, " irritated day after day by seeing ascribed to Englishmen ignoble motives which certainly were not prevalent, if they existed at all, the strength of my fellow feeling with the North gradually diminished."—I am, Sir, &c., PETER F. SOMERVILLE.
Oaklands, 109 Gipsy Hill, Norwood, London, S.E. 19.
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