October 8, 1864---"The English had a right to . . . indulge to excess, to give our sympathy to the weaker side in any quarrel."

OCTOBER 8, 1864:            

The unabashedly pro-Confederate Illustrated London News publishes an editorial politely excusing itself for its own shameless partisanship and placing blame where it properly belongs, on the crude and violent Colonials who made them do it. The editorial reads in part:

We entirely approve of the remonstrances that have lately been offered by a portion of the London press against the tone which has been much too generally adopted by public speakers and writers in discussing the events of the American war . . . [W]e may fairly assert that at no period of the war have we permitted ourselves to be irritated into printing aught that . . .  can properly give offence to American readers. We . . . wish that partisans on both sides would remember that the exasperating interference of bystanders in a quarrel is much more slowly forgiven by combatants than the wrongs which each supposes himself to have sustained from his enemy.

It would be absurd to deny that the supposed weakness of the Confederates, and the gallant fight which they have made . . . have enlisted on the side of the South a very large share of British sympathy. Nearly all the leading newspapers of this country have seemed delighted to chronicle the successes of the Confederates, to make the most of the deeds of their Generals, and to speak slightingly of the efforts of the Unionists. Journals . . . now chronicle the story of the combat with warm admiration and treat each campaign as a new step towards Southern independence . . . the Federals . . . will not be entitled to complain of us . . . It is clear that both London and Washington were deceived as to the power and resolution of the South . . . If the Federals knew so little of the will and of the resources of provinces with which they were in daily and hourly communication, it was scarcely to be expected that we, at a fortnight's distance from New York, should be better informed . . . We saw the Federals beaten in the field, and . . .  impotent at sea; while the Confederates grew stronger and stronger . . . The South held its own, and holds it still; . . . [h]ereafter, the Federals will, we imagine, be ashamed of the language in which they have permitted their organs to revile the Southern combatants, who have shown themselves so worthy of the name of Americans.

Let it be admitted, therefore, that the English had a right to . . . indulge to excess, to give our sympathy to the weaker side in any quarrel. A small nation gallantly struggling against a great one is almost certain to find favour in England* . . . If we have given too strong expression to our admiration of the pluck of the Confederates, we have erred; . . . the Federal combatants . . .  have fought well, or the South needed not to have fought so hard. In fact, it would be worse than childish to allege that the great body of the English people did injustice to the efforts of the Federals, although the character of the war necessarily attracted attention to the resisting rather than to the assailing champions.

It is not unfair, nor is it unkind . . . to say that we in England had considerable provocation to speak somewhat frankly on American affairs. For ten years, at least, before the war the leading American journals were full of abuse of this country . . . [U]p to the very last mails, England is still abused and menaced for a neutrality which has been sternly preserved under the most difficult circumstances which ever complicated the relations of those who ought to be the firmest friends.

*Unless said nation is a British colonial possession, that is --- Konrei