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:
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
