One thing upon which Englishmen prided themselves was their role in suppressing the transatlantic slave trade and abolishing slavery in the West Indies. To support a rebellion in behalf of slavery would be un-British. To accept the notion that the South fought for independence rather than slavery required considerable mental legerdemain. But so long as the North did not fight for freedom, many Britons could see no moral superiority in the Union cause. If the North wanted to succeed in “their struggle [for] the sympathies of Englishmen,” warned a radical newspaper, “they must abolish slavery.”
