Abraham Lincoln quarterly. [Vol. 3, no. 2]

8.o ABRAHAM LINCOLN QUARTERLY
and finish as quickly as possible; not to prolong and exacerbate.
The rigid American Constitution and the fluid American massdemocratic politics might have contributed to the disaster. Britain might sympathize with the South. But The Economist observed, so early, that most of the world was bound to become increasingly dependent for peace and prosperity upon firm and
amicable Anglo-American solidarity.'
The influence of these two liberal weeklies was very great
among British businessmen, family life and the church; and
to their steadying influence must be added that of the Daily
News., Morning Star, and other daily papers. Moreover Lincoln had supporters in Tory circles. The leader of the opposition was a Tory and a Jew, named Disraeli. He rose in the
Commons in 1863 to warn the House and the cabinet not to
mistake the feeling of the British people, not to count on
Tory support, and not to intervene to put a stop to the Civil
War. There may have been something of every opposition's
desire to embarrass the government in this, but at least it
helped Lincoln.
It is fitting that I should refer here, at the very heart of
Illinois and of America, to one significant development in all
British attitudes towards Lincoln. Whether they favored him
or not, they concurred in one particular: namely that he was
the first of a new kind of President from the new Middle West.
British travelers in America had long noted the importance
of the Great West as it was called, of the pioneer movement
westwards, and of the region's economic development. The
same Mackay, whom I quoted prophesying in the forties
abolition of slavery or the end of the Union, pointed out that
the Mississippi and its basin would prevent any permanent
separation of North and South. The great river, he said, was
an essential artery for the people of the new Middle West,
and they would never give up control of its mouth and lower
5 rmThe Economist: 1843-1943, Oxford University Press, 1943,, p. 84.