As early as December, 1860, before the war began, Bunch, at Charleston, had reported a conversation with Rhett, in which the latter frankly declared that the South would expect to revive the African Slave Trade[876].

This was limited in the constitution later adopted by the Confederacy which in substance left the matter to the individual states--a condition that Southern agents in England found it hard to explain[877].

As already noted, the ardent friends of the North continued to insist, even after Lincoln's denial, that slavery was the real cause of the American rupture[878].

By September, 1861, John Bright was writing to his friend Sumner that, all indications to the contrary, England would warmly support the North if only it could be shown that emancipation was an object[879].

Again and again he urged, it is interesting to note, just those ideals of gradual and compensated emancipation which were so strongly held by Lincoln.