They were also caught up in something far less attractive and more ominous that autumn: the reverberations of the American Civil War. It had never been far from mind since the fighting had started in the spring. For Canadians, it was like a deep, unceasing drum-beat in the background: sometimes drowned by their own outcries over the census, rep by pop, or the general elections; sometimes swelling in its own crescendos, as during the first great battle of Bull Run in late July. Yet always it was there. Nor was it merely that Canadians were front-row spectators of an immense conflict. The war was rousing old antagonisms between the United States and Britain, between Americans and British subjects in America. And, more and more, the problem of their own defence began to loom as a serious question for Canadians, as the war and growing international tension went onward without sign of end.
They had lost much of their initial sympathy for the Northern cause, which had largely been based on their own strong aversion to slavery. When it became apparent that Lincoln and the Republicans did not, after all, intend to fight a war to free the slaves but rather to preserve the American union, the Canadians had felt disgruntled and confused. Many asked why it had been right for the thirteen original colonies to declare their independence, but wrong for the southern states to do the same. Some degree of sentiment favourable to the South emerged: either for resolute men struggling for their liberty, or for discontented states that had proved that the sprawling democratic republic was inherently unsound and must collapse. In short, either the left or right in Canadian political opinion could turn pro-Southern, though the trend became more noticeable in the Conservative press. Furthermore, the colonial views might often echo those of the Mother country, where the governing classes decidedly sympathized with the “gentlemanly” South – although leading British middle-class Liberals like Richard Cobden and John Bright, with strong working-class support, maintained their faith in the democracy of the American North, and in its ultimate decision to abolish slavery.73
There were other reasons, too, for a Canadian reaction against the North. The Americans’ rather irritating tendency to identify their own purposes with Divine plan had led them to angry denunciations of the British, who at home and in America had not shown proper willingness to aid the sword of the Lord in putting down most foul rebellion.74 They had not opened the colonies’ skimpy stock of arms for Northern use; they had even presumed to invoke neutrality in the struggle.75 And mounting American resentment showed itself further in renewed talk of wresting British North America from England. The powerful New York Herald had pushed the project quite cold-bloodedly, either as a means of reuniting the divided states in a war against the old national enemy, or as a consolation prize to the North for letting the South go.76 This sort of talk might be discounted as so much American press bluster, except that it expressed a genuine growth of animosity to Britain in the United States. It even seemed to be reflected in the policies of Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward, who in the early months of the war toyed with notions of his own for exploiting anti-British sentiment, and by no means kept them hidden.77
Consequently, as British-American relations deteriorated almost steadily throughout 1861, and as Canadian and American newspapers snapped at each other across the border, it was all the more noteworthy that the largest provincial journal, George Brown’s Globe, continued to support the North in the Civil War. Not that his paper failed to criticize the Americans, to answer their attacks on Britain, or to scorn their wild proposals to annex Canada. Yet, like Brown’s own archetypes of middle-class British Liberalism, Cobden and Bright, the Globe continued to believe in the essential rightness of the Northern cause, and in the absence of any real grounds for a war between Britain and the United States.
Plainly, the explanation lay in Brown himself. His personal and business ties with the Northern states were many; and he had repeatedly visited New York, not only to transact Globe business but also to stay with his sister and brother-in-law, Jane and George Mackenzie, who were firmly rooted in that city. Furthermore, his first six years in America, spent in New York, had given him a deep appreciation of the ordinary American’s sense of freedom, his self-reliance and innate decency, even though the excessive sweep of elective institutions might make his democratic government unstable or irresponsible. But despite the shortcomings of republican rule, Brown as a Liberal warmly believed in the value of the huge American democratic experiment for all mankind.78 It must not fail. And, inevitably, the blot of slavery must be erased from it. His own abolitionism, begun in youth in Scotland, had simply been made more ardent by his years in the United States. Certainly it did not flag in Canada thereafter, as his prominent part in Toronto’s Anti-Slavery Society made fully evident.
Thus it was that Brown and his journal stayed firmly by the North in battle: because it fought to save a vast enterprise of freedom, and because it would yet become the means of expunging slavery from half a continent. They denied that the chaotic Federal retreat from Bull Run meant that the fight would soon end in Confederate victory. They assured exulting pro-Southern journals in Canada that there still would be a desperate struggle, but that the North would win.79 They discounted alarmist talk of the danger of invasion, and of the Federals’ plans to turn their armies against the British provinces when the Civil War was over, contending that the United States was bending all its energies to the internal conflict, and would have had quite enough of warfare when that was done.80 By these determined efforts Brown and his paper did much to sustain pro-Northern opinion in Canada. Others did so as well, for the North had by no means lost all its support in the province. Yet the Globe’s influence was so extensive that it must have played a major part in countering pro-Southern leanings among Canadians. It was no easy part, in any case – especially when, in mid-November 1861, a major crisis suddenly broke out between the United States and Britain.
The Federal frigate San Jacinto had stopped the British mail steamer Trent in mid-Atlantic, and high-handedly seized two Confederate commissioners aboard, Mason and Slidell, who were being sent as their government’s emissaries to France and England. It was a blatant violation of neutral rights; but the Northern press, eager for a hero at a dull moment in the war, loudly applauded gallant Captain Wilkes of the San Jacinto. On the other hand, when the news reached England on November 27, the British press howled quite as loudly over the outrage to the British flag, never so sacred as on the high seas. It was a dangerous situation, if scarcely worth a war. Yet the United States government was all but committed by the surge of anti-British public feeling, and the British government could hardly do less than demand that the insolent republic surrender the two commissioners.
British North America learned of the Trent affair before England did, and loyally and utterly condemned Captain Wilkes. There was indignant, gusty talk of the need for Britain to teach the Yankees a lesson, but at first no widespread expectation of war. The Globe itself, while denouncing the Wilkes coup as wrong and stupid (“a bit of bravado – a foolish flout”), held that neither Britain nor the United States wanted war, and saw the “only possible danger” in popular hysteria.81 Earnestly it counselled moderation, cautious waiting at least till Britain’s official response could be made known.82 Yet as Canadians awaited that response through tense days in early December, the pro-Southern papers were anything but moderate; and, as anti-British diatribes mounted in the neighbouring American press, the colonists grew sharply aware of how thoroughly exposed their own position was beside the armed and hostile republic. “The cry of war rings throughout the land,” the Globe uneasily admitted on December 10. “At the corner of every street you hear excited discussions as to the Mason and Slidell outrage, the next news from England, the erection of forts, and the problems of a fight with the Americans.”
If it had to come, those who had tried hardest for peace would not be slow to draw the sword.83 So Brown resolutely affirmed; but, in the meantime, he turned his journal against the recklessly pro-Southern papers in the province (mainly Conservative), bitterly attacking them for war-mongering.84 The most fire-eating of all was the largest ministerial journal, the Leader; and its replies to Brown were quite as strong as his attacks. There was good cause, too. Charles Lindsey,