This is a review of a new book about the British and European view of our Civil War, expressed in contemporary news and opinion articles. They all opposed slavery very strongly, but those who supported the Southern cause believed that the North’s invasion of the Southern states had nothing to do with freeing the slaves."The quarrel between the North and South is… solely a fiscal quarrel,” wrote Charles Dickens in 1862.
Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature also noted that the black population of the North was generally treated as inhuman. “In scarcely any of the large cities of the North did they [blacks] escape violence” at the hand of whites. It was hardly likely, therefore, that Northern whites would fight a war and die by the hundreds of thousands purely for the benefit of black strangers, as has been taught to generations of American school children."