That the truculence and venom of some of our own
papers may have repressed the feeling and the utterance of this same
sympathy in many individuals and ways where it might otherwise have
manifested itself is not unnatural, and is very probable. We acknowledge
most gratefully the cheer and the inspiration which have come to us from
every word, wish, and act from abroad that has recognized the stake of
our conflict; and we will take for granted the real existence and the
glowing heartiness of much of the same which has not been expressed, or
has not reached us. Farther even than this we will go in tempering or
qualifying the utterance of our grievances. We will take for granted
that very much of the coldness, or antipathy, or contemptuousness, or
misrepresentation which we have recognized in the general treatment of
us and our cause by Englishmen is to be accounted to actual ignorance
or a very partial understanding of our real circumstances and of the
conditions of the conflict, and of the relations of parties to it. De
Tocqueville is universally regarded among us as the only foreigner
who ever divined the theoretical and the practical method of our
institutions. Englishmen, English statesmen even, have never penetrated
to the mystery of them.
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