[Footnote 1: See Vol. I. p. 212.—ED.]
August 18.—We drove in the afternoon to the coast, and sat in the shade of the little ricks of sea-weed, gazing on an open sea as blue as the Mediterranean.
We talked of America.
'I can understand,' said Madame de Tocqueville, 'the indignation of the North against you. It is, of course, excessive, but they had a right to expect you to be on their side in an anti-slavery war.'
'They had no right,' I said, 'to expect from our Government anything but absolute neutrality.'
'But you need not,' she replied, 'have been so eager to put the South on the footing of belligerents.'
'On what other footing,' I asked, 'could we put them? On what other footing does the North put them? Have they ventured, or will they venture, to hang a single seceder?'
'At least,' she said, 'you might have expressed more sympathy with the
North?'
'I think,' I answered, 'that we have expressed as much sympathy as it was possible to feel. We deplore the combat, we hold the South responsible for it, we think their capricious separation one of the most foolish and one of the most wicked acts that have ever been committed; we hope that the North will beat them, and we should bitterly regret their forcing themselves back into the Union on terms making slavery worse, if possible, than it is now. We wish the contest to end as quickly as possible: but we do not think that it can end by the North subjugating the Southerns and forcing them to be its subjects.
'The best termination to which we look forward as possible, is that the North should beat the South, and then dictate its own terms of separation.