New Hampshire I did not find this to be the case to any violent
degree. Men spoke of the war as openly as they did at Boston, and,
in speaking to me, generally connected England with the subject.
But they did so simply to ask questions as to England's policy.
What will she do for cotton when her operatives are really pressed?
Will she break the blockade? Will she insist on a right to trade
with Charleston and new Orleans? I always answered that she would
insist on no such right, if that right were denied to others and
the denial enforced. England, I took upon myself to say, would not
break a veritable blockade, let her be driven to what shifts she
might in providing for her operatives. "Ah! that's what we fear,"
a very stanch patriot said to me, if words may be taken as a proof
of stauchness. "If England allies herself with the Southerners,
all our trouble is for nothing." It was impossible not to feel
that all that was said was complimentary to England. It is her
sympathy that the Northern men desire, to her co-operation that
they would willingly trust, on her honesty that they would choose
to depend. It is the same feeling whether it shows itself in anger
or in curiosity. An American, whether he be embarked in politics,
in literature, or in commerce, desires English admiration, English
appreciation of his energy, and English encouragement. The anger
of Boston is but a sign of its affectionate friendliness. What
feeling is so hot as that of a friend when his dearest friend
refuses to share his quarrel or to sympathize in his wrongs! To my
thinking, the men of Boston are wrong and unreasonable in their
anger; but were I a man of Boston, I should be as wrong and as
unreasonable as any of them. All that, however, will come right.
I will not believe it possible that there should in very truth be a
quarrel between England and the Northern States.