For one commentator, writing, in October 1863, it is no laughing matter.
'Our mother English', he laments, 'is threatened with a deluge of barbarisms'
stemming chiefly from the United States: 'fond as we are of rating our
republican kinsmen for their vulgarity and uncouthness, it is wonderful
to see the eager quickness with which we adopt their perversions of the
language'. One of his examples is the use of 'expect' to mean 'suspect'.
By far the most important American subject of the years 1860-64 was, of course,
the Civil War but, by comparison with other British journals, All The Year Round's
coverage of this ferocious upheaval was somewhat meagre. As we have seen,
Household Words had featured a few anti-slavery articles and we find one or
two more appearing in Al 1 the Year Round in 1860 and 1861 but Dickens early
took the line that slavery had really nothing to do with the causes of the war,
which he expected to be 'very short' and soon succeeded by 'some new compact
between the Northern and the Southern States'. In May 1861 one of his contributors
declared that 'trade jealousy' was at the bottom of the 'intense virulence of
hatred existing between the Northerns and the Southerns'. As to slavery, it
'needs no sword to kill it. It is fast passing away, and it has been proved
unprofitable'. Two articles later in the year concern the necessity for Britain
to look elsewhere than the American South for its raw cotton and the second
of these again asserts that the war is one of 'tariffs', slavery being a mere
'Northern pretext'.
Just about this time Dickens read a book, The American Union, by an English
apologist for the South, James Spence. He seems to have been totally convinced
by it and, as John Waller has shown, the editorial policy of Al 1 The Year Round
almost immediately became, if not exactly pro-Southerncertainly very hostile
to the Federal cause. Dickens fussed about getting a favourable review of
the book (by Henry Morley) into the journal as quickly as possoble and it
duly appeared on 21 December 1861, entitles 'American Discussion'.
Laudatory as it was,Dickens was .disappointed with it and a second article by
Morley appeared the following week which pursued the argument that the war
was 'solely a fiscal quarrel'Union means so many millions a year lost
to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North.
The love of money is the root of this as of many, many other evils'.
Whole-heartedly believing this, Dickens felt sure the war would end
in 'an tgnoble and contemptible compromise'The New- Yorkers, 'the greatest
and meanest of scoundrels', would refuse to accept conscription, he was
convinced. He summed up his views in a letter written to a Swiss friend
on 16 March 1862:
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