It stipulated that there should be no slavery, and with that single reservation washed its hands finally, as it imagined, of the whole question.

So the South African Republic came formally into existence.
In the very year after the Sand River Convention a second republic, the Orange Free State, was created by the deliberate withdrawal of Great Britain from the territory which she had for eight years occupied.

The Eastern Question was already becoming acute, and the cloud of a great war was drifting up, visible to all men.

British statesmen felt that their commitments were very heavy in every part of the world, and the South African annexations had always been a doubtful value and an undoubted trouble.

Against the will of a large part of the inhabitants, whether a majority or not it is impossible to say, we withdrew our troops as amicably as the Romans withdrew from Britain, and the new republic was left with absolute and unfettered independence.