The novelist, Anthony Trollope, after a long tour of the North, beginning in September, 1861, published late in 1862 a two-volume work, _North America_, descriptive of a nation engaged in the business of war and wholly sympathetic with the Northern cause.

Yet he, also, could see no hope of forcing the South back into the Union.

"The North and South are virtually separated, and the day will come in which the West also will secede[1041]." Such interpretations of conditions in America were not unusual; they were, rather, generally accepted.

The Cabinet decision in November, 1862, was not regarded as final, though events were to prove it to be so for never again was there so near an approach to British intervention.
Mason's friend, Spence, early began to think that true Southern policy was now to make an appeal to the Tories against the Government.

In January, 1863, he was planning a new move: "I have written to urge Mr.Gregory to be here in time for a thorough organization so as to push the matter this time to a vote.