But he was compelled also to refer to slavery and did so in the sense of Lincoln's inaugural, asserting that the North had no purpose of emancipating the slaves.

"It was no question at all that slavery within a state was sacred from all interference by the general government, or by the free states, or by individuals in those states; and the Chicago Convention [which nominated Lincoln] strenuously asserted that doctrine." Coming at the moment when the British press and public were seeking ground for a shift from earlier pro-Northern expressions of sympathy to some justification for the South, it may be doubted whether Motley's letter did not do more harm than good to the Northern cause.
His denial of a Northern anti-slavery purpose gave excuse for a, professedly, more calm and judicial examination of the claimed _Southern right_ of secession, and his legal argument could be met, and was met, with equally logical, apparently, pro-Southern argument as to the nature of the American constitution.

Thus early did the necessity of Lincoln's "border state policy"-- a policy which extended even to warnings from Seward to American diplomats abroad not to bring into consideration the future of slavery--give ground for foreign denial that there were any great moral principles at stake in the American conflict.
In the meantime the two sections in America were busily preparing for a test of strength, and for that test the British press, reporting preparations, waited with interest.

It came on July 21 in the first battle of Bull Run, when approximately equal forces of raw levies, 30,000 each, met in the first pitched battle of the war, and where the Northern army, after an initial success, ultimately fled in disgraceful rout.

Before Bull Run the few British papers early taking strong ground for the North had pictured Lincoln's preparations as so tremendous as inevitably destined to crush, quickly, all Southern resistance.