Lord Acton is an interesting figure. A Liberal Catholic, back when those words seemed antonyms, he was very committed to the liberal ideology as he saw it. And that Liberal ideology included concepts such as the freedom of the individual, and an idealization of the state as simply something that exists to protect the rights of the people and allow them to exercise them. In the view of Acton, a centralized, powerful regime was the greatest threat, the greatest form of tyranny.

In accordance with this ideology, Acton believed that slavery was an evil, but that taking slaves from a man would also be an evil. In his view, a powerful state would be taking a man's property, and no self-respecting Liberal could condone such an action. Of course, this seems ridiculous to us now. The slaver had, after all, taken another's man freedom. Acton, we should note, deplored slavery, but he believed that the "rights" of the masters should also be respected. For this reason, Acton was deeply convinced that emancipation should be gradual "to save those whom they despoiled from ruin, and those whom they liberated from destitution."

He believed that the US Civil War had been an illegal, revolutionary change which did not respect the rights of everyone and would lead only to ruin. In a lecture, he praised the US along the following terms: "Taxation was scarcely felt; there was no standing army; a navy that weighed lightly in the Budget, an inconsiderable public debt."

This, of course, changed radically with Lincoln and his government. The Lincoln administration represented an unprecedented change in the relation of the Federal government with the states and the citizens. Whereas before the Civil War, authority was associated with state government (Potter, Impending Crisis), during it the power of the National government was expanded. Now it had a rational system of taxation that affected every citizen, so much that McPherson says that "The relationship of the American taxpayer to the government was never again the same"; there was a powerful standing army with more than a million men, some of them drafted into the army; the Navy had been expanded and was now one of the biggest and finest in the world; and, of course, the government had a great public debt and had adopted measures to deal with it such as the creation of the Federal greenback dollar.

You can see how such changes would distress someone like Acton. Whereas he had believed that the US represented a Liberal ideal, an almost utopian society that combined the best of Europe without their ills, he now thought that it was dominated by a radical regime. "The Union which was founded and sustained by the attachment of the people has been restored by force", he said. And this tells us something important: for him, the Confederates were justified in their rebellion. They to protect their right to govern themselves and maintain the system of government Acton idealized against the influence of a radical foe.

He doesn't absolve the South of fault. He acknowledges that slavery played a big part, even if it was not the only factor, and condemns the South for "adopting inequality" as its basic principle. But he also placed the fault in the North, saying that the North had been in the wrong in the Nullification crisis, for it denied the South's right of reddres. According to Acton, the North then "entered upon those violent courses which ended in making the Union intolerable to those who were opposed to them." He frames Northern abolitionism not as a crusade for a noble goal, but a terrible course taken with the sole objective of subjugating the South and taking away its rights. A movement against the slaveholder and the Union itself.

For Acton, emancipation was "an act of war, not of statesmanship or humanity." He believes the Confederacy was making an effort "to remedy the faults of that form of government" [a Democratic Republic]. He laments that they did not call "on the negroes to be partners with them in the perils of war and in the fruits of victory", but concludes that the Southern cause was a noble one started "to cure the evils and to correct the errors of a false interpretation of Democracy", while the North "has used the doctrines of Democracy to destroy self-government".

He did conclude his lecture with an open tribute to both Lee and Lincoln. But it's evident that Acton considered that the Confederate cause was more just than the Northern one. For him, the Confederacy was fighting to defend Democracy and self-government against a despotic and radical governments that was destroying everything that made the United States a great nation. That's the stake lost at Richmond, that of a small government which respected the rights of everyone and was based on consent and law, a system of government that he identified with Britain as well ("the stake saved at Waterloo").

(Just to make it clear, I absolutely don't agree with Acton's views and think that the Confederacy fought for a terrible and unjustifiable cause. I agree with Mark Neely when he characterizes the view of Lincoln as an arbitrary tyrant as the "constitutional moralizing of sore losers").

Were the views of Lord Acton common? They were among a significant part of the British upper crust. The American minister, Charles Francis Adams, comented that "The great body of the aristocracy and the commercial classes are anxious to see the United States go to pieces", and it's true that aristocrats and leading men such as Gladstone, Lord Russell, and Acton opposed the US. They rejoiced in thinking that the Republican experiment had failed, and that Democracy was arrogant, aggressive, levelling and vulgarizing. The Times, for example, said considered the end of the US to be a "riddance of a nightmare. . . . Excepting a few gentlemen of republican tendencies, we all expect, we nearly all wish, success to the Confederate cause."

On the flipside, many British seemed to support the South because they saw it like Acton did, as the struggle of a plucky country for independence and liberty. The British had always been suckers for such stories. Perhaps it was because they saw themselves as the little plucky country that stood up to mighty Napoleon, but in any case the British had cheered for the Greeks, the Hungarians, the Italians and others.

A decisive factor was of course that many considered that the Americans were hypocrites. Most Britons were against slavery, and they often criticized the US for proclaiming itself the land of the free yet protecting and expanding slavery. They believed the Americans were lying when they professed to be fighting for freedom and the Constitution, and were not convinced by the Emancipation Proclamation until Lincoln actually signed it.

The aptitude of the anti-Union British aristocrats can be clearly seen in the satirical magazine Punch, which had shifted to express nationalistic views during those years. In many cartoons, they predicted a Confederate victory - to an almost delusional point, in fact, saying for example that the South would win as late as 1865. Most cartoons, however, focused on how Lincoln was a tyrant who was destroying democracy and popular government in the United States. A cartoon about his reelection showed him as a Phoenix who arose from the ashes of the Constitution, Free Press, Commerce, States Rights, among others. Another cartoon compared him with Tsar Alexander, calling them both "despots" and accusing him of massacring civilians and destroying the country. Yet another article of Punch parodied Yankee Doddle by saying how Mr. Chase "finds your dollars handy!"

To recapitulate, Lord Acton reflected the views of many Upper Class Britons who saw the Confederacy as a plucky nation justly defending its rights against the assaults of a group of radical despots who wanted to destroy the Democratic Republic of consent and small government that had brought so much prosperity to the US.

Sources:

James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom.

Mark E. Neely, The Fate of Liberty.

The Essays and Lectures of Lord Acton, available here.

Oscar Maurer, "Punch" on Slavery and Civil War in America 1841-1865. Available here.

David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis.