The view from 1865 - and now

There is a fascinating Guardian article from Martin Kettle pointing out that during the American Civil War the Manchester Guardian and many other liberal voices supported the Confederacy (the south) rather than the Union (the north) and thought Abraham Lincoln.  There was a respectable argument for this position: if it was OK for the Italians to secede from Austrian rule (and the Belgians from Dutch and the Greeks from Turkish rule) why should the southern states be forced against their will to remain in the Union.

The moral? Things can look very different a hundred and fifty years on.