Observers in Britain looked beyond the rhetoric of "preserve the Union" and saw what was really at stake. Charles Dickens views on the subject were typical:
Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many other evils. The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel
I suppose Charles Dickens is a fool.
Great novelist. But not even on the radar as an expert on American society, economics or politics any more than the Dixie Chicks are experts on the Iraq War.