During the Civil War, Henry Ward Beecher traveled to England in order to solicit British support for the Northern cause. While addressing a turbulent crowd of rebel sympathizers in Manchester, Beecher was asked a difficult question: "Why didn't you whip the Confederates in sixty days, as you said you would!" "Because," he replied, "we found we had Americans to fight instead of Englishmen!"

[Ironically, one of the Confederacy's rallying songs in the Civil War, "Dixie," was written by a Northerner: Dan Emmett, of Ohio.]