As to the American [Civil] War it has manifestly ceased to have any attainable object as far as the Northerns are concerned, except to get rid of some more thousand troublesome Irish and Germans. It must be owned, however, that the Anglo-Saxon race on both sides have shown courage and endurance highly honourable to their stock.

Letter to George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon (20 October 1862), quoted in Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London: Constable, 1970), p. 559.