Col. John M. Harrell, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 10.2, Arkansas
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[193] the attack on Helena soon passed out of mind. There were contemporaneous and more significant events that absorbed the public attention. On the same day Vicksburg capitulated, and four days later Port Hudson fell. On the day before, Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania had terminated adversely in his decisive defeat at Gettysburg.

Before this momentous July 3d and 4th, the sympathy of the French and English was approaching the point of intervention in favor of the South. Napoleon III was actively advocating it. Gladstone, ‘the grand old man,’ openly eulogized the Confederates. His touching reference to ‘that heroic people, struggling for independence,’ is yet remembered against him in Wall street. A majority of the British cabinet was in favor of recognition. The motion of Roebuck for intervention had been offered in the house of commons. If once put to the house its passage was a foregone conclusion. The London Times exulted over Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania. But while parliament was becoming daily more favorable to the proposition, Gettysburg was lost! The force of events and the dictates of prudence turned the tide so that Giadstone himself mournfully made this decisive utterance in parliament: ‘It is not that I think the war is waged on the part of the North for any adequate or worthy object that I would venture to deprecate the adoption of the motion of the honorable gentleman (Roebuck). I fear it is running the risk of making that worse which is already and sufficiently horrible; of causing other feuds and quarrels that may carry still further desolation over the face of the earth.’ The last thought of intervention was banished from the councils of that great power. General Lord Wolseley, in a eulogy on Lee, has written: ‘The desperate, though drawn battle of Gettysburg was the death-knell of Southern independence.’ But the conflict went on. Blood continued to flow, even more freely than before.