Why, it's Honest Abe! How'd you get here on Parliament Square with Churchill and other respected Englishmen, ol' friend? The British have great respect for Lincoln because he freed the slaves. The upper classes sympathized with the South in the American Civil War, and the main reason Britain didn't enter the war on the South's side or recognize the Confederacy as a sovereign nation is because the lower and middle classes in Britain were passionately anti-slavery.