The political conflict in Sicily between June and October took shape round one central problem, how soon and by what method the island would join up with the existing kingdom in northern Italy. It will help to explain this conflict if a general preview is given of the various arguments brought up by one side or the other. Historians generally used to conclude that ‘immediate annexation to Piedmont was the wise policy for Sicily’. Crispi and his friends, in opposing ‘the almost universal eagerness of the Sicilians to be annexed’, were said by Bolton King to have had ‘no excuse’; and they were not even allowed any motive except ‘to leave a thorn in the side of the government’, and perhaps to upset the monarchy. Such an interpretation, however, is more than just oversimplified, it is inaccurate.

Some of the reasons urged for quick annexation were spurious in the extreme: for instance, that it would stop England from acquiring her coveted foothold in Sicily, or that it would prevent Garibaldi's camarilla from taking all the perquisites and pickings of office; or else that, by making impossible any further expeditions to Rome, it would end the hated novelty of conscription which Garibaldi was trying hard to introduce. Much more weighty than these was the argument that annexation would restore law and order to the country, and compel northern Italy to underwrite the revolution against a Bourbon restoration. In many parts of Sicily the pent-up communist rebelliousness of the peasants had been released by the war, and Garibaldi's government found itself with no effective police force to keep the peace.