History of the United States, v.3, by James Ford Rhodes, 1910 [c1892].

Chapter 16, Part 2: English Sentiment through Pressure of the Blockade

As has been shown, English sentiment up to late in the summer was favorable to the federal government. "I have not seen or heard of a soul," wrote Darwin, June 5, to Asa Gray, "who is not with the North.'3 But when the detailed news of the battle of Bull Run became fully understood, when the full effect of it was comprehended, a marked revulsion of feeling took place. It is easy to classify the many manifestations of opinion, from the day that the tale of Bull Run was told in England to that on which London heard of the capture of Mason and Slidell.4 There were outspoken friends of the North, and men distinctly favorable to the South; but the dominant sentiment was that of the main body of the aristocracy and middle class, who, seeing clearly, as they thought, that the Union could not conquer the Confederacy, earnestly longed for the war to cease. The aristocracy had no tears to shed that the great and powerful democracy, rent by internal feud, was going the way of all democracies; they felt that a divided Union would be less of a moral menace than a compact democratic federal government to the intrenched rights on which most European governments, and particularly that of Great Britain, were based. The middle class, devoted
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1 Ante.
2 Besides authorities specifically quoted, I have used the report of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, and the testimony before it of McClellan, Franklin, McCall, Fitz-John Porter, Heintzelman, McDowell, Wadsworth, and Meigs; also McClellan's Military Career Reviewed and Exposed, Swinton, pamphlet, 1864; General J. D. Cox's review of McClellan's Own Story, the Nation, January 20 and 27, 1887 ; John C. Ropes's review of the same, Atlantic Monthly, April, 1887,
3 Life and Letters, vol. ii. p. 166.
4 August 5 to November 38.

to commerce and manufactures, were disturbed that the supply of cotton was cut off. Business became deranged. Hunger stared thousands of laborers in the face. Higher in the social scale, the fear of curtailed incomes and of the sacrifice of luxuries and necessaries may be plainly seen. Goldwin Smith, a friend to the North, described the situation in terms none too strong: "The awful peril, not only commercial but social, with which the cotton famine threatened us, and the thrill of alarm and horror which upon the dawning of that peril ran through the whole land." 1 Peace would open the Southern ports, would restore comfort to the British householder; and as it seemed to him that the South was in the end certain to gain her independence, the sooner the fact was acknowledged by the North, the sooner would the disturbed equilibrium be restored. This was the opinion of the great body of voting Whigs and of such Conservatives as did not distinctly sympathize with the South,2 and it found fitting representation
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1 Macmillan's Magazine, December, 1865, p. 167. See detailed figures in London Times of September 7. "The reports from Lancashire apprise us that the first mutterings of the long-expected storm are already heard. Mills are working short time, manufacturers are reducing wages, and operatives assembling in trouble and alarm to discuss the prospects before them. . . . The fact is that our stocks of cotton are rapidly sinking, while the supplies on the road to us are of uncertain quality and insufficient amount. ... So a manufacture which pays upward of £11,000,000 in wages, and supports a fifth part of our whole population, is coming gradually to a stand."—London Times, September 19. "Lancashire calls for so many million bales of cotton, but these bales are paid for with so many millions of pounds. In fact, it is a trade of some £40,000,000 a year."—Ibid., September 21. "To a man whom books or travel have made familiar with the great features of nature throughout the earth, it must seem strange that Manchester should be shaking in her shoes, and that Liverpool should be in a fever of speculative excitement, on account of the non-arrival of a few ship-loads of cotton."—Ibid., November 2.
2 John Stuart Mill speaks of "the rush of nearly the whole upper and middle classes of my own country, even those who passed for Liberals, into a furious pro-Southern partisanship: the working classes and some of the literary and scientific men being almost the sole exceptions to the general frenzy."—Autobiography, p. 268.

in Palmerston and Russell, the two leading men of the cabinet. Earl Russell, in a speech at Newcastle in October, told the British public that the American civil war did not turn on the question of slavery, "though that, I believe," he added, "was the original cause of the quarrel;" neither was the strife about free trade or protection; but the two parties were "contending, as so many States in the old world have contended, the one for empire and the other for independence." To what good result, he asked, can the contest lead? He answered his own question, to the effect that a separation of the two sections was the only logical and permanent settlement of the controversy.1 The notion that the Union could never be restored found expression in the Times and the Saturday Review, which, gravitating naturally to the representation of the opinion of the majority of the English public, made, by reason of the ability with which they hammered away, many converts from among the waverers.2 The laboring class, so far as they
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1 London Times, October 16; on this speech see the Spectator of October 19. Many speeches in the same tone as Russell's were made. Bright said publicly, December 4: "Of all the speeches made since the end of the last session of Parliament by public men, by politicians, the majority of them have either displayed a strange ignorance of American affairs, or a stranger absence of that cordiality and friendship which, I maintain, our American kinsmen have a right to look for at our hands."—Speeches, vol. i. p. 180.
2 "The South is not absolutely so strong as the North, but it has hitherto been stronger in the field, and it will always be strong enough, in all human probability, to resist subjection, if not to enforce its will."—London Times, September 17. "Slavery counts for little in the quarrel, commercial antagonism for much. . . . The watchword of the South is 'Independence,' of the North 'Union,' and in those two war-cries the real issue is contained."—Ibid., September 19. "The contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the government of George III., and the South and the thirteen revolted provinces. These opinions may be wrong, but they are the general opinions of the English nation."—Ibid., November 7. See W. H. Russell's letter from Washington, October 17. "It continues to be improbable that the South should be conquered, and impossible that it should be held in subjection."—Sat

thought at all, sympathized with the United States. They saw clearly, as did the aristocracy, that the cause of the North was the cause of democracy in England; but they counted little in making up the sum of public sentiment, for parliamentary representation was based upon the reform bill of 1832, which gave them no share in the suffrage.

It is not the least of the glories of England that when public opinion veers strongly in one direction, she has men who see clearer than the mass, and set themselves at work to stem the current; who speak boldly and with no uncertain sound; whose boldness, whose resistance to the tyranny of the majority, if joined to ability and honesty, rarely if ever—such is the wholesomeness of English political life—compel them to retirement. Most conspicuous of these men, who at this time were unreservedly on the side of the North, was John Bright. September 6 he wrote Sumner from Rochdale, giving his own opinion and an exposition of the sentiment of the country. "The Times newspaper, as you know," he said, "will willingly make mischief if its patrons want mischief, and on your side you have the New York Herald doing Southern work when it dares to do it, and stirring up ill-blood with England as the best mode of helping its Southern friends. Public opinion here is in a languid and confused state. The upper and ruling class have some satisfaction, I suspect, in your troubles — they think two nations on your northern continent more easy to deal with than one, and they see, without grief, that democracy may get into trouble and war and
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Saturday Review, September 28. "The belief of foreigners that the Union can never be restored by force contradicts the language rather than the convictions of American speakers and writers." — Ibid., October 12, see, also, November 23. I have seen many extracts from the London Morning Post, which was the accredited organ of Lord Palmerston; this was more friendly to the South than the Times and Saturday Review. I have not consulted the files of the London Standard and Herald, conservative journals, but from frequent references to them I observe that their sympathy with the Confederacy was warm.

debt and taxes, as aristocracy has done for this country. The middle class wish abolition to come out of your contentions, but they are irritated by your foolish tariff, and having so lately become free-traders themselves, of course they are great purists now, and severely condemn you. In this district we have a good many friends of the South — the men who go South every year to buy cotton for our spinners, and those among our spinners and merchants who care little for facts and right, and go just where their interest seems to point. I have not, so far, seen any considerable manifestation of a disposition to urge our government to interfere in your affairs; and yet with some, doubtless, there is a hope that France and England will not permit their cotton manufacture to be starved out by your contest. There is a great anxiety as to what is coming. Our mills are just now reducing their working time to four days and some of them to three days in the week; this is not universal or general, but it is spreading, and will soon become general, I cannot doubt. Working half-time we can go on till April or May perhaps, but this will cause suffering and discontent, and it is possible pressure may be put upon the government to take some step supposed likely to bring about a change. I preach the doctrine that the success of the North is our nearest way to a remedy, but there are those who hold a contrary opinion. . . . With our upper-class hostility to your country and government, with the wonderful folly of your tariff telling against you here, and with the damage arising from the blockade of the Southern ports, you will easily understand that the feeling here is not so thorough and cordial with you as I could wish it to be." 1

Bright was the ablest and best-known exponent of the friendly feeling towards the North, but he had many sympathizing friends. Cobden,2 William E. Forster
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1 Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
2 Cobden wrote Sumner, November 27: "My respect and admiration for your

Foster,1 the Duke of Argyll, and Thomas Hughes are not only men of grateful memory to the North, but they reflect honor on their own land. The Daily News and the Spectator urged the cause of the North without ceasing, with signal ability uniting large information to correct judgment.2 The sentiment towards America in England depended to some extent on differences of political opinion. The war and the Northern conduct of it were used with effect by the Times and the Saturday Review to point the moral of the failure of the great democracy to realize the hopes of its English advocates. "Help us to a breath of generous strengthening sympathy from Old England," wrote Sumner to William H. Russell, "which will cheer the good cause, and teach everybody that there can be no terms of any kind with a swarm of traitors trying to build
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free States is so great that I have regretted you did not let the vile incubus of slavery slip off your back. And yet I confess the almost insuperable difficulty of making two nations of the United States. The geographical obstacles alone seem insurmountable. ... Be assured that we are deeply sympathetic with you and all earnest friends of peace and freedom."—Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
1 Forster made a warm speech for the North in October, see Life, by Reid, p. 337. See comment on same by London Daily News, October 4. "I wish success to the North," he said, ''because I love freedom and hate slavery."
2 "We believe, as we always did, that the South cannot hold out."— Daily News, September 17. "The Southern States are, according to their own formal declaration, fighting not only to perpetuate, but to extend the institution of slavery."—Ibid., October 10; see, also, September 18, October 2, 3, 4. "The news of every succeeding mail from America makes it more and more evident that the slavery issue is the practical hinge of the civil war. . . . The view taken by the conservatives, whether avowed or concealed under the cloak of moderate liberalism, is . . . that the North are fighting for an impossibility. . . . This impossibility is rather a new invention; it dates from the battle of Bull Run. ... To talk of the endeavor [of the North] as an impossibility is an abuse of human language." —London Spectator, September 14; see, also, September 28, November 16. The London Star was also strong in its sympathy with the North. I have read many extracts from it, but have not consulted its files, for the reason that, as it was the reputed organ of Cobden and Bright, I have preferred to show this phase of sentiment by their private letters.

a State on human slavery." 1 "I do not approve," wrote Russell in reply, " of the tone of many papers in Great Britain in reference to American matters; but do not forget, I pray you, that in reality it is Brightism and republicanism at home which most of those remarks are meant to smite. America is the shield under which the blow is dealt."2 In the light of succeeding events and the well-rounded career of John Bright, we may venture to assert that he had high moral and political wisdom and chose the right side, and that the dominant English opinion was wrong and did harm to Great Britain, to America, and to civilization. "Some friends of mine in this town," he wrote Sumner from Rochdale, November 20, "have invited me to a public dinner on the 4th of December. I intend to take that opportunity for saying something on your great political earthquake, and I need not tell you that I shall not abandon the faith I have in the greatness of the free North. It has been a misfortune here that so little has been said to instruct the public on the true bearings of your question, for it is incredible almost how densely ignorant even our middle and upper class is with regard to your position. The sympathies of the great body of the people here are, I think, quite right, although some papers supposed to be read by them are wrong. I suspect there has been some tampering with a certain accessible portion of the press. I am very anxious that your affairs should take some more decided turn before our Parliament meets about the 1st of February. When a mob of 650 men get together with party objects and little sympathy for you or for the right anywhere, there is no knowing what mischief may come out of foolish and wicked speeches, with a ministry led by
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1 September 16, Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 42.
2 Letter of October 2, Pierce Sumner Papers, MS.; see the London Times of August 19. "The real secret of the exultation which manifests itself in the Times and other organs over our troubles and disasters, is their hatred, not to America so much as to democracy in England."—Motley to his mother from England, September 22, Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 85.

such a man as the present Prime Minister of England. However, I will hope for the best."1

If, with the results before us, we extol the political perceptions of the few, fairness demands that we examine the contemporary evidence to ascertain what may excuse the mistake of the majority. That Earl Russell, the Times, and the Saturday Review made out an apparently good case, hardly needs stating. The iterated and reiterated argument ran that, as the Confederacy was certain to gain its independence, the sooner the disturbance was put an end to the better. "The people of the Southern States," declared the Times, "may be wrong, but they are ten millions." 2 This summed up the political philosophy of the British public; yet the notion that the North could not conquer the South was shared by many of our friends. "Judging from this distance," wrote Bright to Sumner, September 6, "I confess I am unable to see any prospect of reunion through a conquest of the South, and I should grieve to see it through any degrading concessions on the part of the North. I confess I am surprised at the difficulties you meet with even in the border States. It would seem that the separation in regard to feeling and interests had made a fatal progress before secession was openly proclaimed; for surely, if there was a large and preponderating sympathy for the Union
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1 Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
2 October 9, in the same article, it was said: "The one great fact which swayed English opinion was the decided and multiform antagonism between North and South, which time and events combined to disclose. . . . We think the policy of the federal government wrong. If the whole case of the war is to be analyzed, we must needs say the Northerners have the right on their side, for the Southerners have destroyed without provocation a mighty political fabric, and have impaired the glory and strength of the great American Republic." The London Daily News of October 10 said, in reply: "The Confederate States may be ten millions, but they are wrong —notoriously, flagrantly wrong." William H. Russell wrote the London Times from Washington, October 17: "The history of the world cannot point out two countries now more divided than North and South—two governments, two nations, two policies. Is it possible that the broken vase can ever be restored? Thousands of able men think it can."

in those States, the Northern forces would have great advantages over the South in the conduct of their operations which they do not now appear to have. ... I cannot see how the South, with its vast territory, is to be subdued, if there be any of that unanimity among its population which is said to exist, and of which there are some proofs. If it be subdued, I cannot see in the future a contented section of your great country made up of States now passing through the crisis of a civil war, with every ferocious passion excited against the North; and the prospect being so dark, looking through the storm of war, I am hoping for something that will enable you to negotiate."1 "The belief is largely held," he wrote, November 20, that the subjugation of the South "is barely, if at all, possible, and that a restoration of the Union is not to be looked for." 3 Cobden did not believe that the North and the South could "ever lie in the same bed again."' "I hope to God," wrote Darwin, " we English are utterly wrong in doubting whether the North can conquer the South." 4 On our side of the water the letter of William M. Evarts to Thurlow Weed, purporting to give "about the staple of opinion and conversation when men talked freely," breathed out despair of the Union being able to conquer the Confederacy.5

It was frequently asserted that if the North, in 1861, had avowed the war to be against slavery, we should have had the warm sympathy of the British public 6 The proclamation
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1 Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
2 Ibid.
3 Morley's Cobden, American edition, p. 572.
4 To Asa Gray, September 17, Life and Letters, vol. ii. p. 169. December 11 he wrote,'' How curious it is that you seem to think that you can conquer the South; and I never meet a soul, even those who would most wish it, who think it possible—that is, to conquer and retain it."—Ibid., p. 174.
5 Letter of February 2, 1862. Weed was in London. Life of Weed, vol. ii. p. 410.
6 "If the issue of forcible and total emancipation is raised, the United States will have no reason hereafter to complain of a want of popular sympathy in England."—London Saturday Review, September 28; see, also, October 5, November 9. "That the doctrine of emancipation, if always and sincerely

emancipation, if issued a year earlier, would undoubtedly have increased the enthusiasm of our English friends,1 and
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professed by the Northern States, would have strongly commended their cause to the sympathies of this country, is not for a moment to be doubted. . . . The public in this country would rejoice to see an end made of slave-holding, and so far the North might gain."—London Times, September 30. "There would perhaps be an overwhelming sentiment of popular sympathy with the North in this conflict if they were fighting for freedom; but the pretence that this is an anti-slavery war cannot be sustained for a moment, and is sedulously disavowed by the government itself."—W. H. Russell to Sumner, October 14, Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.; see also New York Tribune, August 11. 1 Bright wrote Sumner, September 6: "Many console themselves with the hope that the great question of the future condition of your four million negroes is about to be solved. I do not see how you can move for emancipation within your Constitution, or without giving to the South a complete case in favor of their insurrection; but if necessity or the popular feeling should drive you to it, then there will, I think, be no power in this country able to give any support to the South. Many who cavil at you now say, 'If the war was for liberating the slave, then we could see something worth fighting for, and we could sympathize with the North.' I cannot urge you to this course. The remedy for slavery would be almost worse than the disease, and yet how can such a disease be got rid of without some desperate remedy?" Harriet Martineau wrote Sumner, November 14: "Whenever the anti-slavery view is adopted and acted upon at Washington in any preponderant way, you will have no reason to complain of coldness on this side of the water. ... I need not explain that I, with my American friendships and sympathies, am eager and constant in speaking up for what you and I consider the right, and in hoping for the best; but the pottering at Washington is infinitely damaging here to your cause."— Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. Darwin wrote Asa Gray, June 5: "Some few, and I am one of them, even wish to God, though at the loss of millions of lives, that the North would proclaim a crusade against slavery. In the long-run, a million horrid deaths would be amply repaid in the cause of humanity."—Life and Letters, vol. ii. p. 166. "We can wait till the occasion arises for showing how England can sympathize with a people who have a purpose to abolish slavery."—London Daily News, September 17. "We have no hesitation in saying that we believe the boldest course would be the wisest. The Union can never be restored again with the old canker at the roots."—London Spectator, October 5.

Carl Schurz, our minister to Spain, wrote Seward from San Ildefonso, September 14, a careful exposition of the sentiment of Europe generally. As it was not printed, I insert the greater part of it: "It is my conviction, and I consider it a duty to communicate it to you, that the sympathies of

lent augmented potency to their arguments; but the course of English opinion after September, 1862, may well raise the
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liberal masses in Europe are not as unconditionally in our favor as might be desired, and that unless the war end soon or something be done to give our cause a stronger foothold in the popular heart, they will, in the end, not be decided and powerful enough to control the actions of those governments whose good-will or neutrality is to us of the greatest importance. When the struggle about the slavery question in the United States assumed the form of an armed conflict, it was generally supposed in Europe that the destruction of slavery was to be the avowed object of the policy of the government, and that the war would, in fact, be nothing less than a grand uprising of the popular conscience in favor of a great humanitarian principle. If this opinion had been confirmed by the evidence of facts, the attitude of Europe, as determined by popular sentiment, could not have been doubtful a single moment. But it was remarked, not without a feeling of surprise and disappointment, that the federal government, in its public declarations, cautiously avoided the mentioning of the slavery question as the cause and origin of the conflict; that its acts, at the beginning of the war at least, were marked by a strikingly scrupulous respect for the sanctity of slave property, and that the ultimate extinction of an institution so hateful to European minds was most emphatically denied to be one of the objects of the war. I do not mean to question the wisdom of the government under circumstances so difficult and perplexing, but I am bearing witness to the effect its attitude produced upon public opinion in Europe. ... It is exceedingly difficult to make Europeans understand, not only why the free and prosperous North should fight morally for the privilege of being reassociated with the imperious and troublesome slave States, but, also, why the principle, by virtue of which a population, sufficiently strong for establishing and maintaining an independent national existence, possesses the right to have a government and institutions of its own choice, should be repudiated in America, while it is almost universally recognized in monarchical Europe. I have had to discuss this point with men whose sympathies were most sincerely on our side, and all my constitutional arguments failed to convince them that such a right can be consistently denied, unless our cause was based upon principles of a higher nature. I know that journalists, who in their papers work for us to the best of their ability, are secretly troubled with serious scruples on that point. The agents of the South, whose footprints are frequently visible in the public press, are availing themselves of this state of things with great adroitness. While they carefully abstain from alluding to the rights of slavery, they speak of free trade and cotton to the merchant and the manufacturer, and of the right of self-government to the liberal. They keep it well before the people that the same means of repression which are of so beneficial a memory to most European nations—the suspension of the

the doubt whether it would have helped us with the aristocracy and the bulk of the middle class.1

writ of habeas corpus, arbitrary imprisonments, the confiscation of newspapers, the use of armed force—are now found necessary to prop the federal government; and that the latter, in its effort to crush the independent spirit of eight millions of people, is with rapid strides approaching the line which separates democratic government from the attributes of an arbitrary despotism. The incidents of the war, so unfavorable to our arms, could not fail to give weight and color to these representations. . . . And if opinions like these could gain ground among our natural friends, what have we to expect of those who secretly desire a permanent disruption of the Union? . . . And what will the federal government have to oppose to this plausible reasoning? A rupture of relations, which would undoubtedly be more disagreeable to us than to them? Fleets and armies, which so far have been hardly able to close some Southern ports and to protect the President from capture in his capital 1 The resentment of the American people, which has ceased to be formidable? There are, in my opinion, but two ways in which the overwhelming perplexities can be averted which a rupture with foreign powers, added to our troubles at home, would inevitably bring upon us. The one consists in great and decisive military success speedily accomplished, and the other in such measures and manifestations on the part of the government as will place the war against the rebellious slave States upon a higher moral basis, and thereby give us the control of public opinion in Europe. ... It is my profound conviction that as soon as the war becomes distinctly one for and against slavery, public opinion will be so strongly, so overwhelmingly in our favor that, in spite of commercial interests or secret spites, no European government will dare to place itself, by declaration or act, upon the side of a universally condemned institution. Our enemies know that well, and we may learn from them. While their agents carefully conceal from the eyes of Europeans their only weak point, their attachment to slavery, ought we to aid them in hiding with equal care our only strong point, our opposition to slavery? While they, well knowing how repugnant slavery is to the European way of feeling, do all to make Europeans forget that they fight for it, ought we, who are equally well acquainted with European sentiment, to abstain from making Europeans remember that we fight against it? In not availing ourselves of our advantages, we relieve the enemy of the odium attached to his cause. It is, therefore, my opinion that every step done by the government towards the abolition of slavery is, as to our standing in Europe, equal to a victory in the field."—MSS. State Department archives.

1 This is foreshadowed by the Spectator of October 5, in an acute analysis of the indifferent and unfriendly sentiment of the London press to the North. The article is entitled "Ambiguous Counsels to the Northern States." See, also, Saturday Review of November 30, 1861, January 4,1862.

The articles in the Times and the Saturday Review were eagerly read on our side of the water, and they caused much irritation. The sneers at the panic and cowardice of the Northern troops at Bull Run were hard to bear. The criticism of the arbitrary measures of our government, the assertion that we had cut loose from the moorings of the Constitution, the comparison continually drawn between the despotism in France and the despotism in America, between the coup-d'etat of Louis Napoleon and the coup-d'etat of Abraham Lincoln, were galling.1 Few of the English
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1 "The arrest of the newly elected members of the legislative assembly [of Maryland] before they had had any time to meet, without any form of law or prospect of trial, merely because President Lincoln conceived that they might in their legislative capacity do acts at variance with his interpretation of the American Constitution, was as perfect an act of despotism as can be conceived. ... It was a coup-d'etat in every essential feature. Every argument by which it can be justified will justify the Second of December."—Saturday Review, October 19. "Northern orators and such Northern journalists as are allowed to write still love to celebrate their country as ' the land of the free and the home of the brave.' Its title to the latter designation has been conclusively established at Leesburg [Ball's Bluff] and Bull Run. . . . 'The land of the free' is a land in which electors may not vote for fear of arrest, and judges may not execute the law for fear of dismissal—in which unsubmissive advocates are threatened with imprisonment and hostile newspapers are suppressed."—Ibid., November 23. The Spectator of October 12 also criticised the arbitrary measures of the administration.

"I recollect arguing once with a Northern gentleman, whose name as an author is known and honored in this country, about what seemed to me his unreasonable animosity towards England. After a concession on his part that possibly his feelings were morbidly exaggerated, he turned round and pointed to the portrait of a very near and dear relative of his—a brave, handsome lad, who had been killed a few months before when leading his men into action at the fatal defeat of Ball's Bluff. 'How,' he said to me, 'would you like yourself to read constantly that that lad died in a miserable cause, and, as an American officer, should be called a coward?' And I own to that argument I could make no adequate reply. Let me quote, too, a paragraph from a letter I received the other day from another friend of mine, whose works have been read eagerly wherever the English tongue is spoken [probably O. W. Holmes]. 'I have,' he wrote, 'a stake in this contest, which makes me nervous and tremulous, and impatient of contradiction. I have a noble boy, a captain in one of our regiments, which has been fearfully decimated by battle and disease, and himself twice wounded within a hair's-breadth of his life.' If you consider that in almost every Northern family there is thus some personal interest at stake in the war, it is not to be wondered at if the nation itself is also unduly impatient of contradiction."—Dicey's Federal States, vol. ii., pp. 12, 13; see, also, vol. i. p. 170.

understood how earnestly we craved their sympathy. Darwin, who saw both sides of any question as well if not better than any man living, and whose lightest word deserves respect,1 wrote Asa Gray: "I heartily wish I could sympathize more fully with you, instead of merely hating the South. We cannot enter into your feelings; if Scotland were to rebel, I presume we should be very wrath; but I do not think we should care a penny what other nations thought. 2 True enough is it that if the United States had had behind them England's splendid history, and had given birth to her splendid literature, the Northern people might have pursued their course, caring little what other nations thought, so long as they kept within the strict letter of international law. 3
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1 "I have a great respect for Mr. Darwin, as almost the only perfectly disinterested lover of truth I ever encountered."—J. R. Lowell, September 1,1878, Letters, vol. ii. p. 230.
2 March 15, 1862, Life and Letters, vol. ii. p. 178 ; see, also, the London Daily News of September 17.
3 Thomas Hughes looked at the matter differently from Darwin, and in a strong letter to the Spectator, published September 21, said : "Let any Englishman try to put himself honestly in the place of an American, and then read such articles as the one to which I have alluded ["Mrs. Beecher Stowe's Wounded Feelings," in the Saturday Review], and which is by no means an unfavorable specimen of the class, and I venture to say he will no longer wonder at the effect they have had in the United States. They are remarkable for two characteristics : first, for the deliberate imputation of mean motives, and, secondly, for the cruel spirit in which they are written. It may have been right to say unpleasant things, but it cannot be right to say them in the way, of all others, which will give most pain. To a nation or a man engaged in a struggle for life or death, the tone of flippant and contemptuous serenity is the worst we can adopt, if we must speak. ... As to the imputation of the worst motives to the Northerner by the Times and the Saturday Review, from the first outbreak of hostilities till now, could anything have been more unfair or more needless ? . . . We all know that the North has not put the slavery question forward officially. All of us who care to study the subject know why this has not been done. Many of us think the policy unwise, and the reasons wholly insufficient. We may think and say that, if persisted in, it will ruin the cause of the North ; that it has already given an enormous advantage to the secessionists. But this is quite another thing from crying out, over and over again, 'It is naught, it is naught. The Yankees are, after all, only fighting for tariff and hurt vanity.' It was our duty, as the nation which has taken the lead in the abolition of slavery, to have borne all things from, and hoped all things for, those who had gone down into the lists with the great slave power; to have given them credit for what they could not, or dared not, yet avow; to have encouraged them to go bravely on in the path they had taken, let it lead them where it might. We have not done this. Our press has chosen to take the other course: to impute the lowest motives, to cull out and exult over all the meanness and bragging and disorder which the contest has brought out, and, while we sit on the bank, to make no allowances for those who are struggling in the waves. The consequence is the state of feeling we see now in all loyal Americans towards England." Dr. G. E. Ellis, in an article entitled "Why Has the North Felt Aggrieved with England?" in the Atlantic Monthly for November, 1861, gave an excellent description of the feeling in America excited by the criticism of the English press.

The irritation caused by the ungenerous criticism of the London journals was cast back by the recrimination of our own press. Chief in truculence was the New York Herald. "We first unmasked," it said, "and then spiked the battery which English aristocrats were preparing against this country and its liberties. . . . We notified the English government and aristocracy that we were prepared to resent the insults they seemed disposed to offer us, and have thus far kept England in abeyance;" and seven weeks later it declared, "Let England and Spain look well to their conduct, or we may bring them to a reckoning."1 Such writing did harm to our cause. "It is unfortunate," said John Bright, in a letter to Sumner of November 20, "that nothing is done to change the reckless tone of your New York Herald; between it and the Times of London there is great mischief done in both countries."2 As friends of the North
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1 September 18 and November 9. See the New York Herald passim between these dates.
2 Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.

in England endeavored to depreciate the influence of the London Times,1 so did friends of England in America underrate the power of the New York Herald. 2 But, in truth, this journal spoke for a potent public sentiment outside of New England. By its large news-gathering agencies, and by its unvarying support of the administration, it had a large and increasing circulation. Men who were eager for the latest and fullest news from the field, and who wished to stand loyally by Lincoln against the fault-finding of peace Democrats on one side and of Fremont radicals on the other, read it gladly.3 It had a body of devoted readers whom it could influence, and in working up animosity towards England it played upon an oft-used string. The American voter of 1861 had learned at school, from his crude historical study of the Revolution and the War of 1812, that England was a natural enemy; and failing now, in his own country's death-grapple, to make proper allowance for the difficulties of her situation, he was ready and apt to misjudge her. Thus censure and recrimination went on between the two countries. 4
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1 "After I have read something very ugly in the Times I have a sort of longing to tell you how full one feels of sympathy for all you are going through."—Duchess of Argyll to Sumner, October 22. "I most certainly agree with you as to the odious spirit of some of the newspaper articles. ... I think you rate the importance of the Times very high."—Ibid., December 1. Pierce Sumner Papers, MS. See letter of Motley of January 13,1862, and letter of Lord Wensleydale to Motley, February 7, Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 52, 59.
2 For a just appreciation of what the London Times and New York Herald represented, see Edward Dicey's Federal States, vol. i. pp. 27, 273. Dicey was in the United States a large part of 1862 as correspondent of the Spectator and Macmillan's Magazine.
3 "Mr. Lincoln . . . reads no paper . . . the New York Herald excepted. So at least it is generally stated."—Count Gurowski's Diary, August, 1861, p. 81. John Hay wrote Herndon from Paris, in 1866, Lincoln "scarcely ever looked into a newspaper unless I called his attention to an article on some special subject."—Herndon's Lincoln, p. 516.
4 "The North was learning to hate England, and day by day the feeling grew upon me that, much as I wished to espouse the cause of the North, I should have to espouse the cause of my own country."—Anthony Trollope, speaking of November and Dec, 1861, in North America (1862), vol. i. p. 317.

The English public had facts enough for a correct judgment. The Times and Daily News were full of trustworthy information,1 and a careful reading of them, with a fairly enlightened judgment, ought to have led to the conviction that, although the success of the North would not necessarily bring about the abolition of slavery, it was certain to deprive that institution of its political and social power, and eventually destroy it, while the success of the South was sure to extend negro slavery and reopen the African slave-trade. To deny this was to shut the eyes to patent facts. Yet the English would not believe there was a moral question involved in the contest,2 because, under the influence of their hatred of democracy and their desire for good trade and prosperous manufactures, they did not wish to believe it; and the thought that the South would probably succeed developed into a wish for its success. Nevertheless, it may not be becoming for an American to pass condemnation, for, being true children of the mother-country,3 it may be suspected that, in similar circumstances, we should have likewise erred; that, had England been engaged in a war in which justice, supported by the monarchy and the aristocracy, was on one side, and American dollars and a plausible case on the other, the dominant sympathy
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1 "As to interest in the war," the Americans " may assure themselves it is the one absorbing topic. It fills the Times, as they may see. It is the grand theme of conversation, as they may be easily assured." — London Saturday Review, October 5.
2 Edward Dicey wrote: "I have often heard it asserted, and I have seen the statement constantly repeated in the English press, that slavery had nothing to do with the questions at issue between the North and the South. I can only say that during my residence in Washington [the early part of 1862] I heard little talked about except the question of slavery."—Federal States, vol. i. p. 190. Anthony Trollope wrote: "It is vain to say that slavery has not caused secession, and that slavery has not caused the war. That, and that only, has been the real cause of this conflict, though other small collateral issues may now be put forward to bear the blame."—North America (1862), vol. ii. p. 61.
3 See Dicey's Federal States, vol. i. pp. 80, 273,

in our country would have been with the cause which seemed linked with our commercial prosperity.

Great Britain preserved a strict neutrality. What Motley wrote from Paris may, in the light of the later evidence, be affirmed as true up to the last of November. "The present English government," he said, "has thus far given us no just cause of offence."1 Louis Napoleon, the emperor of the French, though in his American policy he did not represent the intelligent and liberal sentiment of his country, had officially asked England to co-operate with him in recognizing the Confederacy and breaking the blockade, but this she had refused to do.2 Motley saw the English Foreign Secretary in September, and gave to Holmes an account of his visit. "I think I made some impression on Lord John Russell," he wrote, "with whom I spent two days soon after my arrival in England; and I talked very frankly and as strongly as I could to Lord Palmerston. . . . For this year there will be no foreign interference with us, and I do not anticipate it at any time, unless we bring it on ourselves by bad management. . . . Our fate is in our own hands, and Europe is looking on to see which side is the strongest. When it has made the discovery, it will back it as also the best and the most moral.3 The impression which Motley made was not lasting. In October Earl Russell proposed to Palmerston that England unite with France in an offer of mediation between the North and the South, with the implied understanding that a refusal of it by the United States would make these two European countries her enemies. Palmerston did not agree with
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1 Letter of October 18. He added: "Moreover, although we have many bitter haters in England, we have many warm friends. ... No man in England more thoroughly understands American politics than Mr. Forster does. There are few like him."—Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 37. 2 Yancey and Rost to Hunter, Paris, October 5 ; Yancey to Hunter, Paris, October 29 ; Rost to Davis, Paris, December 24, 26; Slidell to Benjamin, Paris, April 14, 1862, Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MSS. Treasury Department.
3 Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 43.

Russell, but thought their true policy was to keep clear of the conflict;1 his opinion determined the course of the government, which was in harmony with the prevailing sentiment of the country, although the disposition of the Emperor Napoleon was a matter of public knowledge. 2

Such was the state of public sentiment in England, and of feeling in the United States in regard to it, when an overzealous American naval commander brought the two countries to the brink of war. James M. Mason and John Slidell, who had been appointed commissioners from the Southern Confederacy to Great Britain and France, reached Havana on a little steamer which had successfully run the blockade, and there they took passage for Southampton in the British mail steamship Trent. November 8, the next day after she left Havana, she was overhauled in the Bahama Channel by the American man-of-war San Jacinto, under the command of Captain Wilkes. He fired a shot across her bow without result, and then a shell; this brought her to. The lieutenant of the San Jacinto with a number of sailors and marines boarded the Trent, and took from her by force Mason, Slidell, and their secretaries, in spite of their appeal to the British flag for protection, and in spite of the protest of Captain Williams, of the royal navy, in charge of the mails.3 The prisoners were taken to Fort Warren in Boston harbor. The news of this transaction was received in New York November 16. The country went as wild with jubilant delight as if it had gained a signal victory in the field. The Northern people had waited and watched so long for some result from the immense levies of men and of money that
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1 The letter of Earl Russell was written October 17 ; Palmerston replied the next day, Walpole's Life of Russell, vol. ii. p. 844; Ashley's Life of Palmerston, vol. ii. p. 216.
2 See London Times, November 5; London Saturday Review, October 26, November 2, 9.
3 Reports of Captain Wilkes and Lieutenant Fairfax; protests of Mason and Slidell and Captain Williams; statement of the purser of the Trent, Moore's Rebellion Record, vol. iii., Docs., p. 321 et seq.

it is no wonder they gave way to extravagant joy when the two men, who of all the Confederates except Davis and Floyd were hated the worst, were delivered into their hands. Blended with the feeling that Mason and Slidell would now be prevented from doing us mischief abroad1 was the thought that they would serve as important hostages. Fourteen federal officers, prisoners of war at Richmond and Charleston, had been selected by lot to be hanged in case the pirate's doom should be meted out to the same number of privateersmen confined at the North, and carrying out the plan of treating them as common felons, they had been incarcerated in the county jail.2 It was now proposed that, in retaliation, Mason and Slidell be sent to the Tombs, and that if the hanging began, it should not end until these men of distinction had died on the scaffold. It was understood that Great Britain had to be reckoned with, but in the flush of excitement war with her was looked at without trepidation; for the belief existed that if half a million men could be raised to battle for the Union, double that number would enlist to fight the traditional enemy. As representing the prevalent sentiment, Secretary Welles sent a congratulatory letter to Captain Wilkes; Boston gave him a banquet at which Governor Andrew and the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court spoke with enthusiasm; he was a guest at the dinner of the Boston Saturday Club; and the National House of Representatives on the first day of its session thanked him. It also requested the President to confine Mason as a convicted felon. Edward Everett, Caleb Cushing, and Richard H. Dana, Jr., justified the act of Wilkes. The press teemed with discussions of the legal points involved, and with citations from the authorities on international law tending to
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1 "The government would give a good deal to seize upon such an able and dangerous man as Slidell."—W. H. Russell to London Times, September 2.
2 Ely's Journal in Richmond, p. 211 et seg.

show that the American captain had acted within proper limits.1

Secretary Welles is authority for the statement that all the members of the cabinet, except Blair, shared his own jubilation and that of the House and the country at the arrest of Mason and Slidell.' Lincoln was not carried away by the general joy. He knew that the act of Wilkes was not in line with principles for which we had contended, and for this reason, and for the further one that it might be hard to resist the popular clamor for their summary punishment, he feared that they would "prove to be white elephants."3 Of all the men in responsible positions Sum
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1 New York Tribune, November 18, 19; New York Herald, November 17, 19, 22; New York Times, November 18; New York Evening Post, November 16; Boston Evening Transcript, November 18; Boston Advertiser, November 18; Boston Herald, November 18, 27 ; Edward Everett, in New York Ledger, cited in New York Tribune, December 24; W. H. Russell's letters to London Times, November 19, December 27; Moore's Rebellion Record, vol. iii., Docs., p. 330; Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 51 ; Adams's Dana, vol. ii. pp. 167, 259 ; Life of Bowles, vol. i. p. 332. "What you complain of in the Boston dinner was indeed lamentable; such men should not have talked bosh, even at a little private ovation, and we have reason to know some of them were heartily ashamed of it as soon as they saw it in print."—Asa Gray to Darwin, February 18, 1862, Gray's Letters, p. 476. For action of the House, see Congressional Globe, p. 5. The proposed treatment of Mason was in retaliation for that to which Colonel Corcoran had been subjected.

Anthony Trollope wrote in his North America, vol. i. pp. 264, 317: "It was pretty to hear the charming women of Boston, as they became learned in the law of nations. 'Wheaton is quite clear about it,' one young girl said to me. It was the first I had ever heard of Wheaton, and so far was obliged to knock under." "'We are quite right, 'the lawyers said. 'There are Vattel and Puffendorf and Stowell and Phillimore and Wheaton,' said the ladies."

After Mason and Slidell had been surrendered, General George W. Morgan, of Ohio, still regarding war with Great Britain inevitable, wrote Chase: "A war with England would inspire our people with the fierce passion necessary to successful war. It is what our army and people now stand in need of."—Letter of January 6,1862, Chase Papers, MS.
2 Lincoln and Seward, Welles, p. 184. Nicolay and Hay partly substantiate this, vol. v. p. 26.
3 Lossing's Civil War, vol. ii. p. 156; Nicolay and Hay, vol. v. p. 26; Welles, in the Galaxy, May, 1878.

Sumner and Blair saw the clearest; they were in favor of at once surrendering to England the Confederate commissioners.1 Had Lincoln understood international law as well as Sumner, and had he felt that confidence of public support which he did later, he might have directed this, for in doing a rightful act he was capable of breasting popular sentiment. His sense of the feeling of the people was keener than his knowledge of international law, and knowing he had alienated the radicals by his treatment of Fremont, he held back with his habitual caution from a peremptory move which might also lose him the support of that body of conservative Republicans and war Democrats whose ideas were fairly espoused by the New York Herald. Yet at this time four men could have led public opinion. If Lincoln, Seward, Chase, and Sumner had declared that the act of Wilkes was contrary to the law of nations and our own precedents, that Great Britain had been wronged, and that the injury could be atoned only by the surrender of Mason and Slidell, the country would have acquiesced in it. Policy as well as justice dictated such a course. It was true, as the London Times affirmed, that "the voices of these Southern commissioners, sounding from their captivity, are a thousand times more eloquent in London and in Paris than they would have been if heard at St. James's and the Tuileries."2 The American government, not being able to rise to the height of giving up these captives before they were demanded, did the next best thing. If, as Welles asserts, Seward was at first as elated as any one, 3 reflection changed his mind, for his despatch to Adams of November 30 was prudent, and seems to indicate that he
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1 Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. pp. 52, 61; Lincoln and Seward, Welles, p. 186. This opinion was shared by others of prominence and authority, W. H. Russell to the London Times, December 10, 27. It was clear from the first to Charles Francis Adams that the act was not justifiable, see his Address on Seward, April, 1878.
2 November 28; likewise the London Saturday Review, November 30. 3 Chittenden denies this, Recollections of President Lincoln, p. 148.

believed the surrender of Mason and Slidell to be the probable solution of the difficulty.1 The secretary informed Adams that Captain Wilkes had acted "without any instructions from the government," and gave him permission to impart this fact, and to read the whole of his friendly,
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1 It seems to me clear from Seward's letters to Weed (December 27,1861, and January 22, 1862, Life of Seward, vol. iii. pp. 34, 43) that he was determined, after he had carefully considered the matter, to urge the surrender of the commissioners, if Great Britain demanded them; and although his letter to Weed of March 7, 1862 (Galaxy, March, 1870), is somewhat inconsistent with this view, it does not necessarily contravene it. This is all the more creditable to Seward on account of the Jingo policy he had pursued, and on account of his bitterness towards England. His confidential letter to Sumner of October 11, which he wished to be shown to Bright, exhibits his personal feeling. "Many thanks, my dear Sumner," he wrote, "for the perusal of this noble letter from John Bright [that of September 6]. How sad for the cause of humanity, yet how honorable to John Bright, that he is the only Englishman having public position or character who has written one word of favor to or desire for the preservation of the American Union! Tell him that I appreciate his honesty, his manliness, his virtue. Tell him the American question is not half so difficult of solution as he thinks. The rebellion is already arrested. Henceforward it will drag, languish, perish; that it owes all the success it attained to the timidity, hesitation, and indirect favor of British statesmen and the British press; that our interest in regard to it is Great Britain's interest—nothing different. Both countries were wrong. Both feared it too much and thereby made it formidable. Both have been impatient of the continuance of civil war, and sought to extinguish it by convulsive demonstration against it, when it was only to be accepted as inevitable and treated as such. But we have passed that stage and we shall soon see the war successful. Great Britain has reached a period when she can reflect, and reflecting she cannot fail to see that if she wishes, and will only declare the sentiment, that the government may triumph, the emissaries of faction will retire from her shores, and its authorities here, no longer sustained by false hopes from abroad, will flee before the returning allegiance of the misguided people."—Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. R. H. Dana, Jr., to whom this letter was shown, wrote: ''Mr. Seward's was for British consumption evidently, and well adapted to the needs there."—Ibid. The Secretary of State appears to advantage in a controversy had with Lord Lyons in October. It drew from the Spectator the remark: "Mr. Seward has for once made a hit. In his recent correspondence with Lord Lyons he has developed, possibly from a novel consciousness of being in the right, an unexpected self-restraint, and writing like a gentleman, is victorious as a diplomatist."—November 9.

confidential note to Earl Russell and Lord Palmerston. In his annual message the President made no allusion to the affair. November 27 England received the news of the arrest of Mason and Slidell. The opinion was general that it was an outrage to her flag. Liverpool, strong in sympathy with the South, held a crowded and influential indignation meeting. It "has made a great sensation here," wrote John Bright to Sumner from London, "and the ignorant and passionate and 'Rule Britannia' class are angry and insolent as usual. The ministers meet at this moment on the case."1 The next day Bright wrote from Manchester: "A cabinet council was held yesterday. The chancellor, attorney, and solicitor-general were agreed, and decided that you have done an illegal act in seizing the commissioners. ... I have urged that. . nothing should be asked from your government that you could not easily comply with. The tone of the ministers is not violent, and I hope they will be moderate."3 At that meeting the cabinet decided that the act of Captain Wilkes was "a clear violation of the law of nations, and one for which reparation must be at once demanded."3 Earl Russell prepared a despatch to Lord Lyons, the language of which was softened and made more friendly on the suggestion of the Queen and the prince consort; but as modified, the British government demanded the liberation of Mason, Slidell, and their secretaries, and "a suitable apology for the aggression." Seward was to have seven days, if necessary, to make a reply; but if at the end of that time no answer or an unfavorable one should be received, Lord Lyons was instructed to leave Washington and "to repair immediately to London."4 On Sunday, December 1, a Queen's messenger bearing this despatch was on his way to Washington.' The

1 November 29, Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
2 November 30, Ibid.; see, also, London Times, November 29.
3 Ibid., November 30.
4 British Blue-Book ; Walpole's Russell, vol. ii. p. 346; Martin's Life of the Prince Consort, vol. v. p. 422.
5 London Times, December 2.

admiralty began making extensive naval preparations; eight thousand troops were sent to Canada; the Queen by proclamation prohibited the export of arms and ammunition.1

"England's attitude," wrote Martin Farquhar Tupper, a friend of the North, " is that of calm, sorrowful, astonished determination."2 This well expresses the sentiment of the majority of Englishmen who had property and intelligence.3 They felt that the United States " had invaded the sanctuary which England extends to all political exiles who seek her protection," 4 and that it had, moreover, insulted her flag. Though averse to war, they agreed that if adequate reparation were not made they must resort to the ultimate argument of nations. War meant the decimation of families and increased taxation, yet while Great Britain could inflict injury on the United States, such a war could bring no glory. Neither could it be ignored that she would be the ally of a slave power, nor that her merchant marine could be harmed beyond measure by American privateers. The longing that the Washington government would so act that this public woe might be averted was earnest and sincere. That such a war would open the Southern ports and give them the much-needed supply of cotton,5 was far from being deemed a sufficient compensation for the damage to
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1 Annual British Register, cited in Life of Thurlow Weed, vol. ii. p. 368; Martin's Life of the Prince Consort, vol. v. p. 419; London Gazette Extraordinary, December 4, cited in New York Tribune.
2 To Sumner, December 3, Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
3 This opinion was represented by the London Times, Daily News, Saturday Review, and Spectator. With one or two exceptions, this was the sentiment of the press of the provinces, see Daily News, November 30. It also appears in much of the private correspondence of the time.
4 Expression of London Times, January 9, 1862. 5 "There should have arrived by this time at the Southern ports of America, for shipment to England, from 500,000 to 1,000,000 bales of last year's cotton crop. By the latest estimate it was calculated that not 1000 bales had been sent down, and it was known indeed that small stocks of cotton remaining over from the preceding year's crop had been removed from the ports to the interior of the country."—London Times, January 9,1862.

England which would ensue. The question still pending made the usual merry Christmas a gloomy festival.1

A certain set in England, however, strong in social influence and position, had so ardent and active a sympathy with the South that they were for war at any price, and they did their best to embroil the two countries. "The excitement here has been and is great," wrote John Bright to Sumner, December 5, "and it is fed, as usual, by newspapers, who seem to imagine a cause of war discovered to be something like ' treasure-trove.'" 2 Two days later he said: "There is more calmness here in the public mind— which is natural after last week's explosion—but I fear the military and naval demonstrations of our government point to trouble, and I am not sure that it would grieve certain parties here if any decent excuse could be found for a quarrel with you. You know the instinct of aristocracy and of powerful military services, and an ignorant people is easily led astray on questions foreign to their usual modes of thought." 3 In his letter of December 5 he described the sentiment of a majority of his countrymen much as it seems to me to have been from a study of the London press and the other evidence. "Our law officers," he wrote from Rochdale, "are agreed and strong in their opinion of the illegality of the seizure of the commissioners. . . . All the people here, of course, accept their opinion as conclusive as to the law of the case. . . . Now, notwithstanding the war spirit here, I am sure, even in this district where your civil strife is most injuriously felt, that all thoughtful and
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1 "Christmas comes this year on a country bright with sun and frost, but on a people oppressed with a national loss and threatened with a formidable war. Already closed mills and short time have given some part of our population an earnest of what they may hereafter expect; already speculation is more careful than it has been for many years, and the sombre appearance of our churches and chapels last Sunday portends a bad season next spring for the many trades concerned in female attire. The prospect of an aggravated income-tax sits like a nightmare on many households."— London Times, December 27.
2 Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
3 December 7, ibid.

serious men, and indeed the great majority of the people, will be delighted if some way can be found out of the present difficulty. . . . Nations drift into wars—as we drifted into the late war with Russia—often through the want of a resolute hand at some moment early in the quarrel. So, now, a courageous stroke, not of arms, but of moral action, may save you and us. . . . It is common here to say that your government cannot resist the mob violence by which it is surrounded. I do not believe this, and I know that our government is often driven along by the force of the genteel and aristocratic mob which it mainly represents. But now in this crisis I fervently hope that you may act firmly and courteously; any moderate course you may take will meet with great support here, and in the English cabinet there are, as I certainly know, some who will gladly accept any fair proposition for friendly arrangement from your side."1

An offset to the war-at-any-price faction was the group represented by Bright, Cobden, and Forster. They urged the treatment of the matter in an amicable way; should the federal government maintain that its act was legal and right, they were ready to accept arbitration, or even propose it, rather than go to war.2 At Rochdale, December 4, Bright made a noble, sympathetic, and convincing speech, reaching a moral height which few public men ever attain.3 "This steamer will take out a report of Bright's speech," wrote Cobden to Sumner, December 5, "and my letter of excuse for not being able to attend. You will see that we stand in the breach, as usual, to stem the tide of passion.
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1 Pierce Sumner Papers, MS.
2 Bright's letters to Sumner show this; Cobden to Sumner, December 12,19, Morley's Cobden, p. 574; Forster's speech at Bradford, London Times, January 3,1862.
3 The whole speech should be read. It is printed in vol. i. of Rogers's edition of Bright's speeches. The comments of the London Times of December 6, of the Saturday Review and the Spectator of December 7, are interesting; see Motley's reference to it in his letter of December 10, Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 48.

But you know that we don't represent all England at such a moment. . . . You will see a new feature in this disagreeable matter in the ardor with which the French press takes up the cry against you. Some of the papers most eager to push us to extremities are those which are conducted by parties who are supposed to be in the confidence of the emperor." 1
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1 Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. As neither this letter nor any part of it was printed by Morley, I will add liberal extracts from it: "Spending as I did eighteen months in France, and always in close communication with the emperor's ablest advisers, and frequently having very free audiences with himself, I came to the conclusion that the corner-stone of his policy was friendship with England. ... It was because I knew the inner policy of the French government that I could not see without mortification and disgust the shallow antics of some of your official representatives in Paris, at that most lamentable public meeting where individuals, accredited by your government, invited the emperor to join you against England to avenge Waterloo and St. Helena! These proceedings not having led to the recall or official rebuke of the parties, have done more harm in this country than all the ravings of your Herald. . . . From all that I hear from France the trade of that country is dreadfully damaged, and I feel convinced the emperor would be supported by his people if he were to enter into alliance with England to abolish the blockade and recognize the South. The French are inconvenienced in many ways by your blockade, and especially in their relations with New Orleans, which are more important to them in exports than to us. For ourselves in England, in spite of the bluster of the Times, the majority are anxious for peace. Do not overrate the powers of the Times. Seven years ago it had a monopoly of publicity. Now its circulation is not perhaps one-tenth of the daily press. The Star and Manchester Examiner, two admirable papers, circulate far more than the Times. But it cannot be denied that the great motives of hope and fear which kept us at peace, and inclined the English government always to recede in pinching controversies with you are gone. The English people have no sympathy with you on either side. You know how ignorant we are on the details of your history, geography, constitution, etc. There are two subjects on which we are unanimous and fanatical—personal freedom and free trade. These convictions are the result of fifty years of agitation and discussion. In your case we observe a mighty quarrel: on one side protectionists, on the other slave-owners. The protectionists say they do not seek to put down slavery. The slave-owners say they want free trade. Need you wonder at the confusion in John Bull's poor head? He gives it up! leaves it to the government. Which government, by the way, are the most friendly to your government

On the whole, the attitude of the majority of the English pending the difficulty was dignified,1 although they showed some acerbity upon hearing the news of the way in which Wilkes's action had been received in the United States— "the outburst of hilarity," as the Times described it.' The Southern sympathizers, however, were active and aggressive, using arguments which had considerable power over the English mind. The pressure of the blockade, 3 the proposal
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government which could be found in England, for although Palmerston is fond of hot water, he boasts that he never got us into a serious war. As for his colleagues, they are all sedate, peaceable men. God bless us! 'A mad world, my masters !'" Perhaps it is unnecessary for me to add that I do not agree with Cobden's depreciation of the influence of the Times, and that I feel sure of the correctness of my statements in the text. His remarks about the English government seem to me strictly accurate, and should be constantly borne in mind as the story of our relations with Great Britain goes on. Charles Francis Adams wrote from London, July 13,1865 : "At the time when I first reached this country, in 1861, the character of the elections then taking place, to fill casual vacancies, was such, in consequence of the general impression that the 'bubble of democracy had burst in America,' as to fill the conservatives with hopes of what they denominated a strong reaction. It was this feeling which really lay at the root of all their views of our struggle. Had the Parliament been dissolved at any time prior to July, 1863, there can be little doubt that it would have had a considerable effect on the issue." The conservative leaders, Disraeli and Sir Stafford Northcote, were, however, opposed to any interference in the American war, see article of Lord Coleridge in Macmillan's Magazine, January, 1888, p. 165 ; Froude's Disraeli, p. 159. Lord Stanley had also spoken a friendly word for the North, see Bright's speech of December 4, 1861.
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1 "I don't think the nation here behaved badly under the terrible evil of loss of trade and danger of starving under your blockade. Of course all privileged classes and aristocracies hate your institutions—that is natural enough."—Cobden to Sumner, December 19, Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.; Morley's Cobden, p. 574.
2 December 4; see, also, Cobden's letter of December 19, ibid.
3 Cobden wrote Sumner, December 12: "I am afraid that we in England who are well-wishers to the North take a more accurate measure of the difficulties of your position than you who are in the heat of the turmoil can do; just as you took a more correct view of the Crimean war and its utter uselessness than the bulk of Englishmen did. We do not believe that the subjugation of the South can be a speedy achievement. Nobody doubts the power of the North ultimately, if it chooses to make the sacrifice, to ruin the South, and even to occupy its chief places. But this will take a very long time,

proposal of the federal government to sink in the channels leading to the Southern ports vessels laden with stone,1 the animosity of Seward to Great Britain, were urged as fortifying reasons to the outrage committed on board the steamer Trent, all of which together would justify a declaration of war. Seward's course had irritated English opinion, and made the position of our friends and that of the larger number of Englishmen who desired to preserve a strict neutrality harder to maintain. "There is a feeling among our ministers," wrote Bright to Sumner, November 29, "that Mr. Seward is not so friendly in his transactions with them as they could wish."2 This feeling was shared by the public. A remark he was said to have made to the Duke of Newcastle, who accompanied the Prince of Wales to America in 1860, went the rounds. Seward told the duke, at a dinner given by Governor Morgan to the prince, that in the
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and the world will not look on, I believe, patient sufferers during the process. I am not justifying any interference on the part of Europe; but it is a fearful thing to have the whole civilized world undergoing privations and sufferings which they lay at the door of the North, thus making it the interest of their governments to interfere with you. Recollect that your own government has condemned blockades of purely commercial ports; the world has in truth outgrown them. . . . The state of modern society, where you have millions of laborers in Europe depending for the means of employment on a regular supply of raw materials brought from another continent, to say nothing of hundreds of millions of capital invested on the same dependence, will necessitate a change in the law of blockade and other belligerent rules. ... I do not, I repeat, say that the rest of the world has the right to force you to raise your blockade. But I do think you ought to consider these tendencies of the world's opinion, and how much you are acting in opposition to the spirit of the age; and above all, in your present state, weigh well the danger of putting yourself in the dilemma of making all the world your enemies. The recognition of the independence of the South, and the forcing of the blockade, will come to be viewed, about next March, as a matter of life and death by many millions of people in Europe, and as a question of high political urgency by the most powerful governments of the world."—Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
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1 Report of Welles, December 2; Cobden's letter of December 19, Morley's Cobden, p. 574; Life of Weed, vol. ii. p. 892.
2 Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.

next administration he should probably occupy high office; that "it would become his duty to insult England, and that he should insult her accordingly." 1 The remark—supposing that the duke understood it correctly—was probably an attempt at facetiousness, but he took the very poor joke in sober earnest, and gave the story to the ministry; afterwards it got into the newspapers, and at this time had considerable influence on public opinion.3 The subsequent acts of Seward seemed to confirm the accuracy of the report. It was also believed that, soon after his accession to office, he had proposed to the North and the South that they sink their differences and unite in an attack on Canada. His public circular of October 14 to the governors of all the States on the seaboard and lakes, urging them to put their ports and harbors in a condition of complete defence in order to guard against attack from foreign nations,3 when joined to all the other circumstances, seemed to show that, for his own behoof, he was determined to provoke a war with Great Britain.4 "There is general distrust and hostility to yourself," said Thurlow Weed, in a letter from London of December 6 to Seward.5 "There is an impression, I know, in high quarters here," wrote Cobden to Sumner, November 29, "that Mr. Seward wishes to quarrel with this country. This seems absurd enough. I confess I
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1 London Times, December 14,1861.
2 See Thurlow Weed's letters from London to Seward. December 6, 10; see Seward's reference to it, letters of December 27,1861, January 2,1862, Life of Seward, vol. iii. pp. 29, 30, 34, 37. George Peabody to Weed, January 17, 1862, Life of Weed, vol. ii. p. 365; also see p. 355, and Thurlow Weed's letter in the London Times of December 14.
3 New York Tribune, October 17. Chase wrote Jay Cooke, October 19, that there was no necessity for Seward's circular, Schuckers, p. 432. The President, however, in his message of December 3, and the Secretary of War in his report of December 1, advocated such a measure.
4 London Times, November 7, December 14,30; London Saturday Review, December 14. 5 Life of Seward, vol. iii. p. 29. Weed, Archbishop Hughes, and Bishop Mcllvaine had gone to Europe, at the request of the administration, in the hope of influencing sentiment in England and France favorably to the North, Life of Weed, vol. i. p. 634

have as little confidence in him as I have in Lord Palmerston. Both will consult bunkum for the moment, without much regard, I fear, for the future."1 We may, I think, accept as faithful this characterization.

Yet in the Mason and Slidell affair Seward behaved better than Palmerston. We have seen that the secretary wrote Adams, November 30, that he might assure Lord Palmerston and Earl Russell that Captain Wilkes had acted without any authority whatever from the government.2 December 19 Adams imparted this to Russell, and although the American minister took great care that the despatch and his conference with the British foreign secretary should be kept strictly private, an inkling of them in some manner leaked out, and the funds rose one per cent. on the next day. In the meantime popular opinion took an admirable turn. The Bright and Cobden party had gained on the British public at the expense of the sympathizers with the Southern Confederacy. The feeling became strong that if agreement could not be reached by negotiation, arbitration were preferable to war.3 The giving
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1 Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.; Morley's Cobden, p. 573; see Sumner's reply, Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 60. "The Times and other journals, but the Times chiefly, have sought to create the opinion that your government, and Mr. Seward principally, seeks war with England.. . . Unfortunately, while heretofore cotton has been the great bond of peace between the United States and England, now it is acting in a contrary direction."—Bright to Sumner, December 21, Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. Gray said to Darwin, in a letter written late in 1861 or early in 1862: "Seeman wrote me that the general belief at the clubs and in the City was that our government wanted to get into war with England for an excuse to give up the South."—Gray's Letters, p. 473. 2 Ante.
3 Bright wrote Sumner, December 14, "There is less passion shown here than there was a week ago, and there has been a considerable expression of opinion in favor of moderate counsels and urging arbitration rather than war." December 21 he wrote, "There has been more manifestation of opinion in favor of peace and of moderate counsels, and of arbitration in case your government cannot accept the opinion of our law officers on the unhappy Trent affair."—Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. The Daily News of December 27said, "The principle of arbitration has excited during the last ten days an amount of public interest and received an amount of public

giving out of the virtual contents of Seward's despatch by Palmerston would have been proper, and would have caused joy in the financial and commercial circles of London. But not only did he fail to confirm the pleasant rumor which had obtained currency, but he suffered his accredited organ, the Morning Post, to assert more than once, without correction, that while Adams had indeed communicated a despatch to the British government, it "in no way related to the difficulty about the Trent."1 It is possible that Palmerston, with an eye to his majority in the House of Commons, soon to assemble, saw fit to cajole the war party, in which were many members of Parliament, while other members of the cabinet sympathized with the dominant opinion for peace.2 "I suspect" wrote Bright to Sumner, December 21," there is a section of our government disposed for war, but I know there is another section disposed for peace." 3
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support that could hardly have been anticipated at such a moment." Adams wrote Seward, December 27: "Although many of the leading presses zealously continue their efforts to keep up the war feeling here against the United States, I think the signs are clear of a considerable degree of reaction, and a growing hope that the friendly relations between the two countries may be preserved."—Diplomatic Correspondence, 1862, p. 12; see Cobden's letter of January 23,1862, Morley's Cobden, p. 575.
1 Adams to Seward, January 17, 1862, Diplomatic Correspondence, 1862, p. 14. Goldwin Smith, in Macmillan's Magazine for December, 1865, speaks of "the suppression of Mr. Seward's pacific note, and the positive denial of the fact that such a communication had been received published in the prime-minister's personal organ."
2 Adams to Seward, December 27, 1861, January 17, 1862, Diplomatic Correspondence, 1862, pp. 13, 16. The Observer, a weekly paper, supposed to represent Earl Russell, gave after the first denial of the Post the substance of Seward's pacific despatch, see Diplomatic Correspondence, 1862, p. 15. Russell had acted with dignity. The Confederate commissioners had pressed for an interview which he declined, British and Foreign State Papers, 1860-61, p. 261. See also Adams to Seward, December 27, Diplomatic Correspondence, 1862, p. 13; Bright's criticism of Palmerston in House of Commons, February 17,1862, and Palmerston's reply, Hansard, pp. 379, 390.
3 Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. Bright had written, December 14: "The unfavorable symptom is the war preparations of the government and the sending of troops to Canada and the favor shown to the excitement which so generally precedes war. This convinces us either that this gov

"We in England," said Cobden in a letter to Sumner, "have ready a fleet surpassing in destructive force any naval armament the world ever saw, exceeding greatly the British navy in the great French war in 1810. This force has been got up under false pretences. There is always a desire on the part of governments to use such armaments, by way of proving that they were necessary. France was the pretence, and now we have plenty of people who would be content to see this fleet turned against you."1

The Queen's messenger delivered Earl Russell's despatch of November 30 to the British minister at Washington at
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eminent believes that you intend war with England, or that itself intends war with you. The first supposition is scarcely credible—unless the New York Herald be accepted as the confidential organ of your government (!), or that Lord Lyons has misrepresented the feeling of the Washington cabinet. The second supposition may be true—for it may be imagined that by a war got up on some recent pretence, such as your steamer San Jacinto is supposed to have given, we may have cotton sooner than by waiting for your success against the South. I know nothing but what is in the papers, but I conclude that this government is ready for war if an excuse can be found for it. I need not tell you that at a certain point the moderate opinion of a country is borne down by the passion which arises and which takes the name of patriotism, and that the good men here who abhor war may have no influence if a blow is once struck."—Ibid.

1 Letter of December 12, Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. Cobden wrote, January, 1862: "Palmerston ought to be turned out for the reckless expense to which he has put us. . . . Then came Seward's despatch to Adams on the 19th December, which virtually settled the matter. To keep alive the wicked passions in this country as Palmerston and his Post did was like the man, and that is the worst that can be said of it."—Morley's Cobden, p. 572; see, also, Goldwin Smith's article, Macmillan's Magazine, December, 1865.

Besides authorities which have been mentioned from time to time, I have read all the leaders on American affairs pending the Trent difficulty in the London Times, Daily News, Saturday Review, and the Spectator, and several articles in the London Morning Post and Morning Star, printed in the New York Tribune. I desire to refer especially to the Times of November 28, 29, 30, December 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,7,13,14,16, 21, 24,25,30,1861, January 2,1862; the Daily News, November 28,30, December 4, 5,11, 27; Saturday Review, November 30, December 7, 14, 28; the Spectator, November 30, December 7, 21, 28,1861, January 4,1862. See the correspondence between Weed and Seward, Life of Seward, vol. iii. chaps. in., iv.; also Life of Weed, vol. i. p. 634 et seq., vol. ii. p. 348 et seq.; Motley's Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 45.

half-past eleven on the night of December 18. Lord Lyons saw Seward the next day, and, in accordance with private instructions, did not read Russell's despatch, but acquainted him with the tenor of it, saying that her majesty's government would be satisfied with nothing less than the liberation of the captive commissioners. The Secretary of State asked for a little delay. December 23 Lyons read to Seward England's formal demand, and left him a copy of it. It does not appear that the British minister stated that unless he received a satisfactory answer in seven days he should close his legation and leave Washington, nor that Seward asked what would be the consequence should the United States refuse compliance. In a private note from Russell to Lyons the desire of the English government "to abstain from anything like menace" was expressed. Courtesy and a conciliatory manner marked the conduct of the Englishman, dignity and gravity that of the American during these negotiations. On Christmas morning the President assembled his cabinet. Earl Russell's despatch was read. The Secretary of State submitted the draft of his answer proposing to surrender Mason and Slidell to the British authorities. Sumner came by invitation to the cabinet meeting, and read to the gentlemen assembled the letters of John Bright, and the most important of those from Cobden.1 While the discussion to which these papers
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1 Bright's up to and including December 14, Cobden's up to and including December 12. I have already quoted freely from these letters, but I will add two more citations from Bright which bore directly on the point discussed. He wrote, December 7: "At all hazards you must not let this matter grow to a war with England; even if you are right and we are wrong, war will be fatal to your idea of restoring the Union, and we know not what may survive its evil influences. I am not now considering its effects here—they may be serious enough—but I am looking alone to your great country, the hope of freedom and humanity, and I implore you not, on any feeling that nothing can be conceded, and that England is arrogant and seeking a quarrel, to play the game of every enemy of your country. Nations in great crises and difficulties have often done that which in their prosperous and powerful hour they would not have done, and they have done it without humiliation or disgrace. You may disappoint your enemies by the

gave rise was going on, a despatch from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of France to Mercier, her representative at Washington, was sent into the council-room. This asserted that England had made a just demand, and urged that the federal government comply with it. The despatch had been received only that morning by Mercier. Impressed by its importance he had hurried to the White House, and begged that it be submitted at once to Seward.1 The discussion went on until two o'clock, and was continued the next day. Seward maintained that, Wilkes having clearly violated the law of nations, England had a right to ask for the restoration of the Confederate commissioners. Sumner, either in the cabinet meeting or out of it, strongly supported this view of the Secretary of State. The President and some members of the cabinet hesitated. Lincoln had entertained the notion of proposing arbitration; perhaps it had been suggested to him by one of Bright's letters. 2
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moderation and reasonableness of your conduct, and every honest and good man in England will applaud your wisdom. Put all the fire-eaters in the wrong, and Europe will admire the sagacity of your government." —Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. December 14 he said: "If you are resolved to succeed against the South have no war with England; make every concession that can be made ; don't even hesitate to tell the world that you will even concede what two years ago no power would home asked of you, rather than give another nation a pretence for assisting in the breaking up of your country. The time will probably come when you can safely disregard the menaces of the English oligarchy; now it is your interest to baffle it, even by any concession which is not disgraceful."—Ibid.
1 The despatch was dated December 3. The Austrian and Prussian governments were both friendly to the North. Their despatches did not reach Washington until after the affair was settled. Count Rechberg wrote from Vienna, December 8, to Hulsemann that he thought England was in the right. Count Bernstorff wrote from Berlin, December 25, to Baron Gerolt in a similar strain and said, "Public opinion in Europe has with singular unanimity pronounced in the most positive manner for the injured party." —British Blue-Book.
2 Bright wrote, December 5: "If opinions on your side and ours vary and are not to be reconciled—I mean legal opinions—then I think your government may fairly say it is a question for impartial arbitration, to which they are willing to submit the case ; and, further, that, in accordance with all their past course, they are willing to agree to such amendments of maritime or international law as England, France, and Russia may consent to. If I were minister or President in your country, I would write the most complete answer the case is capable of, and, in a friendly and courteous tone, send it to this country. I would say that if, after this, your view of the case is not accepted, you are ready to refer the matter to any sovereign or two sovereigns, or governments of Europe, or to any other eligible tribunal, and to abide by the decision, and you will rejoice to join with the leading European governments in amendments and modifications of international law in respect to the powers of belligerents and the rights of neutrals. I think you may do this with perfect honor, and you would make it impossible for the people of England to support our government in any hostile steps against you; in fact, I think a course so moderate and just would bring over to your side a large amount of opinion here that has been poisoned and misled by the Times and other journals since your troubles began."—Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. Compare Lincoln's MS. draft of a reply, Nicolay and Hay, vol. v. p. 32.

While he cared little about keeping Mason and Slidell, and was earnestly anxious to avoid war with Great Britain, he feared the sentiment of the people. In the end, however, from the considerations that the United States did not have a good case and that it could not afford a war with Great Britain, all came to Seward's position and approved his answer. His letter, dated December 26, was a lengthy discussion of the law, obviously written for its effect at home. The best and perhaps the only necessary parts were: This government cannot deny the justice of the claim presented by the British government, which " is not made in a discourteous manner," and " the four persons in question . . . will be cheerfully liberated." 1 Mason, Slidell, and their secretaries were delivered to an English steamer at Provincetown. The disavowal of the act was accepted as a sufficient apology.2
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1 Cobden wrote, January 23,1862: "I regret that your foreign secretary did not give a word of sympathy in this direction instead of threats. However, he had his hands full at home, and I am bound to say there is much in his correspondence to inspire both admiration and respect."—Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
2 My authorities for this account are three despatches of Russell to Lyons of November 30 ; ibid., December 19; Lyons to Russell, December 19, 23, and two despatches of December 27, British Blue-Book; Walpole's Russell, vol. ii. p. 346;

The President had misread public sentiment. The outburst of exultation when the news of Wilkes's exploit was first received had given way to sober reflection on the right and policy of our act. "The decision of our government," wrote Asa Gray to Darwin, "will be as unitedly and thoroughly sustained by the whole people as if it had been the other way." This is an accurate statement of popular opinion.1 Although the people of the North were impulsive, they were generous and desired to be just; they certainly did not at this time wish a war with England, but they believed that she desired an excuse to interfere in their trouble and help the South. If the Trent had been a Russian ship, the people with one accord would have demanded that the offer be immediately made for the surrender of the prisoners ; and had English opinion justified Earl Russell in sending words as kind and sympathetic as those which Russia had sent in July, the same feeling would have existed towards Great Britain. That the hearts of Americans, in spite of their griefs, beat warmly for those of their stock across the sea was manifested when the intelligence of
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Bates's MS. Diary, Nicolay and Hay, vol. v. p. 35 et seq.; Chase's Diary, Warden, p. 393; Sumner's letters to Bright and Cobden, Pierce, vol. iv. p. 57 et seq.; Seward to Weed, January 22, 1862, Life of Weed, vol. ii. p. 409, and other private letters of Seward printed in the biographies of Seward and Weed; Charles Francis Adams's address on Seward, April, 1873; for an abstract of the legal points involved, see Snow's Cases of International Law, p. 486.
1Gray's Letters, p. 473; New York Herald, December 21, 29; New York World, Times, December 16, 30 ; New York Tribune, Evening Post, Boston Evening Transcript, Daily Advertiser, December 30; Boston Herald, December 29; private correspondence of Sumner for December, Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. Edward L. Pierce wrote Sumner, January 12, 1862: "When you asked me how the surrender of Mason and Slidell would be received if determined upon, I said it might meet with indignation in the morning, but would be acquiesced in in the evening; but it was acquiesced in universally in the morning. All thought it wise." Ibid; Anthony Trollope's North America, vol. ii. p. 35; Motley's Correspondence, vol. ii. pp. 45, 49, 53. Seward's despatch of November 30 to Adams, Earl Russell's demand, Seward's reply, the advice of the French minister of foreign affairs, were printed in the New York Tribune of December 30.

Prince Albert's death came. The decision in the Mason and Slidell case had not been reached, and it was not known whether it would be for peace or for war, but New York showed its respect for the good and capable man by lowering to half-mast the flags of the ships in the harbor and those on the buildings in the city.1

All England, with the exception of that party which sympathized so strongly with the South that they were ready to go to war to aid her, received the news of the surrender of Mason and Slidell with great thankfulness.' Gladstone had
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1 New York Evening Post, December 28. 2 London Times, January 9 ; London Daily News, January 10; London Saturday Review and Spectator, January 11, 1862. Lord Lyons wrote Sumner, February 1, 1862: "You will, I am sure, hear with pleasure that the queen has created me a Knight Grand Cross of the Bath. This is a great mark of the satisfaction with which the termination of the dangerous question is regarded by her majesty and the government."—Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. The leader in the Times of January 11 is a striking illustration of English sentiment, and goes to prove that if our government had at once liberated Mason and Slidell, and had taken pains to recall to the British public that Mason was the author of the Fugitive Slave law, and that Slidell had been the champion of filibustering, it would have been a master-stroke of policy. I therefore quote largely from it: "The four American gentlemen who have got us into our late trouble and cost us probably a million apiece, will soon be in one of our ports. . . . How, then, are we to receive these illustrious visitors ?. . . We may as well observe that Messrs. Mason and Slidell are about the most worthless booty it would be possible to extract from the jaws of the American lion. They have long been known as the blind and habitual haters and revilers of this country. They have done more than any other men to get up the insane prejudice against England which disgraces the morality and disorders the policy of the Union. The hatred of this country has been their stock in trade. On this they have earned their political livelihood and won their position, just as there are others who pander to the lower passions of humanity. A diligent use of this bad capital has made them what they are and raised them to the rank of commissioners. It is through their lifelong hatred and abuse of England that they come here in their present conspicuous capacity. The nation under whose flag they sought a safe passage across the Atlantic, the nation that has now rescued them with all her might from the certainty of a dungeon and the chances of retaliatory murder, is that against which they have always done their best to exasperate their countrymen. Had they perished in the cell or on the scaffold, amid the triumphant yells of the multitude, memory would have suggested that their own bitter tirades had raised the storm, and that their death was only the natural and logical conclusion of their own calumnies and sophistries. So we do sincerely hope that our countrymen will not give these fellows anything in the shape of an ovation. . . . Impartial as the British public is in the matter, it certainly has no prejudice in favor of slavery, which, if anything, these gentlemen represent. . . . They must not suppose, because we have gone to the very verge of a great war to rescue them, that therefore they are precious in our eyes. We should have done just as much to rescue two of their own negroes, and, had that been the object of the rescue, the swarthy Pompey and Caesar would have had just the same right to triumphal arches and municipal addresses as Messrs. Mason and Slidell. So please, British public, let's have none of these things."

written Sumner, January 3: "I write in the interval, not, let us hope, a trough between the waves, when your answer to our demand in the case of Mason and Slidell is on the way. ... I must not enter into the gigantic question of the convulsion now agitating the North American continent. For British interests, I could heartily wish the old Union had continued. I will only further say that I am sure you have entered on this terrific struggle in good faith and good conscience, and that I do not believe even it can destroy your greatness."1 After the action of the American government was known, Gladstone spoke in public with generous and friendly sympathy for the Union.2 In a letter to Sumner of January 10 the Duke of Argyll said: "The news which came to us two days ago has been indeed a relief. I am sure I need not tell you how I hated what appeared the prospect before us. There were just two things which appeared to me certain: one was that if the act of the San Jacinto were defended, war was absolutely forced upon us; the other was that such a war, odious at all times, was doubly odious now.3 Bright rejoiced and wrote, "The war-mongers here are baffled for the time, and I cannot but believe that a more healthy opinion is gradually extending itself on all matters connected with your great struggle."4 Yet he was
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1 Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
2 London Daily News, January 14,1862.
3 Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
4 To Sumner, January 11, ibid.; also his speech in the House of Commons, February 17, Hansard, p. 886.

afraid of Palmerston. "I have a letter from a friend of mine in a government office," he added, "in which he expresses his confident belief that Palmerston and Louis Napoleon do intend at an early period to recognize the independence of the South and to repudiate or break the blockade."

It is a pity that this honorable settlement of the difficulty does not end the chapter of misunderstanding, of lack of sympathy, of irritation between England and the United States. The affair left a rankling wound. "You have made us sore," wrote Asa Gray to Darwin.1 Lowell said, in 1869: "It is the Trent that we quarrel about, like Percy and Glendower. That was like an east wind to our old wound and set it a-twinge once more. . . . That imperious despatch of Lord John's made all those inherited drops of ill-blood as hot as present wrongs."2 "I agree with you,"
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1 February 18, Letters, p. 477; see, also, letter of W. C. Bryant to a friend in England, Life of Bryant, Godwin, vol. ii. p. 159.
2 Letter to E. L. Godkin, May 2, 1869, Lowell's Letters, vol. ii. p. 29. This is a curious instance of the survival in a broad-minded man of a former intensity of feeling. Earl Russell's despatch and instructions were, as long as a peremptory demand had to be made, courteous and even considerate, and were so regarded at the time, see Seward's letter of December 26; New York World, December 30. Lowell's remark was possibly on the supposition that the demand for the surrender of Mason and Slidell was accompanied with the threat that, if they were not given up in seven days, Lord Lyons should close his legation and leave Washington. Although it is frequently stated that such a threat was made by Lyons to Seward, I have not been able to find any evidence of it. William Gray, writing Chase from Boston, December 24, that the general opinion of the Law Club was that war with Great Britain must be avoided, added, "The conduct of England during the whole year has caused an estrangement in our people, the effect of which will outlive the present generation."—Chase Papers, MS. Richard H. Dana wrote Sumner, February 12: "I am glad to see the London Times' attack on you and your speech. [Sumner's speech on the Trent case, Senate, January 9, 1862, see Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 55; Adams's Dana, vol. ii. p. 261.] It will make you feel to the quick what you did not seem to feel, or refused to admit—the intolerable insolence of England towards us, and the false and fraudulent manner in which they have treated this case. Those few semi republican, semi-abolition, liberally inclined men in England whom few respect, and who command, perhaps, one paper and one monthly, are a drop in the bucket. The mass of the English are determined to sever this republic, and all their pent-up jealousy, contempt, arrogance, revenges, and superciliousness are breaking out stronger and stronger. There is not one English paper that has not either suppressed or falsified the material facts of this case, because they foresee they could not bear the light. I am rejoiced that you are made to feel this! Talk not of the 'press' and of private letters! You might as well set up the Isle of Skye against London, as all that against the avalanche of the Times, Herald, Post, Westminster, Blackwood, Quarterly, Edinboro, Punch, Saturday, etc. If I were Secretary of State I would keep my temper as Seward does, I hope—and keep peace. But if this style of treating us goes on much longer there must be war. Human nature cannot endure it."—Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.

wrote Darwin to Sir Joseph Hooker, January 25, 1862; "the present American row has a very Torifying influence on us all."1

With military operations at a stand-still, the Southern people looked on the progress of the difficulty about the Trent with painful suspense, and they grieved at its settlement, for they felt that a war between Great Britain and the United States would be an absolute warrant of their independence. Nevertheless, at the close of 1861 it would have been difficult to find many Southerners who doubted, whether or not there was foreign interference in the struggle, eventual success. The battles of Bull Run and of Ball's Bluff seemed to show that they were more than a match in prowess for their assailants. In eight months the North had made no progress towards a restoration of the Union, or as the Southerners expressed it, towards the subjugation of the South. There was a triumphant note in Jefferson Davis's message to his congress, which met at Richmond November 18, as he spoke of their victories, the waxing strength of the Confederacy, and its well-regulated financial system. 2 The financiering extolled by Davis consisted in meeting the expenses of the war by loans and the issue of treasury notes. From July 1 to November 16 less than one per cent, of the receipts had come from customs and "miscellaneous
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1 Life and Letters, vol. ii. p. 177.
2 Davis's message, Moore's Rebellion Record, vol. iii. p. 404.

sources;" $20,400,000 had been raised by loans, $31,000,000 in treasury notes had been paid out.1 A direct war tax had indeed been imposed by the Confederate congress in August, but it had not yet yielded anything. Such was the aversion of the people to taxation that most of the States assumed this tax, as they were allowed to do by the statute, and paid it to the Confederate government, raising the means by issuing State bonds and State treasury notes.2 The expenditures for the two months previous to November 20, when the Secretary of the Treasury made his report, had averaged about twenty millions per month.3 The banks in the Confederacy had suspended specie payments. Before the 1st of May gold was four per cent, premium in Atlanta; quoted in Richmond at 110 August 1, it sold at 120 by the end of the year.4

While there is not a glimmering of discouragement in Davis's message, in Memminger's report, or in the legislation of the Confederate congress,5 the pressure of the blockade had begun to be felt severely. Salt, bacon, butter, coffee, tea, soap, candles, matches, starch, and glue had advanced enormously in price, and these articles were extremely scarce. The same may be said of dry goods. Highly bred young women of Charleston dressed in homespun, and the gentlemen of Richmond made a virtue of wearing last year's clothes. The blockade was teaching lessons of economy
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1 Memminger's report.
2 J. C. Schwab, "Finances of the Confederacy," Political Science Quarterly, March, 1892, and "The Financier of the Confederate States," Yale Review, November, 1893; Davis's Confederate Government, vol. i. p. 495. For the tax law see Statutes at Large, Provisional Government C. S. A., p. 177.
3 Memminger's report, which also gives total receipts and expenses from the organization of the government to November 16, Life of Memminger, Capers, pp. 422-28.
4 Atlanta Commonwealth, April 33; Richmond Examiner, August 1; Schwab, Political Science Quarterly, p. 44; also Stephens's War between the States, vol. ii. p. 589.
5 The last session of the provisional congress of the Confederacy lasted from November 18,1861, to February 17,1863, but its proceedings do not call for special notice.

to an extravagant people. The first cold weather of the autumn made evident that coal was scarce and wood in short supply; both had become luxuries for the well-to-do. The supply of medicines was becoming low. The scarcity of lint and surgical plaster was felt seriously by the surgeons in the hospitals, and the wounds of federal prisoners taken at Bull Run were for a time left undressed. "Tell your master Lincoln to raise the blockade, and then we will tend to you," the doctors frequently said. "We have not lint enough for our own wounded, and they must be served first."1

Shifts were made to get along without the comforts and necessaries of life. To eke out their store of coffee people mixed rye with it, and when the supply of rye ran short, they found that wheat would answer as well. Drawing a lesson from European experience, the use of chiccory, which grew in profusion in Virginia, was recommended; the root, it was said, when dried, roasted, and ground, would make an excellent substitute for coffee, or a mixture with it, while, being less irritating to the nerves than the pure coffee, it would prove a wholesome as well as an economical beverage. The bark of the dogwood-tree in some measure supplied the want of quinine. The Confederacy affords an example of the discomforts and inconveniences to which a wholly agricultural people are subject when shut off from intercourse with the inventive and manufacturing world. Though it had been apparently more profitable to devote particular attention to the cultivation of the peculiar Southern staples — cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar—and to buy food from the North, it was now perceived that the Southern States could raise bread and meat enough for their population. It happened fortunately for them that in the year 1861, before their system of planting had become adjusted to the conditions of war, their crops of wheat and corn were large. Distribution, however, is almost as important as
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1 Ely's Journal in Richmond, p. 101.

production. Excluded from commerce with the North and England, the railroads of the Confederacy ran down, and as their track and their rolling-stock could be neither renewed nor repaired, they were unable at times to do more than the government work and keep the armies supplied. Hence, we may note a great discrepancy in prices, remarkable in railroad days, in different parts of the Confederacy. Whatever industrial capacity the South possessed was set to work to manufacture implements of war, and in this field accomplished important results, yet there was no overplus to devote to the arts of peace. For example, a street railroad had been constructed in Richmond, but the cars ordered from the North could not be procured. It was humiliating, the Richmond Whig declared, to see the track in Main Street unused because no one in the Confederacy could make a car.1 When at last one car was obtained, it was a gratifying, almost a gala sight to the citizens of Richmond to see it running from Ninth Street to Rocketts.2

The cutting off of the supply of paper was grievously felt. The tightening of the pressure of the blockade may be studied in the deterioration in the appearance of the daily newspapers. The Richmond Examiner at the beginning of the war was an admirably printed sheet, but as the days wore on its paper became poorer and its print less legible. The Richmond Whig and the Charleston Courier decreased in size. The Atlanta Southern Confederacy and the Atlanta Commonwealth appeared occasionally as half-sheets only, since they could not procure sufficient paper for the whole of their matter, and for several days they were obliged to print their meagre issues on brown wrapping-paper.3 When Alfred Ely, a New York congressman captured at Bull Run and held a prisoner for several months in Richmond, was released, his passport was written on brown paper4 of Southern
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1 August 9. 2 Richmond Enquirer, September 3.
3 See the Southern Confederacy for September 25, 28, October 1, 2; the Commonwealth for October 1, 2.
4 A Rebel War Clerk's Diary, vol. i. p. 102.

manufacture. Unable to get the notes ordered from the American Bank Note Company, New York, the treasury operations of the new government were attended with inconvenience. It is sometimes said that the financiering of the Confederacy required only paper and a printing-press, but such a remark ignores that the manufacture even of its bonds and its notes was conjoined with difficulty. The first bank-note paper was brought from Baltimore, its special agents eluding the watch of the federal pickets. But no skilled engravers could be found. At last, by diligent search, Capers, Memminger's chief clerk, found in Richmond a clever German who was doing lithographing in a small way, and engaged him to prepare the treasury notes by his own process. Memminger called them "uncanny bills," but he recognized the exigency and that the people could not wait for artistic work. In truth, the first demand for the promises to pay of the Confederacy was so urgent that to provide for his daily wants he was forced to have recourse to the banks for a loan of their own notes.1 Not until October did the Confederate government have its postage-stamps ready for distribution. Complaints of the administration of the Post-office department were frequent. In fact, after making allowance for all the difficulties that beset the new government, it cannot be denied that the management of affairs was defective. The reason of this has been explained in a word by a brilliant Southern writer. "The Southern mind," he said, "lacked the faculty of business."2

The cotton and tobacco crops of the year were ready for market. England and France wanted the cotton and France wanted the tobacco, and both stood ready to pay a high price for these staples, while they had the implements of war and
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1 Life of Memminger, Capers, pp. 317, 335, 430.
2 Pollard's Davis, p. 166. It is perhaps unnecessary to say that, owing to Pollard's animosity to Davis and his inaccuracy as to details, his works must be used with caution, but if employed with proper care they are valuable. Pollard was editor of the Richmond Examiner during the war.

the comforts, conveniences, and luxuries of life which the South so earnestly longed for. The only barrier between such a wished-for traffic was the federal blockade, which the powerful navies of England and France could have broken in a day. Let Lincoln, Seward, and Adams have all the credit which is their due that their management of affairs did much to prevent self-interest and the might that makes right from forcing the exchange of these desirable commodities;1 but underneath it all, disguised and misrepresented as the contest was in England, the overpowering consideration that stayed the hand of the European powers was that the South was fighting for slavery and the North contending against its extension.2
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1 In connection with this brief exhibit of the sufferings of the South from the blockade I will quote from a letter to Sumner from Paris of John Bigelow, our consul, to show the injury done Europe by it. "So long as the blockade lasts it will be impossible to make the European States look with an impartial eye upon our situation or withhold a certain amount of moral support from the South. I fear you do not realize the force of the political necessity which is operating here. Our war has deranged the financial calculations of the government and bankers of Europe to a greater degree than any of the wars or revolutions that have preceded it in Europe. The statesmen are at their wits' end to know what to do. Sources of revenue are dried up upon which all their calculations have been heretofore based with the greatest confidence. The capital of many States is insufficiently employed; hundreds of thousands of people are becoming a charge upon the governments for their daily bread, and the heavens seem charged with some terrible convulsion from which they think nothing can save them but raising our blockade."—Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
2 "It was the fashion among English critics at the time I left England to state that the whole secession question had no direct bearing on, no immediate connection with, the issue of slavery. As to the letter, there was some small truth in this assertion; as to the spirit, there was none."— Dicey's Federal States, vol. i. p. 65


Source: Rhodes, James Ford. History of the United States; from the compromise of 1850 to the final restoration of home rule at the south in 1877, v.3. New York: Macmillan, 1910 [c1892].