History of the United States, v.4, by James Ford Rhodes, 1910 [c1892].

Chapter 22: English Sentiment on Our Civil War through Change in English Opinion

CHAPTER XXII

We have examined the trend of English sentiment on our civil war and the action of the British government as late as the reception of the news of McClellan's defeat before Richmond, in June, 1862, and the escape of the Alabama in July.1 Bolstered by the Southern success, James M. Mason, the special commissioner of the Confederate States, residing in London, applied to Earl Russell for the recognition of his government asking also the honor of a personal interview, that he might the better impart by word of mouth the claim made in his formal letter. Russell declined the interview, and two days later, after submitting a draft of his answer to the Cabinet, replied to Mason's application and arguments that "Her Majesty's government are still determined to wait."3

Then came the intelligence of Pope's defeat at the second battle of Bull Run, the last of August. The London Times was of the opinion that the federal government was "brought to the verge of ruin," but did not favor the recognition of the Southern Confederacy.3 This journal was not, however, at this time in the confidence of the ministry. The correspondence between Palmerston and Russell indicates that they were about ready to propose to the Cabinet that England should take the initiative, and ask France, Russia, and the
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1 Ante, p. 76 et seq.
a Letters of Mason to Russell, July 24, August 1, 1862, Russell to Mason, July 81, August 2, Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, U. S. Treas. Dep't, Washington. This correspondence is printed in Life of Davis by his wife, vol. ii. p. 334.
3 September 15, 16.

other powers to join her in some intervention in the struggle in America. The Federals "got a very complete smashing," the Prime Minister wrote, September 14; and if Washington or Baltimore "fall into the hands of the Confederates," as "seems not altogether unlikely," should not England and France "address the contending parties and recommend an arrangement upon the basis of separation"? Russell replied: "I agree with you that the time has come for offering mediation to the United States Government with a view to the recognition of the independence of the Confederates. I agree, further, that, in case of failure, we ought ourselves to recognize the Southern States as an independent State." He suggested, moreover, a meeting of the Cabinet, and if a decision were arrived at, to propose, first, the intervention to France, and "then on the part of England and France to Russia and the other powers." When Palmerston replied to this letter, he was watching the Antietam campaign, and thought that if the Federals sustained "a great defeat" it would be well to proceed with the project of mediation; but if "they should have the best of it we may wait awhile and see what may follow."1 At about the same time Lord Granville, who was in attendance on the Queen at Gotha, expressed an opinion averse to any present interference.2 While Adams got no inkling of this confidential correspondence, since he had at this time no interviews with Earl Russell, who was away from London, he was depressed at the state of affairs, and noted in his diary, "Unless the course of the war should soon change, it seems to me that my mission must come to an end by February."3
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1 This correspondence, the dates being respectively September 14, 17, 23, is printed in Walpole's Life of Russell, vol. ii. pp. 349, 350.
2 Ibid., p. 351. Granville's letter may possibly be a confirmation of the apparently well-founded and general impression that the influence of the Queen was employed on the side of the North. But he spoke of " the strong antipathy to the North, the strong sympathy with the South, and the passionate wish to have cotton ;" and Russell's letter of September 17 was written when attending the Queen.
3 Entry September 21.

Soon afterwards came the news of the victory of Antietam, which had a "very considerable " effect on the popular mind,1 and influenced Palmerston to write Russell, suggesting delay for the reason that "ten days or a fortnight more may throw a clearer light upon future prospects."2 With the succeeding intelligence, which lessened the import of the victory, the movement towards mediation went on, and, October 13, Earl Russell sent his colleagues a confidential memorandum, putting the question "whether it is not a duty for Europe to ask both parties, in the most friendly and conciliatory terms, to agree to a suspension of arms." 3

Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the third member of the Cabinet in importance, must have known of the interchange of views between Palmerston and Russell in reference to the policy of the government; at all events, he gave public expression to their meaning. October 7, at a banquet at Newcastle, he made a speech in which he denied that England "had any interest in the disruption of the Union," felicitated himself on her "perfect neutrality," and at the same time that he professed sympathy with the people of the Northern States, struck them the most telling blow they had received from any member of the English government. "There is no doubt," he declared, "that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made, what is more than either — they have made a nation." This statement caused great sensation, and was received with loud cheers. He continued: "We may anticipate with certainty the success of the Southern States so far as their separation from the North is concerned." 4 The construction which the country naturally put upon this speech was that the government had determined on the recognition of the Southern
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1 Adams to Seward, October 3, Diplomatic Correspondence, 1862, p. 205; London Times, October 1, 2 ; Daily News, October 1 ; Spectator and Saturday Review, October 4.
2 Walpole's Russell, vol. ii. p. 351.
3 Ibid.
4 The Times, October 8, 9. "Hear, hear I" was the response.

Confederacy,1 and it was looked upon by the manufacturers of Lancashire as an expression of vital significance. The trade
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1 Disraeli said in the House of Commons, February 5,1863: "Her Majesty's Government commissioned one of their members to repair to the chief seats of industry in the country to announce, as I understood it, an entire change in the policy which they had throughout supported and sanctioned. It was not an accident; the declaration [that cited in the text] was made formally, and it was made avowedly with the consent and sanction of the Government. Now, sir, what did that declaration mean? If it meant anything, it meant that the Southern States would be recognized ; because, if it be true that they have created armies, navies, and a people, we are bound by every principle of policy and of public law to recognize their political existence." — Hansard, 82. Palmerston replied at length to Disraeli, but did not touch on his reference to Gladstone's speech or in any way on American affairs.— Ibid., 123.
"It is hard to believe that Mr. Gladstone, cabinet minister and dialectician, as familiar with English words as with European politics, would have used either of those expressions, except to announce a settled and official resolve. . . . The recognition may not be immediate, may be postponed till Parliament meets, or may await a combination of many powers, but the Cabinet has made up its mind that the American struggle is over, and that henceforward two nations must exist on the American continent. We cannot, bitterly as we lament the decision, honestly blame the Cabinet. They have only followed the lead of the people, and followed it at far distance. The educated million in England, with here and there an exception, have become unmistakably Southern. . . . The Cabinet is not to blame if, after enforcing delay sufficient for reconsideration, it obeys the national will. . . . The only point left is one of time, and the Premier will be wise to wait as long as events and precedents permit." — Spectator, October 11.
Adams wrote in his diary, October 8: "If Gladstone be any exponent at all of the views of the Cabinet, then is my term likely to be very short. The animus as it respects Mr. Davis and the recognition of the rebel cause is very apparent." October 9: "Unless things should materially change at home, I do not expect to stay beyond Christmas at the farthest." See Adams to Seward, October 10, Diplomatic Correspondence, 1862, p. 209; the Times and Daily News, October 9; Saturday Review, October 11 ; Letter from Bright to Sumner, October 10, Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 157.
Louis Blanc wrote, October 18: "I fear that Mr. Gladstone yielded to the temptation of courting popularity." October 24: "How eagerly did the Conservatives seize upon these words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. . . . To hear them speak, it was now all over; the recognition of the Confederate States by England was about to take place. . . . The sympathies for the North are a dam; the sympathies for the South are a torrent. This is the reason why Mr. Gladstone's words went straight to the heart of the nation, and why they were interpreted with eagerness in the sense of an early recognition of the Confederate States." —Letters on England, pp. 176-178.

in cotton and cotton goods at Manchester was paralyzed, and orders which had been sent abroad for cotton were countermanded.1 This speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the confidential memorandum of the Foreign Secretary were the acme of the movement of the English Cabinet at this time towards mediation or recognition. While Gladstone had spoken in public only what Palmerston and Russell were thinking of, he had been indiscreet, and a pressure was now undoubtedly brought to bear upon him to explain away the meaning of his words. In conventional and courteous terms, a gentleman of Manchester asked by letter, on behalf of the cotton trade, What do you mean by your speech? Gladstone's private secretary replied that " the words at Newcastle were no more than the expression, in rather more pointed terms, of an opinion he had long ago stated in public, that the effort of the Northern States to subjugate the Southern ones is hopeless."2

October 14 Sir George Cornewall Lewis, the member of the Cabinet ranking next in importance to Gladstone, made a speech which plainly left the inference that the government had no intention of recognizing the independence of the Southern States.3 By that day, or soon thereafter, Palmerston and Russell had determined to continue the existing policy of non-intervention, and they represented, undoubtedly, the majority of the Cabinet. In an interview which Adams had with Earl Russell, October 23, he said: "If I had entirely trusted to the construction given by the public to a late speech, I should have begun to think of packing my carpet-bag and trunks. His Lordship," as Adams proceeds
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1 Mosley to Gladstone, October 13, Times, October 20; Saturday Review, October 25.
2 Letters of October 13, 16, Times, October 20; Life of Gladstone, Emerson, p. 236. In August, 1867, Gladstone wrote: "I must confess that I was wrong ; that I took too much upon myself in expressing such an opinion. Yet the motive was not bad." —Life by G. B. Smith, p. 297; see also Gladstone to Cyrus W. Field, November 27, 1862, February 20, 1863, April 20, 1864, Harper's Magazine, May, 1896, p. 846 et seq.
3 Times, October 17.

to relate the conversation, "at once embraced the allusion, and whilst endeavoring to excuse Mr. Gladstone, in fact, admitted that his act had been regretted by Lord Palmerston and the other cabinet officers. Still he could not disavow the sentiments of Mr. Gladstone; so far as he understood them [his meaning] was not that ascribed to him by the public. Mr. Gladstone was himself willing to disclaim that. He had written to that effect to Lord Palmerston. . . . His Lordship said that the policy of the government was to adhere to a strict neutrality, and to leave this struggle to settle itself. ... I asked him if I was to understand that policy as not now to be changed? He said ' Yes.' "1

The change of opinion of Palmerston and Russell was complete. It is evident from the sequence of events that it was not caused by the victory of Antietam, nor was it due to the President's Proclamation of Emancipation, which had not at first any favorable influence on the action of the English government. It is a fair conjecture, that the reason for this sudden alteration was the knowledge conveyed to Russell, indirectly, of the response which the United States would make to any offer of mediation, and of the course it would adopt should the Confederacy be recognized. Anticipating certain contingencies, Adams had asked for instructions, and these he had received from the President in a despatch of Seward of August 2. "If the British government," he said, "shall in any way approach you, directly or indirectly, with propositions which assume or contemplate an appeal to the President on the subject of our internal affairs, whether it seem to imply a purpose to dictate, or to mediate, or to advise, or even to solicit, or persuade, you will answer that you are forbidden to debate, to hear, or in any way receive, entertain, or transmit any communication of the kind. . . . If the British government, either alone or in combination with any other government, should acknowledge the
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1 Charles Francis Adams's Diary, MS. entry October 23. See Adams to Seward, October 17, 24, Diplomatic Corr., 1862, pp. 221, 223.

insurgents . . . you will immediately suspend the exercise of your functions, and give notice of that suspension to Earl Russell and to this department. . . . [The] possible consequences have been weighed, and [the] solemnity is therefore felt and freely acknowledged. [We] meet and confront the danger of a war with Great Britain and other States. . . . We have approached the contemplation of that crisis with a caution which great reluctance has inspired. But I trust that you will also have perceived that the crisis has not appalled us."1

October 12, while Adams was on a visit to William E. Forster (a stanch friend of the North) at his Yorkshire home, he communicated, in confidence, the substance of these instructions. Forster thought that he ought to make the government aware of them before they committed themselves. Adams replied that he "had been thinking of it, but waited to see how far Mr. Gladstone should appear to be sustained." 2 Adams never communicated these instructions to Earl Russell; but considering the political friendship between Forster and Russell, and between the two and Cobden, the intimacy between Forster, Cobden, and Bright, and Bright's relations with Milner Gibson of the Cabinet, it is not a far-fetched conjecture that the purport of Adams's instructions was indirectly communicated to Russell, and that this was the reason why the project of mediation or recognition was so suddenly abandoned. The English government, and the public who supported it, did not wish to take any action in regard to the struggle in America by which they should run the risk of war with the United States. The cabinet meeting which had been determined for October 23 was not held, but a continuance of the policy of non-intervention was informally agreed upon.3

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was received with 1 MS. State Department. 3 Diary, entry October 12. 8 Adams to Seward, October 28, Diplomatic Correspondence, p. 225 ; Walpole's Russell, vol. ii. p. 352; Slidell to Benjamin, October 28, France and the Confederate Navy, John Bigelow, p. 144.

coldness and suspicion. The governing classes, whose organs in 1861 had asserted that if the North made her fight for the emancipation of the negro she would commend her cause strongly to their sympathies,1 could now see in it nothing but an attempt to excite servile insurrection.2 Even by the friends of the United States the constitutional basis and scope of it were not comprehended, and their comments were dubious and chilling.3 John Bright did not understand it
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1 Vol. iii. p. 510, note 6.
2 The Times of October 7 said : "Mr. Lincoln will, on the 1st of next January, do his best to excite a servile war in the States which he cannot occupy with his armies. . . . He will appeal to the black blood of the Africans. He will whisper of the pleasures of spoil and of the gratification of yet fiercer instincts; and when blood begins to flow and when shrieks come piercing through the darkness, Mr. Lincoln will wait till the rising flames, till all is consummated, and then he will rub his hands and think that revenge is sweet. . . . We are in Europe thoroughly convinced that the death of slavery must follow . . . upon the success of the Confederates in this war . . . ;but sudden and forcible emancipation resulting from the 'efforts the negroes may make for their actual freedom' can only be effected by massacre and utter destruction. . . . Where he has no power Mr. Lincoln will set the negroes free; where he retains power he will consider them as slaves." The Saturday Review of October 11 said: "If the proclamation of freedom for the slaves had been strictly legal, it would nevertheless be a crime." For a caustic criticism of such opinions, see the Daily News, October 10. John Stuart Mill wrote Motley, October 31: "In England the Proclamation hasonly increased the venom of those who, after taunting you so long with caring nothing for abolition, now reproach you for your abolitionism as the worst of your crimes." —Motley's Letters, vol. ii. p. 95.
3 The Spectator of October 11 said: "The Proclamation . . . has been made in a way which takes from it half its usefulness and almost all its grace. The principle at stake is entirely disregarded, and emancipation promised as a mere incident in the war. The government liberates the enemy's slaves as it would the enemy's cattle, simply to weaken them in the coming conflict." See the Daily News, October 7, 8. The Duchess of Argyll wrote Sumner, October 20: "In England there are great misgivings about the effect of the Proclamation. God grant that the spirit of forgiveness may be given to that race to the end. But it is difficult not to tremble." — Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. Mr. Pierce told me that the Duchess of Argyll in this correspondence with Sumner represented faithfully the opinions of the Duke (who was a member of the Cabinet and friendly to the North), which was the main reason why Sumner did not suffer his correspondence with her to cease.
In making the first reference to these papers since the death of Edward L. Pierce in September, 1897, I cannot forbear expressing my deep obligation to him, not only for affording me the use of this valuable manuscript material and for his very excellent biography of Sumner, but for the ideas and impressions I have received from him in familiar intercourse during a friendship of four years. Living through the period of history that I am endeavoring to picture, he had the faculty of throwing himself back to those times in which he had been an actor, and while revivifying them to me he maintained the position of an impartial observer, remarkable in a man who had espoused so zealously one side of the contest.

fully,1 and when in his speech to his constituents, December 18, he made a powerful plea for their sympathy for the free States, he made no allusion to it whatever. Nevertheless, there was a slight undercurrent of feeling and hope that the policy might turn out better than for the moment it promised. John Stuart Mill did not join in the general disapproval; he wrote Motley that no American could have exulted more than he over the anti-slavery Proclamation.2

Affairs across the English Channel now claim our attention. On account of a money dispute France, Spain, and Great Britain had sent, in 1861, an expedition to Mexico; but Great Britain and Spain withdrew their forces in April, 1862, and the movement became, on the part of France, an attempt to conquer Mexico, to restore the prestige of the Latin race on this side of the ocean, and to place on the throne a European monarch.3 The people of the United States looked upon her operations with suspicion, which, Seward diplomatically wrote, was allayed in the mind of the administration by her assurance that she did not propose to establish an anti-republican government in Mexico.* Still later, after large reinforcements had been ordered to the invading army, he believed, or affected to believe, that the Emperor of the French, Louis Napoleon, concealed no "hidden design against the United States,"5 while at the same time
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1 Letter of October 10 to Sumner. — Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
2 Letter of October 31, Motley's Letters, vol. ii. p. 95.
3 For an interesting account of this movement, see Frederic Bancroft, Political Science Quart., March, 1896; also, H. H. Bancroft, History of Mexico, vol. vi.; Lothrop's Seward, p. 387; Letters on England, Louis Blanc, vol. ii. p. 70 et seq.
4 Seward to Dayton, June 21, 1862, Diplomatic Correspondence, 1862, p. 355.
5 Seward to Dayton, November 10, ibid., p. 404, also p. 400.

Adams "suspected his object to be to grasp at a new dependency in that region, with its borders on the Mississippi River."1

Slidell, the Confederate commissioner to France, had an interview with the Emperor at Vichy, July 17, and intimated that as the Lincoln government sympathized with Mexico, the Confederate States would make common cause with him against the common enemy;2 at the same time he offered Louis Napoleon a hundred thousand bales of cotton, worth, in Europe, $12,500,000, if he would send his war-ships to break the blockade. The proposition, he reports, did not seem disagreeable to the Emperor. He also asked for the recognition of his government, and later saw the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and made a formal demand for it. During the summer the Emperor took no action, but continuing to observe closely events in America, he made up his mind in the autumn that it was time to interfere in the struggle. October 22 he accorded to Slidell an interview at St. Cloud, in which he intimated that he should endeavor to bring about the joint mediation of France, England, and Russia. "My own preference is for a proposition of an armistice of six months," he said; "this would put a stop to the effusion of blood, and hostilities would probably never be resumed. We can urge it on the high grounds of humanity and the interest of the whole civilized world; if it be refused by the North, it will afford good reason for recognition, and perhaps for more active intervention."3 In eight days from this time the Emperor, through his Minister of Foreign Affairs, addressed a despatch
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1 Adams's statement to Russell in interview of November 15, Adams's Diary.
2 It is quite probable that in this assurance Slidell went beyond his instructions. See Benjamin to Slidell, October 17, an intercepted despatch, Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 64.
3 Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MS., cited by John Bigelow, France and the Confederate Navy, p. 128. For an account of Slidell's first interview, ibid., p. 116, also pp. 114, 177. I have verified the part of these despatches used in the text by having a comparison made with the originals in the archives.

to his ambassadors at St. Petersburg and London, proposing that the three governments "exert their influence at Washington, as well as with the Confederates, to obtain an armistice for six months." The reply of Russia, declining to be a party to such a mediation, was, in its terms, most friendly to the North. "In our opinion," it said, "what ought specially to be avoided [is] the appearance of any pressure whatsoever of a nature to wound public opinion in the United States, and to excite susceptibilities very easily aroused at the bare idea of foreign intervention." Earl Russell also declined to join in any such mediation, for the reason "that there is no ground at the present moment to hope that the federal government would accept the proposal suggested, and a refusal from Washington at the present time would prevent any speedy renewal of the offer."1 The decision of the government was entirely satisfactory to the British public.2 Two months later a combination of circumstances induced the Emperor to propose, for his government alone, a mediation between the two belligerents. The apparently crushing
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1 Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia, 1862, p. 738 et seq. The French proposal is printed in the Times, of November 14, and Earl Russell's answer, November 15. "His Lordship seemed a little elated by his paper, and was more cordial than usual." — Adams's Diary, November 15.
2 See the Times, Daily News, and Spectator, November 15, and the Sat Review, November 22. John Bright wrote Sumner, December 6: " I can assure you that the refusal of Lord Russell to unite with France in that matter has been cordially approved throughout the country, and even by those who, like Mr. Gladstone, believe your undertaking hopeless, and many of whom doubtless wish that you may ultimately fail in your efforts to restore the Union. Judging from the tone of our press and from all I can hear, I think England is not more, but is really less hostile than she was some time ago — and the more you seem likely to succeed, the more will your friends and moderate men show themselves, and your enemies be driven into obscurity. To me it seems that mediation or intervention is less likely and less possible than ever, and that recognition will be a thing not even talked about by any sane man if you once obtain possession of your Atlantic and Gulf ports." — Pierce Sumner Papers, MS.
For an example of the tortuous diplomacy of the Emperor, cf. the Emperor's conversation with Slidell already quoted, with the assurances given by Drouyn de l'Huys, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Dayton, Diplomatic Correspondence, 1862, p. 404.

disaster of Fredericksburg1 satisfied him, as, indeed, it confirmed the public opinion of Europe, that the cause of the North was hopeless. At the same time the distress in the cotton-manufacturing districts of France, which had become acute, was brought home as the winter wore on. More than a hundred thousand operatives in one department alone were out of work, and in a condition of utter misery, subsisting, according to report, "by roaming at night from house to house, and demanding, rather than asking, alms."2 Seizing the fit opportunity, Slidell, on January 8, sent, through the private secretary of the Emperor, a memorandum to him, praying for the separate recognition by France of the Confederacy.3 If Louis Napoleon had not already determined to move alone, this communication furnished the final arguments guiding him to a decision. The next day he dictated a despatch, in which he offered, in courteous and diplomatic words, the friendly mediation of his government between the two sections without the suggestion of an armistice which had been contained in his former proposition. This message went through the usual diplomatic channels, and was presented, February 3, by the French Minister at Washington to Seward, who, three days later, by the President's instructions, declined the offer in a polite, gently argumentative, and considerate letter.4 The Emperor lacked the courage to proceed further in his policy of intervention without the co-operation of Great Britain, which was persistently withheld.5
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1 "Another tremendous disaster has fallen on the Federal arms. So great has been the carnage, so complete and undeniable the defeat, that the North appears stunned by the blow."— Times, December 29, 1862.
2 The Spectator, January 3, 1863; the Times, January 10; the Index, January 8.
3 Slidell to Benjamin, January 11, 21, 1863, Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MS., Treas. Dep't, Washington
4 This correspondence is printed in Senate Executive Document, No. 38, 37 Congress, 3 Session Seward's reply is printed in his works, vol. v. p. 376; vide ante, p. 222.
5 Sir Roundell Palmer, the Solicitor-General, wrote in a private letter, January 8: "The bearing of the upper classes (Conservatives and Liberals alike) to the side of the South is so strong that, but for the apparently opposite bearing of the intelligent industrial population, there would be some danger of the Government being driven, or drifting of its own accord, into the enormous mistake (as I think it would be) of a premature recognition of the South, flagrante bello. For such a step there could not, I believe, be found anything like a precedent in the whole range of modern history, except the recognition of the United States themselves by France, which was treated by us, very justly, as equivalent to a Declaration of War; and, if we were to do the same thing now, the United States would certainly view the act in the same light, and would resent it accordingly, whether at once, or afterwards, would (of course) depend upon circumstances."—Memorials, Earl of Selborne, vol. ii. p. 438.
March 3 Congress, by a large majority, adopted a concurrent resolution which declared that any proposition from a foreign power for mediation or for any other form of interference would be regarded as an unfriendly act. — Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 122; Sumner's Works, vol. vii. p. 308.

In the record of our relations with England during the Civil War, we now come to a splendid page, which, unrolling, as it does, the response of anti-slavery opinion in England to the President's Proclamation of Emancipation, delights those who have faith in the common people. In contrast with the sneers from the governing classes, the friends of the North suspended their judgment to await a better understanding of the matter; and knowing that the September proclamation was preliminary, and believing that it was tentative, they were anxious to see whether it would be confirmed and perfected on the first of January. In November, 1862, however, an Emancipation Society had been established, to encourage the Federal government and people; but a meeting which they held in London to give expression to their sentiments was boisterous, for it was somewhat disturbed by Southern sympathizers.1 The December 1st message of the
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1 The Daily News, November 14, 15, 1862. John Bright wrote Sumner, December 6: "The anti-slavery sentiment here has been more called forth of late, especially since the Proclamation was issued, and I am confident that every day the supporters of the South among us find themselves in greater difficulty, owing to the course taken by your government in reference to the negro question. . . . The Proclamation, like everything else you have done, has been misrepresented, but it has had a large effect here, and men are looking with great interest to the first of January, and hoping that the President may be firm." — Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
Adams wrote Seward, November 15, 1862: "Efforts are now making here, with a good prospect of success, for a more effective organization of the anti-slavery sentiment in our behalf." In his letter of November 20 he spoke of the "active revival of the anti-slavery feeling among the people at large." — Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. pp. 3, 4.

President to Congress, which was widely read and commented on in England, made it clear that he would take no backward step.1 With the end of the year, therefore, the tide of antislavery sentiment began to rise perceptibly. On the last day of December2 a great public meeting was held in London, which, in a resolution, hailed "the dawn of the new year as the beginning of an epoch of universal freedom upon the Western continent, and of closer friendship between the people of England and America." The same night, six thousand workingmen and others of Manchester, "with the greatest enthusiasm and unanimity," declared their "profound sympathy" with the United States, and adopted an address to President Lincoln which showed a full understanding of what had been accomplished and what hope there was in the future.3 A public meeting in Sheffield, on the 31st of December,4 resolved "that it is the duty of England to give her sympathy and moral influence to the Northern States," and eleven days later another assemblage in the same city prayed "that the rebellion may be crushed and its wicked object defeated."5

When the intelligence came that the emancipation policy of the President was confirmed by the supplementary proclamation of January l,6 the demonstrations of support were greater
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1 The Spectator said, December 20, 1862: "'The mills of God grind slowly,' but when an American President can take and express that view of the great national offence, then surely, amidst all our Impatient doubts, the world is not moving back.1'
2 1862.
3  Daily News, January 1, 2. Heywood, the mayor of Manchester, to Adams, January 1. Adams to Seward, January 2. Adams wrote: "This meeting is in every respect a most remarkable indication of the state of popular sentiment in Great Britain."— MS. Diplomatic Correspondence, State Dep't, Washington The address of the Manchester meeting is printed in Moore's Reb. Rec., vol. vi. Documents p. 344. The President sent a reply, Complete Works, vol. ii. p. 301.
4 1862.
5 Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 55.
6 1863.

than had been known for any movement since the uprising for the abolition of the duties on corn. A deputation from the Emancipation Society waited on the American Minister to offer to President Lincoln their warmest congratulations; Rev. Newman Hall, one of the speakers, asserting that "the leading newspapers really did not represent the feelings of the masses."1 On a Sunday Spurgeon thus prayed before his congregation of many thousands: "Now, O God! we turn our thoughts across the sea to the terrible conflict of which we knew not what to say; but now the voice of freedom shows where is right. We pray Thee, give success to this glorious proclamation of liberty which comes to us from across the waters. We much feared our brethren were not in earnest, and would not come to this. Bondage and the lash can claim no sympathy from us. God bless and strengthen the North; give victory to their arms!" The immense congregation responded to this invocation in the midst of the prayer with a fervent amen.2 The address, eight years before, of half a million English women, which spoke of the "frightful results" of negro slavery, and implored that something might be done for the amelioration of the sad condition of the slaves, received at this time a reply from Harriet Beecher Stowe. Now that we had really grappled with the evil, she prayed for the sympathy of her sisters in England.3 Public meetings were constantly occurring.4 The Duke of Argyll and Milner Gibson, both cabinet ministers, made speeches, indicating "greater confidence in the treatment of the American question and its relations to slavery." There was even a reaction at Liverpool, which had seen with joy the departure of the Alabama. Bristol, the last port in Great Britain to relinquish the slave
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1 Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 57.
2 Adams to Seward, January 22, ibid., p. 80.
3 Published in the Atlantic Monthly, January 1863; Life of Mrs. Stowe, Mrs. Fields, p. 263; Life by C. E. Stowe, p. 374; letters of John Bright and Hawthorne, ibid., pp. 389, 394, of Abp. Whately, Times, January 16; see, also, the Spectator, January 10.
4 Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 81.

trade, addressed the President with "respectful sympathy."1 January 29 Exeter Hall was the scene of a more earnest demonstration of public opinion than had been known in London since the days of the Anti-Corn-Law League. So vast was the crowd that an overflow meeting was held in a lower room, and another in the open air. In the great hall the mention of Jefferson Davis brought out manifestations of dislike, while the name of Abraham Lincoln was greeted with a burst of enthusiasm, the audience rising, cheering, and waving hats and handkerchiefs. The resolutions adopted showed intelligence as well as fellow-feeling.2 On the same night a public meeting at Bradford, Yorkshire, declared " that any intervention, physical or moral, on behalf of the slave power would be disgraceful," and closed its proceedings with three hearty cheers for President Lincoln. A large antislavery meeting in Gloucestershire, in a sympathetic address to the President, deplored "any apparent complicity [of Englishmen] with the Southern States in the clandestine equipment of war-ships." 3 "Everybody now that I meet," declared John Bright, "says to me, 'public opinion seems to have undergone a considerable change.' "4

The month of February witnessed similar large meetings, which adopted like resolutions. There were gatherings at Leeds, Bath, Edinburgh, Paisley, Carlisle, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Merthyr Tydvil, and many other places. A concourse of citizens in Glasgow said to the President
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1 Spectator, Jan 24, 31; Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. pp. 88, 104.
2 Daily News, January 30; the Spectator, January 31; Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 97 ; Speeches of John Bright, vol. i. p. 240; Vacation Rambles, Thomas Hughes, p. 395. Bright wrote Sumner, January 30: "You will see what meetings are being held here in favor of your emancipation policy and of the North in general. I think in every town in the kingdom a public meeting would go, by an overwhelming majority, in favor of President Lincoln and of the North. I hope what is doing may have an effect on our Cabinet and on Parliament, which meets on the 5th of February." — Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
3 Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 100 et seq.; Daily News, January 30; Spectator, January 31.
4 Speech of February 3, Bright's Speeches, vol. i. p. 241.

in their address, "We honor you and we congratulate you."1 March 26, at a meeting of skilled laborers, held in London at the call of the Trades-Unions, John Bright took the chair, and made an eloquent speech, in which he expressed the meaning of the assemblage and the spirit of their address to Abraham Lincoln. "Privilege has shuddered," he said, "at what might happen to old Europe if this grand experiment should succeed. But you, the workers — you, striving after a better time — you, struggling upwards towards the light with slow and painful steps — you have no cause to look with jealousy upon a country which, menaced by the great nations of the globe, is that one where labor has met with the highest honor, and where it has reaped its greatest reward." This fearful struggle, he went on, is between one section where "labor is honored more than elsewhere in the world," and another section where labor "is degraded and the laborer is made a chattel." He closed his speech with prophetic words: "Impartial history will tell that, when your statesmen were hostile or coldly neutral, when many of your rich men were corrupt, when your press — which ought to have instructed and defended — was mainly written to betray, the fate of a continent and its vast population being in peril, you clung to freedom with an unfaltering trust that God in His infinite mercy will yet make it the heritage of all His children."2
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1 Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 104 et seq.; Daily News and Spectator, February 21. Adams wrote Seward, February 19: "The current of popular sentiment flows with little abatement of strength, as was made manifest last night at another great assemblage at St. James's Hall in this town. I have taken no part whatever in promoting these movements, having become well convinced that the smallest suspicion of my agency would do more harm than good."—Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 117.
2 Bright's Speeches, vol. i. pp. 248, 253; Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. pp. 162, 244; Spectator, March 28. Bright wrote Sumner, April 4: "It was a great meeting, and means much for those present, who are the choice men of the London workmen and artisan class. I endeavored in my speech to widen your great question, and to show its transcendent importance to labor all over the world. The speeches of the workingmen were logical and good, and I am sure the effect of the meeting must be great." —Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. On the sentiment generally, see Mill to Motley, January 26, Bright to Motley, March 9, Motley to his mother, March 3, Motley's Letters, vol. ii. pp. Ill, 118, 119; Cobden to Sumner, February 13, American Historical Review, January 1897, p. 308; Bright to C. W. Field, Harper's Magazine, May, 896, p. 846.

It is interesting to look, with the eyes of Adams, upon these expressions of a noble public opinion. Thus he wrote in his diary: "January 17. It is quite clear that the current is now setting very strongly with us among the body of the people. This may be quite useful on the approach of the session of Parliament. . . . January 30. Things are improving here. The manifestation made at Exeter Hall last night is reported as one of the most extraordinary ever made in London, and proves, pretty conclusively, the spirit of the middle classes here as well as elsewhere. It will not change the temper of the higher classes, but it will do something to moderate the manifestation of it. . . . February 3. I think there can be but little doubt that the tendency of the popular current now sets in our favor," and, speaking of a large and respectable delegation of the British and Foreign Antislavery Society, he wrote: "They left me with hearty shakes of the hand that marked the existence of active feeling at bottom. It was not the lukewarmness and indifference of the aristocracy, but the genuine English heartiness of goodwill." February 11 he said: "I am still overrun with reports of public meetings, to the notices of which I am obliged to give an answer;" and February 26, "The current is still setting strongly with us among the people."

These demonstrations show what potent arguments for the Northern side were the Emancipation Proclamation and the organized anti-slavery agitation. The English who had espoused the cause of the South now became, by the logic of the situation, apologists for slavery. The Times presented the Biblical argument for the justification of it, and told the story of Paul and Onesimus in the language and temper of men on Southern plantations. Slavery, it argued further, is no more at variance with the spirit of the gospel than "sumptuous fare, purple and fine linen;" and it said of the Proclamation that was arousing the enthusiasm of the masses, President Lincoln "calls to his aid the execrable expedient of a servile insurrection. Egypt is destroyed, but his heart is hardened, and he will not let the people go."1 The Saturday Review urged that the laws dictated from on high, as recorded in the Old Testament, sanctioned and protected property in slaves. But "the American law-giver not only confiscates his neighbor's slaves, but orders the slaves to cut their masters' throats. Nor," it went on to say, "is the matter left to the remote guidance of Old Testament precedent. ... St. Paul sent Onesimus, the fugitive slave of that time, back to his master, Philemon; so that without the master's consent it was not competent, even in an Apostle, to release a slave. But what St. Paul might not do Abraham Lincoln may."2 Later, it spoke of the movement which was ennobling the common people of England as "a carnival of cant — arousing agitation on behalf of the divine right of insurrection and massacre."8 The Times and Saturday Review, according to the Spectator, represented "the higher intelligence of England,"4 and their ground of reasoning displays well the bond of sympathy between the two landed aristocracies separated by the sea. The Southern lords, by their system of labor, were relieved from the minute cares of making money, were enabled to maintain an open and generous hospitality, and were afforded leisure for devotion to society and politics, thus reaching a communion in conditions, tastes, and aims with the English noblemen, who, in turn, had taken a leaf out of the book of their Southern brethren, for, having begun by looking kindly upon the Southern
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1 January 6, 15.
2 January 3. Cf. these arguments with the Southern arguments. See vol. 1. p. 370.
3 January 24.
4 January 10. The Spectator is filled with "profound consternation. We could not have believed for a moment a year ago that the Times and Saturday Review would both in the same week devote their ablest pens to an apology, not merely for slavery itself but for the Christian character of that institution."

Confederacy, and wishing for its success, they had ended with taking up the cudgels in behalf of the institution of negro slavery.1 A contrast of these arguments which reflected the sentiment of the best with the resolutions and addresses of the popular meetings will establish the faith of those who believe in government by the people. The people2 were right; the wealthy, the educated, the refined, were wrong. These saw things as they were; those wilfully threw dust into their own eyes.

Strenuous efforts were made by the Confederates in England to counteract the opinion aroused by this agitation of the slavery question.3 The Index, a weekly journal which was appearing in London, an "organ of Southern interests and opinions," and was sustained partly by money from the Confederate government, exerted itself with vigor to stem the current.4 "Our Southern newspapers," wrote Bright to
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1 Cf. vol. i. pp. 54, 68, 360, 365. Motley wrote Holmes, November 2, 1862: "We are Mudsills beloved of the Radicals; the negro breeders are aristocrats, and, like Mrs. Jarley, the pride of the nobility and gentry." —Motley's Letters, vol. ii. p. 100.
2 "These lower classes! which one calls the lower, but which in God's eyes are surely the highest! " — Goethe, Lewes, p. 215.
3 April 12, 1862, Secretary Benjamin wrote Mason that he had appointed Edwin de Leon as confidential agent of the State Department, "and he has been supplied with twenty-five thousand dollars as a secret service fund to be used by him in the manner he may deem most judicious, both in Great Britain and the Continent, for the special purpose of enlightening public opinion in Europe through the press." January 16, 1863, Benjamin wrote Hotze at London: "You are aware that your position of commercial agent was conferred principally with the view of rendering effective your services in using the press of Great Britain in aid of our cause; and until our recognition all other objects must be made subordinate to that end. . . . Your plan of engaging the services of writers employed in the leading daily papers, and thereby securing not only their co-operation but educating them into such a knowledge of our affairs as will enable them to counteract effectually the misrepresentations of the Northern agents, appears to be judicious and effective; and after consultation with the President he is satisfied that an assignment to the support of your efforts of two thousand pounds per annum out of the appropriation confided to him for secret service will be well spent." — MS. Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, Treas. Dep't, Washington; see, also, Dayton to Seward, February 13, Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 642.
4 Slidell wrote Benjamin, December 6,1863: I had concurred "at Mr. Mason's suggestion, in a recommendation for the advance of a moderate sum to sustain the Index." — MS. Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, Treas. Dep't. I am indebted to Mr. Charles F. Adams for the convenient loan of the volumes of the Index from October 30, 1862, to December 31, 1863.

Sumner, meaning the major part of the London press, "are surprised and puzzled at the expression of opinion in favor of the North;"1 at times they were full of irritation which they vented in virulent attacks on the Proclamation and in sneers at the Exeter Hall meeting.2 Even Earl Russell was influenced more by the sentiment of his order than by his love for liberty; and in a letter to Lord Lyons condemned the Proclamation in harsh words: "It makes slavery at once legal and illegal. There seems to be no declaration of a principle adverse to slavery. ... It is a measure of war of a very questionable kind;" and he intimated that its object was not "total and impartial freedom for the slave," but "vengeance on the slave owner."3
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1 January 30, Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. "Our London press is mainly in the hands of certain ruling West End classes; it acts and writes in favor of those classes."—Bright's Speeches, vol. i. p. 222.
2 See Morning Post, Daily Telegraph, January 31, cited by the Index. "But what is said," demanded Bright, "by the writers in this infamous Southern press in this country with regard to that meeting? Who was there ?'A gentleman who had written a novel and two or three dissenting ministers.'" — February 3, Speeches, vol. i. p. 241. The Times said, January 31: "The speakers were a minor novelist and two or three dissenting ministers, who seem to be of the usual intellectual calibre. Not one man whose opinion the country would listen to on any political subject — not one statesman, not one person endowed with genius, however self-willed or erratic; no representative of the Peerage, only one of the House of Commons, not one of the Church, of the gentry, or the commercial world was found to stand on that platform and make himself responsible for Mr. Lincoln's Proclamation." Among the speakers were Thomas Hughes, Rev. Newman Hall, and Rev. Baptist Noel. Adams wrote in his diary, January 31 : "The newspapers are much exercised by this popular demonstration. The Times . . . intimates that it is stimulated by money from the government through me. Had I been able to effect it in any way, the operation might not have been a feat without something to boast of."
3 Despatch No. 57, January 17, N. A. Papers. This despatch was not printed until somewhat later. Sumner wrote to Bright, March 30, that it was "cold and unsympathizing." — Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 130. Adams spoke of it in his diary, May 27: "The most flagrant case of all is the construction put by Lord Russell on the President's Proclamation of Emancipation. Such is English manliness! Such is English honesty!" The Duchess of Argyll wrote Sumner, March 26: "Is it not natural that those unacquainted with American politics should be puzzled by the Proclamation, which leaves the slaves of the loyal in slavery? and worst of all there was hope held out of the continuance of the Fugitive Slave Law. These things are puzzling. . . . There are many who hate slavery very much, who have from the first thought there was more hope of its destruction when separation is accomplished. I have never been able to see any reason for this hope, but I am sure it is honestly entertained by some." She wrote Sumner, May 15: "I do not think you trust Lord Russell as you might. His strictures on the Proclamation may have been a mistake, but it was a friend's hand." — Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.

It will be instructive to sum up in numbers, as best we may, the popular opinion as evinced by the demonstration in favor of Lincoln's Proclamation. The agitation had little, if any, direct effect on the aristocracy and upper middle classes, who, in the main, still sympathized with the South;1 but it supported the friends of the North, in the Cabinet, who were bent on maintaining a strict neutrality. Four-fifths of the House of Lords were "no well-wishers of anything American,"2 and most members of the House of Commons3 desired the success of the South, although a majority were willing to follow the lead of the government in its policy of nonintervention. The total number of electors in Great Britain was about a million; but the figures appear to indicate that only four-fifths of those ever voted, while in the general election, in 1859, which chose the existing House of Commons, the whole number of votes registered was under 370,000, the falling off being largely for the reason that
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1 But Mason's opinion did not prove to be correct. He wrote Benjamin, January 15: "The abolition decree of the first of January is characterized in the Times of this morning ... as the 'execrable expedient of a servile insurrection;' and this, I think, will be the judgment passed upon it by all except the most ignorant classes of England. It will have an effect exactly opposite to that which was intended, if the object was to conciliate the public opinion of Europe." —MS. Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence
2 Adams to Seward, March 26, Diplomatic Correspondence, p. 157.
3 Mason wrote Benjamin, April 27: "It is perfectly understood in the House of Commons that the war professedly waged to restore the Union Is hopeless, and the sympathies of four-fifths of its members are with the South." —MS. Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence

many members were returned from boroughs and counties without a contest. There were, according to John Bright, five to six million men who did not possess the franchise.1 Nearly all of these, who had any opinion whatever, sympathized with the North; and their hearty manifestations of friendship came at the most gloomy period of the war, when patriots at home and friends abroad despaired of our ability to conquer the South, and when Englishmen of position and influence were gloating over the prospect of a divided republic.2 The Great Britain of to-day, which in the general election of 1895 cast 4,280,000 votes,3 would have been with the
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1 See Speeches of John Bright, vol. ii. pp. 140, 172,179, 191, 232; The Platform, Jephson, vol. ii. pp. 344, 355.
2 John Stuart Mill wrote Motley, October 31, 1862: "We are now beginning to hear what disgusts me more than all the rest, the base doctrine that it is for the interest of England that the American republic should be broken np. Think of us as ill as you may (and we have given you abundant cause), but do not, I entreat you, think that the general English public is so base as this. ... I am deeply conscious and profoundly grieved and mortified that we deserve so ill and are making in consequence so pitiful a figure before the world." — Motley's Letters, vol. ii. pp. 96, 98. John Bright said, in his speech of December 18, 1862: "I have heard . . . that there are members of the aristocracy who are terrified at the shadow of the Great Republic. . . . One of the most eminent statesmen in this country . . . told me twice at an interval of several months, 'I had no idea how much influence the example of that Republic was having upon opinion here until I discovered the universal congratulation that the Republic was likely to be broken up.' " — Speeches of John Bright, vol. i. pp. 218,222. Charles Darwin, with his transparent truthfulness of soul, wrote Asa Gray, February 23, 1863: "I read Cairnes's excellent lecture (ante, p. 79), which shows so well how your quarrel arose from slavery. It made me for a time wish honestly for the North; but I could never help, though I tried, all the time thinking how we should be bullied and forced into a war by you when you were triumphant. But I do most truly think it dreadful that the South with its accursed slavery should triumph and spread the evil. I think, if I had the power, which, thank God, I have not, I would let you conquer the border States and all west of the Mississippi, and then force you to acknowledge the cotton States. For do you not now begin to doubt whether you can conquer and hold them? " — Life of Darwin, vol. ii. p. 195.
3 This was the vote of England, Wales, and Scotland as computed and estimated by the Times. The whole electorate was 5,595,055. — Times, July 31, 1895; the Speaker, August 3, 1895. In 1863 about one person in twenty-three had a vote; in 1895 about one in six.

North; and no doubt can exist that if the same wide franchise had obtained in 1863, the House of Commons would have sympathized with the Union, and determined the government to a friendly instead of a grudging neutrality, with the result that there would have been no Florida or Alabama destroying our shipping on the high seas. If there still remain an American Jingo1 who wishes to retaliate, when the bided time comes, for the depredations of the Confederate cruisers, the cynical ill-will of Palmerston, the speech of Gladstone, the leaders in the Times and the Saturday Review, he must remember that the England which arouses his indignation has passed away. In truth, we have reason to thank the English common people for their comprehension, right thinking, and hearty utterance of sympathy, and for their appreciation and admiration, in 1863, of Abraham Lincoln. They received his words gladly; and while trained writers criticised his grammar, his inelegant English, his backwoodsman style of expression,2 they grasped the ideas for which he stood, and their hearts went out to him. The expressions of the beau monde, preserved by the antiseptic of style, are repeated with their irritating sting, while the prosaic resolves of the masses are not remembered. But it is no longer true, as it was in Voltaire's time, that the beau monde rules the world.3

While the meeting in Exeter Hall was, as the Spectator said, "crowded with scholars and workmen,"4 the sympathies of many of the literary men were not extended to the North. Grote, who loved democracy in Greece, and could palliate its excesses in Athens, criticised, with acrimony, the Northern people, because they insisted that England had violated the neutrality which she had declared, and because they did not
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1 January 1899.
2 See the Spectator, December 20, 1862, January 17, 31, December 26, 1863; Saturday Review, September 19, 1863.
3 "' Get good society on your side,' Voltaire used to say; 'the beau monde rules the monde.'' " — James Parton in the Forum, September 1888, p. 61
4 January 31.

in their criticisms use courteous and refined language.1 Carlyle, who had received the first money for his "French Revolution" from Boston, when "not a penny had been realized in England," and who had thankfulness of heart for what it implied, as well as for the needful money, had now no fellow-feeling with the North. "No war ever raging in my time," he said, "was to me more profoundly foolish looking. Neutral I am to a degree: I for one." Again, he spoke of it as "a smoky chimney which had taken fire;" and when asked to publish something in regard to the conflict, he wrote his Ilias Americana in nuce. "Peter of the North (to Paul of the South): Paul, you unaccountable scoundrel, I find you hire your servants for life, not by the month or year, as I do. You are going straight to hell, you —

Paul: Good words, Peter. The risk is my own. I am willing to take the risk. Hire you your servants by the month or the day, and get straight to heaven; leave me to my own method.

Peter: No, I won't. I will beat your brains out first! (And is trying dreadfully ever since, but cannot yet manage it.)"2
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1 Grote wrote to Sir G. C. Lewis, December 29, 1862: "I quite agree in the remarks contained in your last note about the unreasonable and insane language of the Americans against England. The perfect neutrality of England in this destructive war appears to me almost a phenomenon in political history. No such forbearance has been shown during the political history of the last two centuries. . . . And the way in which the Northern Americans have requited such forbearance is alike silly and disgusting. I never expected to have lived to think of them so unfavorably as I do at present. Amidst their very difficult present circumstances they have manifested little or nothing of those qualities which inspire sympathy and esteem and very much of all the contrary qualities; and among the worst of their manifestations is their appetite for throwing the blame of their misfortunes on guiltless England." — Life of Grote by Mrs. Grote, p. 262. I have expressed in the text probably the average Northern opinion of this letter; for a fair statement of the Southern view of Grote's position, see article of Gildersleeve in the Atlantic Monthly, January 1892, p. 79.
2 While this was not published in Macmillan's Magazine until August, 1863, it is dated May, and it is proper to refer the thought to this period. See the Magazine; Froude's Carlyle, vol. iv. p. 209, also, vol. iii. p. 131. Much the same notion as that in the text was expressed by Carlyle, July 30, 1862, Notes from a Diary, Grant Duff, vol. i. p. 204. See an article and a parody by F. D. M., Spectator, August 8.

Dickens, who had sent cheer and humor and pathos into every household from the Atlantic to the Missouri River, who was loved in the free States as few writers have been loved, who, one might have thought from his vehement denunciation of slavery in the "American Notes,"1 would, now that the battle was joined, see that the right would prevail, treated the opinion of a friend, who returned from America in the spring of 1863 and said that the North would ultimately triumph, as a "harmless hallucination."2 Indirectly and undesignedly he was himself a contributing cause to the view which the English higher classes took of the North, for his caricatures in "Martin Chuzzlewit" came to be regarded as a true portrayal 3 of the character of the men and women who were now risking all for unity and freedom. But Tennyson, the poet of the people, though filled with conventional horror at the war, was inspired by the hope of the abolition of slavery, and used to sing, with enthusiasm,

"Glory, glory, hallelujah,
His soul goes marching on." 4

All interested in the attitude of Great Britain towards American affairs awaited, anxiously, the opening of Parliament. The terrible defeat which Burnside had met at Fredericksburg, and the cabinet crisis which followed, together with the Democratic success in the fall elections, seemed to presage the breaking-up of the war party of the North, and affected profoundly the public opinion which moved the House of Commons. Mason wrote Benjamin, January 15:
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1 Chapter xvii. and passim.
2 Cornhill Magazine, April, 1892, p. 308.
3 "The American part of 'Martin Chuzzlewit' is, we think, one of the very cleverest things ever written in fiction. There are not many pages in it, but Mr. Dickens has so thoroughly caught the spirit and reproduced the character of the people he set himself to describe, that almost everything said or done in public by Americans is virtually contained in 'Martin Chuzzlewit.' " —Saturday Review, October 25, 1862.
4 Memoir of Tennyson, vol. i. p. 490.

"Though I doubt not a word from the Minister suggesting that the time had arrived for recognition would meet with unanimous response in the affirmative, both from the ministerial and opposition benches in the House of Commons, I do not think Lord Palmerston is disposed to speak that word."1 Nevertheless, Adams had reason for anxiety, for, in spite of the rising tide of anti-slavery sentiment, military affairs looked so gloomy for the North that even Forster "seemed inclined to give way to a proposal of recognition of the rebels if brought up . . . in Parliament."2 Parliament assembled February 5. In the Queen's speech reference was made to a condition operating to the advantage of the North: the distress in Lancashire was diminishing. Throughout the autumn it had been great;3 but towards the end of the year
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1 Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MS. Mason added: "Nor will the Tories make an issue with him on American affairs. The fact is that parties are so nearly balanced in the House, and, as it would seem, in the country, that the latter are very coy in measuring strength with their opponents."
2 Adams's Diary, entry January 21. Two days later Forster modified his opinion. 
3 Adams wrote Seward : September 12, 1862, "There are announcements of increasing distress among the operatives as the growing scarcity of cotton has the effect of closing more of the mills;" September 25, "The distress in the manufacturing districts is rather on the increase, and the demand for cotton more imperative;" October 3," The distress in the manufacturing region rather increases in severity; but I am inclined to believe that the further closing of the mills is no longer made imperative by the diminution of the material. Large supplies of cotton of the old crop were received from India last week, and 300,000 bales are announced as far on their way. The new crop will soon follow;" December 4, "It is more than likely that the distress from this time will become less and less burdensome. Such engagements have been entered into for the prospective supply of cotton from other sources than the United States, that the probability of a sudden reopening of our ports is beginning to be viewed with quite as much apprehension as desire. . . . Thus far it is notorious here that all the markets of the world to which the English have access had been, prior to the troubles, so much glutted with their cotton goods as, in spite of the subsequent cessation of manufacture, not yet to have recovered their equilibrium." — Diplomatic Correspondence Bright wrote Sumner, December 6, 1862: "This country is passing through a wonderful crisis, but our people will be kept alive by the contributions of the country. I see that some one in the States has proposed to send something to our aid. If a few cargoes of flour could come, say 50,000 barrels, as a gift from persons in your Northern States to the Lancashire workingmen, it would have a prodigious effect in your favor here. Our working class is with you, and against the South; but such a token of your good-will would cover with confusion all those who talk against you." — Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. Bright said in his speech of December 18: "Nearly 500,000 persons—men, women, and children — at this moment are saved from the utmost extremes of famine, not a few of them from death, by the contributions which they are receiving from all parts of the country." The Times said, January 8: "The number of persons dependent more or less on the support, compulsory or voluntary, of the public was not much less than a million."

an improvement began, and by the first of January, 1863, the crisis in the cotton trade had been passed.1 Egypt, Syria, and Brazil were sending cotton,2 and at the same time it began to be understood that the suffering was not due solely to the cutting off of the raw material by the American war. The glut of cotton goods in the great markets of China and India3 indicated that without any other disturbing element the manufacturers of Manchester would have been forced to curtail operations from an inability to dispose of their product. Nevertheless, the generous people in the eastern part of the United States were touched by the tale of distress that came across the water, and sent, in the early part of January, from New York City, a ship loaded with flour, bread, and meat to the suffering workmen of Lancashire.4

The debate on the Queen's speech was favorable to the North. "The most marked indication respecting American affairs," wrote Adams, in his diary, "was the course of Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, which decidedly discouraged movement. On their minds the effect of the President's Proclamation on public sentiment here had not been lost."5
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l Spectator and Saturday Review, January 3.
2 John Bright's Speeches, vol. i. p. 209.
3 See Earl of Derby's Speech in the House of Lords, February 5.
4 New York Times, January 10; Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 18. The cotton operatives held meetings, and sent a formal expression of their thanks to the New York City merchants, and to the people of the United States generally. — Daily News, January 30, February 4. John Bright, Speeches, vol. i. p. 227; see, also, Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 103.
5 Entry, February 6. For these Speeches, see Hansard, 23, 82. Mason wrote Benjamin, February 9: "Whilst both the ministry and the opposition agree that the separation of the States is final, yet both equally agree that in their judgment the time has not yet arrived for recognition. Both parties are guided in this by a fixed English purpose to run no risk of a broil, even far less of a war with the United States. . . . The ground taken by Lord Derby that recognition without other form of intervention would have no fruits, is constantly assumed here by those who are against any movement; and with those willingly deaf it is vain to argue." — Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MS.

Towards the end of March the situation between the two countries again looked grave. Owing to the depredations of the Alabama, which had been built at Liverpool and was almost sweeping our flag from the seas, the irritation in the United States against Great Britain was constantly on the increase. Adams persistently urged upon the English government, in a correspondence marked by some acerbity between him and Earl Russell, its responsibility for the destruction caused by this cruiser, when Russell at last wrote: "Her Majesty's Government entirely disclaim all responsibility for any acts of the Alabama."1 The Alabama was manned by British seamen, showed frequently the English flag, and received a hearty welcome in all ports of the English colonies; on one occasion she was greeted by enthusiastic demonstrations from an English ship bound from Australia to England, the men cheering and the ladies waving their handkerchiefs. This incident, by the time it reached the United States and was told and retold, became the story of the passengers of a British packet making the "sea resound with cheers" as they witnessed the burning of two American ships which had been captured by the Alabama.2 She was a swift screw steamer, with full sail power, and had an able Southern commander, who by his watchfulness aided by a certain degree of good fortune, eluded all the attempts made by the United States Naval Department to catch her and destroy her. During her career she burned fifty-seven vessels
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1 March 9, Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 145. 3 Sinclair, Two Years on the Alabama, pp. 16, 29, 73; Cruise of the Alabama, Semmes, vol. i. p. 298, vol. ii. pp. 60,79. I have assumed that the incident related by Semmes is the same as that described by Sumner in his speech of September 10, 1863, Sumner's Works, vol. vii. p. 354.

of a value of over six and one-half million dollars.1 Despite the damage which was being done by this cruiser, it was then fully recognized that the blockade of the Southern ports must in no wise be weakened for the purpose of capturing her or the Florida. At Liverpool the construction was now going on of at least three ships of war which, it was notorious, were destined for the Confederates. A Confederate loan of three million pounds had been floated in London, and the money obtained from it was to be used in the building of war vessels in England for commerce destroyers, for breaking the blockade, and, perhaps, for attacking New York and Boston. The critical condition at this time is told by Adams in his diary: "The talk about the Alabama is 'it is done and cannot be helped.' "2 "Over all this grows a cloud, hanging darker and darker from this country. I now begin to fear again that the peace will scarcely last six months. The last aggravation is the making of a loan of three million sterling to the rebels, which the government had absolutely done nothing to discountenance. The temper of our people is already roused enough by the constant annoyance created by the ravages of the Alabama not to have an additional spur to it from the prospect of a supply of money to fit out others."3 "My spirits are also failing me a good deal, as the public indications grow more threatening. The course of the wealthy classes is turning the scale against us. They are recovering from the shock occasioned by the public manifestation of the popular sympathy, and are doing by indirection what they cannot effect directly. The only thing which would really check them, military success, does not come at our call."4 March 22 Adams wrote again: "Had a visit from Mr. Forster, and talked earnestly with him about the very grave condition of our affairs. I feared that a collision would come
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1 Two Years on the Alabama, Sinclair, p. 3; British Blue-Book, Proceedings of the Geneva arbitration, part i. p. 368. The first capture of the Florida was in February 1863; the captures of the Shenandoah were in 1865, pp. 369, 370.
2 March 18.
3 March 20.
4 March 21.

unless the ministry here could be persuaded to act with more energy in restraining the outfits from this kingdom." . . . For there "would be a demand in America for the issue of letters of marque which the government would find it hard to resist. But if the President should yield, the chances of a collision on the ocean would be much increased. ... I urged him, therefore, to do something to make the ministry alive to the nature of the difficulty."1

March 27, in the House of Commons, Forster called the attention of the government to the fitting out of ships of war in the English ports for the Confederates, referred to the destroying career of the Alabama, and contrasted favorably the course of the United States during the Crimean War with that of England at present. Sir Roundell Palmer, the Solicitor-General, maintained that in the case of the Alabama the British government had acted with diligence and promptitude, and was free from blame. John Bright took part in the debate, and charged that a gun-boat, the Alexandra, had been launched from a ship-yard in Liverpool, and that two iron-clad rams were building by the Lairds at Birkenhead,2 all three being intended for Confederate cruisers to make war against the United States. Laird, whose sons had built the Alabama, declared that in the
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1 By the act of March 3 the President was authorized to issue letters of marque, but he never availed himself of this privilege. See Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. pp. 120-122,129, 138; Welles, Lincoln and Seward, p. 153 et seq. The loan referred to was that put upon the market by Erlanger & Co.: they gave the Confederacy 77 for $15,000,000 of 7 per cent. bonds. If payment was made in cotton, it was to be at sixpence a pound. — Benjamin to Mason, January 15, 1863, Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MS. Lord Campbell said in the House of Lords, March 23: "And is the issue doubtful? The capitalists of London, Frankfort, Paris, Amsterdam, are not of that opinion. Within the last few days the Southern loan has reached the highest place in our market: £3,000,000 were required, £9,000,000 were subscribed for. The loan is based upon the security of cotton." The loan was placed on the market at 90. The Rothschilds took none of it. See Letters of Belmont, p. 81; Bigelow, p. 182 et seq.; Diplomatic Correspondence, 1803, part i. p. 239.
2 Opposite Liverpool. The builders of the Alexandra had constructed the Florida.

building of that ship "everything was perfectly straightforward and above board," and in the midst of great cheering1 he said, "I would rather be handed down to posterity as the builder of a dozen Alabamas than as the man [referring to Bright] who applies himself deliberately to set class against class, and to cry up the institutions of another country which, when they come to be tested, are of no value whatever, and which reduce the very name of liberty to an utter absurdity." Palmerston closed the debate, treating the American grievances in a conventional and flippant manner, but hinting at the same time at the difficulties under which his government labored, owing to the eager money-making spirit of British merchants and ship-builders. He said: "Whenever any political party, whether in or out of office in the United States, finds itself in difficulties, it raises a cry against England as a means of creating what in American language is called political 'capital.' . . . The Solicitor-General . . . has demonstrated, indisputably, that the Americans have no cause of complaint against us. . . . Honorable members have argued as if the seizure of a vessel were equivalent to its condemnation. . . . You cannot seize a vessel under the Foreign Enlistment Act, unless you have evidence on oath confirming a just suspicion. . . . When a vessel is seized unjustly, and without good grounds, there is a process of law to come afterwards, and the Government may be condemned in heavy costs and damages. Why are we to undertake an illegal measure which may lead to those consequences, simply to please the agent of a foreign government? ... I have, myself, great doubts whether, if we had seized the Alabama, we should not have been liable to considerable damages. ... I can assure the House that Her Majesty's Government have no indisposition to enforce the provisions of the Foreign Enlistment Act."2

Mason was in glee at this debate. "The reply of the
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1 Times, Daily News, Morning Star, March 28.
2 This debate may be found in Hansard, 33 et seq., and a report of it, though not strictly accurate, in Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 164.

Solicitor-General," he wrote, "besides a clear and able exposition of the law of the question, was a scathing rebuke to the pretensions of the United States; but the logic of Mr. Laird's facts were conclusive against them." Lord Palmerston's "speech told capitally. ... It was felt on all hands that the debate was a most damaging one to the arrogance of the Yankee pretensions as well as their advocates."1 Adams wrote of it in his diary: "Sir Roundell Palmer made a lawyer's plea, and Lord Palmerston indulged, as usual, in derogatory and insulting language rather than in conciliation." 2

The feeling of the friends of the North in England was that this debate of March 27 meant war;8 and even before the report of it was received in the United States, the hope there was but faint that the calamity could be avoided.4 Forster
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1 March 30, Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MS.
2 Entry March 28. Bright wrote Sumner, April 4: "The debate on the Alabama was badly managed, and told against us. . . . The speeches of the Solicitor-General and Palmerston were untrue and altogether bad in tone." He also said: "lam very uneasy at the irritation which arises from the building of the pirate ships in this country. Some meetings will be held to condemn the conduct of the builders and of the government, but the House of Commons is not disposed to say anything in the matter. The government is supported nearly as much by the Tory party as by the Liberals, and there is little chance at present of any change. Palmerston, I am convinced, is no friend of your country, and his cold or hostile neutrality is well liked by the great aristocratic party and class, of which he is the chief."—Pierce Sumner Papers, MS. The Spectator of April 4 said: "We read the debate ... on the Alabama question with profound humiliation. . . . The House of Commons . . . cheered and cheered again the statements of the Prime Minister and Sir Roundell Palmer. As if to remove all doubt of the temper of the House, Mr. Laird ... got up in his place, and was not ashamed to justify his infraction of the provisions of the English statute book." The Daily News of March 28 had a severe comment on the debate, in which it said: "If, when we were at war with Russia, powerful fighting vessels, built in American dockyards, manned by American crews, and paid by American money, had preyed on the commerce, destroying British trading vessels by scores, what would have been the general feeling in this country?" I subjoin a fac-simile of the call for a meeting.

SHIPS OF WAR

FOR THE

SLAVEHOLDERS' CONFEDERACY.

On MONDAY, April 6th, 1863,

A

PUBLIC MEETING

Of the Members and Friends of the UNION AND EMANCIPATION SOCIETY, will be held in the

FREE TRADE HALL,
MANCHESTER,

To PROTEST against the Building and Fitting-Out of
PIRATICAL SHIPS, in support of the SOUTHERN SLAVEHOLDERS' CONFEDERACY.

At this meeting Professor Goldwin Smith, of Oxford, thus spoke : "The duties of nations towards each other were not bound by the technical rules of law. They were as wide as the rules of morality and honor: and if in our dealings with America we violated the rules of morality and honor, we should abide the consequences of wrong doing, though our lawyers might advise us that we were secure. . . . No nation ever inflicted upon another a more flagrant or more maddening wrong [permitting the Alabama to escape]. No nation with English blood in its veins had ever borne such a wrong without resentment. . . . Built and equipped in a British port, manned by British seamen, with the English flag flying, she [the Alabama] went forth to cruise from an English port against the commerce of our allies. That was the substantial grievance of the American government, and no technicalities of the Solicitor-General would make it otherwise than a heinous wrong. . . . The Americans would soon have read the speech of the Solicitor-General, treating their complaints with little courtesy, and the speech of Mr. Laird avowing (it might be said) his crime ; they would have seen that a large party in the House of Commons received Mr. Laird, not with disapprobation, but with enthusiastic cheers ; they would have seen that the announcements of the success of the Alabama herself were cheered by the House ; and all this would excite in them bitter feelings, and perhaps they might do on their side something that would cause our government to demand reparation. . . . We could not mistake from the bearing of Lord Palmerston that he was at the head of the Southern party. It was clear, too, from some expressions of Lord Russell that his heart was on the right side." —Daily News, April 8.
3 Adams's Diary, entry March 29.
4 Sumner wrote Cobden, March 16: "I am anxious, very anxious, on account of the ships building in England to cruise against our commerce. Cannot something be done to stop them? Our people are becoming more and more excited, and there are many who insist upon war. A very important person said to me yesterday, 'We are now at war with England, but the hostilities are all on her side.' " — Pierce's Sumner, vol. Iv. p. 129. On receipt of this letter, Cobden wrote Earl Russell in regard to the matter, with good effect, ibid., note 5; Cobden to Sumner, American Historical Review, January 1897, p. 309; see Cobden to Forster, April 5, Life of Forster, Reid, vol. i. p. 358. Sumner wrote Bright, March 30: "If those ships get to sea, our commerce is annihilated." On April 7: "All the signs are of war, more surely than in the time of the Trent. . . . All look forward to action of a most decisive character, should those ships come out." After he read the report of the debate of March 27, he was sad and anxious. — Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 130 et seq. See also New York Times, March 7, April 13; Letters of Belmont, privately printed, p. 79.

was disappointed at the result, and so anxious about the matter1 that he redoubled his energies to have justice done.
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1 See letter to his wife, April 7, Life of Forster, Reid, p. 359.

He went to see Adams, and asked "if the stopping of one vessel would do any good." Adams said, "Yes, much good."1 April 5 Earl Russell stopped the Alexandra. While the decision of the Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer was against the position which the government had taken in seizing the ship, still the case remained in the courts, on one legal point and another, for a long while, with the result that she never got into the hands of the Confederates to be used against American commerce.2 The significance of this seizure lay in the excellent action of the English government, directed undoubtedly by Earl Russell, and the sincere manner in which it prosecuted the case.3
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1 Adams's Diary, March 29.
2 Ibid., entry April 5, June 24; Appendix to the British Case at Geneva, p. 219 et seq.
3 Adams to Seward, April 23; Memorials of Earl of Selborne, vol. ii. p. 440 et seq. The Manchester meeting of April 6 received with loud cheers the intelligence that the Alexandra had been stopped. There came simultaneously a considerable fall in the Confederate loan. Mason, in a letter of April 9 (Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MS.), tells of the desperate efforts he, Slidell, Erlanger & Co, and Fraser, Trenholm & Co. made to sustain the market. See Bigelow, p. 179 et seq.
An incident shows the indirect pressure on men of position. R. P. Collier had been of such service in the Alabama that Adams desired to retain him again, but he intimated that he "had been found fault with for his former course, and that his connection with the admiralty might conflict with further engagements to us." Adams added: "No lawyer of eminence will have the courage to repeat Mr. Collier's experiment." —Entry March 18. Collier was appointed Solicitor-General in October, 1863, and later became Lord Monkswell. William M. Evarts was sent to London by the United States government to assist Adams with his legal advice, and he was of much service.

The effect of the stopping of the Alexandra was good, but the uneasiness continued pretty nearly through the month of April.1 The debate of April 24, in spite of a bitter attack on the North by one member had an assuaging effect, and the next day Adams had a call from the speaker of the House, who "made a species of apology for his inability to put a check on the abuse of America under the rules of order, which," Adams adds, "quite moved me."2 In the first days of May a change of tone for the better is apparent.3
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1 Adams wrote in his diary, April 10: "I am conscious of a much increased pressure of anxiety of late, from the course which matters are manifestly taking here." It was at this time that Sir George C. Lewis died, and Gibson told Adams "that it was a great loss to us, as he had generally exercised his influence in the Cabinet for our benefit.'' — Entry April 15. Adams adds: "Matters are daily approaching a crisis, and the turn of the tide may send me on my way home with the countries on the brink of a conflict." April 16 he wrote: Mr. Forster talked "of the probability of avoiding a collision, about which I grow more and more doubtful." John Bright wrote Sumner, April 24: "There seems mischief brewing between your government and ours. You are justly irritated about the pirate ships. ... I hope the course taken by our government in respect to the ship Alexandra now in Liverpool, will do something to calm the feelings of your people. So far as I can learn, our government is in earnest in the prosecution begun against the persons concerned in the building and equipment of this ship, and I believe they will act at once in any other case where evidence can be obtained." — Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. See also Cobden to Bright, April 22, Morley's Cobden, p. 588; Letters of Belmont, privately printed, p. 81.
2 Adams's Diary, April 25.
3 Ibid., May 5. Bright wrote Sumner, May 2: "I believe Lord Russell is really sorry that the case of the Alabama occurred, and that he is now anxious to prevent further mischief. The debate [March 27] to which you refer was unfortunate, and the speeches of Palmerston and Palmer were wicked. I am satisfied that they were opposed in tone to the foreign minister's intention, and I have reason to believe that he was dissatisfied and has remonstrated against it. The subsequent debate [April 24] was a different affair, and the Prime Minister and his Solicitor-General were as mild and decent as we could wish them to be. I hear too, from the best sources, that no more ships will be allowed to go out if any fair ground can be shown for interfering with them. The speech of Mr. Cobden was excellent, and opinion this week is moderate and without excitement." — Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. See also Cobden to Sumner, May 2,22, American Historical Review, January 1897, pp. 310, 311; Saturday Review, May 9. The Confederate commercial agent wrote Benjamin, May 9: "The public mind has settled down into a state of quiescence on American affairs which resembles stagnation. Everybody —that is to say, the mass of intelligence and respectability — wishes well to the Confederate cause, but nobody now speaks of recognition, nobody thinks about it, nobody even writes pamphlets about it." — Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MS.

The most significant feature in the aspect of English sentiment at this time is the feeling of our friends that our cause was utterly hopeless.1 The news of the disaster of Hooker at Chancellorsville strengthened this belief.2 Then came the intelligence of Lee's invasion into Pennsylvania, fostering the rumors which were abroad that England and France would decide on intervention.3 Attempts were now made by assemblies of people, to arouse the sentiment in the country which favored the recognition of the Southern Confederacy. Meetings were held at Manchester, Preston, Sheffield, and some other places which recommended this policy, and were answered by other gatherings which protested against any interference.4 The Confederate commercial agent in London wrote to Benjamin, June 6: "There is, then, this new symptom
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1 The Duke of Argyll wrote Sumner, April 24: "I regard your undying confidence with astonishment, but I should rejoice to see that confidence justified by the event. . . . There are many here who hold that slavery is even more sure to fall by the success of secession than by the conquest of the South. I cannot allow my sympathies to be guided by any such belief, even if I entertained it. I wish those who are in the right to triumph; I wish those who represent a wicked cause to fail." — Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
2 The Duke of Argyll wrote Sumner, May 30: "You wrote after Hooker's failure must have been known, but you still speak as if the subjugation of the rebel States would certainly be effected, and as if it were only delayed by the sympathy which you attributed to foreign nations. I confess that, however strongly my wishes have been and are with your government . . . the probability of such success seems to me to be now very small." — Pierce Sumner Papers, MS.
3 The Morning Post and Morning Herald, cited in the Index of July 2, favored the recognition of the Confederacy. But the Times and Saturday Review opposed such action.
4 Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 302; Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MS.; letter of Louis Blanc, May 17, Letters on England, second series, vol. i. p. 183; Spectator, May 30.

to chronicle, that there is at last a people's movement and a people's champion [Roebuck, a Radical] in favor of recognition, and although I do not yet know the extent and depth of the movement, I think it worth while to support it by all the means in my power. ... I have taken measures to placard every available space in the streets of London with representations of our newly adopted flag conjoined to the British national ensign . . . which I design simply as a 'demonstration' to impress the masses with the vitality of our cause."1

Such expressions of public sentiment and such attempts to bias it were preliminary to Roebuck's speech in the House of Commons on June 30, when he made a motion which, had it prevailed, would be an instruction to the English government "to enter into negotiations with the Great Powers of Europe for the purpose of obtaining their co-operation in the recognition" of the Confederacy. The time has come, he said, for the recognition of the Southern States: they have vindicated their right to it, and, moreover, they offer us perfect free trade. He proceeded to relate an interview he had recently had with the Emperor of the French. Louis Napoleon said: "As soon as I learnt that that rumor was circulating in England [that I had changed my mind about recognizing the Confederacy], I gave instructions to my ambassador to deny the truth of it. Nay, more, I instructed him to say that my feeling was not, indeed, exactly the same as it was, because it was stronger than ever in favor of recognizing the South. I told him also to lay before the British government my understanding and my wishes on this question, and to ask them again whether they would be willing to join me in that recognition." The Emperor went on: "I give you full liberty to state to the English House of Commons this my wish. I have determined in all things to act with England, and, more particularly, I have determined to act with her as regards America." 2 Roebuck continued: "I have to-day had
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1 Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MS.
2 Hansard, 1776 et seq.

letters from Lancashire, which say that in thirteen of the great towns there have been large meetings in favor of the recognition of the South—that that has been carried by an immense majority of ten to one, and that there will be no end to the petitions sent up to this House for that measure." During the debate Gladstone spoke for the government, and Forster and Bright for the North: the tenor of the speeches, their reception, and the atmosphere of the House indicated a strong preponderating opposition to the motion of Roebuck.1 It is very important to note that at this time, when in England it was supposed that any mail might bring the news that General Lee had captured Washington and Baltimore, the English government and the House of Commons made it evident that Great Britain would not recognize the Southern Confederacy, either alone or in partnership with Louis Napoleon. July 13 Roebuck withdrew his motion.2

The intelligence of the victories of Gettysburg and Vicksburg came. Adams wrote thus in his diary: "July 16. Our amiable friends, the British, who expected to hear of the capture of Washington, are correspondingly disappointed." "July 17. The British persist in thinking it by no means decisive. The tendencies to feeling have never been more sensibly developed than since the announcement of this invasion. . . . This comes from . . . the atmospheric pressure of opinion as generated in England by the London Times."
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1 Adams wrote in his diary, July 1: "Mr. Roebuck succeeded in spoiling his case most completely as well as complicating the Emperor at Paris with the Ministry here and the Government at home." See the Saturday Review and Spectator, July 4; Times, July 13; Adams to Seward, July 1, 3 ; letter of Louis Blanc, July 3, Letters on England, second series, vol. i. p. 222.
2 I have not considered it necessary to discuss the evidence whether Roebuck made a faithful report of his conversation with the Emperor, but it would seem quite likely, from the whole course of Louis Napoleon's diplomacy, that he was in no way misrepresented. Entry in Adams's Diary, June 25; Times, July 13; Saturday Review, July 4, 18; Spectator, July 18; the Moniteur of July 4 and a letter of Lindsay in the Times cited in the Index of July 9, its leaders of the same date and of July 16; Life of Roebuck, Leader, p. 296. Roebuck's influence in the House was not great; see letters of Louis Blanc, July 12,14, Letters on England, second series, vol. L p. 238 et seq.

At a reception, July 18, at Lady Palmerston's, he notes, however, that the Prime Minister was more civil to him than "at anytime since our difficulty." "July 20. Perhaps the most curious phenomenon is to be seen in the London newspapers, which betray the profound disappointment and mortification of the aristocracy at the result. They persist in disbelieving the fact of the fall of Vicksburg." "July 21. The incredulity is yet considerable. It is the strongest proof how deep-seated is the passion in the English heart." "July 27. The London Times condescends to admit this morning, that Vicksburg is taken. Its tone, like that of the other journals, is depressed. The whole English public mourns as for a calamity." "July 28. The people here are waking from their dream."1 The Confederates in London were disheartened. "The news of the check sustained by our forces at Gettysburg," wrote the commercial agent to Benjamin, July 23, "coupled with the reported fall of Vicksburg, was so unexpected as to spread very general dismay, not only among the active sympathizers with our cause, but even among those who take merely a selfish interest in a great struggle;" and August 27 he said, "You have here, in the tremulous condition of the loan, a sufficiently accurate description of the state of public opinion."2
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1 Bright wrote Sumner, July 31: "I need not tell you with what feelings of gratification and relief I have received the news of your recent success. The debate on the foolish Roebuck proposition took place when there was much gloom over your prospects, and the friends of the 'secesh' here were rejoicing in the belief that your last hour had come. How soon are the clouds cleared away, and how great is now the despondency of those who have dishonored themselves by their hatred of your people and government! The loan [Confederate] is down near twenty per cent, in little more than a week, and is now, I suspect, unsalable, and people are rubbing their eyes and wondering where the invincible South has gone to. Our pro-slavery newspapers are desperately puzzled, and the whole mass of opinion is in confusion." —Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. See the Times, July 16, 20, 21, 23, 27, August 3; Daily News, July 21. The Saturday Review was impressed with the importance of the Northern victories, see August 1, 8, 15; Spectator, July 25; see letter from Louis Blanc, July 25, Letters on England, second series, vol. i. p. 255.
2 Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MS. Adams wrote, July 30: "A panic has . . . happened among the holders of the rebel loan. The feeling of regret at the course of events is very general." — Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 329, see pp. 319, 336; Bright's letter of August 7 to Cyrus W. Field, Harper's Magazine, May, 1896, p. 848.

In the mean time work was proceeding on the two steam iron-clad rams which the Lairds were building at Birkenhead for the Confederates. Adams was diligent in calling the attention of Earl Russell to the transaction, and in furnishing him evidence, supplied by Dudley, our consul at Liverpool, which showed the character and destination of these vessels;1 and, should a grave contingency arise, he had for his guidance an unequivocal despatch from the Secretary of State. If more vessels which become armed cruisers get away, Seward wrote, rendering it evident that the laws of Great Britain, or their administration, or the judicial construction of them is not sufficient to insure a proper observance of neutrality, then the United States must protect themselves. Being brought to a condition of things where war is waged against them "by a portion, at least, of the British nation," the President may decide to order the navy to pursue these "pirates"2 into the British ports, and while perceiving the "risks and hazards " consequent on such a determination he does not think that the responsibility of war will fall upon the United States.3

In pursuance of the communications of Adams, Earl Russell, with honest intent, set affairs in train to ascertain for whom these iron-clad rams were building, with the design of stopping them should there be, under the law, warrant for such action. While their construction was a matter of common knowledge, and while, as the Times remarked, "ninety-nine people out of a hundred believe that these steam rams are 'intended to carry on hostilities sooner or later against the Federals,' "4 Captain Bulloch, the able
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1 Letters of July 11, 16, 25, August 14.
2 An erroneous designation of Seward.
3 July 11, Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 309.
4 September 7; but the remark would have been exactly true at least a month earlier.

naval representative of the Southern Confederacy, who had contracted for these war-ships as well as for the Alabama, and had been enlightened by the seizure of the Alexandra, was managing the business astutely, with the sympathetic co-operation of the Lairds. To a report that they were for the Emperor of the French, Palmerston, in an allusion in the House of Commons, gave some credence:1 when this was shown to be without foundation,2 it was stated to the English government that they were for the viceroy of Egypt. This was in turn denied.3 Representations were then made to the officials who were investigating the matter, that they were owned by a firm of French merchants, and for this there was a legal basis. Fearing that they might be seized, Bulloch had in June sold the ships to a French firm who had engaged to resell them to him when they should get beyond British jurisdiction. He had no idea that the Lairds suspected that the sale was not a bona fide transfer:4 indeed, they wrote to the English Foreign Office that they were building the vessels for a Paris copartnery.5

Earl Russell caused all the facts which were submitted to him to be sifted with care by the Law officers of the Crown, who gave him two positive opinions nearly a month apart, that there was "no evidence capable of being presented to a
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1 July 23, Hansard, 1272. The Duchess of Argyll wrote Sumner the same day: "As to the iron-plated ships there seems to be great difficulty at getting at the truth, but it is said that one at least is for the French." — Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
2 Earl Cowley at Paris to Earl Russell, August 24, in answer to inquiry, Appendix to British Case at Geneva, vol. ii. p. 338, also p. 328. This will hereafter be referred to as Brit. Case, and vol. ii. will be understood.
3 By telegram from Alexandria, ibid., p. 341.
4 Bulloch, Secret Service of the Confederate States, vol. i. p. 400 etseq.
5 Brit. Case, p. 355. This letter, dated September 5, was received September 7, after the English government had substantially arrived at the final decision and it could not of itself have affected the first determination. But I refer to it for the reason that its positive statement was quite likely communicated previously by some indirect way to Earl Russell and the Law officers of the Crown. According to legal knowledge, the statement was true, although it was not in reality.

Court of Justice " that the ships were intended for the Confederates, but that, on the other hand, the claim of French ownership seemed to be legally sustained: they could not, therefore, advise the Government to detain the vessels.1 Still Russell was not satisfied, and he continued his inquiries, leaving no stone unturned to arrive at the truth; but in spite of his suspicions he could not get over the palpable tokens that they belonged to a firm of Paris merchants.2 He therefore wrote Adams, September 1, that the government was advised that they could not in any way interfere with these ships, but he promised that they would maintain a careful watch, and be ready to stop them, should trustworthy evidence show any proceeding contrary to the statute.3 At this time he was at his country-seat in Scotland, and his letter did not reach Adams until four o'clock of September 4.4

Our minister had returned from his outing, cheered by his friendly intercourse with members of the government;5 but on his arrival in London he was immediately confronted with the critical question of the iron-clad rams, one of which Dudley had good reason to believe would at any time go to sea.6 September 3 Adams wrote Russell, transmitting copies of further depositions, and averring that there were no reasonable grounds for doubt that these iron-clad rams were intended for the Confederate service;7 and the next day, hearing from Dudley that one of them was about to depart,8
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1 Letters of July 24, August 20, Brit. Case, pp. 327, 836. This was followed by a supplementary opinion of Palmer, August 21 (after the consideration of more evidence), to the same purpose, p. 337.
2 Ibid., pp. 338-343.
3 Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 363.
4 Ibid., p. 362 ; Adams's Diary.
5 "I met several of them in the course of my trip into Scotland, with whom my conversation was of the most friendly nature, though, being altogether social, it of course is not suitable to be reported. I still remain of the conviction that the disposition of the greater part of the ministry is friendly." —Adams to Seward, September 3, Diplomatic Correspondence, MS.
6 Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 361.
7 Ibid., p. 357.
8 Adams's Diary, entry September 4

he sent to the Foreign Office a "last solemn protest against the commission of such an act of hostility against a friendly nation."1 Soon afterwards he received Russell's note of September 1, which, he wrote in his diary, "affected me deeply. I clearly foresee that a collision must now come out of it. I must not, however, do anything to accelerate it, and yet must maintain the honor of my country with proper spirit. The issue must be properly made up before the world on its merits. The prospect is dark for poor America."2 After a night given to such reflections, "My thoughts turned strongly upon the present crisis. . . . My conclusion was that another note must be addressed to Lord Russell. So I drew one which I intended only to gain time previous to the inevitable result."3 This was his celebrated despatch of September 5: "My Lord," he wrote: "At this moment, when one of the iron-clad vessels is on the point of departure from this kingdom, on its hostile errand against the United States, I am honored" with yours of the 1st instant. "I trust I need not express how profound is my regret at the conclusion to which Her Majesty's Government have arrived. I can regard it no otherwise than as practically opening to the insurgents free liberty in this kingdom to execute a policy " of attacking New York, Boston, and Portland, and of breaking our blockade. "It would be superfluous in me to point out to your lordship that this is war. ... I prefer to desist from communicating to your lordship even such portions of my existing instructions as are suited to the case,4 lest I should contribute to aggravate difficulties already far too serious. I therefore content myself with informing your lordship that I transmit by the present steamer a copy of your note for the consideration of my government, and shall await the more specific directions that will be contained in the reply."5

If Russell had been in London, the tale of the iron-clad
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1 Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part 1. p. 361.
2 Entry September 5.
3 Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 367. 3 Entry September 4.
5 Seward of July 11, ante, p. 377.

rams would have been simple and brief: one friendly interview between him and Adams would have cleared up the matter, for both had the same end in view. It is the crossing of their letters which makes the story complex, and which necessitates a close attention to the dates when the notes were received as well as when they were sent. Had the Foreign Secretary been of the mind to admit our minister somewhat more to his confidence, such an unravelling of the correspondence would not be required to manifest that Russell deserves applause for his methodical straightforwardness and his honest purpose in this affair where action was hedged about with difficulties, owing to the evasion of the true ownership and to the force of the precedent made by the narrow and doubtful construction of the statute in the case of the Alexandra.

As early as September 1 he was better than his word to Adams. Layard, the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, who was in London, wrote on that day to the Treasury: "I am directed by Earl Russell to request that you will state to the Lords Commissioners of her Majesty's Treasury that so much suspicion attaches to the iron-clad vessels at Birkenhead, that if sufficient evidence can be obtained to lead to the belief that they are intended for the Confederate States Lord Russell thinks the vessels ought to be detained until further examination can be made."1 Reflection, in which the belief that he had been tricked in the escape of the Alabama undoubtedly played a part, led him, two days later [September 3], to direct that the iron-clad rams be stopped.2 On this
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1 Brit. Case, p. 343. He promised Adams future action; he acted at once. Cf. the letters of September 1.
2 I have adopted this explanation of Russell's apparently sudden change in two days only after a very careful consideration. From the whole correspondence it seems to me that he was gradually working to this point. The steps are exactly those which a very honorable man given somewhat to vacillation would take. The additional evidence which Adams sent to the Foreign Office had not yet reached him.
Another explanation may be suggested which it might be assumed that I should adopt in order to be consistent with my treatment of his alteration of opinion in October, 1862. Adams, on a visit to the Duke of Argyll at Inverary Castle, Scotland, makes this entry in his diary, August 28 : "In the evening a little conversation with the Duke of Argyll about the fitting out of the iron-clad vessels. He said that he had received a letter from Mr. Sumner, dwelling very strongly on the danger of war from this cause. I said that I felt the same apprehension. He wanted to know something of the French claim. I replied that I had exposed the motive of that pretence. . . . The Ministry dislikes to assume a responsibility which may make it the object of popular attack at home. It thus hazards the evil of war upon a doubt. He seemed a little impressed with my earnestness. I told him I had instructions on the subject far more stringent than I had yet been disposed to execute. My own inclinations had been to make as little of the difficulty as I could. But I could not fail to regard the question as grave and critical." It is no unnatural supposition that the Duke should have communicated this conversation to Earl Russell by letter, and it may have been a slight contributing cause to the decision, but the main reason seems to me to have been that, full of regret at the escape of the Alabama and her depredations, he was determined not to give our country another similar cause of offence.
The difference of feeling too in England after McClellan's reverses before Richmond, and after Gettysburg and Vicksburg, is an element to betaken into consideration. "The progress of the Federal arms," wrote Cobden to Bright, September 8, "will help the Cabinet over some of the legal technicalities of the enlistment act." — Morley, p. 589. The Northern victories undoubtedly strengthened Russell's arm to do what he considered right. The feeling of the ministry is probably well expressed by the Duchess of Argyll to Sumner, September 8: "I have just heard that the iron-clads are to be arrested. I trust there may be evidence sufficient to do what we wish to do." — Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.

day he wrote from Meikleour, Scotland: "My dear Palmerston, — The conduct of the gentlemen who have contracted for the two iron-clads at Birkenhead is so very suspicious that I have thought it necessary to direct that they should be detained. The Solicitor-General has been consulted, and concurs in the measure, as one of policy, though not of strict law. We shall thus test the law, and, if we have to pay damages, we have satisfied the opinion, which prevails here as well as in America, that that kind of neutral hostility should not be allowed to go on without some attempt to stop it. If you do not approve, pray appoint a Cabinet for Tuesday or Wednesday next [the 8th or 9th]."1 Palmerston did not dissent, and therefore called no meeting of the Cabinet.
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1 Walpole, Life of Russell, vol. ii. p. 359, note.

But Russell was not content to wait the slow course of the post or the approval of the Prime Minister, and on the same day [September 3] telegraphed to Layard to give directions to stop the iron-clads "as soon as there is reason to believe that they are actually about to put to sea, and to detain them until further orders."1 September 4 he sent word to Adams that "the matter is under the serious and anxious consideration of Her Majesty's Government;"2 but this the minister did not receive until after he had despatched his note, saying, "It would be superfluous in me to point out to your lordship that this is war."3 September 5 Russell ordered that the vessels "be prevented from leaving Liverpool" on a trial trip "or on any other pretext" "until satisfactory evidence can be given as to their destination,"4 and on the same day he sent a confidential note to the charges d'affaires in Washington, requesting that Secretary Seward be apprised that they had been stopped from leaving port;6 but for some unexplained reason he did not advise Adams of this action until three days later.8

After the iron-clad rams were " detained," the Foreign Secretary employed the utmost circumspection to prevent the one almost ready from slipping away to sea through any artifice. While two different constructions may be drawn from the correspondence, it seems, on the whole, that he had confidence in the honor of the Lairds, although it was at times clouded with suspicions, born of the escape of the Alabama 7 and augmented by their persistence in asking permission for a trial trip, that, if the steamer went out to test her machinery, she would never come back, through causes ostensibly beyond their control. A large body of seamen from the Confederate
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1 Brit. Case, p. 349.
2 Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i, p. 364.
3 Diary, September 5.
4 Brit. Case, p. 352.
5 Layard to Stuart, September 5, State Papers, 1864, Correspondence respecting ironclad vessels, No. 14; Memorandum State Dep't Archives, MS. ; Seward to Adams, September 19, "confidential," ibid.; Russell's statement in House of Lords, February 11, 1864, Hansard, 438.
6 September 8, Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 368; Brit. Case, p. 355. Russell was still in Scotland. Palmerston was in London.
7 Ante, p. 89.

cruiser Florida had recently come to Liverpool for the purpose, it was suspected, of carrying out a plan for the "forcible abduction of the vessel," and to checkmate this game Russell had moved the Board of Admiralty to authorize the Admiral of the Channel fleet, then in the Mersey, to place "on board the iron-clad, about to be tried, a sufficient force of seamen and marines in her Majesty's naval service to defeat any attempt to run away with the vessel."1 But it then turned out that the ship was not ready, and the trial trip was postponed.2

In the mean time the Foreign Office made a systematic and careful investigation, demonstrating, to a moral certainty, that the French ownership was a blind, and that the ironclad rams were intended for the Confederates.3 October 8, by the order of Earl Russell, the vessel the more advanced in her construction was seized, and the next day the Broad Arrow was likewise put upon the other.4 The Lairds were annoyed at this action, and their operatives showed much ill feeling. To ward off any attempt at a rescue, the ships were watched by a powerful naval force.5 The question whether the iron-clads should be condemned was never passed upon by the courts. Neither the government nor the owners were eager to run the chances of a trial. In the end, as the best way out of the complication, the vessels were purchased by the British Admiralty.6
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1 Brit. Case, p. 367 et ante.
3 Ibid., p. 370 et seq.
2 Ibid., p. 353 et seq.
4 Ibid., pp. 388-391; Morley's Cobden, p. 589. When this word came to the immense audience Henry Ward Beecher was addressing in Manchester, "the whole audience rose to its feet. Men cheered and waved their hats, while women waved their handkerchiefs and wept." — Life of Beecher, p. 410. As indications of public sentiment at the time the rams were detained, see Times, September 7, Daily News, September 8, 9, Spectator, September 5, Saturday Review September 12.
5 Brit. Case, pp. 397, 415, 417, 420 et seq.; Bulloch, Secret Service of the Confederate, vol. i. p. 435 et seq.
6 The purchase was consummated in May, 1864 (Brit. Case, p. 457 et seq.,) but such an outcome was thought of by Russell as early as September 14, 1863. See Life by Walpole, vol. ii. p. 359, note.

These iron-clad rams were formidable vessels of war, and had they got away they would undoubtedly have broken the blockade at Charleston and Wilmington;1 and as the blockade, constantly growing in efficiency, was a potent weapon on the Northern side, the harm would have been incalculable: the victories even of Gettysburg and Vicksburg might have been neutralized. Bulloch dreamed that "our iron-clads" might "sweep the blockading fleet from the sea front of every harbor," "ascend the Potomac," and "render Washington itself untenable," and lay Portsmouth (N. H.) and Philadelphia under contribution.2 From some such damage Earl Russell, by his careful and decisive action, saved the North, and thereby prevented a war between the United States and Great Britain, which the energy of Bulloch and the sympathy and cupidity of a firm of Birkenhead ship-builders came near bringing about.3 The seizure of the rams was a blow to the Confederate cause.4

The debate in the House of Commons, June 30, made it evident that England would not recognize, singly or jointly, the Southern Confederacy, or offer to mediate between the two belligerents; and the proceedings which I have just related
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1 Through the kindness of Mr. Charles F. Adams and Mr. S. A. B. Abbott, I have received the following statement made in January, 1898, from Captain Page, who had been selected as the commander of these vessels : I never received from the Confederate government any instructions, written or of any other kind, as to the course I should pursue after taking command of the rams, but I had outlined in my own mind a plan of operations. My intention was to sail at once to Wilmington and to raise the blockade there and at Charleston. Having accomplished this, I intended to raise the blockade of the gulf ports and cut off all communications of the North by water with New Orleans. I had at the time perfect confidence in my ability to accomplish my purposes, and I now believe, in the light of what I have since learned, that if the rams had been permitted to leave England I would have been successful. I never had any intention of attacking New York, Boston, or Hampton Roads, or any Northern port, as I did not believe in that kind of warfare.
2 Bulloch to the Richmond Secretary of the Navy, July 9, Secret Service of the Confederate States, vol. i. p. 411.
3 See Spectator, September 5, Saturday Review, September 12. 4 Bulloch, vol. i. p. 414 et seq.

showed that the Confederates could no longer hope to build and get away from England vessels of war. The contrast of the action now, and that in regard to the Alabama was marked, especially as the case against the cruiser was the stronger of the two. Her depredations, the claims for damages, urged persistently by our government, the Proclamation of Emancipation, Gettysburg and Vicksburg, invigorated the friendship of Russell,1 and added to his supporters in the Cabinet.

As early as January, Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of State, complained, when writing to Slidell, that Mason had "been discourteously treated by Earl Russell," in March, that "the irritation against Great Britain is fast increasing;" and in June he indulged in words almost abusive of the English government.2 August 4 he wrote Mason that the President was convinced, from the recent debates in Parliament, that England would not recognize the Confederacy, and he therefore instructed him to consider his mission at an end, and withdraw from London.3 Mason received this despatch September 14, and after waiting a week to consult with Slidell, notified Earl Russell that in accordance with his instructions he should terminate his mission.4 Jefferson Davis,
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1 "I have generally had occasion to infer a favorable disposition on the part of Lord Russell. ... In our personal relations we have been uniformly friendly but not intimate." — Adams to Seward, September 24, MS. State Dep't Archives.
2 "The mutual relations of the United States and Great Britain . . . seem to have now become settled on the established basis of insulting aggression on the one side and tame submission on the other. ... It is impossible not to admire the sagacity with which Mr. Seward penetrated into the secret feelings of the British Cabinet, and the success of his policy of intimidation which the world at large supposed would be met with prompt resentment, but which he with deeper insight into the real policy of that Cabinet foresaw would be followed by submissive acquiescence in his demands." — June 22, Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MS.
3 Ibid. A private letter sent at the same time advised Mason that he might exercise some discretion in carrying out this order.
4 Adams wrote Seward, September 24: "The Times distinctly admits this to be a relief to the Government, though I confess myself at a loss to understand how he annoyed them. The selection of Mr. Mason to come here was an unfortunate one from the outset. I can scarcely imagine an agency to have been more barren of results. Mr. Mason's efforts have been of late to concentrate the attacks upon Lord Russell, as if he were the chief barrier to the rebel progress in the Cabinet." — MS. State Dep't Archives. Even had Mason possessed the peculiar ability needed for his position, the constant iteration that he was the author of the Fugitive Slave Law would have impaired his usefulness.

in his message to his Congress in December, gave vent to his "dissatisfaction with the conduct of the British government," two of his many grievances being that they respected the Federal blockade, and had seized the iron-clad rams.1

While Seward's diplomacy after the Trent affair may, on the whole, be commended in the view of the results accomplished, there was in it so much of the "claim everything" principle that it is not extolled by adepts in international law. The course of Adams was well-nigh faultless. There being no Atlantic cable, it took from three weeks to a month to obtain instructions that he asked for. In an exigency therefore he could not wait for these, and was forced many times to act on his own judgment, with a result, since his knowledge was larger and his vision clearer than Seward's, that was beneficial to our cause. As I have told the story of the ironclad rams, his language in the celebrated despatch of September 5 may seem more peremptory than the occasion required, but he must be judged in the light of the facts he himself knew. Applying that test, we perceive that his action, which showed both decision and reserve, denoted diplomatic ability of the highest order.

Russell lacked the force of Palmerston, the many-sidedness and the promptitude of initiative of Gladstone; he belonged to that class of honorable gentlemen whose service to their country and their order is safe rather than impressive, and if his conduct be estimated, not by a hard and fast line which the historian with the knowledge of the after event may draw in his study, but with a due allowance for the difficulties which beset the path of a practical statesman,2 it may be
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1 Moore's Reb. Rec., vol. viii. Documents p. 265.
2 Touching the stopping of the iron-clad rams, Adams wrote Russell, October 12: "The President, not insensible of the difficulties in the way of the decision to which Her Majesty's Government . . . had arrived, is gratified in being able to regard it in the light of a sincere desire on just principles to maintain its friendly relations with the United States."—Brit. Case, p. 400.

asserted, in spite of his deviations from a consistent course, that he deserved well of both English-speaking nations. While the course of England towards us was not as just as ours towards her during the Crimean War,1 it must be borne in mind that "our only well-wisher in Europe" was Russia,2 and that if a contrast be instituted with the policy of France, the action of the government of Great Britain will appear to border on friendliness.3 England, indeed, was the insurmountable obstacle to the recognition of the Southern Confederacy by France and other European nations.4 While the
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1 Adams to Russell, December 30, 1862, Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 43. Forster and Palmer in the House of Commons, March 27, 1863, Hansard, 40, 53; Collier, February 23,1864,1009; Saturday Review, March 28,1863: Letters of Belmont, privately printed, p. 79. In making this statement, however, it is but fair to cite a defence made by Russell in a private letter, about July 23, to the Duchess of Argyll, who had transmitted to him some newspaper extracts sent to her by Sumner. "We do not 'fit out ships by the dozen.' . . . One, two, three ships may have evaded our laws just as the Americans evaded the American laws during the Canadian contest. We are not in the habit of condemning and punishing without proof." — Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.
2 This is on the authority of Motley, March 3, then at Vienna. — Letters, vol. ii. p. 119; see also Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part ii. p. 763. It is difficult to reconcile this with the statement G. W. Smalley makes regarding Bismarck, London Letters, vol. i. p. 27. Yet Motley's relations with Bismarck were intimate. But many of the German people were friendly to the North. "The German mind was obstinately bent against us [the South]." — Be Leon to Benjamin, February 23, 1863, Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MS. Bright declared, December 18, 1862: "A German merchant in Manchester who had recently travelled all through Germany, said,' I am so surprised I don't find one man in favor of the South.' "—Speeches, vol. i. p. 222. The purchase of our bonds by Germans is a well-known fact.
3 J. S. Mill wrote Motley, September 17, 1862: "I believe that our Government has felt more rightly all through than a majority of the public [t. t. the voters]." —Motley's Letters, vol. ii. p. 92.
4 This is a fact so well known, having appeared also in the course of the narrative, that it will be unnecessary to cite a mass of evidence to support it; but a reference to Cobden's opinion, American Hist. Review, January 1897, p. 313, and to Bigelow, France and the Confed. Navy, p. 135, will be pertinent. I will quote three expressions of Benjamin: "January 17. Both Mr. Slidell and Mr. Mason are entirely convinced of the hearty sympathy of the Emperor, and of his desire to give it active expression, as well of the opposite feeling and tendency in the Cabinet of St. James." "July 20. It has become perfectly plain to the whole world . . . that Great Britain stands the only real obstacle to our recognition." "August 17. The important fact has been saliently developed that France is ready and anxious for our recognition, and that England is opposed to it." — Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MS.

English Cabinet looked with regret on the operations of English merchants and ship-builders who, by selling arms, munitions, and vessels to the South, entangled Great Britain in its relations with the United States, Louis Napoleon instigated the Confederates to construct two iron-clads and four clipper corvettes in France, giving indirectly the assurance that they might be armed and equipped, and permitted upon a plausible pretext to leave his ports.1 While Russell declined to see Mason, subsequent to their first meeting, shortly after his arrival in February, 1862, and Palmerston saw him only twice, at a time when all danger of foreign interference had passed, the Emperor accorded three interviews to Slidell, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs and other members of the imperial ministry and household held with him unrestrained intercourse. Moreover, Louis Napoleon conquered Mexico, and placed a European monarch on her throne.2 Notwithstanding his designs were not so clear in 1863 as they are now, enough was known to arouse in the mind of the American public a suspicion that was undoubtedly shared by Seward,3 although the tone of his despatches to France, either
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1 Slidell to Benjamin, January 11, March 4, Confederate Diplomatic Correspondence, MS. But they never got to sea as Confederate vessels. In November Louis Napoleon began to change his tune. For a history of this transaction, see Bigelow, France and the Confederate Navy; Bulloch, vol. ii.; Nicolay and Hay, vol. viii. chap. x.
2 On Mexico, besides the article of Bancroft already cited, see Nicolay and Hay, vols. vi., vii.; H. H. Bancroft's Mexico, vol. vi.
3 Adams wrote Seward, September 25: "I am sorry to be obliged to confess to a belief that there is more or less of duplicity in the policy of the Emperor of France towards the United States. Little as I am disposed to be satisfied with the action of the Ministry here, I prefer their rougher and colder truth to his more polished and courtly insincerity." —State Dep't Archives, MS.

from motives of policy, or because he was influenced by the traditional amity of that nation and the sympathy of liberal Frenchmen,1 was considerate and kindly, in striking contrast with his roughness to England.

After October, 1863, there was no danger of foreign intervention in our struggle. This chapter therefore concludes my extended review of English sentiment, and the course of the English government, and my cursory treatment of the designs and action of the Emperor of the French during our civil war.2
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1 Mill wrote Motley from Avignon, October 31: "All liberal Frenchmen seem to have been with you from the first. They did not know more about the subject than the English, but their instincts were truer." — Motley's Letters, vol. ii. p. 96. "There is unquestionably a strong feeling in a portion of French society in favor of the North, and a majority of the educated classes are desirous that the relations of France with the Federal government should continue amicable . . . The Emperor entered on a policy unfriendly to the Federal States and strongly condemned by the educated classes in France when he sent his troops to Mexico." — Saturday Review, October 3. "No doubt it is true that the cultivated portion of English society has far more sympathy with the Slave Power than the cultivated portion of French society." — Spectator, October 3. Slidell's despatch of January 21 gives a different view of French sentiment, but I have not hesitated to accept the other authorities.
2 The numerous references which I have made to the diary of Charles Francis Adams by no means indicate the full value that it has been to me in affording me the best of daily commentaries on the diplomatic negotiations. Besides the specific dates noted, I have used the files of the Times, Daily News, Spectator, and Saturday Review for the period. The distinct references do not measure fully my obligations to Bulloch's candid and useful work. The chapters in Nicolay and Hay's volumes vi., vii., viii., have been of use to me. Authorities other than those mentioned from time to time are: Letters of Asa Gray, vol. ii.; Letters of J. R. Lowell, vol. i.; the Biography of Henry Ward Beecher; the Neutrality of Great Britain, Bernard; several articles in the Diet" of National Biog.; Sumner's speech, September 10, 1863, Works, vol. vii. p. 333; Earl Russell's speech, Times, September 28, Spectator, October 3, 1863; Louis Blanc, Letters from England, second series, vol. i.; Soley, The Blockade and the Cruisers. For the friction arising from our contiguity to Canada, see The Northern Lake Frontier during the Civil War, J. M. Callahan, Rep. American Historical Ass'n, 1896, p. 343 et seq. Also, in general, Callahan's Diplomatic History Southern Confederacy
Note. — I have avoided entering upon two subjects of dispute between Seward and Adams on one side and Russell on the other. Several citations will give a fair presentation of them. In a letter to Russell of July 11, Adams complained of the despatch from the United Kingdom of "numbers of steam vessels laden with arms and munitions of war of every description together with other supplies, well adapted to procrastinate the struggle with a purpose of breaking a blockade legitimately established and fully recognized by her Majesty." [Reference is made to merchant vessels intending to run the blockade or to transfer their cargoes to blockade runners at Nassau.] Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 314. Russell wrote Adams, September 11: "With regard to the general duties of a neutral, according to international law, the true doctrine has been laid down repeatedly by Presidents and judges of eminence of the United States, and that doctrine is that a neutral may sell to either or both of two belligerent parties any implements or munitions of war which such belligerent may wish to purchase from the subjects of the neutral. . . . Admitting also, that which is believed to be the fact, that the Confederates have derived a limited supply of arms and ammunition from the United Kingdom, notwithstanding the federal blockade of their ports; yet, on the other hand, it is perfectly notorious that the federal government have purchased in and obtained from the United Kingdom afar greater quantity of arms and war-like stores." —Ibid., p. 373. Russell made his meaning clear in his speech of September 26: "The principle [of the Foreign Enlistment Act] is clear enough. If you are asked to sell muskets, you may sell muskets to one party or to the other, and so with gunpowder, shells, or cannon; and you may sell a ship in the same manner. But if you will on the one hand train and drill a regiment with arms in their hands, or allow a regiment to go out with arms in their hands to take part with one of two belligerents, you violate your neutrality and commit an offence against the other belligerent. So in the same way in regard to ships, if you allow a ship to be armed and go at once to make an attack on a foreign belligerent, you are yourself, according to your law, taking part in the war, and it is an offence which is punished by the law." — Times, September 28. Bright wrote Sumner, May 2: "The people too are not informed on the legal difference between selling arms and equipping war-ships, and as they know that great quantities of arms have been sold to the North, they argue that it must be equally lawful to sell arms or ships to the South. And Mr. Seward and Mr. Adams have lent some support to this view in complaining of the sale of arms to the Confederacy as if it were an offence in magnitude equal to that of furnishing ships of war. Since the South were admitted as belligerents, in respect of the sale of arms, you have been treated as two nations equal in the sight of our government and one as much in their favor as the other. You have imagined that our sympathy with the United States government should have given it an advantage in this matter over the concern at Richmond; but it has not been so. The love of gain and the sympathy for the South openly expressed by our papers, and almost universally felt by our richer classes, have entirely prevented this. But with regard to ships, we have an express enactment, and that has clearly been broken; but our people confound the two things.".— Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. Seward wrote Adams, October 5: "The proclamation of neutrality was a concession of belligerent rights to the insurgents, and was deemed by this government as unnecessary, and in effect as unfriendly, as it has since proved injurious to this country. . . . The United States stand upon what they think impregnable ground, when they refuse to be derogated, by any act of the British government, from their position as a sovereign nation in amity with Great Britain, and placed upon a footing of equality with domestic insurgents who have risen up in resistance against their authority." — Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i. p. 393. See my vol. iii. p. 420, note 1. The persistent complaints of Seward and Adams and the progress of our arms had their effect. Bulloch writes: After "the seizure of the rams, Earl Russell applied the Foreign Enlistment Act so stringently with reference to the Confederate States, that it was very difficult to forward the most essential supplies, and while the drain of battle and the lack of necessary comforts were thinning the ranks and wasting the strength of the armies in the field, and the difficulty of placing funds in Europe was daily increasing, the cheapest and most favorable market, that of England, was well-nigh closed to the Confederacy, while the United States were permitted to buy and ship what they liked without hindrance, and at the ordinary current prices." — Secret Service of the Confederate States, vol. i. p. 443.
As I shall not recur to this subject again, I will add some citations showing the course of opinion and events after the time to which I have brought down the story in the text. Adams wrote in his diary, October 24: "There certainly is more inclination to let matters go without meddling." "November 21: The present threatening aspect of things in Europe is soothing the temper towards us surprisingly. I have never felt so serene before." Gladstone wrote Sumner, November 5: "In England I think nearly all consider war against slavery unjustifiable; but all without exception will rejoice if it should please God that by the war slavery shall be extinguished. I could go further and say it will please me much if by the war the Union shall be re-established. But it would be a shabby way of currying favor with you to state a proposition which though in its terms strictly true contemplates a contingency which as it seems to me is wholly unattainable, and in the endeavor to attain which you are as a people displaying infinite courage, and inflicting the most frightful suffering. Does the history of the world offer an instance in which, within so short a period and among only thirty millions of men, there has been so vast a deluge of blood and treasure? But the almost immeasurable distance of the American view from ours — let us rather say from mine, as I have no right to speak for others — as to facts and as to possibilities, not as to wishes, calls, I admit, for the exercise of a boundless Christian charity on your part to endure it, and on mine leaves only space for the hope that it may please Him, who governs the hearts of men as the rivers of water, to lead them in the way of peace. Years and years hence, with what wonder shall we, or our children, look back upon these things." — Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. John Bright wrote, November 20: "Neutrality is agreed upon by all, and I hope a more fair and friendly neutrality than we have seen during the past two years. There are still heard some voices against you — for there is a wonderful ignorance here in all classes on everything American; but I can see and feel all around me that another tone prevails, and that the confident predictions as to your failure are uttered much less frequently even by the most rash of your opponents. . . . The Slaveholders' loan falls still — it is now at 32 dis't, 90 stock having fallen to 58." — Ibid. Bright wrote, January 22,1864: "On your great question opinion seems to settle in or towards the belief that you can and will restore the Union; but great difficulties are anticipated, and some are still unconvinced." — Ibid. Adams made this entry, J an. 30, 1864: "In the evening I went by invitation ... to Lady Palmerston's. ... I went to make my bow to Lord Palmerston. 'How d'ye do, Adams.'" Bright wrote Sumner, February 18, 1864: "You will have noticed the tone taken by our Attorney-General and Lord Palmerston a few days ago in speaking of your prize Courts and your dealing with international law — nothing could be more friendly — it was all I could wish for." — Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. Earl Russell sent through Lord Lyons, April 1, 1864, "to Mr. Davis at Richmond . . . the formal protest and remonstrance of Her Majesty's Government against the efforts of the authorities of the so-called Confederate States to build war vessels within her Majesty's dominions to be employed against the Government of the United States." — Appleton's Ann. Cyc., 1864, p. 556. Bright wrote Sumner, September 2, 1864: "With us I think nearly all the friends of the North are most anxious that Mr. Lincoln should be elected again — they think any change must be for the worse, and that it would infuse new faith into the minds of the secessionists, both North and South. I am strongly of this opinion. ... To elect Mr. Lincoln will be to tell Europe that the country is to be restored and slavery is to be destroyed. . . . Here there is always great interest in your contest — the newspapers are less violent in their opposition to you, always excepting the avowed partisans of the slave cause, and men speak with less confidence in favor of the South. At the same time there is a great uncertainty of opinion — it fluctuates with the varying news from week to week, and men become puzzled with the long-continued strife." January 26, 1865: " I think you need not trouble yourself about England. At this moment opinion seems to have undergone a complete change, and our people and indeed our Government is more moderately disposed than I have ever before known it to be. I hear from a member of the Government that it is believed that the feeling between our Cabinet and the Washington Government has been steadily improving. . . . Mr. Adams has done well here — everybody here says so." February 17, 1865: "There seems still to be an idea in America that somebody in Europe intends to meddle in your contest. I suppose the rebels invent the story, and credulous people believe it. With us such a notion is unknown. All parties and classes here are resolved on a strict neutrality, and I believe there is an honest intention that no further cause of irritation or quarrel shall come from this side. . . . The tone of Parliament is wholly changed, and men begin to be ashamed of what has been said and done during the last four years." — Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS.


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.4. New York: Macmillan, 1910 [c1892].