LORD JOHN RUSSELL
(From Trevelyan’s “Garibaldi and the Making of Italy“)

EPHRAIM DOUGLASS ADAMS

GREAT BRITAIN
AND
THE AMERICAN
CIVIL WAR

TWO VOLUMES BOUND AS ONE

VOLUME I.
VOLUME II.

PREFACE

This work was begun many years ago. In 1908 I read in the
British Museum many newspapers and journals for the years
1860-1865, and then planned a survey of English public opinion on
the American Civil War. In the succeeding years as a teacher at
Stanford University, California, the published diplomatic
correspondence of Great Britain and of the United States were
studied in connection with instruction given in the field of
British-American relations. Several of my students prepared
excellent theses on special topics and these have been acknowledged
where used in this work. Many distractions and other writing
prevented the completion of my original plan; and fortunately, for
when in 1913 I had at last begun this work and had prepared three
chapters, a letter was received from the late Charles Francis Adams
inviting me to collaborate with him in preparing a “Life” of his
father, the Charles Francis Adams who was American Minister to
Great Britain during the Civil War. Mr. Adams had recently returned
from England where he had given at Oxford University a series of
lectures on the Civil War and had been so fortunate as to obtain
copies, made under the scholarly supervision of Mr. Worthington C.
Ford, of a great mass of correspondence from the Foreign Office
files in the Public Record Office and from the private papers in
the possession of various families.

The first half of the year 1914 was spent with Mr. Adams at
Washington and at South Lincoln, in preparing the “Life.” Two
volumes were completed, the first by Mr. [V1:pg vi] Adams carrying
the story to 1848, the second by myself for the period 1848 to
1860. For the third volume I analysed and organized the new
materials obtained in England and we were about to begin actual
collaboration on the most vital period of the “Life” when Mr. Adams
died, and the work was indefinitely suspended, probably wisely,
since any completion of the “Life” by me would have lacked that
individual charm in historical writing so markedly characteristic
of all that Mr. Adams did. The half-year spent with Mr. Adams was
an inspiration and constitutes a precious memory.

The Great War interrupted my own historical work, but in 1920 I
returned to the original plan of a work on “Great Britain and the
American Civil War” in the hope that the English materials obtained
by Mr. Adams might be made available to me. When copies were
secured by Mr. Adams in 1913 a restriction had been imposed by the
Foreign Office to the effect that while studied for information,
citations and quotations were not permissible since the general
diplomatic archives were not yet open to students beyond the year
1859. Through my friend Sir Charles Lucas, the whole matter was
again presented to the Foreign Office, with an exact statement that
the new request was in no way related to the proposed “Life” of
Charles Francis Adams, but was for my own use of the materials.
Lord Curzon, then Foreign Secretary, graciously approved the
request but with the usual condition that my manuscript be
submitted before publication to the Foreign Office. This has now
been done, and no single citation censored. Before this work will
have appeared the limitation hitherto imposed on diplomatic
correspondence will have been removed, and the date for open
research have been advanced beyond 1865, the end of the Civil
War.

Similar explanations of my purpose and proposed work were made
through my friend Mr. Francis W. Hirst to the [V1:pg vii] owners of
various private papers, and prompt approval given. In 1924 I came
to England for further study of some of these private papers. The
Russell Papers, transmitted to the Public Record Office in 1914 and
there preserved, were used through the courtesy of the Executors of
the late Hon. Rollo Russell, and with the hearty goodwill of Lady
Agatha Russell, daughter of the late Earl Russell, the only living
representative of her father, Mr. Rollo Russell, his son, having
died in 1914. The Lyons Papers, preserved in the Muniment Room at
Old Norfolk House, were used through the courtesy of the Duchess of
Norfolk, who now represents her son who is a minor. The Gladstone
Papers, preserved at Hawarden Castle, were used through the
courtesy of the Gladstone Trustees. The few citations from the
Palmerston Papers, preserved at Broadlands, were approved by
Lieut.-Colonel Wilfred Ashley, M.P.

The opportunity to study these private papers has been
invaluable for my work. Shortly after returning from England in
1913 Mr. Worthington Ford well said: “The inside history of
diplomatic relations between the United States and Great Britain
may be surmised from the official archives; the tinting and shading
needed to complete the picture must be sought elsewhere.” (Mass.
Hist. Soc. Proceedings, XLVI, p. 478.) Mr. C.F. Adams
declared (ibid., XLVII, p. 54) that without these papers
“… the character of English diplomacy at that time (1860-1865)
cannot be understood…. It would appear that the commonly
entertained impressions as to certain phases of international
relations, and the proceedings and utterances of English public men
during the progress of the War of Secession, must be to some extent
revised.”

In addition to the new English materials I have been fortunate
in the generosity of my colleague at Stanford University, Professor
Frank A. Golder, who has given to me transcripts, obtained at St.
Petersburg in 1914, of all [V1:pg viii] Russian diplomatic
correspondence on the Civil War. Many friends have aided, by
suggestion or by permitting the use of notes and manuscripts, in
the preparation of this work. I have sought to make due
acknowledgment for such aid in my foot-notes. But in addition to
those already named, I should here particularly note the courtesy
of the late Mr. Gaillard Hunt for facilities given in the State
Department at Washington, of Mr. Herbert Putnam, Librarian of
Congress, for the transcript of the Correspondence of Mason and
Slidell, Confederate Commissioners in Europe, and of Mr. Charles
Moore, Chief of Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, for the
use of the Schurz Papers containing copies of the despatches of
Schleiden, Minister of the Republic of Bremen at Washington during
the Civil War. Especially thanks are due to my friend, Mr. Herbert
Hoover, for his early interest in this work and for his generous
aid in the making of transcripts which would otherwise have been
beyond my means. And, finally, I owe much to the skill and care of
my wife who made the entire typescript for the Press, and whose
criticisms were invaluable.

It is no purpose of a Preface to indicate results, but it is my
hope that with, I trust, a “calm comparison of the evidence,” now
for the first time available to the historian, a fairly true
estimate may be made of what the American Civil War meant to Great
Britain; how she regarded it and how she reacted to it. In brief,
my work is primarily a study in British history in the belief that
the American drama had a world significance, and peculiarly a
British one.

EPHRAIM DOUGLASS ADAMS.

November 25, 1924

CONTENTS
OF
VOLUME ONE

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PART ONE

GREAT BRITAIN
AND THE
AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

CHAPTER I

BACKGROUNDS

In 1862, less than a year after he had assumed his post in
London, the American Minister, Charles Francis Adams, at a time of
depression and bitterness wrote to Secretary of State Seward: “That
Great Britain did, in the most terrible moment of our domestic
trial in struggling with a monstrous social evil she had earnestly
professed to abhor, coldly and at once assume our inability to
master it, and then become the only foreign nation steadily
contributing in every indirect way possible to verify its judgment,
will probably be the verdict made against her by posterity, on calm
comparison of the evidence[1].” Very different were the views of
Englishmen. The historian, George Grote, could write: “The perfect
neutrality [of Great Britain] 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.
It is the single case in which the English Government and
public–generally so meddlesome–have displayed most prudent and
commendable forbearance in spite of great temptations to the
contrary[2].” And
Sir William Harcourt, in September, 1863, declared: “Among all Lord
Russell’s many titles to fame and to public gratitude, the manner
in which he has steered the vessel of State through the Scylla and
Charybdis of the American War will, I think, always stand
conspicuous[3].”

Minister Adams, in the later years of the Civil War, saw reason
somewhat to modify his earlier judgment, but his indictment of
Great Britain was long prevalent in America, as, indeed, it was
also among the historians and writers of Continental
Europe–notably those of France and Russia. To what extent was this
dictum justified? Did Great Britain in spite of her long years of
championship of personal freedom and of leadership in the cause of
anti-slavery seize upon the opportunity offered in the disruption
of the American Union, and forgetting humanitarian idealisms, react
only to selfish motives of commercial advantage and national power?
In brief, how is the American Civil War to be depicted by
historians of Great Britain, recording her attitude and action in
both foreign and domestic policy, and revealing the principles of
her statesmen, or the inspirations of her people?

It was to answer this question that the present work was
originally undertaken; but as investigation proceeded it became
progressively more clear that the great crisis in America was
almost equally a crisis in the domestic history of Great Britain
itself and that unless this were fully appreciated no just estimate
was possible of British policy toward America. Still more it became
evident that the American Civil War, as seen through British
spectacles, could not be understood if regarded as an isolated and
unique situation, but that the conditions preceding that
situation–some of them lying far back in the relations of the two
nations–had a vital bearing on British policy and opinion when the
crisis arose. No expanded examination of these preceding conditions
is here possible, but it is to a summary analysis of them that this
first chapter is devoted.

On the American War for separation from the Mother Country it is
unnecessary to dilate, though it should always [V1:pg 3] be remembered that
both during the war and afterwards there existed a minority in
Great Britain strongly sympathetic with the political ideals
proclaimed in America–regarding those ideals, indeed, as something
to be striven for in Britain itself and the conflict with America
as, in a measure, a conflict in home politics. But independence
once acknowledged by the Treaty of Peace of 1783, the relations
between the Mother Country and the newly-created United States of
America rapidly tended to adjust themselves to lines of contact
customary between Great Britain and any other Sovereign State. Such
contacts, fixing national attitude and policy, ordinarily occur on
three main lines: governmental, determined by officials in
authority in either State whose duty it is to secure the greatest
advantage in power and prosperity for the State; commercial,
resulting, primarily, from the interchange of goods and the
business opportunities of either nation in the other’s territory,
or from their rivalry in foreign trade; idealistic, the result of
comparative development especially in those ideals of political
structure which determine the nature of the State and the form of
its government. The more obvious of these contacts is the
governmental, since the attitude of a people is judged by the
formal action of its Government, and, indeed, in all three lines of
contact the government of a State is directly concerned and
frequently active. But it may be of service to a clearer
appreciation of British attitude and policy before 1860, if the
intermingling of elements required by a strict chronological
account of relations is here replaced by a separate review of each
of the three main lines of contact.

Once independence had been yielded to the American Colonies, the
interest of the British Government rapidly waned in affairs
American. True, there still remained the valued establishments in
the West Indies, and the less considered British possessions on the
continent to the [V1:pg
4] north of the United States. Meanwhile, there were
occasional frictions with America arising from uncertain claims
drawn from the former colonial privileges of the new state, or from
boundary contentions not settled in the treaty of peace. Thus the
use of the Newfoundland fisheries furnished ground for an
acrimonious controversy lasting even into the twentieth century,
and occasionally rising to the danger point. Boundary disputes
dragged along through official argument, survey commissions,
arbitration, to final settlement, as in the case of the northern
limits of the State of Maine fixed at last by the Treaty of
Washington of 1842, and then on lines fair to both sides at any
time in the forty years of legal bickering. Very early, in 1817, an
agreement creditable to the wisdom and pacific intentions of both
countries, was reached establishing small and equal naval armaments
on the Great Lakes. The British fear of an American attack on
Canada proved groundless as time went on and was definitely set at
rest by the strict curb placed by the American Government upon the
restless activities of such of its citizens as sympathized with the
followers of McKenzie and Papineau in the Canadian rebellion of
1837[4].

None of these governmental contacts affected greatly the British
policy toward America. But the “War of 1812,” as it is termed in
the United States, “Mr. Madison’s War,” as it was derisively named
by Tory contemporaries in Great Britain, arose from serious
policies in which the respective governments were in definite
opposition. Briefly, this was a clash between belligerent and
neutral interests. Britain, fighting at first for the preservation
of Europe against the spread of French revolutionary influence,
later against the Napoleonic plan of Empire, held the seas in her
grasp and exercised with vigour all the accustomed rights of a
naval [V1:pg 5]
belligerent. Of necessity, from her point of view, and as always in
the case of the dominant naval belligerent, she stretched
principles of international law to their utmost interpretation to
secure her victory in war. America, soon the only maritime neutral
of importance, and profiting greatly by her neutrality, contested
point by point the issue of exceeded belligerent right as
established in international law. America did more; she advanced
new rules and theories of belligerent and neutral right
respectively, and demanded that the belligerents accede to them.
Dispute arose over blockades, contraband, the British “rule of
1756” which would have forbidden American trade with French
colonies in war time, since such trade was prohibited by France
herself in time of peace. But first and foremost as touching the
personal sensibilities and patriotism of both countries was the
British exercise of a right of search and seizure to recover
British sailors.

Moreover this asserted right brought into clear view definitely
opposed theories as to citizenship. Great Britain claimed that a
man once born a British subject could never cease to be a
subject–could never “alienate his duty.” It was her practice to
fill up her navy, in part at least, by the “impressment” of her
sailor folk, taking them whenever needed, and wherever found–in
her own coast towns, or from the decks of her own mercantile
marine. But many British sailors sought security from such
impressment by desertion in American ports or were tempted to
desert to American merchant ships by the high pay obtainable in the
rapidly-expanding United States merchant marine. Many became by
naturalization citizens of the United States, and it was the duty
of America to defend them as such in their lives and business.
America ultimately came to hold, in short, that expatriation was
accomplished from Great Britain when American citizenship was
conferred. On shore they were safe, for Britain did not attempt
[V1:pg 6] to
reclaim her subjects from the soil of another nation. But she
denied that the American flag on merchant vessels at sea gave like
security and she asserted a naval right to search such vessels in
time of peace, professing her complete acquiescence in a like right
to the American navy over British merchant vessels–a concession
refused by America, and of no practical value since no American
citizen sought service in the British merchant marine.

This “right of search” controversy involved then, two basic
points of opposition between the two governments. First America
contested the British theory of “once a citizen always a
citizen[5]“;
second, America denied any right whatever to a foreign naval vessel
in time of peace to stop and search a vessel lawfully flying
the American flag. The right of search in time of war, that
is, a belligerent right of search, America never denied, but there
was both then and later much public confusion in both countries as
to the question at issue since, once at war, Great Britain
frequently exercised a legal belligerent right of search and
followed it up by the seizure of sailors alleged to be British
subjects. Nor were British naval captains especially careful to
make sure that no American-born sailors were included in their
impressment seizures, and as the accounts spread of victim after
victim, the American irritation steadily increased. True, France
was also an offender, but as the weaker naval power her offence was
lost sight of in view of the, literally, thousands of bona
fide Americans seized by Great Britain. Here, then, was a third
cause of irritation connected with impressment, though not a point
of governmental dispute as to right, for Great Britain professed
her earnest desire to restore promptly any American-born sailors
whom her naval officers had seized through error. In fact many such
sailors were soon liberated, but a large number either continued to
serve [V1:pg 7]
on British ships or to languish in British prisons until the end of
the Napoleonic Wars[6].

There were other, possibly greater, causes of the War of 1812,
most of them arising out of the conflicting interests of the chief
maritime neutral and the chief naval belligerent. The pacific
presidential administration of Jefferson sought by trade
restrictions, using embargo and non-intercourse acts, to bring
pressure on both England and France, hoping to force a better
treatment of neutrals. The United States, divided in sympathy
between the belligerents, came near to disorder and disruption at
home, over the question of foreign policy. But through all American
factions there ran the feeling of growing animosity to Great
Britain because of impressment. At last, war was declared by
America in 1812 and though at the moment bitterly opposed by one
section, New England, that war later came to be regarded as of
great national value as one of the factors which welded the
discordant states into a national unity. Naturally also, the war
once ended, its commercial causes were quickly forgotten, whereas
the individual, personal offence involved in impressment and right
of search, with its insult to national pride, became a patriotic
theme for politicians and for the press. To deny, in fact, a
British “right of search” became a national point of honour, upon
which no American statesman would have dared to yield to British
overtures.

In American eyes the War of 1812 appears as a “second war of
Independence” and also as of international importance in contesting
an unjust use by Britain of her control of the seas. Also, it is to
be remembered that no other war of importance was fought by America
until the Mexican War of 1846, and militant patriotism was thus
centred on the two wars fought against Great Britain. [V1:pg 8] The contemporary
British view was that of a nation involved in a life and death
struggle with a great European enemy, irritated by what seemed
captious claims, developed to war, by a minor power[7]. To be sure there
were a few obstinate Tories in Britain who saw in the war the
opportunity of smashing at one blow Napoleon’s dream of empire, and
the American “democratic system.” The London Times urged the
government to “finish with Mr. Bonaparte and then deal with Mr.
Madison and democracy,” arguing that it should be England’s object
to subvert “the whole system of the Jeffersonian school.” But this
was not the purpose of the British Government, nor would such a
purpose have been tolerated by the small but vigorous Whig minority
in Parliament.

The peace of 1814, signed at Ghent, merely declared an end of
the war, quietly ignoring all the alleged causes of the conflict.
Impressment was not mentioned, but it was never again resorted to
by Great Britain upon American ships. But the principle of right of
search in time of peace, though for another object than
impressment, was soon again asserted by Great Britain and for forty
years was a cause of constant irritation and a source of danger in
the relations of the two countries. Stirred by philanthropic
emotion Great Britain entered upon a world crusade for the
suppression of the African Slave Trade. All nations in principle
repudiated that trade and Britain made treaties with various
maritime powers giving mutual right of search to the naval vessels
of each upon the others’ merchant vessels. The African Slave Trade
was in fact outlawed for the flags of all nations. But America,
smarting under the memory of impressment injuries, and maintaining
in any case the doctrine that in time of peace the national flag
protected a vessel from interference [V1:pg 9] or search by the naval vessels of any
other power, refused to sign mutual right of search treaties and
denied, absolutely, such a right for any cause whatever to Great
Britain or to any other nation. Being refused a treaty, Britain
merely renewed her assertion of the right and continued to exercise
it.

Thus the right of search in time of peace controversy was not
ended with the war of 1812 but remained a constant sore in national
relations, for Britain alone used her navy with energy to suppress
the slave trade, and the slave traders of all nations sought
refuge, when approached by a British naval vessel, under the
protection of the American flag. If Britain respected the flag, and
sheered off from search, how could she stop the trade? If she
ignored the flag and on boarding found an innocent American vessel
engaged in legal trade, there resulted claims for damages by
detention of voyage, and demands by the American Government for
apology and reparation. The real slave trader, seized under the
American flag, never protested to the United States, nor claimed
American citizenship, for his punishment in American law for
engaging in the slave trade was death, while under the law of any
other nation it did not exceed imprisonment, fine and loss of his
vessel.

Summed up in terms of governmental attitude the British
contention was that here was a great international humanitarian
object frustrated by an absurd American sensitiveness on a point of
honour about the flag. After fifteen years of dispute Great Britain
offered to abandon any claim to a right of search,
contenting herself with a right of visit, merely to verify a
vessel’s right to fly the American flag. America asserted this to
be mere pretence, involving no renunciation of a practice whose
legality she denied. In 1842, in the treaty settling the Maine
boundary controversy, the eighth article sought a method of escape.
Joint cruising squadrons were provided for the coast of
[V1:pg 10]
Africa, the British to search all suspected vessels except those
flying the American flag, and these to be searched by the American
squadron. At once President Tyler notified Congress that Great
Britain had renounced the right of search. Immediately in
Parliament a clamour was raised against the Government for the
“sacrifice” of a British right at sea, and Lord Aberdeen promptly
made official disclaimer of such surrender.

Thus, heritage of the War of 1812 right of search in time of
peace was a steady irritant. America doubted somewhat the honesty
of Great Britain, appreciating in part the humanitarian purpose,
but suspicious of an ulterior “will to rule the seas.” After 1830
no American political leader would have dared to yield the right of
search. Great Britain for her part, viewing the expansion of
domestic slavery in the United States, came gradually to attribute
the American contention, not to patriotic pride, but to the selfish
business interests of the slave-holding states. In the end, in
1858, with a waning British enthusiasm for the cause of slave trade
suppression, and with recognition that America had become a great
world power, Britain yielded her claim to right of search or visit,
save when established by Treaty. Four years later, in 1862, it may
well have seemed to British statesmen that American slavery had
indeed been the basic cause of America’s attitude, for in that year
a treaty was signed by the two nations giving mutual right of
search for the suppression of the African Slave Trade. In fact,
however, this was but an effort by Seward, Secretary of State for
the North, to influence British and European opinion against the
seceding slave states of the South.

The right of search controversy was, in truth, ended when
American power reached a point where the British Government must
take it seriously into account as a factor in general world policy.
That power had been steadily and rapidly advancing since 1814. From
almost the first moment [V1:pg 11] of established independence
American statesmen visualized the separation of the interests of
the western continent from those of Europe, and planned for
American leadership in this new world. Washington, the first
President, emphasized in his farewell address the danger of
entangling alliances with Europe. For long the nations of Europe,
immersed in Continental wars, put aside their rivalries in this new
world. Britain, for a time, neglected colonial expansion westward,
but in 1823, in an emergency of European origin when France,
commissioned by the great powers of continental Europe, intervened
in Spain to restore the deposed Bourbon monarchy and seemed about
to intervene in Spanish America to restore to Spain her revolted
colonies, there developed in Great Britain a policy, seemingly
about to draw America and England into closer co-operation.
Canning, for Britain, proposed to America a joint declaration
against French intervention in the Americas. His argument was
against the principle of intervention; his immediate motive was a
fear of French colonial expansion; but his ultimate object was
inheritance by Britain of Spain’s dying influence and position in
the new world.

Canning’s overture was earnestly considered in America. The
ex-Presidents, Jefferson and Madison, recommended its acceptance,
but the Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, opposed this,
favouring rather a separate declaration by the United States, and
of this opinion was also President Monroe. Thus arose the Monroe
Doctrine announcing American opposition to the principle of
“intervention,” and declaring that the American continents were no
longer to be regarded as open to further colonization by European
nations. The British emergency situation with France, though
already quieted, caused Monroe’s Message to be greeted in England
with high approval. But Canning did not so approve it for he saw
clearly that the Monroe Doctrine was a challenge [V1:pg 12] not merely to
continental Europe, but to England as well and he set himself to
thwart this threatening American policy. Had Canning’s policy been
followed by later British statesmen there would have resulted a
serious clash with the United States[8].

In fact the Monroe Doctrine, imposing on Europe a self-denying
policy of non-colonial expansion toward the west, provided for the
United States the medium, if she wished to use it, for her own
expansion in territory and in influence. But for a time there was
no need of additional territory for that already hers stretched
from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains, two-thirds of the way
from ocean to ocean. Her population was growing fast. But four
millions at the time of the Revolution, there were thirteen
millions in 1830, and of these nearly a third were already across
the Appalachian range and were constantly pressing on towards new
lands in the South and West. The Monroe Doctrine was the first
definite notice given to Europe of America’s preconceived
“destiny,” but the earlier realization of that destiny took place
on lines of expansion within her own boundaries. To this there
could be no governmental objection, whether by Great Britain or any
other nation.

But when in the decade 1840 to 1850, the United States, to the
view of British statesmen, suddenly startled the world by entering
upon a policy of further territorial expansion, forsaking her
peaceful progress and turning toward war, there was a quick
determination on a line of British policy as regards the American
advance. The first intimation of the new American policy came in
relation to the State of Texas which had revolted from Mexico in
1836, and whose independence had been generally recognized by 1842.
To this new state Britain sent diplomatic and consular agents and
these reported two factions among the people–one [V1:pg 13] seeking admission
to the American Union, one desiring the maintenance of
independence.

In 1841 Aberdeen had sent Lord Ashburton to America with
instructions to secure, if possible, a settlement of all matters in
dispute. Here was a genuine British effort to escape from national
irritations. But before the Treaty of 1842 was signed, even while
it was in the earlier stages of negotiation, the British Government
saw, with alarm, quite new questions arising, preventing, to its
view, that harmonious relation with the United States the desire
for which had led to the Ashburton mission. This new development
was the appearance of an American fever for territorial expansion,
turning first toward Texas, but soon voiced as a “manifest destiny”
which should carry American power and institutions to the Pacific
and even into Central America. Among these institutions was that of
slavery, detested by the public of Great Britain, yet a delicate
matter for governmental consideration since the great cotton
manufacturing interests drew the bulk of their supplies of raw
cotton from the slave-holding states of America. If Texas, herself
a cotton state, should join the United States, dependence upon
slave-grown cotton would be intensified. Also, Texas, once
acquired, what was there to prevent further American exploitation,
followed by slave expansion, into Mexico, where for long British
influence had been dominant?

On the fate of Texas, therefore, centred for a time the whole
British policy toward America. Pakenham, the British minister to
Mexico, urged a British pressure on Mexico to forgo her plans of
reconquering Texas, and strong British efforts to encourage Texas
in maintaining her independence. His theory foreshadowed a powerful
buffer Anglo-Saxon state, prohibiting American advance to the
south-west, releasing Britain from dependence on American cotton,
and ultimately, he hoped, leading Texas to abolish [V1:pg 14] slavery, not yet
so rooted as to be ineradicable. This policy was approved by the
British Government, Pakenham was sent to Washington to watch
events, a chargé, Elliot, was despatched to Texas,
and from London lines were cast to draw France into the plan and to
force the acquiescence of Mexico.

In this brief account of main lines of governmental contacts, it
is unnecessary to recite the details of the diplomatic conflict,
for such it became, with sharp antagonisms manifested on both
sides. The basic fact was that America was bent upon territorial
expansion, and that Great Britain set herself to thwart this
ambition. But not to the point of war. Aberdeen was so incautious
at one moment as to propose to France and Mexico a triple guarantee
of the independence of Texas, if that state would acquiesce, but
when Pakenham notified him that in this case, Britain must clearly
understand that war with America was not merely possible, but
probable, Aberdeen hastened to withdraw the plan of guarantee,
fortunately not yet approved by Mexico[9].

The solution of this diplomatic contest thus rested with Texas.
Did she wish annexation to the United States, or did she prefer
independence? Elliot, in Texas, hoped to the last moment that Texas
would choose independence and British favour. But the people of the
new state were largely emigrants from the United States, and a
majority of them wished to re-enter the Union, a step finally
accomplished in 1846, after ten years of separate existence as a
Republic. The part played by the British Government in this whole
episode was not a fortunate one. It is the duty of Governments to
watch over the interests of their subjects, and to [V1:pg 15] guard the
prestige and power of the state. Great Britain had a perfect
right to take whatever steps she chose to take in regard to
Texas, but the steps taken appeared to Americans to be based upon a
policy antagonistic to the American expansion policy of the moment.
The Government of Great Britain appeared, indeed, to have adopted a
policy of preventing the development of the power of the United
States. Then, fronted with war, she had meekly withdrawn. The basic
British public feeling, fixing the limits of governmental policy,
of never again being drawn into war with America, not because of
fear, but because of important trade relations and also because of
essential liking and admiration, in spite of surface antagonisms,
was not appreciated in America. Lord Aberdeen indeed, and others in
governmental circles, pleaded that the support of Texan
independence was in reality perfectly in harmony with the best
interests of the United States, since it would have tended toward
the limitation of American slavery. And in the matter of national
power, they consoled themselves with prophecies that the American
Union, now so swollen in size, must inevitably split into two,
perhaps three, rival empires, a slave-holding one in the South,
free nations in North and West.

The fate of Texas sealed, Britain soon definitely abandoned all
opposition to American expansion unless it were to be attempted
northwards, though prophesying evil for the American madness.
Mexico, relying on past favours, and because of a sharp controversy
between the United States and Great Britain over the Oregon
territory, expected British aid in her war of 1846 against America.
But she was sharply warned that such aid would not be given, and
the Oregon dispute was settled in the Anglo-Saxon fashion of
vigorous legal argument, followed by a fair compromise. The Mexican
war resulted in the acquisition of California by the United States.
British agents in this province of [V1:pg 16] Mexico, and British admirals on the
Pacific were cautioned to take no active steps in opposition.

Thus British policy, after Texan annexation, offered no barrier
to American expansion, and much to British relief the fear of the
extension of the American plans to Mexico and Central America was
not realized. The United States was soon plunged, as British
statesmen had prophesied, into internal conflict over the question
whether the newly-acquired territories should be slave or free.

The acquisition of California brought up a new problem of quick
transit between Atlantic and Pacific, and a canal was planned
across Central America. Here Britain and America acted together, at
first in amity, though the convention signed in 1850 later
developed discord as to the British claim of a protectorate over
the Atlantic end of the proposed canal at San Juan del Nicaragua.
But Britain was again at war in Europe in the middle ‘fifties, and
America was deep in quarrel over slavery at home. On both sides in
spite of much diplomatic intrigue and of manifestations of national
pride there was governmental desire to avoid difficulties. At the
end of the ten-year period Britain ceded to Nicaragua her
protectorate in the canal zone, and all causes of friction, so
reported President Buchanan to Congress in 1860, were happily
removed. Britain definitely altered her policy of opposition to the
growth of American power.

In 1860, then, the causes of governmental antagonisms were
seemingly all at an end. Impressment was not used after 1814. The
differing theories of the two Governments on British expatriation
still remained, but Britain attempted no practical application of
her view. The right of search in time of peace controversy, first
eased by the plan of joint cruising, had been definitely settled by
the British renunciation of 1858. Opposition to American
territorial advance but briefly manifested by Britain, had ended
with [V1:pg 17]
the annexation of Texas, and the fever of expansion had waned in
America. Minor disputes in Central America, related to the proposed
canal, were amicably adjusted.

But differences between nations, varying view-points of peoples,
frequently have deeper currents than the more obvious frictions in
governmental act or policy, nor can governments themselves fail to
react to such less evident causes. It is necessary to review the
commercial relations of the two nations–later to examine their
political ideals.

In 1783 America won her independence in government from a
colonial status. But commercially she remained a British
colony–yet with a difference. She had formed a part of the British
colonial system. All her normal trade was with the mother country
or with other British colonies. Now her privileges in such trade
were at an end, and she must seek as a favour that which had
formerly been hers as a member of the British Empire. The direct
trade between England and America was easily and quickly resumed,
for the commercial classes of both nations desired it and profited
by it. But the British colonial system prohibited trade between a
foreign state and British colonies and there was one channel of
trade, to and from the British West Indies, long very profitable to
both sides, during colonial times, but now legally hampered by
American independence. The New England States had lumber, fish, and
farm products desired by the West Indian planters, and these in
turn offered needed sugar, molasses, and rum. Both parties desired
to restore the trade, and in spite of the legal restrictions of the
colonial system, the trade was in fact resumed in part and either
permitted or winked at by the British Government, but never to the
advantageous exchange of former times.

The acute stage of controversy over West Indian trade was not
reached until some thirty years after American Independence, but
the uncertainty of such trade during a [V1:pg 18] long period in
which a portion of it consisted in unauthorized and unregulated
exchange was a constant irritant to all parties concerned.
Meanwhile there came the War of 1812 with its preliminary check
upon direct trade to and from Great Britain, and its final total
prohibition of intercourse during the war itself. In 1800 the bulk
of American importation of manufactures still came from Great
Britain. In the contest over neutral rights and theories, Jefferson
attempted to bring pressure on the belligerents, and especially on
England, by restriction of imports. First came a non-importation
Act, 1806, followed by an embargo on exports, 1807, but these were
so unpopular in the commercial states of New England that they were
withdrawn in 1810, yet for a short time only, for Napoleon tricked
the United States into believing that France had yielded to
American contentions on neutral rights, and in 1811 non-intercourse
was proclaimed again with England alone. On June 18, 1812, America
finally declared war and trade stopped save in a few New England
ports where rebellious citizens continued to sell provisions to a
blockading British naval squadron.

For eight years after 1806, then, trade with Great Britain had
steadily decreased, finally almost to extinction during the war.
But America required certain articles customarily imported and
necessity now forced her to develop her own manufactures. New
England had been the centre of American foreign commerce, but now
there began a trend toward manufacturing enterprise. Even in 1814,
however, at the end of the war, it was still thought in the United
States that under normal conditions manufactured goods would again
be imported and the general cry of “protection for home industries”
was as yet unvoiced. Nevertheless, a group of infant industries had
in fact been started and clamoured for defence now that peace was
restored. This situation was not unnoticed in Great Britain
[V1:pg 19] where
merchants, piling up goods in anticipation of peace on the
continent of Europe and a restored market, suddenly discovered that
the poverty of Europe denied them that market. Looking with
apprehension toward the new industries of America, British
merchants, following the advice of Lord Brougham in a parliamentary
speech, dumped great quantities of their surplus goods on the
American market, selling them far below cost, or even on
extravagant credit terms. One object was to smash the budding
American manufactures.

This action of British merchants naturally stirred some angry
patriotic emotions in the circles where American business suffered
and a demand began to be heard for protection. But the Government
of the United States was still representative of agriculture, in
the main, and while a Tariff Bill was enacted in 1816 that Bill was
regarded as a temporary measure required by the necessity of paying
the costs of the recent war. Just at this juncture, however,
British policy, now looking again toward a great colonial empire,
sought advantages for the hitherto neglected maritime provinces of
British North America, and thought that it had found them by
encouragement of their trade with the British West Indies. The
legal status of American trade with the West Indies was now
enforced and for a time intercourse was practically suspended.

This British policy brought to the front the issue of protection
in America. It not only worked against a return by New England from
manufacturing to commerce, but it soon brought into the ranks of
protectionists a northern and western agricultural element that had
been accustomed to sell surplus products to West Indian planters
seeking cheap food-stuffs for their slaves. This new protectionist
element was as yet not crystallized into a clamour for “home
markets” for agriculture, but the pressure of opinion was beginning
to be felt, and by 1820 the question [V1:pg 20] of West Indian trade became one of
constant agitation and demanded political action. That action was
taken on lines of retaliation. Congress in 1818 passed a law
excluding from American ports any British vessel coming from a port
access to which was denied to an American vessel, and placing under
bond in American ports British vessels with prohibition of their
proceeding to a British port to which American vessels could not
go. This act affected not merely direct trade with the West Indies,
but stopped the general custom of British ships of taking part
cargoes to Jamaica while en route to and from the United
States. The result was, first, compromise, later, under Huskisson’s
administration at the British Board of Trade, complete abandonment
by Britain of the exclusive trade basis of her whole colonial
system.

The “retaliatory system” which J.Q. Adams regarded as “a new
declaration of independence,” was, in fact, quickly taken up by
other non-colonial nations, and these, with America, compelled
Great Britain to take stock of her interests. Huskisson, rightly
foreseeing British prosperity as dependent upon her manufactures
and upon the carrying trade, stated in Parliament that American
“retaliation” had forced the issue. Freedom of trade in British
ports was offered in 1826 to all non-colonial nations that would
open their ports within one year on terms of equality to British
ships. J.Q. Adams, now President of the United States, delayed
acceptance of this offer, preferring a treaty negotiation, and was
rebuffed by Canning, so that actual resumption of West Indian trade
did not take place until 1830, after the close of Adams’
administration. That trade never recovered its former
prosperity.

Meanwhile the long period of controversy, from 1806 to 1830, had
resulted in a complete change in the American situation. It is not
a sufficient explanation of the American belief in, and practice
of, the theory of protection to attribute [V1:pg 21] this alone to
British checks placed upon free commercial rivalry. Nevertheless
the progress of America toward an established system, reaching its
highest mark for years in the Tariff Bill of 1828, is distinctly
related to the events just narrated. After American independence,
the partially illegal status of West Indian trade hampered
commercial progress and slightly encouraged American manufactures
by the mere seeking of capital for investment; the neutral troubles
of 1806 and the American prohibitions on intercourse increased the
transfer of interest; the war of 1812 gave a complete protection to
infant industries; the dumping of British goods in 1815 stirred
patriotic American feeling; British renewal of colonial system
restrictions, and the twelve-year quarrel over “retaliation” gave
time for the definite establishment of protectionist ideas in the
United States. But Britain was soon proclaiming for herself and for
the world the common advantage and the justice of a great theory of
free trade. America was apparently now committed to an opposing
economic theory, the first great nation definitely to establish it,
and thus there resulted a clear-cut opposition of principle and a
clash of interests. From 1846, when free trade ideas triumphed in
England, the devoted British free trader regarded America as the
chief obstacle to a world-wide acceptance of his theory.

The one bright spot in America, as regarded by the British free
trader, was in the Southern States, where cotton interests,
desiring no advantage from protection, since their market was in
Europe, attacked American protection and sought to escape from it.
Also slave supplies, without protection, could have been purchased
more cheaply from England than from the manufacturing North. In
1833 indeed the South had forced a reaction against protection, but
it proceeded slowly. In 1854 it was Southern opinion that carried
through Congress the reciprocity treaty with the British American
Provinces, partly brought about, no [V1:pg 22] doubt, by a Southern fear that
Canada, bitter over the loss of special advantages in British
markets by the British free trade of 1846, might join the United
States and thus swell the Northern and free states of the Union.
Cotton interests and trade became the dominant British commercial
tie with the United States, and the one great hope, to the British
minds, of a break in the false American system of protection. Thus
both in economic theory and in trade, spite of British dislike of
slavery, the export trading interests of Great Britain became more
and more directed toward the Southern States of America. Adding
powerfully to this was the dependence of British cotton
manufactures upon the American supply. The British trade attitude,
arising largely outside of direct governmental contacts, was bound
to have, nevertheless, a constant and important influence on
governmental action.

Governmental policy, seeking national power, conflicting trade
and industrial interests, are the favourite themes of those
historians who regard nations as determined in their relations
solely by economic causes–by what is called “enlightened
self-interest.” But governments, no matter how arbitrary, and still
more if in a measure resting on representation, react both
consciously and unconsciously to a public opinion not obviously
based upon either national or commercial rivalry. Sometimes,
indeed, governmental attitude runs absolutely counter to popular
attitude in international affairs. In such a case, the historical
estimate, if based solely on evidences of governmental action, is a
false one and may do great injustice to the essential friendliness
of a people.

How then, did the British people, of all classes, regard America
before 1860, and in what manner did that regard affect the British
Government? Here, it is necessary to seek British opinion on, and
its reaction to, American institutions, ideals, and practices. Such
public opinion can [V1:pg 23] be found in quantity sufficient to
base an estimate only in travellers’ books, in reviews, and in
newspapers of the period. When all these are brought together it is
found that while there was an almost universal British criticism of
American social customs and habits of life, due to that insularity
of mental attitude characteristic of every nation, making it prefer
its own customs and criticize those of its neighbours, summed up in
the phrase “dislike of foreigners”–it is found that British
opinion was centred upon two main threads; first America as a place
for emigration and, second, American political ideals and
institutions[10].

British emigration to America, a governmentally favoured
colonization process before the American revolution, lost that
favour after 1783, though not at first definitely opposed. But
emigration still continued and at no time, save during the war of
1812, was it absolutely stopped. Its exact amount is
unascertainable, for neither Government kept adequate statistics
before 1820. With the end of the Napoleonic wars there came great
distress in England from which the man of energy sought escape. He
turned naturally to America, being familiar, by hearsay at least,
with stories of the ease of gaining a livelihood there, and
influenced by the knowledge that in the United States he would find
people of his own blood and speech. The bulk of this earlier
emigration to America resulted from economic causes. When, in 1825,
one energetic Member of Parliament, Wilmot Horton, induced the
Government to appoint a committee to investigate the whole subject,
the result was a mass of testimony, secured from returned emigrants
or from their letters home, in which there constantly appeared one
main argument influencing the labourer type of emigrant; he
[V1:pg 24] got
good wages, and he was supplied, as a farm hand, with good food.
Repeatedly he testifies that he had “three meat meals a day,”
whereas in England he had ordinarily received but one such meal a
week.

Mere good living was the chief inducement for the labourer type
of emigrant, and the knowledge of such living created for this type
remaining in England a sort of halo of industrial prosperity
surrounding America. But there was a second testimony brought out
by Horton’s Committee, less general, yet to be picked up here and
there as evidence of another argument for emigration to America.
The labourer did not dilate upon political equality, nor boast of a
share in government, indeed generally had no such share, but he did
boast to his fellows at home of the social equality, though not
thus expressing it, which was all about him. He was a common farm
hand, yet he “sat down to meals” with his employer and family, and
worked in the fields side by side with his “master.” This, too, was
an astounding difference to the mind of the British labourer.
Probably for him it created a clearer, if not altogether universal
and true picture of the meaning of American democracy than would
have volumes of writing upon political institutions. Gradually
there was established in the lower orders of British society a
visualization of America as a haven of physical well-being and
personal social happiness.

This British labouring class had for long, however, no medium of
expression in print. Here existed, then, an unexpressed public
opinion of America, of much latent influence, but for the moment
largely negligible as affecting other classes or the Government. A
more important emigrating class in its influence on opinion at
home, though not a large class, was composed about equally of small
farmers and small merchants facing ruin in the agricultural and
trading crises that followed the end of the European war. The
[V1:pg 25]
British travellers’ books from 1810 to 1820 are generally written
by men of this class, or by agents sent out from co-operative
groups planning emigration. Generally they were discontented with
political conditions at home, commonly opposed to a petrified
social order, and attracted to the United States by its lure of
prosperity and content. The books are, in brief, a superior type of
emigrant guide for a superior type of emigrant, examining and
emphasizing industrial opportunity.

Almost universally, however, they sound the note of superior
political institutions and conditions. One wrote “A republican
finds here A Republic, and the only Republic on the face of the
earth that ever deserved the name: where all are under the
protection of equal laws; of laws made by Themselves[11].” Another, who
established an English colony in the Western States of Illinois,
wrote of England that he objected to “being ruled and taxed by
people who had no more right to rule and tax us than consisted in
the power to do it.” And of his adopted country he concludes: “I
love the Government; and thus a novel sensation is excited; it is
like the development of a new faculty. I am become a patriot in my
old age[12].”
Still another detailed the points of his content, “I am here, lord
and master of myself and of 100 acres of land–an improvable farm,
little trouble to me, good society and a good market, and, I think,
a fine climate, only a little too hot and dry in summer; the parson
gets nothing from me; my state and road taxes and poor rates amount
to §25.00 per annum. I can carry a gun if I choose; I leave my
door unlocked at night; and I can get snuff for one cent an ounce
or a little more[13].”

From the first days of the American colonial movement
[V1:pg 26]
toward independence there had been, indeed, a British interest in
American political principles. Many Whigs sympathized with these
principles for reasons of home political controversy. Their
sympathy continued after American independence and by its insistent
expression brought out equally insistent opposition from Tory
circles. The British home movement toward a more representative
Government had been temporarily checked by the extremes into which
French Liberalism plunged in 1791, causing reaction in England. By
1820 pressure was again being exerted by British Liberals of
intelligence, and they found arguments in such reports as those
just quoted. From that date onward, and especially just before the
passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, yet always a factor, the
example of a prosperous American democracy was an element in
British home politics, lauded or derided as the man in England
desired or not an expansion of the British franchise. In the
earlier period, however, it is to be remembered that applause of
American institutions did not mean acceptance of democracy to the
extent of manhood franchise, for no such franchise at first existed
in America itself. The debate in England was simply whether the
step forward in American democracy, was an argument for a similar
step in Great Britain.

Books, reviews and newspapers in Great Britain as the political
quarrel there grew in force, depicted America favourably or
otherwise according to political sympathies at home. Both before
and after the Reform Bill of 1832 this type of effort to mould
opinion, by citation of America, was widespread. Hence there is in
such writing, not so much the expression of public opinion, as of
propaganda to affect that opinion. Book upon book, review upon
review, might be quoted to illustrate this, but a few notable
examples will suffice.

The most widely read and reviewed book on the United
[V1:pg 27]
States before 1840, except the humorous and flippant
characterization of America by Mrs. Trollope, was Captain Basil
Hall’s three-volume work, published in 1829[14]. Claiming an open
mind, he expected for his adverse findings a readier credence. For
adverse to American political institutions these findings are in
all their larger applications. In every line Hall betrays himself
as an old Tory of the ‘twenties, fixed in his belief, and convinced
of the perfection and unalterableness of the British Constitution.
Captain Hamilton, who wrote in 1833, was more frank in avowal of a
purpose[15]. He
states in his preface:

“… When I found the institutions and experiences of
the United States deliberately quoted in the reformed parliament,
as affording safe precedent for British legislation, and learned
that the drivellers who uttered such nonsense, instead of
encountering merited derision, were listened to with patience and
approbation by men as ignorant as themselves, I certainly did feel
that another work on America was yet wanted, and at once determined
to undertake a task which inferior considerations would probably
have induced me to decline.”

Harriet Martineau, ardent advocate of political reform at home,
found in the United States proofs for her faith in
democracy[16].
Captain Marryat belittled Miss Martineau, but in his six volumes
proved himself less a critic of America than an enemy of democracy.
Answering a review of his earlier volumes, published separately, he
wrote in his concluding volume: “I candidly acknowledge that the
reviewer is right in his supposition; my great object has been to
do serious injury to the cause of democracy[17].”

The fact was that British governing and intellectual classes
were suffering a recoil from the enthusiasms leading up to the step
toward democracy in the Reform of 1832. The electoral franchise was
still limited to a small minority of the population. Britain was
still ruled by her “wise men” of wealth and position. Meanwhile,
however, just at the moment when dominant Whig influence in England
carried through that step forward toward democratic institutions
which Whigs had long lauded in America, the latter country had
progressed to manhood suffrage, or as nearly all leading
Englishmen, whether Whig or Tory, regarded it, had plunged into the
rule of the mob. The result was a rapid lessening in Whig
ruling-class expression of admiration for America, even before long
to the complete cessation of such admiration, and to assertions in
Great Britain that the Reform of 1832 was “final,” the last step
toward democracy which Britain could safely take. It is not strange
that the books and reviews of the period from 1830 to 1840, heavily
stress the dangers and crudity of American democracy. They were
written for what was now a nearly unanimous British reading public,
fearful lest Radical pressure for still further electoral reform
should preach the example of the United States.

Thus after 1832 the previous sympathy for America of one section
of the British governing class disappears. More–it is replaced by
a critical, if not openly hostile attitude. Soon, with the rapid
development of the power and wealth of the United States,
governing-class England, of all factions save the Radical, came to
view America just as it would have viewed any other rising nation,
that is, as a problem to be studied for its influence on British
prosperity and power. Again, expressions in print reflect the
changes of British view–nowhere more clearly than in travellers’
books. After 1840, for nearly a decade, these are devoted, not to
American political institutions, but to [V1:pg 29] studies, many of
them very careful ones, of American industry and governmental
policy.

Buckingham, one-time member of Parliament, wrote nine volumes of
such description. His work is a storehouse of fact, useful to this
day to the American historical student[18]. George Combe,
philosopher and phrenologist, studied especially social
institutions[19]. Joseph Sturge, philanthropist and
abolitionist, made a tour, under the guidance of the poet Whittier,
through the Northern and Eastern States[20]. Featherstonaugh,
a scientist and civil engineer, described the Southern slave
states, in terms completely at variance with those of
Sturge[21].
Kennedy, traveller in Texas, and later British consul at Galveston,
and Warburton, a traveller who came to the United States by way of
Canada, an unusual approach, were both frankly startled, the latter
professedly alarmed, at the evidences of power in America[22]. Amazed at the
energy, growth and prosperity of the country and alarmed at the
anti-British feeling he found in New York City, Warburton wrote
that “they [Americans] only wait for matured power to apply the
incendiary torch of Republicanism to the nations of Europe[23].” Soon after this
was written there began, in 1848, that great tide of Irish
emigration to America which heavily reinforced the anti-British
attitude of the City of New York, and largely changed its
character.

Did books dilating upon the expanding power of America reflect
British public opinion, or did they create it? It is [V1:pg 30] difficult to
estimate such matters. Certainly it is not uninteresting that these
books coincided in point of time with a British governmental
attitude of opposition, though on peaceful lines, to the
development of American power, and to the adoption to the point of
faith, by British commercial classes, of free trade as opposed to
the American protective system. But governing classes were not the
British public, and to the great unenfranchised mass, finding voice
through the writings of a few leaders, the prosperity of America
made a powerful appeal. Radical democracy was again beginning to
make its plea in Britain. In 1849 there was published a study of
the United States, more careful and exact than any previous to
Bryce’s great work, and lauding American political institutions.
This was Mackay’s “Western World,” and that there was a public
eager for such estimate is evidenced by the fact that the book went
through four British editions in 1850[24]. At the end of the
decade, then, there appeared once more a vigorous champion of the
cause of British democracy, comparing the results of “government by
the wise” with alleged mob rule. Mackay wrote:

“Society in America started from the point to which
society in Europe is only yet finding. The equality of men is, to
this moment, its corner-stone … that which develops itself as the
sympathy of class, becomes in America the general sentiment of
society…. We present an imposing front to the world; but let us
tear the picture and look at the canvas. One out of every seven of
us is a pauper. Every six Englishmen have, in addition to their
other enormous burdens, to support a seventh between them, whose
life is spent in consuming, but in adding nothing to the source of
their common subsistence.”

British governing classes then, forgoing after 1850 opposition
to the advance of American power, found themselves [V1:pg 31] involved again,
as before 1832, in the problem of the possible influence of a
prosperous American democracy upon an unenfranchised public opinion
at home. Also, for all Englishmen, of whatever class, in spite of
rivalry in power, of opposing theories of trade, of divergent
political institutions, there existed a vague, though influential,
pride in the advance of a people of similar race, sprung from
British loins[25]. And there remained for all Englishmen also
one puzzling and discreditable American institution, slavery–held
up to scorn by the critics of the United States, difficult of
excuse among her friends.

Agitation conducted by the great philanthropist, Wilberforce,
had early committed British Government and people to a crusade
against the African slave trade. This British policy was clearly
announced to the world in the negotiations at Vienna in 1814-15.
But Britain herself still supported the institution of slavery in
her West Indian colonies and it was not until British humanitarian
sentiment had forced emancipation upon the unwilling sugar
planters, in 1833, that the nation was morally free to criticize
American domestic slavery. Meanwhile great emancipation societies,
with many branches, all virile and active, had grown up in England
and in Scotland. These now turned to an attack on slavery the world
over, and especially on American slavery. The great American
abolitionist, Garrison, found more support in England than in his
own country; his weekly paper, The Liberator, is full of
messages of cheer from British friends and societies, and of
quotations from a sympathetic, though generally provincial, British
press.

From 1830 to 1850 British anti-slavery sentiment was at its
height. It watched with anxiety the evidence of a developing
struggle over slavery in the United States, [V1:pg 32] hopeful, as each
crisis arose, that the free Northern States would impose their will
upon the Southern Slave States. But as each crisis turned to
compromise, seemingly enhancing the power of the South, and
committing America to a retention of slavery, the hopes of British
abolitionists waned. The North did indeed, to British opinion,
become identified with opposition to the expansion of slavery, but
after the “great compromise of 1850,” where the elder American
statesmen of both North and South proclaimed the “finality” of that
measure, British sympathy for the North rapidly lessened. Moreover,
after 1850, there was in Britain itself a decay of general
humanitarian sentiment as regards slavery. The crusade had begun to
seem hopeless and the earlier vigorous agitators were dead. The
British Government still maintained its naval squadron for the
suppression of the African slave trade, but the British official
mind no longer keenly interested itself either in this effort or in
the general question of slavery.

Nevertheless American slavery and slave conditions were still,
after 1850, favourite matters for discussion, almost universally
critical, by English writers. Each renewal of the conflict in
America, even though local, not national in character, drew out a
flood of comment. In the public press this blot upon American
civilization was a steady subject for attack, and that attack was
naturally directed against the South. The London Times, in
particular, lost no opportunity of presenting the matter to its
readers. In 1856, a Mr. Thomas Gladstone visited Kansas during the
height of the border struggles there, and reported his observations
in letters to the Times. The writer was wholly on the side
of the Northern settlers in Kansas, though not hopeful that the
Kansas struggle would expand to a national conflict. He constantly
depicted the superior civilization, industry, and social excellence
of the North as compared with the South[26].

Mrs. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin excited greater interest
in England than in America itself. The first London edition
appeared in May, 1852, and by the end of the year over one million
copies had been sold, as opposed to one hundred and fifty thousand
in the United States. But if one distinguished writer is to be
believed, this great British interest in the book was due more to
English antipathy to America than to antipathy to slavery[27]. This writer was
Nassau W. Senior, who, in 1857, published a reprint of his article
on “American Slavery” in the 206th number of the Edinburgh
Review, reintroducing in his book extreme language denunciatory
of slavery that had been cut out by the editor of the
Review[28]. Senior had been stirred to write by the
brutal attack upon Charles Sumner in the United States Senate after
his speech of May 19-20, 1856, evidence, again, that each incident
of the slavery quarrel in America excited British attention.

Senior, like Thomas Gladstone, painted the North as all
anti-slavery, the South as all pro-slavery. Similar impressions of
British understanding (or misunderstanding) are received from the
citations of the British provincial press, so favoured by Garrison
in his Liberator[29]. Yet for intellectual Britain, at
least–that Britain which was vocal and whose opinion can be
ascertained in spite of this constant interest in American slavery,
there was generally a fixed belief that slavery in the United
States was so firmly [V1:pg 34] established that it could not be
overthrown. Of what use, then, the further expenditure of British
sympathy or effort in a lost cause? Senior himself, at the
conclusion of his fierce attack on the Southern States, expressed
the pessimism of British abolitionists. He wrote, “We do not
venture to hope that we, or our sons, or our grandsons, will see
American slavery extirpated, or even materially mitigated[30].”

FOOTNOTES:

[1]
State Department, Eng., Vol. LXXIX, No. 135, March 27,
1862.

[2]
Walpole, Russell, Vol. II, p. 367.

[3]
Life of Lady John Russell, p. 197.

[4]
There was a revival of this fear at the end of the American Civil
War. This will be commented on later.

[5]
This was the position of President and Congress: yet the United
States had not acknowledged the right of an American citizen to
expatriate himself.

[6]
Between 1797 and 1801, of the sailors taken from American ships,
102 were retained, 1,042 were discharged, and 805 were held for
further proof. (Updyke, The Diplomacy of the War of 1812, p.
21.)

[7]
The people of the British North American Provinces regarded the war
as an attempt made by America, taking advantage of the European
wars, at forcible annexation. In result the fervour of the United
Empire Loyalists was renewed, especially in Upper Canada. Thus the
same two wars which fostered militant patriotism in America against
England had the same result in Canadian sentiment against
America.

[8]
Temperley, “Later American Policy of George Canning” in Am.
Hist. Rev., XI, 783. Also Cambridge History of British
Foreign Policy, Vol. II, ch. 2.

[9]
Much has recently been published on British policy in Texas. See my
book, British Interests and Activities in Texas, 1838-1846,
Johns Hopkins Press, Balt., 1910. Also Adams, Editor, British
Diplomatic Correspondence concerning the Republic of Texas, The
Texas State Historical Association, Austin, Texas,
1918.

[10] In my studies on British-American relations,
I have read the leading British reviews and newspapers, and some
four hundred volumes by British travellers. For a summary of the
British travellers before 1860 see my article “The Point of View of
the British Traveller in America,” in the Political Science
Quarterly, Vol. XXIX, No. 2, June, 1914.

[11] John Melish, Travels, Vol. I, p.
148.

[12] Morris Birkbeck, Letters from
Illinois, London, 1818, p. 29.

[13] Letter in Edinburgh Scotsman, March,
1823. Cited by Niles Register, Vol. XXV, p. 39.

[14] Travels in North America, 1827-28,
London, 1829.

[15] Captain Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners
in America, Edinburgh and London, 1833. 2 vols.

[16] Society in America, London, 1837. 3
vols. Retrospect of Western Travel, London, 1838. 2
vols.

[17] Captain Frederick Marryat, A Diary in
America, with Remarks on Its Institutions, Vol. VI, p.
293.

[18] James Silk Buckingham, America,
Historical, Statistic and Descriptive, London, 1841-43. 9
vols.

[19] Notes on the United States of North
America during a phrenological visit, 1838-9-40, Edinburgh,
1841. 3 vols.

[20] A Visit to the United States in 1841,
London, 1842.

[21] George William Featherstonaugh, Excursion
through the Slave States, London, 1844. 2 vols.

[22] William Kennedy, Texas: The Rise,
Progress and Prospects of the Republic of Texas, London, 1841.
2 vols. George Warburton, Hochelaga: or, England in the New
World, London, 1845. 2 vols.

[23] Warburton, Hochelaga, 5th Edition,
Vol. II, pp. 363-4.

[24] Alexander Mackay, The Western World: or,
Travels through the United States in 1846-47, London,
1849.

[25] This is clearly indicated in Parliament
itself, in the debate on the dismissal by the United States in 1856
of Crampton, the British Minister at Washington, for enlistment
activities during the Crimean War.–Hansard, 3rd. Ser.,
CXLIII, 14-109 and 120-203.

[26] Gladstone’s letters were later published in
book form, under the title The Englishman in Kansas, London,
1857.

[27] “The evil passions which ‘Uncle Tom’
gratified in England were not hatred or vengeance [of slavery], but
national jealousy and national vanity. We have long been smarting
under the conceit of America–we are tired of hearing her boast
that she is the freest and the most enlightened country that the
world has ever seen. Our clergy hate her voluntary system–our
Tories hate her democrats–our Whigs hate her parvenus–our
Radicals hate her litigiousness, her insolence, and her ambition.
All parties hailed Mrs. Stowe as a revolter from the enemy.”
Senior, American Slavery, p. 38.

[28] The reprint is without date, but the context
shows the year to be 1857.

[29] For example the many British expressions
quoted in reference to John Brown’s raid, in The Liberator
for February 10, 1860, and in succeeding issues.

[30] Senior, American Slavery, p.
68.

CHAPTER II

FIRST KNOWLEDGE OF IMPENDING CONFLICT, 1860-61.

It has been remarked by the American historian, Schouler, that
immediately before the outbreak of the Civil War, diplomatic
controversies between England and America had largely been settled,
and that England, pressed from point to point, had “sullenly”
yielded under American demands. This generalization, as applied to
what were, after all, minor controversies, is in great measure
true. In larger questions of policy, as regards spheres of
influence or developing power, or principles of trade, there was
difference, but no longer any essential opposition or declared
rivalry[31]. In
theories of government there was sharp divergence, clearly
appreciated, however, only in governing-class Britain. This sense
of divergence, even of a certain threat from America to British
political institutions, united with an established opinion that
slavery was permanently fixed in the United States to reinforce
governmental indifference, sometimes even hostility, to America.
The British public, also, was largely hopeless of any change in the
institution of slavery, and its own active humanitarian interest
was waning, though still dormant–not dead. Yet the two nations, to
a degree not true of any other two world-powers, were of the same
race, had similar basic laws, read the same books, and were held in
close touch at many points by the steady flow of British emigration
to the United States.

When, after the election of Lincoln to the Presidency, in
November, 1860, the storm-clouds of civil strife rapidly gathered,
the situation took both British Government and people by surprise.
There was not any clear understanding either of American political
conditions, or of the intensity of feeling now aroused over the
question of the extension of slave territory. The most recent
descriptions of America had agreed in assertion that at some future
time there would take place, in all probability, a dissolution of
the Union, on lines of diverging economic interests, but also
stated that there was nothing in the American situation to indicate
immediate progress in this direction. Grattan, a long-time resident
in America as British Consul at Boston, wrote:

“The day must no doubt come when clashing objects will
break the ties of common interest which now preserve the Union. But
no man may foretell the period of dissolution…. The many
restraining causes are out of sight of foreign observation. The
Lilliputian threads binding the man mountain are invisible; and it
seems wondrous that each limb does not act for itself independently
of its fellows. A closer examination shows the nature of the
network which keeps the members of this association so tightly
bound. Any attempt to untangle the ties, more firmly fastens them.
When any one State talks of separation, the others become
spontaneously knotted together. When a section blusters about its
particular rights, the rest feel each of theirs to be common to
all. If a foreign nation hint at hostility, the whole Union becomes
in reality united. And thus in every contingency from which there
can be danger, there is also found the element of safety.” Yet, he
added, “All attempts to strengthen this federal government at the
expense of the States’ governments must be futile…. The federal
government exists on sufferance only. Any State may at any time
constitutionally withdraw from the Union, and thus virtually
dissolve it[32].”

Even more emphatically, though with less authority, wrote one
Charles Mackay, styled by the American press as a “distinguished
British poet,” who made the usual rapid tour of the principal
cities of America in 1857-58, and as rapidly penned his
impressions:

“Many persons in the United States talk of a
dissolution of the Union, but few believe in it…. All this is
mere bravado and empty talk. It means nothing. The Union is dear to
all Americans, whatever they may say to the contrary…. There is
no present danger to the Union, and the violent expressions to
which over-ardent politicians of the North and South sometimes give
vent have no real meaning. The ‘Great West,’ as it is fondly
called, is in the position even now to arbitrate between North and
South, should the quarrel stretch beyond words, or should
anti-slavery or any other question succeed in throwing any
difference between them which it would take revolvers and rifles
rather than speeches and votes to put an end to[33].”

The slavery controversy in America had, in short, come to be
regarded in England as a constant quarrel between North and South,
but of no immediate danger to the Union. [V1:pg 38] Each outbreak of
violent American controversy produced a British comment sympathetic
with the North. The turmoil preceding and following the election of
Lincoln in 1860, on the platform of “no extension of slavery,” was
very generally noted by the British press and public, as a sign
favourable to the cause of anti-slavery, but with no understanding
that Southern threat would at last be realized in definite action.
Herbert Spencer, in a letter of May 15, 1862, to his American
friend, Yeomans, wrote, “As far as I had the means of judging, the
feeling here was at first very decidedly on the side of the
North[34] …”
The British metropolitan press, in nearly every issue of which for
at least two years after December, 1860, there appeared news items
and editorial comment on the American crisis, was at first nearly
unanimous in condemning the South[35]. The Times, with accustomed vigour,
led the field. On November 21, 1860, it stated:

“When we read the speech of Mr. Lincoln on the subject
of Slavery and consider the extreme moderation of the sentiments it
expresses, the allowance that is made for the situation, for the
feelings, for the prejudices, of the South; when we see how
entirely he narrows his opposition to the single point of the
admission of Slavery into the Territories, we cannot help being
forcibly struck by the absurdity of breaking up a vast and glorious
confederacy like that of the United States from the dread and anger
inspired by the election of such a man to the office of Chief
Magistrate…. We rejoice, on higher and surer grounds, that it
[the election] has ended in the return of Mr. Lincoln. We are glad
to think that the march of Slavery, and the domineering tone which
its advocates were beginning to assume over Freedom, has been at
length arrested and silenced. We rejoice that a vast community of
our own race has at [V1:pg 39] length given an authoritative
expression to sentiments which are entertained by everyone in this
country. We trust to see the American Government employed in tasks
more worthy of a State founded on the doctrines of liberty and
equality than the invention of shifts and devices to perpetuate
servitude; and we hear in this great protest of American freedom
the tardy echo of those humane doctrines to which England has so
long become a convert.”

Other leading journals, though with less of patronizing
self-complacency, struck the same note as the Times. The
Economist attributed Lincoln’s election to a shift in the
sympathies of the “lower orders” in the electorate who had now
deserted their former leaders, the slave-owning aristocracy of the
South, and allied themselves with the refined and wise leaders of
the North. Lincoln, it argued, was not an extremist in any sense.
His plan of action lay within the limits of statesmanlike
moderation[36].
The Saturday Review was less sure that England should
rejoice with the North. British self-esteem had suffered some hard
blows at the hands of the Democratic party in America, but at least
England knew where Democrats stood, and could count on no more
discourtesy or injustice than that inflicted in the past. The
Republican party, however, had no policy, except that of its
leader, Seward, and from him might be expected extreme
insolence[37].
This was a very early judgment of Seward, and one upon which the
Saturday Review preened itself later, as wholly justified.
The Spectator, the only one of the four journals thus far
considered which ultimately remained constant in advocacy of the
Northern cause, was at first lukewarm in comment, regarding the
1860 election, while fought on the slavery issue, as in reality a
mere contest between parties for political power[38].

Such was the initial attitude of the English press. Each press
issue for several weeks harped on the same chord, though sounding
varying notes. If the South really means forcible resistance, said
the Times, it is doomed to quick suppression. “A few hundred
thousand slave-owners, trembling nightly with visions of murder and
pillage, backed by a dissolute population of ‘poor whites,’ are no
match for the hardy and resolute populations of the Free
States[39],”
and if the South hoped for foreign aid it should be undeceived
promptly: “Can any sane man believe that England and France will
consent, as is now suggested, to stultify the policy of half a
century for the sake of an extended cotton trade, and to purchase
the favours of Charleston and Milledgeville by recognizing what has
been called ‘the isothermal law, which impels African labour toward
the tropics’ on the other side of the Atlantic[40]?” Moreover all
Americans ought to understand clearly that British respect for the
United States “was not due to the attitude of the South with its
ruffian demonstrations in Congress…. All that is noble and
venerable in the United States is associated with its Federal
Constitution[41].”

Did the British public hold these same opinions? There is no
direct evidence available in sufficient quantity in autobiography
or letters upon which to base a conclusion. Such works are silent
on the struggle in America for the first few months and presumably
public opinion, less informed even than the press, received its
impressions from the journals customarily read. Both at this period
and all through the war, also, it should be remembered, clearly,
that most newspapers, all the reviews, in fact nearly all vehicles
of British expression, were in the early ‘sixties “in the hands of
the educated classes, and these educated [V1:pg 41] classes
corresponded closely with the privileged classes.” The more
democratic element of British Society lacked any adequate press
representation of its opinions. “This body could express itself by
such comparatively crude methods as public meetings and
demonstrations, but it was hampered in literary and political
expression[42].” The opinion of the press was then,
presumably, the opinion of the majority of the educated British
public.

Thus British comment on America took the form, at first of
moralizations, now severe toward the South, now indifferent, yet
very generally asserting the essential justice of the Northern
position. But it was early evident that the newspapers, one and
all, were quite unprepared for the determined front soon put up by
South Carolina and other Southern States. Surprised by the violence
of Southern declarations, the only explanation found by the British
press was that political control had been seized by the uneducated
and lawless element. The Times characterized this element of
the South as in a state of deplorable ignorance comparable with
that of the Irish peasantry, a “poor, proud, lazy, excitable and
violent class, ever ready with knife and revolver[43].” The fate of the
Union, according to the Saturday Review, was in the hands of
the “most ignorant, most unscrupulous, and most lawless [class] in
the world–the poor or mean whites of the Slave States[44].” Like judgments
were expressed by the Economist and, more mildly, by the
Spectator[45]. Subsequently some of these journals found
difficulty in this connection, in swinging round the circle to
expressions of admiration for the wise and powerful aristocracy of
the South; but all, especially [V1:pg 42] the Times, were skilled by
long practice in the journalistic art of facing about while
claiming perfect consistency. In denial of a Southern right of
secession, also, they were nearly a unit[46], though the
Saturday Review argued the case for the South, making a
pointed parallel between the present situation and that of the
American Colonies in seceding from England[47].

The quotations thus far made exhibit for the leading papers an
initial confusion and ignorance difficult to harmonize with the
theory of an “enlightened press.” The Reviews, by the conditions of
publication, came into action more slowly and during 1860 there
appeared but one article, in the Edinburgh Review, giving
any adequate idea of what was really taking place in
America[48].
The lesser British papers generally followed the tone of the
leading journals, but without either great interest or much acumen.
In truth the depth of British newspaper ignorance, considering
their positiveness of utterance, appears utterly astonishing if
regarded from the view-point of modern historical knowledge. But is
this, after all, a matter for surprise? Was there not equal
confusion at least, possibly equal ignorance, in America itself,
certainly among the press and people of the Northern States? They
also had come by experience to discount Southern threats, and were
slow to understand that the great conflict of ideals and interests
was at last begun.

The British press both influenced and reflected educated class
opinion, and, in some degree, official opinion as well. Lord John
Russell at the Foreign Office and Lord Lyons, British Minister at
Washington, were exchanging anxious letters, and the latter was
sending home reports remarkable for their clear analysis of the
American controversy. Yet even he was slow to appreciate the
inevitability of secession.

LORD LYONS
(From a photograph taken at Boston, U.S.A., in 1860) (From Lord
Newton’s “Life of Lord Lyons,” by kind permission)

Other officials, especially those in minor positions in the
United States, showed a lack of grasp of the situation similar to
that of the press. An amusing illustration of this, furnishing a
far-fetched view of causes, is supplied in a letter of February 2,
1860, from Consul Bunch, at Charleston, S.C., to Lord Lyons, the
British Minister at Washington[49]. Bunch wrote describing a dinner which had
been given the evening before, by the Jockey Club of Charleston.
Being called upon for a speech, he had alluded to the prizes of the
Turf at home, and had referred especially to the Plates run for the
various British colonies. Continuing, he said:

“‘… I cannot help calling your attention to the great
loss you yourselves have suffered by ceasing to be a Colonial
Dependency of Great Britain, as I am sure that if you had continued
to be so, the Queen would have had great pleasure in sending you
some Plates too.’

“Of course this was meant for the broadest sort of joke, calculated
to raise a laugh after dinner, but to my amazement, the company
chose to take me literally, and applauded for about ten minutes–in
fact I could not go on for some time.”

Bunch evidently hardly knew what to make of this demonstration.
He could with difficulty believe that South Carolina wished to be
re-annexed as a colony of Great Britain, and comments upon the
episode in a somewhat humorous vein. Nevertheless in concluding his
letter, he solemnly assures Lord Lyons that

“… The Jockey Club is composed of the ‘best people’
of South Carolina–rich planters and the like. It represents,
therefore, the ‘gentlemanly interest’ and not a bit of universal
suffrage.”

It would be idle to assume that either in South Carolina or in
England there was, in February, 1860, any serious thought of a
resumption of colonial relations, though [V1:pg 44] W.H. Russell,
correspondent of the Times, reported in the spring, 1861,
that he frequently heard the same sentiment in the South[50]. For general
official England, as for the press, the truth is that up to the
time of the secession of South Carolina no one really believed that
a final rupture was about to take place between North and South.
When, on December 20, 1860, that State in solemn convention
declared the dissolution “of the Union now existing between South
Carolina and the other States, under the name of the ‘United States
of America,'” and when it was understood that other Southern States
would soon follow this example, British opinion believed and hoped
that the rupture would be accomplished peaceably. Until it became
clear that war [V1:pg
45] would ensue, the South was still damned by the press as
seeking the preservation of an evil institution. Slavery was even
more vigorously asserted as the ignoble and sole cause. In the
number for April, 1861, the Edinburgh Review attributed the
whole difficulty to slavery, asserted that British sympathy would
be with the anti-slavery party, yet advanced the theory that the
very dissolution of the Union would hasten the ultimate extinction
of slavery since economic competition with a neighbouring free
state, the North, would compel the South itself to abandon its
beloved “domestic institution[51].”

Upon receipt of the news from South Carolina, the Times,
in a long and carefully worded editorial, took up one by one the
alleged causes of secession, dismissed them as inadequate, and
concluded, “… we cannot disguise from ourselves that, apart from
all political complications, there is a right and a wrong in this
question, and that the right belongs, with all its advantages, to
the States of the North[52].” Three days later it asserted, “The North
is for freedom of discussion, the South represses freedom of
discussion with the tar-brush and the pine-fagot.” And again, on
January 10, “The Southern States expected sympathy for their
undertaking from the public opinion of this country. The tone of
the press has already done much to undeceive them….”

In general both the metropolitan and the provincial press
expressed similar sentiments, though there were exceptions. The
Dublin News published with approval a long communication
addressed to Irishmen at home and abroad: “… there is no power on
earth or in heaven which can keep in peace this unholy
co-partnership…. I hope … that the North will quietly permit
the South to retire from the confederacy and bear alone the odium
of [V1:pg 46]
all mankind[53]….” The Saturday Review thought
that deeper than declared differences lay the ruling social
structure of the South which now visioned a re-opening of the
African Slave Trade, and the occupation by slavery of the whole
southern portion of North America. “A more ignoble basis for a
great Confederacy it is impossible to conceive, nor one in the long
run more precarious…. Assuredly it will be the Northern
Confederacy, based on principles of freedom, with a policy
untainted by crime, with a free working-class of white men, that
will be the one to go on and prosper and become the leader of the
New World[54].”
The London Chronicle was vigorous in denunciation. “No
country on the globe produces a blackguardism, a cowardice or a
treachery, so consummate as that of the negro-driving States of the
new Southern Confederacy”–a bit of editorial blackguardism in
itself[55]. The
London Review more moderately stigmatized slavery as the
cause, but was lukewarm in praise of Northern idealisms, regarding
the whole matter as one of diverging economic systems and in any
case as inevitably resulting in dissolution of the Union at some
time. The inevitable might as well come now as later and would
result in benefit to both sections as well as to the world fearing
the monstrous empire of power that had grown up in America[56].

The great bulk of early expressions by the British press was, in
truth, definitely antagonistic to the South, and this was
particularly true of the provincial press. Garrison’s
Liberator, advocating extreme abolition action, had long
[V1:pg 47] made
a practice of presenting excerpts from British newspapers, speeches
and sermons in support of its cause. In 1860 there were thirty-nine
such citations; in the first months of 1861 many more, all
condemning slavery and the South. For the most part these citations
represented a comparatively unknown and uninfluential section, both
in politics and literature, of the British people. Matthew Arnold
was among the first of men of letters to record his faith that
secession was final and, as he hoped, an excellent thing for the
North, looking to the purity of race and the opportunity for
unhampered advance[57]. If English writers were in any way
influenced by their correspondents in the United States they may,
indeed, have well been in doubt as to the origin and prospects of
the American quarrel. Hawthorne, but recently at home again after
seven years’ consulship in England, was writing that abolition was
not a Northern object in the war just begun. Whittier wrote to
his English friends that slavery, and slavery alone, was the
basic issue[58]. But literary Britain was slow to express
itself save in the Reviews. These, representing varying shades of
British upper-class opinion and presenting articles presumably more
profound than the newspaper editorials, frequently offered more
recondite origins of the American crisis. The Quarterly
Review, organ of extreme Conservatism, in its first article,
dwelt upon the failure of democratic institutions, a topic not here
treated at length since it will be dealt with in a separate chapter
as deserving special study. The Quarterly is also the first
to advance the argument that the protective tariff, advocated by
the North, was a real cause for Southern secession[59]; an idea made much
of later, by the elements unfriendly to the North, [V1:pg 48] but not hitherto
advanced. In these first issues of the Reviews for 1861, there was
frequently put forth the “Southern gentlemen” theory.

“At a distance of three thousand miles, the Southern
planters did, indeed, bear a resemblance to the English country
gentleman which led to a feeling of kinship and sympathy with him
on the part of those in England who represented the old traditions
of landed gentility. This ‘Southern gentleman’ theory, containing
as it did an undeniable element of truth, is much harped upon by
certain of the reviewers, and one can easily conceive of its
popularity in the London Clubs…. The ‘American,’ so familiar to
British readers, during the first half of the century, through the
eyes of such travellers as Mrs. Trollope, now becomes the ‘Yankee,’
and is located north of Mason and Dixon’s line[60].”

Such portrayal was not characteristic of all Reviews, rather of
the Tory organs alone, and the Radical Westminster took
pains to deny the truth of the picture, asserting again and again
that the vital and sole cause of the conflict was slavery. Previous
articles are summed up in that of October, 1863, as a profession of
the Westminster’s opinion throughout: “… the South are
fighting for liberty to found a Slave Power. Should it prove
successful, truer devil’s work, if we may use the metaphor, will
rarely have been done[61].”

Fortunate would it have been for the Northern cause, if British
opinion generally sympathetic at first on anti-slavery grounds, had
not soon found cause to doubt the just basis of its sympathy, from
the trend of events in America. Lincoln had been elected on a
platform opposing the further territorial expansion of slavery. On
that point the North was fairly well united. But the great majority
of those who voted for Lincoln would have indignantly [V1:pg 49] repudiated any
purpose to take active steps toward the extinction of slavery where
it already existed. Lincoln understood this perfectly, and whatever
his opinion about the ultimate fate of slavery if prohibited
expansion, he from the first took the ground that the terms of his
election constituted a mandate limiting his action. As secession
developed he rightly centred his thought and effort on the
preservation of the Union, a duty imposed by his election to the
Presidency.

Naturally, as the crisis developed, there were many efforts at
still another great compromise. Among the friends of the outgoing
President, Buchanan, whose term of office would not expire until
March 4, 1861, there were still some Southern leaders, like
Jefferson Davis, seeking either a complete surrender to Southern
will, or advantages for Southern security in case secession was
accomplished. Buchanan appealed hysterically to the old-time love
of the Union and to the spirit of compromise. Great congressional
committees of both Senate and House of Representatives were formed
seeking a solution. Crittenden for the border states between North
and South, where, more than anywhere else, there was division of
opinion, proposed pledges to be given to the South. Seward,
long-time champion of the anti-slavery North, was active in the
Senate in suggestion and intrigue seemingly intended to conciliate
by concessions. Charles Francis Adams, early a Free Soiler, in the
House of Representatives Committee conducted his Republican
colleagues along a path apparently leading to a guarantee of
slavery as then established[62]. A constitutional amendment was drafted to
this effect and received Lincoln’s preliminary [V1:pg 50] approval. Finally
Lincoln, in his inaugural address, March 4, 1861, declared:

“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly to interfere
with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I
believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination
to do so.”

It should be no matter for surprise, therefore, that, as these
efforts were observed in Great Britain, a note of uncertainty began
to replace the earlier unanimity of opinion that the future of
slavery was at stake in America. This offered an easy excuse for a
switch-about of sympathy as British commercial and other interests
began to be developed, and even dismayed the ardent friends of the
anti-slavery North. Meanwhile the Government of Great Britain, from
the very first appearance of the cloud of civil war, had focused
its attention on the point of what the events in America portended
to British interests and policy. This is the business of
governments, and their agents would be condemned as inefficient did
they neglect it. But did British governmental policy go beyond this
entirely justifiable first thought for immediate British interests
to the point of positive hope that England would find an advantage
in the breaking up of the great American Republic? American
opinion, both then and later, believed Great Britain guilty of this
offence, but such criticism was tinged with the passions of the
Civil War. Yet a more impartial critic, though possibly an
unfriendly one because of his official position, made emphatic
declaration to like effect. On January 1, 1861, Baron de Brunow,
Russian Ambassador at London, reported to St. Petersburg that, “the
English Government, at the bottom of its heart, desires the
separation of North America into two republics, which will watch
each other jealously and counterbalance one the other. Then
England, on terms of peace and commerce with both, [V1:pg 51] would have
nothing to fear from either; for she would dominate them,
restraining them by their rival ambitions[63].”

If, however, one turns from the surmises of foreign diplomats as
to the springs of British policy, to the more authentic evidence of
official and private diplomatic correspondence, there is found no
proof for such accusations. Certainty neither Lord John Russell,
Foreign Secretary, nor Lord Lyons, British Minister at Washington,
reveal any animus against the United States. Considering his many
personal ties with leaders of both factions Lyons, from the first,
reported events with wonderful impartiality, and great clarity. On
November 12, 1860, he sent to Russell a full description of the
clamour raised in the South over the election of Lincoln,
enumerated the resignation of Federal officials (calling these
“ill-judged measures”), and expressed the opinion that Lincoln was
no Radical. He hoped the storm would blow over without damage to
the Union[64].
Russell, for his part, was prompt to instruct Lyons and the British
consuls not “to seem to favour one party rather than the other,”
and not to express opinions or to give advice, unless asked for by
the State Governments, in which case the advice should be against
all violent action as tending toward civil war[65].

This bare statement may indeed be interpreted as indicating an
eager readiness on Russell’s part to accept as final the
dissolution of the Union, but such an interpretation is not borne
out by a reading of his instructions. Rather he was perplexed, and
anxious that British agents should not gain the ill-will of either
American faction, an ill-will that would be alike detrimental in
the future, whether the Union remained unbroken or was
destroyed.

Strict instructions against offering advice are therefore
repeated frequently[66]. Meanwhile the first concrete problem
requiring British action came from the seizure by South Carolina of
the Federal customs house at the port of Charleston, and the
attempt of the State authorities to collect port dues customarily
paid to Federal officials. British shipowners appealed to Consul
Bunch for instructions, he to Lyons, and the latter to the American
Secretary of State, Judge Black. This was on December 31, 1860,
while Buchanan was still President, and Black’s answer was evasive,
though asserting that the United States must technically regard the
events in South Carolina as acts of violent rebellion[67]. Black refused to
state what action would be taken if Bunch advised British
shipowners to pay, but a way out of the embarrassment was found by
advising such payment to State authorities “under protest” as done
“under compulsion.” To one of his letters to Bunch on this topic,
Lyons appended an expression indicative of his own early attitude.
“The domestic slavery of the South is a bitter pill which it will
be hard enough to get the English to swallow. But if the Slave
Trade is to be added to the dose, the least squeamish British
stomach will reject it[68].”

Nevertheless the vigorous action of South Carolina, soon
followed by other Southern States, made a deep impression on
Russell, especially when compared with the uncertainty and
irresolution manifested in the attempted compromise measures of
Northern statesmen. In a private letter to Lyons, January 10, 1861,
he wrote “I do not see how the United States can be cobbled
together again by any compromise…. I cannot see any mode of
reconciling such [V1:pg
53] parties as these. The best thing now would be
that the right to secede should be acknowledged…. I hope sensible
men will take this view…. But above all I hope no force will be
used[69].” And
again twelve days later, “I suppose the break-up of the Union is
now inevitable[70].” To Russell, as to most foreign observers,
it seemed that if the South with its great wealth, its enormous
extent of territory, and its five and one-half millions of
population, were determined to leave the Union, no force whatever
could compel a return. History failed to record any revolution on
so large a scale which had not succeeded. His desire, therefore,
was that the North would yield to the inevitable, and would not
plunge into a useless civil war disastrous alike to the prosperity
of America and of foreign nations. Russell’s first hope was that
the South would forgo secession; his second, this accomplished,
that there would be no war, and in this sense he instructed Lyons.
The latter, less expectant of peaceful separation, and more aware
of the latent power of the North, maintained throughout his entire
service at Washington that there was at least a chance that
the North could subdue the South by might of arms[71], but he also,
looking to British interests, saw his early duty, before war broke,
in cautious suggestions against forcible Northern action. Thus from
January to March, [V1:pg 54] 1861, British effort and indirect
advice were based on the hope that British trade interests might
escape the tribulations inevitable from a civil conflict in
America. Beyond that point there was no grasp of the complications
likely to arise in case of war, and no clear formulation of British
policy[72].

In fact up to the middle of March, 1861, both public and
official British opinion discounted armed conflict, or at least any
determined Northern effort to recover the South. Early British
attitude was, therefore, based on a misconception. As this became
clear, public opinion began to break from a united humanitarian
pro-Northern sentiment and to show, in some quarters, quite another
face. Even as early as January the Economist expressed
wonder that the Northern States had not availed themselves gladly
of the chance to “shake off such an incubus, and to purify
themselves of such a stain[73].” and a month later professed to believe
that Great Britain would willingly permit the North to secure
compensation for loss of territory by annexing Canada–provided the
Canadians themselves desired it. This, it was argued, would
directly benefit England herself by cutting down military
expenditures[74]. The London Press indulged in
similar speculation, though from the angle of a Canadian annexation
of the Northern States, whose more sober citizens must by now be
weary of the sham of American democracy, and disgusted with the
rowdyism of political elections, which “combine the morals of a
horse race, the manners of a dog fight, the passions of a tap-room,
and the emotions of a gambling [V1:pg 55] house[75].” Probably such
suggestions had little real purpose or meaning at the moment, but
it is interesting that this idea of a “compensation” in Canada
should have been voiced thus early. Even in the United States the
same thought had occurred to a few political leaders. Charles
Sumner held it, though too wise, politically, to advance it in the
face of the growing Northern determination to preserve the Union.
It lay at the bottom of his increasing bitterness toward his old
friend Charles Francis Adams, now busy in schemes intended,
apparently, to restore the Union by compromise, and it led Sumner
to hope for appointment as Minister to England[76].

The chief organ of British upper-class opinion, the
Times, was one of the first to begin the process of “face
about,” as civil war in America seemed imminent[77]. Viewed from the
later attitude of the Times, the earlier expressions of that
paper, and in truth of many British journals, seem merely the
customary platitudinous British holding up of horrified hands at
American slavery. On January 19, 1861, a strong editorial still
proclaimed the folly of South Carolina, as acting “without law,
without justice,” but displayed a real dismay at the possible
consequences of war to British trade and commerce. On January 22,
the Times reprinted an article from the Economist, on
a probable cessation of cotton supply and editorially professed
great alarm, even advocating an early recognition of the Southern
confederacy if needed to maintain that supply. From this time on
there [V1:pg 56]
is no further note in the Times of the righteousness of the
Northern cause; but while it is still asserted that war would be
folly, the strength of the South, its superiority as a military
nation, are depicted.

A long break of nearly six weeks follows with little editorial
comment. Soon the correspondence from New York, previously written
by Bancroft Davis, and extremely favourable to the Northern cause,
was discontinued. W.H. Russell, the famous war correspondent of the
Crimea, was summoned to London and, according to his own story,
upon being given papers, clippings, and correspondence (largely
articles from the New York Herald) supporting the right of
the South to secede, hastily took his departure for America to
report upon the situation[78]. He sailed from Queenstown on March 3, and
arrived in New York on March 16. At last on March 12, the
Times took positive ground in favour of the justice of the
Southern cause.

“No treachery has been at work to produce the
disruption, and the principles avowed are such as to command the
sympathies of every free and enlightened people. Such are the
widely different auspices under which the two rival Republics start
into existence. But mankind will not ultimately judge these things
by sympathies and antipathies; they will be greatly swayed by their
own interest, and the two Republics must be weighed, not by their
professions or their previous history, but by the conduct they
pursue and the position they maintain among the Powers of the
earth. Their internal institutions are their own affair; their
financial and political arrangements are emphatically ours. Brazil
is a slave-holding Empire, but by its good faith and good conduct
it has contrived to establish for itself a place in the hierarchy
of nations far superior to that of many Powers which are free from
this domestic contamination. If the Northern Confederacy of America
evinces a determination to act in a narrow, exclusive, and unsocial
spirit, while its Southern competitor [V1:pg 57] extends the hand
of good fellowship to all mankind, with the exception of its own
bondsmen, we must not be surprised to see the North, in spite of
the goodness of its cause and the great negative merit of the
absence of Slavery, sink into a secondary position, and lose the
sympathy and regard of mankind.”

This to Northern view, was a sad relapse from that high moral
tone earlier addressed to the South notifying slave-holders that
England would not “stultify the policy of half a century for the
sake of an extended cotton trade[79].”

The Economist, with more consistency, still reported the
violence and recklessness of the South, yet in logical argument
proved to its own satisfaction the impossibility of Northern
reconquest, and urged a peaceful separation[80]. The
Spectator, even though pro-Northern, had at first small hope
of reunion by force, and offered consolation in the thought that
there would still remain a United States of America “strong,
powerful and free; all the stronger for the loss of the Black
South[81].” In
short from all quarters the public press, whatever its sympathy,
united in decrying war as a useless effort doomed to failure if
undertaken in the hope of restoring the Union. Such public opinion,
however, was not necessarily governmental opinion. The latter was
indeed more slow to make up its mind and more considerate in
expressing itself. When it became clear that in all probability the
North would fight, there was still no conception, any more than in
the United States itself, of the duration and intensity of the
conflict. Indeed, Russell yet hoped, as late as the end of January,
that no protracted war would occur. Nevertheless he was compelled
to face the situation in its relation to British commerce.

On February 16, Russell addressed Lyons on that aspect of
possible war which would at once call for a determination
[V1:pg 58] of
British policy. “Above all things,” he wrote, “endeavour to prevent
a blockade of the Southern coast. It would produce misery, discord,
and enmity incalculable[82].” Within a week Forster, a thorough friend
of the North throughout the whole war, was interrogating the
Ministry in the House of Commons in regard to the situation at
Charleston, and expressing the hope that England would not in any
way attempt to interfere[83]. This was the first reference in
Parliament, its sittings but just renewed after the long vacation,
to the American conflict, but British commercial interests were
being forced to a keener attention, and already men in many circles
were asking themselves what should be the proper governmental
attitude; how soon this new Southern Confederacy could justly claim
European recognition; how far and how fast European governments
ought to go in acknowledging such a claim; what ought to be the
proper policy and position of a neutral power; whether, indeed, a
declaration of neutrality ought to be issued.

With these questions rapidly coming to the front, it became
important for British statesmen to know something about the leaders
in this new Southern movement, the attitude of the people in
general, and the purposes of the [V1:pg 59] new Government. Here,
unfortunately, Lord Lyons could be no guide. The consuls in the
South, however, were in a position to give their impressions. On
February 28, 1861, Bunch wrote to Russell, describing the election
of Davis and Stephens[84], to the Presidency and Vice-Presidency of
the Confederacy, and giving a personal characterization of many
members of the Government. He was rather caustic. Davis, he said,
was the only able man, and he, unfortunately, was a
confirmed “manifest destiny” leader, so much so in fact that Bunch
prophesied a renewal of filibustering when once the North had
acquiesced in a Southern State and the fear of the North had
passed. Bunch had no faith in any future greatness of the South,
asserting that it would be a State despised among nations for its
maintenance of slavery, and that it could not hope for any
encouragement or sympathy from the humane nations of Europe; in
fact, his entire characterization was wholly damning to the South.
Yet it is to be noted that he never for a moment questioned that
the South had already actually established its independence. This
he seems to take for granted. Thus again, and from another quarter,
there was presented the double difficulty of England in regard to
the Civil War–the difficulty of reconciling sentiments of humanity
long preached by Great Britain, with her commercial interests and
her certainty that a new State was being born.

For men in the Northern Government Lyons was in a position to
report, but up to the end of January he had not written in any
great detail with regard to the new administration and its make-up,
though on January 7, he had informed Russell that Seward would be
the Secretary of State and had expressed the fear that with regard
to Great Britain he would be “a dangerous Foreign Minister[85].” Lincoln was
still in Illinois and the constituency of the [V1:pg 60] Cabinet was yet
uncertain, but Seward’s voice was sure to be a powerful one.
Occasionally Lyons found some opportunity to talk with him. On
February 4, 1861, in an official letter to Russell, Lyons reported
at length an interview with Seward, in which the latter had
expressed his extreme confidence that the trouble in America was
but superficial and that union sentiment in the South would soon
prevail[86]. In
a private letter of the same date, however, Lyons asserted that
Seward was indeed likely to be a very dangerous Secretary of State.
He had told Lyons that if European governments interfered to
protect their commerce, he could unite America by a foreign war in
order to resist such interference[87]. Again, on February 12, while himself
expressing hope that a solution might be found for the difficulties
in America, Lyons warned Russell that there were those who would
solve these difficulties by a foreign war, especially if foreign
governments refused to acknowledge a United States declaration
without formal blockade closing the Southern ports[88]. Writing
privately, Lyons exhibited great anxiety in regard to Seward’s
attitude and suggested that the best safeguard would be close union
by England and France, for if these two governments took exactly
the same stand in regard to trade, Seward would hardly dare to
carry out his threat[89].

Lyons’ letter of February 4 called out from Russell an
instruction in which it was repeated that advice to either party
should be withheld and a strictly neutral attitude maintained, and
Russell concluded by an assertion that if the United States
attempted a jingo policy toward England, the British Cabinet would
be tolerant because of its feeling of strength but that “blustering
demonstrations” must [V1:pg 61] not be carried too far[90]. Even as early as
December, 1860, Russell had foreseen the possibility of what he
considered a mere jingo policy for home effect in America. Now,
however, upon the repeated expression of fears from Lyons that this
might be more than mere “bunkum,” Russell began to instruct Lyons
not to permit English dignity to be infringed, while at the same
time desiring him to be cautious against stirring American
antagonism. Lyons’ earlier disquietude seems, indeed, to have
passed away for a time, and on February 26 he wrote that everyone
was waiting to see what Lincoln would do when inaugurated, that
there was still hope of compromise, and that in his own view this
was still possible. In this letter the tone is more important than
the matter, and so far as Lyons is concerned the tone is all
distinctly hopeful, all favourable to a resumption of normal
relations between the North and South. He at least had no hope of
disruption, and no happiness in it[91].

Before this communication could reach England Russell had
thoroughly awakened to the seriousness of the American situation in
relation to British foreign trade. On March 9, writing privately to
Lyons, he stated, “I hope you are [V1:pg 62] getting on well with the new
President. If he blockades the Southern ports we shall be in a
difficulty. But according to all American doctrine it must be an
actual blockade kept up by an efficient force[92].” Thus, before any
act had really occurred in America, the matter of a blockade was
occupying the attention of British statesmen. One difficulty at the
time was that there was no one in England qualified to speak for
the new administration at Washington. Dallas, the American Minister
appointed under the Buchanan administration, while, unlike some
other diplomatic representatives abroad, faithful to the cause of
the United States, was nevertheless not wholly trusted by Lincoln
or by Seward, and was thus handicapped in representing to Russell
American conditions or intentions. Indeed he had very little
communication with Russell. Adams’ nomination to England was known
to Lyons on March 20, for on that day he telegraphed to Russell,
“Mr. Charles Francis Adams, of Massachusetts, is appointed Minister
in London. I think it a very good appointment[93].” This news was
received in London on April 2, but over six weeks were yet to
elapse before Adams reached his post. The appointment of Adams,
however, seemed to Lyons a matter of congratulation in his hope
that no vicious anti-British policy would be indulged in by Seward.
Ten days after his telegram, he wrote at length to Russell, making
an excellent statement and analysis in regard to the character of
Adams.

“Mr. Adams is son of John Quincy Adams, the fifth P. of
the U.S., and grandson of John Adams, the second P. The grandfather
was the first Am. minister in England. The father was one of the
Plenipotentiaries who signed in London the Convention of the 3rd
July, 1815. Mr. Adams as a member of the H. of R. for one of the
districts of Mass., acted with the less violent section of the
‘Republican’ Party. During the last session of Congress he made a
very [V1:pg 63]
remarkable speech on the state of the Union, denying the
reasonableness of the complaints of the Southern States, but
stating his desire that every concession not inconsistent with
honour and principle should be made to them. He is considered to be
a man of great independence of character, and has the reputation of
being very tenacious of his own opinions. In manner he is quiet and
unassuming. He is a man of good fortune. Mrs. Adams comes of a
considerable family in Mass., of the name of Brooks. The late wife
of Mr. Edward Everett, who, as your L. is aware, has held the
offices of Minister in London and Secretary of State, was her
sister[94].”

Similar characterizations were being forwarded at almost the
same time by Bunch in regard to the Southern Commissioners, now
being despatched to London, but they were not so favourable. Mann,
wrote Bunch, was the son of a “bankrupt grocer.” His personal
character was “not good,” yet he alone of the three Commissioners
appointed had had diplomatic experience. Yancey, it was stated, was
an able lawyer, a stirring orator, and a recognized leader of the
secession movement, but he was also extremely pro-slavery in his
views, had expressed himself in favour of a renewal of the slave
trade, and throughout his career had been a “manifest destiny” man.
Of Rost, Bunch had no knowledge. In conclusion Bunch described the
extreme confidence expressed in the South in “King Cotton,” and in
rather bitter criticism stated that the Southern Commissioners
thought even England, the foe of slavery, would now be compelled to
bend the knee and recognize the South in order to get
cotton[95].

The Northern British Consuls on the other hand took an
astonishingly pro-Northern view of the whole situation. Archibald,
consul at New York, wrote to Russell soon after the fall of Sumter,
an exceedingly strong statement of his [V1:pg 64] faith in the
power of the North and its fixed and unalterable determination to
force the South back into the Union, his confidence in Northern
success, and his belief in the justice of the Northern cause. He
ventured to suggest the proper policy for England to pursue, viz.,
to offer immediately her services in mediation but wholly and
clearly on the side of the North. He stated that if England did not
feel free to offer mediation, she should at least show “such a
consistent and effective demonstration of sympathy and aid” for the
North as would help in shortening the war[96]. The British
Consul at Boston wrote to Russell in much the same vein. So far,
indeed, did these men go in expressing their sympathy with the
North, that Lyons, on April 27, commented to Russell that these
consuls had “taken the Northern War Fever,” and that he had mildly
reproved Archibald[97].

With the inauguration of Lincoln on March 4, and the
installation of Seward as Secretary of State, it was possible for
Lyons to become more active in his efforts to prevent a disruption
of British Trade. On March 20 he told Seward in a confidential
conversation:

“… If the United States determined to stop by force
so important a commerce as that of Great Britain with the
cotton-growing States, I could not answer for what might
happen.

“… It was, however, a matter of the greatest consequence to
England to procure cheap cotton. If a considerable rise were to
take place in the price of cotton, and British ships were to be at
the same time excluded from the Southern Ports, an immense pressure
would be put upon Her Majesty’s Government to use all the means in
their power to open those ports. If Her Majesty’s Government felt
it to be their duty to do so, they would naturally endeavour to
effect their object in a manner as consistent as possible, first
with their friendly feelings towards both Sections of this Country,
and secondly with [V1:pg 65] the recognized principles of
International Law. As regards the latter point in particular, it
certainly appeared that the most simple, if not the only way, would
be to recognize the Southern Confederacy[98].”

This was plain speaking, and Lyons’ threat of recognizing the
South did not at the moment stir Seward to any retort. But five
days later, on March 25, Lyons gave a dinner to Seward and a number
of the foreign Ministers, and there Seward’s violent talk about
seizing any and all ships that tried to trade with the South, even
if there was no blockade, made Lyons very anxious. As a host he
diverted the conversation lest it become too acrimonious, but he
himself told Seward

“… that it was really a matter so very serious that I
was unwilling to discuss it; that his plan seemed to me to amount
in fact to a paper blockade of the enormous extent of coast
comprised in the seceding States; that the calling it an
enforcement of the Revenue Laws appeared to me to increase the
gravity of the measure, for it placed Foreign Powers in the dilemma
of recognizing the Southern Confederation or of submitting to the
interruption of their commerce[99].”

Lyons’ advice to Russell was that no rebuff should be given the
Southern Commissioners when they arrived in London, but that they
be treated well. This, he thought, might open Seward’s eyes to his
folly. Still Lyons did not yet fully believe that Seward would be
so vigorous as his language seemed to imply, and on March 29 he
wrote that “prudent counsels” were in the ascendant, that there
would be no interference with trade “at present,” and that a
quieter tone was everywhere perceptible in Washington[100].

From the point of view of the British Minister at [V1:pg 66] Washington, the
danger spot in relations between the United States and Great
Britain lay in this matter of interference with trade to Southern
ports. Naturally, and as in duty bound, he sought to preserve that
trade. At first, indeed, he seems to have thought that even though
a civil war really ensued the trade might continue uninterrupted.
Certainly he bore hard and constantly on this one point, seeking to
influence not only officials at Washington but the public press.
Thus, in a letter to Bunch dated April 12, 1861, at a time when he
knew that W.H. Russell, the Times correspondent, would
shortly appear in Charleston, he instructed Bunch to remember that
in talking to Russell he must especially impress him with the idea
that any interruption of trade might and probably would result in a
British recognition of the South. Lyons wrote, “… the only
chance, if chance there still be of preventing an interruption of
the English commerce with the S. is the fear entertained here, that
it would lead to our recognizing the S.C.[101]” In these words
is revealed, however, as in other communications from Lyons, the
fact that he was striving to prevent an interruption of trade
rather than that he was convinced such interruption ought to result
in a British recognition of the South. Indeed, as will be seen,
when the blockade was at last declared, Lyons thought it no cause
for recognition and was most tolerant of its early
ineffectiveness.

While Lyons was thus keeping in close touch with Seward, the
relations between England and America at London were exceedingly
meagre. All that the American Minister Dallas knew of Russell’s
intentions is summed up in his despatches to Seward of March 22 and
April 9, 1861[102]. On the former date, he gave an account
of an interview with Russell in which the latter simply refused to
[V1:pg 67]
pledge himself against a recognition of the Confederacy; in the
latter, presenting a long memorial written by Seward to all of the
larger European Governments arguing in friendly spirit the cause of
the North, Dallas reported that he drew from Russell merely a
general expression of England’s kindly feeling towards the United
States and her hope that there might still be a peaceful solution.
Russell again refused to make any pledge in regard to English
policy. In this interview it was tacitly agreed that it would be
better for Great Britain to await Adams’ arrival before taking any
definite action, or so at least Dallas understood Russell–though
the latter later denied that any pledge of delay was given. There
is no doubt, however, that in Russell’s mind, whatever he might say
to Dallas, the separation in America was an accomplished fact and
the hope of Great Britain was centred upon the idea of a peaceful
separation.

Up to and including April 1, indeed, Lyons had been reporting
that no definite stand was yet being taken by the American
Government. At the same time Russell was continuing his
instructions to Lyons to recommend conciliation “but never to
obtrude advice unasked[103].” Yet Russell was not wholly undisturbed
by the reports of Seward’s quarrelsome attitude, for in a private
letter of the same date as the preceding, he wrote to Lyons, “I
rely upon your wisdom, patience, and prudence, to steer us through
the dangers of this crisis. If it can possibly be helped Mr. Seward
must not be allowed to get us into a quarrel. I shall see the
Southerners when they come, but not officially, and keep them at a
proper distance[104].” It is an interesting query, whether
this fear thus expressed of Seward’s temper was not of distinct
benefit to the United States at the moment when the Southern
Commissioners [V1:pg
68] arrived in England. The inference would seem to be
clear, that in spite of Lyons’ advice to treat them well, the
effect upon Russell of Seward’s attitude was to treat them coolly.
Russell was indeed distinctly worried by Seward’s unfriendly
attitude.

In the meantime the British press and public, while still
uncertain and divided as to the merits of the conflict were now
substantially a unit in accepting separation as final. The
Times, with judicial ponderosity declared: “The new
nationality has been brought forth after a very short period of
gestation…. and the Seceding States have now constituted
themselves a nation[105] …” At the other end of the scale in
newspaper “tone,” the London Press jeered at the Northern
American eagle as having “had his tail pulled out and his wings
clipped–yet the meek bird now holds out his claws to be pared,
with a resignation that would be degrading in the most henpecked of
domestic fowls[106].” Having now veered about to expressions
of confidence in the permanency of the Southern Confederacy the
Times was also compelled to alter its opinion of Southern
Statesmen. An editorial gave high praise to the Confederate
Congress sitting at Montgomery, stated its personnel to be far
superior to that of the Congress at Washington, yet was unable to
resist making the customary reference to manners traditionally
American;

“With regard to the Congress itself, we cannot refrain
from quoting the naïve testimony of a visitor in its
favour. ‘Gentlemen here [Montgomery] who have spent much time in
Washington city declare that they have never witnessed such
industry, care, propriety, courtesy, and pleasant Congressional
action. Not one member has appeared in his seat under the
influence of liquors or wines, not a harsh word [V1:pg 69] has been uttered
in debate, and all exhibit the most unflagging energy and
determination[107].'”

The most of the British press quickly followed the lead of the
Times, forgot its previous dictum that the South was in the
control of “ignorant ruffians,” and dilated upon the statemanlike
directness and sagacity of Southern leaders as contrasted with the
stupidity of the North, displayed in its tariff policy[108]. A few journals
thought that the North might eventually win in a prolonged struggle
but that such a victory would be disastrous to the principles of
federalism[109], and, in any case, that this civil war
was one without “a noble cause to sustain either side[110].” By May nearly
all the older journals were aligned on the right of the South to
secede, and on the fact of a successful secession, though still
differing as to the basic causes and essential justice involved. In
this same month, however, there emerged a few vigorous champions of
the Northern cause and prospects. In April the Spectator
agreed that the Great Republic was at an end[111]; in May it
urged the North to fight it out with hope, asserting a chance of
ultimate victory because of superior resources and the sympathy of
all European nations[112]. A small newspaper of limited
circulation, the Morning Star, organ of John Bright, had
from the first championed the Northern cause. Now, as the armed
conflict broke in America, it was joined by a more important paper,
the Daily News, which set itself the task of controverting
the Times. Moreover the Daily News was all the more
influential in that it was not uncritical of the North, yet
consistently, throughout the war, expressed sympathy for the cause
and [V1:pg 70]
principles behind the efforts of the Northern Government. Selling
for a low price, twopence-halfpenny, the Daily News, like
the Westminster among the Reviews, appealed to a broader and
more popular constituency than the older publications, especially
to a constituency not yet vocal, since still unrepresented, in
Parliament[113].

The Daily News was fortunate in having, after 1862, the
best-informed New York correspondent writing to the London press.
This was an Irishman, E.L. Godkin, who, both at home and in
America, was the intimate friend of literary men, and himself,
later, a great moulder of public opinion[114]. Harriet
Martineau further aided the Daily News by contributing
pro-Northern articles, and was a power in Radical circles[115]. But literary
England in general, was slow to express itself with conviction,
though Robert Browning, by April, 1861, was firmly determined in
his pro-Northern sentiment. In August he was writing in letters of
the “good cause[116].” But Browning was a rare exception and
it was not until the Civil War had been under way for many months
that men of talent in the non-political world were drawn to make
comment or to take sides. Their influence at the outset was
negligible[117].

In spite of press utterances, or literary silence, alike
indicative of a widespread conviction that Southern independence
was assured, there still remained both in those circles where
anti-slavery sentiment was strong, and in others more neutral in
sympathy, a distaste for the newly-born State as the embodiment of
a degrading institution. Lincoln’s inaugural address denying an
intention to interfere with slavery was a weapon for the friends of
the South, but it could not wholly still that issue. Even in the
Times, through the medium of W.H. Russell’s descriptive
letters, there appeared caustic criticisms. He wrote in his
“Diary,” “I declare that to me the more orderly, methodical, and
perfect the arrangements for economizing slave labour … are, the
more hateful and odious does slavery become[118],” and in his
letter of May 8, from Montgomery, having witnessed an auction sale
of slaves he stated:

“I am neither sentimentalist nor Black Republican, nor
negro worshipper, but I confess the sight caused a strange thrill
through my heart. I tried in vain to make myself familiar with the
fact that I could, for the sum of $975, become as absolutely the
owner of that mass of blood, bones, sinew, flesh and brains as of
the horse which stood by my side. There was no sophistry which
could persuade me the man was not a man–he was, indeed, by no
means my brother, but assuredly he was a fellow creature[119].”

This was hard printing for the Times, in its new advocacy
of the South, and Russell’s description was made much of by the
Westminster Review and other publications that soon began to
sound again the “issue” of slavery[120]. Yet the
[V1:pg 72]
Westminster itself in the same article decried the folly of
the Northern attempt at reconquest. So also thought even John
Bright at the moment, when expressing himself privately to friends
in America[121].

Slavery, then, still remained an issue before the British
public, but of what use was it to upbraid the South, if a new world
State were in fact born? And if a State in power, why not give it
prompt recognition? The extreme British anti-slavery opponents
feared that this was just what the Government was inclined to do,
and with promptness. Here and there meetings were hurriedly called
to protest against recognition[122]. This fear was unfounded. Neither in
London nor at Washington was there any official inclination to
hasten recognition. Lyons had held up to Seward the logic of such
action, if British trade were illegally interfered with. By April 9
Lyons was aware that the so-called Radical Party in the Cabinet
would probably have its way, that conciliation would no longer be
attempted, and that a coercive policy toward the South was soon to
follow. On that date he wrote to Russell stating that people in
Washington seemed so convinced that Europe would not
interfere to protect its trade that they were willing to venture
any act embarrassing to that trade. He himself was still insisting,
but with dwindling confidence, that the trade must not be
interfered with under any circumstances. And in a second letter of
this same date, he repeated to Russell his advice of treating the
Southern Commissioners with deference. Any rebuff to them, he
asserts again, will but increase the Northern confidence that they
may do anything without provoking the resistance of England[123].

Like a good diplomat Lyons was merely pushing the argument for
all it was worth, hoping to prevent an injury to his country, yet
if that injury did come (provided it were sanctioned by the law of
nations) he did not see in it an injury sufficient to warrant
precipitate action by Great Britain. When indeed the Southern
capture of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbour finally brought the
actual clash of arms, Lyons expressed himself with regard to other
elements in the struggle previously neglected in his
correspondence. On April 15 describing to Russell the fall of
Sumter, he stated that civil war had at last begun. The North he
believed to be very much more powerful than the South, the South
more “eager” and united as yet, but, he added, “the taint of
slavery will render the cause of the South loathsome to the
civilized world.” It was true that “commercial intercourse with the
cotton States is of vital importance to manufacturing
nations[124]….” but Lyons was now facing an actual
situation rather than a possible one, and as will be seen later, he
soon ceased to insist that an interruption of this “commercial
intercourse” gave reasonable ground for recognition of the
South.

With the fall of Fort Sumter and the European recognition that a
civil war was actually under way in America, a large number of new
and vexing problems was presented to Russell. His treatment of them
furnishes the subject matter of later chapters. For the period
previous to April, 1861, British official attitude may be summed up
in the statement that the British Minister at Washington hoped
against hope that some solution might be found for the preservation
of the Union, but that at the same time, looking to future British
interests and possibly believing also that his attitude would tend
to preserve the Union, he asserted vehemently the impossibility of
any Northern interference with British trade to Southern ports.
Across [V1:pg
74] the water, Russell also hoped faintly that there might
be no separation. Very soon, however, believing that separation
inevitable and the disruption of the Union final, he fixed his hope
on peaceful rather than warlike secession. Even of this, however,
he had little real expectation, but neither he nor anyone else in
England, nor even in America, had any idea that the war would be a
long and severe one. It is evident that he was already considering
the arrival of that day when recognition must be granted to a new,
independent and slave-holding State. But this estimate of the
future is no proof that the Russian Ambassador’s accusation of
British governmental pleasure in American disruption was
justified[125]. Russell, cautious in refusing to pledge
himself to Dallas, was using exactly such caution as a Foreign
Secretary was bound to exercise. He would have been a rash man who,
in view of the uncertainty and irresolution of Northern statesmen,
would have committed Great Britain in March, 1861, to a definite
line of policy.

On April 6, Russell was still instructing Lyons to recommend
reconciliation. April 8, Dallas communicated to Russell an
instruction from Seward dated March 9, arguing on lines of
“traditional friendship” against a British recognition of the
Confederacy. Russell again refused to pledge his Government, but on
April 12 he wrote to Lyons that British Ministers were “in no hurry
to recognize the separation as complete and final[126].” In the early
morning of that same day the armed conflict in America had begun,
and on the day following, April 13, the first Southern victory had
been recorded in the capture of Fort Sumter. The important question
which the man at the head of the British Foreign Office had now
immediately to decide was, what was to be England’s attitude, under
international [V1:pg
75] law, toward the two combatants in America. In deciding
this question, neither sentiment nor ideals of morality, nor
humanitarianism need play any part; England’s first need and
duty were to determine and announce for the benefit of her citizens
the correct position, under International law, which must be
assumed in the presence of certain definite facts.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] Dr. Newton asserts that at the end of the
‘fifties Great Britain made a sharp change of policy. (Cambridge
History of British Foreign Policy, Vol. II, p.
283.)

[32] Thomas Colley Grattan, Civilized
America, 2 vols. 2nd ed., London, 1859, Vol. I, pp. 284-87. The
first edition was printed in 1859 and a third in 1861. In some
respects the work is historically untrustworthy since internal
evidence makes clear that the greater part of it was written before
1846, in which year Grattan retired from his post in Boston. In
general he wrote scathingly of America, and as his son succeeded to
the Boston consulship, Grattan probably thought it wiser to
postpone publication. I have found no review of the work which
treats it otherwise than as an up-to-date description of 1859. This
fact and its wide sale in England in 1860-61, give the work
importance as influencing British knowledge and
opinions.

[33] Charles Mackay, Life and Liberty in
America: or, Sketches of a Tour in the United States and Canada in
1857-8, one vol., New York, 1859, pp. 316-17. Mackay was at
least of sufficient repute as a poet to be thought worthy of a
dinner in Boston at which there were present, Longfellow, Holmes,
Agassiz, Lowell, Prescott, Governor Banks, and others. He preached
“hands across the seas” in his public lectures, occasionally
reading his poem “John and Jonathan”–a sort of advance copy of
Kipling’s idea of the “White Man’s Burden.” Mackay’s concluding
verse, “John” speaking, was:

“And I have strength for nobler work
  Than e’er my hand has done,
And realms to rule and truths to plant
  Beyond the rising sun.
Take you the West and I the East;
  We’ll spread ourselves abroad,
With trade and spade and wholesome laws,
  And faith in man and God.”

[34] Duncan, Life and Letters of Herbert
Spencer, Vol. I, p. 140.

[35] R.C. Hamilton, Manuscript Chapters and Notes
on “The English Press and the Civil War.” Mr. Hamilton was at work
on this subject, as a graduate student, but left Stanford
University before completing his thesis. His notes have been of
considerable value, both for suggested citations from the English
Press, and for points of interpretation.

[36] Economist, November 24, 1860. Six
months later, however, the Economist pictured Lincoln as
merely an unknown “sectionalist,” with no evidence of
statesmanship–Economist, June 1, 1861.

[37] Saturday Review, November 24,
1860.

[38] Spectator, November 24,
1860.

[39] The Times, November 26,
1860.

[40] Ibid., November 29,
1860.

[41] Ibid.

[42] R.L. Duffus, “Contemporary English Popular
Opinion on the American Civil War,” p. 2. A thesis presented in
fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts,
Stanford University, 1911. This thesis is in manuscript. It is a
valuable study of the Reviews and of the writings of men of
letters. Hereafter cited as Duffus “English Opinion.”

[43] The Times, January 12,
1861.

[44] Saturday Review, January 12,
1861.

[45] Economist, December 8, 1860.
Spectator, January 19, 1861.

[46] Spectator, December 1, 1860.
Times, January 29, 1861. Economist, May 25,
1861.

[47] Saturday Review, January 19,
1861.

[48] Edinburgh Review, Vol. 112, p.
545.

[49] Lyons Papers.

[50] Russell, My Diary North and South,
Boston, 1863, p. 134. “Then cropped out again the expression of
regret for the rebellion of 1776, and the desire that if it came to
the worst, England would receive back her erring children, or give
them a prince under whom they could secure a monarchical form of
government. There is no doubt about the earnestness with which
these things are said.” Russell’s Diary is largely a
condensation of his letters to the Times. In the letter of
April 30, 1861 (published May 28), he dilates to the extent of a
column on the yearning of South Carolina for a restoration of
colonial relations. But Consul Bunch on December 14, 1860, reported
a Charleston sentiment very different from that of the Jockey Club
in February. He wrote to Lyons:

“The church bells are ringing like mad in celebration
of a
newly revived festival, called ‘Evacuation Day,’ being the
nefastus ille dies in which the bloody Britishers left
Charleston 78 years ago. It has fallen into utter disuse for
about 50 years, but is now suddenly resuscitated apropos
de
nothing at all.”

In this same letter Bunch described a Southern patriotic
demonstration. Returning to his home one evening, he met a military
company, which from curiosity he followed, and which

“drew up in front of the residence of a young lawyer of
my
friends, after performing in whose honour, through the medium
of a very brassy band, a Secession Schottische or Palmetto
Polka, it clamorously demanded his presence. After a very
brief interval he appeared, and altho’ he is in private life
an agreeable and moderately sensible young man, he succeeded,
to my mind at any rate, in making most successfully, what Mr.
Anthony Weller calls ‘an Egyptian Mummy of his self.’ the
amount of balderdash and rubbish which he evacuated (dia
stomatos) about mounting the deadly breach, falling back
into the arms of his comrades and going off generally in a
blaze of melodramatic fireworks, really made me so unhappy
that I lost my night’s rest. So soon as the speech was over
the company was invited into the house to ‘pour a libation to
the holy cause’–in the vernacular, to take a drink and spit
on the floor.”

Evidently Southern eloquence was not tolerable to the ears of the
British consul. Or was it the din of the church bells rather than
the clamour of the orator, that offended him? (Lyons
Papers.)

[51] Edinburgh Review, Vol. 113, p.
555.

[52] The Times, January 4,
1861.

[53] Letter to Dublin News, dated January
26, 1861. Cited in The Liberator, March 1, 1861. Garrison,
editor of The Liberator, was then earnest in advocating
“letting the South go in peace” as a good riddance.

[54] Saturday Review, March 2, 1861, p.
216.

[55] London Chronicle, March 14, 1861.
Cited in The Liberator, April 12, 1861.

[56] London Review, April 20, 1861. Cited
in Littel’s Living Age, Vol. LXIX, p. 495. The editor of the
Review was a Dr. Mackay, but I have been unable to identify
him, as might seem natural from his opinions, as the Mackay
previously quoted (p. 37) who was later New York correspondent of
the Times.

[57] Matthew Arnold, Letters, Vol. I., p.
150. Letter to Mrs. Forster, January 28, 1861.

[58] Julian Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne and
his Wife, Vol. II, pp. 271-78. Life and Letters of John
Greenleaf Whittier, Vol. II, pp. 439 seq.

[59] Quarterly Review, Vol. 110, p. 282.
July, 1861.

[60] Duffus, “English Opinion,” p.
7.

[61] Westminster, Vol. LXXX, p.
587.

[62] Adams’ course was bitterly criticized by his
former intimate friend, Charles Sumner, but the probable purpose of
Adams was, foreseeing the certainty of secession, to exhibit so
strongly the arrogance and intolerance of the South as to create
greater unity of Northern sentiment. This was a purpose that could
not be declared and both at home and abroad his action, and that of
other former anti-slavery leaders, for the moment weakened faith
that the North was in earnest on the general issue of
slavery.

[63] Services rendered by Russia to the
American People during the War of the Rebellion, Petersburg,
1904, p. 5.

[64] Parliamentary Papers, 1862,
Lords, Vol. XXV, “Correspondence on Civil War in the United
States,” No. 1.

[65] Ibid., No. 6. Russell to Lyons,
December 26, 1860.

[66] Ibid., Russell to Lyons, No. 9,
January 5, 1861, and No. 17, February 20, 1861.

[67] Parliamentary Papers, 1861,
Lords, Vol. XVIII. Correspondence with U.S. Government
respecting suspension of Federal Customs House at the Port of
Charleston. Nos. 1 and 3.

[68] Lyons Papers. Lyons to Bunch, December 12,
1860.

[69] Ibid., The same day official
instructions were sent permitting Bunch to remain at Charleston,
but directing him, if asked to recognize South Carolina, to refer
the matter to England. F.O., Am., Vol. 754, No. 6. Russell to
Lyons, January 10, 1861.

[70] Lyons Papers. Russell to Lyons, January 22,
1861.

[71] This view was not shared by Lyons’
colleagues at Washington. The Russian Minister, Stoeckl, early
declared the Union permanently destroyed, and regretting the fact,
yet hoped the North would soon accept the inevitable and seek close
co-operation with the South in commerce and in foreign relations.
This view was repeated by him many times and most emphatically as
late as the first month of 1863. (Russian Archives, Stoeckl to
F.O., January 29-February 10, 1863. No. 342.) It was not until
September, 1863, that Stoeckl ventured to hope for a Northern
reconquest of the South. I am indebted to Dr. Frank A. Golder, of
Stanford University, for the use of his notes and transcripts
covering all of the Russian diplomatic correspondence with the
United States, 1860-1865. In the occasional use made of this
material the English translation is mine.

[72] Stoeckl reported that at a dinner with
Lyons, at which he, Mercier and Seward were the guests, Seward had
asserted that if Civil War came all foreign commerce with the South
would be interrupted. To this Lyons protested that England could
not get along without cotton and that she would secure it in one
way or another. Seward made no reply. (Ibid., March 25-April
9, 1861, No. 810.)

[73] Economist, January 12,
1861.

[74] Ibid., February 23,
1861.

[75] London Press, March 23, 1861. Cited
in Littell’s Living Age, Vol. LXIX, p. 438.

[76] Before Adams’ selection as Minister to
England was decided upon, Sumner’s Massachusetts friends were
urging him for the place. Longfellow was active in this interest.
H.W. Longfellow, by Samuel Longfellow, Vol. II, pp.
412-13.

[77] John Bright later declared “his conviction
that the leading journal had not published one fair, honourable, or
friendly article toward the States since Lincoln’s accession to
office.” Dasent, Life of Delane, Vol. II, p. 38. The time is
approximately correct, but the shift in policy began earlier, when
it came to be feared that the North would not submit to peaceable
secession.

[78] Bigelow, Retrospections, Vol. I, pp.
344-45.

[79] See ante, p. 40.

[80] Economist, March 2,
1861.

[81] Spectator, March 16,
1861.

[82] Lyons Papers.

[83] Hansard, 3rd. Ser., CLXI, p. 814. February
22, 1861. William E. Forster was of Quaker descent and had early
taken part in public meetings called to express humanitarian
sentiment. From 1850 on he was an acceptable public speaker in all
matters liberal, as free trade, social reform, and anti-slavery.
Elected to Parliament in 1859 and again in 1861 from Bradford,
where he was engaged in business as a woollen manufacturer, he
sought, after the fashion of new Members, a cause to represent and
found it in championship of the North. Having great native ability,
as shown by his later distinguished career, it was the good fortune
of the United States thus to enlist so eager a champion. Forster
and John Bright were the two leading “friends of the North” in
Parliament. The latter already had established reputation, but was
more influential out of Parliament than in it. Forster, with a
reputation to make, showed skill in debate, and soon achieved
prestige for himself and his American cause. Henry Adams, son and
private secretary of the American Minister to England, once told
the writer that he regarded Forster’s services as, on the whole,
the most valuable rendered by any Englishman to the
North.

[84] F.O., Am., Vol. 780, No. 30.

[85] Newton, Lord Lyons, Vol. I, p.
30.

[86] F.O., Am., Vol. 760, No. 40.

[87] Russell Papers. Lyons to Russell, February
4, 1861.

[88] F.O., Am., Vol. 760, No. 59.

[89] Russell Papers. Lyons to Russell, February
12, 1861.

[90] Parliamentary Papers, 1862,
Lords, Vol. XXV. “Correspondence on Civil War in the United
States,” No. 17. Russell to Lyons, February 20, 1861.

[91] F.O., Am., Vol. 761, No. 78. Received March
11. It is curious that in the first period of the war Lyons made no
extended characterization of Lincoln. Probably his contacts with
the new President were insufficient to justify it. The first record
of personal impressions was that made by W.H. Russell and later
printed in his “Diary” but not reproduced in his letters to the
Times. Russell was taken to the White House. “Soon
afterwards there entered, with a shambling, loose, irregular,
almost unsteady gait, a tall, lank, lean man, considerably over six
feet in height, with stooping shoulders, long pendulous arms,
terminating in hands of extraordinary dimensions, which, however,
were far exceeded in proportion by his feet…. The impression
produced by the size of his extremities, and by his flapping and
wide-projecting ears, may be removed by the appearance of
kindliness, sagacity, and awkward bonhomie of his face … eyes
dark, full, and deeply set, are penetrating, but full of an
expression which almost amounts to tenderness…. A person who met
Mr. Lincoln in the street would not take him to be what–according
to usages of European society–is called a ‘gentleman’ … but, at
the same time, it would not be possible for the most indifferent
observer to pass him in the street without notice.”–My
Diary, I, pp. 37-8.

[92] Lyons Papers.

[93] F.O., Am., Vol. 761.

[94] F.O., Am., Vol. 762, No. 122. March 30,
1861. Received April 16.

[95] F.O., Am., Vol. 780, No. 37. March 21, 1861.
Received April 9.

[96] F.O., Am., Vol. 778, No. 26. April 24,
1861.

[97] Russell Papers.

[98] Russell Papers. Lyons to Russell, March 26,
1861. Printed in Newton, Lord Lyons, Vol. I., p.
31.

[99] Ibid.

[100] Russell Papers.

[101] Lyons Papers.

[102] U.S. Messages and Documents,
1861-2, pp, 80-81.

[103] F.O., Am., Vol. 754, No. 79. Russell to
Lyons, April 6, 1861.

[104] Lyons Papers, Russell to Lyons, April 6,
1861.

[105] The Times, February 26,
1861.

[106] London Press, March 30, 1861, Cited
in Littell’s Living Age, Vol. 69, p. 379.

[107] The Times, March 26,
1861.

[108] Saturday Review, May 11, 1861, pp.
465-6.

[109] Economist, May 4,
1861.

[110] Examiner, January 5 and (as quoted)
April 27, 1861. Cited in Littell’s Living Age, Vol. 68, p.
758 and Vol. 69, p. 570.

[111] Spectator, April 27,
1861.

[112] Ibid., May 4, 1861.

[113] These four publications, the
Spectator, the Westminster, the Daily News,
and the Morning Star, were the principal British
pro-Northern organs. In addition The Liberator names among
the lesser and provincial press the following: Nonconformist,
British Standard, Dial, Birmingham Post, Manchester Examiner,
Newcastle Chronicle, Caledonian Mercury and Belfast
Whig. Duffus, “English Opinion,” p. 40.

[114] Godkin had joined the staff of the
Daily News in 1853. During the Crimea War he was special war
correspondent. He had travelled extensively in America in the late
‘fifties and was thoroughly well informed. From 1862 to 1865 his
letters to the Daily News were of great value in encouraging
the British friends of the North. In 1865 Godkin became editor of
the New York Nation.

[115] W.E. Forster said of her, “It was Harriet
Martineau alone who was keeping English opinion about America on
the right side through the Press.” The Daily News Jubilee
Edition, p. 46.

[116] James, William Wetmore Story and His
Friends, Vol. II, p. 92.

[117] Moncure D. Conway’s Autobiography
asserts that two-thirds of the English authors “espoused the Union
cause, some of them actively–Professor Newman, Mill, Tom Hughes,
Sir Charles Lyell, Huxley, Tyndall, Swinburne, Lord Houghton,
Cairns, Fawcett, Frederic Harrison, Leslie Stephen, Allingham, the
Rossettis,” Vol. I, p. 406. This is probably true of ultimate,
though not of initial, interest and attitude. But for many writers
their published works give no clue to their opinions on the Civil
War–as for example the works of Dickens, Thackeray, William
Morris, or Ruskin. See Duffus, “English Opinion,” p.
103.

[118] Russell, My Diary, I, p.
398.

[119] The Times, May 30,
1861.

[120] Westminster Review, Vol. 76, pp.
487-509, October, 1861.

[121] Bright to Sumner, September 6, 1861. Cited
in Rhodes, United States, Vol. III, p. 509.

[122] A meeting held in Edinburgh, May 9, 1861,
declared that anti-slavery England ought never to recognize the
South. Reported in Liberator, May 31, 1861.

[123] F.O., Am., Vol. 762, Nos. 141 and
142.

[124] Ibid., No. 146.

[125] See ante, pp. 50-51.

[126] Parliamentary Papers, 1862,
Lords, Vol. XXV. “Correspondence on Civil War in the United
States.” Nos. 24, 25 and 26.

CHAPTER III

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A POLICY, MAY, 1861

In June, 1859, a short-lived Conservative Government under the
leadership of Lord Derby had been replaced by a “coalition” Liberal
Government, at the head of which stood Palmerston, but so
constituted that almost equal influence was attributed to the
Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell. Both men had previously held
the Premiership, and, as they represented different wings of the
Whig-Liberal party, it was prophesied by political wiseacres that
personal friction would soon lead to a new disruption. Nor were the
possible elements of discord confined to these two. Gladstone,
formerly a Peelite Tory, and for a time uncertain whether to return
to the Tory fold or to join the Liberals, had yielded to
Palmerston’s promise of a free hand in financial matters, and had
joined the Ministry as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Opposed to him
in a certain sense, as the rival claimant for political leadership
among the younger group, was Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Home
Secretary until July, 1861, thereafter until his death in April,
1863, Secretary for War. Acting in some degree as intermediary and
conciliator between these divergent interests stood Lord Granville,
President of Council, then a “Conservative-Liberal,” especially
valuable to the Cabinet for the confidence reposed in him by Queen
Victoria and Prince Albert.

In 1861 Palmerston was seventy-seven years old. Long before this
he had built his popularity upon a vigorous British “patriotism,”
assertive of England’s honour and [V1:pg 77] jealous for British advantage. Now,
however, as head of a Government requiring the most delicate
handling to maintain itself, he devoted his energies to details of
political management in which he had great skill. His ambition was,
primarily, to retain office, and in this purpose he was fortunate
because, unknown to his ministerial colleagues, he had received an
indirect pledge from Lord Derby, the Opposition leader, that there
would be, for a time at least, no determined effort to unseat him
so long as his Ministry brought forward no Bill for a further
expansion of the franchise. In the unwillingness to make any
further adventure toward an expanded democracy Palmerston was
wholly at one with Derby. Of like opinion, though less strongly so,
was Russell, whose popular nickname, “Finality John,” gained by his
assertion that the Reform Bill of 1832 was England’s last step
toward democracy, sufficiently indicates his stand on the franchise
question. In fact every member of the Cabinet belonged to the
“Conservative-Liberal” group, though with shades of political
faith, and none were really Liberals–far less Radicals. The
outspoken Radicals in Parliament, like John Bright, and his friend
Cobden, who had refused to take office under Palmerston, gave a
lukewarm support to the Ministry, but would not pledge themselves
to steadfast adherence. They had hopes of Gladstone, believed that
he would ultimately come into their group, but meanwhile watched
with anxiety his delighted immersion, as indeed Palmerston desired
it, in the details of financial management to the exclusion of
other questions.

The matter of ministerial and general British attitude toward
democracy as affecting British policy during the American Civil War
will be considered in a later chapter. In the spring of 1861 it had
not become a clear-cut British opinion and did not, so far as
historical evidence can determine, affect early governmental policy
toward America. [V1:pg
78] The outstanding feature of the British Government in
1861 is that it was made up of various so-called “Liberal”
elements, the representatives of each of which carried on the
business of his own department much as he pleased. Palmerston’s
was, of course, the deciding opinion, whenever he cared to express
it, but this he did but rarely. His great concern was to keep his
all-star associates running smoothly together and thus to give no
occasion for parliamentary criticism and attack. It followed that
Russell, eight years the junior of Palmerston, was in foreign
affairs more powerful and independent than is customary. Indeed the
Government was at times spoken of as the “Palmerston-Russell
Ministry.” These two were the leaders of the team; next came
Gladstone and Cornewall Lewis, rivals of the younger generation,
and each eager to lead when their elders should retire from
harness. Gladstone’s great ability was already recognized, but his
personal political faith was not yet clear. Lewis, lacking his
rival’s magnetic and emotional qualities, cold, scholarly, and
accurate in performance, was regarded as a statesman of high
promise[127].
Other Cabinet members, as is the custom of coalitions, were more
free in opinion and action than in a strict party ministry where
one dominating personality imposes his will upon his
colleagues.

Lord John Russell, then, in foreign policy, was more than the
main voice of the Government; rather, save in times of extreme
crisis, governmental foreign policy was Russell’s policy. This was
even more true as regards American than European affairs, for the
former were little understood, and dependence was necessarily
placed upon the man whose business it was to be familiar with them.
[V1:pg 79]
Indeed there was little actual parliamentary or governmental
interest, before midsummer of 1861, in the American question,
attention in foreign affairs being directed toward Italian
expansion, to the difficulties related to the control of the Ionian
islands, and to the developing Danish troubles in
Schleswig-Holstein. Neither did the opposition party venture to
express a policy as regards America. Lord Derby, able but indolent,
occasionally indulged in caustic criticism, but made no attempt to
push his attack home. Malmesbury, his former Foreign Secretary, was
active and alert in French affairs, but gave no thought to
relations across the Atlantic[128]. Disraeli, Tory leader in the Commons,
skilfully led a strong minority in attacks on the Government’s
policy, but never on the American question, though frequently urged
to do so by the friends of the South. In short for the first year
of the Civil War, 1861, the policy of Great Britain toward America
was the policy of Lord John Russell, unhampered by friend or
foe.

This being the case, what did Russell know about the American
crisis? Briefly, no more than has already been stated as derived
from the reports of British officials in the United States, and
from the pages of the public press. The salient facts known to
Russell were few. Lincoln’s Cabinet had been named. Lincoln himself
was absolutely an unknown quantity, but it was unbelievable that a
man of his origins and history could be more than a mere
figurehead–an opinion then held as widely in America as in
England. But someone must determine American policy, and by
universal consent, this would be Seward.

The new Secretary of State was at the moment better known in
England than any other American statesman, with the possible
exception of Charles Sumner, whose visits and personal contacts had
established a circle of British [V1:pg 80] friendships. Both men were accepted
as champions of anti-slavery, Sumner for his vigorous denunciations
and his so-called “martyrdom” under the physical violence of the
South Carolinan, Brooks; and Seward for his clever political
anti-Southern leadership in the United States Senate. But Seward’s
reputation in this respect was offset by the belief that he was
anti-British in his personal sentiments, or at least that he was
very ready to arouse for political ends the customary anti-British
sentiment of his Irish constituents in the State of New York. In
1860, on the occasion of the visit to the United States of the
Prince of Wales, Seward is alleged to have stated to the Duke of
Newcastle that in case he became Secretary of State it would then
“become my duty to insult England, and I mean to do so”–a threat,
whether jocose or not, that aroused much serious and anxious
speculation in British governmental circles[129]. Moreover
Seward’s reputation was that of a wily, clever politician, rather
unscrupulous in methods which British politicians professed to
disdain–a reputation serving to dim somewhat, as indeed it did in
America also, the sincere idealisms and patriotism of the
statesman. Altogether, Seward was regarded in Great Britain as a
rather dangerous man, yet as the inevitable guiding power in the
new Republican administration.

This estimate was shared by many in the United States also, but
not by all. The new American Minister to London, Charles Francis
Adams, himself a most stiffly upright politician, both regarded
Seward as the only possible leader of Republican party policy and
rejoiced that this was so, having great confidence in his chief’s
integrity and wisdom. Adams himself was well suited to his new
post. He was known as having early in 1849 fought the battle of
anti-slavery as a “Free Soil Whig,” and later as a leading
Republican member of Congress from Massachusetts. [V1:pg 81] Principally,
however, he was suited to his post by education, family, and
character. He had been taken as a boy to Russia during his father’s
ministry at St. Petersburg, and later had been educated in England.
His father and grandfather, John Quincy Adams and John Adams, both
Presidents of the United States, had both, also, been American
Ministers at London. Intensely patriotic, but having wide
acquaintance through training and study with European affairs,
especially those of Britain, and equipped with high intellectual
gifts, Adams was still further fitted to his new post by his power
of cool judgment and careful expression in critical times. His very
coolness, sometimes appearing as coldness and stiff dignity,
rendered him an especially fit agent to deal with Russell, a man of
very similar characteristics. The two men quickly learned to
respect and esteem each other, whatever clash arose in national
policies.

But meanwhile Adams, in April, 1861, was not yet arrived in
London. The Southern Government organized at Montgomery, Alabama,
but soon transferred to Richmond, Virginia, was headed by Jefferson
Davis as President and Alexander Stephens as Vice-President.
Neither man was well known in England, though both had long been
prominent in American politics. The little British information on
Davis, that he had served in the United States Senate and as a
Cabinet member, seemed to indicate that he was better fitted to
executive duties than his rival, Lincoln. But Davis’ foreign policy
was wholly a matter for speculation, and his Cabinet consisted of
men absolutely unknown to British statesmen. In truth it was not a
Cabinet of distinction, for it was the misfortune of the South that
everywhere, as the Civil War developed, Southern gentlemen sought
reputation and glory in the army rather than in political position.
Nor did President Davis himself ever fully grasp the importance to
the South of a [V1:pg
82] well-considered and energetic foreign policy. At first,
indeed, home controversy compelled anxious attention to the
exclusion of other matters. Until war cemented Southern patriotism,
Davis, himself regarded as an extremist, felt it necessary in
denial of an asserted unreasonableness of personal attitude, to
appoint to office men known for their earlier moderate opinions on
both slavery and secession[130]. “The single exception to this general
policy[131]”
was the appointment as agents to Europe of Yancey, Rost and Mann,
all of them extreme pro-slavery men and eager secessionists. Of
these Mann was the only one with any previous diplomatic
experience. Yancey’s choice was particularly inappropriate, for he
at least was known abroad as the extreme fire-eating Southern
orator, demanding for ten years past, that Southern action in
defence of states rights and Southern “interests,” which now, at
last, the South was attempting[132].

Yancey and Rost, starting on their journey on March 16, reached
London on April 29[133]. Meanwhile in this same month of April,
conditions in America, so long confused and uncertain, were being
rapidly clarified. The South, earlier than the North, had come to a
determined policy, for while during January and February, at the
Montgomery convention, there had been uncertainty as to actively
applying the doctrinaire right of secession, by March the party of
action had triumphed, and though there was still talk of
conferences with the North, and commissioners actually appointed,
no real expectation existed of a favourable result. In the North,
the determination of policy was more slowly developed. Lincoln was
not inaugurated [V1:pg
83] until March 4, and no positive pronouncement was earlier
possible. Even after that date uncertainty still prevailed.
European correspondents were reporting men like Sumner as willing
to let the South go in peace. The Mayor of New York City was
discussing the advisability of a separate secession by that
financial centre from Nation and State alike–and of setting up as
a “free town.” Seward, just appointed Secretary of State, was
repudiating in both official and private talk any intention to
coerce the South by force of arms[134]. It is no wonder that British statesmen
were largely at sea over the American situation.

But on April 13, 1861, the Stars and Stripes floating over Fort
Sumter in Charleston harbour was lowered in surrender of a Federal
fortress under the armed attack of the newly-born Confederacy. That
event drove away as by magic the uncertainty of the North, and
removed the last vestiges of Southern doubt. A great wave of
militant patriotism swept over both sections[135]. Hurriedly both
North and South prepared for war, issuing calls for volunteers and
organizing in all accustomed warlike preparations. The news of
Sumter reached London on April 27, and that civil war seemed
certain was known on April 29. On April 17, Davis, since the South
lacked a navy, approved a proclamation offering to issue letters of
marque and reprisal. On April 19 Lincoln proclaimed a Northern
intention to treat as pirates any privateers acting under such
letters, and also gave notice of a blockade of Southern ports, to
be instituted later. Thus suddenly, so it seemed to British
officials and public after the long delay and uncertainty of
months, events in America had precipitated a state of war, though
in fact there were still to elapse other months in which both North
and South laboured to transform [V1:pg 84] a peaceful society into one capable
of waging effective battle.

The result of this sudden change in the American horizon was to
alter, almost as quickly, the previous delay in outlining a British
policy, though, presumably, the British Government, while waiting
the turn of events, had given careful consideration to the steps
required of it in just such a situation as had now arisen.
Certainly both Lyons and Russell had been deeply anxious for some
time, and had visualized a proper British policy. The movement in
Great Britain now became rapid. On April 29, Malmesbury, in the
Lords, spoke of the news of civil war which had arrived “this
morning,” and asked if the Government had tried to prevent it, or
had set on foot negotiations with other powers to check it.
Wodehouse, replying for the Government, stated that the United
States as an independent State would have resented any suggestions
from Great Britain, and that Lyons had been instructed to be
extremely careful about offering advice unless “asked for by the
contending parties themselves.” Both speakers commented on the
“ties of blood” rendering Britain especially anxious in this
American quarrel, and regretted the conflict[136]. Malmesbury’s
query as to the approach to another government, meaning France, was
evaded. That some such approach, in accordance with the earlier
advice of Lyons[137], had already been made, is evident from
the fact that three days later, on May 1, Dallas learned from
Russell of the plan of joint action with France, though what that
action would be was not made clear[138]. As Dallas’
report was soon the basis of an American complaint shortly to be
considered, the paragraph referring to this matter is
important:

“The solicitude felt by Lord John Russell as to the
effect of certain measures represented as likely to be adopted by
the President induced him to request me to call at his private
residence yesterday. I did so. He told me that the three
representatives of the Southern confederacy were here[139]; that he had
not seen them, but was not unwilling to do so, unofficially;
that there existed an understanding between this government and
that of France which would lead both to take the same course as to
recognition, whatever that course might be; and he then referred to
the rumour of a meditated blockade of Southern ports and their
discontinuance as ports of entry–topics on which I had heard
nothing. But as I informed him that Mr. Adams had apprised me of
his intention to be on his way hither, in the steamship ‘Niagara,’
which left Boston on the 1st May, and that he would probably arrive
in less than two weeks, by the 12th or 15th instant, his lordship
acquiesced in the expediency of disregarding mere rumour, and
waiting the full knowledge to be brought by my successor. The
motion, therefore, of Mr. Gregory may be further postponed, at his
lordship’s suggestion.”

May 3rd, Russell held an unofficial interview with the two
Southern commissioners in fact arrived, Yancey and Rost. As
reported by them[140], Russell listened with attention to their
representation, but made no informing comment. They argued the
constitutional right of secession, depicted the firm determination
of the South, were confident of early acquiescence by the North,
and especially laid stress on the Southern desire for free trade.
Russell’s own report to Lyons on this interview and on one held six
days later, May 9, is in substantial agreement, but much more is
made by him than by the Commissioners of a question put by Russell
as to a Southern plan of reviving the African slave-trade[141]. [V1:pg 86] Yancey and Rost
denied this and asserted “that they had prohibited the slave-trade,
and did not mean to revive it.” Their report to Richmond does not
depict this matter as of special significance in the interview;
Russell’s report to Lyons lays stress upon it. The general result
of the interview was that Russell listened, but refused, as to
Dallas, to make any pledge on recognition. But the Southern
Commissioners came away with a feeling of confidence and were
content to wait on British action[142].

On this same day, May 3, Russell received from the
Attorney-General a memorandum in reply to a query as to recognizing
the belligerency of the South and as to the right of the South to
issue letters of marque and reprisal. The memorandum notes that
Southern privateering would be dangerous to British commerce with
the North, but sees no help for it. “The best solution,” wrote the
Attorney-General, “would be for the European nations to determine
that the war between the two Confederacies shall be carried on on
the principles of ‘Justum Bellum,’ and shall be conducted according
to the rules of the Treaty of Paris. Recognize the Southern States
as a Belligerent on this condition only[143].” The next day,
referring to this memorandum, Russell wrote Lyons that the law
officers “are of opinion that we must consider the Civil War in
America as regular war[144],” but he does not comment on the
legal advice to press the South to abandon privateering before
recognizing her belligerent rights, for this is the only meaning
that can be attached to the last sentence quoted [V1:pg 87] from the
Attorney-General’s memorandum. This advice, however, in view of the
opinion that there was “no help for it,” was presumably but a
suggestion as to a possible diplomatic manoeuvre with little
confidence that it would succeed. The “best solution” was not the
probable one, for the South, without a navy, would not readily
yield its only naval weapon.

In these few days British policy was rapidly matured and
announced. The letter of May 4 to Lyons, stating the Civil War to
be a “regular war” was followed on May 6 by a formal instruction
giving Lyons advance notice of the determination reached by the
Cabinet to recognize the belligerent rights of the South. Russell
indulged in many expressions of regret and sympathy, but Lyons was
not to conceal that this British action represented the
Government’s view of the actualities of the American situation. Yet
while Lyons was not to conceal this opinion he was not instructed
to notify Seward, officially, of the recognition of Southern
belligerency[145]. Here was a correct understanding of the
difficulty of the diplomatic position at Washington, and a
permitted avoidance by Lyons of dangerous ground[146]. Russell was
not then aware of the tenacity with which Seward was to cling to a
theory, not yet clearly formulated for foreign governments, that
the Civil War was a rebellion of peoples rather than a conflict of
governments, but he does appear to have understood the delicacy of
formal notification to the constituted government at
Washington[147]. Moreover his instructions were in line
with the British policy of refusing, at present, a recognition of
Southern sovereignty.

On the same day, May 6, a copy of the instructions to Lyons was
sent to Cowley, British Ambassador at Paris, directing him to
request France to join, promptly, in recognizing Southern
belligerent rights. Cowley was also instructed that the blockade
and privateering required precautions by European governments, and
it was suggested that France and England unite in requesting both
belligerents to accede to the second and third articles of the
Declaration of Paris[148]. These articles refer to the exemption
from capture, except contraband, of enemy’s goods under a neutral
flag, and of neutral goods under an enemy’s flag[149]. This day,
also, Russell stated in Parliament that England was about to
recognize the belligerent rights of the South, and spoke of the
measure as a necessary and inevitable one. May 7, Cowley notified
Russell that Thouvenel, the French Foreign Minister, was in
complete agreement with England’s policy[150], and on May 9,
in a more extended communication, Cowley sent word of Thouvenel’s
suggestion that both powers issue a declaration that they “intended
to abstain from all interference,” and that M. de Flahault, French
Ambassador at London, had [V1:pg 89] been given instructions to act in
close harmony with Russell[151].

The rapidity of movement in formulating policy in the six days
from May 1 to May 6, seems to have taken the British public and
press somewhat by surprise, for there is a lack of newspaper
comment even after Russell’s parliamentary announcement of policy
on the last-named date. But on May 9 the Times set the
fashion of general approval in an editorial stating that Great
Britain was now coming to see the American conflict in a new
light–as a conflict where there were in fact no such ideals
involved as had been earlier attributed to it. Southern rights were
now more clearly understood, and in any case since war, though
greatly to be regretted, was now at hand, it was England’s business
to keep strictly out of it and to maintain neutrality[152]. This
generalization was no doubt satisfactory to the public, but in the
Government and in Parliament men who were thinking seriously of
specific difficulties realized that the two main problems
immediately confronting a British neutral policy were privateering
and blockade. The South had declared its intention to use
privateers. The North had declared its intention, first to
hang those who engaged in privateering, and second to establish a
blockade. Neither declaration had as yet been put into effect.

The first action of the British Government was directed toward
privateering. On May 1, Russell sent a note to the Lords
Commissioners of the Admiralty calling attention to the Southern
plan to issue letters of marque and reprisal and directing that
reinforcements be sent to the British fleet in American waters.
This was prompt action on unofficial information, for Davis’
proclamation bore date of April 17, and Lyons’ despatch containing
copies of it, [V1:pg
90] sent on April 22, was not received by Russell until May
10[153].
Ordinary news from the United States required ten days to get into
print in London[154], but official messages might be sent more
rapidly by way of telegraph to Halifax, thence by steamer to
Liverpool and by telegraph again to London. In case the telegram to
Halifax coincided with the departure of a fast vessel the time was
occasionally reduced to seven days, but never less. At the best the
exact information as to the contents of the Davis and Lincoln
proclamations of April 17 and 19 respectively, could have been
received only a few days before the order was issued to reinforce
the British fleet.

Photo: F. Hollyer.
SIR WILLIAM GREGORY, K.C.M.G.
(From Lady Gregory’s “Sir William Gregory, K.C.M.G.: An
Autobiography,” by kind permission)

The next day, May 2, Ewart, in the Commons, asked “if Privateers
sailing under the flag of an unrecognized Power will be dealt with
as Pirates,” thus showing the immediate parliamentary concern at
the Davis and Lincoln proclamations. Russell stated in reply that a
British fleet had been sent to protect British interests and took
occasion to indicate British policy by adding, “we have not been
involved in any way in that contest by any act or giving any advice
in the matter, and, for God’s sake, let us if possible keep out of
it[155].” May
6, Gregory, a friend of the [V1:pg 91] South, who had already given notice
of a motion for the recognition of the Confederacy as an
independent State, asked whether the United States had been
informed that a blockade of Southern ports would not be recognized
unless effective, and whether there would be acquiescence in the
belligerent right of the South to issue letters of marque and
reprisal[156]. Russell replied that Lincoln had
not been informed that a blockade must be effective to be
respected since the Washington Government did not need to be told
of an international rule which it had itself long proclaimed. As to
the second point, he now announced what heretofore had not been
clearly stated, that Southern privateers could not be regarded by
Great Britain as pirates, for if so regarded Britain would herself
have to treat them as pirates and would thus be unneutral. This was
in fact, in spite of Northern bitter accusations that Britain was
exhibiting governmental sympathy with the South by her tolerance of
the plan of Southern privateering, an inescapable conclusion.
Russell added, however, that the matter of privateering involved
some new questions under the Declaration of Paris upon which the
Government had not yet decided what stand to take[157]. It was on this
same day, in fact, that Russell had instructed Cowley to take up
with France the question of the Declaration of Paris[158], [V1:pg 92] Privateering and
blockade, declared in America months before there was any
possibility of putting them into effect, and months before there
were any military operations in the field, forced this rapid
European action, especially the action of Great Britain, which,
more than any other European nation, feared belligerent
interference with her carrying and export trade. How was the
British Government to know that Davis would not bend every energy
in sending out privateers, and Lincoln to establish a blockade? The
respective declarations of Davis and Lincoln were the first
evidences offered of belligerent status. It was reasonable to
assume that here would come the first energetic efforts of the
belligerents. Nor was British governmental intelligence
sufficiently informed to be aware that Davis, in fact, controlled
few ships that could be fitted out as privateers, or that
two-thirds of the Northern navy was at the moment widely scattered
in foreign seas, making impossible a prompt blockade.

To the British view the immediate danger to its commercial
interests lay in this announced maritime war, and it felt the
necessity of defining its neutral position with speed. The
underlying fact of the fixity of Southern [V1:pg 93] determination to
maintain secession had in the last few weeks become clearly
recognized.

Moreover the latest information sent by British officials in
America, some of it received just before the issue of the
Proclamation of Neutrality, some just after, was all confirmative
of the rapid approach of a great war. A letter from Bunch, at
Charleston, was received on May 10, depicting the united Southern
will to resist Northern attack, and asserting that the South had no
purpose save to conduct a strictly defensive war. Bunch was no
longer caustic; he now felt that a new nation was in process of
birth[159].
May 4, Monson, writing from Washington, and just returned from a
trip through the South, in the course of which he had visited
Montgomery, stated “no reconstruction of the Union is
possible,” and added that there was no danger of a servile
insurrection, a matter that now somewhat began to disturb the
British Government and public[160]. A few days later on, May 12, Lyons
expressed his strong sympathy with the North for reasons of
anti-slavery, law, and race, but added that he shrank from
expressions of sympathy for fear of thus encouraging the Northern
Cabinet in its plan of prosecuting civil war since such a war would
be frightful in its consequences both to America and to
England[161].

Such reports if received before the issue of the Proclamation
[V1:pg 94] of
Neutrality must have strengthened the feeling that prompt action
was necessary; if received later, they gave confidence that that
action had been wise. May 9, Forster asked in the Commons a series
of questions as to the application of the British Foreign
Enlistment Act in the American crisis. What would be the status of
British citizens serving on Confederate privateers? How would the
Government treat citizens who aided in equipping such privateers?
Did not the Government intend to take measures to prevent the
infringement of law in British ports? Here was pressure by a friend
of the North to hasten an official announcement of the policy
already notified to Parliament. Sir George Lewis replied stating
that the Government was about to issue a general proclamation
warning British subjects not to take any part in the war[162]. Similar
questions were asked by Derby in the Lords on May 10, and received
a similar answer[163]. The few days’ delay following Russell’s
statement of May 6 was due to consideration given by the Law
Officers to the exact form required. The Proclamation as issued was
dated May 13, and was officially printed in the London
Gazette on May 14.

In form and in substance the Proclamation of Neutrality did not
differ from customary usage[164]. It spoke of the Confederacy as “states
styling themselves the Confederate States of America,” prohibited
to Englishmen enlistment on either side, or efforts to enlist
others, or equipment of ships of war, or delivery of commissions to
such ships. War vessels being equipped in British ports would be
seized and forfeited to the British Government. If a belligerent
[V1:pg 95]
war-ship came into a British port, no change or increase of
equipment was to be permitted. If a subject violated the
Proclamation he was both punishable in British courts and forfeited
any claim to British protection. The Parliamentary discussion on
May 16 brought out more clearly and in general unanimity of opinion
the policy of the Government in application of the Proclamation;
the South was definitely recognized as a belligerent, but
recognition of independence was for the future to determine; the
right of the South to send out privateers was regretfully
recognized; such privateers could not be regarded as pirates and
the North would have no right to treat them as such, but if the
North in defiance of international opinion did so treat them, Great
Britain had at least warned its subjects that they, if engaged in
service on a Southern privateer, had no claim to British
protection; a blockade of the South to be respected must be
effective at least to the point where a vessel attempting to pass
through was likely to be captured; the plan of blockading the
entire Southern coast, with its three thousand miles of coast line,
was on the face of it ridiculous–evidence that Members of
Parliament were profoundly ignorant of the physical geography of
the Southern seaboard[165].

The Parliamentary discussion did not reveal any partiality for
one side in the American quarrel above the other. It turned wholly
on legal questions and their probable application. On May 15
Russell sent to Lyons the official text of the Proclamation, but
did not instruct him to communicate it officially to Seward,
leaving this rather to Lyons’ discretion. This was discretionary in
diplomatic usage since in strict fact the Proclamation was
addressed to British subjects and need not be communicated
officially to the belligerents. In the result the discretion
permitted to Lyons had, an important bearing, for recognition of
[V1:pg 96]
Southern belligerency was opposed to the theory upon which the
Northern Government was attempting to proceed. Lyons did not then,
or later, make official communication to Seward of the
Proclamation[166]. The fact soon appeared that the United
States seriously objected to the Proclamation of Neutrality,
protesting first, its having been issued at all, and, in the second
place, resenting what was considered its “premature” announcement
by a friendly nation. This matter developed so serious a criticism
by both American Government and public, both during and after the
Civil War, that it requires a close examination. Did the British
Government exhibit an unfriendly attitude toward the North by a
“premature” Proclamation of Neutrality?

On May 13 the new American Minister landed at Liverpool, and on
the morning of the fourteenth he was “ready for business” in
London[167],
but the interview with Russell arranged for that day by Dallas was
prevented by the illness of Russell’s brother, the Duke of
Bedford[168].
All that was immediately possible was to make official notification
of arrival and to secure the customary audience with the Queen.
This was promptly arranged, and on May 16 Adams was presented,
Palmerston attending in the enforced absence of Russell. Adams’
first report to Seward was therefore brief, merely noting that
public opinion was “not exactly what we would wish.” In this
[V1:pg 97] he
referred to the utterances of the press, particularly those of the
Times, which from day to day and with increasing vigour
sounded the note of strict neutrality in a “non-idealistic” war. On
May 30 the Times, asserting that both parties in America
were bidding for English support, summed up public opinion as
follows:

“We have been told, in fact, by Northern politicians,
that it does not become us to be indifferent, and by Southern
leaders that they are half inclined to become British once more.
Both sides are bidding for us, and both sides have their partisans
over here. On such perilous ground we cannot walk too warily.

“For our own part, we are free to confess that the march of events
has induced us to regard the dispute as a more commonplace kind of
quarrel than it at first appeared to be. The real motives of the
belligerents, as the truth transpires; appear to be exactly such
motives as have caused wars in all times and countries. They are
essentially selfish motives–that is to say, they are based upon
speculations of national power, territorial aggrandizement,
political advantage, and commercial gain. Neither side can claim
any superiority of principle, or any peculiar purity of
patriotism….

“We certainly cannot discover in these arguments anything to remove
the case from the common category of national or monarchical
quarrels. The representations of the North might be made word for
word by any autocrat or conqueror desirous of ‘rectifying’ his
frontier, consolidating his empire, or retaining a disaffected
province in subjection. The manifestos of the South might be put
forth by any State desirous of terminating an unpleasant connexion
or exchanging union for independence….

“It is just such a question as has been left times out of mind in
this Old World to the decision of the sword. The sword will be the
arbitrator in the New World too; but the event teaches us plainly
enough that Republics and Democracies enjoy no exemption from the
passions and follies of humanity.”

Under these impressions Adams presented himself [V1:pg 98] on May 18 for his
first interview with Russell[169]. He stated that he had come with the idea
that there was

“…. little to do beyond the duty of preserving the
relations actually existing between the two nations from the risk
of being unfavourably affected by the unfortunate domestic
disturbances prevailing in my own country. It was not without pain
that I was compelled to admit that from the day of my arrival I had
felt in the proceedings of both houses of Parliament, in the
language of Her Majesty’s ministers, and in the tone of opinion
prevailing in private circles, more of uncertainty about this than
I had before thought possible,”

Adams then inquired whether the replies given by Russell to
Dallas refusing to indicate a policy as to recognition of the South
implied a British purpose “to adopt a policy which would have the
effect to widen, if not to make irreparable, a breach [between
North and South] which we believed yet to be entirely manageable by
ourselves.”

Russell here replied that “there was no such intention”; he had
simply meant to say to Dallas that the British Government “were not
disposed in any way to interfere.” To this Adams answered that:

“…. it was deserving of grave consideration whether
great caution was not to be used in adopting any course that might,
even in the most indirect way, have an effect to encourage the
hopes of the disaffected in America…. It was in this view that I
must be permitted to express the great regret I had felt on
learning the decision to issue the Queen’s proclamation, which at
once raised the insurgents to the level of a belligerent State, and
still more the language used in regard to it by Her Majesty’s
ministers in both houses of Parliament before and since. Whatever
might be the design, there could be no shadow of doubt that the
effect of these events had been to encourage the friends of the
disaffected here. The tone of the press and of private opinion
indicated it strongly.”

Russell’s answer was that Adams was placing more stress on
recent events than they deserved. The Government had taken the
advice of the Law Officers and as a result had concluded that “as a
question merely of fact, a war existed…. Under such
circumstances

it seemed scarcely possible to avoid speaking of this
in the technical sense as justum bellum, that is, a war of
two sides, without in any way implying an opinion of its justice,
as well as to withhold an endeavour, so far as possible, to bring
the management of it within the rules of modern civilized warfare.
This was all that was contemplated by the Queen’s proclamation. It
was designed to show the purport of existing laws, and to explain
to British subjects their liabilities in case they should engage in
the war.”

To this Adams answered “… that under other circumstances

I should be very ready to give my cheerful assent to
this view of his lordship’s. But I must be permitted frankly to
remark that the action taken seemed, at least to my mind, a little
more rapid than was absolutely called for by the occasion…. And
furthermore, it pronounced the insurgents to be a belligerent State
before they had ever shown their capacity to maintain any kind of
warfare whatever, except within one of their own harbours, and
under every possible advantage. It considered them a marine power
before they had ever exhibited a single privateer on the ocean….
The rule was very clear, that whenever it became apparent that any
organized form of society had advanced so far as to prove its power
to defend and protect itself against the assaults of enemies, and
at the same time to manifest a capacity to maintain binding
relations with foreign nations, then a measure of recognition could
not be justly objected to on any side. The case was very different
when such an interference should take place, prior to the
establishment of the proof required, as to bring about a result
which would not probably have happened but for that external
agency.”

This representation by the American Minister, thus [V1:pg 100] early made,
contains the whole argument advanced against the British
Proclamation of Neutrality, though there were many similar
representations made at greater length both by Adams later, and by
Seward at Washington. They are all well summarized by Bernard as “a
rejection … of the proposition that the existence of war is a
simple matter of fact, to be ascertained as other facts are–and an
assertion … of the dogma that there can be no war, so far as
foreign nations are concerned, and, therefore, no neutrality, so
long as there is a sovereignty de jure[170].” But in this
first representation Adams, in the main, laid stress upon the
haste with which the Proclamation of Neutrality had been
issued, and, by inference, upon the evidence that British
sympathies were with the South.

One British journal was, indeed, at this very moment voicing
exactly those opinions advanced by Adams. The Spectator
declared that while the Proclamation, on the face of it, appeared
to be one of strict neutrality, it in reality tended “directly to
the benefit of the South[171].” A fortnight later this paper asserted,
“The quarrel, cover it with cotton as we may, is between freedom
and slavery, right and wrong, the dominion of God and the dominion
of the Devil, and the duty of England, we submit, is clear.” She
should, even though forced to declare her neutrality, refuse for
all time to recognize the slave-holding Confederacy[172]. But the
Spectator stood nearly alone in this view. The Saturday
Review defended in every respect the issue of the Proclamation
and added, “In a short time, it will be necessary further to
recognize the legitimacy of the Southern Government; but the United
States have a right to require that the acknowledgment shall be
postponed until the failure of the effort [V1:pg 101] which they
assert or believe that they are about to make has resulted in an
experimental proof that subjugation is impossible[173].” A few
provincial papers supported the view of the Spectator, but
they were of minor importance, and generally the press heartily
approved the Proclamation.

At the time of Adams’ interview with Russell on May 18 he has
just received an instruction from Seward written under the
impression aroused by Dallas’ report of Russell’s refusal on April
8 to make any pledge as to British policy on the recognition of
Southern independence. Seward was very much disturbed by what
Russell had said to Dallas. In this instruction, dated April
27[174], he
wrote:

“When you shall have read the instructions at large
which have been sent to you, you will hardly need to be told that
these last remarks of his lordship are by no means satisfactory to
this government. Her Britannic Majesty’s government is at liberty
to choose whether it will retain the friendship of this government
by refusing all aid and comfort to its enemies, now in flagrant
rebellion against it, as we think the treaties existing between the
two countries require, or whether the government of Her Majesty
will take the precarious benefits of a different course.

“You will lose no time in making known to Her Britannic
Majesty’s Government that the President regards the answer of his
lordship as possibly indicating a policy that this government would
be obliged to deem injurious to its rights and derogating from its
dignity.”

Having promptly carried out these instructions, as he understood
them, Adams soon began to report an improved British attitude, and
especially in the Government, stating that this improvement was
due, in part, to the vigour now being shown by the Northern
Government, in part “to a sense that the preceding action of Her
Majesty’s ministers has been construed to mean more than they
[V1:pg 102]
intended by it[175].” But at Washington the American
irritation was not so easily allayed. Lyons was reporting Seward
and, indeed, the whole North, as very angry with the Proclamation
of Neutrality[176]. On June 14, Lyons had a long
conversation with Seward in which the latter stubbornly denied that
the South could possess any belligerent rights. Lyons left the
conference feeling that Seward was trying to divide France and
England on this point, and Lyons was himself somewhat anxious
because France was so long delaying her own Proclamation[177]. To meet the
situation, he and Mercier, the French Minister, went the next day,
June 15, on an official visit to Seward with the intention of
formally presenting the British Proclamation and Thouvenel’s
instructions to Mercier to support it[178]. But Seward
“said at once that he could not receive from us a communication
founded on the assumption that

the Southern Rebels were to be regarded as
Belligerents; that this was a determination to which the Cabinet
had come deliberately; that he could not admit that recent events
had in any respect altered the relations between Foreign Powers and
the Southern States; that he would not discuss the question with
us, but that he should give instructions to the United States
Ministers in London and Paris who would thus be enabled to state
the reasons for the course taken by their Government to Your
Lordship and to M. Thouvenel, if you should be desirous to hear
them…. He should not take Official cognizance of the recognition
of the Belligerent Rights of Southern Rebels by Great Britain and
France, unless he should be forced to do so by an Official
communication addressed to the Government of the United States
itself.”

In the result the two Ministers submitted their papers to Seward
“for his own use only.” They did not regard the moment well chosen
“to be punctilious.” Lyons reported that Seward’s language and
demeanour throughout the interview were “calm, friendly, and good
humoured,” but the fact remained that the United States had not
been officially notified of the Proclamation of Neutrality, and
that the American Government, sensitive to popular excitement in
the matter and committed to the theory of a rebellion of peoples,
was thus left free to continue argument in London without any
necessity of making formal protest and of taking active steps to
support such protest[179]. The official relation was eased by the
conciliatory acquiescence of Lyons. The public anger of America,
expressed in her newspapers, astonished the British press and,
temporarily, made them more careful in comment on American affairs.
The Times told its readers to keep cool. “It is plain that
the utmost care and circumspection must be used by every man or
party in England to avoid giving offence to either of the two
incensed belligerents[180].” In answer to the Northern outcry at the
lack of British sympathy, [V1:pg 104] it declared “Neutrality–strict
neutrality–is all that the United States Government can
claim[181].”

While the burden of American criticism was thus directed toward
the British recognition of Southern belligerency, there were two
other matters of great moment to the American view–the attitude of
the British Government toward Southern privateers, and the hearing
given by Russell to the Confederate envoys. On the former, Seward,
on May 21, wrote to Adams: “As to the treatment of privateers in
the insurgent service, you will say that this is a question
exclusively our own. We treat them as pirates. They are our own
citizens, or persons employed by our own citizens, preying on the
commerce of our country. If Great Britain shall choose to recognize
them as lawful belligerents and give them shelter from our pursuit
and punishment, the law of nations affords an adequate and proper
remedy[182].”
This was threatening language, but was for Adams’ own eye, and in
the next sentence of his letter Seward stated that avoidance of
friction on this point was easy, since in 1856 Great Britain had
invited the United States to adhere to the Declaration of Paris
everywhere abolishing privateering, and to this the United States
was now ready to accede.

What Seward really meant to accomplish by this was not made
clear for the question of privateering did not constitute the main
point of his belligerent letter of May 21. In fact the proposed
treatment of privateers as pirates might have resulted in very
serious complications, for though the Proclamation of Neutrality
had warned British subjects that they would forfeit any claim to
protection if they engaged in the conflict, it is obvious that the
hanging as a pirate of a British seaman would have aroused a
national outcry almost certain to have forced the Government into
[V1:pg 105]
protest and action against America. Fortunately the cooler judgment
of the United States soon led to quiet abandonment of the plan of
treating privateers as pirates, while on the other point of giving
“shelter” to Confederate privateers Seward himself received from
Lyons assurance, even before Adams had made a protest, that no such
shelter would be available in British ports[183].

In this same letter of May 21 Seward, writing of the rumour that
the Southern envoys were to be received by Russell “unofficially,”
instructed Adams that he must use efforts to stop this and that:
“You will, in any event, desist from all intercourse whatever,
unofficial as well as official, with the British Government, so
long as it shall continue intercourse of either kind with the
domestic enemies of this country.” Here was a positive instruction
as to the American Minister’s conduct in a given situation, and a
very serious instruction, nearly equivalent to “taking leave” after
a rupture of diplomatic relations, but the method to be used in
avoiding if possible the necessity of the serious step was left to
Adams’ discretion. Well might Adams’ comment, when reporting the
outcome, that this was the “most delicate portion of my
task[184].”
Adams again went over with Russell the suspicion as to British
intentions aroused in America by the Queen’s Proclamation, but
added that he had not been able to convince himself of the
existence of an unfriendly design. “But it was not to be disguised
that the fact of the continued stay of the pseudo-commissioners in
this city, and still more the knowledge that they had been admitted
to more or less interviews with his lordship, was calculated to
excite uneasiness. Indeed, it had already given great
dissatisfaction to my [V1:pg 106] Government. I added, as
moderately as I could, that in all frankness any further
protraction of this relation could scarcely fail to be viewed by us
as hostile in spirit, and to require some corresponding action
accordingly.” Russell replied that both France and England had long
been accustomed to receive such persons unofficially, as in the
case of “Poles, Hungarians, Italians, etc.,” to hear what they had
to say. “But this did not imply recognition in their case any more
than in ours. He added that he had seen the gentlemen once some
time ago, and once more some time since; he had no expectation of
seeing them any more[185].”

For the moment, then, a matter which under Seward’s instructions
might have brought on a serious crisis was averted by the tact of
Adams and the acquiescence of Russell. Yet no pledge had been
given; Russell merely stated that he had “no expectation” of
further interviews with the Southern commissioners; he was still
ready to hear from them in writing. This caused a division of
opinion between the commissioners; Yancey argued that Russell’s
concession to Adams was itself a violation of the neutrality the
British Government had announced, and that it should be met by a
formal protest. But the other members insisted on a reference to
Richmond for instructions[186]. On the same day that Adams reported the
result to Seward he wrote privately to his son in Boston:

“My position here thus far has not been difficult or
painful. If I had followed the course of some of my colleagues in
the diplomatic line, this country might have been on the high road
to the confederate camp before now. It did not seem to me to be
expedient so to play into the hands of our opponents. Although
there has been and is more or less of sympathy with the
slave-holders in certain circles, they are not so powerful as to
overbear the general sentiment of the people. The ministry has been
placed in rather delicate circumstances, when a small loss of power
on either extreme would have thrown them out[187].”

In Adams’ opinion the Liberals were on the whole more friendly,
at least, to the North than were the Conservatives, and he
therefore considered it best not to press too harshly upon the
Government.

But the concluding sentence of this same letter was significant:
“I wait with patience–but as yet I have not gone so far as to
engage a house for more than a month at a time….” He might
himself be inclined to view more leniently the Proclamation of
Neutrality and be able to find excuses for the alleged haste with
which it had been issued, but his instructions required strong
representations, especially on the latter point. Adams’ report to
Seward of June 14, just noted, on the interview with Russell of
June 12, after treating of privateering and the Southern
commissioners, turns in greater length to the alleged pledge of
delay given by Russell to Dallas, and to the violation of that
pledge in a hasty issue of the Proclamation. He renews attack on
the line already taken on May 18[188]. From this time on, throughout and after
the war, this criticism was repeatedly made and with increasing
bitterness. British friends of the North joined in the American
outcry. [V1:pg
108] By mere reiteration it became in the popular mind on
both sides of the Atlantic an accepted and well-founded evidence of
British governmental unfriendliness in May, 1861. At the conclusion
of the Civil War, John Bright in Parliament, commenting on the
causes of American ill-will, declared that the Government of 1861,
knowing that Adams was on his way, should in mere courtesy, have
waited his arrival. Then, said Bright, the Proclamation, entirely
justifiable in itself, might have been issued without offence and
without embittering the United States[189].

Had in fact a “pledge to wait” been given to Dallas; and was the
Proclamation hasty and premature? Russell always denied he had
given any such pledge, and the text of Dallas’ report of the
interview of May 1 would seem to support that denial[190]. On that day
Russell for the second time told Dallas that England would not
commit herself, as yet, as regards Southern recognition, clearly
meaning a recognition of sovereignty, not of belligerency,
and immediately asked Dallas what the rumours of a blockade meant.
Dallas replied that he had no information on this point, and
Russell “acquiesced in the expediency of disregarding mere rumour,
and waiting the full knowledge to be brought by my successor. The
motion, therefore, of Mr. Gregory may be further postponed, at his
lordship’s suggestion.”

The unprejudiced interpretation of this report is merely that
Russell refrained from pressing Dallas about a matter–blockade–of
which Dallas knew nothing, agreeing that this would be explained by
Adams, and especially that he let Dallas understand that Gregory’s
motion, which was one for recognizing the independence and
sovereignty of the South, would be postponed. If there was a
pledge here it was a pledge not to recognize Southern sovereignty
until after Adams’ arrival.

But even if there was no promise of delay “there can be no
question,” writes the son of Adams in a brief biography of his
father, “that the proclamation of the 13th was issued with unseemly
haste…. The purpose was manifest. It was to have the status of
the Confederacy as a belligerent an accomplished fact before the
arrival of the newly accredited minister. This precipitate action
was chiefly significant as indicating an animus; that animus being
really based on … the belief, already matured into a conviction,
that the full recognition of the Confederacy as an independent
power was merely a question of time, and probably of a very short
time[191].”
The author does not, however, support the contemporary American
contention that any Proclamation was contrary to
international custom and that no recognition of belligerent status
was permissible to neutrals until the “insurgents” had forced the
mother country itself to recognize the division as fully
accomplished, even while war still continued. Indeed American
practice was flatly contradictory of the argument, as in the very
pertinent example of the petty Canadian rebellion of 1837, when
President Van Buren had promptly issued a proclamation of
neutrality. It is curious that in his several replies to Seward’s
complaints Russell did not quote a letter from Stevenson, the
American Minister to London, addressed to Palmerston, May 22, 1838.
Stevenson was demanding disavowal and disapproval of the “Caroline”
affair, and incidentally he asserted as an incontrovertible
principle “that civil wars are not distinguished from other wars,
as to belligerent and neutral rights; that they stand upon the same
ground, and are governed by the same principles; that whenever
[V1:pg 110] a
portion of a State seek by force of arms to overthrow the
Government, and maintain independence, the contest becomes one
de facto of war[192].” This was as exact, and correct, a
statement of the British view as could have been desired[193].

The American Minister, whatever his official representation, did
not then hold, privately, the view of “unfriendly animus.” On July
2, 1861, his secretary son wrote: “The English are really on our
side; of that I have no doubt whatever. [Later he was less sure of
this.] But they thought that as a dissolution seemed inevitable and
as we seemed to have made up our minds to it, that their
Proclamation was just the thing to keep them straight with both
sides, and when it turned out otherwise they did their best to
correct their mistake[194].” The modern historical judgment of the
best American writers likewise exonerates the British Government of
“unfriendly animus[195],” but is still apt to refer to the
“premature” issue of the Proclamation.

This was also John Bright’s view. But can Russell and the
Government be criticized even as exercising an unwise (not
unfriendly) haste? Henry Adams wrote that the British thought the
“dissolution seemed inevitable” and “we seemed to have made up our
minds to it.” Certainly this was a justifiable conclusion from the
events in America from Lincoln’s election in November, 1860, to his
inauguration in March, 1861–and even to a later date, almost in
[V1:pg 111]
fact to the first week in April. During this period the British
Ministry preserved a strictly “hands off” policy. Then, suddenly,
actual conflict begins and at once each side in America issues
declarations, Davis on privateering, Lincoln on blockade and
piracy, indicative that maritime war, the form of war at
once most dangerous to British interests and most likely to draw in
British citizens, was the method first to be tried by the
contestants. Unless these declarations were mere bluff and bluster
England could not dare wait their application. She must at once
warn her citizens and make clear her position as a neutral. The
Proclamation was no effort “to keep straight with both sides”; it
was simply the natural, direct, and prompt notification to British
subjects required in the presence of a de facto war.

Moreover, merely as a matter of historical speculation, it was
fortunate that the Proclamation antedated the arrival of Adams. The
theory of the Northern administration under which the Civil War was
begun and concluded was that a portion of the people of the United
States were striving as “insurgents” to throw off their allegiance,
and that there could be no recognition of any Southern
Government in the conflict. In actual practice in war, the
exchange of prisoners and like matters, this theory had soon to be
discarded. Yet it was a far-seeing and wise theory nevertheless in
looking forward to the purely domestic and constitutional problem
of the return to the Union, when conquered, of the sections in
rebellion. This, unfortunately, was not clear to foreign nations,
and it necessarily complicated relations with them. Yet under that
theory Adams had to act. Had he arrived before the Proclamation of
Neutrality it is difficult to see how he could have proceeded
otherwise than to protest, officially, against any British
declaration of neutrality, declaring that his Government did not
acknowledge a state of war as existing, and threatening
[V1:pg 112] to
take his leave. It would have been his duty to prevent, if
possible, the issue of the Proclamation. Dallas, fortunately, had
been left uninformed and uninstructed. Adams, fortunately, arrived
too late to prevent and had, therefore, merely to complain. The
“premature” issue of the Proclamation averted an inevitable rupture
of relations on a clash between the American theory of “no state of
war” and the international fact that war existed. Had that rupture
occurred, how long would the British Government and people have
remained neutral, and what would have been the ultimate fate of the
United States[196]?

FOOTNOTES:

[127] Sir George Cornewall Lewis was better
informed in the early stages of the American conflict than any of
his ministerial colleagues. He was an occasional contributor to the
reviews and his unsigned article in the Edinburgh, April,
1861, on “The Election of President Lincoln and its Consequences,”
was the first analysis of real merit in any of the
reviews.

[128] In his Memoirs of an Ex-Minister,
Malmesbury makes but three important references to the Civil War in
America.

[129] Adams, Charles Francis Adams, p.
165.

[130] Dodd, Jefferson Davis, pp.
227-8.

[131] Ibid.

[132] It was generally whispered in Southern
political circles that Davis sent Yancey abroad to get rid of him,
fearing his interference at home. If true, this is further evidence
of Davis’ neglect of foreign policy.

[133] Du Bose, Yancey, p.
604.

[134] Adams, Charles Francis Adams, pp.
149-51.

[135] Possibly the best concise statement of the
effect on the North is given in Carl Schurz, Reminiscences,
Vol. II, p. 223. Or see my citation of this in The Power of
Ideals in American History, ch. I, “Nationality.”

[136] Hansard, 3rd. Ser., Vol. CLXII, pp.
1207-9.

[137] See ante, p. 60.

[138] U.S. Messages and Documents,
1861-62, pp. 83-4. Dallas to Seward, May 2, 1862.

[139] An error. Mann did not arrive in London
until May 15. Du Bose, Yancey, p. 604.

[140] Richardson, Messages and Papers of the
Confederacy, Vol. II, p. 34. This report also shows that Mann
was not present at the first interview with Russell.

[141] F.O., America, Vol. 755, No. 128, Russell
to Lyons, May 11, 1861. This document is marked “Seen by Lord
Palmerston and the Queen.” The greater and essential part has been
printed in Parliamentary Papers, 1862, Lords, Vol. XXV.
“Correspondence on Civil War in United States.” No.
33.

[142] Du Bose, Yancey, p.
604.

[143] Lyons Papers. The copy of the Memorandum
sent to Lyons is undated, but from Russell’s letter to Lyons of May
4, in which it was enclosed, it is presumable that the date of May
3 for the Memorandum is correct.

[144] Ibid., Russell to Lyons, May 4,
1861.

[145] F.O., Am., Vol. 755, No. 121, Russell to
Lyons, May 6, 1861.

[146] It is to be remembered that the United
States had given no notice of the existence of a state of
war.

[147] In diplomatic usage official notification
of neutrality to a belligerent has varied, but Russell’s letters
show him to have appreciated a peculiar delicacy here.

[148] F.O., France, Vol. 1376, No. 553. Draft.
Printed in Parliamentary Papers, 1862, Lords, Vol.
XXV. “Correspondence on International Maritime Law.” No.
1.

[149] It is interesting that on this same day
Lyons was writing from Washington advocating, regretfully, because
of his sympathy with the North, a strict British neutrality:

“The sympathies of an Englishman are naturally
inclined
towards the North–but I am afraid we should find that
anything like a quasi alliance with the men in office here
would place us in a position which would soon become
untenable. There would be no end to the exactions which they
would make upon us, there would be no end to the disregard of
our neutral rights, which they would show if they once felt
sure of us. If I had the least hope of their being able to
reconstruct the Union, or even of their being able to reduce
the South to the condition of a tolerably contented or at all
events obedient dependency, my feeling against Slavery might
lead me to desire to co-operate with them. But I conceive all
chance of this to be gone for ever.”

Russell Papers. Lyons to Russell, May 6, 1861.

[150] F.O., France, Vol. 1390. No.
677.

[151] Ibid., No. 684. Printed in part in
Parliamentary Papers, 1862, Lords, Vol. XXV. “Correspondence
on International Maritime Law.” No. 3.

[152] Times, May 9, 1861.

[153] Parliamentary Papers, 1862,
Lords, Vol. XXV. “Correspondence on Civil War in the United
States.” No. 31.

[154] So stated by the Times, May 9,
1861.

[155] Hansard, 3rd. Ser., Vol. CLXII, pp.
1378-9. This blunt expression of Great Britain’s Foreign Secretary
offers an interesting comparison with the words of the American
President Wilson, in a parallel statement at the outbreak of the
Great War in 1914. Wilson on August 3, 1914, gave a special
audience to newspaper correspondents, begging them to maintain an
attitude of calm impartiality. On August 4 he issued the first of
several neutrality proclamations in which, following the customary
language of such documents, the people were notified that
neutrality did not restrict the “full and free expression of
sympathies in public and in private.” But on August 18 in an
address to the people of the United States, this legal phraseology,
required by traditional usage was negatived by Wilson’s appeal that
“we must be impartial in thought as well as in action, must put a
curb upon our sentiments as well as upon every transaction that
might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle
before another.” And three weeks later, on September 8, came the
proclamation setting aside October 4 “as a day of prayer to
Almighty God,” informing Him that war existed and asking His
intervention. Possibly Russell’s more blunt and pithy expression
was better suited to the forthrightness of the British
public.

[156] Hansard, ibid., pp. 1564-7.
Gregory, a “Liberal-Conservative,” though never a “good party man”
was then supporting Palmerston’s ministry. He was very popular in
Parliament, representing by his prominence in sport and society
alike, the “gentleman ruling class” of the House of Commons, and
was a valuable influence for the South.

[157] This subject is developed at length in
Chapter V on “The Declaration of Paris Negotiation.”

[158] See ante, p. 88. The chronology of
these rapidly succeeding events is interesting:

  April 29–Malmesbury states in the Lords that “news was
received
    this day.”
  May 1–Naval reinforcements sent to American
waters.
  May 1–Russell’s interview with Dallas.
  May 2–Russell’s plea in Parliament, “For God’s sake
keep out of
    it.”
  May 3–Russell’s first interview with Yancey and
Rost.
  May 3–Attorney-General’s memorandum.
  May 4–Russell’s note to Lyons that this is a “regular
war.”
  May 6–Cowley instructed to ask France to recognize
Southern
    belligerency.
  May 6–Lyons notified that England will recognize
Southern belligerency.
  May 6–Russell states in Parliament that privateers can
not be
    treated as pirates.
    [Presumably, since parliamentary sittings begin
in the late
      afternoons, the instructions to
diplomats were drawn before
      the statement in Parliament.]
  May 9–Russell’s second interview with Yancey and
Rost.
  May 9–Sir George Lewis announces that a Proclamation
of Neutrality
    will be issued soon.
  May 13–The Proclamation authorized.
  May 13–Adams reaches Liverpool.
  May 14–The Proclamation officially published in the
London Gazette.
  May 14–Adams in London “ready for business.”

It would appear that Russell’s expressions in Parliament on May 2
indicated clearly the purpose of the Government. This was notified
to Lyons on May 4, which may be taken as the date when the
governmental position had become definitely fixed, even though
official instructions were not sent Lyons until the
6th.

[159] F.O., Am., Vol. 780, No. 50. Bunch to
Russell, April 19, 1861.

[160] F.O., Am., 789, Monson to Alston, received
May 21.

[161] F.O., Am., 763, No. 197, Lyons to Russell,
received May 26. The full statement is:

“To an Englishman, sincerely interested in the welfare
of
this country, the present state of things is peculiarly
painful. Abhorrence of slavery, respect for law, more
complete community of race and language, enlist his
sympathies on the side of the North. On the other hand, he
cannot but reflect that any encouragement to the predominant
war feeling in the North cannot but be injurious to both
sections of the country. The prosecution of the war can lead
only to the exhaustion of the North by an expenditure of life
and money on an enterprise in which success and failure would
be alike disastrous. It must tend to the utter devastation of
the South. It would at all events occasion a suspension of
Southern cultivation which would be calamitous even more to
England than to the Northern States themselves.”

[162] Hansard, 3rd. Ser., CLXII, p.
1763.

[163] Ibid., pp. 1830-34. In the general
discussion in the Lords there appeared disagreement as to the
status of privateering. Granville, Derby, and Brougham, spoke of it
as piracy. Earl Hardwicke thought privateering justifiable. The
general tone of the debate, though only on this matter of
international practice, was favourable to the North.

[164] For example see Hertslet, Map of Europe
by Treaty, Vol. I, p. 698, for the Proclamation issued in 1813
during the Spanish-American colonial revolutions.

[165] Hansard, 3rd. Ser., CLXII, pp.
2077-2088.

[166] Parliamentary Papers, 1862,
Lords, Vol. XXV, “Correspondence on Civil War in the United
States.” No. 35. Russell to Lyons, May 15, 1861. Another reason for
Lyons’ precaution was that while his French colleague, Mercier, had
been instructed to support the British Proclamation, no official
French Proclamation was issued until June 10, and Lyons, while he
trusted Mercier, felt that this French delay needed some
explanation. Mercier told Seward, unofficially, of his instructions
and even left a copy of them, but at Seward’s request made no
official communication. Lyons, later, followed the same procedure.
This method of dealing with Seward came to be a not unusual one,
though it irritated both the British and French
Ministers.

[167] U.S. Messages and Documents,
1861-2, p. 85. Adams to Seward, May 17, 1861.

[168] Bedford died that day.

[169] U.S. Messages and Documents,
1861-2, pp. 90-96. Adams to Seward, May 21, 1861.

[170] Bernard, The Neutrality of Great
Britain during the American Civil War, p. 161. The author cites
at length despatches and documents of the period.

[171] Spectator, May 18,
1861.

[172] Spectator, June 1,
1861.

[173] Saturday Review, June 1,
1861.

[174] U.S. Messages and Documents,
1861-2, p. 82.

[175] Ibid., p. 98. Adams to Seward, June
7, 1861. See also p. 96, Adams to Seward, May 31,
1861.

[176] Russell Papers. Lyons to Russell, June 10,
1861.

[177] Ibid., Lyons to Russell, June 14,
1861.

[178] F.O., Am., Vol. 766, No. 282. Lyons to
Russell, June 17, 1861. Seward’s account, in close agreement with
that of Lyons, is in U.S. Messages and Documents, 1861-2, p.
106. Seward to Adams, June 19, 1861.

[179] Bancroft in his Seward (II, p. 183)
prints a portion of an unpublished despatch of Seward to Dayton in
Paris, July 1, 1861, as “his clearest and most characteristic
explanation of what the attitude of the government must be in
regard to the action of the foreign nations that have recognized
the belligerency of the ‘insurgents.'”

“Neither Great Britain nor France, separately nor
both
together, can, by any declaration they can make, impair the
sovereignty of the United States over the insurgents, nor
confer upon them any public rights whatever. From first to
last we have acted, and we shall continue to act, for the
whole people of the United States, and to make treaties for
disloyal as well as loyal citizens with foreign nations, and
shall expect, when the public welfare requires it, foreign
nations to respect and observe the treaties.

“We do not admit, and we never shall admit, even the
fundamental statement you assume–namely, that Great Britain
and France have recognized the insurgents as a belligerent
party. True, you say they have so declared. We reply: Yes,
but they have not declared so to us. You may rejoin: Their
public declaration concludes the fact. We, nevertheless,
reply: It must be not their declaration, but the fact, that
concludes the fact.”

[180] The Times, June 3,
1861.

[181] Ibid., June 11, 1861.

[182] U.S. Messages and Documents,
1861-2, p. 87.

[183] Parliamentary Papers, 1862, Lords,
Vol. XXV. “Correspondence on Civil War in the United States.” No.
56. Lyons to Russell, June 17, 1861, reporting conference with
Seward on June 15.

[184] U.S. Messages and Documents,
1861-62, p. 104. Adams to Seward, June 14, 1861.

[185] Bancroft, the biographer of Seward, takes
the view that the protests against the Queen’s Proclamation, in
regard to privateering and against interviews with the Southern
commissioners were all unjustifiable. The first, he says, was based
on “unsound reasoning” (II, 177). On the second he quotes with
approval a letter from Russell to Edward Everett, July 12, 1861,
showing the British dilemma: “Unless we meant to treat them as
pirates and to hang them we could not deny them belligerent rights”
(II, 178). And as to the Southern commissioners he asserts that
Seward, later, ceased protest and writes: “Perhaps he remembered
that he himself had recently communicated, through three different
intermediaries, with the Confederate commissioners to Washington,
and would have met them if the President had not forbidden it.”
Bancroft, Seward, II, 179.

[186] Du Bose, Yancey, p.
606.

[187] A Cycle of Adams’ Letters,
1861-1865, Vol. I, p. 11. Adams to C.F. Adams, Jnr., June 14,
1861.

[188] See ante, p. 98. Russell’s report
to Lyons of this interview of June 12, lays special emphasis on
Adams’ complaint of haste. Parliamentary Papers, 1862,
Lords, Vol. XXV, “Correspondence on Civil War in the United
States,” No. 52. Russell to Lyons, June 21, 1861.

[189] Hansard, 3rd. Ser., CLXXVII, pp. 1620-21,
March 13, 1865.

[190] See ante, p. 85.

[191] C.F. Adams, Charles Francis Adams,
p. 172. In preparing a larger life of his father, never printed,
the son later came to a different opinion, crediting Russell with
foresight in hastening the Proclamation to avoid possible
embarrassment with Adams on his arrival. The quotation from the
printed “Life” well summarizes, however, current American
opinion.

[192] U.S. Documents, Ser. No. 347, Doc.
183, p. 6.

[193] The United States Supreme Court in 1862,
decided that Lincoln’s blockade proclamation of April 19, 1861, was
“itself official and conclusive evidence … that a state of war
existed.” (Moore, Int. Law Digest, I, p. 190.)

[194] A Cycle of Adams’ Letters, I, p.
16. Henry Adams to C.F. Adams, Jnr.

[195] Rhodes, History of the United
States, III, p. 420 (note) summarizes arguments on this
point, but thinks that the Proclamation might have been delayed
without harm to British interests. This is perhaps true as a matter
of historical fact, but such fact in no way alters the compulsion
to quick action felt by the Ministry in the presence of probable
immediate fact.

[196] This was the later view of C.F. Adams,
Jnr. He came to regard the delay in his father’s journey to England
as the most fortunate single incident in American foreign relations
during the Civil War.

CHAPTER IV

BRITISH SUSPICION OF SEWARD

The incidents narrated in the preceding chapter have been
considered solely from the point of view of a formal American
contention as to correct international practice and the British
answer to that contention. In fact, however, there were intimately
connected wth these formal arguments and instructions of the
American Secretary of State a plan of possible militant action
against Great Britain and a suspicion, in British Governmental
circles, that this plan was being rapidly matured. American
historians have come to stigmatize this plan as “Seward’s Foreign
War Panacea,” and it has been examined by them in great detail, so
that there is no need here to do more than state its main features.
That which is new in the present treatment is the British
information in regard to the plan and the resultant British
suspicion of Seward’s intentions.

The British public, as distinguished from the Government,
deriving its knowledge of Seward from newspaper reports of his
career and past utterances, might well consider him as
traditionally unfriendly to Great Britain. He had, in the ‘fifties,
vigorously attacked the British interpretation of the
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and characterized Great Britain as “the most
grasping and the most rapacious Power in the world”; he had long
prophesied the ultimate annexation of Canada to the United States;
he had not disdained, in political struggles in the State of New
York, to whip up, for the sake of votes, Irish antagonism to Great
Britain; and more especially and more recently he had been reported
[V1:pg 114] to
have expressed to the Duke of Newcastle a belief that civil
conflict in America could easily be avoided, or quieted, by
fomenting a quarrel with England and engaging in a war against
her[197].
Earlier expressions might easily be overlooked as emanating from a
politician never over-careful about wounding the sensibilities of
foreign nations and peoples, for he had been even more outspoken
against the France of Louis Napoleon, but the Newcastle
conversation stuck in the British mind as indicative of a probable
animus when the politician had become the statesman responsible for
foreign policy. Seward might deny, as he did, that he had ever
uttered the words alleged[198], and his friend Thurlow Weed might
describe the words as “badinage,” in a letter to the London
Times[199], but the “Newcastle story” continued to
be matter for frequent comment both in the Press and in private
circles.

British Ministers, however, would have paid little attention to
Seward’s speeches intended for home political consumption, or to a
careless bit of social talk, had there not been suspicion of other
and more serious evidences of unfriendliness. Lyons was an
unusually able and well-informed Minister, and from the first he
had pictured the leadership of Seward in the new administration at
Washington, and had himself been worried by his inability to
understand what policy Seward was formulating. But, in fact, he did
not see clearly what was going on in the camp of the Republican
party now dominant in the North. The essential feature of the
situation was that Seward, generally regarded as the man whose
wisdom must guide the ill-trained Lincoln, and himself thinking
this to be his destined function, early found his authority
challenged by other leaders, and his [V1:pg 115] policies not certain of
acceptance by the President. It is necessary to review, briefly,
the situation at Washington.

WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD
(From Lord Newton’s “Life of Lord Lyons,” by kind
permission)

Lincoln was inaugurated as President on March 4. He had been
elected as a Republican by a political party never before in power.
Many of the leading members of this party were drawn from the older
parties and had been in administrative positions in either State or
National Governments, but there were no party traditions, save the
lately created one of opposition to the expansion of slavery to the
Territories. All was new, then, to the men now in power in the
National Government, and a new and vital issue, that of secession
already declared by seven Southern States, had to be met by a
definite policy. The important immediate question was as to whether
Lincoln had a policy, or, if not, upon whom he would depend to
guide him.

In the newly-appointed Cabinet were two men who, in popular
estimate, were expected to take the lead–Chase, of Ohio, the
Secretary of the Treasury, and Seward, of New York, Secretary of
State. Both were experienced in political matters and both stood
high in the esteem of the anti-slavery element in the North, but
Seward, all things considered, was regarded as the logical leading
member of the Cabinet. He had been the favoured candidate for
Republican Presidential nomination in 1860, making way for Lincoln
only on the theory that the latter as less Radical on anti-slavery,
could be more easily elected. Also, he now held that position which
by American tradition was regarded as the highest in the
Cabinet.

In fact, everyone at Washington regarded it as certain that
Seward would determine the policy of the new administration.
Seward’s own attitude is well summed up in a despatch to his
Government, February 18, 1861, by Rudolph Schleiden, Minister from
the Republic of Bremen. He described a conversation with Seward in
regard to his relations with Lincoln:

“Seward, however, consoled himself with the clever
remark, that there is no great difference between an elected
president of the United States and an hereditary monarch. The
latter is called to the throne through the accident of birth, the
former through the chances which make his election possible. The
actual direction of public affairs belongs to the leader of the
ruling party, here as well as in any hereditary principality.

“The future President is a self-made man and there is therefore as
little doubt of his energy as of his proverbial honesty (‘honest
old Abe’). It is also acknowledged that he does not lack common
sense. But his other qualities for the highest office are
practically unknown. His election may therefore be readily compared
with a lottery. It is possible that the United States has drawn the
first prize, on the other hand the gain may only have been a small
one. But unfortunately the possibility is not excluded that it may
have been merely a blank.”

The first paragraph of this quotation reports Seward’s opinion;
the second is apparently Schleiden’s own estimate. Two weeks later
Schleiden sent home a further analysis of Lincoln:

“He makes the impression of a natural man of clear and
healthy mind, great good-naturedness and best intentions. He seems
to be fully conscious of the great responsibility which rests upon
him. But at the same time it appears as if he had lost some of his
famous firmness and resoluteness through the novelty of the
conditions which surround him and the hourly renewed attempts from
various sides to gain influence over him. He is therefore at
present inclined to concede double weight to the superior political
experience of his Secretary of State[200].”

This was written on March 4, and the situation was correctly
described. Seward led for the moment, but his supremacy was not
unchallenged and soon a decision was called for that in its final
solution was to completely overthrow his already matured policy
towards the seceding States. Buchanan had been pressed by South
Carolina to yield possession of federal property in that State and
especially to withdraw Federal troops from Fort Sumter in
Charleston Harbour. After some vacillation he had refused to do
this, but had taken no steps to reinforce and re-supply the weak
garrison under the command of Major Anderson. On March 5, Lincoln
learned that Sumter would soon have to be yielded unless
reinforcements were sent. There followed ten days of delay and
indecision; then on March 15 Lincoln requested from each member of
his Cabinet an opinion on what should be done. This brought to an
issue the whole question of Seward’s policy and leadership.

For Seward’s policy, like that of Buchanan, was one of
conciliatory delay, taking no steps to bring matters to an issue,
and trusting to time and a sobering second thought to bring
Southern leaders and people to a less violent attitude. He
sincerely believed in the existence of an as yet unvoiced strong
Union sentiment in the South, especially in those States which were
wavering on secession. He was holding communications, through
intermediaries, with certain Confederate “Commissioners” in
Washington, and he had agents in Virginia attempting to influence
that State against secession. To all these Southern representatives
he now conveyed assurances quite without warrant from Lincoln, that
Sumter would be evacuated, acting solely in the belief that his own
“policy” would be approved by the President. His argument in reply
to Lincoln’s call for an opinion was positive against reinforcing
Fort Sumter, and it seemed to meet, for the moment, with the
approval of the majority of his Cabinet colleagues. Lincoln himself
made no pertinent comment, yet did not commit himself. [V1:pg 118] There the
matter rested for a time, for the Confederate Commissioners,
regarding Seward’s policy of delay as wholly beneficial to the
maturing of Southern plans, and Seward “as their cat’s-paw[201],” did not care
to press for a decision. Moreover, Seward had given a personal
pledge that in case it were, after all, determined to reinforce
Sumter, notification of that determination would at once be given
to South Carolina. The days went by, and it was not until the last
week of March that Lincoln, disillusioned as to the feasibility of
Seward’s policy of conciliation, reached the conclusion that in his
conception of his duty as President of the United States he must
defend and retain Federal forts, or attempt to retain them, for the
preservation of the Union, and decided to reinforce Fort Sumter. On
March 29, the Cabinet assembled at noon and learned Lincoln’s
determination.

This was a sharp blow to Seward’s prestige in the Cabinet; it
also threatened his “peaceful” policy. Yet he did not as yet
understand fully that either supreme leadership, or control of
policy, had been assumed by Lincoln. On April 1 he drafted that
astonishing document entitled, “Some Thoughts for the President’s
Consideration,” which at once reveals his alarm and his supreme
personal self-confidence. This document begins, “We are at the end
of a month’s administration, and yet without a policy [V1:pg 119] either domestic
or foreign.” It then advocates as a domestic policy, “Change The
Question Before The Public From One Upon Slavery, Or About
Slavery, for a question upon Union or Disunion.” Then in
a second section, headed “For Foreign Nations,” there followed:

“I would demand explanations from Spain and France,
categorically, at once.

“I would seek explanations from Great Britain and Russia, and send
agents into Canada, Mexico and Central America to rouse a vigorous
continental spirit of independence on this continent against
European intervention.

“And, if satisfactory explanations are not received from Spain and
France.

“Would convene Congress and declare war against them.

“But whatever policy we adopt, there must be energetic prosecution
of it.

“For this purpose it must be somebody’s business to pursue and
direct it incessantly.

“Either the President must do it himself, and be all the while
active in it, or

“Devolve it on some member of his Cabinet. Once adopted, debates on
it must end, and all agree and abide.

“It is not in my especial province;

“But I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility[202].”

Lincoln’s reply of the same day, April 1, was characteristically
gentle, yet no less positive and definite to any save one obsessed
with his own superior wisdom. Lincoln merely noted that Seward’s
“domestic policy” was exactly his own, except that he did not
intend to abandon Fort Sumter. As to the warlike foreign policy
Lincoln pointed out that this would be a sharp reversal of that
already being prepared in circulars and instructions to Ministers
abroad. This was, indeed, the case, for the first instructions,
soon despatched, were drawn on lines of recalling to foreign powers
their established and long-continued friendly [V1:pg 120] relations with
the United States. Finally, Lincoln stated as to the required
“guiding hand,” “I remark that if this must be done, I must do
it…. I wish, and suppose I am entitled to have, the advice of all
the Cabinet[203].”

This should have been clear indication of Lincoln’s will to
direct affairs, and even to Seward would have been sufficient had
he not, momentarily, been so disturbed by the wreck of his pacific
policy toward the South, and as yet so ignorant of the strength of
Lincoln’s quiet persistence. As it was, he yielded on the immediate
issue, the relief of Sumter (though attempting to divert
reinforcements to another quarter) but did not as yet wholly yield
either his policy of conciliation and delay, nor give up
immediately his insane scheme of saving the Union by plunging it
into a foreign war. He was, in fact, still giving assurances to the
Confederate commissioners, through indirect channels, that he could
and would prevent the outbreak of civil war, and in this confidence
that his ideas would finally control Lincoln he remained up to the
second week in April. But on April 8 the first of the ships
despatched to the aid of Sumter left New York, and on that day
Governor Pickens of South Carolina was officially notified of the
Northern purpose. This threw the burden of striking the first blow
upon the South; if Southern threats were now made good, civil war
seemed inevitable, and there could be no peaceful decision of the
quarrel.

The reinforcements did not arrive in time. Fort Sumter, after a
day and a half of dogged fighting, was surrendered to the enemy on
April 13–for as an enemy in arms the South now stood. The fall of
Sumter changed, as in a moment, the whole attitude of the Northern
people. There was now a nearly unanimous cry for the preservation
of the Union by force. Yet Seward still clung, privately, to
his belief that even now the “sober second thought” of the
[V1:pg 121]
South would offer a way out toward reunion without war. In official
utterances and acts he was apparently in complete harmony with the
popular will to reconquer the South. Davis’ proclamation on marque
and privateering, of April 17, was answered by the Lincoln blockade
proclamation of April 19. But Virginia had not yet officially
seceded, and until this occurred there seemed to Seward at least
one last straw of conciliation available. In this situation
Schleiden, Minister for Bremen, came to Seward on the morning of
April 24 and offered his services as a mediator[204].

Schleiden’s idea was that an armistice be agreed upon with the
South until the Northern Congress should meet in July, thus giving
a breathing spell and permitting saner second judgment to both
sides. He had consulted with his Prussian colleague, who approved,
and he found Seward favourable to the plan. Alexander H. Stephens,
Vice-President of the Confederacy, was then at Richmond, and to
him, as an old friend, Schleiden proposed to go and make the same
appeal. Seward at once took Schleiden to see Lincoln. The three
men, with Chase (and the Prussian Minister) were the only ones in
the secret. Lincoln’s first comment was that he was “willing to
make an attempt of contributing to the prevention of bloodshed and
regretted that Schleiden had not gone to Richmond without
consulting him or Seward.” Lincoln further stated that “he did not
have in mind any aggression against the Southern States, but merely
the safety of the Government in the Capitol and the possibility to
govern everywhere,” a concluding phrase that should have
enlightened Schleiden as to Lincoln’s determination to preserve the
Union. Lincoln said he could neither authorize negotiations nor
invite proposals, but that he would gladly consider any such
proposals voluntarily made. Schleiden asked for a definite
[V1:pg 122]
statement as to whether Lincoln would recall the blockade
proclamation and sign an armistice if Davis would recall the
letters of marque proclamation, but Lincoln refused to commit
himself.

This was scant encouragement from the President, but Seward
still thought something might result from the venture, and on that
evening, April 24, Schleiden started for Richmond, being provided
by Seward with a pass through the Union lines. He arrived on the
afternoon of the twenty-fifth, but even before reaching the city
was convinced that his mission would be a failure. All along his
journey, at each little station, he saw excited crowds assembled
enthusiastic for secession, bands of militia training, and every
indication of preparation for war. Already, on that same day, the
Virginia secession ordinance had been published, and the State
convention had ratified the provisional constitution of the
Southern Confederacy. Schleiden immediately notified Stephens of
his presence in Richmond and desire for an interview, and was at
once received. The talk lasted three hours. Stephens was frank and
positive in asserting the belief that “all attempts to settle
peacefully the differences between the two sections were futile.”
Formal letters were exchanged after this conference, but in these
the extent to which Stephens would go was to promise to use his
influence in favour of giving consideration to any indication made
by the North of a desire “for an amicable adjustment of the
questions at issue,” and he was positive that there could be no
return of the South to the Union.

On the afternoon of April 27 Schleiden was back in Washington.
He found that three days had made a great change in the sentiment
of the Capitol. “During my short absence,” he wrote, “many
thousands of volunteers had arrived from the North. There was not
only a feeling of security noticeable, but even of combativeness.”
He found [V1:pg
123] Seward not at all disposed to pursue the matter, and
was not given an opportunity to talk to Lincoln; therefore, he
merely submitted copies of the letters that had passed between him
and Stephens, adding for himself that the South was arming
because of Lincoln’s proclamation calling for volunteers.
Seward replied on April 29, stating his personal regards and that
he had no fault to find with Schleiden’s efforts, but concluding
that Stephens’ letters gave no ground for action since the “Union
of these States is the supreme as it is the organic law of this
country,” and must be maintained.

This adventure to Richmond by the Minister of Bremen may be
regarded as Seward’s last struggle to carry out his long-pursued
policy of conciliatory delay. He had not officially sent Schleiden
to Richmond, but he had grasped eagerly at the opening and had
encouraged and aided Schleiden in his journey. Now, by April 27,
hope had vanished, and Seward’s “domestic policy,” as set forth in
his “Thoughts for the President’s Consideration” on April 1, was
discredited, and inevitably, in some measure, their author also.
The dates are important in appreciating Seward’s purposes. On April
27, the day of Schleiden’s return to Washington, there was sent to
Adams that “sharp” despatch, taking issue with British action as
foreshadowed by Dallas on April 9, and concluding by instructing
Adams to lose no time in warning Russell that such action would be
regarded by the United States as “injurious to its rights and
derogating from its dignity[205].” It appears, therefore, that Seward,
defeated on one line of “policy,” eager to regain prestige, and
still obsessed with the idea that some means could yet be found to
avert [V1:pg
124] domestic conflict, was, on April 27, beginning to pick
at those threads which, to his excited thought, might yet save the
Union through a foreign war. He was now seeking to force the
acceptance of the second, and alternative, portion of his “Thoughts
for the President.”

Seward’s theory of the cementing effect of a foreign war was no
secret at Washington. As early as January 26 he had unfolded to
Schleiden this fantastic plan. “If the Lord would only give the
United States an excuse for a war with England, France, or Spain,”
he said “that would be the best means of re-establishing internal
peace[206].”
Again, on February 10, he conversed with Schleiden on the same
topic, and complained that there was no foreign complication
offering an excuse for a break. Lyons knew of this attitude, and by
February 4 had sent Russell a warning, to which the latter had
replied on February 20 that England could afford to be patient for
a time but that too much “blustering demonstration” must not be
indulged in. But the new administration, as Lincoln had remarked in
his reply to Seward on April 1, had taken quite another line,
addressing foreign powers in terms of high regard for established
friendly relations. This was the tone of Seward’s first instruction
to Adams, April 10[207], in the concluding paragraph of which
Seward wrote, “The United States are not indifferent to the
circumstances of common descent, language, customs, sentiments, and
religion, which recommend a closer sympathy between themselves and
Great Britain than either might expect in its intercourse with any
other nation.” True, on this basis, Seward claimed a special
sympathy from Great Britain for the United States, that is to
[V1:pg 125]
say, the North, but most certainly the tone of this first
instruction was one of established friendship.

Yet now, April 27, merely on learning from Dallas that Russell
“refuses to pledge himself” on British policy, Seward resorts to
threats. What other explanation is possible except that, seeking to
save his domestic policy of conciliation and to regain his
leadership, he now was adventuring toward the application of his
“foreign war panacea” idea. Lyons quickly learned of the changed
tone, and that England, especially, was to hear American complaint.
On May 2 Lyons wrote to Russell in cypher characterizing Seward as
“arrogant and reckless toward Foreign Powers[208].” Evidently
Seward was making little concealment of his belligerent attitude,
and when the news was received of the speeches in Parliament of the
first week in May by which it became clear that Great Britain would
declare neutrality and was planning joint action with France, he
became much excited. On May 17 he wrote a letter home exhibiting,
still, an extraordinary faith in his own wisdom and his own foreign
policy.

“A country so largely relying on my poor efforts to
save it had [has] refused me the full measure of its confidence,
needful to that end. I am a chief reduced to a subordinate
position, and surrounded by a guard, to see that I do not do too
much for my country, lest some advantage may revert indirectly to
my own fame.

“… They have misunderstood things fearfully, in Europe, Great
Britain is in danger of sympathizing so much with the South, for
the sake of peace and cotton, as to drive us to make war against
her, as the ally of the traitors…. I am trying to get a bold
remonstrance through the Cabinet before it is too late[209].”

The “bold remonstrance” was the famous “Despatch No. 10,” of May
21, already commented upon in the preceding [V1:pg 126] chapter. But as
sent to Adams it varied in very important details from the draft
submitted by Seward to Lincoln[210].

Seward’s draft was not merely a “remonstrance”; it was a
challenge. Its language implied that the United States desired war,
and Seward’s plan was to have Adams read the despatch to Russell,
give him a copy of it, and then discontinue diplomatic relations so
long as Russell held either official or unofficial intercourse with
the Southern Commissioners. This last instruction was, indeed,
retained in the final form of the despatch, but here, as elsewhere,
Lincoln modified the stiff expressions of the original. Most
important of all, he directed Adams to consider the whole despatch
as for his own guidance, relying on his discretion. The despatch,
as amended, began with the statement that the United States
“neither means to menace Great Britain nor to wound the
sensibilities of that or any other European nation…. The paper
itself is not to be read or shown to the British Secretary of
State, nor any of its positions to be prematurely, unnecessarily,
or indiscreetly made known. But its spirit will be your
guide[211].”
Thus were the teeth [V1:pg 127] skilfully drawn from the threat
of war. Even the positive instructions, later in the despatch, as
to the Southern Commissioners, need not have been acted upon by
Adams had he not thought it wise to do so. But even with
alterations, the American remonstrance was so bold as to alarm
Adams. On first perusual he wrote in his diary, June 10, “The
Government seems almost ready to declare war with all the powers of
Europe, and almost instructs me to withdraw from communication with
the Ministers here in a certain contingency…. I scarcely know how
to understand Mr. Seward. The rest of the Government may be
demented for all I know; but he surely is calm and wise. My duty
here is in so far as I can do it honestly to prevent the irritation
from coming to a downright quarrel. It seems to me like throwing
the game into the hands of the enemy[212].”

Adams, a sincere admirer of Seward, was in error as to the
source of American belligerent attitude. Fortunately, his judgment
of what was wise at the moment coincided with that of
Lincoln’s–though of this he had no knowledge. In the event Adams’
skilful handling of the situation resulted favourably–even to the
cessation of intercourse between Russell and the Southern
Commissioners. For his part, Lincoln, no more than earlier, was to
be hurried into foreign complications, and Seward’s “foreign war
panacea” was stillborn.

The incident was a vital one in the Northern administration, for
Seward at last realized that the President intended to control
policy, and though it was yet long before he came to appreciate
fully Lincoln’s customary calm judgment, he did understand the
relation now established between [V1:pg 128] himself and his chief.
Henceforth, he obeyed orders, though free in suggestion and
criticism, always welcome to Lincoln. The latter, avowedly ignorant
of diplomacy, gladly left details to Seward, and the altered
despatch, far from making relations difficult, rendered them simple
and easy, by clearing the atmosphere. But it was otherwise with
Foreign Ministers at Washington, for even though there was soon a
“leak” of gossip informing them of what had taken place in regard
to Despatch No. 10, they one and all were fearful of a recovery of
influence by Seward and of a resumption of belligerent policy. This
was particularly true of Lord Lyons, for rumour had it that it was
against England that Seward most directed his enmity. There
resulted for British diplomats both at Washington and in London a
deep-seated suspicion of Seward, long after he had made a complete
face-about in policy. This suspicion influenced relations greatly
in the earlier years of the Civil War.

On May 20, the day before Seward’s No. 10 was dated, Lyons wrote
a long twelve-page despatch to Russell, anxious, and very full of
Seward’s warlike projects. “The President is, of course, wholly
ignorant of foreign countries, and of foreign affairs.” “Seward,
having lost strength by the failure of his peace policy, is seeking
to recover influence by leading a foreign war party; no one in the
Cabinet is strong enough to combat him.” Britain, Lyons thought,
should maintain a stiff attitude, prepare to defend Canada, and
make close contacts with France. He was evidently anxious to
impress upon Russell that Seward really might mean war, but he
declared the chief danger to lie in the fact of American belief
that England and France could not be driven into war with the
United States, and that they would submit to any insult. Lyons
urged some action, or declaration (he did not know what), to
correct this false impression[213]. [V1:pg 129] Again, on the next day, May 21,
the information in his official despatch was repeated in a private
letter to Russell, but Lyons here interprets Seward’s threats as
mere bluster. Yet he is not absolutely sure of this, and in any
case insists that the best preventative of war with the United
States is to show that England is ready for it[214].

It was an anxious time for the British Minister in Washington.
May 22, he warned Sir Edmund Head, Governor of Canada, urging him
to make defensive preparation[215]. The following day he dilated to Russell,
privately, on “the difficulty of keeping Mr. Seward within the
bounds of decency even in ordinary social intercourse[216] …” and in an
official communication of this same day he records Washington
rumours of a belligerent despatch read by Seward before the
Cabinet, of objections by other members, and that Seward’s
insistence has carried the day[217]. That Seward was, in fact, still smarting
over his reverse is shown by a letter, written on this same May 23,
to his intimate friend and political adviser, Thurlow Weed, who had
evidently cautioned him against precipitate action. Seward wrote,
“The European phase is bad. But your apprehension that I may be too
decisive alarms me more. Will you consent, or advise us to consent,
that Adams and Dayton have audiences and compliments in the
Ministers’ Audience Chamber, and Toombs’ [Confederate Secretary of
State] emissaries have access to his bedroom[218]?”

Two interpretations are possible from this: either [V1:pg 130] that Seward
knowing himself defeated was bitter in retrospect, or that he had
not yet yielded his will to that of Lincoln, in spite of the
changes made in his Despatch No. 10. The former interpretation
seems the more likely, for though Seward continued to write for a
time “vigorous” despatches to Adams, they none of them approached
the vigour of even the amended despatch. Moreover, the exact facts
of the Cabinet of May 21, and the complete reversal of Seward’s
policy were sufficiently known by May 24 to have reached the ears
of Schleiden, who reported them in a letter to Bremen of that
date[219].
And on the same day Seward himself told Schleiden that he did “not
fear any longer that it would come to a break with England[220].” On May 27
Lyons himself, though still suspicious that an attempt was being
made to separate France and England, was able to report a better
tone from Seward[221].

British Ministers in London were not so alarmed as was Lyons,
but they were disturbed, nevertheless, and long preserved a
suspicion of the American Secretary of State. May 23, Palmerston
wrote to Russell in comment on Lyons’ despatch of May 2: “These
communications are very unpleasant. It is not at all unlikely that
either from foolish and uncalculating arrogance and
self-sufficiency or from political calculation Mr. Seward may bring
on a quarrel with us[222].” He believed that more troops ought
[V1:pg 131] to
be sent to Canada, as a precautionary measure, but, he added, “the
main Force for Defence must, of course, be local”–a situation
necessarily a cause for anxiety by British Ministers. Russell was
less perturbed. He had previously expressed appreciation of Adams’
conduct, writing to Lyons: “Mr. Adams has made a very favourable
impression on my mind as a calm and judicious man[223],” and he now
wrote: “I do not think Mr. Seward’s colleagues will encourage him
in a game of brag with England…. I am sorry Seward turns out so
reckless and ruthless. Adams seems a sensible man[224].” But at
Washington Lyons was again hot on the trail of warlike rumours. As
a result of a series of conversations with Northern politicians,
not Cabinet members, he sent a cipher telegram to Russell on June
6, stating: “No new event has occurred but sudden declaration of
war by the United States against Great Britain appears to me by no
means impossible, especially so long as Canada seems open to
invasion[225].” This was followed two days later by a
despatch dilating upon the probability of war, and ending with
Lyons’ opinion of how it should be conducted. England should strike
at once with the largest possible naval force and bring the war to
an end before the United States could prepare. Otherwise, “the
spirit, the energy, and the resources of this people” would make
them difficult to overcome. England, on her part, must be prepared
to suffer severely from American privateers, and she would be
forced to help the South, at least to the extent of keeping
Southern ports open. Finally, Lyons concluded, all of this letter
and advice were extremely distasteful to him, yet he felt compelled
to write it by the seriousness of the situation. Nevertheless, he
would exert every effort and use every method to conciliate
America[226].

In truth, it was not any further belligerent talk by Seward that
had so renewed Lyons’ anxiety. Rather it was the public and Press
reception of the news of the Queen’s Proclamation of Neutrality.
The Northern people, counting beyond all reasonable expectation
upon British sympathy on anti-slavery grounds, had been angrily
disappointed, and were at the moment loudly voicing their vexation.
Had Seward not already been turned from his foreign war policy he
now would have received strong public support in it. But he made no
effort to utilize public excitement to his own advantage in the
Cabinet. In England, Adams was able to report on June 14 that
Russell had no intention of holding further interviews with the
Southern Commissioners[227], but before anyone in Washington could
learn of this there was general knowledge of a changed tone from
the Secretary of State, and Lyons’ fears were considerably allayed.
On June 15, occurred that interview between Seward, Lyons, and
Mercier, in which Seward had positively refused to receive the
Queen’s Proclamation, but had throughout evinced the greatest
courtesy and goodwill. Lyons so reported the conversation[228]. June 15 may,
in fact, be taken as the date when Lyons ceased to be alarmed over
an immediate war. Possibly he found it a little difficult to report
so sudden a shift from stormy to fair weather. June 21, he wrote
that the “lull” was still continuing[229]. June 24, he at
last learned and described at length the details of Lincoln’s
alteration of Despatch No. 10[230]. He [V1:pg 133] did not know the exact date but
he expressed the opinion that “a month or three weeks ago” war was
very near–a misjudgment, since it should be remembered that war
seemed advisable to one man only–Seward; and that on this issue he
had been definitely cast down from his self-assumed leadership into
the ranks of Lincoln’s lieutenants.

Lyons was, then, nearly a month behindhand in exact knowledge of
American foreign policy toward England, and he was in error in
thinking that an American attack on England was either imminent or
intended. Nevertheless, he surely was excusable, considering
Seward’s prestige and Lincoln’s lack of it, in reporting as he did.
It was long, indeed, before he could escape from suspicion of
Seward’s purposes, though dropping, abruptly, further comment on
the chances of war. A month later, on July 20, he wrote that Seward
had himself asked for a confidential and unofficial interview, in
order to make clear that there never had been any intention of
stirring agitation against England. Personally, Seward took credit
for avoiding trouble “by refusing to take official cognizance of
the recognition [by England] of the belligerent rights of the
South,” and he asked Lyons to explain to Russell that previous
strong language was intended merely to make foreign Powers
understand the intensity of Northern feeling[231].

Lyons put no faith in all this but was happy to note the change,
mistakenly attributing it to England’s “stiff tone,” and not at all
to the veto of the President. Since Lyons himself had gone to the
utmost bounds in seeking conciliation (so he had reported), and, in
London, Russell also had taken no forward step since the issue of
the Queen’s Proclamation–indeed, had rather yielded somewhat to
Adams’ representations–it is not clear in what the “stiff tone”
consisted.

Indeed, the cause of Seward’s explanation to Lyons [V1:pg 134] was the receipt
of a despatch from Adams, dated June 28, in which the latter had
reported that all was now smooth sailing. He had told Russell that
the knowledge in Washington of the result of their previous
interviews had brought satisfaction, and Russell, for his part,
said that Lyons had “learned, through another member of the
diplomatic corps, that no further expression of opinion on the
subject in question would be necessary[232].” This
referred, presumably, to the question of British intention, for the
future, in relation to the Proclamation of Neutrality. Adams wrote:
“This led to the most frank and pleasant conversation which I have
yet had with his lordship…. I added that I believed the popular
feeling in the United States would subside the moment that all the
later action on this side was known…. My own reception has been
all that I could desire. I attach value to this, however, only as
it indicates the establishment of a policy that will keep us at
peace during the continuance of the present convulsion.” In reply
to Adams’ despatch, Seward wrote on July 21, the day after his
interview with Lyons, arguing at great length the American view
that the British Proclamation of Neutrality in a domestic quarrel
was not defensible in international law. There was not now, nor
later, any yielding on this point. But, for the present, this was
intended for Adams’ eye alone, and Seward prefaced his argument by
a disclaimer, much as stated to Lyons, of any ill-will to Great
Britain:

“I may add, also, for myself, that however otherwise I
may at any time have been understood, it has been an earnest and
profound solicitude to avert from foreign war; that alone has
prompted the emphatic and sometimes, perhaps, impassioned
remonstrances I have hitherto made against any form or measure of
recognition of the insurgents by the government of Great Britain. I
write in the same spirit now; and I invoke on the part of the
British government, [V1:pg 135] as I propose to exercise on my
own, the calmness which all counsellors ought to practise in
debates which involve the peace and happiness of mankind[233].”

Diplomatic correspondence couched in the form of platform
oratory leads to the suspicion that the writer is thinking,
primarily, of the ultimate publication of his despatches. Thus
Seward seems to have been laying the ground for a denial that he
had ever developed a foolish foreign war policy. History pins him
to that folly. But in another respect the interview with Lyons on
July 20 and the letter to Adams of the day following overthrow for
both Seward and for the United States the accusations sometimes
made that it was the Northern disaster at Bull Run, July 21, in the
first pitched battle with the South, which made more temperate the
Northern tone toward foreign powers[234]. It is true
that the despatch to Adams was not actually sent until July 26, but
internal evidence shows it to have been written on the 21st before
there was any news from the battle-field, and the interview with
Lyons on the 20th proves that the military set-back had no
influence on Seward’s friendly expressions. Moreover, these
expressions officially made were but a delayed voicing of a
determination of policy arrived at many weeks earlier. The
chronology of events and despatches cited in this chapter will have
shown that the refusal of Lincoln to follow Seward’s leadership,
and the consequent lessening of the latter’s “high tone,” preceded
any news whatever from England, lightening the first impressions.
The Administration at Washington did not on May 21, even know that
England had issued a Proclamation of Neutrality; it knew merely of
Russell’s statement that one would have to be issued; and the
friendly explanations of Russell to Adams were not received in
Washington until the month following.

In itself, Seward’s “foreign war panacea” policy does not
deserve the place in history usually accorded it as a moment of
extreme crisis in British-American relations. There was never any
danger of war from it, for Lincoln nipped the policy in the bud.
The public excitement in America over the Queen’s Proclamation was,
indeed, intense; but this did not alter the Governmental attitude.
In England all that the public knew was this American irritation
and clamour. The London press expressed itself a bit more
cautiously, for the moment, merely defending the necessity of
British neutrality[235]. But if regarded from the effect upon
British Ministers the incident was one of great, possibly even
vital, importance in the relations of the two countries. Lyons had
been gravely anxious to the point of alarm. Russell, less acutely
alarmed, was yet seriously disturbed. Both at Washington and in
London the suspicion of Seward lasted throughout the earlier years
of the war, and to British Ministers it seemed that at any moment
he might recover leadership and revert to a dangerous mood. British
attitude toward America was affected in two opposite ways; Britain
was determined not to be bullied, and Russell himself sometimes
went to the point of arrogance in answer to American complaints;
this was an unfortunate result. But more fortunate, and also a
result, was the British Government’s determination to step
warily in the American conflict and to give no just cause, unless
on due consideration of policy, for a rupture of relations with the
United States. Seward’s folly in May of 1861, from every angle but
a short-lived “brain-storm,” served America well in the first years
of her great crisis.

FOOTNOTES:

[197] See ante, p. 80.

[198] Barnes, Life of Thurlow Weed, II,
p. 378. Seward to Weed, December 27, 1861.

[199] Ibid., p. 355. Weed’s letter was on
the Trent affair, but he went out of his way to depict
Seward as attempting a bit of humour with Newcastle.

[200] Schleiden, a native of Schleswig, was
educated at the University of Berlin, and entered the Danish
customs service. In the German revolution of 1848 he was a delegate
from Schleswig-Holstein to the Frankfort Parliament. After the
failure of that revolution he withdrew to Bremen and in 1853 was
sent by that Republic to the United States as Minister. By 1860 he
had become one of the best known and socially popular of the
Washington diplomatic corps, holding intimate relations with
leading Americans both North and South. His reports on events
preceding and during the Civil War were examined in the archives of
Bremen in 1910 by Dr. Ralph H. Lutz when preparing his doctor’s
thesis, “Die Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und den Vereinigten
Staaten während des Sezessionskrieges” (Heidelberg, 1911). My
facts with regard to Schleiden are drawn in part from this thesis,
in part from an article by him, “Rudolph Schleiden and the Visit to
Richmond, April 25, 1861,” printed in the Annual Report of the
American Historical Association for 1915, pp. 207-216. Copies
of some of Schleiden’s despatches are on deposit in the Library of
Congress among the papers of Carl Schurz. Through the courtesy of
Mr. Frederic Bancroft, who organized the Schurz papers, I have been
permitted to take copies of a few Schleiden dispatches relating to
the visit to Richmond, an incident apparently unknown to history
until Dr. Lutz called attention to it.

[201] This is Bancroft’s expression.
Seward, II, p. 118.

[202] Lincoln, Works, II,
29.

[203] Ibid., p. 30.

[204] For references to this whole matter of
Schleiden’s visit to Richmond see ante, p. 116, note
1.

[205] U.S. Messages and Documents,
1861-2, p. 82. This, and other despatches have been examined at
length in the previous chapter in relation to the American protest
on the Queen’s Proclamation of Neutrality. In the present chapter
they are merely noted again in their bearing on Seward’s “foreign
war policy.”

[206] Quoted by Lutz, Am. Hist. Assn.
Rep. 1915, p. 210.

[207] U.S. Messages and Documents,
1861-2, p. 80. This despatch was read by Seward on April 8 to W.H.
Russell, correspondent of the Times, who commented that it
contained some elements of danger to good relations, but it is
difficult to see to what he could have had objection.–Russell,
My Diary, I, p. 103.

[208] Russell Papers.

[209] Bancroft, Seward, II, p.
169.

[210] Yet at this very time Seward was
suggesting, May 14, to Prussia, Great Britain, France, Russia and
Holland a joint naval demonstration with America against Japan
because of anti-foreign demonstrations in that country. This has
been interpreted as an attempt to tie European powers to the United
States in such a way as to hamper any friendly inclination they may
have entertained toward the Confederacy (Treat, Japan and the
United States, 1853-1921, pp. 49-50. Also Dennet, “Seward’s Far
Eastern Policy,” in Am. Hist. Rev., Vol. XXVIII, No. 1.
Dennet, however, also regards Seward’s overture as in harmony with
his determined policy in the Far East.) Like Seward’s overture,
made a few days before, to Great Britain for a convention to
guarantee the independence of San Domingo (F.O., Am., Vol. 763, No.
196, Lyons to Russell, May 12, 1861) the proposal on Japan seems to
me to have been an erratic feeling-out of international attitude
while in the process of developing a really serious policy–the
plunging of America into a foreign war.

[211] U.S. Messages and Documents,
1861-2, p. 88. The exact facts of Lincoln’s alteration of Despatch
No. 10, though soon known in diplomatic circles, were not published
until the appearance in 1890 of Nicolay and Hay’s Lincoln,
where the text of a portion of the original draft, with Lincoln’s
changes were printed (IV, p. 270). Gideon Welles, Secretary of the
Navy in Lincoln’s Cabinet, published a short book in 1874,
Lincoln and Seward, in which the story was told, but without
dates and so vaguely that no attention was directed to it.
Apparently the matter was not brought before the Cabinet and the
contents of the despatch were known only to Lincoln, Seward, and
the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,
Sumner.

[212] C.F. Adams, “Seward and the Declaration of
Paris,” p. 21. Reprint from Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings,
XLVI, pp. 23-81.

[213] F.O., Am., Vol. 764, No. 206.
Confidential.

[214] Russell Papers. This letter has been
printed, in part, in Newton, Lyons, I, 41.

[215] Lyons Papers.

[216] Ibid., Lyons to Russell, May 23,
1861.

[217] F.O., Am., Vol. 764, No. 209,
Confidential, Lyons to Russell, May 23, 1861. A brief “extract”
from this despatch was printed in the British Parliamentary
Papers, 1862, Lords, Vol. XXV. “Correspondence on Civil
War in the United States,” No. 48. The “extract” in question
consists of two short paragraphs only, printed, without any
indication of important elisions, in each of the
paragraphs.

[218] Bancroft, Seward, II, p.
174.

[219] Lutz, “Notes.” The source of Schleiden’s
information is not given in his despatch. He was intimate with many
persons closely in touch with events, especially with Sumner,
Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and with
Blair, a member of the Cabinet.

[220] Ibid., Schleiden to Republic of
Bremen, May 27, 1861.

[221] Bancroft, Seward, II, p. 179, sets
the date as June 8 when Seward’s instructions for England and
France show that he had “recovered his balance.” This is correct
for the change in tone of despatches, but the acceptance of
Lincoln’s policy must have been immediate. C.F. Adams places the
date for Seward’s complete change of policy much later, describing
his “war mania” as lasting until the Northern defeat of Bull Run,
July 21. I think this an error, and evidence that it is such
appears later in the present chapter. See Charles Francis Adams,
“Seward and the Declaration of Paris,” Mass. Hist. Soc.
Proceedings, XLVI, pp. 23-81.

[222] Russell Papers.

[223] Lyons Papers, May 21, 1861.

[224] Ibid., Russell to Lyons, May 25,
1861.

[225] F.O., Am., Vol. 765, No. 253.

[226] Ibid., No. 263, Lyons to Russell,
June 8, 1861.

[227] See ante, p. 106.

[228] See ante, p. 102. Bancroft,
Seward, II, p. 181, using Seward’s description to Adams
(U.S. Messages and Documents, 1861-2, p. 106) of this
interview expands upon the Secretary’s skill in thus preventing a
joint notification by England and France of their intention to act
together. He rightly characterizes Seward’s tactics as “diplomatic
skill of the best quality.” But in Lyons’ report the emphasis is
placed upon Seward’s courtesy in argument, and Lyons felt that the
knowledge of British-French joint action had been made sufficiently
clear by his taking Mercier with him and by their common though
unofficial representation to Seward.

[229] Russell Papers. To Russell.

[230] Ibid, To Russell. Lyons’ source of
information was not revealed.

[231] Ibid., To Russell.

[232] U.S. Messages and Documents,
1861-2, p. 110.

[233] Ibid., p. 118. To
Adams.

[234] C.F. Adams, “Seward and the Declaration of
Paris.” p. 29, and so argued by the author throughout this
monograph. I think this an error.

[235] The Spectator, friend of the North,
argued, June 15, 1861, that the Queen’s Proclamation was the next
best thing for the North to a definite British alliance. Southern
privateers could not now be obtained from England. And the United
States was surely too proud to accept direct British
aid.

CHAPTER V

THE DECLARATION OF PARIS NEGOTIATION

If regarded merely from the view-point of strict chronology
there accompanied Seward’s “foreign war” policy a negotiation with
Great Britain which was of importance as the first effort of the
American Secretary of State to bring European nations to a definite
support of the Northern cause. It was also the first negotiation
undertaken by Adams in London, and as a man new to the diplomatic
service he attached to it an unusual importance, even, seemingly,
to the extent of permitting personal chagrin at the ultimate
failure of the negotiation to distort his usually cool and fair
judgment. The matter in question was the offer of the United States
to accede by a convention to the Declaration of Paris of 1856,
establishing certain international rules for the conduct of
maritime warfare.

This negotiation has received scant attention in history. It
failed to result in a treaty, therefore it has appeared to be
negligible. Yet it was at the time of very great importance in
affecting the attitude toward each other of Great Britain and the
United States, and of the men who spoke for their respective
countries. The bald facts of the negotiation appear with exactness
in Moore’s Digest of International Law[236], but without
comment as to motives, and, more briefly, in Bernard’s
Neutrality of Great Britain during the American Civil
War[237],
at the conclusion of which the author [V1:pg 138] writes, with
sarcasm, “I refrain from any comment on this negotiation[238].” Nicolay and
Hay’s Lincoln, and Rhodes’ United States, give the
matter but passing and inadequate treatment. It was reviewed in
some detail in the American argument before the Geneva court of
arbitration in the case of the Alabama, but was there
presented merely as a part of the general American complaint of
British neutrality. In fact, but three historical students, so far
as the present writer has been able to discover, have examined this
negotiation in detail and presented their conclusions as to
purposes and motives–so important to an understanding of British
intentions at the moment when the flames of civil war were rapidly
spreading in America.

These three, each with an established historical reputation,
exhibit decided differences in interpretation of diplomatic
incidents and documents. The first careful analysis was presented
by Henry Adams, son of the American Minister in London during the
Civil War, and then acting as his private secretary, in his
Historical Essays, published in 1891; the second study is by
Bancroft, in his Life of Seward, 1900; while the third is by
Charles Francis Adams (also son of the American Minister), who, in
his Life of his father, published 1900, gave a chapter to
the subject and treated it on lines similar to those laid down by
his brother Henry, but who, in 1912, came to the conclusion,
through further study, that he had earlier been in error and
developed a very different view in a monograph entitled, “Seward
and the Declaration of Paris.”

C.F. ADAMS
(From a photograph in the United States Embassy, London, by kind
permission)

If these historiographic details seem unduly minute, partaking
as they do of the nature of a foot-note, in a work otherwise
general in treatment, the author’s answer is that the personality
of two of the writers mentioned and their intimate knowledge of the
effect of the negotiation upon the mind of the American Minister in
London are themselves [V1:pg 139] important historical data; a
further answer is the fact that the materials now available from
the British Foreign Office archives throw much new light both on
the course of the negotiation and on British purposes. It is here
planned, therefore, first to review the main facts as previously
known; second, to summarize the arguments and conclusions of the
three historians; third, to re-examine the negotiation in the light
of the new material; and, finally, to express an opinion on its
conduct and conclusions as an evidence of British policy.

In 1854, during the Crimean War, Great Britain and France, the
chief maritime belligerents engaged against Russia, voluntarily
agreed to respect neutral commerce under either the neutral’s or
the enemy’s flag. This was a distinct step forward in the practice
of maritime warfare, the accepted international rules of which had
not been formally altered since the Napoleonic period. The action
of Great Britain was due in part, according to a later statement in
Parliament by Palmerston, March 18, 1862, to a fear that unless a
greater respect were paid than formerly to neutral rights, the
Allies would quickly win the ill-will of the United States, then
the most powerful maritime neutral, and would run the danger of
forcing that country into belligerent alliance with Russia[239]. No doubt there
were other reasons, also, for the barbarous rules and practices of
maritime warfare in earlier times were by now regarded as
semi-civilized by the writers of all nations. Certainly the action
of the belligerents in 1854 met with general approval and in the
result was written into international law at the Congress of Paris
in 1856, where, at the conclusion of the war, the belligerents and
some leading neutrals were gathered.

The Declaration of Paris on maritime warfare covered four
points:

“1. Privateering is, and remains, abolished.

“2. The neutral flag covers enemy’s goods, with the exception of
contraband of war.

“3. Neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, are not
liable to capture under enemy’s flag.

“4. Blockades, in order to be binding, must be effective; that is
to say, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access
to the coast of the enemy[240].”

This agreement was adopted by Austria, France, Great Britain,
Prussia, Russia, Sardinia and Turkey, and it was further agreed
that a general invitation to accede should be extended to all
nations, but with the proviso “that the powers which shall have
signed it, or which shall accede thereto, shall not in future enter
into any arrangement, concerning the application of the law of
neutrals in time of war, which does not rest altogether upon the
four principles embodied in the said declaration[241].” In other
words it must be accepted in whole, and not in part, and the powers
acceding pledging themselves not to enter into any subsequent
treaties or engagements on maritime law which did not stipulate
observance of all four points. Within a short time nearly all the
maritime nations of the world had given official adherence to the
Declaration of Paris.

But the United States refused to do so. She had long stood in
the advance guard of nations demanding respect for neutral rights.
Little by little her avowed principles of international law as
regards neutrals, first scoffed at, had crept into acceptance in
treaty stipulations. Secretary of State Marcy now declared, in
July, 1856, that the United [V1:pg 141] States would accede to the
Declaration if a fifth article were added to it protecting all
private property at sea, when not contraband. This covered not only
cargo, but the vessel as well, and its effect would have been to
exclude from belligerent operations non-contraband enemy’s goods
under the enemy’s flag, if goods and ship were privately owned.
Maritime warfare on the high seas would have been limited to
battles between governmentally operated war-ships. Unless this rule
were adopted also, Secretary Marcy declared that “the United States
could not forgo the right to send out privateers, which in the past
had proved her most effective maritime weapon in time of war, and
which, since she had no large navy, were essential to her fighting
power.”

“War on private property,” said the Americans, “had been
abolished on land; why should it not be abolished also on the sea?”
The American proposal met with general support among the smaller
maritime nations. It was believed that the one great obstacle to
the adoption of Marcy’s amendment lay in the naval supremacy of
Great Britain, and that obstacle proved insurmountable. Thus the
United States refused to accede to the Declaration, and there the
matter rested until 1861. But on April 17 Jefferson Davis
proclaimed for the Southern Confederacy the issue of privateers
against Northern commerce. On April 24 Seward instructed
representatives abroad, recounting the Marcy proposal and
expressing the hope that it still might meet with a favourable
reception, but authorizing them to enter into conventions for
American adherence to the Declaration of 1856 on the four points
alone. This instruction was sent to the Ministers in Great Britain,
France, Russia, Prussia, Austria, Belgium, Italy, and Denmark; and
on May 10 to the Netherlands.

Having received this instruction, Adams, at the close of his
first meeting with Russell on May 18, after having [V1:pg 142] developed at
length the American position relative to the issue of the British
Proclamation of Neutrality, briefly added that he was directed to
offer adherence by means of a convention, to the Declaration of
Paris. Russell replied that Great Britain was willing to negotiate,
but “seemed to desire to leave the subject in the hands of Lord
Lyons, to whom he intimated that he had already transmitted
authority[242]….” Adams therefore did not press the
matter, waiting further information and instruction from
Washington. Nearly two weeks earlier Russell had, in fact,
approached the Government of France with a suggestion that the two
leading maritime powers should propose to the American belligerents
adherence to the second and third articles of the Declaration of
Paris. France had agreed and the date of Russell’s instruction to
Lyons was May 18, the day of the interview with Adams. Confusion
now arose in both London and Washington as to the place where the
arrangement was to be concluded. The causes of this confusion will
be considered later in this chapter; here it is sufficient to note
that the negotiation was finally undertaken at London.

On July 18 Russell informed Adams that Great Britain was ready
to enter into a convention with the United States, provided a
similar convention was signed with France at the same time. This
convention, as submitted by Adams, simply recorded an agreement by
the two powers to abide by the four points of the Declaration of
Paris, using the exact wording of that document[243]. Adams’ draft
had been communicated to Russell on July 13. There then followed a
delay required by the necessity of securing similar action by
Dayton, the American Minister at Paris, but on July 29 Adams
reported to Russell that this had [V1:pg 143] been done and that he was ready
to sign. Two days later, July 31, Russell replied that he, also,
was ready, but concluded his letter, “I need scarcely add that on
the part of Great Britain the engagement will be prospective, and
will not invalidate anything already done[244].” It was not
until August 8, however, that Cowley, the British Ambassador to
France, reported that Dayton had informed Thouvenel, French Foreign
Minister, that he was ready to sign the similar convention with
France[245].
With no understanding, apparently, of the causes of further delay,
and professing complete ignorance of the meaning of Russell’s
phrase, just quoted[246], Adams waited the expected invitation to
an official interview for the affixing of signatures. Since it was
a condition of the negotiation that this should be done
simultaneously in London and Paris, the further delay that now
occurred caused him no misgivings.

On August 19 Russell requested Adams to name a convenient day
“in the course of this week,” and prefaced this request with the
statement that he enclosed a copy of a Declaration which he
proposed to make in writing, upon signing the convention. “You will
observe,” he wrote, “that it is intended to prevent any
misconception as to the nature of the engagement to be taken by Her
Majesty.” The proposed Declaration read:

“In affixing his signature to the Convention of this
day between Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and
the United States of America, the Earl Russell declares, by order
of Her Majesty, that Her Majesty does not intend thereby to
undertake any engagement which shall have any bearing, direct or
indirect, on the internal differences now prevailing in the United
States[247].”

Under his instructions to negotiate a convention for a pure and
simple adherence to the Declaration of Paris, Adams could not now
go on to official signature. Nor was he inclined to do so.
Sincerely believing, as he stated to Russell in a communication of
August 23, that the United States was “acting with the single
purpose of aiding to establish a permanent doctrine for all time,”
and with the object of “ameliorating the horrors of warfare all
over the globe,” he objected “to accompany the act with a
proceeding somewhat novel and anomalous,” which on the face of it
seemed to imply a suspicion on the part of Great Britain that the
United States was “desirous at this time to take a part in the
Declaration [of Paris], not from any high purpose or durable
policy, but with the view of securing some small temporary object
in the unhappy struggle which is going on at home[248].” He also
pointed out that Russell’s proposed declaration either was or was
not a part of the convention. If it was a part then the Senate of
the United States must ratify it as well as the convention itself,
and he would have gone beyond his instructions in submitting it. If
not a part of the convention there could be no advantage in making
the Declaration since, unratified by the Senate, it would have no
force. Adams therefore declined to proceed further with the matter
until he had received new instructions from Washington.

To this Russell answered, August 28, with a very explicit
exposition of his reasons. Great Britain, he said, had declared her
neutrality in the American conflict, thereby recognizing the
belligerent rights of the South. It followed that the South “might
by the law of nations arm privateers,” and that these “must be
regarded as the armed vessels of a belligerent.” But the United
States had refused to recognize the status of belligerency, and
could therefore maintain that privateers issued by the Southern
[V1:pg 145]
States were in fact pirates, and might argue that a European Power
signing a convention with the United States, embodying the
principles of the Declaration of Paris, “would be bound to treat
the privateers of the so-called Confederate States as pirates.”
Hence Russell pointed out, the two countries, arguing from
contradictory premises as to the status of the conflict in America,
might become involved in charges of bad faith and of violation of
the convention. He had therefore merely intended by his suggested
declaration to prevent any misconception by the United States.

“It is in this spirit that Her Majesty’s Government
decline to bind themselves, without a clear explanation on their
part, to a Convention which, seemingly confined to an adoption of
the Declaration of Paris of 1856, might be construed as an
engagement to interfere in the unhappy dissensions now prevailing
in the United States; an interference which would be contrary to
Her Majesty’s public declarations, and would be a reversal of the
policy which Her Majesty has deliberately sanctioned[249].”

Thus the negotiation closed. Seward in declining to accept the
proposed declaration gave varying reasons in his instructions to
Adams, in London, and to Dayton, in Paris, for an exactly similar
declaration had been insisted upon by France, but he did not argue
the question save in generalities. He told Dayton that the supposed
possible “intervention” which Great Britain and France seemed to
fear they would be called upon to make was exactly the action which
the United States desired to forestall, and he notified Adams that
he could not consent since the proposed Declaration “would be
virtually a new and distinct article incorporated into the
projected convention[250].” The first formal negotiation of the
United States during the Civil War, and of the new American
Minister in London, had come [V1:pg 146] to an inglorious conclusion.
Diplomats and Foreign Secretaries were, quite naturally, disturbed,
and were even suspicious of each others’ motives, but the public,
not at the moment informed save on the American offer and the
result, paid little attention to these “inner circle”
controversies[251].

What then were the hidden purposes, if such existed, of the
negotiating powers. The first answer in historical writing was that
offered by Henry Adams[252], in an essay entitled “The Declaration of
Paris, 1861,” in the preparation of which the author studied with
care all the diplomatic correspondence available in print[253]. His treatment
presents Russell as engaged in a policy of deception with the view
of obtaining an ultimate advantage to Great Britain in the field of
commercial rivalry and maritime supremacy. Following Henry Adams’
argument Russell, on May 9, brought to the attention of France a
proposal for a joint request on the American belligerents to
respect the second and third articles of the Declaration of Paris,
and received an acquiescent reply. After some further exchanges of
proposed terms of instructions to the British and French Ministers
at Washington, Russell, on May 18, sent a despatch to Lyons with
instructions for his action. On this same day Russell, in his first
interview with Adams, “before these despatches [to Lyons] could
have left the Foreign Office,” and replying to Adams’ proposal to
negotiate [V1:pg
147] on the Declaration of Paris as a whole–that is
to say, on all four articles–intimated that instructions had
already gone to Lyons, with directions to assent to any
modification of the article on privateering that the United States
might desire. Adams understood Russell to prefer that the
negotiation (for such Adams thought it was to be) should take place
in Washington, and did not press the matter.

This was deliberate deceit; first in a statement of fact since
the interview with Adams took place at noon on May 18, at Russell’s
country house nine miles from London, and in all reasonable
supposition the despatch to Lyons would not have been sent until
the Foreign Secretary’s return to his office; second because Lyons
was not instructed to negotiate on the Declaration. The
interpretation is justified therefore that Russell “evaded the
offer of the United States Government.” The result of this evasion
was delay, but when Seward learned from Lyons that he had no
authority to negotiate a convention and Adams received renewed
instructions to proceed, the latter “kept his temper, but the
affair made a lasting impression on his mind, and shook his faith
in the straightforwardness of the British Government.” In renewing
his overtures at London, Adams made explanations of the previous
“misunderstanding” and to these Russell replied with further
“inaccuracies” as to what had been said at the first interview.

Thus beginning his survey with an assertion of British deceit
and evasion from the very outset, and incidentally remarking that
Lyons, at Washington, “made little disguise of his leanings” toward
the South, Henry Adams depicts Russell as leading France along a
line of policy distinctly unfriendly to the North. Examining each
point in the negotiation as already narrated, he summarized it as
follows:

“The story has shown that Russell and his colleagues
… induced the French Government to violate the [V1:pg 148] pledge in the
protocol of the Declaration of Paris in order to offer to both
belligerents a partial adhesion, which must exclude the United
States from a simple adhesion, to the Declaration of Paris, while
it placed both belligerents on the same apparent footing. These
steps were taken in haste before Adams could obtain an interview.
When Adams by an effort unexpected to Russell obtained an interview
at Pembroke Lodge at noon of Saturday, May 18, and according to
Russell’s report of May 21, said that the United States were
‘disposed to adhere to the Declaration of Paris,’ Russell evaded
the offer, saying that he had already sent sufficient instructions
to Lyons, although the instructions were not sufficient, nor had
they been sent. When this evasion was afterward brought to his
notice by Adams, Russell, revising his report to Lyons, made such
changes in it as should represent the first proposal as coming from
himself, and the evasion to have come from Adams. When at last
obliged to read the American offer, Russell declared that he had
never heard of it before, although he had himself reported it to
Lyons and Lyons had reported it to him. When compelled to take the
offer for consideration, Russell, though always professing to
welcome adhesion pure and simple, required the co-operation of
Dayton. When Adams overcame this last obstacle, Russell interposed
a written proviso, which as he knew from Lyons would prevent
ratification. When Adams paid no attention to the proviso but
insisted on signature of the treaty, Russell at last wrote a
declaration in the nature of an insult, which could not be
disregarded[254].”

In this presentation of the case to the jury certain minor
points are insisted upon to establish a ground for suspicion–as
the question of who first made the proposal–that are not essential
to Henry Adams’ conclusions. This conclusion is that “From the
delays interposed by Russell, Adams must conclude that the British
Cabinet was trying one device after another to evade the
proposition; and finally, from the written declaration of August
19, he could draw no other inference than that Russell had resorted
to [V1:pg 149]
the only defensive weapon left to him, in order to avoid the avowal
of his true motives and policy[255].” The motive of this tortuous
proceeding, the author believed to have been a deep-laid scheme to
revive, after the American War was ended, the earlier
international practice of Great Britain, in treating as subject to
belligerent seizure enemy’s goods under the neutral flag. It was
the American stand, argues Henry Adams, that in 1854 had compelled
Great Britain to renounce this practice. A complete American
adherence, now, to the Declaration, would for ever tie Britain’s
hands, but if there were no such complete adherence and only
temporary observation of the second article, after the war had
resulted in the disruption of the United States, thus removing the
chief supporter of that article, Great Britain would feel free to
resume her old-time practice when she engaged in war. If Great
Britain made a formal treaty with the United States she would feel
bound to respect it; the Declaration of Paris as it stood
constituted “a mere agreement, which was binding, as Lord
Malmesbury declared, only so long as it was convenient to respect
it[256].”
Thus the second article of the Declaration of Paris, not the first
on privateering, was in the eye of the British Cabinet in the
negotiation of 1861. Henry Adams ends his essay: “After the manner
in which Russell received the advances of President Lincoln, no
American Minister in London could safely act on any other
assumption than that the British Government meant, at the first
convenient opportunity, to revive the belligerent pretensions
dormant since the War of 1812[257].”

This analysis was published in 1891. Still more briefly
summarized it depicts an unfriendly, almost hostile attitude
[V1:pg 150] on
the part of Russell and Lyons, deceit and evasion by the former,
selfish British policy, and throughout a blind following on by
France, yielding to Russell’s leadership. The American proposal is
regarded merely as a simple and sincere offer to join in supporting
an improved international practice in war-times. But when Frederic
Bancroft, the biographer of Seward, examined the negotiation he was
compelled to ask himself whether this was all, indeed, that the
American Secretary of State had in view. Bancroft’s analysis may be
stated more briefly[258].

Seward’s general instruction, Bancroft notes, bore date of April
24, nearly a month before any foreign Power had recognized Southern
belligerent rights; it indicates “a plan by which he hoped to
remove all excuse for such action.” In despatches to Dayton, Seward
asserted a twofold motive: “a sincere desire to co-operate with
other progressive nations in the melioration of the rigours of
maritime war,” and “to remove every cause that any foreign Power
could have for the recognition of the insurgents as a belligerent
Power[259].”
This last result was not so clear to Dayton at Paris, nor was the
mechanism of operation ever openly stated by Seward. But he did
write, later, that the proposal of accession to the Declaration of
Paris was tendered “as the act of this Federal Government, to be
obligatory equally upon disloyal as upon loyal citizens.” “It did
not,” writes Bancroft, “require the gift of prophecy to tell what
would result in case the offer of accession on the part of the
United States should be accepted[260].”

Seward’s object was to place the European nations in a position
where they, as well as the United States, would be forced to regard
Southern privateers as pirates, and treat [V1:pg 151] them as such.
This was a conceivable result of the negotiation before European
recognition of Southern belligerency, but even after that
recognition and after Dayton had pointed out the impossibility of
such a result, Seward pressed for the treaty and instructed Dayton
not to raise the question with France. He still had in mind this
main object. “If Seward,” says Bancroft, “had not intended to use
the adherence of the United States to the declaration as a lever to
force the other Powers to treat the Confederates as pirates, or at
least to cease regarding them as belligerents, he might easily and
unofficially have removed all such suspicions[261].” In an
interview with Lyons on July 6 Seward urged a quick conclusion of
the treaty, arguing that its effect upon the revolted states could
be determined afterwards. Naturally Lyons was alarmed and gave
warning to Russell. “Probably it was this advice that caused
Russell to insist on the explanatory declaration[262].”

It would appear, then, that Seward much underestimated the
acuteness of Russell and Thouvenel, and expected them “to walk into
a trap.” Nor could his claim “that there was no difference between
a nation entirely at peace and one in circumstances like those of
the United States at this time” be taken seriously. “He was
furnishing his opponent with evidences of his lack of candour.”
This clouded the effect that would have followed “a wise and
generous policy toward neutrals, which had doubtless been in
Seward’s mind from the beginning[263].” In the end he concluded the negotiation
gracefully, writing to Adams a pledge of American respect for the
second and third articles of the Declaration of Paris–exactly that
which Lyons had originally been instructed by Russell to
secure.

“We regard Great Britain as a friend. Her Majesty’s
flag, according to our traditional principles, covers enemy’s goods
not contraband of war. Goods of Her Majesty’s subjects, not
contraband of war, are exempt from confiscation, though found under
a neutral or disloyal flag. No depredations shall be committed by
our naval forces or by those of any of our citizens, so far as we
can prevent it, upon the vessels or property of British subjects.
Our blockade, being effective, must be respected[264].”

Thus Bancroft regards Seward’s proposals of April 24 as in part
the result of humanitarian motives and in part as having a
concealed purpose of Northern advantage. This last he calls a
“trap.” And it is to be noted that in Seward’s final pledge to
Adams the phrase “those of any of our citizens” reserves, for the
North, since the negotiation had failed, the right to issue
privateers on her own account. But Russell also, says Bancroft, was
not “altogether artless and frank.” He had in view a British
commercial advantage during the war, since if the United States
respected the second and third articles of the Declaration of
Paris, and “if Confederate privateers should roam the ocean and
seize the ships and goods of citizens of the North, all the better
for other commercial nations; for it would soon cause the commerce
of the United States to be carried on under foreign flags,
especially the British and French[265].” Ulterior motive is, therefore, ascribed
to both parties in the negotiation, and that of Seward is treated
as conceived at the moment when a policy of seeking European
friendship was dominant at Washington, but with the hope of
securing at least negative European support. Seward’s persistence
after European recognition of Southern belligerency is [V1:pg 153] regarded as a
characteristic obstinacy without a clear view of possible resulting
dangerous complications.

This view discredits the acumen of the American Secretary of
State and it does not completely satisfy the third historian to
examine the incident in detail. Nor does he agree on the basis of
British policy. Charles Francis Adams, in his “Life” of his father,
writing in 1899, followed in the main the view of his brother,
Henry Adams. But in 1912 he reviewed the negotiation at great
length with different conclusions[266]. His thesis is that the Declaration of
Paris negotiation was an essential part of Seward’s “foreign war
policy,” in that in case a treaty was signed with Great Britain and
France and then those Powers refused to aid in the suppression of
Southern privateering, or at least permitted them access to British
and French ports, a good ground of complaint leading to war would
be established. This was the ultimate ulterior purpose in
Seward’s mind; the negotiation was but a method of fixing a quarrel
on some foreign Power in case the United States should seek, as
Seward desired, a cementing of the rift at home by a foreign
war.

In the details of the negotiation C.F. Adams agrees with
Bancroft, but with this new interpretation. The opening
misunderstanding he ascribed, as did Lyons, to the simple fact that
Seward “had refused to see the despatch” in which Russell’s
proposals were made[267]. Seward’s instructions [V1:pg 154] of July 6,
after the misunderstanding was made clear to him, pushing the
negotiation, were drawn when he was “still riding a very high
horse–the No. 10 charger, in fact, he had mounted on the 21st of
the previous May[268],” and this warlike charger he continued
to ride until the sobering Northern defeat at Bull Run, July 21,
put an end to his folly. If that battle had been a Northern victory
he would have gone on with his project. Now, with the end of a
period of brain-storm and the emergence of sanity in foreign
policy, “Secretary Seward in due time (September 7) pronounced the
proposed reservation [by Russell] quite ‘inadmissible.’ And here
the curtain fell on this somewhat prolonged and not altogether
creditable diplomatic farce[269].”

Incidentally C.F. Adams examined also British action and
intention. Lyons is wholly exonerated. “Of him it may be fairly
said that his course throughout seems to furnish no ground for
criticism[270].” And Lyons is quoted as having
understood, in the end, the real purpose of Seward’s policy in
seeking embroilment with Europe. He wrote to Russell on December 6
upon the American publication of despatches, accompanying the
President’s annual message: “Little doubt can remain, after reading
the papers, that the accession was offered solely with the view to
the effect it would have on the privateering operations of the
Southern States; and that a refusal on the part of England and
France, after having accepted the accession, to treat the Southern
privateers as pirates, would have been made a serious grievance, if
not a ground of quarrel[271]….” As to [V1:pg 155] Russell, combating Henry Adams’
view, it is asserted that it was the great good fortune of the
United States that the British Foreign Secretary, having declared a
policy of neutrality, was not to be driven from its honest
application by irritations, nor seduced into a position where the
continuation of that policy would be difficult.

Before entering upon an account of the bearing of the newly
available British materials on the negotiation–materials which
will in themselves offer sufficient comment on the theories of
Henry Adams, and in less degree of Bancroft–it is best to note
here the fallacy in C.F. Adams’ main thesis. If the analysis given
in the preceding chapter of the initiation and duration of Seward’s
“foreign war policy” is correct, then the Declaration of Paris
negotiation had no essential relation whatever to that policy. The
instructions to Adams were sent to eight other Ministers. Is it
conceivable that Seward desired a war with the whole maritime
world? The date, April 24, antedates any deliberate proposal of a
foreign war, whatever he may have been brooding, and in fact stamps
the offer as part of that friendly policy toward Europe which
Lincoln had insisted upon. Seward’s frenzy for a foreign war did
not come to a head until the news had been received of England’s
determination to recognize Southern belligerency. This was in the
second week of May and on the twenty-first Despatch No. 10 marked
the decline, not the beginning, of a belligerent policy, and by the
President’s orders. By May 24 probably, by the twenty-seventh
certainly, Seward had yielded and was rapidly beginning to turn to
expressions of friendship[272]. Yet it was only on May 18 that Russell’s
first instructions to Lyons were sent, and not until late in June
that the “misunderstanding” cleared away, instructions were
despatched by Seward to push the Declaration of Paris negotiations
at London and Paris. The battle of Bull Run [V1:pg 156] had nothing to
do with a new policy. Thus chronology forbids the inclusion of this
negotiation, either in its inception, progress, or conclusion, as
an agency intended to make possible, on just grounds, a foreign
war.

A mere chronological examination of documents, both printed and
in archives, permits a clearer view of British policy on the
Declaration of Paris. Recalling the facts of the American situation
known in London it will be remembered that on May 1 the British
Government and Parliament became aware that a civil war was
inevitable and that the South planned to issue privateers. On that
day Russell asked the Admiralty to reinforce the British fleet in
West Indian waters that British commerce might be adequately
protected. Five days later, May 6, he announced in the Commons that
Great Britain must be strictly neutral, and that a policy of close
harmony with France was being matured; and on this day he proposed
through Cowley, in Paris, that Great Britain and France each ask
both the contending parties in America to abide by the
second and third articles of the Declaration of Paris[273]. If there was
ulterior motive here it does not appear in any despatch either then
or later, passing between any of the British diplomats
concerned–Russell, Cowley, and Lyons. The plain fact was that the
United States was not an adherent to the Declaration, that the
South had announced privateering, and the North a blockade, and
that the only portions of the Declaration in regard to which the
belligerents had as yet made no statement were the second and third
articles.

It was, indeed, an anxious time for the British Government. On
May 9 Forster asked in the Commons what would be the Government’s
attitude toward a British subject serving on a Southern
privateer[274]. The next day in the Lords there occurred
a debate the general burden of which was that privateering was in
fact piracy, but that under the conditions of the American previous
stand, it could not be treated as such[275]. Both in the
Commons and the Lords speakers were referred to the forthcoming
Proclamation of Neutrality, but the uncertainty developed in both
debates is very probably reflected in the new despatch now sent to
Cowley, on May 11[276]. By that despatch France was asked to
send an instruction to Mercier in Washington similar to a draft
instruction intended for Lyons, a copy of which was enclosed to
Cowley, the object being to secure from the American belligerents
adherence to all the articles, privateering included, of the
Declaration of Paris[277].

Whatever Russell’s purpose in thus altering his original
suggestion, it met with a prompt check from France. On May 9
Thouvenel had agreed heartily to the proposal of May 6, adding the
practical advice that the best method of approach to the
Confederacy would be through the consuls in the South[278]. Now, on May
13, Russell was informed that Thouvenel feared that England and
France would get into serious trouble if the North agreed to accede
on privateering and the South did not. Cowley reported that he had
argued with Thouvenel that privateers were [V1:pg 158] pirates and
ought to be treated as such, but that Thouvenel refused to do more
than instruct Mercier on the second and third articles[279]. For the moment
Russell appears to have yielded easily to this French advice. On
May 13 he had that interview with the Southern commissioners in
which he mentioned a communication about to be made to the
South[280];
and on May 15 the London Times, presumably reflecting
governmental decision, in commenting on the Proclamation of
Neutrality, developed at some length the idea that British
citizens, if they served on Southern privateers, could claim no
protection from Great Britain if the North chose to treat them as
pirates. May 16, Cowley reported that Thouvenel had written Mercier
in the terms of Russell’s draft to Lyons of the eleventh, but
omitting the part about privateering[281], and on this
same day Russell sent to Cowley a copy of a new draft of
instructions to Lyons, seemingly in exact accord with the French
idea[282]. On
the seventeenth, Cowley reported this as highly satisfactory to
Thouvenel[283]. Finally on May 18 the completed
instruction was despatched.

It was on this same day, May 18, that Adams had his first
interview with Russell. All that had been planned by Great Britain
and France had been based on their estimate of the necessity of the
situation. They had no knowledge of Seward’s instructions of April
24. When therefore Adams, toward the conclusion of his interview,
stated his authority to negotiate a convention, he undoubtedly took
Russell by surprise. So far as he was concerned a suggestion to the
North, the result of an agreement made with France [V1:pg 159] after some
discussion and delay, was in fact completed, and the draft finally
drawn two days before, on the sixteenth. Even if not
actually sent, as Henry Adams thinks, it was a completed agreement.
Russell might well speak of it as an instruction already given to
Lyons. Moreover there were two points in Adams’ conversation of the
eighteenth likely to give Russell cause for thought. The first was
Adams’ protest against the British recognition of a status of
belligerency. If the North felt so earnestly about this, had it
been wise to instruct Lyons to make an approach to the South? This
required consideration. And in the second place did not Adams’
offer again open up the prospect of somehow getting from the North
at least a formal and permanent renunciation of privateering?

For if an examination is made of Russell’s instruction to Lyons
of May 18 it appears that he had not, after all, dropped that
reference to privateering which Thouvenel had omitted in his own
instructions to Mercier. Adams understood Russell to have said that
he “had already transmitted authority [to Lyons] to assent to any
modification of the only point in issue which the Government of the
United States might prefer. On that matter he believed that there
would be no difficulty whatever[284].” This clearly referred to privateering.
Russell’s instructions to Lyons took up the points of the
Declaration of Paris in reverse order. That on blockades was now
generally accepted by all nations. The principle of the third
article had “long been recognized as law, both in Great Britain and
in the United States.” The second article, “sanctioned by the
United States in the earliest period of the history of their
independence,” had been opposed, formerly, by Great Britain, but
having acquiesced in the Declaration of 1856, “she means to adhere
to the principle she then adopted.” [V1:pg 160] Thus briefly stating his
confidence that the United States would agree on three of the
articles, Russell explained at length his views as to privateering
in the American crisis.

“There remains only to be considered Article I, namely,
that relating to privateering, from which the Government of the
United States withheld their assent. Under these circumstances it
is expedient to consider what is required on this subject by the
general law of nations. Now it must be borne in mind that
privateers bearing the flag of one or other of the belligerents may
be manned by lawless and abandoned men, who may commit, for the
sake of plunder, the most destructive and sanguinary outrages.
There can be no question, however, but that the commander and crew
of a ship bearing a letter of marque must, by the law of nations,
carry on their hostilities according to the established laws of
war. Her Majesty’s Government must, therefore, hold any Government
issuing such letters of marque responsible for, and liable to make
good, any losses sustained by Her Majesty’s subjects in consequence
of wrongful proceedings of vessels sailing under such letters of
marque.

“In this way, the object of the Declaration of Paris may to a
certain extent be attained without the adoption of any new
principle.

“You will urge these points upon Mr. Seward[285].”

What did Russell mean by this cautious statement? The facts
known to him were that Davis had proclaimed the issue of letters of
marque and that Lincoln had countered by proclaiming Southern
privateering to be piracy[286]. He did not know that Seward was prepared
to renounce privateering, but he must have thought it likely from
Lincoln’s proclamation, and have regarded this as a good time to
strike for an object desired by all the European maritime nations
since 1856. Russell could not, while Great Britain was neutral,
join the United States in treating Southern privateers as pirates,
but he here offered to come as close [V1:pg 161] to it as he dared, by asserting
that Great Britain would use vigilance in upholding the law of
nations. This language might be interpreted as intended for the
admonition of the North also, but the facts of the then
known situation make it applicable to Southern activities alone.
Russell had desired to include privateering in the proposals to the
United States and to the South, but Thouvenel’s criticisms forced
him to a half-measure of suggestion to the North, and a full
statement of the delicacy of the situation in the less formal
letter to Lyons accompanying his official instructions. This was
also dated May 18. In it Russell directed Lyons to transmit to the
British Consul at Charleston or New Orleans a copy of the official
instruction “to be communicated at Montgomery to the President of
the so-styled Confederate States,” and he further explained his
purpose and the British position:

“… You will not err in encouraging the Government to
which you are accredited to carry into effect any disposition which
they may evince to recognize the Declaration of Paris in regard to
privateering….

“You will clearly understand that Her Majesty’s Government cannot
accept the renunciation of privateering on the part of the
Government of the United States if coupled with the condition that
they should enforce its renunciation on the Confederate States,
either by denying their right to issue letters of marque, or by
interfering with the belligerent operations of vessels holding from
them such letters of marque, so long as they carry on hostilities
according to the recognized principles and under the admitted
liabilities of the law of nations[287].”