A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War

by Amanda Foreman

  Ill.6 Punch depicts the North and South as a mismatched couple.

  Lord John Russell had still not spoken to William Gregory when the Southern commissioners Yancey and Rost finally reached London on April 29, a week after Mann. Unaccustomed to foreign travel, they had passed two miserable days in Southampton and had arrived in the capital feeling bewildered and frightened. Rather than pausing for a moment to consider the best way of contacting the Confederate community, they sent a telegram to the American legation addressed to Ambrose Dudley Mann. “The unblushing impudence of these scoundrels,” ranted Moran, “to send their message to the US Legation for one of their fellow traitors.”13 The timing and announcement of their arrival was fortunate for Lord John Russell, since it gave him a bargaining chip with Gregory, who agreed to postpone his motion to June 7 in return for a Foreign Office meeting with the Southerners on May 3.

  Russell was not making a great concession, since it was standard Foreign Office practice to receive representatives from breakaway countries. These meetings never carried official weight, nor were the emissaries accorded diplomatic rank. Russell assumed that Dallas had lived in England long enough to know this, and that Charles Francis Adams could have it explained to him when he eventually arrived. Russell was disturbed by the thought of Confederate privateers roaming the seas, and, at his request, the Admiralty was already taking precautionary measures to reinforce the North Atlantic squadron. The prospect of encountering lawless privateers so frightened Dallas that he booked passage for his wife and three daughters for May 1, hoping they would be home before transatlantic travel became impossible.

  Russell’s satisfaction over his dealings with Gregory lasted only twenty-four hours. On May 2 he received a run of telegrams: the first announced that Lincoln had decided on a blockade rather than port closures; the next, that Virginia, that mainstay of the American Revolution, had seceded, depriving the North of the large weapons arsenal at Harpers Ferry; and finally, that Maryland had erupted in violence, leaving eleven people dead in Baltimore during street fighting between Federal troops and Southern protesters.4.2 “This is the first bloodshed and God knows where it will end,” Moran wrote in his diary. It surprised and comforted him when several Englishmen called at the legation vainly asking to join the Federal army. But the reaction of Russell’s predecessor at the Foreign Office, Lord Clarendon, showed that old resentments had a habit of reviving: “For my own part if we could be sure of getting raw cotton from them, I should not care how many Northerners were clawed at by the Southerners & vice versa!”14

  When Russell went to the House of Commons that evening, he was bombarded with questions from MPs, not a few of whom shared Clarendon’s view. He could give little enlightenment, but to those who expressed a desire for British intervention he warned against such a reckless move. “Nothing but the imperative duty of protecting British interests, in case they should be attacked, justified the government in at all interfering,” he told the House. “We have not been involved in any way in that contest. For God’s sake, let us if possible keep out of it.”15 He delivered a similar message to the Southern envoys when they arrived for their interview on Friday, May 3. Gregory had warned them about Russell’s notorious shyness, but they had not expected the frigid politeness with which they were received. Russell caught them off guard by declaring he had “little to say.” William Yancey stumbled through a speech about the Constitution, liberty, and states’ rights. He insisted the slave trade would not be revived, which Russell disbelieved, threw in a warning about cotton, which Russell ignored, and finally asked for immediate recognition, which Russell refused. The envoys returned to their lodgings at 40 Albemarle Street thoroughly disheartened.

  Lord John Russell spent the weekend of the fourth and fifth of May carefully analyzing the choices open to the British government. He hoped that antislavery would become the overriding cause of the war, but feared that the North would throw it over without hesitation if the Union could thus be saved. He was also torn between despising the South for its dependence on slavery and admiring its spirited bid for independence. Above all, he agreed with Lord Lyons that to give preferential treatment to the North would be unwise and possibly dangerous with Seward at the helm. Accepting the legality of the blockade, which would require a declaration of official neutrality, struck him as the wisest course, he told his colleagues, especially in light of Seward’s evident keenness to manufacture a reason for declaring war.

  The cabinet was not enthusiastic about adopting a policy that was so dangerous to the country’s cotton industry. Palmerston agreed with the proposal, though he felt it was a heavy price for staying out of the conflict. “The South fight for independence; what do the North fight for,” asked the home secretary, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, “except to gratify passion or pride?”16 William Gladstone was privately even more outspoken for the South and compared Jefferson Davis to General Garibaldi. When his friend Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, heard about his views, she was outraged and demanded to know how he could “think the Southern states most in the right—I did not hear you say; I don’t believe it.”17 Nor did she accept his explanation that the wishes of minorities ought to be respected.18 Only the Duke of Argyll, her favorite son-in-law, wholeheartedly supported Russell. He abhorred revolutionary movements on principle; moreover, his friendship with Charles Sumner had given him an insight into American politics. He rightly understood that the Union had to be safeguarded since the South would never abolish slavery on its own.

  In declaring neutrality, Russell was convinced he had chosen the best alternative; he had consulted the law officers of the Crown, as he always did when in doubt, and in their opinion the crisis in America was not a minor insurgency but a genuine state of war. The blockade could and should be recognized, they told him, and so should the right of the South to employ privateers. Russell endured some aggressive questioning in Parliament when he announced the government’s decision on May 6. He was also pressured by Gregory into seeing the Confederate envoys for a second time, on the grounds that the Northern blockade had not been confirmed at the first meeting. Russell suspected they would try to make more of the neutrality announcement than the government intended. Their exultant demeanor on May 9 showed that his instincts had been correct.19 The envoys were unaware, however, that even as they pressed their arguments on him, the law officers were composing an additional proviso to Britain’s declaration of neutrality that would make it illegal for a British subject to volunteer for either side in the war. Russell had meant it when he said “for God’s sake, let us if possible keep out of it.”

  Yancey, Rost, and Mann were dumbfounded when they read the “Queen’s Proclamation of Neutrality” in The Times on May 14. A close examination of the wording showed that Russell had taken away many of the advantages that belligerent status had initially seemed to give to the Confederacy. He had invoked the rarely used 1819 Foreign Enlistment Act, under which British subjects were forbidden to volunteer for a foreign cause or encourage others to do so.20 The act also prohibited the selling or arming of warships to either belligerent; those who disobeyed the proclamation would be prosecuted, and the offending items confiscated.21 The more populous, industrial North would be able to overcome these obstacles on its own, but not the smaller, agrarian South.

  The Southern envoys realized that their two interviews with Russell had failed to make the slightest impression on him. Yancey ascribed their failure to Russell’s prejudice against the “peculiar institution,” as Southerners euphemistically called slavery: “We are satisfied that the public mind here is entirely opposed to the Government of the Confederate States of America on the question of slavery,” he reported to Robert Toombs, the Southern secretary of state. “All we can do at present is to affect public opinion in as unobtrusive a manner, as well as we can.”22

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  Charles Francis Adams also read the neutrality proclamation in The Times on May 14. He had arrived in London the night before, having endured the wor
st sea crossing of his life. The three children, Henry, Mary, and Brooks, had, like him, been prostrate with seasickness. Abigail, his wife, had stayed below deck for a different reason: Cassius Clay, Lincoln’s appointment to the legation in Russia, had embarrassed them by sauntering around the boat like a Punch caricature of the boorish American, with three pistols at his belt and a toothpick between his teeth.

  Adams knew nothing of what had passed between Seward and Lyons. But even if he had, his outrage at the British government’s decision to act without waiting for his arrival and consulting him first would have been the same. “Charles Francis Adams naturally looked on all British Ministers as enemies,” acknowledged Henry Adams in his autobiography. “The only public occupation of all Adamses for a hundred and fifty years at least, in their brief intervals of quarrelling with State Street, had been to quarrel with Downing Street, and the British Government.”23

  That first morning, Adams was ready to confront Lord John Russell, so he asked George Dallas, who arrived at the hotel after breakfast, to escort him to Russell’s house. To his dismay, the foreign secretary was not at home; a footman informed them that the family had been called suddenly to Woburn Abbey. Russell’s brother, the Duke of Bedford, had collapsed and was not expected to recover. Forced to delay his confrontation for a few days, Adams turned his attention to the family’s living situation. London had changed so much that he barely recognized it from the memories of his childhood. The city seemed ostentatious and gaudy; “shops fail in taste in everything here,” he wrote.24 His disapproval of English exhibitionism did not blind him to the fact that Dallas’s residence was far too modest for its purpose; the family would have to remain at the hotel until something grander was found. He was also irritated with Dallas for having neglected to renew the legation’s lease, which was ending in five days’ time.25 Adams responded to these twin challenges with stoicism, but Abigail’s fragile courage deserted her. Benjamin Moran was called to the hotel to reassure her that the Adamses would not be made social pariahs. Unconvinced, she insisted that he give the family a course in social etiquette. “Altogether I feel pretty sick and tired of the whole thing,” Henry Adams complained to Charles Francis Jr.26

  Adams’s first invitation was from an MP named William Forster. Dallas’s inquiries about him revealed that Forster belonged to the Liberal Party and had been an MP for all of three months. Like John Bright, Forster was a Quaker from a northern mill town, in his case Bradford, whose wealth came from manufacturing. But there the similarities ended. Bright was not interested in small acts or minor details; in Anthony Trollope’s damning judgment, “It was his business to inveigh against evils, and perhaps there is no easier business.”27 Forster was a modest and sincere man who sought neither power nor popularity. These attributes inclined the House to be gentle toward the newcomer. His maiden speech on the slave trade had been listened to without interruption (although afterward he was informed by a fellow MP that in London one said la-MENT-able, not LA-ment-able).

  Forster’s father had twice visited the United States to preach against slavery, in some places risking his life to be heard. Forster Sr.’s experiences had provided his son with an unsentimental attitude toward the South’s desire for secession. “A Mr. Gregory, MP, for Galway, who lately travelled in the South,” Forster wrote to a friend in America, “has returned well humbugged by the Southerners.” Gregory was talking all sorts of nonsense without anyone’s daring to challenge him: “I wish it had fallen into the hands of a member of more experience to stand up for the North and the Union; but I must do what I can.”28 Forster decided his first step should be to organize a meeting of pro-Northern MPs.

  Adams accepted Forster’s invitation even though the date was set for May 16, the day of his presentation at court. When he arrived at Forster’s house, he was disconcerted to discover that there were only seven people at the meeting, three of whom were Americans. Neither John Bright nor Richard Cobden had bothered to come. Cassius Clay and the historian John Lothrop Motley were the other Americans. Forster introduced the first two MPs so quickly that Adams missed their names. But the third, Richard Monckton Milnes, impressed Adams at once. “One might discuss long whether, at that moment, Milnes or Forster were the more valuable ally, since they were influences of different kinds,” recalled Henry Adams.

  Monckton Milnes was a social power in London … who knew himself to be the first wit in London, and a maker of men—of a great many men. A word from him went far. An invitation to his breakfast-table went farther.… William E. Forster stood in a different class. Forster had nothing whatever to do with May Fair [the fashionable center of London]. Except in being a Yorkshireman he was quite the opposite of Milnes. He had at that time no social or political position; he never had a vestige of Milnes’s wit or variety; he was a tall, rough, ungainly figure.… Pure gold, without a trace of base metal; honest, unselfish, practical.29

  “I found them all very tolerably informed and strongly inclined to the anti-Slavery side,” Adams wrote in his diary. However, Milnes declared he had come “mainly for the abominable selfishness of the South in breaking up a great country”; Adams could not decide whether that was English irony or a genuine statement.30 John Motley informed the meeting that he had received a letter from the Duke of Argyll, who insisted that the British government had no alternative but to declare neutrality. “When the American colonies revolted from England we attempted to treat their privateers as pirates, but we very soon found this would be out of the question,” he wrote. “The rules affecting and defining the rights and duties of belligerents are the only rules which prevent war from becoming massacre and murder.”31

  Cassius Clay refused to be persuaded of England’s good intentions. He was already tired of the country, with its rude servants and hotels that claimed not to have his reservation. Adams was also dubious, though he might have felt less wretched about the small number of MPs around the table had he known that the Southern envoys were in no better position. Gregory had managed to introduce Yancey to only two MPs, John Laird, owner of one of the largest shipbuilding firms in the country, and William Schaw Lindsay, a self-made shipping magnate. Both professed interest in helping the South achieve independence, but only on the understanding that slavery would eventually be abolished.

  Adams went home after the meeting to change for his presentation at court. This was not the time, he told Moran, “for indulging oddities of any kind,” nor for wearing clothes that made them look like servants caught on the wrong side of the green baize door.32 The plain black uniform mandated by the State Department was to be put away; under his tenure, the legation would attend royal functions in the usual brocade and breeches of the diplomatic corps. Dallas and Adams arrived at Buckingham Palace twenty-five minutes early, giving Adams the chance to study the paintings in the Great Saloon while he steadied his nerves. “I reasoned with myself with severity,” he wrote in his diary.33 Queen Victoria received him with a few gracious words and then asked with polite disinterest whether he had ever been to England before. Keeping his composure, Adams replied that he had, when young.

  George Dallas and his son left for Southampton immediately after Charles Francis Adams’s presentation. Adams wrote in his diary, “From this time I take the burden on my shoulders.”34 He was justifiably uneasy about his staff; the legation secretary, Charles Wilson, displayed a lingering disappointment at being denied the Chicago Post Office. Benjamin Moran’s open hostility toward Dallas was also an ill omen. “I part with the whole lot with joy,” Moran crowed when the two Dallases set sail. He felt they had taken him for granted, never asking about his late wife during her illness, nor bothering to include him at legation dinners. His job was all he had, and he clung to it with ferocious desperation. Moran did not know that retaining him at the legation had been Henry Adams’s idea or that he was the one who arranged it with the State Department.35 From the moment Moran set eyes on Henry he regarded him as a rival, even though the young Adams was only his father’s
private secretary with no official standing at the legation.

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  Minister Adams received his first dispatch from Seward on May 17. Its tone and the peremptory demands of the British government worried him, but he obeyed Seward’s orders and requested an interview with Lord John Russell, who had returned to London following the death of the Duke of Bedford. Russell replied with an offer of lunch that day if Adams was prepared to come to his house, Pembroke Lodge, in Richmond Park. In his haste, Adams arrived at the house before his message of acceptance, which caused Russell to greet him with more reserve than he had intended. Both men were struck for a moment by the physical similarities between them. Their small stature, coupled with their bald crowns, meant that from the back they could be taken for twins. Since neither had the least facility for small talk, the meeting quickly escalated into an acrimonious debate about the neutrality proclamation. Each thought the other rude and arrogant, and each set out to prove his superior knowledge of diplomatic history. They continued arguing after the bell rang for lunch. However, by the end of the meal their animosity had given way to a grudging respect. Russell showed his goodwill by inviting Adams for a stroll around the grounds. “I like Adams very much,” he wrote a few weeks later, “though we did not understand one another at first.”36

  When he reflected on the interview, Adams thought he had acquitted himself reasonably well, but he was less positive about the state of relations between the two countries.37 He never imagined the sense of emergency he had created in Lord John Russell. During the closing days of May, the British cabinet spent many hours trying to divine Seward’s real purpose. The Duke of Newcastle’s conversation with him the previous October was again analyzed. It was recalled how Napoleon had always reacted to failure with aggression; was Seward of the same mold, they wondered? If the South became independent, would he try to deflect public anger by attacking Canada? The question became not whether but how many regiments they should send to reinforce the Canadian border. The Duke of Argyll agreed to warn Charles Sumner about the effect of Seward’s threatening behavior. “Mr. Seward knows Europe less well than you do,” Argyll explained in his letter of June 4; “he may be disposed to do high-handed and offensive things which would necessarily lead to bad blood, and perhaps finally to rupture.”38