Ten days later, the Confederates’ mole in the Foreign Office sent word that Adams knew the name and the location of the Fingal. Anderson and Bulloch went down to Holyhead in Wales on October 15 but were too late to prevent a customs officer from boarding the Fingal, his pen and notebook in hand. Bulloch was aghast: “I thought of the rifles and sabres in the hold, and the ill-armed pickets on the Potomac waiting and longing for them.”9 The two men took a desperate risk. Anderson tricked the customs officer into leaving the steamer. Then, instead of sailing into dock as promised, Bulloch ordered the Fingal to weigh anchor and “we cracked on all the steam her boilers would bear.” They expected to be fired upon or chased by a customs ship, but nothing happened. “It was half past eight o’clock before we got fairly out to sea beyond the reach of batteries and pursuit,” wrote Anderson. “How my heart lightened as I looked at the blue water again and found myself on board a good staunch ship once more.”10
Shortly after the Fingal’s escape, the U.S. legation heard that the Bermuda had arrived at Savannah. “Wilson pretends to disbelieve it,” complained Moran on October 17. “But I fear it is fact.” Otherwise, he thought, there would not be so many advertisements in The Times for investors to buy shares in blockade-running ships. “John Bull would violate every law of honor and every principle of justice if he can secure his own ends thereby,” Moran declared.11 The same criticism was being leveled, with equal rancor, by the British government against Seward.
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“Mr. Seward appears to have deemed it advisable to get up a little excitement about the European Powers again” was how Lord Lyons wryly characterized the situation to Lord Russell on October 22.12 William Howard Russell was not constrained like Lyons by the language of diplomacy. Seward was up to “his usual tricks,” he noted in a letter to J. C. Bancroft Davis. “He is determined to resort to his favorite panacea of making the severed States reunited by a war with England.”13 Neither Lyons nor William Howard Russell thought it was a coincidence that Seward’s latest salvos against England had started when public confidence in the Lincoln administration was wavering. “A victory would do much to set things straight,” Lyons had written privately to Lord Russell in September, “but some of the illusions with which the war was begun are gone forever. The appearance of unanimity in the North has completely vanished.”14 Lyons was referring to the political controversy started by Union general John C. Frémont in the border state of Missouri, who in August had announced the emancipation of all slaves in the state belonging to Confederate sympathizers. Frémont’s impetuous act not only threatened to tear the army apart, with some regiments appearing ready to resign en masse rather than fight for the Negro, but also gave the strongest possible incentive to Missouri and the other slave-owning border states to join forces with the Confederacy.
Lincoln was already considering the removal of Frémont from his post when General McClellan suffered his first significant defeat. It was only a small engagement between two brigades at a place called Ball’s Bluff, forty miles upriver from Washington, but the high number of Federal soldiers killed and wounded shook Lincoln’s confidence in his new military commander. The possibility that the South might grow from eleven to thirteen or fourteen states could tip the scales against the North. The next day, October 22, Lincoln announced to his cabinet that he was repudiating both Frémont and his emancipation declaration. He was prepared to lose the support of the radical abolitionists in his own party, but not that of Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, which would make “the job on our hands,” Lincoln confessed, “too large for us.”15
Lord Lyons had at first paid little attention to Seward’s rather obvious attempts to distract attention from the U.S. government’s woes.16 He was too busy trying to prevent the secretary of state from undermining the Anglo-French alliance. Seward had begun to woo Emperor Napoleon III in the delusion that France was the friendlier of the two nations.7.1 17 When Henri Mercier, the French minister, warned him that his government was losing patience with the blockade, Seward hinted that if the emperor withdrew his recognition of Southern belligerency, the North would do everything in its power to ensure a steady supply of cotton. Rather than being grateful for this show of favoritism, the French saw it as further proof that the North was heading for defeat. Mercier regarded Southern independence as a fait accompli and was trying to persuade Lyons that it was in everybody’s interest for the Great Powers to recognize the Confederacy. Logic must prevail over sentiment, Mercier patiently but persistently argued. Lyons refused to be drawn in: “I take, perhaps, a more hopeful view than M. Mercier does of the Military prospects of the North,” he explained to Lord Russell.19
However, Lyons could not ignore Seward’s declaration on October 26 that the North was “expelling” Consul Bunch from Charleston (where it had no effective jurisdiction) for holding talks with the Confederacy about privateering. The staff at the British legation was furious that Seward had made no reference to the French consul, who had also taken part in the negotiations. Lyons maintained a stony silence during his interview with Seward, knowing that it would annoy the secretary of state to be denied a reaction. “Mr. Bunch has merely been selected as a safer object of attack than the British or French Government,” he reported angrily to Lord Russell after the meeting.20 It was not the transparency of Seward’s motives that worried Lyons but the American’s failure to realize the impact of his words and deeds on the international stage. “He always tries violence in language first,” observed Lyons, “and then runs the risk of pledging himself and the nation to violent courses, if he be taken at once at his word.”21
When Lord Russell heard the news about Consul Bunch, he understood that his efforts with Adams were unlikely to have the slightest effect on Seward’s behavior. “It is the business of Seward to feed the mob with sacrifices every day,” he wrote to Lord Palmerston, “and we happen to be the most grateful food he can offer.” As long as there were no actions accompanying the secretary of state’s words, Russell thought the safest course was to ignore him, since Seward was a “singular mixture of the bully and coward.”22 Palmerston agreed, although he wished that more regiments had been sent to Canada as a warning to Seward against becoming too cocky. But the British cabinet’s anxieties were dismissed by the new secretary for war, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, who advised them not to be fooled by Seward’s charade of aggression: “The Washington government is violent and unscrupulous,” he wrote, “but it is not insane.”23
Throughout Britain, however, the effect of Seward’s threats, which he ensured were known to the press, was to swing public opinion dramatically away from the North. The mills had already moved to short time in order to preserve their dwindling cotton stocks. Reynolds’s Newspaper, a popular weekly aimed at the working classes, blamed the Northern blockade rather than the Southern cotton embargo for the looming crisis. “England must break the Blockade,” cried an editorial in early autumn, “or Her Millions must starve.”24 Henry Adams was trying without success to plant favorable articles in the press. “I hope that you will see in some of the London newspapers if not my writing, at least my hand,” he wrote in confidence to his brother Charles Francis Jr. “They need it, confound ’em.”25 Benjamin Moran was convinced that the Confederates were either feeding Reuter with false information or encouraging him to slant his news. “That he is under the influence of the rebels is too clear to be the subject of doubt,” he fulminated in his diary. Only after the news service turned a recent Federal victory into a defeat was Moran able to persuade Charles Francis Adams to deliver a friendly warning to Reuter.26
Ill.10 Punch acknowledges the threat posed by the Union blockade to “King Cotton.”
Henry Adams complained to Charles Francis Jr. that their father would not engage in any form of journalism or public speaking. Although the senior Adams received many more invitations than his Confederate rivals, he invariably turned them down. While he agreed to attend the Lord Mayor’s dinner on November 9 on the assurance that he
would not be called upon to speak, William Yancey eagerly accepted an invitation to the less coveted Fishmongers’ Company because there was a chance that he might.27
The departing Confederate commissioners had been working hard, they informed Richmond, to cultivate anyone “likely to bring to bear a favorable influence on the British cabinet.”28 But the greatest Southern propaganda coup had nothing to do with the envoys’ efforts. In September a book entitled The American Union, which defended the South’s claim to independence, became a surprise bestseller. The author was a Liverpool businessman named James Spence whose travels in America had persuaded him that while slavery was doomed, the cultural and economic differences between the North and South would never be overcome. In his opinion, it was politically and morally unfeasible for two such distinct entities to remain united.
The great strength of The American Union was its sober style and earnest attempt to discuss the merits of secession. Although Northern sympathizers disagreed with Spence’s arguments, they had to admit that the book was too well written to dismiss. “It is studiously suited to the English taste,” explained the abolitionist Richard Webb, “being moderate in tone, lucid in style, and free from personalities.”29 Moreover, the subject matter—independence—appealed to English sensibilities. “I believe Englishmen instinctively sympathize with rebels,” the American vice consul, Henry Wilding, commented to his former superior, Nathaniel Hawthorne, so long as “the rebellion be not against England.”30 “Why do the Southern agents have it all their own way?” grumbled Charles Francis Jr. when he heard about the success of The American Union and other polemics. “Our agents abroad apparently confine their efforts to cabinets and officials and leave public opinion and the press to take care of themselves.”31
Henry Adams assured his brother that the situation in England was worse than he could imagine; even “our own friends fail to support us.” Lincoln’s rejection of General Frémont and his emancipation proclamation had played into the Confederates’ hands; without the slavery issue, the North was simply a large country fighting a rebellion in its nether regions. “Look at the Southerners here,” Henry wrote indignantly on October 25; “every man is inspired by the idea of independence and liberty while we are in a false position.”32 The Times seemed to take a malicious pleasure in repeating as often as it could the hoary claim that the war was a contest between one side fighting for “empire” and the other “for independence.”33 The only politician who was prepared to attack Delane’s crafty misrepresentation of the conflict was the Duke of Argyll, who delivered a ringing defense of the Union at his annual estate dinner on November 2. “I do not care whether we look at it from the Northern or from the Southern point of view,” the Illustrated London News reported him as saying. “Gentlemen, I think we ought to admit, in fairness to the Americans, that there are some things worth fighting for, and that national existence is one of these.”34
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The public in both countries would have been shocked had they known Seward’s real thoughts about the state of Anglo-American relations. Although the secretary of state was always talking as though he were locked in a life-and-death struggle with Britain, he knew that there was no desire in London for conflict with the North. Even if he discounted Lyons’s protestations and Adams’s dispatches, John Motley, whose opinion Seward trusted, had been giving him verbatim reports of his conversations with persons of note in England, including Lord Russell, Prince Albert, and the Queen. Motley’s letters contained “a most cheering account of the real sentiment of honest sympathy existing in the best Class of English Society towards us,” exclaimed the president’s private secretary John Hay, who was present when Seward read out sections to Lincoln.35
The truth was that Seward cared little for what foreign governments thought about the war so long as they obeyed his directive to regard it as a minor insurrection and not a fully fledged rebellion. He worried even less about foreign sentiment and persistently ignored the warnings from his consuls and Henry Sanford that the North was squandering its goodwill abroad.36 “Foreign sympathy … never did and never can create or maintain any state,” Seward wrote flippantly to John Bigelow, the new American consul in Paris.37 But once he learned that the new Confederate commissioners were to be Senators Mason and Slidell, Seward started to feel anxious about the North’s representation in Europe. John Bright’s complaint about the Morrill Tariff having “done immense harm to the friendly feeling which ought to exist here towards you,” and Motley’s observation of the “very great change in English public sympathy since the passing of the Morrill Tariff,” suddenly became the talk of the State Department.38
William Howard Russell had disregarded rumors that Seward was looking for emissaries to send to Europe until he bumped into him on November 4 and learned that the stories were true. “He begged of me to come and dine with him tomorrow,” Russell recorded in his diary, “to meet Mr. Everett who is here as one of a secret commission.”39 But having embraced the need for special agents abroad, Seward discovered that it was no easy task to find the right men. The august Edward Everett, a former secretary of state, minister to Britain, governor of and senator for Massachusetts, and the greatest orator of his generation, changed his mind two days later, and several other candidates showed a similar reluctance. Finally Seward was able to enlist four suitable representatives: General Winfield Scott, who had been forced to retire from the army; John Hughes, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, who would battle with Slidell for the sympathy of the French; the Episcopal bishop of Ohio, Charles McIlvaine, who was to woo the Anglican clergy; and his own old political partner Thurlow Weed, who Seward knew would be more than a match for James Mason. William Howard Russell could see why Seward admired Weed as a political lobbyist, although he doubted that the skill would serve him as well in a foreign environment. “Thurlow is a crafty old fellow,” he wrote to the Times correspondent in New York, “but he will be of small weight among the polished politicians of France or England.”40 Weed, Archbishop Hughes, and General Scott sailed together on November 8 from New York. Weed was angered by a newspaper report that exposed the nature of their mission. He was sure that Charles Sumner had either written it or told the writer what to say in order to embarrass Seward. Weed had seen him the day before and noticed that he had a “hang-dog look.” But they had only Seward to blame for the pandemonium on the docks.
All persons wishing to depart from New York, including foreigners, were suddenly required to have their passport countersigned by the secretary of state. Among those most severely affected were British travelers passing through New York on ship connections to other ports. British consul Archibald’s Manhattan office was filled with stranded families seeking his help. Some of them would have to wait another month for the next boat to their destination. Even a British Army officer who was en route from Canada to his regiment in Nassau was forcibly detained at the quayside. Archibald begged Lyons to make Seward appoint a civil servant with signatory powers, so at least the process might be done in New York.41 Archibald assumed that the purpose of all this was to annoy England.42 He was not alone in thinking so; Anthony Trollope accused Seward of having “resolved to make every Englishman in America feel himself in some way punished because England had not assisted the North.”43
The real reason lay with Mason and Slidell. Initial reports claimed that they had managed to sail out of Charleston on board CSS Nashville, another converted steamship like the Sumter. The secretary of the navy, Gideon Welles, had immediately dispatched several warships to run her down before she reached Europe, but the only ship that spotted the Nashville—USS Connecticut—lost sight of her in the pursuit. Then Seward received a different report: the Confederates had traveled by way of Cuba and were going to dock in New York in early November.44 No longer sure what to believe, Seward imposed the passport regulation to save the administration from the embarrassment of the Confederates’ escaping in full view.
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The Nashville was
not carrying the envoys, although her mission was no less dangerous to the North. The Confederate secretary of the navy, Stephen Mallory, had ordered her to England to be fitted as a war steamer. The Nashville had reached St. George’s harbor in Bermuda when the Fingal arrived on November 2, carrying Edward Anderson and James Bulloch. The two ships anchored only a few hundred yards from each other. “The Nashville ran up the Confederate flag as we stood in,” recorded Anderson, “& I supposed had been sent out by Mr. Mallory for the express purpose of communicating with us, but how to learn this was the question.” Their disguise was working a little too well. “To all intents and purposes we were an English merchant steamer,” he recorded. “We were sporting the British flag, had an English captain and crew, and desired above all things to keep our movements secret. To send a boat to the Nashville direct would be to betray ourselves.” It was a ridiculous situation. The ships rocked gently side by side, neither daring to make the first move. Anderson grew impatient. “Taking a spyglass from one of the quarter masters I affected to be admiring the surrounding objects until by degrees my vision turned upon the Nashville. Her officers were on deck scrutinizing us.” He ordered coded signals to be raised, but it soon became clear that they meant nothing to the Nashville. Finally, one of the Fingal’s officers rowed over on the pretext of asking for a casket of fresh water and was recognized by a former crewmate.
The captain of the Nashville turned out to be a former naval colleague of Anderson’s named Robert Pegram. That night, as they swapped news and experiences, Pegram warned Anderson and Bulloch to banish any thoughts of an easy entry into Savannah: if his encounter with the Connecticut was anything to go by, they would be chased all the way from the Outer Banks.
A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War Page 22
