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

by Amanda Foreman

  Francis Lawley and Frank Vizetelly were a great hit among Stuart’s staff. Lieutenant Colonel William Blackford recalled the officers’ delight when they returned to camp on October 16 and found the journalists waiting to meet them. “These gentlemen were often after this our guests, and we all became very fond of them,” he wrote. They already had a Prussian officer serving as a volunteer aide, Major Heros von Borcke, and were used to eccentric foreigners.59 A partially recovered Henry MacIver was also pottering in and out of Stuart’s camp, trying to be useful but more often simply passing the time with friends from his Garibaldi days. He was delighted to see Vizetelly again. The hard-drinking journalist “was the most interesting narrator I have ever listened to around a campfire,” wrote Blackford.

  Ill.24 General Jeb Stuart scouting in the neighborhood of Culpeper Court House, Virginia, by Frank Vizetelly.

  There was not a disreputable or reputable place of prominence in the civilized world that he did not know all about.… We had a shrewd suspicion that he drew a little on his imagination for his facts, but what difference did that make to us. Late into the night we all sat around the embers of our fire out under the grand oaks listening to the fascinating tales he told, his expressive countenance and gestures giving full effect to his words by their play. Mr. Lawley was an exceedingly intelligent and refined Englishman and in another style we enjoyed his instructive conversation very much, but Vizetelly was fascinating.60

  Ill.25 Night amusements in the Confederate camp, by Frank Vizetelly.

  Blackford and Borcke invited them to pitch their tents on the vacant plot next to their own. “Regularly after dinner,” Borcke recalled, “our whole family of officers, from the commander down to the youngest lieutenant, used to assemble in [Vizetelly’s] tent, squeezing ourselves into narrow quarters to hear his entertaining narratives.”61

  During the journey home, Wolseley mused on the scenes he had witnessed down south. He had seen many armies, “but I never saw one composed of finer men, or that looked more like work,” he wrote. “Any one who goes amongst those men in their bivouacs, and talks to them as I did, will soon learn why it is that their Generals laugh at the idea of Mr. Lincoln’s mercenaries subjugating the South.”62 By the time he reached Montreal, he had made up his mind to campaign for Southern recognition. Wolseley was aware that the question remained open in Britain. Like so many Englishmen, he assumed that slavery would quickly die out after independence. The real moral issue, in his eyes, was how long the suffering should be allowed to continue. In a bid to reach the widest possible audience, he decided to write an essay for the literary Blackwood’s Magazine entitled “A Month’s Visit to the Confederate Headquarters.” “The first question always asked me by both men and women was,” he declared in the article, “why England had not recognised their independence.… Had we no feelings of sympathy for the descendants of our banished cavaliers? Was not blood thicker than water?”63

  * * *

  13.1 Lincoln continued to be hamstrung by the opposition to emancipation from influential leaders such as John Hughes, the archbishop of New York, who had already issued this warning: “We Catholics … have not the slightest idea of carrying on a war that costs so much blood and treasure just to gratify a clique of Abolitionists in the North.” With elections coming up and the military tide against him, Lincoln felt that he could not afford to alienate anyone.

  13.2 Mackay had been a foot soldier in the army of underpaid hacks until 1843, when, at the age of twenty-nine, he made his reputation with a book called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. But in his heart he always considered himself a poet rather than a journalist. He did not intend to do any traveling for The Times. Mackay had toured the United States in 1858 and felt that he had experienced enough trains and American hotels to last him a lifetime.

  FOURTEEN

  A Fateful Decision

  British reaction to Antietam—Gladstone’s Newcastle speech—Battle in the cabinet—The emperor proposes joint intervention—Russell turns tail

  Britain did not receive word of Antietam until the very end of September. “I hope more than I dare express,” wrote Adams in his diary on the twenty-ninth. “For a fortnight my mind has been running so strongly on all this night and day, that it seems to almost threaten my life.” His son Charles Francis Jr., now Lieutenant Adams in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, had last written to the family to say that his regiment was joining the Army of the Potomac in Maryland. The following day, on the thirtieth, the legation heard that Lee’s advance had been stopped. “But [McClellan] failed to follow it up and let them escape,” raged Benjamin Moran.1 Adams was also disappointed. Nor were his fears allayed about his son. It was several more days before they received a letter from Charles Francis Jr. His regiment had sat on their horses in readiness while shells exploded on the surrounding hills, but McClellan never sent them into battle.

  Reports of the terrific slaughter at Antietam shocked the nation; the 25,000 casualties on a single day seemed almost inconceivable, especially when compared to the 25,000 Britain suffered during the entire Crimean War.2 “The Federals in their turn have had a victory; and so it goes on; when will it end? Fanny Kemble says not until the South is coerced back into the Union,” wrote Henry Greville, reflecting the horror felt by many people at the thought that the war might continue for many months more.3 Five days later, on October 5, 1862, there was a second uproar in the press, this time over Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. As Seward had feared from the outset, the Proclamation was widely denounced as a cynical and desperate ploy. Charles Francis Adams understood its symbolic importance, but even pro-Northern supporters could not understand why Lincoln had allowed the border states to keep their slaves, unless the emancipation order was directed against the South rather than slavery itself. “Our people are very imperfectly acquainted with the powers of your Federal Government,” explained the antislavery crusader George Thompson to his American counterpart William Lloyd Garrison. “They know little or nothing of your constitution—its compromises, guarantees, limitations, obligations, etc. They are consequently unable to appreciate the difficulties of your president.”4

  The Spectator declared itself to be disappointed with the Proclamation: “The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another,” it insisted, “but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States.”5 For the radical Richard Cobden, the moral contradiction proved that “the leaders in the Federal government are not equal to the occasion.”6 The Times went further and accused Lincoln of inciting the slaves in the South to kill their owners, imagining in graphic terms how the president “will appeal to the black blood of the African; he will whisper of the pleasures of spoil and of the gratification of yet fiercer instincts; and when blood begins to flow and shrieks come piercing through the darkness, Mr. Lincoln will wait till the rising flames tell that all is consummated, and he will rub his hands and think that revenge is sweet.”7

  Ill.26 As the French and British governments ponder intervention, Punch argues the time is now.

  Lord Palmerston reacted to the two announcements with a far cooler head than either Russell or Gladstone. All along he had been a proponent of mediation while the outcome of the war seemed obvious. But Lee’s check at Antietam, regardless of his miraculous escape across the Potomac, had revealed a serious weakness in the Confederate army. The prime minister’s confidence in the mediation plan was further shaken by a strong remonstrance from Lord Granville, the Liberal leader in the House of Lords, who argued in a letter to Russell on September 27 that any sort of interference in the war—no matter how good or charitable the intention—would only result in Britain becoming dragged into the conflict. “I return you Granville’s letter which contains much deserving of serious consideration,” Palmerston wrote to Russell on October 2. “The whole matter is full of difficulty, and can only be cleared up by some more decided events between the contending armies.”8

  Ill.27 Punch portrays L
incoln’s Emancipation Proclamation as a last desperate move.

  Russell had come to the opposite conclusion. He wanted the cabinet meeting to discuss mediation brought forward by a week, from October 23 to the sixteenth. The news of Antietam and the Emancipation Proclamation had convinced him that only Britain had the power to stop the humanitarian crisis unfolding in America. The answer to Granville’s objections, he thought, was to build an international alliance involving France and Russia to force the warring sides to agree to an armistice. “My only doubt is whether we and France should stir if Russia holds back,” he told Palmerston.9

  Gladstone was also moved by his belief that a humanitarian crisis was at hand, though he saw two—the one in Lancashire as well as the one in Virginia. Unlike Russell and Palmerston, he did not think that the Confederates had suffered a significant setback at Antietam. “It has long been clear enough,” he wrote, “that secession is virtually an established fact.” When Gladstone talked about the undecided questions in America, he meant whether “Virginia must be divided, and probably Tennessee likewise.”10 He patiently brushed aside the Duchess of Sutherland’s objections, telling her that “Lincoln’s lawless proclamation” would be far more destructive to America than a separation between the states. When the duchess informed her son-in-law, the Duke of Argyll, about this latest twist to Gladstone’s view of the war, the duke sent him a blistering rebuke. “I would not interfere to stop [the war] on any account,” he wrote. “It is not our business to do so; and even short-sightedly, it is not our interest. Do you wish, if you could secure this result tomorrow, to see the great cotton system of the Southern States restored? Do you wish to see us almost entirely dependent on that system for the support of our Lancashire population? I do not.”11 The combination of his worries about Lancashire and his disgust with the Emancipation Proclamation pushed Gladstone over the edge. On October 7, the day after the Proclamation appeared in The Times, he went to Newcastle to attend a banquet in his honor. He had been thinking all day about “what I should say about Lancashire and America: for both these subjects are critical.”12 Gladstone later told his wife that the acoustics were terrible and he had struggled to make himself heard. It would have been better for him, perhaps, if he had not been heard at all. The words that caught everyone’s attention were these: “We may have our own opinions about slavery; we may be for or against the South, but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made what is more difficult than either; they have made a nation.”

  Gladstone’s startling announcement was telegraphed all over Europe almost before he had sat down. Ambrose Dudley Mann in Brussels wrote to Richmond that same night: “This clearly foreshadows our early recognition.”13 Thirty-four years later, Gladstone admitted that his speech was a mistake of “incredible grossness.” “I really, though most strangely, believed that it was an act of friendliness to all America to recognize that the struggle was virtually at an end.” He hated to think of the damage he had caused, “because I have for the last five and twenty years received from the … people of America tokens of goodwill which could not fail to arouse my undying gratitude.”14.1 14 But at the time he was unrepentant, until Russell pointed out to him that he had created a controversy where none had existed.

  Benjamin Moran worked himself up into one of his customary rages after he read the morning news on October 8. Adams was not sure what to think. He knew enough about British politics now to realize that it would be highly unusual for a change in cabinet policy to be announced in this way. The press seemed hesitant as well. When Adams saw William Forster four days later, he revealed that Seward had given him secret instructions that he was to withdraw from his post if recognition or intervention became government policy. Forster thought this was something the Foreign Office ought to know before it made any irretrievable decisions. But, Adams wondered, was this the Foreign Office at work, or just Gladstone? Feeling depressed, he cheered himself up with a trip to the theater to see Our American Cousin. “The piece has no literary merit whatever,” he wrote. “I laughed heartily and felt better for it.”16

  It seemed to Adams that his question about the British cabinet’s intentions was answered a week later when Sir George Cornewall Lewis gave a speech in Hereford contradicting Gladstone’s claim that the South was an established nation. His speech received favorable comment in the North and caused uproar in the South. Gladstone’s “made a nation” remark was forgotten. Britain was the clear leader in Europe, complained the influential Richmond Enquirer: Lewis had extinguished the light and closed “the last prospect of European intervention.”17 At home, a relieved Adams decided that Gladstone had spoken only for himself in Newcastle and “had overshot the mark.”

  After these two conflicting statements, there were no more public comments by any of the cabinet. But furious arguments were taking place behind the scenes. Gladstone and Lewis had long been rivals. Only one of them could become Palmerston’s heir, and each was conscious of the other’s near presence. Allowing his emotions to cloud his judgment was exactly what the aloof and scholarly Lewis expected of Gladstone. Russell, whenever he thought that the liberal Whig traditions of the house of Bedford were at stake, did the same, and this, Lewis knew, was their weak point.

  Russell issued a memorandum to the cabinet on October 13 that laid out why they should intervene and settle the war. Lewis pounced on it and wrote a scathing countermemorandum on the seventeenth, pointing out that it was not a debating club that would be receiving the mediation proposal but “heated and violent partisans,” who would reject it in an instant. The South would not be grateful for the help, thought Lewis, and the North would swear vengeance on Britain.18

  Many years later, Henry Adams decided that the real reason why the cabinet fell into such a muddle over the American question was because the English were, by habit, eccentric:

  The English mind took naturally to rebellion—when foreign—and it felt particular confidence in the Southern Confederacy because of its combined attributes—foreign rebellion of English blood—which came nearer ideal eccentricity than could be reached by Poles, Hungarians, Italians or Frenchmen. All the English eccentrics rushed into the ranks of the rebel sympathizers, leaving few but well-balanced minds to attach themselves to the cause of the Union.… The “cranks” were all rebels.… The Church was rebel, but the dissenters were mostly with the Union. The universities were rebel, but the university men who enjoyed most public confidence—like Lord Granville, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Lord Stanley, Sir George Grey—took infinite pains to be neutral for fear of being thought eccentric. To most observers, as well as to The Times, the Morning Post, and the Standard, a vast majority of the English people seemed to follow the professional eccentrics; even the emotional philanthropists took that direction … and did so for no reason except their eccentricity; but the “canny” Scots and Yorkshiremen were cautious.19

  Senior Tories also voiced their concerns after they discovered that Russell was on the verge of approaching the French with his intervention plan; the opposition still maintained its stance that Britain should avoid becoming entangled with either side. Lord Derby had no doubt, wrote Lord Clarendon, “we should only meet with an insolent rejection of our offer.”20 But Russell was no longer listening to his critics. He had already made overtures to the emperor via the British ambassador in Paris, Lord Cowley. However, the French cabinet was undergoing one of its periodic crises, and the foreign minister was clearing his desk for his successor. The Confederate commissioner in Paris, John Slidell, was in a state of nervous excitement. By now, he wrote to the Confederate secretary of state, Judah P. Benjamin, on October 20, “I had hoped to have had it in my power to communicate something definite as to the Emperor’s intentions respecting our affairs.” Instead, everything seemed to be in confusion. Slidell’s informants were giving him conflicting accounts of the two countries’ intentions. All he knew for certain was that
the emperor was their friend and that Lord Lyons most decidedly was not. Slidell ended his letter with the rueful admission: “I have no dispatches from you later than 15 April.”21

  It was mortifying to James Mason to hear that John Slidell was having another interview with the emperor. The Confederates in England envied Slidell for his easy access to senior French politicians. “I have seen none but Lord Russell,” Mason admitted to his wife, and that was “now nearly a year ago.”22 Henry Hotze had to scavenge for news, seizing on scraps and tidbits from friends with “connections to high places” without ever quite knowing whether he was receiving supposition or fact. He was mesmerized by the unprecedented cabinet brawl over the recognition question. “This species of ex-parliamentary warfare was opened with the sparring between Mr. Roebuck and Lord Palmerston,” he wrote. “Since then it has grown more serious, and in the case of Mr. Gladstone and Sir George C. Lewis into almost open animosity.” In trying to divine the tea leaves, Hotze put great weight on the fact that Lord Lyons was still in London. He hoped it meant that the cabinet was teetering on the side of the South. He tried giving a gentle shove toward Southern recognition by encouraging his “allies in the London press” to increase their output. Some writers, including one at the Tory-leaning Herald, were even willing to let Hotze dictate their articles. There was, however, one person whom Hotze wished he could silence. “I almost dread the direction his friendship and devotion seem about to take,” he confessed. James Spence had been inspired by the Emancipation Proclamation and was now convinced that the South should issue one of her own. Hotze was furious with Spence for bringing the subject into public view again, but he was at a loss how to divert him.23 Mason was encountering a similar problem from his friends in the Tory Party, who were trying to extract a pledge from him that the South would renounce slavery.