A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (152 page)

30.
George Douglas, Eighth Duke of Argyll (1823–1900)
:
Autobiography and Memoirs
, ed. the Dowager Duchess of Argyll, 2 vols. (London, 1906), vol. 1, p. 412.

Chapter 2: On the Best of Terms

 
1.
Kathleen Burk,
Morgan Grenfell, 1838–1988
(Oxford, 2002), p. 20.

 
2.
John M. Taylor,
William Henry Seward: Lincoln’s Right Hand
(New York, 1991), p. 107.

 
3.
Jay Sexton,
Debtor Diplomacy
(Oxford, 2005), p. 138.

 
4.
Playing to the gallery, Seward had urged President Buchanan to give Britain one year to withdraw entirely from Central America. If she refused, he argued, the United States would have the right to annex Canada. Cuba had become the largest importer of slaves after Brazil, prompting Lord Palmerston to order the Royal Navy to surround the island, if necessary, and board any suspicious-looking ship, whatever the color of its flag. By May 1858, the navy had boarded 116 suspected slave ships, of which 61 were American-owned. The New York press, in particular, raised an outcry, and Secretary of State Lewis Cass demanded that Britain stop such activities immediately. Senator James Murray Mason had steered a bill through the Senate to send a U.S. naval squadron to the Caribbean. The British government backed away from a confrontation and ordered the Royal Navy to desist from the practice. Palmerston was outraged by Derby’s pusillanimity, but he placed the greater blame on the United States. Hugh Thomas,
The Slave Trade
(New York, 1997), p. 764.

 
5.
Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace,
Gotham
(New York, 1999), p. 676.

 
6.
H. C. Allen,
Great Britain and the United States
(New York, 1955), p. 158.

 
7.
Frederick W. Seward (ed.),
Seward at Washington
(New York, 1891), p. 372.

 
8.
Taylor,
William Henry Seward
, p. 113.

 
9.
H. F. Bell,
Lord Palmerston
, 2 vols. (London, 1936), vol. 2, p. 253. Her mother had been the great Lady Melbourne, a political hostess whose influence in the 1780s was second only to the Duchess of Devonshire’s.

10.
John Prest,
Lord John Russell
(London, 1972), p. 134. “You give great offence to your followers,” his exasperated brother, the Duke of Bedford, once complained, “by not being courteous to them, by treating them superciliously or de haut en bas, by not listening … to their solicitations, remonstrances, or whatever it may be.… ”

11.
Ibid., p. 349.

12.
Beverly Wilson Palmer (ed.),
The Selected Letters of Charles Sumner
, 2 vols. (Boston, 1990), vol. 1, p. 24, Sumner to Duchess of Argyll, May 22, 1860.

13.
Seward (ed.),
Seward at Washington
, p. 390.

14.
Sarah Agnes Wallace and Frances Elma Gillespie (eds.),
The Journal of Benjamin Moran, 1857–1865
, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1948, 1949), vol. 1, p. 545, May 21, 1859.

15.
Ibid., p. 558, June 23, 1859.

16.
Ibid., p. 504, February 8, 1859.

17.
K. Theodore Hoppen,
The Mid-Victorian Generation
(Oxford, 1998), p. 202.

18.
James Matlack Scovel, “The Great Free Trader by His Own Fire Side,”
Overland Monthly and Out West Magazine
(1893), p. 129.

19.
Seward (ed.),
Seward at Washington
, p. 380. Deborah Logan (ed.),
The Collected Letters of Harriet Martineau
, 5 vols. (London, 2007), vol. 4, p. 180, Martineau to Henry Reeve, July 6, 1859. Seward also told Harriet Martineau that he believed Sumner’s ailments were mostly psychological.

20.
Wilbur Devereux Jones,
The American Problem in British Diplomacy, 1841–1861
(London, 1974), p. 200.

21.
Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanties:
http://www.mfh.org/special-projects/shwlp/site/honorees/remond.html
, Sarah Parker Remond to Abby Kelly Foster, September 1858. Sibyl Ventress Brownlee, “Out of the Abundance of the Heart: Sarah Ann Parker Remond’s Quest for Freedom,” Ph.D. thesis, University of Massachusetts, 1997, p. 119.

22.
Wallace and Gillespie (eds.),
The Journal of Benjamin Moran, 1857–1865
, vol. 1, p. 608, November 22, 1859.

23.
Ibid., p. 614, December 10, 1859.

24.
Ibid., p. 616, December 16, 1859.

25.
Brownlee, “Out of the Abundance of the Heart,” p. 136.

26.
David Herbert Donald,
Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War
(New York, 1961), p. 348.

27.
Taylor,
William Henry Seward
, p. 114.

28.
James J. Barnes and Patience P. Barnes (eds.),
Private and Confidential: Letters from British Ministers in Washington to the Foreign Secretaries
(Selinsgrove, Pa., 1993), p. 223, Lord Lyons to Lord Russell, December 6, 1859.

29.
Mason’s report was published in June 1860.

30.
Mrs. Roger A. Pryor,
Reminiscences of Peace and War
(New York, 1905), p. 98.

31.
Rose Greenhow,
My Imprisonment and the First Year of Abolition Rule at Washington
(London, 1863), p. 192.

32.
Martin Duberman,
Charles Francis Adams
(New York, 1961), p. 213.

33.
Greenhow,
My Imprisonment
, p. 192.

34.
Ernest Samuels (ed.),
Henry Adams: Selected Letters
(Cambridge, Mass., 1988), p. 21, Henry Adams to Abigail Adams, February 13, 1860.

35.
Duberman,
Charles Francis Adams
, p. 21.

36.
Charles Francis Adams would have argued back that he had not been a slouch during his adulthood: he served in the Massachusetts state legislature for five years, and was twice an unsuccessful candidate for vice president in 1848 and 1872.

37.
San Juan Island remained under joint military occupation for the next twelve years. Then, after Britain and the United States signed the Treaty of Washington, the San Juan question was referred to Kaiser Wilhelm I. He established a three-man arbitration commission, which studied the issue for almost a year. On October 21, 1872, the commission ruled in favor of the United States. A month later, the Royal Marines packed their bags, said goodbye to their American friends, and marched out of the English camp for the last time. Two years later, the American camp was abandoned.

38.
PRO 30/22/34, ff. 130–33, Lyons to Russell, April 10, 1860.

39.
PRO 30/22/34, ff. 149–50, Lyons to Russell, May 22, 1860.

40.
As recently as March 2, Sumner had told her, “I incline now more than ever to think that Seward will be [our candidate].” Palmer (ed.),
The Selected Letters of Charles Sumner
, vol. 1, p. 19.

41.
No one had actually counted the prince’s entourages so it came as a terrible shock when there were too many bodies for too few beds. Buchanan gallantly offered up his room and slept on a sofa in the corridor.

42.
Stanley Weintraub,
Edward the Caresser
(New York, 2003), p. 68.

43.
Ibid., p. 71. The issue of slavery would force itself upon the prince one more time, in the North. On October 18, 1860, a delegation of African-Americans presented him with “An Address of Colored Citizens of Boston to the Prince of Wales,” which offered “their profound and grateful attachment and respect for the Throne which you represent here, under whose shelter so many thousands of their race, fugitives from American slavery, find safety and rest … and where the road to wealth, education, and social position, and civil office and honors is as free to the black man as to the white.”
Anti-Slavery Advocate
, 2/403/50, February 1, 1861.

44.
Weintraub,
Edward the Caresser
, p. 73.

45.
Edward Dicey,
Spectator of America
, ed. Herbert Mitgang (Athens, Ga., 1971), p. 11.

46.
Lloyd Morris,
Incredible New York
(New York, 1951; repr. Syracuse, N.Y., 1996), p. 24.

47.
Weintraub,
Edward the Caresser
, p. 76.

48.
The 69th Regiment, New York State Militia, was the nucleus for the 69th New York State Volunteers, which was itself one of the three founding Irish regiments of the famous New York Irish Brigade.

49.
Seward (ed.),
Seward at Washington
, p. 455.

50.
Palmer (ed.),
Selected Letters of Charles Sumner
, vol. 1, p. 23, Sumner to Seward, May 20, 1860.

51.
Glyndon Van Deusen,
William Henry Seward
(Oxford, 1967), p. 231.

52.
Hallward Library, University of Nottingham; Newcastle, NEC/10885/134, Duke of Newcastle to Sir Edmund Head, June 5, 1861.

53.
Sir Theodore Martin,
The Life of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort
, vol. 5 (New York, 1880), p. 204.

54.
Ibid.

55.
Martin Crawford,
The Anglo-American Crisis of the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Times and America, 1850–1862
(Athens, Ga., 1987), p. 76, Morris to Bancroft Davis, October 30, 1860.

56.
Lord Newton (ed.),
Lord Lyons: A Record of British Diplomacy
, 2 vols. (London, 1914), vol. 1, pp. 27–28, Lord Lyons to Duke of Newcastle, October 29, 1860.

57.
Crawford,
The Anglo-American Crisis of the Mid-Nineteenth Century
, p. 10, October 12, 1860.

58.
Newton (ed.),
Lord Lyons
, vol. 1, p. 29, Lord Lyons to Duke of Newcastle, December 10, 1860.

Chapter 3: “The Cards Are in Our Hands!”

 
1.
Wilbur Devereux Jones,
The American Problem in British Diplomacy, 1841–1861
(London, 1974), p. 198.