A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (154 page)

64.
Robert Douthat Meade,
Judah P. Benjamin: Confederate Statesman
(Baton Rouge, La., 2001), pp. 172, 175.

65.
Russell,
My Diary North and South
, p. 128, May 7, 1861.

66.
Meade,
Judah P. Benjamin
, p. 172.

67.
Ibid., p. 166. During his long imprisonment after the war, Jefferson Davis allegedly told his doctor that he had wanted to send 3 million bales of cotton to Europe before the blockade took effect. It never happened because he “had not time to study and take the responsibility of directing until too late.”
Prison Life of Jefferson Davis
by Dr. Cravens, quoted in
Confederate Veteran
, 24 (1916), p. 207. Douglas B. Ball also exonerates Davis and instead blames the secretary of the treasury, Christopher Memminger, for being shortsighted and vacillating on the subject until it was too late:
Financial Failure and Confederate Defeat
(Champaign, Ill., 1991), pp. 88–96. Where the ships would have come from to ship 3 million bales, however, is not clear.

68.
Russell,
My Diary North and South
, p. 130, May 7, 1861.

69.
F. L. Owsley,
King Cotton Diplomacy
(2nd ed., Chicago, 1959), p. 24, June 4, 1861.

Chapter 4: Expectations Are Dashed

 
1.
William S. Walsh,
Abraham Lincoln and the London Punch
(New York, 1909), p. 24.

 
2.
MPUS
, no. 330, Dallas to Seward, April 9, 1861.

 
3.
Donald Bellows, “A Study of British Conservative Reaction to the American Civil War,”
Journal of Southern History
, 51/4 (Nov. 1985), pp. 505–26, at p. 511.

 
4.
MPUS
, no. 330, Dallas to Seward, April 9, 1861.

 
5.
Brian Jenkins, “Sir William Gregory: Champion of the Confederacy,”
History Today
, 28 (1978), p. 323.

 
6.
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., “The British Proclamation of May, 1861,”
Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings
, 48 (1915), pp. 190–241, at p. 209, Bunch to Russell, March 21, 1861.

 
7.
Sarah Agnes Wallace and Frances Elma Gillespie (eds.),
Journal of Benjamin Moran, 1857–1865
, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1948, 1949), vol. 1, p. 809, May 13, 1861.

 
8.
PRO 30/22/21, ff. 469–71, Palmerston to Russell, April 27, 1861. They were flummoxed by having no American to speak to on the issue. On May 5 (f. 472), Palmerston wrote to Russell that he had received a visit from an agent of Rothschilds, who read a letter from August Belmont urging mediation: “I stated to him also the obvious objections to any step on our part at the present moment but I admitted the great importance of the matter and it desires to be fully weighed and considered.” Palmerston suggested they could try communicating “confidentially with the South by the men who have come over here from there; and with the North by Dallas who is about to return in a few days. Dallas, it is true, is not a political friend of Lincoln and on the contrary rather leans to the South, but still he might be an organ, if it should be deemed prudent to take any step.”

 
9.
PRO NI T/1585A, Private John Thompson to father, April 28, 1861.

10.
Illustrated London News
, May 4, 1861.

11.
Economist
, May 4, 1861.

12.
Saturday Review
, March 30, 1861.

13.
Wallace and Gillespie (eds.),
The Journal of Benjamin Moran
, vol. 1, p. 796, April 5, 1861, p. 799, April 18, 1861, p. 802, April 27, 1861.

14.
A. L. Kennedy (ed.),
My Dear Duchess: Social and Political Letters to the Duchess of Manchester, 1858–1869
(London, 1956), p. 154, Lord Clarendon to Duchess of Manchester, May 8, 1861.

15.
British Sessional Papers, 1861, vol. 63, Command Paper No. 2910, pp. 210–11, May 3, 1861.

16.
Letters of Sir George Cornewall Lewis,
ed. G. F. Lewis (London, 1870), pp. 395–96, G. C. Lewis to Sir Edmund Head, May 13, 1861.

17.
K. D. Reynolds,
Aristocratic Women and Political Society in Victorian Britain
(Oxford, 1998), p. 124, Duchess of Sutherland to Gladstone, May 25, 1861, BL Add. MS 44325, ff. 137–79, and Duchess of Sutherland to Gladstone, May 28, 1861, f. 144.

18.
BL Add. MSS 44531, Gladstone to Duchess of Sutherland, May 29, 1861.

19.
BDOFA
, part I, ser. C, vol. 5, p. 199, Lord John Russell to Lord Lyons, May 11, 1861.

20.
Even before the proclamation, the U.S. secretary of war, Simon Cameron, had to gently but firmly reject offers from Canadians who were eager to raise regiments for the North. OR, ser. 3, vol. 1, ser. 122, no. 6.

21.
After the war, the United States claimed that Britain had acted without provocation and with malign intent. However, as D. P. Crook, C. F. Adams, Jr., and others argue, the cabinet had more than enough information and reason to take this route. Lord Russell knew by May 11, thanks to the consul in New York, that Lincoln had proclaimed the blockade and called for 75,000 soldiers—and that the Confederacy had a president, functioning legislature, a constitution, judges, customs officers, armies, and a flag. See, for example, D. P. Crook,
The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861–1865
(New York, 1974), passim.

22.
ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, p. 215, Yancey and Mann to Toombs, May 21, 1861.

23.
Henry Adams,
The Education of Henry Adams
, ed. Ernest Samuels (New York, 1973), p. 116.

24.
MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, July 11, 1861.

25.
The legation shuttled first to 7 Duke Street on May 20, and then to 17 St. George’s Place on June 1. The building was adequate but on the small side. The house he found for his family, 52 Grosvenor Square, had also been his grandfather’s residence during his posting in London.

26.
W. C. Ford (ed.),
Letters of Henry Adams, 1858–1891
, 2 vols. (Boston, 1930–38), vol. 1, p. 90, Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., May 16, 1861.

27.
Quoted in Asa Briggs,
Victorian People
(London, 1954), p. 206.

28.
T. Wemyss Reid,
Life of the Right Honourable William Edward Forster
(London, 1888), p. 333, Forster to Ellis Yarnall, May 10, 1861.

29.
Adams,
The Education of Henry Adams
, p. 124.

30.
Trinity College Library, Cambridge, Houghton MS CA9/66, Milnes to Sir Charles J. MacCarthy, June 25, 1861.

31.
George Douglas, Eighth Duke of Argyll (1823–1900): Autobiography and Memoirs
, ed. the Dowager Duchess of Argyll, 2 vols. (London, 1906), vol. 2, p. 170, Argyll to John Motley, May 14, 1861.

32.
MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, May 15, 1861.

33.
Ibid., May 16, 1861.

34.
Ibid.

35.
Charles Vandersee, “Henry Adams Behind the Scenes: Civil War Letters to Frederick W. Seward,”
Bulletin of the New York Public Library
, 71/4 (1967), p. 248. Otherwise, Henry had written to Frederick Seward, every staff member would be new and “you will see at once what a position the Embassy would be in.”

36.
G. P. Gooch (ed.),
The Later Correspondence of Lord John Russell, 1840–1878
, 2 vols. (London, 1925), vol. 2, p. 320, Lord John Russell to Lord Cowley, June 13, 1861.

37.
MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, May 18, 1861.

38.
Edward L. Pierce (ed.),
Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner
, 4 vols. (Boston, 1894), vol. 4:
1860–1870
, p. 31, Argyll to Sumner, June 4, 1861.

39.
Gooch (ed.),
The Later Correspondence of Lord John Russell
, vol. 2, p. 320, Russell to Lord Cowley, June 13, 1861.

40.
Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 163, col. 277, May 30, 1861.

41.
C. Vann Woodward (ed.),
Mary Chesnut’s Civil War
(repr., New Haven, 1981), p. 67.

42.
Seward’s new accommodation was called the “Old Club House.” Two years before he moved in, it was the scene of Daniel Sickles’s notorious murder of Phillip Barton Key, his wife’s alleged lover. Sickles shot Key in cold blood on the street in front of the house, and his victim was carried inside, where he bled to death in the room that became Seward’s parlor.

43.
David Herbert Donald,
Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man
(New York, 1970), p. 21.

44.
Ibid., p. 25.

45.
Tropic Wind, Hiawatha, Octavia
, and
Haxall
.

46.
BDOFA
, part I, ser. C, vol. 5, p. 209, doc. 172, Lyons to Russell, May 2, 1861.

47.
Adam Gurowski,
Diary from March 4, 1861 to November 12, 1862
(Boston, 1862), pp. 37–50.

48.
PRO 30/22/35, ff. 96–98, Lyons to Russell, June 4, 1861; PRO 30/23/35, ff. 99–100, Lyons to Russell, June 10, 1861.

49.
George Templeton Strong,
Diary of the Civil War, 1860–1865
, ed. Allan Nevins (New York, 1962), p. 145, May 22, 1861.

50.
G. H. Warren,
Fountain of Discontent: The Trent Affair and Freedom of the Seas
(Boston, 1981), p. 84.

51.
MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, June 1, 1861.

52.
Ford (ed.),
Letters of Henry Adams
, vol. 1, p. 93, Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., June 10–11, 1861.

53.
Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the ship was five times the size of its nearest rival. In addition to the 2,000 troops on board, there were more than 470 women and children, 122 horses, and 400 crew, making a total of around 3,000. During the voyage, two women gave birth, and five stowaways were discovered. G. H. Warren,
Fountain of Discontent
, p. 87.