A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (158 page)

 
6.
MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, September 21, 1861.

 
7.
MHS, Charles Francis Adams, Notebook Reminiscences, September 18 1867. Russell was able to reassure Adams that Britain had no intention of going to war with Mexico.

 
8.
MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, vol. 76, October 1, 1861.

 
9.
James D. Bulloch,
The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe
, 2 vols. (New York, 1884), vol. 1, p. 115.

10.
Hoole,
Confederate Foreign Agent
, p. 82, October 15, 1861.

11.
Wallace and Gillespie (eds.),
The Journal of Benjamin Moran
, vol. 2, p. 892, October 17, 1861.

12.
PRO 30/22/35 ff. 295–300, Lyons to Russell, October 22, 1861.

13.
Martin Crawford (ed.),
William Howard Russell’s Civil War: Private Diary and Letters, 1861–1862
(Athens, Ga., 1992), p. 159, Russell to J. C. Bancroft Davis, October 19, 1861.

14.
PRO 30/22/35 ff. 229–40, Lyons to Russell, September 6, 1861.

15.
James M. McPherson,
Battle Cry of Freedom
(London, 1988), p. 357.

16.
These included a letter sent to all the governors of states that possessed a port or coastal city, telling them to be prepared for a foreign invasion.

17.
Sumner certainly knew the truth about France. Harriet Martineau wrote to him, “I know that our Cabinet has had, and still has, the utmost difficulty in preventing the French and Spanish governments from breaking the blockade.” Deborah Logan (ed.),
The Collected Letters of Harriet Martineau
, 5 vols. (London, 2007), vol. 4, p. 307, Martineau to Sumner,
c.
November 1861.

18.
BDOFA
, Part 1, ser. C, vol. 5, doc. 336, pp. 331–32, Lyons to Russell, October 28, 1861.

19.
PRO 30/22/35 ff. 263–78, private, Lyons to Russell, October 4, 1861.

20.
E. D. Adams,
Great Britain and the American Civil War
, 2 vols. in 1 (New York, 1958), vol. 1, p. 194.

21.
PRO 30/22/35 ff. 340–44, Lyons to Russell, December 6, 1861.

22.
Adams,
Great Britain and the American Civil War
, vol. 1, p. 194.

23.
University of Southampton, Palmerston MSS, PP/GC/LE/144, Lewis to Palmerston, September 3, 1861.

24.
Reynolds’s Newspaper
, September 29, 1861.

25.
W. C. Ford (ed.),
A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865
, 2 vols. (Boston, 1920), vol. 1, pp. 48–50, Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., September 28, 1861.

26.
Wallace and Gillespie (eds.),
The Journal of Benjamin Moran
, vol. 2, p. 911, November 25, 1861.

27.
He gave one of his typical barnstorming speeches, eliciting cheers from the audience. However, Yancey overplayed his hand and referred to the South as “the land of the free and the home of the oppressed,” which prompted
Punch
to remind him that the whites were the free and the blacks were the oppressed. Winthrop Donaldson Jordan and Edwin J. Pratt,
Europe and the American Civil War
(New York, 1931), p. 23.

28.
ORN, ser. 2, vol. 3, pp. 222–23, Yancey and Mann to Robert Toombs, July 15, 1861.

29.
R.J.M. Blackett,
Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War
(Baton Rouge, La., 2001), p. 138.

30.
“I often think of you, and wonder what your feelings are with regard to the fearful events now happening,” Wilding told Hawthorne. In a long letter, he analyzed the current situation thus: “The anti-slavery people profess to believe that slavery has nothing to do with the struggle; that the Federal Government are no more contending for the abolition of slavery than are the Confederates. They won’t see that the contest is for the abolition of slavery in the only way that reasonable men in America have ever supposed it possible, by confining it to its present limits; and that the South, rather than submit to that, will, if they can, destroy the Union. There are many reasons for this feeling in England. In the first place, I believe Englishmen instinctively sympathize with rebels—if the rebellion be not against England. A great many also desire to see the American Union divided, supposing that it will be less powerful, and less threatening to England. All the enemies of popular government—and there are plenty even in England—rejoice to see what they suppose to be the failure of Republican institutions.” Julian Hawthorne (ed.),
Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife
, vol. 2 (Boston, 1884), pp. 165–66, Wilding to Hawthorne, November 14, 1861.

31.
Ford (ed.),
A Cycle of Adams Letters
, vol. 1, pp. 52–53, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., to Henry Adams, October 6, 1861.

32.
Ibid., pp. 61–63, Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., October 25, 1861.

33.
Lord Russell told an audience in Newcastle on October 14, “I cannot help asking myself as affairs progress in the conflict, to what good can it lead?” According to
The Times,
Russell then warned his listeners that a moment might come when intervention in the American war would be inevitable. After all, the paper reported him as saying, the war was not about slavery but about one side fighting for “empire, and the other for independence.” (In fact, Russell had said “power” rather than “independence,” which was less inflammatory. But someone at the paper had decided the phrase was too anodyne.) Norman Ferris,
Desperate Diplomacy: William H. Seward’s Foreign Policy, 1861
(Knoxville, Tenn., 1976), p. 238, fn.

34.
Illustrated London News
, November 2, 1861.

35.
Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger (eds.),
Inside Lincoln’s White House
:
The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay
(Carbondale, Ill., 1997), p. 26, October 12, 1861. Seward claimed absurdly to his wife on October 29 that the wicked machinations of Britain “made it doubtful whether we can escape the yet deeper and darker abyss of foreign war.”

36.
The consuls in Belfast, Glasgow, and Dublin all wrote strong letters on the subject.

37.
John M. Taylor,
William Henry Seward: Lincoln’s Right Hand
(New York, 1991), p. 192.

38.
MHS, “Bright-Sumner Letters, 1861–1872,” October 1912, pp. 93–165, Bright to Sumner, November 20, 1861. But if the
Leicester Guardian
was anything to go by, there was still an opportunity to influence public opinion toward the North: “By the domestic fireside, on the exchange, and in the counting house … every tide of events has been anxiously watched,” it commented. The emotional response to the war was not “on account of the great commercial interests involved but the feeling that those taking part in the contest are bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh.” Blackett,
Divided Hearts
, p. 6.

39.
Crawford (ed.),
William Howard Russell’s Civil War
, p. 165, Russell to J. C. Bancroft Davis, November 6, 1861.

40.
Ibid.

41.
PRO FO5/779, desp. 164, Archibald to Lyons, November 2, 1861. PRO FO282/9, f. 79, d. 163, Archibald to Lyons, November 1, 1861.

42.
Seward has “the power,” Lyons added angrily, “of depriving British Subjects of their liberty, or retaining them in prison or liberating them by his own will and pleasure.” PRO FO282/9, f. 79, d. 163, Archibald to Lyons, November 1, 1861.

43.
Anthony Trollope,
North America
(repr. London, 1968), p. 139.

44.
Edward Chalfant, “A War So Near,”
Journal of Confederate History
, 6 (1990), p. 146.

45.
Hoole,
Confederate Foreign Agent
, p. 88.

46.
Stephen R. Wise,
Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War
(Columbia, S.C., 1988), p. 54.

47.
New-York Historical Society,
Narrative of Ebeneezer Wells
(
c
. 1881), n.pp.,
c.
November 9, 1861.

48.
Hoole,
Confederate Foreign Agent
, p. 101.

49.
James P. Gannon,
Irish Rebels, Confederate Tigers
(Mason City, Iowa, 1998), p. 10.

50.
Mary Sophia Hill,
A British Subject’s Recollections of the Confederacy
(Baltimore, 1875), p. 60.

51.
Quoted in Robert Douthat Meade,
Judah P. Benjamin: Confederate Statesman
(Baton Rouge, La., 2001), p. 182.

52.
Hoole,
Confederate Foreign Agent
, p. 102.

53.
MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, vol. 76, November 2, 1861.

54.
Wallace and Gillespie (eds.),
The Journal of Benjamin Moran
, vol. 2, p. 908, November 19, 1861.

55.
Edward Chalfant,
Both Sides of the Ocean
(New York, 1982), p. 316.

56.
PRO FO 198/21, p. 10, Lord Russell to Adams, November 28, 1861.

57.
Henry Adams,
The Education of Henry Adams
, ed. Ernest Samuels (repr. Boston, 1973), p. 119.

58.
Wallace and Gillespie (eds.),
The Journal of Benjamin Moran
, vol. 2, p. 913, November 27, 1861.

59.
John Evan,
Atlantic Impact
(London, 1952), pp. 83–84. Karl Marx was scathing about Seward. His article for
Die Presse
on November 28 claimed, “We regard this latest operation of Mr. Seward as a characteristic act of tactlessness by self-conscious weakness simulating strength. If the naval incident hastens Seward’s removal from the Washington Cabinet, the United States will have no reason to record it as an ‘untoward event’ in the annals of its Civil War.”

60.
MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, vol. 76, November 27, 1861.

61.
Ibid., November 29, 1861.

62.
The Times
, November 29, 1861.

63.
James Chambers,
Palmerston: The People’s Darling
(London, 2004), p. 487, Palmerston to the Queen, December 5, 1861.