A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (34 page)

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

—

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.

—

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.

Five days later, on November 7, the
Fingal
set sail for the South during a tropical storm. After five nights of hurricane-force wind, the weather calmed, and the Confederates were glad to realize they were only 140 miles from Savannah. “The night closed in upon us bright and clear, with the moon shining sweetly down upon us,” wrote Anderson. “Everyone was on the alert.” The moment of reckoning had come. It was not long before they caught sight of a Federal ship bobbing on the water. “The silence of the dead was preserved on board our vessel,” Anderson continued. “In my anxiety as I stood beside the helmsman, I could hear the throbbing of my heart.” As dawn approached, the heavy night dew condensed into a thick, wet fog. Suddenly, one of the caged cockerels began its morning crow. A dozen hands reached frantically into the coop. The creature was strangled and thrown overboard. A second cockerel awoke, and then a third, forcing the crew to pitch the whole cage into the sea. It was too late for secrecy now. The
Fingal
raced toward the harbor, somehow managing to elude the steam frigate that guarded the entrance. At last, wrote Anderson on November 12, “everything had come about just as I had dreamed of.”
⁴⁵
Thousands lined the quayside to cheer the
Fingal
’s entry into Savannah.
⁴⁶

—

Anderson and Bulloch’s arrival in Richmond, however, was overshadowed by the Federal capture of Port Royal in South Carolina on November 7. The South had lost the only good harbor between Charleston and Savannah, while the North gained a second base on the Confederate coast that could provide fuel and supplies to the blockading fleets. The battle had brought together the largest U.S. battle fleet ever assembled up to that time. Seventy-seven vessels carrying 12,000 troops had set sail on November 1 from the recently captured Cape Hatteras. Ebenezer Wells and the reinstated 79th were among the three regiments on board USS
Vanderbilt.