Great Britain and the American Civil War Part 36

[Footnote 771: Thouvenel, _Le Secret de l'Empereur_, II, pp. 438-9.]

[Footnote 772: Russell Papers. Cowley to Russell, Sept. 30, 1862.]

[Footnote 773: _Ibid._, Cowley to Russell, Oct. 3, 1862.]

[Footnote 774: Even the _Edinburgh Review_ for October, 1862, discussed recognition of the South as possibly near, though on the whole against such action.]

[Footnote 775: Palmerston MS. Walpole makes Palmerston responsible for the original plan and Russell acquiescent and readily agreeing to postpone. This study reverses the roles.]

[Footnote 776: Russell Papers. Also see _ante_ p. 41. Stuart to Lyons.

The letter to Russell was of exactly the same tenor.]

[Footnote 777: Palmerston MS. Russell to Palmerston, Oct. 6, 1862.

Lyons' departure had been altered from October n to October 25.]

[Footnote 778: Morley, _Gladstone_, II, p. 79. Morley calls this utterance a great error which was long to embarra.s.s Gladstone, who himself later so characterized it.]

[Footnote 779: Adams, _A Crisis in Downing Street_, p. 402.]

[Footnote 780: Bright to Sumner, October 10, 1862. Ma.s.s. Hist. Soc.

_Proceedings_, XLVI, p. 108. Bright was wholly in the dark as to a Ministerial project. Much of this letter is devoted to the emanc.i.p.ation proclamation which did not at first greatly appeal to Bright as a wise measure.]

[Footnote 781: The _Times_, October 9 and 10, while surprised that Gladstone and not Palmerston, was the spokesman, accepted the speech as equivalent to a governmental p.r.o.nouncement. Then the _Times_ makes no further comment of moment until November 13. The _Morning Post_ (regarded as Palmerston's organ) reported the speech in full on October 9, but did not comment editorially until October 13, and then with much laudation of Gladstone's northern tour but _with no mention whatever_ of his utterances on America.]

[Footnote 782: Gladstone wrote to Russell, October 17, explaining that he had intended no "official utterance," and pleaded that Spence, whom he had seen in Liverpool, did not put that construction on his words (Gladstone Papers). Russell replied, October 20. "... Still you must allow me to say that I think you went beyond the lat.i.tude which all speakers must be allowed when you said that Jeff Davis had made a nation. Negotiations would seem to follow, and for that step I think the Cabinet is not prepared. However we shall soon meet to discuss this very topic" _(Ibid.)_]

[Footnote 783: Palmerston MS. Appended to the Memorandum were the texts of the emanc.i.p.ation proclamation, Seward's circular letter of September 22, and an extract from the _National Intelligencer_ of September 26, giving Lincoln's answer to Chicago abolitionists.]

[Footnote 784: Morley, _Gladstone_, II, 80, narrates the "tradition."

Walpole, _Twenty-five Years_, II, 57, states it as a fact. Also _Education of Henry Adams_, pp. 136, 140. Over forty years later an anonymous writer in the _Daily Telegraph_, Oct. 24, 1908, gave exact details of the "instruction" to Lewis, and of those present. (Cited in Adams, _A Crisis in Downing Street_, pp. 404-5.) C.F. Adams, _Trans-Atlantic Historical Solidarity_, Ch. III, repeats the tradition, but in _A Crisis in Downing Street_ he completely refutes his earlier opinion and the entire tradition. The further narrative in this chapter, especially the letters of Clarendon to Lewis, show that Lewis acted solely on his own initiative.]

[Footnote 785: Anonymously, in the _Edinburgh_, for April, 1861, Lewis had written of the Civil War in a pro-Northern sense, and appears never to have accepted fully the theory that it was impossible to reconquer the South.]

[Footnote 786: Cited in Adams, _A Crisis in Downing Street_, p. 407.]

[Footnote 787: Derby, in conversation with Clarendon, had characterized Gladstone's speech as an offence against tradition and best practice.

Palmerston agreed, but added that the same objection could be made to Lewis' speech. Maxwell, _Clarendon_, II, 267. Palmerston to Clarendon, Oct. 20, 1862. Clarendon wrote Lewis, Oct. 24, that he did not think this called for any explanation by Lewis to Palmerston, further proof of the falsity of Palmerston's initiative. _Ibid._, p. 267.]

[Footnote 788: _The Index_, Oct. 16, 1862, warned against acceptance of Gladstone's Newcastle utterances as indicating Government policy, a.s.serted that the bulk of English opinion was with him, but ignorantly interpreted Cabinet hesitation to the "favour of the North and bitter enmity to the South, which has animated the diplomatic career of Lord Russell...." Throughout the war, Russell, to _The Index_, was the evil genius of the Government.]

[Footnote 789: Palmerston MS.]

[Footnote 790: Maxwell, _Clarendon_, II, 279.]

[Footnote 791: Palmerston MS.]

[Footnote 792: _Parliamentary Papers_, 1863. _Commons_, Vol. I XII.

"Correspondence relating to the Civil War in the United States of North America." Nos. 33 and 37. Two reports received Oct. 13 and 18, 1862.

Anderson's mission was to report on the alleged drafting of British subjects into the Northern Army.]

[Footnote 793: Palmerston MS. Russell to Palmerston, Oct. 18, 1862.]

[Footnote 794: Russell Papers. Clarendon to Russell, Oct. 19, 1862.]

[Footnote 795: Palmerston MS. Russell to Palmerston, Oct. 20, 1862.]

[Footnote 796: Russell Papers. It is significant that Palmerston's organ, the _Morning Post_, after a long silence came out on Oct. 21 with a sharp attack on Gladstone for his presumption. Lewis was also reflected upon, but less severely.]

[Footnote 797: Maxwell, _Clarendon_, II, 265.]

[Footnote 798: _U.S. Messages and Doc.u.ments_, 1862-3, Pt. I, p. 223.

Adams to Seward, Oct. 24, 1862. C. F. Adams in _A Crisis in Downing Street_, p. 417, makes Russell state that the Government's intention was "to adhere to the rule of perfect neutrality"--seemingly a more positive a.s.surance, and so understood by the American Minister.]

[Footnote 799: _The Index_, Oct. 23, 1862. "... while our people are starving, our commerce interrupted, our industry paralysed, our Ministry have no plan, no idea, no intention to do anything but fold their hands, talk of strict neutrality, spare the excited feelings of the North, and wait, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up."]

[Footnote 800: Russell Papers. To Russell.]

[Footnote 801: _Ibid._, To Russell, Oct. 24, 1862.]

[Footnote 802: Palmerston MS. Russell to Palmerston, Oct. 24, 1862.]

[Footnote 803: Palmerston MS. Marked: "Printed Oct. 24, 1862."]

[Footnote 804: Morley, _Gladstone_, II, 84. Morley was the first to make clear that no final decision was reached on October 23, a date hitherto accepted as the end of the Cabinet crisis. Rhodes, IV, 337-348, gives a resume of talk and correspondence on mediation, etc., and places October 23 as the date when "the policy of non-intervention was informally agreed upon" (p. 343), Russell's "change of opinion" being also "complete" (p. 342). Curiously the dictum of Rhodes and others depends in some degree on a mistake in copying a date. Slidell had an important interview with Napoleon on October 28 bearing on an armistice, but this was copied as October 22 in Bigelow's _France and the Confederate Navy_, p. 126, and so came to be written into narratives of mediation proposals. Richardson, II, 345, gives the correct date. Rhodes'

supposition that Seward's instructions of August 2 became known to Russell and were the determining factor in altering his intentions is evidently erroneous.]

[Footnote 805: Maxwell, _Clarendon_, II, 265.]

[Footnote 806: _Ibid._, p. 266.]

[Footnote 807: Russell Papers. Palmerston to Russell, Oct. 24, 1862.

Palmerston was here writing of Italian and American affairs.]

[Footnote 808: Palmerston MS. Oct. 25, 1862.]

[Footnote 809: Russell Papers. To Russell.]

[Footnote 810: F.O., France, Vol. 1446. Cowley to Russell, Oct. 28, 1862. Cowley, like Lyons, was against action. He approved Drouyn de Lhuys' "hesitation." It appears from the Russian archives that France approached Russia. On October 31, D'Oubril, at Paris, was instructed that while Russia had always been anxious to forward peace in America, she stood in peculiarly friendly relations with the United States, and was against any appearance of pressure. It would have the contrary effect from that hoped for. If England and France should offer mediation Russia, "being too far away," would not join, but might give her moral support. (Russian Archives, F.O. to D'Oubril, Oct. 27, 1862 (O.S.). No.

320.) On the same date Stoeckl was informed of the French overtures, and was instructed not to take a stand with France and Great Britain, but to limit his efforts to approval of any _agreement_ by the North and South to end the war. Yet Stoeckl was given liberty of action if (as Gortchakoff did not believe) the time had a.s.suredly come when both North and South were ready for peace, and it needed but the influence of some friendly hand to soothe raging pa.s.sions and to lead the contending parties themselves to begin direct negotiations (_Ibid._, F.O. to Stoeckl, Oct. 27, 1862 (O.S.).)]

[Footnote 811: Mason Papers. Slidell to Mason, Oct. 29, 1862. Slidell's full report to Benjamin is in Richardson, II, 345.]

[Footnote 812: F.O., France, Vol. 1446, No. 1236. Cowley thought neither party would consent unless it saw some military advantage. (Russell Papers. Cowley to Russell, Oct. 31, 1862.) Morley, _Gladstone_, II, 84-5, speaks of the French offer as "renewed proposals of mediation."

There was no renewal for this was the _first_ proposal, and it was not one of mediation though that was an implied result.]

[Footnote 813: Russell Papers, Nov. 2, 1862. Monday, November 1862, was the 10th not the 11th as Palmerston wrote.]

[Footnote 814: Palmerston MS. Nov. 3, 1862.]