Lincoln in the World (21 page)

Still, for all the British Empire’s power, Palmerston displayed a puzzling insecurity—which is partly what made him so dangerous. Britain still faced serious rivals on the Continent despite its predominance. France remained a threat, even after its defeat at Britain’s hands earlier in the century. Prussia was beginning to maneuver for control of central Europe. Britain and Russia scrambled for control of Asia, a geopolitical conflict that would later come to be known as the Great Game. Finally, in North America, the prime minister was concerned that Lincoln and Seward would try to divert attention by striking at British Canada, which he believed was dangerously unprepared for an invasion. If the Confederate military proved to be “too hard a morsel for his teeth,” he worried, Seward—whom Palmerston considered “a vapouring, blustering, ignorant man”—might convince Lincoln to invade their poorly defended northern neighbor. Palmerston’s fears were not wholly without merit. The year before, Seward had prated that Britain’s North American provinces would make “excellent states.” Palmerston also feared that the war would slow shipments of cotton from the South. “We do not like slavery,” he explained, “but we want cotton, and we dislike very much your Morrill tariff.” (The Morrill Tariff, passed in early March 1861, raised duties significantly on European imports.)

The British prime minister, despite his advanced age, remained firmly in control of British foreign policy at the start of the Civil War. He recommended dispatching three regiments that might form the foundation of a militia to Britain’s North American provinces. Such a move, Palmerston decided, would provide “a useful hint to Seward and Lincoln and their associates.” Victoria agreed that it was “of great importance that we should be strong in Canada.” British leaders ultimately dispatched a steamship packed with artillery to North America. As the year wore on, Palmerston argued for sending even more troops. The deployments, he suggested, were already having “a wholesome effect upon the tone and temper of Lincoln and Seward.”
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In late May, Cassius Marcellus Clay, the president’s appointee to the St. Petersburg post, stopped in London on his way to Russia and met with Palmerston at his home. The prime minister received Clay “in a very kindly spirit,” the American reported home. Still, “I saw at a glance where the feeling of England was,” Clay wrote in a letter to Lincoln. “They hoped for our ruin! They are jealous of our power. They care neither for the South or the North. They hate both.”
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British opinion about the conflict was actually far more varied than Clay’s analysis. Palmerston, for one, recognized that it would be folly to plunge England into America’s conflict. Britain’s “best and true policy,” he told his foreign minister in October 1861, “seems to be to go on as we have begun, and to keep quite clear of the conflict between North and South.… The only thing to do seems to be to lie on our oars, and to give no pretext to the Washingtonians to quarrel with us, while on the other hand, we maintain our rights and those of our fellow countrymen.” The prime minister acknowledged that there “have been cases in Europe in which allied Powers have said to fighting parties … ‘In the Queen’s name, I bid you to drop your swords.’ But those cases are rare and peculiar. The love of quarreling and fighting is inherent in man, and to prevent its indulgence is to impose restraints on natural liberty.”
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A Gross Outrage

As winter approached, however, Palmerston found it increasingly difficult to simply ignore the American conflict. “It may be,” the prime minister wrote the Duke of Newcastle on November 12, “that the Washington Gov’t may not wish or intend to declare war against us without adequate cause.” Still, he added, “their policy is to heap indignities upon us, and they are encouraged to do so by what they imagine to be the defenseless state of our North American Provinces.”
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The same day, the prime minister wrote the Union minister in London, Charles Francis Adams, asking for a meeting. “My Dear Sir,” the prime minister began, “I would be very glad to have a few minutes conversation with you; could you without inconvenience call upon me today at any time between one and two?” Adams was surprised that Palmerston had asked to see him on such short notice. The prime minister had ignored the usual channels, including his own foreign minister. Adams showed up at Palmerston’s home in London’s Piccadilly district at the appointed time. He swept past a pair of flaming torches into the prime minister’s darkened library, which was lit only by flickering gas lamps.
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Tensions between Britain and the United States had been simmering all fall. Washington and London had exchanged a series of “tart” dispatches. Lincoln and Seward worried that Britain was angling to recognize the Confederacy. Palmerston and his ministers, still spooked by Seward’s belligerent spring behavior, feared the Federals wanted a foreign war. “Every report, public, official and private, that comes to us from the Northern States of America,” Palmerston wrote an acquaintance in November, “tends to shew that our relations with the Washington government are on the most precarious footing and that Seward and Lincoln may at any time and on any pretence come to a rupture with us.” Palmerston’s foreign minister warned him a few days later that “it is the business of Seward to feed
the mob with sacrifices every day, and we happen to be the most grateful food he can offer.”
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Now, in the dark of his London library, Palmerston pressed Adams on his government’s intentions. The prime minister had become particularly concerned about an American ship called the
James Adger
, which had been loitering off the coast of Britain. Palmerston feared that the
Adger
intended to seize the
Trent
and its Confederate passengers—a move that he was sure would ignite public anger in Britain. The prime minister complained, somewhat off point, that the
Adger
’s captain had been getting drunk on “some excellent brandy” during his stay in Britain. Adams later recalled that Palmerston warned of a hostile British response if the
Adger
’s captain, “after enjoying the hospitality of this country, filling his ship with coals, and with other supplies, and filling his own stomach with brandy (and here he laughed in his characteristic way)
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should within sight of the shore commit an act which would be felt as offensive to the national flag.” The prime minister stressed that seizing the
Trent
would do the Federal cause little good in Britain—and would probably inspire great “prejudice” among ordinary Englishmen. Palmerston later reported to Queen Victoria that Adams had assured him that the
Adger
“had orders not to meddle with any vessel under any foreign flag.”
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What neither man knew was that Wilkes had already seized the
Trent
four days earlier off the Cuban coast. The news arrived in London on November 27. Karl Marx, then a journalist living in London, observed that “the electric telegraph immediately flashed” the news “to all parts of Great Britain.” Rumors of war flew through the city. “Every normal Englishman,” Marx reported, “went to bed with the conviction that he would go to sleep in a state of peace but wake up in a state of war.” The British stock exchange plunged on war fears, becoming “a stage of stormy scenes,” as Marx put it. The author of the
Communist Manifesto
, a shrewd observer of economic trends, wrote his friend Frederick Engels that he wished he had “the means to exploit the stupidity” of the stock exchange “during this fool period.”
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Britain’s most influential newspaper tried to tamp down popular
passions. The London
Times
editors found it hard to believe that the Federals would intentionally provoke a conflict and counseled against responding with “an outburst of passion.” Another newspaper blended swaggering nationalism with doubts about whether war would actually erupt. “We are pretty well accustomed to Yankee bluster and hot headedness,” the Cardiff
Mercury
reported, “but we cannot think that they [the United States] will be so utterly blind as to provoke a collision with a power which with little difficulty could blow to the four winds their dwarf fleet and shapeless mass of incoherent squads.”
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After ordering a review of the legal precedents, Palmerston convened a meeting of his cabinet on the afternoon of November 29. He told his foreign minister that he thought Britain should “demand from Seward and Lincoln apology and liberation of the captives.” If the Americans refused, Palmerston suggested that Britain should withdraw its minister in Washington, rather than have him “remain [as] the representative of a country deliberately insulted.” In the meantime, the prime minister wanted to halt all arms exports to the federal government. “We have reason to suppose that Seward and Lincoln mean a rupture with England,” he told his foreign minister. Under such circumstances he considered it “folly, amounting to imbecility” to allow British weapons to reach the bluecoats. Palmerston told the queen that the cabinet believed “a gross outrage and violation of international law has been committed.” He advised Victoria to “demand reparation and redress.”
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Palmerston was convinced that Washington had planned the seizure, hoping to provoke a foreign war. The prime minister had heard rumors that the Lincoln administration had approved Wilkes’s action beforehand at a White House cabinet meeting. Some Americans had initially believed the same thing; Seward’s close ally Thurlow Weed wrote the secretary of state shortly after the capture of Mason and Slidell explaining that General Winfield Scott had told him in Paris that such a seizure had been discussed in Washington for weeks beforehand. “You have, I suppose, well considered [the consequences],”
Weed wrote Seward. (Scott later argued that his comments had been taken out of context.)

Palmerston was nevertheless miffed when he heard that Lincoln had dismissed the affair to a visiting Canadian official, sniffing, “Oh, that’ll be got along with.” The British prime minister ordered his foreign minister to draft a blunt dispatch demanding that the envoys be released within seven days of receipt of the note. The same evening he shipped the text off to Windsor Castle for the queen’s approval. Palmerston believed that the British demands would come as a “Thunder Clap” to the American president.
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Britain’s monarchs, however, were far less eager for a war. The mood at Windsor Castle was already grim. Prince Albert had been ailing for several weeks and felt “thoroughly miserable” when the dispatch arrived. The prince consort had been haunting the palace halls like a walking ghost, shivering despite the fur coat he had wrapped around his aching body. Albert felt “as if cold water were being poured down his back,” Victoria worried to her diary. The prince consort “could eat no breakfast and looked very wretched.” His incoming correspondence on the morning of December 1 contained nothing to lighten his mood. The prince consort complained that the Palmerston ministry’s draft dispatch was “somewhat meager.” Despite his illness—he could “scarcely hold his pen,” Victoria reported—Albert decided to rewrite it himself.
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Albert softened the cabinet’s language, although he still demanded a “suitable apology” from the Americans. His primary goal was to give Lincoln a way to save face. “Her majesty’s government,” he wrote, “bearing in mind the friendly relations which have long subsisted between Great Britain and the United States, are willing to believe that the United States naval officer who committed this aggression was not acting in compliance with any authority from his government.” Or, the prince consort added, perhaps Wilkes “greatly misunderstood the instructions which he had received.” Victoria and Albert then returned the text to Palmerston and his cabinet. While the British monarchs approved the text “upon the whole,” they
explained, they would prefer to include some “expression of hope” that Wilkes had acted alone.
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Palmerston, rather than picking a fight with the queen, said he thought Albert’s changes “excellent.” He swiftly dispatched the new text to the British minister in Washington. “What we want is a plain Yes or a plain No to our very simple demands,” Palmerston’s foreign minister wrote to the British envoy in Washington, “and we want that plain Yes or No within seven days of the communication of the dispatch.” Over the following week the prime minister received heartening indications that American expats were urging their government to release the Confederate envoys. Still, Palmerston entertained little hope of a peaceful resolution. “The best thing,” Palmerston’s foreign minister mused, “would be if Seward could be turned out and a rational man put in his place.” Absent such a dramatic move, the prime minister worried, “we shall not get what we ask for, without fighting for it.”
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Not all Britons were so sanguine about the results of a prospective war. John Bright, a liberal member of Parliament who had cultivated close ties with the Lincoln White House, argued that a conflict would destroy Britain’s improving relationship with its former colonies. At a speech in Rochdale on December 4, Bright lamented the British reaction to the
Trent
news—“every sword leaping from its scabbard, and every man looking about for his pistols and his blunderbusses.” The statesman criticized Britons who jealously wanted to see the United States dismembered for geopolitical reasons. The American population was growing so rapidly that it would soon overtake Britain’s, Bright warned. “When that time comes,” he concluded, “I pray that it may not be said” that “in the darkest hour of their country’s trials, England, the land of their fathers, looked on with icy coldness and saw unmoved the perils and calamities of their children.”
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Nevertheless, two days later, on December 6, a fleet of reinforcements sailed for British Canada. Americans in London reported home to Seward that they were seeing Confederate flags unfurled
throughout the city. “In the streets,” wrote one correspondent, “I noticed two boys carrying miniature trays of secession flags for sale.” Wagonloads of guns were spotted leaving the Tower of London. Eventually the Palmerston ministry would dispatch more than eleven thousand troops on eighteen transport ships to North America. The prime minister was satisfied with the show of force. If the Americans gave in, he told the queen, the result would be “honourable for England and humiliating for the United States.” If, on the other hand, the Federals stood by Wilkes’s seizure of Mason and Slidell, Britain would be well positioned to inflict a crushing blow on her former colonies.
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