"Mr. Adams' pretensions are extravagant, his logic is blundering, his threats laughable; but he has hit his mark. We can trace his influence in the detention of the Alexandra and the protracted judicial proceedings which have arisen out of it; in the sudden raid upon the rams at Birkenhead; in the announced intention of the Government to alter the Foreign Enlistment Act of this country in accordance with the views of the United States Cabinet. When one knows the calibre of Mr. Adams one feels inclined to marvel at his success. The astonishment ceases when one reflects that the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs is Earl Russell[1151]."
But when, on February 23, the debate on the Laird Rams occurred [1152], the Tory leaders, upon whom Lindsay and others depended to drive home the meaning of the Alexandra decision, carefully avoided urging the Government to change its policy and contented themselves with an effort, very much in line with that initiated by The Index, to belittle Russell as yielding to a threat. Adams was even applauded by the Tories for his discretion and his anxiety to keep the two countries out of war. The Southern Independence Association remained quiescent. Very evidently someone, presumably Derby or Disraeli, had put a quietus on the plan to make an issue of the stoppage of Southern ship-building. Russell's reply to his accusers was but a curt denial without going into details, in itself testimony that he had no fear of a party attack on the policy of stopping the ships. He was disgusted with the result of the Alexandra trial and in conversation with Adams reflected upon "the uncertainty and caprice incident everywhere to the administration of justice [1153]."
As between Russell and Seward the waters formerly troubled by the stiff manner and tone of the one statesman and the flamboyance of the other were now unusually calm. Russell was less officious and less eager to protest on minor matters and Seward was less belligerent in language. Seward now radiated supreme confidence in the ultimate victory of the North. He had heard rumours of a movement to be made in Parliament for interposition to bring the war to an end by a reunion of North and South on a basis of Abolition and of a Northern assumption of the Confederate debts. Commenting on this to Lyons he merely remarked that the Northern answer could be put briefly as: (1) determination to crush rebellion by force of arms and resentment of any "interposition"; (2) the slaves were already free and would not be made the subject of any bargain; (3) "As to the Confederate debt the United States, Mr. Seward said, would never pay a dollar of it [1154]." That there was public animosity to Great Britain, Lyons did not deny and reported a movement in Congress for ending the reciprocity treaty with Canada but, on Seward's advice, paid no attention to this, acknowledging that Seward was very wise in political manipulation and depending on his opposition to the measure [1155]. Some alarm was indeed caused through a recurrence by Seward to an idea dating back to the very beginning of the war of establishing ships off the Southern ports which should collect duties on imports. He told Lyons that he had sent a special agent to Adams to explain the proposal with a view to requesting the approval of Great Britain. Lyons urged that no such request be made as it was sure to be refused, interpreting the plan as intended to secure a British withdrawal of belligerent rights to the South, to be followed by a bold Northern defiance to France if she objected [1156]. Adams did discuss the project with Russell but easily agreed to postpone consideration of it and in this Seward quietly acquiesced [1157]. Apparently this was less a matured plan than a "feeler," put out to sound British attitude and to learn, if possible, whether the tie previously binding England and France in their joint policy toward America was still strong. Certainly at this same time Seward was making it plain to Lyons that while opposed to current Congressional expressions of antagonism to Napoleon's Mexican policy, he was himself in favour, once the Civil War was ended, of helping the republican Juarez drive the French from Mexico [1158].
For nearly three years Russell, like nearly all Englishmen, had held a firm belief that the South could not be conquered and that ultimately the North must accept the bitter pill of Southern independence. Now he began to doubt, yet still held to the theory that even if conquered the South would never yield peaceful obedience to the Federal Government. As a reasoning and reasonable statesman he wished that the North could be made to see this.
"... It is a pity," he wrote to Lyons, "the Federals think it worth their while to go on with the war. The obedience they are ever likely to obtain from the South will not be quiet or lasting, and they must spend much money and blood to get it. If they can obtain the right bank of the Mississippi, and New Orleans, they might as well leave to the Confederates Charleston and Savannah[1159]."
This was but private speculation with no intention of urging it upon the United States. Yet it indicated a change in the view held as to the warlike power of the North. Similarly the Quarterly Review, long confident of Southern success and still prophesying it, was acknowledging that "the unholy [Northern] dream of universal empire" must first have passed [1160]. Throughout these spring months of 1864, Lyons continued to dwell upon the now thoroughly developed readiness of the United States for a foreign war and urged the sending of a military expert to report on American preparations [1161]. He was disturbed by the arrogance manifested by various members of Lincoln's Cabinet, especially by Welles, Secretary of the Navy, with whom Seward, so Lyons wrote, often had difficulty in demonstrating the unfortunate diplomatic bearing of the acts of naval officers. Seward was as anxious as was Lyons to avoid irritating incidents, "but he is not as much listened to as he ought to be by his colleagues in the War and Navy Departments [1162]."
Such an act by a naval officer, defiant of British authority and disregardful of her law, occurred in connection with a matter already attracting the attention of the British public and causing some anxiety to Russell--the alleged securing in Ireland of enlistments for the Northern forces. The war in America had taken from the ranks of industry in the North great numbers of men and at the same time had created an increased demand for labour. But the war had also abruptly checked, in large part, that emigration from Europe which, since the middle 'forties, had been counted upon as a regular source of labour supply, easily absorbed in the steady growth of productive enterprise. A few Northern emissaries of the Government early sent abroad to revive immigration were soon reinforced by private labour agents and by the efforts of steamship companies [1163]. This resulted in a rapid resumption of emigration in 1863, and in several cases groups of Irishmen signed contracts of such a nature (with non-governmental agents) that on arrival in America they were virtually black-jacked into the army. The agents thereby secured large profits from the sums offered under the bounty system of some of the Eastern states for each recruit. Lyons soon found himself called upon to protest, on appeal from a few of these hoodwinked British citizens, and Seward did the best he could to secure redress, though the process was usually a long one owing to red-tape and also to the resistance of army officers.
As soon as the scheme of "bounty profiteers" was discovered prompt steps were taken to defeat it by the American Secretary of State. But the few cases occurring, combined with the acknowledged and encouraged agents of bona fide labour emigration from Ireland, gave ground for accusations in Parliament that Ireland was being used against the law as a place of enlistments. Russell had early taken up the matter with Adams, investigation had followed, and on it appearing that no authorized Northern agent was engaged in recruiting in Ireland the subject had been dropped [1164]. There could be and was no objection to encourage labour emigration, and this was generally recognized as the basis of the sudden increase of the numbers going to America [1165]. But diplomatic and public quiescence was disturbed when the United States war vessel Kearsarge, while in port at Queenstown, November, 1863, took on board fifteen Irishmen and sailed away with them. Russell at once received indirectly from Mason (who was now in France), charges that these men had been enlisted and in the presence of the American consul at Queenstown; he was prompt in investigation but before this was well under way the Kearsarge sailed into Queenstown again and landed the men. She had gone to a French port and no doubt Adams was quick to give orders for her return. Adams was soon able to disprove the accusation against the consul but it still remained a question whether the commander of the vessel was guilty of a bold defiance of British neutrality. On March 31, 1864, the Irishmen, on trial at Cork, pleaded guilty to violation of the Foreign Enlistment Act, but the question of the commander's responsibility was permitted to drop on Adams' promise, April 11, of further investigation [1166].
The Kearsarge case occurred as Parliament was drawing to a close in 1863, and at a time when Southern efforts were at low ebb. It was not, therefore, until some months later when a gentleman with a shady past, named Patrick Phinney, succeeded in evading British laws and in carrying off to America a group of Irishmen who found themselves, unwillingly, forced into the Northern army, that the two cases were made the subject of a Southern and Tory attack on Russell. The accusations were sharply made that Russell was not sufficiently active in defending British law and British honour [1167], but these were rather individual accusations than concerted and do not indicate any idea of making an issue with the Government [1168]. Whenever opportunity arose some inquiry up to July, 1864, would be made intended to bring out the alleged timidity of Russell's policy towards the North--a method then also being employed on many other matters with the evident intention of weakening the Ministry for the great Tory attack now being organized on the question of Danish policy.
In truth from the beginning of 1864, America had been pushed to one side in public and parliamentary interest by the threatening Danish question which had long been brewing but which did not come into sharp prominence until March. A year earlier it had become known that Frederick VII of Denmark, in anticipation of a change which, under the operations of the Salic law, would come at his death in the constitutional relations of Denmark to Schleswig-Holstein, was preparing by a new "constitutional act" to secure for his successor the retention of these districts. The law was enacted on November 13, 1863, and Frederick VII died two days later. His successor, Christian IX, promptly declared his intention to hold the duchies in spite of their supposed desire to separate from Denmark and to have their own Prince in the German Confederation. The Federal Diet of the Confederation had early protested the purpose of Denmark and Russell had at first upheld the German arguments but had given no pledges of support to anyone [1169]. But Palmerston on various occasions had gone out of his way to express in Parliament his favour for the Danish cause and had used incautious language even to the point of virtually threatening British aid against German ambitions [1170]. A distinct crisis was thus gradually created, coming to a head when Prussia, under Bismarck's guiding hand, dragging Austria in with her, thrust the Federal Diet of the Confederation to one side, and assumed command of the movement to wrest Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark.
This occurred in February, 1864, and by this time Palmerston's utterances, made against the wish of the majority of his Cabinet colleagues (though this was not known), had so far aroused the British public as to have created a feeling, widely voiced, that Great Britain could not sit idly by while Prussia and Austria worked their will on Denmark. There was excellent ground for a party attack to unseat the Ministry on the score of a humiliating "Danish policy," at one time threatening vigorous British action, then resorting to weak and unsuccessful diplomatic manoeuvres. For three months the Government laboured to bring about through a European council some solution that should both save something for Denmark and save its own prestige. Repeatedly Palmerston, in the many parliamentary debates on Denmark, broke loose from his Cabinet colleagues and indulged in threats which could not fail to give an excellent handle to opponents when once it became clear that the Ministry had no intention of coming in arms to the defence of the Danish King.
From February to June, 1864, this issue was to the fore. In its earlier stages it did not appear to Southern sympathizers to have any essential bearing on the American question, though they were soon to believe that in it lay a great hope. Having set the Southern Independence Association on its feet in London and hoping much from its planned activities, Lindsay, in March, was momentarily excited over rumours of some new move by Napoleon. Being undeceived [1171] he gave a ready ear to other rumours, received privately through Delane of the Times, that an important Southern victory would soon be forthcoming [1172]. Donoughmore, the herald of this glad news also wrote:
"Our political prospects here are still very uncertain. The Conference on the Danish question will either make or
mar the Government. If they can patch up a peace they will remain in office. If they fail, out they go[1173]."
Here was early expressed the real hope of one faction of extreme Southern friends in the Danish question. But Lindsay had not yet made clear where he stood on a possible use of a European situation to affect the cause of the South. Now, as always, he was the principal confidant and friend of Mason in England, but he was on ordinary political questions not in sympathy with Tory principles or measures. He was soon disgusted with the apathy of the London Independence Association and threatened to resign membership if this organization, started with much trumpeting of intended activity, did not come out boldly in a public demand for the recognition of the South [1174]. He had already let it be known that another motion would be made in Parliament for mediation and recognition and was indignant that the Association did not at once declare its adherence. Evidently there were internal difficulties. Lindsay wrote Mason that he retained membership only to prevent a break up of the Association and had at last succeeded in securing a meeting of the Executive Committee when his proposed parliamentary resolution would be considered. The Manchester Association was much more alert and ready to support him. "The question is quite ripe for fresh agitation and from experience I find that that agitation must be started by a debate in Parliament. No notice is taken of lectures or speeches in the provinces [1175]."
Before any move was made in Parliament letters to the newspapers began anew to urge that the Ministry should be pressed to offer mediation in America. They met with little favourable response. The Times, at the very end of Lindsay's effort, explained its indifference, and recited the situation of October-November, 1862, stating that the question had then been decided once for all. It declared that Great Britain had "no moral right to interfere" and added that to attempt to do so would result in filling "the North with the same spirit of patriotism and defiance as animated the invaded Confederates [1176]." Thus support to Lindsay was lacking in a hoped-for quarter, but his conferences with Association members had brought a plan of modified action the essential feature of which was that the parliamentary motion must not be made a party one and that the only hope of the South lay in the existing Government. This was decidedly Lindsay's own view though it was clearly understood that the opportuneness of the motion lay in ministerial desire for and need of support in its Danish policy. Lindsay expected to find Palmerston more complaisant than formerly as regards American policy and was not disappointed. He wrote to Mason on May 27:
"I received in due course your note of the 23rd. In a matter of so much importance I shall make no move in the House in regard to American affairs without grave consideration. I am therefore privately consulting the friends of the South. On this subject we had a meeting of our lifeless association on Monday last and on the same subject we are to have another meeting next Monday; but differences of opinion exist there as well as elsewhere, as to the advisability of moving at present. Some say 'move'--others, 'postpone'--but the news by the Scotia to-morrow will regulate to a considerable extent our course of action. One thing is now clear to me that the motion must not be a party one, and that the main point will be to get the Government to go with whoever brings forward the motion, for as you are aware I would rather see the motion in other hands than mine, as my views on the American question are so well known. As no competent member however seems disposed to move or rather to incur the responsibility, I sent to inquire if it would be agreeable to Lord Palmerston to see me on American affairs and on the subject of a motion to be brought forward in the House. He sent word that he would be very glad to see me, and I had, therefore, a long meeting with him alone last night, the result of which was that if I brought forward a motion somewhat as follows, on the third of June, he would likely be prepared to accept it, though he asked if I would see him again after the Scotia arrived. The motion we talked about was to this effect--'That the House of Commons deeply regretting the great loss of life and the sufferings of the people of the United States and the Confederate States of North America by the continuance of the war which has been so long waged between them, trust that Her Majesty's Government will avail itself of the earliest opportunity of mediating in conjunction with the other powers of Europe to bring about a cessation of hostilities.'"