Great Britain and the American Civil War

by Ephraim Douglass Adams

"The Association will also devote itself to the cultivation of kindly feelings between the people of Great Britain and of the Confederate States; and it will, in particular, steadily but kindly represent to the Southern States, that recognition by Europe must necessarily lead to a revision of the system of servile labour, unhappily bequeathed to them by England, in accordance with the spirit of the age, so as to combine the gradual extinction of slavery with the preservation of property, the maintenance of the civil polity, and the true civilization of the negro race[1144]."

The Association was unquestionably armed with distinguished guns of heavy calibre in its Committee and officers, and its membership fee (one guinea annually) was large enough to attract the élite, but it remained to be seen whether all this equipment would be sent into action. As yet the vigour of the movement was centred at Manchester and even there a curious situation soon arose. Spence in various speeches, was declaring that the "Petition to Parliament" movement was spreading rapidly. 30,000 at Ashton, he said, had agreed to memoralize the Government. But on January 30, 1864, Mason Jones, a pro-Northern speaker in the Free Trade Hall at Manchester, asked why Southern public meetings had come to a halt. "The Southerners," he declared, "had taken the Free Trade Hall in the outset with that intention and they were obliged to pay the rent of the room, though they did not use it. They knew that their resolutions would be outvoted and that amendments would pass against them[1145]." There must have been truth in the taunt for while The Index in nearly every issue throughout the middle of 1864 reports great activity there, it does not give any account of a public meeting. The reports were of many applications for membership "from all quarters, from persons of rank and gentlemen of standing in their respective counties[1146]."

Just here lay the weakness of the Southern Independence Association programme. It did appeal to "persons of rank and gentlemen of standing," but by the very fact of the flocking to it of these classes it precluded appeal to Radical and working-class England--already largely committed to the cause of the North. Goldwin Smith, in his "Letter to a Whig Member of the Southern Independence Association," made the point very clear[1147]. In this pamphlet, probably the strongest presentation of the Northern side and the most severe castigation of Southern sympathizers that appeared throughout the whole war, Smith appealed to old Whig ideas of political liberty, attacked the aristocracy and the Church of England, and attempted to make the Radicals of England feel that the Northern cause was their cause. Printing the constitution and address of the Association, with the list of signers, he characterized the movement as fostered by "men of title and family," with "a good sprinkling of clergymen," and as having for its object the plunging of Great Britain into war with the North[1148].

It is significant, in view of Mason Jones' taunt to the Southern Independence Association at Manchester, that The Index, from the end of March to August, 1864, was unable to report a single Southern public meeting. The London Association, having completed its top-heavy organization, was content with that act and showed no life. The first move by the Association was planned to be made in connection with the Alexandra case when, as was expected, the Exchequer Court should render a decision against the Government's right to detain her. On January 8, 1864, Lindsay wrote to Mason that he had arranged for the public launching of the Association "next week," that he had again seen the Chief Baron who assured him the Court would decide "that the Government is entirely wrong":

"I told him that if the judgment was clear, and if the Government persisted in proceeding further, that our Association (which he was pleased to learn had been formed) would take up the matter in Parliament and out of it, for if we had no right to seize these ships, it was most unjust that we should detain them by raising legal quibbles for the purpose of keeping them here till the time arrived when the South might not require them. I think public opinion will go with us on this point, for John Bull--with all his failings--loves fair play[1149]."

It is apparent from the language used by Lindsay that he was thinking of the Laird Rams and other ships fully as much as of the Alexandra[1150], and hoped much from an attack on the Government's policy in detaining Southern vessels. Earl Russell was to be made to bear the brunt of this attack on the reassembling of Parliament. In an Index editorial, Adams was pictured as having driven Russell into a corner by "threats which would not have been endured for an hour by a Pitt or a Canning"; the Foreign Secretary as invariably yielding to the "acknowledged mastery of the Yankee Minister":

"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.