Henry Clews, Esq.
In this letter it will be seen, Mr. Gladstone, the Grand Old Man, as England called him, a member of the British Cabinet during Lord Palmerston’s administration, which extended from 1859 to 1865, more than covering the period of the war for the Union, assured me that the Cabinet never at any time dealt with the subject of recognizing the Southern States, except to decline to entertain the proposition of France, and this “without qualification, hesitation, delay, or dissent.”
WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE
What could be more positive and emphatic than this? What more unequivocal, explicit and direct? It is an unqualified statement that the British Government had never during the war in any way considered the question of recognizing the Southern Confederacy, except on that one occasion, and England was the first nation to which the French proposal was made. Had England joined France when Napoleon made his proposition, which she was the first to reject, that conspirator against us would have tried hard to help the South to succeed in disrupting the Union, for the purpose of regaining possession of Louisiana, and capturing as much additional territory as possible in order to annex it to the empire he expected to found in Mexico. He wanted a weak neighbor. We were saved from his machinations, and this great danger, by the resolute course of the British Government; and Napoleon thereafter sowed the wind to reap the whirlwind in Mexico. He consigned poor Maximilian to disaster and an inglorious death, after his empire had fallen like a house of cards when the French troops, that had bolstered up his throne, were withdrawn.
This positive testimony from so high and competent an authority as Mr. Gladstone ought to be conclusive in effectually disproving the unfounded “cock and bull” story that England, at one time, contemplated the recognition of the Southern Confederacy, and that she was prevented from moving in that direction, and led to reverse her policy, and prevent the escape of the Confederate cruisers from Laird’s shipyard at Birkenhead, by the arrival at New York of Russian war-ships.
The fact that a Russian squadron, commanded by Admiral S. Lessoffsky on his flagship “Alexander Nevsky,” did come to New York late in September, 1863, and that its officers were very hospitably received and entertained, is the peg on which this story is made to hang. I have good reasons for saying the ships came here with no such object, nor with “sealed orders” to take an active part in the war, if required. New York was merely a port of call for them, and no doubt their officers were glad to get here and be fêted, as they were. They also, it is safe to assume, appreciated the courtesy of William H. Seward, the Secretary of State, who afterwards told me that, when he heard of their arrival in American waters, he invited them to accept the hospitalities of the port of New York. He, of course, foresaw that their coming here would, or at least might, have a good moral and political effect in our favor both at home and abroad, by depressing the South and encouraging the North, and causing any foreign Powers that might have been considering the advisability of recognizing the Southern Confederacy to postpone action under the impression that we had, or might have, Russia for an ally.
He was astute enough to see that this visit of the Russian squadron might seem to be what it was not, particularly to foreign eyes. Appearances, we all know, are often deceptive, yet they sometimes exert great influence. The visit of this squadron was a case in point. It was a splendid “bluff,” at a very critical period in our history. Its coming was all the more desired by Mr. Seward because, on the 3d of February, 1863, he had received a despatch from the Emperor Napoleon offering to mediate between the United States and the Southern Confederacy, to which he replied three days later, absolutely rejecting the offer, in very positive terms. After that, early in July, the battle of Gettysburg had been fought, and Northern prospects had brightened very materially. Nevertheless, the coincidence of an arrival, about the same time as the Atlantic Squadron came, of more Russian war-ships at San Francisco, under the command of Admiral Popoff, added to Secretary Seward’s gratification; and, when the Russian officers of the Atlantic Squadron went on to Washington, he kept up the festivities to which they had been accustomed in New York by giving them a grand dinner. He was a fitting host, as he had originally invited them to come here.
