Foreign affairs, less technical, could not in like easy manner be committed to others, and in these Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward labored together. The blackest cloud was the Trent affair, yet after that had passed the sky by no means became clear. In the spring of 1862 the Oreto went out from Liverpool to become the rebel privateer Florida. Before her departure Mr. Adams complained concerning her to the English government, but was assured that the vessel was designed for the Sicilian fruit trade! As it is not diplomatic to say that gentlemen in office are telling lies, the American
minister could push the matter no farther. The Florida, therefore, escaped, not to conduct commerce with Sicily, but to destroy the commerce of the United States. At the same time that she was fitting out, a mysterious craft, oddly known only as the "290," was also building in the Liverpool docks, and against her Mr. Adams got such evidence that the queen's ministers could not help deciding that she must be detained. Unfortunately, however, and by a strange, if not a significant chance, they reached this decision on the day after she had sailed! She became the notorious Alabama. Earl Russell admitted that the affair was "a scandal," but this did not interfere with the career of Captain Semmes. In these incidents there was both cause and provocation for war, and hot-headed ones cried out for it, while prudent men feared it. But the President and the secretary were under the bonds of necessity to keep their official temper. Just at this juncture England would have found it not only very easy, but also very congenial to her real sympathies, to play for the South a part like that which France had once played for certain thirteen revolted colonies, and thereby to change a rebellion into a revolution. So Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward, not willing to give the unfriendly power this opportunity, only wrote down in the national ledger sundry charges against Great Britain, which were afterward paid, not promptly, yet in full!
Another provoking thing was the placing of
Confederate loans in London. This could not be interfered with. The only comfort was that the blockaded South had much difficulty in laying hands upon the proceeds of the bonds which English friends of the Slave Empire were induced to buy. Yet time, always the faithful auxiliary of the North, took care of this matter also. When the news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg came, the investors, who had scarcely finished writing the cheques with which to pay their subscriptions, were obliged to face a drop of thirty per cent, in the market price of their new securities. For many years after the war was over British strong boxes wasted space in accommodating these absurd documents, while the idea of their worthlessness was slowly filtering through the minds of their owners.
Another thing, which did no harm at all, but was exceedingly vexatious, was the constant suggestion of European mediation. For a couple of years, at least, the air was full of this sort of talk. Once, in spite of abundant discouragement, the French emperor actually committed the folly of making the proposal. It came inopportunely on February 3, 1863, after the defeat of Fredericksburg, like a carrion bird after a battle. It was rejected very decisively, and if Napoleon III. appreciated Mr. Seward's dispatch, he became aware that he had shown gross lack of discernment. Yet he was not without some remarkable companions in this incapacity to understand that which he was
observing, as if from aloft, with an air of superior wisdom. One would think that the condition of feeling in the United States which had induced Governor Hicks, in the early stage of the rebellion, to suggest a reference to Lord Lyons, as arbitrator, had long since gone by. But it had not; and it is the surprising truth that Horace Greeley had lately written to M. Mercier, the French minister at Washington, suggesting precisely the step which the emperor took; and there were other less conspicuous citizens who manifested a similar lack of spirit and intelligence.
All this, however, was really of no serious consequence. Talk about mediation coming from American citizens could do little actual injury, and from foreigners it could do none. If the foreigners had only been induced to offer it by reason of a friendly desire to help the country in its hour of stress, the rejection might even have been accompanied with sincere thanks. Unfortunately, however, it never came in this guise; but, on the contrary, it always involved the offensive assumption that the North could never restore the integrity of the Union by force. Northern failure was established in advance, and was the unconcealed, if not quite the avowed, basis of the whole transaction. Now though mere unfriendliness, not overstepping the requirements of international law, could inflict little substantial hurt, yet there was something very discouraging in the unanimity and positiveness with which all these experienced European
statesmen assumed the success of the Confederacy as the absolutely sure outcome; and in this time of extreme trial to discourage was to injure. Furthermore, the undisguised pleasure with which this prospect was contemplated was sorely trying to men oppressed by the burdens of anxiety and trouble which rested on the President and his ministers. The man who had begun life as a frontiersman had need of much moral courage to sustain him in the face of the presagings, the condemnations, and the hostility of nearly all the sage and well-trained statesmen of Europe. In those days the United States had not yet fully thrown off a certain thralldom of awe before European opinion. Nevertheless, at whatever cost in the coin of self-reliance, the President and the secretary maintained the courage of their opinions, and never swerved or hesitated in the face of foreign antipathy or contempt. The treatment inflicted upon them was only so much added to the weight under which they had to stand up.