About two months later Palmerston wrote to Gladstone saying that he and Russell were agreed that an offer of mediation should be made by Britain, France, and Russia, and that the Ambassador at Paris was to be instructed to communicate with the French Government on the subject. “Of course,” he added, “no actual step would be taken without the sanction of the Cabinet.”
Lord Russell had but a few days previously written a letter to Palmerston, which had been shown to Gladstone, in which he said: “I agree with you that the time is come for offering mediation to the United States government with a view to the recognition of the independence of the Confederates. I agree further that, in case of failure, we ought ourselves to recognize the Confederate States as an independent State.”
With the words of these two letters singing in his mind and mingling with the mental harmonies he himself had conceived, Mr. Gladstone went to Newcastle to partake of a banquet prepared for him by party admirers, and to utter on October 7, 1862, in the course of a general speech, a comment upon American affairs that was to vex him to the end of his life. Said he:
“We know quite well that the people of the North have not yet drunk of the cup,—they are still trying to hold it far from their lips,—which, all the rest of the world see, they, nevertheless, must drink of. We may have our own opinions about slavery; we may be for or against the South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made,—what is more than either,—they have made a nation. We may anticipate with certainty the success of the Southern States, so far as their separation from the North is concerned.”
It is difficult to exaggerate the profound sensation that this passage in Gladstone’s speech made in the United Kingdom, on the Continent, and in the United States. There was no escaping its significance. It meant that the British Government was on the point of recognizing the independence of the South, and such an act must have led to war between Great Britain and the United States. Aware of the sentiment that pervaded the Cabinet, Minister Adams had sought explicit instructions from the United States State Department, which instructions had come in unequivocal terms in a letter from Secretary Seward. Mr. Seward wrote:
“If contrary to our expectations, the British Government, either alone or in combination with any other Government, should acknowledge the insurgents, while you are remaining without further instructions from this Government concerning that event, you will immediately suspend the exercise of your functions.... I have now, in behalf of the United States, and by the authority of their Chief Executive Magistrate, performed an important duty. Its possible consequences have been weighed and its solemnity is therefore felt and freely acknowledged. This duty has brought us to meet and confront the danger of a war with Great Britain and other States allied with the insurgents who are in arms for the overthrow of the American Union. You will perceive that we have approached the contemplation of that crisis with the caution that great reluctance has inspired. But I trust that you will also have perceived that the crisis has not appalled us.”
Mr. Adams must have perused this letter many times as he waited for the meeting of the British Ministry,—which he learned had been called for October 23,—to act upon the question of the Civil War in America. Indeed, he had felt a strong impulse to call for his passports immediately after the Gladstone speech at Newcastle, but had concluded to wait a few days for formal action by the government to which he was accredited.
But now conditions and circumstances beyond the ken of diplomacy had conspired to put the inevitable moment indefinitely forward. Whether, as has been suggested, Gladstone, in his Newcastle speech, had intended to force his colleagues into a position the only outlet of which was recognition, or whether knowing their sentiments he had in mere exuberance let the cat out of the bag, he had committed a grave breach of official etiquette in thus speaking without express Cabinet sanction. It was a false move, upon which Palmerston and Russell seized with eagerness and,—it may be imagined,—private glee. Within a week Sir George Cornewall Lewis, a member of the Cabinet, made, at Palmerston’s express direction, a public speech in which he adroitly gave the lie to Gladstone. The fateful Cabinet meeting of the 23rd was postponed, and a new proposal of Napoleon III that came at about this time,—a proposal looking to joint mediation or intervention,—was rejected, on the ground that the time was not yet ripe.
The British Ministry kept looking for the auspicious opportunity for several months thereafter. Many thought it had come in the middle of December, when the Fredericksburg disaster was described by the London Times correspondent as “a memorable day to the historian of the Decline and Fall of the American Republic.” But on the last day of the year was begun the battle that was to show the British public,—what was sometimes forgotten,—that there were armies outside of Virginia and territories beyond the Alleghanies. Out of the mists which surrounded Stone’s River,—out of the uncertainty due to counter-claims of victory by the rival commanders,—arose this definite fact: The Northern Army had occupied the town that it set out to take, and the Southern Army had retired almost to the borders of Tennessee and could not dispute the claim of its enemy to the greater part of the area of that Commonwealth. Another postponement seemed necessary. By this time also the leaven of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which at first had been derided, was working in England; and, in their turn and time, Gettysburg and Vicksburg aided to produce a much-changed official atmosphere. The Foreign Minister who, against the law of the Kingdom, had let the Alabama and the Florida slip away to prey upon American commerce, was to strain that law a few months later to hold war-vessels that had been built for the South.
The danger to the Union from foreign sources had passed.