A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [105]
After the meeting, Adams’s relief that it had nothing to do with Sanford was tempered by his indignation at Palmerston’s accusations. A week later, on the twenty-first, the Adger’s prey, the Nashville, sailed into Southampton with a Confederate flag brazenly flying from its mast. Although the Confederate commissioners were not on board, there were thirty prisoners from a Northern clipper called the Harvey Birch, which the Nashville had captured and burned in the English Channel. Lord Russell promptly sent orders that she was not to receive any military supplies or fittings. Her arrival was embarrassing and obviously provocative to the North. Charles Francis Adams demanded the arrest of Captain Pegram on the charge of piracy. Pegram responded with a letter to The Times pointing out that he was a regularly commissioned officer of the Confederate navy and therefore not a pirate. The locals in Southampton preferred Adams’s version and treated Pegram like a swashbuckling hero.
Russell naturally refused Adams’s request, since the Nashville was a bona fide ship of war belonging to a recognized belligerent, but he did agree to keep her under surveillance in case the Confederates attempted to smuggle guns on board.56 The torrent of correspondence between the legation and Whitehall was now so great that Henry Adams and the two secretaries were overwhelmed by the drudgery of copying and archiving each and every letter. Benjamin Moran’s tirades and twitterings made life in the office almost intolerable for Henry, who struggled “to resist complete nervous depression” resulting from the prolonged exposure.57 On the morning of the twenty-seventh, the subject of Moran’s ire was Lord Russell’s latest response, which he characterized as unforgivably “hostile.” The embittered secretary cursed Russell and Palmerston “for playing into the hands of the rebels.” The prime minister had hated America since the War of 1812, contended Moran, and “has deliberately determined to force us into war.”58 He believed it was only a matter of time before Palmerston found some pretext to unleash his designs.
The moment came sooner than Moran expected. At precisely half past twelve, a messenger called with another telegram from the U.S. consul in Southampton. This time it was not about the Nashville. A ship from St. Thomas had arrived, bearing the astonishing news that Mason and Slidell had been captured off the coast of Cuba. They had been traveling on the Trent, a British mail packet bound for St. Thomas, when USS San Jacinto under Captain Charles Wilkes forcibly stopped the vessel and took the commissioners prisoner. The jaded occupants of the U.S. legation began cheering, even though, Henry Adams admitted, they knew it meant “not merely diplomatic rupture—but a declaration of war.” His opinion was echoed around the country: “Have these Yankees then gone completely crazy to carry out this mad coup with the Confederate Commissioners?” Friedrich Engels asked Karl Marx, whose prodigious journalistic output from his home in Manchester included weekly articles about the Civil War. “To take political prisoners by force, on a foreign ship, is the clearest casus belli there can be. The fellows must be sheer fools to land themselves in war with England.”59
Charles Francis Adams was not at the legation to hear the news. He had accepted an invitation from Richard Monckton Milnes to join a large house party at Fryston Hall in Yorkshire. Neither Charles Francis nor Abigail had experienced life in a grand country house before; Fryston’s “somewhat ancient” decoration and total lack of modern conveniences confirmed their prejudices about the superiority