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to allow himself to be publicly beaten down by the force of Seward’s arguments. “Mr. Seward’s long experience of the Senate, and his well-known tact in dealing with that Body, gives his opinion on such a point so much weight,” explained Lyons to the Foreign Office on March 31, “that I naturally thought it prudent to be guided by it.” Lord Russell responded drily that credit for the treaty was “immaterial” to Her Majesty’s government so long as the slave trade was suppressed.52 Lyons dutifully performed his role as directed by Seward, and grudgingly “changed” his mind after a testy exchange of notes.

Lincoln’s cabinet was unanimous in its congratulation of Seward—with the exception of Gideon Welles, who would not be dissuaded that Britain had an ulterior motive in agreeing to the treaty. “Yesterday was the anniversary of my arrival three years ago at Washington,” Lord Lyons wrote to Lord Russell on April 8. “I celebrated it by signing the Treaty for the Suppression of the Slave Trade.”53 Nothing, except permission to go home, could have given him greater satisfaction. “Weary years they have been in many respects,” he wrote, but the treaty made them seem worth the sacrifice. April was a good month for the abolitionists; a week later, on the sixteenth, President Lincoln signed into law a bill abolishing slavery in Washington. (Sumner had accused him of being the largest slave owner in America for his delay in freeing the three thousand slaves in and around the capital.) At the beginning of the war “it was the fashion amongst English critics,” wrote Edward Dicey, “to state that the whole Secession question had no direct bearing on nor immediate connection with the issue of slavery. As to the letter, there was some truth in this assertion; as to the spirit, there was none.” Finally, one year after the Federal evacuation of Fort Sumter, the “letter” and the “spirit” of the “Secession question” were converging.

* * *

10.1 William Yancey arrived back in New Orleans thoroughly disheartened by his mission. Cotton was a false god, he announced to the crowd that had gathered to greet him. The Queen favored the North, and Lord Palmerston was not interested in aiding the South. “Gladstone we can manage, but the feeling against slavery in England is so strong that no public man there dares extend a hand to help us. We have got to fight the Washington Government alone.”2

10.2 One of the biggest areas of contention between Lyons and Seward had recently been removed when the U.S. War Department assumed responsibility for political arrests. “I think it is well that the arrests should be withdrawn from Seward,” Lord Lyons had written on February 18; “he certainly took delight in making them, and, I may say, playing with the whole matter. He is not at all a cruel or vindictive man, but he likes all things which make him feel that he has power.”

ELEVEN

Five Miles from Richmond

Shiloh—Fall of the Crescent City—The “Woman Order”—Vizetelly’s change of heart—The Seven Days’ Battles—“Percy, old boy!”—Lord Edward is duped—General Lee takes the field—McClellan retreats—“This is Butler’s doing”

Lyons and Seward were quietly congratulating each other over the success of the slave trade treaty when the North won its first major military victory of the war on April 7, 1862, at the Battle of Shiloh. The battle, which took place on Tennessee’s southern border, was a first on several counts. It was the first time Americans witnessed the mass slaughter that comes with large-scale combat. It was also the first intimation that no single battle, no matter how terrible, would end the war; and for young Henry Morton Stanley of the Dixie Grays, it was “the first time that Glory sickened me with its repulsive aspect, and made me suspect it was a glittering lie.”1

More than a hundred thousand soldiers fought in the two-day battle. Stanley’s side was led by General Albert Sidney Johnston—who was regarded by his Northern opponents as the ablest general in the Confederacy—and by Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard, the hero of Fort Sumter