A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [161]
This latest innovation in modern warfare was, Palmerston told Russell, “without example in the history of nations.”15 The more he thought about it, the more he wished to make an official remonstrance to the North. When Russell would not agree, he went ahead anyway. “Even when a Town is taken by assault,” Palmerston protested in a letter to Charles Francis Adams on June 11, “it is the Practice of the Commander of the conquering army to protect to the utmost the Inhabitants and especially the Female Part of Them.” By contrast, Butler was handing over the women of New Orleans “to the unbridled license of an unrestrained soldiery.”16
The U.S. minister did not know what to make of the protest. The letter was marked “confidential,” and yet it did not seem like a private matter. A professional diplomat might have been more cautious in his response, but Adams had only his instincts and twelve months’ experience to guide him. Rather than try to avoid a row, as Lyons would have done, Adams bristled with self-righteous indignation. “My relations with the Prime Minister can never again be friendly,” he wrote in his diary.17 Over the next few days he badgered Palmerston with demands for a clarification of his comments. After Adams twice called at his office to complain, Lord Russell realized that the minister had been pushed to some sort of breaking point. At the second visit, Russell tried to calm him down by agreeing that “the thing was altogether irregular.” Adams went home elated. “I now saw that I had all the advantage,” he wrote on June 19. Meanwhile, Russell suggested to Palmerston that he withdraw his letter. But once the prime minister sensed that Adams was turning the incident into a battle of wills, he refused. The most he could stomach was an ambiguous reply that admitted nothing. Unfortunately, Adams could not resist having the last word. In his final letter, he declared that henceforth he would only accept letters from Palmerston that came through official channels.
Henry was proud that his father had forced Palmerston into a retreat. But in truth, it was a small victory. The next time the two men encountered each other, Adams noticed that Palmerston deliberately ignored him.18 Invitations to Lady Palmerston’s parties also ceased.
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Whatever the provocation, now was not the time for Adams to quarrel with the prime minister; the cabinet was assessing the economic damage caused by the cotton famine. A report by the Poor Law Board read to the Commons in May revealed a bleak picture of inadequate public help and growing private misery. In twelve months, the number of charitable cases in Britain had risen from 40,000 to 150,000. More than 400,000 workers were either unemployed or working part-time, causing great hardship for a further 1.5 million people whose care or livelihood was dependent on them.19 Journalists were beginning to write accounts of their tours to the hardest-hit towns, pricking consciences with their descriptions of once proud, industrious families who were forced by “the iron teeth of poverty” to accept weekly handouts of food and coal.20
The U.S. consuls’ descriptions of the suffering in Lancashire convinced Seward that the British would not hesitate to interfere in the war if the alternative meant starvation across wide swaths of England. Thurlow Weed had been urging him since the spring to show that the North was prepared to help Britain overcome the Southern cotton embargo. “Let the enemy refuse [to send] the cotton,” he advised him.21 In May, Seward declared the four Southern ports under U.S. control open for cotton export. But his scheme failed when the Treasury throttled the plan with too many regulations. The initiative therefore lay with the South, and Judah P. Benjamin was determined to use it. A year ago, the Confederate cabinet had attempted to wield