A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [167]
Hotze’s “reliable friend” had given him an accurate report of the state of opinion in the cabinet. Leading the faction against immediate recognition was the pugnacious Duke of Argyll, who resented Gladstone’s attempt to browbeat them with fallacious moral arguments. “I retain my opinion unchanged,” wrote the duke after a bruising correspondence with Gladstone; no war “has been more just or more necessary.… It is not inconsistent to sympathize with revolts which are just, and to fight against other revolts which are unjust.” In his usual blunt way, Argyll informed Gladstone that he was deceiving himself if he believed that separation was good for the “anti-slavery cause.”65
Argyll’s reproach stung Gladstone, but the latter was mollified by his success with Palmerston, who “has come exactly to my mind,” he told his wife after the final cabinet meeting of the session.66 Palmerston did not in fact share Gladstone’s moral qualms, and he certainly did not wish to fight a war on behalf of the South. But if the Confederates continued their run of victories, and the North proved obdurate, he could see no reason why the question should not be considered. The French had been advocating October—when the cotton season was normally in full swing—as the time for Europe to decide, which seemed reasonable to Palmerston.67 Gladstone had also succeeded in pricking Russell’s conscience. Though he saw the complications and subtleties of the question that the crusading chancellor of the exchequer conveniently ignored, Russell was also becoming bewitched by the siren call of the humanitarian argument. On August 6, Russell suggested to Palmerston that they try to bring the opposing sides to an armistice. But, he asked on reflection, “On what basis are we to negotiate?” It seemed to him there was little hope that Lincoln “and his Democracy will listen to reason.”68
The deliberations in the cabinet soon leaked out; The New York Times reported that the Great Powers were contemplating mediation. France and Russia were said to be keen; England was apparently undecided.69 Without Lord Lyons to reassure him, Seward assumed the worst. Senator Orville Browning bumped into him at Lincoln’s office and asked him point-blank “if there was any danger of intervention in our affairs by England and France. He said there was,” recorded Browning, “unless volunteering went on rapidly, and our army was greatly increased.”70 Seward sent one of his wrap-the-world-in-flames dispatches to Adams, hoping that it would scare the British into inaction. He also rather cleverly sent out a circular on August 8 to all consuls in Europe offering inducements to immigrants seeking work opportunities in America.
The circular, No. 19, seemed innocent enough, but it was actually a back-door route for army recruitment. Consulates were encouraged to display information on the cash bounties awarded to volunteers. Seward knew the game he was playing. “Nobody is authorized to do anything or pay anything, for once entering into this kind of business there would be no end of trouble,” he warned his consul in Paris, since official recruitment was illegal; but “to some extent this civil war must be a trial between the two parties to exhaust each other. The immigration of a large