A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [186]
Senior Tories also voiced their concerns after they discovered that Russell was on the verge of approaching the French with his intervention plan; the opposition still maintained its stance that Britain should avoid becoming entangled with either side. Lord Derby had no doubt, wrote Lord Clarendon, “we should only meet with an insolent rejection of our offer.”20 But Russell was no longer listening to his critics. He had already made overtures to the emperor via the British ambassador in Paris, Lord Cowley. However, the French cabinet was undergoing one of its periodic crises, and the foreign minister was clearing his desk for his successor. The Confederate commissioner in Paris, John Slidell, was in a state of nervous excitement. By now, he wrote to the Confederate secretary of state, Judah P. Benjamin, on October 20, “I had hoped to have had it in my power to communicate something definite as to the Emperor’s intentions respecting our affairs.” Instead, everything seemed to be in confusion. Slidell’s informants were giving him conflicting accounts of the two countries’ intentions. All he knew for certain was that the emperor was their friend and that Lord Lyons most decidedly was not. Slidell ended his letter with the rueful admission: “I have no dispatches from you later than 15 April.”21
It was mortifying to James Mason to hear that John Slidell was having another interview with the emperor. The Confederates in England envied Slidell for his easy access to senior French politicians. “I have seen none but Lord Russell,” Mason admitted to his wife, and that was “now nearly a year ago.”22 Henry Hotze had to scavenge for news, seizing on scraps and tidbits from friends with “connections to high places” without ever quite knowing whether he was receiving supposition or fact. He was mesmerized by the unprecedented cabinet brawl over the recognition question. “This species of ex-parliamentary warfare was opened with the sparring between Mr. Roebuck and Lord Palmerston,” he wrote. “Since then it has grown more serious, and in the case of Mr. Gladstone and Sir George C. Lewis into almost open animosity.” In trying to divine the tea leaves, Hotze put great weight on the fact that Lord Lyons was still in London. He hoped it meant that the cabinet was teetering on the side of the South. He tried giving a gentle shove toward Southern recognition by encouraging his “allies in the London press” to increase their output. Some writers, including one at the Tory-leaning Herald, were even willing to let Hotze dictate their articles. There was, however, one person whom Hotze wished he could silence. “I almost dread the direction his friendship and devotion seem about to take,” he confessed. James Spence had been inspired by the Emancipation Proclamation and was now convinced that the South should issue one of her own. Hotze was furious with Spence for bringing the subject into public view again, but he was at a loss how to divert him.23 Mason was encountering a similar problem from his friends in the Tory Party, who were trying to extract a pledge from him that the South would renounce slavery.
Hotze’s fears that the slavery question might prevent recognition were allayed after he learned that the cabinet meeting and Lyons’s departure had again been delayed. This, he thought, was proof that intervention was imminent. In fact, the meeting of October 23 had not been so much delayed as sabotaged. Palmerston had become alarmed by Russell’s apparently blind enthusiasm for the mediation plan. “I am very much come back to our original