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be rejected.”36 But while he was pottering about the empty legation, there was open war in the British cabinet. George Cornewall Lewis and the Duke of Argyll were the leaders of the opposition to Russell and Gladstone. The week before, Lewis had sent around a second memorandum—this one over fifteen thousand words—that answered every single one of Russell’s and Gladstone’s arguments. He had also enlisted his son-in-law, the gifted lawyer William Vernon Harcourt, to write a companion piece for The Times under the pseudonym “Historicus.”

Russell’s ship was sinking, though he steadfastly remained at the helm. He opened the cabinet meeting by explaining his position once again. When he had finished, he turned expectantly to Palmerston. Russell’s desperate glare told him that retreat was impossible. The cornered prime minister made a few halfhearted comments about not letting Lancashire down. “I do not think his support was very sincere,” wrote Lewis; “it certainly was not hearty: The proposal was now thrown before the Cabinet, who proceeded to pick it to pieces. Everybody present threw a stone at it of great or less size, except Gladstone, who supported it, and the Chancellor and Cardwell, who expressed no opinion.”37 As they debated throughout the morning and into the following day, it became obvious to Lewis that Russell had been rather too forward with the French and feared the consequences of declining their offer. But he remained unmoved by Russell’s embarrassment or his dread of annoying France. Lewis scolded Russell for his unrealistic faith in the ability of outsiders to impose peace on America: “What would an eminent diplomatist from Vienna, or Berlin, or St. Petersburg know of the Chicago platform or the Crittenden compromise?” The idea of the Great Powers dictating the terms of agreement between the North and South was ludicrous.38 He continued to harry the foreign secretary until, in Gladstone’s words, “Lord Russell rather turned tail. He gave way without resolutely fighting out his battle.” Not surprisingly, Gladstone was disgusted with his colleagues. “But I hope,” he wrote to his wife, “[the French] may not take it as a positive refusal, or at any rate that they may themselves act in the matter. It will be clear that we concur with them, that the war should cease.”39

Russell hoped that his reply to the emperor on November 13 was open-ended and flattering enough to soften the awkward fact that his offer was being turned down. Napoleon was indeed annoyed with the foreign secretary, especially since the Russians had also been lukewarm about his proposal. But the emperor’s anger paled beside that of the Confederates, who still perceived Russell as their archnemesis. Henry Hotze’s self-confidence suffered a precipitate fall. He wondered whether his attempts to manipulate opinion had backfired. Worse still was the shock of discovering that the government had far greater control over the press than he had ever imagined. Once it was announced that the French proposal had been declined, Hotze could not find a newspaper willing to print his attack on Lord Russell, not even The Times.40

There is no single reason why the British cabinet voted against intervening in the war. Economically, it did not make sense to interfere; militarily, it would have meant committing Britain to war with the North and once again risking Canada and possibly the Caribbean for uncertain gains; politically, there was no support from either party or sufficient encouragement from the other Great Powers apart from France; and practically, the decision to intervene would have required a majority consensus from a cabinet that had never agreed on the meaning or significance of the war. But there is also an individual whose name is rarely mentioned and yet who deserves his place among the reasons, and that is Seward. From the beginning of the war, eighteen months earlier, Seward had threatened Britain to stay out of the conflict or face the consequences. His bluster and posturing had driven away a potential ally, but the message was heard. A few months