A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [190]
When Charles Francis Adams returned from Tunbridge Wells in mid-November, he straightaway paid a visit to Russell’s house in Chesham Place. Naturally, they discussed Britain’s reply to the French emperor. Adams told him, “I hoped it would open the eyes of the [American] people to their mistake as to the disposition of the Emperor and make them more liberal to England.” Russell’s hearty assent to this was no doubt driven by a combination of guilt and embarrassment. Adams mistakenly thought it was due to the foreign secretary’s having scored a diplomatic coup. “His Lordship seemed a little elated by his paper and was more cordial than usual,” he wrote in his diary on November 15. “He alluded to the alleged audience granted to Mr. Slidell … and said that if the Queen had granted any such to Mr. Mason there would have been no end to the indignation in America. I said, yes.”
As November drew to a close, the public’s interest in the intervention question waned. In spite of himself, Russell was being credited with having behaved with propriety. Even some British Confederate sympathizers agreed with the government’s decision to remain neutral.42 Only the ever optimistic James Mason still believed that “events are maturing which must lead to some change in the attitude of England.”43
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14.1 Two years after the conclusion of the war, in 1867, Gladstone admitted in a letter to the American author and abolitionist Charles Edwards Lester: “I had imbibed, conscientiously if erroneously, an opinion that 20 or 24 millions of the North would be happier, and would be stronger … without the South than with it, and also that the negroes would be much nearer to emancipation under a Southern Government than under the old system of the Union, that had not at that date [August 1862] been abandoned.… As far as regards the special or separate interest of England in the matter, I … had always contended that it was best for our interest that the Union should be kept entire.”15
PART II
FIRE ALL
AROUND THEM
FIFTEEN
Bloodbath at Fredericksburg
Lincoln suffers at the polls—the Battle of Fredericksburg—The Senators attempt a coup—The Marquis of Hartington’s conversion—Victory or annihilation
Lord Lyons returned to Washington on November 12, 1862, having spent a few days in New York speaking to Democratic and Republican leaders. He was relieved to find that they were far more willing to share their personal views than the politicians in the capital, who were wary of appearing too familiar with him. The “Peace Democrats” had performed well in the November elections, picking up the governorships of New York and New Jersey as well as taking control of several state legislatures. Their declared aim of peace and compromise over slavery chimed perfectly with the large number of Northern voters who had felt blindsided by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. McClellan’s failure to chase after Lee following the Battle of Antietam in September had also contributed to a growing doubt in the North over whether the war was worth the enormous sacrifice in human lives. There had been nine major battles during the past eleven months, resulting in more than 150,000 casualties between the two sides, and yet there was no indication of any end in sight.
Across the Atlantic, the results of the midterm elections seemed much worse to Charles Francis Adams than they really were—the Republicans still controlled Congress by a large majority—and his bitterness toward Lincoln threatened to overwhelm his peace of mind. Benjamin Moran was shocked by Adams’s indiscreet tirades against the administration (though he secretly enjoyed them, too) and recorded each outburst