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vessel had suffered one setback after another. The British authorities in Nassau detained her for nearly four months, although the courts there finally determined that she was not in defiance of the Foreign Enlistment Act. But once free, Captain Maffitt lost half his crew to yellow fever, including his own stepson. Even when the Florida eventually sailed into Mobile in September, she continued to be dogged by misfortune. It took three months to complete the repairs to her damaged hull. Finally, on January 17, 1863, nine months after leaving Liverpool, the Florida began its long-delayed career as a Confederate commerce raider. Two days later, Captain Maffitt captured his first prize, a cargo ship bound for New York.

The Confederate gains at sea were taking place at a sensitive time for Anglo-U.S. relations. For the past two months, a group of twelve New York businessmen calling themselves the New York International Relief Committee had been soliciting donations for Lancashire’s suffering cotton workers.37 On January 9, the George Griswold set sail carrying a large cargo of provisions that included 13,000 barrels of flour and 500 bushels of corn, all paid for by the committee. The ship was bedecked with symbols of Anglo-American friendship, including the flags and pennants of the two nations. As the Griswold was towed out of New York Harbor, she received salutes from the British vessels that had gathered to see her off. Four more ships soon followed the Griswold; the irony that they could be captured and destroyed by the Alabama was not lost on the Northern press, nor on Seward.16.5 38

The secretary of state used the public’s resentment over the Alabama and the Florida to his advantage. Over the New Year, he had met with Senator James Grimes, chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee, and persuaded him to propose an armed response against Britain. There was nothing anti-British in Seward’s motives. His only concern was how to shore up his weak position among Republicans; with any luck, Sumner would oppose Grimes’s measures and look like an apologist for England, costing him popularity in the press. After the Galveston attack by CSS Alabama, Grimes announced that he was reviving the bill to allow President Lincoln to issue letters of marque. Arming civilian privateers was necessary, he argued, because the Confederates were building their own fleet in England. Lincoln should have the power “to let slip the dogs of war” against them.39

As Seward had hoped, Charles Sumner could not resist attacking such a poorly conceived idea. “This revival of Letters of Marque is [Seward’s] work. I have protested to the President against their issue, but I fear that I shall not entirely succeed,” he complained to John Bright. “There is not a Senator—not one—who is [Seward’s] friend politically, the larger part are positively, and some even bitterly against him.… In the House of Reps., he has no friends; nor among his colleagues of the cabinet.” Lord Lyons was crestfallen once he realized that Seward had resorted to the same anti-British line that had made the first year of the war so acrimonious and difficult. “It looks like a return to the old bluster,” he wrote sadly. “Whether he does it to recover his position with the Radical party and with the people at large … or … he really thinks he can frighten England and France with his privateers, I can not say. He is more cordial than ever with me personally, and I do my best to prevent his getting into hot water either with France or with me.”40

Sumner was speaking the truth, however, when he warned Bright that the Confederate navy program had to be stopped. “The feeling towards England runs high and I hear it constantly said that war is inevitable unless those ships now building are kept from preying on our commerce.”41 Northern newspapers were blaming the Alabama and the Florida for the precipitous decline of U.S. shipping (rather than the lack of Northern investment in the merchant marine).42 “England will be hated for it, till the last American now on the stage goes to his grave,” threatened