A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [231]
Russell asked Charles Francis Adams what he wanted the government to say in the debate, to which Adams replied they “should declare their disapproval of the fitting out of such ships of war to prey on American commerce.” Russell thought this was eminently sensible and relayed the message to Palmerston just before the Commons discussion on March 27, 1863. The House knew that Lairds had built the Alabama and was in the process of building more like her. “I think you can have no difficulty in declaring this evening,” Russell wrote to Lord Palmerston, “that the Government disapprove of all such attempts to elude our law.”44
“The government itself is getting alarmed,” Freeman Morse wrote excitedly to Seward on the morning of the debate. “This country is now thoroughly agitated on what they call the American question.”45 The debate began with William Forster asking the government whether new laws were required to prevent the Confederates from building their warships in Britain. There should have been no difficulty, except that no one had counted on John Bright’s appearing in the Commons. Adams had tried to dissuade him from speaking, knowing how Bright’s “help” often had the opposite effect. The night before, Bright had enjoyed a standing ovation at a trade union meeting when he roundly denounced the “privileged class” for being foes of freedom. Still intoxicated by the cheers of his audience, he gave a similar-sounding speech to the House, forgetting that his listeners were members of this afflicted class. They should have “looked in the faces of three thousand of the most intelligent of the artisan classes in London, as I did,” he told an indignant House, “and heard their cheers, and seen their sympathy for [America].”46 Bright was answered by John Laird, who had spent the evening hearing himself denounced as a cheat and warmonger. After pointing out that his firm had been approached by both the North and the South at the beginning of the war, “I have only to say that I would rather be handed down to posterity as the builder of a dozen Alabamas, than as the man who applies himself deliberately to set class against class,” he bellowed, to the accompaniment of cheers from both sides of the House.47
In addition to dragging the shipbuilding question into the trenches of class war, Bright also challenged Palmerston to apologize to the Americans. That promptly killed any hope that the House would vote to strengthen the Foreign Enlistment Act. Rather than voicing his disapproval of Confederate evasions of the law, Palmerston declared he would never amend Britain’s laws simply to satisfy international pressure.48 Seizing this as their cue, Confederate sympathizers introduced a new subject in the debate: the U.S. Navy’s harassment of British merchant ships. Adams believed that Bright had provided Palmerston with an excuse to avoid strengthening the act. “Had he been really well disposed he never could have written me the private note which caused our differences last year,” he wrote bitterly.49
Furious that John Bright’s blundering speech had thwarted the government’s attempt to strengthen the Foreign Enlistment Act, Russell ordered his staff to treat seriously all allegations against suspect ships. It was not long before the government had details of several Confederate vessels. Matthew Maury’s Japan on the Clyde