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covering the war in America. Since Charles Mackay’s arrival in America to replace the Times’ ailing New York correspondent, J. C. Bancroft Davis, Mackay had been obediently sending back articles that showed the North in a poor light. The managing editor, Mowbray Morris, was pleased with the reports and told Mackay, “Your views are entirely in accordance with those of the paper and I believe of the majority in this country.”14 (The Morris fortune had disappeared almost overnight after emancipation released the slaves on the family’s sugar plantation in the West Indies.) Francis Lawley was treading a far more precarious line. He was writing his reports to make it seem as though a Confederate victory was inevitable, but was also trying to force the government’s hand by provoking public outrage over Southern suffering.

The combination of Lawley’s eyewitness reports and Frank Vizetelly’s emotive drawings certainly acted powerfully on the public conscience. “I assure you the sympathy of all England is with the South and I think justly so,” a housekeeper from Manchester informed her relatives in Michigan. “[The Northerners] are jealous of us as a mightier nation and hate us because we do not take their part, but it is a family quarrel and they must make it up themselves.”15 At the other end of the social spectrum, the Hon. Lucy Lyttleton, at the time an impressionable twenty-two-year-old debutante, was shocked to discover that not everyone supported the South. “During dinner America was the topic,” she wrote in her diary on June 13, 1863, while staying with the Duchess of Sutherland at Cliveden. “The Duke and Duchess [of Argyll] are Northern! in their sympathies.” Lucy did not feel confident enough to argue with them or with the widowed William Vernon Harcourt, the other guest present. “It does make one’s heart ache to think of such grief,” she wrote; “he joins in conversation, and puts on no affectations of sorrow; but his face tells it all. The little baby lives.”16

Ill.40 Southern refugees camping in the woods near Vicksburg, by Frank Vizetelly.

Henry Hotze could not have hoped for a more positive reception to his propaganda. He was delighted by the lamentations of the pro-Northern Bradford Observer on June 19 that the Northerners were losing the argument: “We have men really wishing for the universal abolition of slavery expressing earnest wishes for the success of the section of a nation who are the most deeply tainted with the crime of slavery.”

Yet the Confederate lobby was still not satisfied. There was a rumor going around the Tory Party that the French emperor would not openly support the South. Roebuck and Lindsay agreed they had to receive a personal assurance from Louis-Napoleon himself before they exposed themselves to the massed ranks of the House. John Slidell prepared the ground for their meeting during his own interview with the emperor on June 18. Once again Louis-Napoleon said he hoped the South would win, not least because he considered the Confederates more supportive of his own venture in Mexico. He also agreed to allay the fears of the two English MPs. Slidell could almost hear the trumpets of independence in his ears. Two days later, on June 20, Roebuck and Lindsay went to the Tuileries. James Spence had run through all the possible arguments with Roebuck in advance. The emperor reassured them that he had not changed his mind. However, he added, his cabinet was opposed to any sort of formal communication with London, fearing that Lord Russell might use the offer as leverage to gain favor with Seward. The French ambassador had been instructed to make only an informal approach about a joint move between the two countries.

In London, James Spence attended a campaign dinner for nearly sixty guests given by Beresford Hope. He sat between the publisher John Murray and the Whig politician Lord Elcho, both of whom made flattering remarks about his Times articles. But Spence could not enjoy himself while the Tories’ participation remained an open question. The Confederate lobby discussed whether they