A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [27]
The Duchess of Sutherland insisted that the wounded warrior recuperate at Stafford House. After his caning she had redoubled her efforts to arouse English sympathy against Southern slavery. One of her most successful events was a public reading of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by the black American performer Mary Webb. The scene at Stafford House “would have caused considerable astonishment to any gentleman of the Southern States of America,” reported the Illustrated London News. “A large audience was gathered together in that hall … to listen to a lady of color giving dramatic readings.… Our Southerner would have been confounded and disgusted at the sight of what he would call a ‘tarnation nigger’ being listened to with the most respectful attention by no inconsiderable number of the aristocracy of England.”29
Among the new friends Sumner made during his stay at Stafford House were the Duchess of Sutherland’s daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, the Duke of Argyll. For the Argylls, it was the perfect meeting of minds. “He was a tall, good-looking man,” recalled the duke in his memoirs, “very erect in attitude, with a genial smile and a very intellectual expression. I always found his conversation full of charm, not only from his devotion to one great cause, but from his wide and cultivated interest in literature and in art.”30 Like Sumner, the thirty-three-year-old duke was a striking figure, whose flaming red hair—which he wore shoulder length—and theatrical dress were considered emblematic of his idiosyncratic politics. His views were always logical and well thought out, and yet strangely angular, so that on any given subject it defied prediction whether they coincided with those of his own party or with those of the opposition. This trait, combined with his caustic and often dogmatic style of debating, meant that Argyll carried weight in politics but would never inspire a following. Both he and Sumner would always be forces in their own right, and yet also their own greatest impediments to power. For the future of British-American relations, however, the relationship between Argyll and Sumner would prove to be one of the most important friendships of the Civil War.
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1.1 The term “impressment” meant the legal conscription of a civilian, usually a sailor, into the Royal Navy. The practice had been going on since the 1600s. It was rare for “landlubbers” to be impressed, but in time of war all kinds of injustices took place, which for the most part the authorities pretended not to notice.
1.2 Although slavery was abolished in Vermont in 1777, the former colony attempted to go it alone for the first fourteen years after independence, joining the Union only in 1791.
1.3 Southerners referred to slavery (and by extension the cotton economy) as the “peculiar institution” not because it was strange, but because the mode of life was particular to the South and nowhere else.
1.4 For the first half of the nineteenth century, the “Monroe Doctrine,” when it was observed at all, was enforced by the Royal Navy, since it was in Britain’s interest to prevent the Great Powers from interfering with the balance of power in South America.
1.5 Several objects, including the Singer sewing machine and the Colt .45-caliber single-action army revolver, were subsequently sent on a triumphant tour around Britain.
1.6 In November 1841, the journey of the Creole from Virginia to Louisiana was interrupted when the slaves on board mutinied and took the ship to Nassau in the Bahamas. The British authorities refused to hand over the mutineers or return the slaves.
1.7 Despite fronting four presidents, the Whig Party survived for less than