A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [283]
Despite Archibald’s brave conduct during the riots, British subjects “are far from being pleased either with HM Government or with HM Minister here,” Lord Lyons told Lord Russell on July 24. No one thought that the legation was doing enough to protect Britons from the rampant cheating and illegal conscriptions that accompanied the latest draft effort. The legation staff was working late into the night trying to keep abreast of the rapidly increasing number of case files. Few cases, if any, were straightforward.41 Young Frederick Farr refused to be helped; he ignored the attachés’ inquiries and would not respond to letters from his father’s friends. “That is a queer boy of yours,” one of them wrote to Dr. Farr in exasperation. “I have not been able to draw a line from him.” Farr’s commanding officer reported that the boy was “in excellent health and spirits” after Gettysburg and only wanted to be left alone.42
Ill.44 Punch accuses President Lincoln of doing nothing to save free blacks from the rioting Irish.
Lyons knew there was nothing to be gained from telling British subjects that they should count themselves fortunate to be in the North and not in the South, where the situation was far worse. In addition to being tricked or beaten into joining regular regiments, Britons were being rounded up to man “home defence militias,” and there was nothing the consuls could do about it; Judah P. Benjamin expelled Consul George Moore from Richmond in June for allegedly exceeding the limits of his purview. One of the very few British conscripts to escape to the North, a Mr. R. R. Belshaw, thanked Lyons “for the interest which you have taken in my case,” but, he complained, “thousands of British subjects are daily suffering in the Confederate army as I have done and yet there is no relief; though England speaks she says nothing.”43
Lyons did not have a satisfactory answer for Belshaw; the diplomatic situation in the South was beyond his control and yet somehow still perceived by Washington and London as his responsibility.23.3 Lord Russell pondered whether they ought to send a military agent or commissioner to Richmond, taking the same route as Fremantle in order to avoid running the blockade, but Lyons persuaded him against the idea. The North would object, and the Confederate government would no doubt ignore the agent as it did the consuls. Seward was adamant that any British attempt to contact the Southern authorities would be regarded by the United States as an act of deliberate provocation, if not war.
Lyons did not understand what drove the secretary of state. Sometimes they seemed to be in the most perfect harmony. Tucked away in the Seward archives are private letters showing that Lyons often coached Seward on how to frame his official responses to British complaints.45 But Seward was always playing more than one game at a time. In early August he asked Lyons if Britain would be prepared to join the North in fighting the French takeover of Mexico. “It would no doubt be a relief to Mr. Seward,” Lyons reported after the interview, if Britain assumed the burden of defending the Mexicans—and the Monroe Doctrine—against the emperor’s imperialist designs. But “England would run the greatest risk of being ultimately sacrificed without scruple by the United States.”46
Four days later, on August 7, Lyons was distressed to see his suspicions confirmed. “An impending quarrel with England is allowed to be put forward as a lure to Volunteers for the Army,” he informed Russell. Seward’s latest dispatch to Charles Francis Adams predicted war if the British government failed to halt the Confederates’ shipbuilding program. Seward knew that Adams would never show such a threatening letter to Lord Russell; and Lyons knew it too, telling Russell, “It will not, I suppose, be communicated