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a speech on October 25, 1858, in Rochester, New York, he declared that the South had started “an irrepressible conflict” with the North: “The United States must … become either entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free-labor nation.” A week earlier, while debating his Democratic opponent in the contest for one of Illinois’s two seats in the United States Senate, the Republican candidate, a lawyer from Springfield, had made a similar-sounding statement: that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”2.1 The lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, lost the election, but his speech won him national acclaim. Whereas Lincoln sounded as though he were giving a warning, Seward seemed to be laying down a challenge.2 Seward later claimed that “irrepressible” was not the same as “unavoidable,” but the damage could not be undone. The press dubbed him “Irrepressible Conflict Seward,” fostering the sense that he was a divisive rather than a unifying figure and voiding three years of careful positioning by Seward to be perceived as the moderate alternative to Charles Sumner.

Seward’s friend and political manager, Thurlow Weed, advised him to take a long trip abroad in the hope that the public would forget the unfortunate phrase. The presidential election would not be until November 1860, which was two years away. There was still sufficient time for Seward to repair his reputation. Weed was confident that the British would have no idea anything was amiss with Seward’s presidential aspirations and would treat him with the respect afforded to the next leader of the Americans.

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Seward’s arrival in England on May 20, 1859, coincided with a recent improvement in Anglo-American relations. English outrage over U.S. support for the Russians during the Crimean War of 1854–562.2 had become less acute after the Indian Mutiny of 1857–58, when the Americans were firmly behind the British Army rather than the mutinous Indian soldiers known as Sepoys. Closer to home, Lord Napier’s popularity in Washington had overcome some of the bad feelings on both sides of the Atlantic after his unlucky predecessor, John Crampton, was expelled by the U.S. government for participating in a secret scheme to recruit American volunteers to fight on the British side in the Crimean War. The perennial flashpoints between Britain and America—the right of the Royal Navy to search American ships suspected of transporting slaves from Africa or the Caribbean and the jostling over boundaries and territorial control in British North America and Central America—had threatened to ignite in 1858. However, these were contained by successful diplomacy in some instances, and by plain reluctance to go from words to something worse in others.4 In his second annual address to Congress in December 1858, President Buchanan stressed the importance of peaceful relations between the two countries: “Any serious interruption of the commerce between the United States and Great Britain would be equally injurious to both. In fact, no two nations have ever existed on the face of the earth which could do each other so much good or so much harm.”

When the two navies did meet at sea, on July 29, 1858, it was to perform the heroic maneuver of linking together the first transatlantic telegraph cable. An underwater cable had been laid in 1851 between Dover and Calais, but the raging storms of the Atlantic had twice defeated the combined efforts of British and American engineers. This time, the cable held strong as HMS Agamemnon and USS Niagara sailed toward their respective destinations flying specially designed flags that incorporated the stars of Old Glory with the stripes of the Union Jack. On August 16, 1858, the line was opened with the message “Glory to God in the highest; on earth, peace and goodwill to men.” Queen Victoria followed with a cable of congratulations to President Buchanan and the people of the United States. Both countries celebrated in a “Festival of Connection,” New York held a candlelight parade, newspapers printed special editions, the streets were decorated with flags, and shops