A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [290]
Lord Lyons’s secretary of the legation, William Stuart, received instructions to explain to Seward that the vessels were being detained even though the government did not expect a favorable decision from the courts. Unfortunately, no one remembered to share this concern with Charles Francis Adams, or indeed to apprise him of the recent developments regarding the rams. Russell’s sudden reticence may have been prompted by a fear of leaks, or a desire to wait until he had definite news, but most likely he had become annoyed with the aggressive tone of Adams’s letters and decided that the minister could afford to wait a little while.
Over the next two weeks, there was frenetic correspondence among the members of the cabinet as they debated whether the detention order had been the right step. As if to remind the ministry how fraught the issue remained in Parliament, the Liverpool Courier declared on September 12 that a government that truckled to U.S. pressure was worthy of impeachment. The next day, Palmerston suggested to the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Duke of Somerset, that the navy should purchase the rams from M. Bravay, which would avoid the embarrassment of another legal battle. At the very least, he wrote in all seriousness, “we are short of iron clads and it takes time to build them.” The rams would be a useful addition to British naval capacity just in case “[the Federals] should be disposed and able next year to execute their threatened vengeance, for all the forbearance we have shown them.”13
In October, Captain Hoare, the Royal Navy attaché to the British embassy in Paris, visited M. Bravay with a line of credit and a list of questions. Their conversation left Hoare with no doubt of the rams’ true ownership. The Frenchman’s nods and winks were irritating but illuminating—had James Bulloch witnessed this display of self-important puffery, he would have been furious at Bravay’s indiscretion. Nevertheless, the Frenchman refused to sell the rams at any price, and Hoare returned home with nothing except a poor opinion of the Confederates’ dealings. By coincidence, British crewmen from the Florida arrived in Liverpool during the week of Hoare’s meeting with Bravay. Captain Maffitt had let them go to save money, but everyone, including Consul Dudley, assumed they were coming to take the rams out of Lairds shipyard while there was still time. This mistaken belief sent officials into a frenzy. Russell saw another Alabama incident in the making and wanted the marines to become involved; the Home Office ordered the Liverpool constabulary to keep a close watch on the sailors.14
If Lord Russell had expected gratitude from Charles Francis Adams, he was soon disabused. The U.S. minister was only just beginning to express his pent-up frustration with the British government. Ignorant of Russell’s marathon negotiation with the law officers, Adams assumed that it was his “war letter” that had frightened the English into action, and he fired another cannonade of unfortunate remarks on September 16: “If Her Majesty’s Government have not the power to prevent the harbours and towns of a friendly nation from being destroyed by vessels built by British subjects, and equipped, manned, and dispatched from her harbours,” he raged, “then … all international obligations, whether implied or expressed, [are] not worth the paper on which they are written.”15 His letter was passed around the cabinet, accompanied by various noises of disgust and outrage. “It seems to me that we cannot allow to remain unnoticed his repeated and I must say somewhat insolent threats of war. We ought, I think, to say to him in civil Terms ‘you be dammed,’ ” declared Palmerston. Russell thought the same. In his reply on September 25 he dispensed with the usual expressions of “regret and concern” and went straight to the point: “There are, however, passages in your letter,” he wrote, that “plainly