A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [323]
But in reality the emperor had only uttered the same platitudes that Slidell had heard a dozen times before, and once Rose was able to reflect on the interview, she realized that she, too, had been fobbed off: “My belief is the stronger now that our only chance of recognition must now come from England and that, that is the place to which our efforts must be directed.” She returned to London on February 6, 1864. “I left my little one behind and my heart was heavy,” she wrote in her diary.23 James Bulloch, who had arrived in France on January 27, escorted her to the station, helped her onto the train, and deposited her in the carriage reserved for women traveling alone. Aware of the heavy burdens upon him, Rose was touched by his courtesy.
Bulloch was too discreet to unburden himself, but he was that day suffering “a greater pain and regret than I ever thought it possible to feel.”24 He had crossed the Channel in a last-ditch effort to save the rams, which were still being held at Lairds in Liverpool. Since they belonged to a French subject, M. Bravay, the emperor could, in theory, request their return to France. But Louis-Napoleon refused to intervene. Slidell assumed that the emperor was simply paying lip service to Northern demands, but Bulloch knew better. “There was a good deal said about the personal sympathy of the Emperor for the South; and his earnest desire that by some means or other we might get our ships out,” he wrote angrily after the war, but “the sympathy and hope were sheer mockery.”25
The day after Rose’s departure, on February 7, Bulloch sent a letter to Bravay authorizing him to sell the Lairds rams as quickly as possible. (It took several months, but after considerable haggling the Admiralty bought the ships for £180,000.) Bulloch’s distress was not only for the loss of the rams; Slidell had decided that the ship construction operation was jeopardizing his relationship with the emperor and ordered Bulloch to sell the unfinished ironclads in Bordeaux. Determined not to be thwarted, Bulloch pretended to acquiesce while he sought a broker who would agree to buy the vessels on paper only.
Even legitimate Confederate enterprises were buckling under pressure. The price of the Confederate cotton bond had dropped precipitously, from £70 to £34, after Grant’s victory at the Battle of Chattanooga and now fluctuated around the £50 mark. The cost of shipping supplies to the Confederacy and the increasing likelihood of capture were wiping out the profits of blockade running.26 For the first time since the war, the survival of Fraser, Trenholm and Co.—the Southern shipping firm and financial clearinghouse for the Confederacy in Europe—appeared to be in doubt. “Every consignment to us is closely scrutinized and anything at all suspicious would be seized at once,” Charles Prioleau in Liverpool explained to a would-be arms supplier. Nor could he extend further credit to the Confederate government, not even to purchase replacement blockade runners for the Ordnance Department. Prioleau calculated that if every available cotton bale arrived at Liverpool, the company would still be owed £70,000.
Six months earlier, the Confederate propaganda agent Henry Hotze had suggested to Benjamin that Richmond should assume control of all the Confederacy’s international dealings, from arms supplying to blockade running. Now he begged the secretary of state to do it before the market damned the Confederacy for good. “Prohibit the exportation of cotton, except for Government account,” he wrote. “Prohibit the importation of luxuries on any pretence, and import shoes and clothes as well for the citizens as the Army.” Most important of all, he urged him to void