A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [324]
Hotze also wanted to be rid of the South’s official financial agent, Liverpool businessman James Spence, whose support for the abolition of slavery had become a burden and an embarrassment for the Confederates in England. The ardent supporter of Southern independence was roaring up and down the country in preparation for the opening of Parliament in February. Spence had studied the methods of the antislavery societies and was imitating them to good effect: publishing pamphlets before each meeting, preparing fact sheets for the local press, circulating petitions during the meeting, and creating local affiliates of his Southern Independence association.28 The aim, he told Lord Wharncliffe, the head of the Manchester affiliate, was to make it seem as though pro-Southern feeling was increasing, since nothing should be allowed to dampen the already fragile spirits “of our people who of late have had much to dismay them.” But all the good work had been ruined, in Hotze’s opinion, by the Association’s antislavery manifesto, which stated explicitly: “The Association will also devote itself … to a revision of the system of servile Labour, unhappily bequeathed to them by England, in accordance with the spirit of the age, so as to combine the gradual extinction of slavery with … the true civilisation of the negro race.”29 This, Hotze believed, was unacceptable and far outweighed Spence’s success in attracting four peers and nine MPs to the committee.
James Mason hastily wrote to Benjamin from France that he had been unable to prevent the antislavery manifesto: the Southern Independence Association represented the “views of Englishmen addressed to English people … it was in vain to combat their ‘sentiment.’ The so-called ‘antislavery’ feeling seems to have become with them a ‘sentiment’ akin to patriotism.”30 Mason’s defense was not enough to save Spence’s position as financial agent, and his operations were transferred to Colin McRae. But Benjamin was so flattering and apologetic in his letter of dismissal on January 11 that the Confederacy was able to retain the Liverpudlian’s goodwill. “As a man of the world,” Benjamin wrote, “I would meet you on the most cordial terms without the slightest reference to your views on this subject; but … ‘as a member of a government,’ it would be impossible for me to engage you in its service after the publication of your opinions.”31 It helped that Benjamin agreed to reimburse Spence for the money he had expended on propping up the South’s declining bonds.
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“It is a singular feature of this struggle in America that its merits should be debated at popular meetings held all over this kingdom,” Adams wrote to Seward shortly before the opening of Parliament. “The association of sympathizers with the Insurgents have of late been assiduously engaged in sending paid agents to deliver lectures in behalf of their cause at various places. This has given occasion to counter efforts. Frequently discussions are held by representatives of both sides. I very much doubt whether anything precisely similar ever took place before.”32
Adams knew that the Confederacy’s supporters were waiting for the new parliamentary session with great anticipation. The Liberal government appeared to be tottering toward collapse, and Palmerston had become mixed up in a bizarre divorce case.27.3 Seward had also contributed to the British government’s weakness. “That Solomon has … exercised his usual indiscretion,” raged Benjamin Moran on February 11, 1864, after Seward included in the official publication of the State Department’s correspondence for 1863 dispatches that were never sent to the Foreign Office, such as his provocative July letter on the Lairds rams.33 By playing fast and loose with the State Department