A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [326]
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Henry Hotze was pleased when he heard that the Reverend John Sella Martin and Andrew Jackson, both former slaves, had ended their lecture tours and were going home to America. Their presence had threatened to overshadow his successful infiltration of the down-market press. With sufficient funds, the South could be parlayed into a national cause, Hotze often told Benjamin:
The North has two papers, one 3-penny and one penny paper, which it subsidizes lavishly. We also have two, a 3-penny one and a penny one, and in respectability, standing, and influence no one would venture to institute even a comparison between the respective champions. We have moreover the advantage over the subsidized writers of the North that our cause is pleaded with the force of personal conviction and with the zeal of personal friendship and political sympathy.… In the neutral press, both daily and weekly, we have also important connections, equally honorable, while the North, beyond its own organs, has nothing. All this, I unhesitatingly declare, is due to the Index.42
Hotze was also looking for ways to dilute the impact of Henry Yates Thompson’s recent articles. Since his return from the battlefields of eastern Tennessee, Thompson had been writing for the Daily News and touring the country giving talks about his experiences in the North, somewhat to his family’s embarrassment. Leslie Stephen was another irritant, since he was unafraid to take on the South’s supporters at Cambridge and force them to defend their views on slavery. Neither man was an eccentric or a fanatic, and their opinions on the war could not easily be dismissed. Hotze hoped that Colonel Fremantle’s Three Months in the Southern States, which had been published just before Christmas, would become so popular that dissenting voices would be ignored.43 Still, even Fremantle’s book contained passages that upset Hotze. At James Mason’s request, Fremantle had removed passages that made the South seem foreign in English eyes, but he refused to take out his impressions of Southern slavery.44
Lawley’s arrival in England in February briefly revived Hotze’s hope of a propaganda coup. The journalist had been traveling for nearly three weeks, and the enforced rest had restored him to health. William Howard Russell saw him twice in the same week and noted that he was “in splendid fettle, grey but as clear and handsome as paint.” His eloquent reports of the Confederacy’s sufferings had won him a following of swooning females, but Russell was not deceived. Lawley, he wrote, was as “hard as nails.”45 However, Lawley could not afford to bring public attention to himself lest he alert his creditors. The best he could do for Hotze and the Confederates during the short time he dared spend in England was to speak privately to his former colleagues in Westminster. None of these meetings produced anything of substance, although his interview with Disraeli on February 19 had seemed promising at the time.46
At the beginning of March, Lawley passed through Paris on his way to Italy. Slidell reported to Benjamin that Lawley “had a long and very interesting interview with the Emperor. The Conversation turned entirely upon American affairs and was most satisfactory … the Emperor is prepared to take any action in our favor in concert with England, but adheres to his determination not to move without her cooperation.”47 The Times barely touched on American affairs while its special correspondent was away, and when it did, Hotze found the articles quite unsatisfactory. His impatience was shared