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that you would naturally like to know what we have been doing with the money.” Mason hardly remembered Tremlett, although the vicar kept open house for any Confederate in need. Tremlett’s organization was not lobbying MPs and peers for Southern independence per se; the vicar knew that such activity would imply an acceptance of slavery. Instead, the Society presented itself as a religious body whose sole aims were peace and the revival of Lancashire’s cotton trade. Mason was astonished to learn that the Society was organizing a deputation to meet Lord Palmerston.11 He also discovered that Tremlett had been working with Commodore Matthew Maury for several months until illness had curtailed Maury’s activities. The vicar was intending to lead deputations to Russell as well as Palmerston; “of course I shall have enough to do to look up influential people to form the Deputation, but if I can’t find these, I will go even if I have to go alone,” he told Maury.12

Mason left Paris within a day of receiving Tremlett’s letter and arrived in London on June 5. As soon as Palmerston learned of Mason’s presence, he knew that the Confederacy’s supporters in Parliament would not dare risk their chances of a pro-Southern resolution by voting with the Tories to bring down the government. He now strung them along, continuously requesting delays to Lindsay’s resolution for British mediation in the war. The Confederate lobby nervously discussed the import of this tactic and decided that the prime minister was waiting for news from Virginia. They were also reassured by Henry Hotze, who had heard from a source that the opposition was again considering its own motion for Southern recognition. “Indeed, I am satisfied that so general, almost universal, is popular sentiment in England with the South,” Mason wrote to Judah P. Benjamin on June 9, “the ministry, even if disposed to resist, would have to yield to the popular sentiment.”13

During the second week of June, the reports from America seemed to confirm Mason’s optimism. He regularly called at Rose Greenhow’s lodgings in Mayfair to discuss the latest telegrams. “He agrees perfectly with me in considering the news excellent,” she recorded in her diary after they read in the press that Grant and Lee had clashed again on June 3, just south of Spotsylvania at a crossroads called Cold Harbor.14 According to the reports, seven thousand Federals had been killed in less than an hour while trying to drive the Confederates from their fortified trenches.29.3 Mason did not bother with Tremlett’s group after he learned about Grant’s setback even though Lord Russell had agreed to meet with the vicar’s “deputation.”

The Confederates noted every utterance and passing remark that indicated a politician’s preference for one side or the other, while remaining blind to the obvious pressures squeezing the government. For the past six weeks a conference of nine European powers had been meeting in London to try to settle the dispute between Germany and Denmark over the sovereignty of Schleswig-Holstein, but Lord Russell’s efforts to impose a resolution were going so badly that Britain was suddenly looking less like a Great Power that could dictate the destiny of other nations than an inconsequential island nation. “A few feeble barks [by the Confederates] have been raised against us, but without much effect as far as I can see,” Henry Adams wrote airily to Charles Francis Jr. on June 10.16

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The Alabama was spotted outside Cherbourg harbor on June 10, 1864, having spent six months in the Far East followed by a return visit to Cape Town. The ship looked battered and dirty. “Our bottom is in such a state that everything passes us,” Captain Semmes had written in his journal on May 21. “We are like a crippled hunter limping home from a long chase.”17 The last four months of her two-year voyage had pushed the vessel and her crew past endurance. The Alabama’s seams were opening; damp and mold had invaded every corner, including the magazine that housed Semmes’s dwindling supply of gunpowder. The repairs would take at