A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [360]
—
Jefferson Davis had been praying for this moment: the Northern public and press were growing weary of the war. His original belief that Southern independence would be achieved through British recognition had been proved wrong, and his hopes that Lee would deliver independence through his victories had been dashed, but he still had faith that the South would prevail if it could break the Northern will to fight. He now realized that Britain’s neutral stance was not a curse but a boon to the Confederacy, since Canada was the perfect staging post for waging psychological warfare against the North. The special commissioners in Canada, Jacob Thompson and Clement C. Clay, could move about with relative ease, and even if they failed to inflict serious damage on Northern targets, their activities might provoke Washington into declaring war against Britain. Davis was sure that recognition of the South would be among the first steps, if not the very first, that Britain would take against the North.
Ill.53 Punch’s view that Britain (Palmerston) will soon have to recognize the Confederacy (Jefferson Davis).
Thompson and Clay had quickly realized that they would never work well together, but they had created enough separation between their projects to minimize potential friction. Clay preferred to work with James Holcombe, a former law professor at the University of Virginia who had been in Canada for the past five months on a separate mission for the Confederate State Department.31.2 11 Clay was hoping to romance disaffected Northern politicians into believing that an armistice was in the interest of both sides. It seemed to him that the peace advocates were willing to believe almost anything. “We have not dispelled the fond delusion of most of those with whom we have conversed, that some kind of common government might—at some time hereafter—be established,” he wrote archly to Benjamin.12 One of these intermediaries convinced the editor of the New York Tribune, Horace Greeley, that Clay and Holcombe had been given the authority to negotiate peace terms with the North.13 Greeley used the power of his newspaper to confront Lincoln over his reluctance to consider the Confederates’ terms: “I entreat you to submit overtures for pacification to the Southern insurgents,” he urged melodramatically. “Our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country also longs for peace.”14 The public, Greeley insisted, would vote for a Democratic president in November if Lincoln seemed to care more about war than peace.
Lincoln knew enough about the Confederate commissioners in Canada to be certain that political embarrassment rather than peace was their goal, but he also knew that he could not afford to be portrayed as deaf to potential overtures from the South. Yet there were no terms that the South could offer—other than the abolition of slavery and restoration of the Union—that he would accept. In contrast to many Northerners, and even some conservative Republicans, Lincoln’s belief in the principles articulated at Gettysburg—liberty and democracy—was unshakable, and he would not trade them for peace, or for his reelection in November.
Lincoln skillfully wrong-footed Greeley by inviting him to be the North’s representative in these apparently genuine discussions for peace. Greeley had no choice but to accept, and on July 18, with Lincoln’s private secretary John Hay accompanying him as a witness, he met with Clay and Holcombe on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. Hay was carrying a letter from Lincoln to the commissioners, addressed “To Whom It May Concern.” It offered them safe conduct to Washington to discuss the war under the following terms: “the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery