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the steamer Chesapeake in New York and hijacked it once they were in international waters. The intention was to turn the vessel into a privateer, but the adventure quickly degenerated into farce. The Chesapeake ran out of coal and most of the crew deserted. The vessel was captured by a U.S. warship and towed into Halifax harbor on December 15. Once it became known that a Canadian was among the prisoners, a furious crowd took over Queen’s Wharf, determined to free him. Five more U.S. Navy ships appeared in the harbor and a tense standoff ensued. Finally, on December 19, the U.S. naval officers bowed to pressure and all the prisoners were rowed to shore, whereupon the crowd “rescued” the Canadian. Holcombe had been ordered to find any legal argument, no matter how weak, to claim the Chesapeake as a Southern prize. But to his embarrassment he discovered that none of the Chesapeake privateers were actually from the South, and the Confederates had no claim to their services or the vessel.

31.3 The victim was Andrew Cunningham, a British subject who had been kidnapped and forced into the 39th New York Volunteers on January 8, 1864. Lyons was alerted to his plight on February 11 and immediately petitioned for his release. The facts regarding Cunningham’s kidnapping were never in dispute, but even so the usual delays followed. Finally, on June 7, 1864, after considerable nudging from Lyons, Seward gleaned from the War Department that Cunningham’s release had been ordered. Six weeks went by without further communication on the subject. Seward had completely forgotten about Cunningham when, on July 23, 1864, he received a sheepish note from Charles Dana, assistant secretary of war. They had been unable to find Private Cunningham because he had been killed in battle on May 10, 1864, four weeks before his discharge.24

31.4 The Confederate government believed there were four hundred escaped prisoners of war hiding out in Canada and Nova Scotia. James Holcombe had been ordered to advertise in local newspapers that he had the means to pay for their passage home. But his efforts to locate the missing four hundred yielded only six Confederates. Hines, on the other hand, had no trouble locating the survivors of Morgan’s brigade, whom he trained for his operations against the North.

THIRTY-TWO

The Tyranny of Hope

Clinging to power—How to orchestrate a public protest—Rose Greenhow makes her decision—Petitioning for peace—Atlanta

Lord Palmerston was facing the prospect of defeat in the twilight of his parliamentary career. “They [the opposition] have had their Meeting and have agreed upon a vote of Censure,” Palmerston wrote to Gladstone on June 28, 1864, after Lord Russell’s peace conference in London ended embarrassingly for the British government, without an armistice agreement between Germany and Denmark. Palmerston could not escape the truth that it was his own pugnacious declaration the previous July—that Denmark could always rely on Britain’s support—that had started the government’s woes. The Danes had believed him; the French resented him; and the Germans had known he was bluffing—even if it was some months before Palmerston realized it himself.

There was a national uproar after Palmerston and Russell announced that Britain would not fight alongside the Danes after all. Whether the government’s course was right or wrong mattered less than the obvious fact that it was a complete reversal from the one originally proposed. On July 4, Disraeli introduced in the House of Commons the motion against the government. “Yet I am more than doubtful about the result,” the Southern propagandist Henry Hotze reported to Judah Benjamin. He considered the Tory Party to be destitute of policies; “the chief end of its tactics is to get into office without committing itself on either of the two great questions … the American and the Danish.” This, feared Hotze, could be their undoing.1

Henry Adams was tickled to be so close to and yet untouched by the Liberals’ political crisis. “Everyone who has an office, or whose family has an