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By Root 7023 0

weeks, Spence’s Southern Independence Association had been distributing petitions throughout England calling for British intervention in the war. These were intended to represent the voice of the ordinary public—some of them, like the Manchester petition, contained more than five thousand signatures.7 Next, Mason was to have his interview with Palmerston, followed by the deputation from the Reverend Francis Tremlett’s peace society. Separately, representatives from the cotton factories were to deliver a 90,000-signature-strong petition to Russell. Only then, after the government had heard from the rich and the poor, from manufacturers and merchants, all demonstrating that the country desired action on behalf of the South, would Lindsay put forward his resolution.

The plan began well. At Henry Hotze’s instigation, The Times reported that the Northern armies had been checked on every front. Lindsay took Mason to see Palmerston at Cambridge House on July 14: “I was received with great civility, and after the ordinary topics of salutation Lord P. commenced the conversation,” Mason wrote afterward to Judah Benjamin. Palmerston seemed interested in the South’s military options, but he became evasive when Mason asked him for a definite answer as to whether Britain would join with Napoleon in offering to broker an armistice. (If Mason had paid any attention to recent debates in Parliament, he would have realized that the idea of an Anglo-French alliance on practically any issue was preposterous.) He tried not to be disappointed by the interview, but it hardly seemed worth the seven-week wait.

Palmerston was no less opaque when Francis Tremlett and James Spence arrived the following day with the delegation from the Society for Promoting the Cessation of Hostilities in America. Tremlett had collected an impressive group that included six MPs and the president of the Royal College of Surgeons. Palmerston listened politely but quipped, “Those who in quarrels interpose / Will often wipe a bloody nose” and sent them on their way. Lord Russell presented a more sympathetic demeanor to the factory workers who visited the Foreign Office on July 18. Their petition described the poverty and hunger endured by those in the once profitable cotton trade and begged Russell to “enter into concert with other European powers, with a view to restore peace on the American continent.” But he was just as vague as Palmerston over when international mediation might be appropriate.

It would have been sensible for Lindsay to retreat at this moment, but the dogged MP would not give up, knowing that if he withdrew his resolution now, there would not be another opportunity to debate intervention for several months. While Lindsay pondered how best to use the limited means at his disposal, Rose Greenhow continued to plead with every member of the government who happened to come her way. She cornered Gladstone at a dinner given by Lord Granville on July 21 and reminded him that less than two years ago he had declared the Confederacy a nation. “Your sympathies have been with us of the South, but your Government have aided the Yankees,” she scolded. “Your neutrality is a farce.” Gladstone parried her accusations with a mixture of humor and obfuscation. Recognition, he told her, would not help the South and would only make the North angry. Rose tried again on July 24 when Lady Chesterfield brought her to Lady Palmerston’s final party of the season and introduced her to the prime minister. Rose was annoyed that he used the same arguments as Gladstone. “Talked a good deal with him,” she wrote in her diary. “He asked me how I got over. I said, ‘Run the blockade.’ ”8

The next afternoon, Lindsay finally raised the subject in the House of Commons, though he was now certain of the answer. He did not bother trying for a resolution, but simply asked Palmerston the same question put by Mason during his private interview eleven days earlier: whether the government had any intention of ending the war in America. The curt response he received was the same: there was “no advantage