A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [370]
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“Thus has terminated an operation which has cost much labor and money to somebody or other” was Charles Francis Adams’s sarcastic epitaph.10 He had paid little attention to the Confederates after Palmerston’s successful repulse of the Tory attack, being more concerned with the worsening asthma of his daughter Mary. He blamed the London fogs for undermining her health, adding the crime of bad weather to the long list of malicious and treacherous acts that Britain would one day be called upon to answer.11 Adams also seemed to draw comfort from his belief that the British upper classes were united in favor of slavery and injustice. He wasted considerable time and effort in July arguing with Lord Russell, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the rescue of the Alabama’s officers had been prearranged with the owner of the Deerhound. Adams was so intent on proving a conspiracy that he neglected to make capital out of the genuine scandal surrounding the Alabama: that Southern officers had saved one another and left the English seamen to drown. Adams also squandered an opportunity to undermine accusations of Northern arrogance and hypocrisy when on July 28 the Commons debated the problem of British workers being kidnapped or tricked into the Federal army. Instead of supplying Northern supporters with information on the latest efforts to stop the abuse, Adams took umbrage against the tone of the complaints and insisted it proved the intent of “the higher classes” to destroy the Union.12
Rose Greenhow suffered from the same willful blindness as Adams, though she confused sympathy for Southern suffering (her own in particular) with acceptance of Southern slavery. Few people had the nerve or desire to challenge her fantasy, though the Duchess of Sutherland snubbed Rose in the most pointed manner possible when Lady Chesterfield introduced them at the Kensington horticultural show. Rose was able to comfort herself with the observation that the duchess’s girth and “gaudy apparel” compared badly with her own remarkably youthful appearance. She had greater trouble putting aside her embarrassment at an incident during a dinner given by Lord Granville’s sister, Lady Georgiana Fullarton. An unnamed earl had pressed her relentlessly on the subject of slave families until she lost her temper and shrilly revealed the ugly prejudices of her native country. Rose sensed the alienation of her audience and was furious. It was at moments like this that she hated the English almost as much as she hated the North.13
“My heart yearns to stay and also to go,” she wrote in her diary after the prorogation of Parliament. Her diplomatic mission appeared to have fizzled into something resembling a goodwill tour. She had not extracted any new promise from the emperor, nor had she helped Mason and Lindsay achieve any material change in government policy. “I thirst for news from home. The desperate struggle in which my people are engaged is ever present,” she wrote unhappily.14 Rose’s book sales had brought her more than £2,000, money she preferred to distribute in the South rather than waste on yet another jolly though meaningless outing with her Tory friends. She assured Mason and Spence that her absence would not be for long. After all, her elder daughter, Florence, had recently joined her in England, and she could not leave little Rose (who was still uncertain about boarding school life) for too long.32.1
Rose would be joining an exodus of Southerners. Captain Semmes was also making arrangements to go home, though he knew that prison and possibly execution were likely if the Federals caught him. He was more than a little in love with Louisa Tremlett, the Reverend Francis Tremlett’s sister, and, unwilling to leave just at the moment, had accepted the Tremletts’ invitation to accompany them on a walking tour of Europe. Other survivors of the Alabama had already