A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [374]
The Adams family returned to London on September 3, still anxious about Mary’s health.32.2 London would not begin to revive until the autumn and until then offered few distractions for the family. The most exciting part of the day was the arrival of the post, though the news from America made them despair. The North was suffering from war malaise, Charles Francis Adams wrote in his diary. “All accounts agree in saying that the President is deserted and his re-election in great danger.”36
On September 11, rumors reached London that Sherman had captured Atlanta. The effect on the legation was electric, even though they had to wait a full week before receiving confirmation of the news. The reports were “doubted by The Times and disbelieved in the City,” Henry told his brother Charles. For the past month the press had been castigating Lincoln for his refusal to concede defeat. Even William Howard Russell had written in the Army and Navy Gazette: “The Northerners have, indeed, lost the day solely owing to the want of average ability in their leaders in the field.”37 The Confederates and their supporters tried to play down the strategic importance of Atlanta. Slidell assured the French emperor during a chance conversation at the races that Sherman’s latest advance would be a pyrrhic victory for his overstretched and undersupplied forces. The emperor “expressed his admiration and astonishment at what we had achieved,” the commissioner reported to Benjamin. But, he added bitterly: “A year ago I should have attached some important political signification to this incident.”38
Knowing that Atlanta’s fall would boost the chances of Lincoln’s winning a second term, Hotze hastened his departure for Germany: “It is from Germany that the enemy must next spring recruit another army,” he wrote. “It is upon Germany that he relies for the gold to carry on the war.”39 Georgiana Walker and her family also left England. Her husband, Norman, had joined them at the end of August, driven from Bermuda by an outbreak of yellow fever. The Confederates agreed that he should make Halifax, Nova Scotia, his new base for supplying the South until it was safe to return to the Caribbean. On September 30 the family set sail for Canada on the Europa. The chief drawback to the voyage, wrote Georgiana, was the number of “Yankee” passengers. “But I must admit that they behaved themselves as well as Yankees can behave and exhibited that respect for us, which all Yankees feel for Southerners.”40 She was expecting to be miserable in Halifax until she remembered that Rose Greenhow might still be there, waiting for a blockade runner to take her to Wilmington. The thought of being with her friend gave Georgiana hope that everything would turn out well.
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32.1 Rose was not alone in feeling guilty about her comfortable life in Britain. When Matthew Fontaine Maury read that the birthday present of his youngest child was to be allowed to eat until full, he confessed to Francis Tremlett that he “felt as if I must choke with the sumptuous viands set before me on the Duke [of Buckingham]’s table.”15
32.2 The holiday had been a trial: Henry did not mind his brother-in-law, Charles Kuhn, but his sister Loo had turned into a peevish invalid. Rather like Alice James, the intelligent, thwarted sister of Henry and William James, Loo was too wealthy to have an occupation and too clever to be happy without a purpose other than herself. “She is evidently much bored by our life,” Henry commented drily to Charles Francis Jr.
THIRTY-THREE
“Come Retribution”
Burley and Beall are reunited—Lord Lyons meets Feo—Shipwreck—Charleston under siege—Northern ambivalence—The enemy in ashes
Lord Lyons arrived in Montreal on September 15, 1864, with his two favorite attachés, George Sheffield and Edward Malet. Simply being away from the unhealthy climate of Washington was enough to restore Malet’s health: “A change of air