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“was a time when there was most extreme and bitter partisan feeling, and the officials had around them a number of spies who were dishonorable men in the extreme, and who would commit any perjury to secure convictions.”42 Grenfell was in the most trouble because of the way he had tried to deceive the war secretary, Edwin Stanton, and his treatment in prison was undoubtedly the harshest, but he made his predicament far worse by his arrogant behavior. One of Grenfell’s greatest weaknesses—the reason his life had been a catalogue of disappointments and bitter feelings—was his delusion that he was a prince among pygmies. He believed he was more intelligent than everyone else, braver, more principled, and certainly more deserving of special treatment. Occasionally, he impressed people with his bravado, but more often he turned them into inveterate foes. If the judge advocate had any animus against Grenfell before the trial, it was increased tenfold after Grenfell mocked him with a silly salute when stating his “not guilty” plea.

But Grenfell’s British nationality would have worked against him even if he had been a model prisoner. Edwin Stanton wanted Britons in the Confederacy to suffer the same retribution as Southerners. Gideon Welles agreed and was disgusted with Seward’s reluctance to sanction the seizure of British property in Savannah. Stanton told Welles not to worry: Sherman was taking a robust approach toward British cotton merchants who were trying to protect their cotton by “asserting it had the British mark upon it.” Sherman told them in reply he had “found the British mark on every battle-field. The muskets, cartridges, caps, projectiles were all British and had the British mark upon them.”35.7 43

There were only eight objections to the resolution when the U.S. Senate voted to rescind its trade treaty with Canada on January 12, 1865. Charles Sumner’s anti-British rhetoric was incomprehensible to his friends in England, particularly his slurs against Lord Russell, which were so outrageous that John Bright was forced into the unfamiliar posture of defending the foreign secretary’s integrity.44 But Sumner’s position did not seem unreasonable, or unjust, to a Northern public still terrified that there were arsonists and insurgents ready to strike without warning.

When Davis’s envoy, Duncan Kenner, reached New York on February 6 after a hazardous trek through the back roads of Virginia and Maryland, he discovered that the slavery issue had been taken out of his hands. On January 21, the U.S. House of Representatives had finally voted—by 119 to 56—to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment, thus abolishing slavery on American soil. The Confederate Congress, on the other hand, had voted against Davis’s proposal to arm the slaves. Kenner also learned that the two governments had engaged in halfhearted peace negotiations on February 3—known as the Hampton Roads Conference—which collapsed on the first day. These were all good reasons for him to give up, but he was determined to see the mission through to completion. He boarded the Southampton-bound America on February 11, posing as a Frenchman in order to confuse the detectives standing guard at the pier. Kenner believed the fate of the Confederacy lay in his hands: Wilmington was gone, Charleston was tottering, and Richmond was surrounded. But if Lord Palmerston could be persuaded that there was no longer any moral impediment to Southern recognition, Kenner still had faith that the combination of Britain’s navy and Confederate courage would win independence for the South.45

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35.1 With great difficulty and expense, Jacob Thompson managed to send a message to Richmond using the latest techniques in photography. The message—a request for written evidence of Burley’s naval commission—was written in extralarge letters and photographed, and the negatives were reduced to the size of five thumbnails, which were then placed under the cloth covering of the messenger’s jacket buttons. “I (afterwards) met J. Davis at a dinner,” recalled the photographer. “I asked him if he remembered