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Lyons looked so ravaged when he arrived at the Foreign Office on Christmas Eve 1864 that Lord Russell was startled. He promised Lyons that his post in Washington would remain open until either his health was restored or he chose to give it up of his own volition. This reassurance lifted a great weight off Lyons; for the first time in many weeks he did not feel as though he had thrown away his career in a moment of weakness. A few days after the interview, Lyons composed his final report on American affairs, and wrote letters of recommendation for his long-suffering staff. There was much he regretted about the war, but it had served a purpose, he told Russell. Amid all the horrors and iniquities “there appears to be one gleam of consolation,” he thought, for “slavery seems to be doomed.”2

The Southern Independence Association was delighted that the South was finally coming around to Britain’s way of thinking, and they composed a congratulatory address to President Davis on his boldness. To many people, however, the idea seemed far-fetched: nothing but sheer desperation would make them relinquish “the services” of their slaves, Lord Palmerston told John Delane, the editor of The Times, “but one can hardly believe that the South [sic] men have been so pressed and exhausted.” Delane was inclined to agree, until he learned that General Sherman had reached the outskirts of Savannah. “The American news is a heavy blow to us as well as to the South. It has changed at once the whole face of things,” Delane wrote to his deputy editor on December 25. “I have told Chenery to write upon it.” The next day, he sent another note: “I am still sore vexed about Sherman, but Chenery did his best to attenuate the mischief.”3 James Spence also tried to play down the news, telling Lord Wharncliffe on January 5, 1865, to look out for his article in The Times: “You will find I do not attempt to deny the Federal success in Tennessee or the danger of Savannah, which I assume to be likely to fall [the news of Christmas Eve had not yet reached Britain], but I hope to show that public opinion overestimates the importance of the events and that upon the whole the year’s campaign is a failure on the part of the Federals.” Spence disliked writing such obvious propaganda for the South, “but then,” he reasoned, “it is at such a time—the hour of need—that a friend is of value. When the South is victorious they can do without one’s aid.”4

The fall of Savannah was not the only disaster that James Spence was trying to present in a more favorable light. His Confederate prisoners’ bazaar had inspired the London office of the U.S. Sanitary Commission to publish a pamphlet on Southern prison conditions.5 Neither Spence nor Wharncliffe had stopped to consider whether highlighting the plight of Confederate prisoners might backfire if anyone queried the South’s own record, though their campaign had worked so well at first that Mrs. Adams asked Charles Francis Jr. whether it was official policy to mistreat Confederate prisoners.6 Lord Wharncliffe tried to calm the public outcry by forwarding letters to the press from English volunteers who had suffered in Federal prisons, but it was too late to reverse the damage.36.1 7 Families with relatives in Southern prisons, including Dr. Livingstone, began to insist that as British subjects they should be released at once under the prisoner exchange system.8 Another father with a missing son in the Union army, Thomas Smelt, wrote directly to Abraham Lincoln, begging him “as a parent from a parent, that my son may be sent back to me, he has surely fought well and suffered much for your cause and deserves so much.”9

James Spence did not realize how badly the Southern cause had suffered until The Times began to turn down his propaganda articles without explanation. After being met with silence for more than a week Spence conceded that his influence with the paper was at an end. “I doubt if they will insert anything more on the subject,” he wrote to Lord Wharncliffe on January 16. “I see but one thing