A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [41]
Seward no doubt believed that it was more important to reach out to undecided voters with his populist message than to concern himself about the effect of his pronouncements in far-off places. The Prince of Wales’s tour of Canada was in midswing when Seward made his speech about its future as a United States territory. The unfortunate timing prompted the Canadian and British press to give his speech much greater attention and credence than it merited. When he sauntered into Governor Morgan’s house on the night of the dinner for the prince, Seward was apparently unaware of the huge offense he had caused. The occasion was already a difficult one for Seward; he had often discussed the idea of a royal visit with Lord Napier, but Seward had avoided the British legation after Napier’s departure, and barely knew Lyons. He felt more comfortable talking to the Duke of Newcastle, who gratifyingly remembered him from his visit to England. Seward started well, until the same urge to drink and talk crept over him. By the end of the meal, the duke was reeling from the encounter. “He fairly told me he should make use of insults to England to secure his own position in the States, and that I must not suppose he meant war. On the contrary he did not wish war with England and he was confident we should never go to war with the States—we dared not and could not afford it,” the duke reported later to the governor-general of Canada.
Outraged by Seward’s effrontery, Newcastle did not mince his words in reply: “I then told him there was no fear of war except from a policy as he indicated, and that if he carried it out and touched our honor, he would, some fine morning, find he had embroiled his country in a disastrous conflict at the moment when he fancied he was bullying all before him.”52 Seward never gave another thought to the conversation. With the election less than a month away, all his energy was directed toward the campaign in New York.
The royal party proceeded to Boston for more banquets, balls, and celebrations, and finally to Maine for one last hurrah. “During [Prince Edward’s] last day [in America] I was with the party & parted with him on the pier,” wrote Charles Sumner to his friend Evelyn Denison, speaker of the House of Commons. “At every station on the railway there was an immense crowd, headed by the local authorities, while our national flags were blended together. I remarked to Dr. Acland [the Radcliffe librarian at Oxford] that it seemed as if a young heir long absent was returning to take possession. ‘It is more than that,’ said he, affected almost to tears.”53
Sumner believed that the two countries had arrived at a turning point in their relations. The prince was “carrying home an unwritten Treaty of Alliance and Amity between two great nations.”54 A similar feeling was evident in England. After reading his New York correspondent’s reports, Mowbray Morris, the managing editor of The Times, wrote that the royal tour “will do a great deal of good here. It will convince persons who know nothing of Americans except by very bad specimens, that Brother Jonathan [the United States] really has brotherly feelings towards John Bull [Britain].”55
It was only later, when Lyons could reflect on the tour from the comfort of his Washington drawing room, that he realized its “wonderful success.” “I have now had time to talk quietly about it with men whose opinion is worth having,” he wrote, “and also to compare