A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [428]
He wrote even more fulsomely the following day after observing the speeches in the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
The U.S. consuls described extraordinary scenes at public meetings. A resident of Liverpool, arguably the most pro-Southern city in Britain, recorded with surprise that the news “has turned all sympathy towards the North. Immense meetings on the subject have been held almost everywhere in England and the Queen herself has addressed a letter of condolence to Mrs. Lincoln.”36 Adams began to think that Lincoln had done more for Anglo-American relations by his death than by any other act during his life.
The great change in attitudes toward the North did not mean that the Confederates in England were being cast aside by their friends, however. James Spence disbanded the pro-Southern associations, because, he explained to a former member, it would be wrong to continue public action on behalf of the South: “I feel, too, that Englishmen cannot now take further part in this direction with propriety.” But his personal loyalty to Mason was undiminished, and he was among those who offered to establish a subscription fund on the Confederate agent’s behalf. (The Southern commissioner was too proud to accept such charity.) “The British believe that resistance is hopeless,” Mason wrote to Judah P. Benjamin on May 1, “and that the war is at an end—to be followed, on our part, by passive submission to our fate. I need not say that I entertain no such impression, and endeavor as far as I can to disabuse the public mind.”37 The South’s other chief agents in England—James Bulloch, Henry Hotze, Colin McRae, and Matthew Maury—were far more realistic. Hotze trimmed his staff on the Index and began looking for financial backers, announcing that journal’s new cause would be the protection of “white man’s government” against the “Africanization” of America.38 Maury sent a formal letter of surrender to the U.S. Navy, promising to desist from all acts of aggression against the United States. Bulloch and McRae girded themselves for prolonged litigation from creditors both real and predatory on account of the Confederacy’s unpaid bills. (Some firms, such as the London Armoury Company, which had turned away business in order to fulfill its lucrative orders from the Confederacy, would quickly go bankrupt.) The certainty that an investigation into their books would absolve them of wrongdoing counted for little against the knowledge that their personal sacrifices for the South had been to no avail.
John Slidell wrote to Mason from Paris urging him to open his eyes to the South’s defeat: “We have seen the beginning of the end. We are crushed and must submit to the yoke. Our children must bide their time for vengeance, but you and I will never revisit our homes under our glorious flag.”39
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Jefferson Davis finally accepted defeat on May 3. He had been constantly on the move since leaving Greensboro on April 14, and he had reached Washington, in northeast Georgia. Right up until the day before, Davis had insisted to the cluster of cabinet members and generals surrounding him that resistance was not just possible but also a duty. He had carried on the normal functions of government, issuing orders and signing papers—albeit by the roadside instead of at his desk—as if it would only be a matter of time before the Confederacy was made whole again. Frank Vizetelly was present to sketch him doing so. “This was probably the last official business transacted by the Confederate Cabinet and may well be termed ‘Government by the roadside,’ ” the war artist wrote next to his drawing.
“Three thousand brave men are enough for a nucleus around which the whole people will rally when the panic which now afflicts them has passed away,” Davis had told a member of his cavalry escort. The officer was speechless for a brief moment before replying that the three thousand troops guarding the