A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [438]
William Henry Seward never accused Britain of having collaborated with the South. But he steadfastly maintained that relations could not be cordial until reparations had been paid for the Alabama’s depredations and an apology given for Britain having bestowed belligerent status on the South. For most of 1865, the secretary of state was content to allow Charles Francis Adams a free rein in his dealings with Lord Russell—as long as these points were not conceded. Seward did not have the strength to mount the kind of blustering campaign that had marked his first year in office. Physically, he would never return to his old self. His right arm was useless and speaking was difficult; “few of his old friends could meet him without a shock,” wrote his son. However, it was the family tragedy following Powell’s attack that inflicted the greatest damage on Seward. His sons Fred and Augustus slowly recovered from their wounds, but Frances, Seward’s wife, went into a rapid decline and died on June 21, less than three months after the assassination attempt. Their relationship, although complicated, had not been unloving, and her loss severed Seward from what he had always considered to be the better part of himself. Almost immediately after Frances’s death, it became clear that his daughter Fanny’s health had also been affected, and she began to succumb to the tuberculosis that would kill her the following year.
Seward’s troubles increased in 1866 as he struggled to find his footing in President Johnson’s administration.22 Having been partly responsible for the Tennessee pro-war Democrat’s appointment as Lincoln’s vice president, Seward wrongly assumed that Johnson would follow his lead, or at least listen to his advice. Instead, Johnson stubbornly pursued his own line, which leaned decidedly toward maintaining the wretched status of the black population in the South. Johnson’s attempts to obstruct Southern Reconstruction lost him the support of the Republicans. The relationship between the White House and Congress deteriorated so quickly that in March 1866, Johnson vetoed the new Civil Rights Bill, which, among other guarantees, awarded full U.S. citizenship to American blacks. Congress responded by overturning his veto. Seward tried to serve Johnson as faithfully as he had served Lincoln, but even the British minister, Sir Frederick Bruce, noticed the lack of rapport between them and wondered whether the president regarded Seward as more of an obstruction than a help.
Bruce had no doubt that Seward was determined to keep the peace between England and America, but what other plans the secretary of state was harboring remained a mystery to him. Charles Francis Adams, however, soon divined exactly what game Seward was playing: the protests over belligerency and the Alabama claims were leverage to force Britain to make territorial concessions to the United States. Seward had heard that there was support in British Columbia for annexation by America, and this had given him the idea that perhaps all of Canada and possibly even parts of the Caribbean might be obtained for the Union. There was “no prospect of coming to an agreement,” he told Adams on May 2, 1866, even though the American minister had been saying for some time that “the line of difference between the two countries was becoming thinner and thinner … assuming any tolerable share of good will [there was] no reason why earnest efforts might not eliminate it altogether.”23
Seward’s machinations were upset by a series of raids between May 31 and June 7 across the U.S.-Canada border. This time the guerrillas were not a handful of Confederates but Fenians—Irish Americans committed to Irish independence—who intended to conquer or hold Canada hostage until