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“We have the worst possible news from home,” the assistant secretary of the American legation, Benjamin Moran, wrote in his diary. A few days later he stood with the American minister, George Dallas, in front of a wall map of the United States, speculating with him as to which of the Southern states would go.4 “The American Union is defunct,” pronounced Moran after the next diplomatic bag revealed that South Carolina had voted to secede on December 20, 1860.

Moran was relieved by the reaction of the British press to what it called the “cotton states.”5 The Times scoffed at the idea of secession: “South Carolina has as much right to secede from … the United States as Lancashire from England.”6 But The Economist was less sympathetic, calling South Carolina’s secession poetic justice since Americans were always bragging about their perfect democracy. The Illustrated London News was the worst, in Moran’s opinion, since it asked “our American Cousins” to let the cotton states go in order to avoid making the same mistake as Austria, which had almost bankrupted itself resisting the Italians’ desire for independence.7 Yet most newspapers followed the line of The Times. Words such as “sharp,” “ignoble,” and “unprincipled” were frequently used to describe South Carolina. Punch suggested that the seceding states could name their new country “Slaveownia.”8

Ill.5 Punch tells the Southern planters that the days of slavery are numbered, December 1860.

The boastful rhetoric of Southern politicians was also attacked in the press. Senator Louis Wigfall of Texas came in for particular censure for his arrogant speech to the Senate on December 6, 1860. The South would be able to dictate her own terms to the world, he declared, because “Cotton is King.… He waves his sceptre not only over these thirty-three states, but over the island of Great Britain.” Queen Victoria herself, Wigfall roared, must “bend the knee in fealty and acknowledge allegiance to that monarch.” The South could turn off the supply of cotton and cripple England in a single week. The cabinet feared Wigfall could be right and agreed with Palmerston “that no time should be lost in securing a supply of cotton from other quarters than America.”9

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The South owed more than $200 million to the North, with most of the debt concentrated in New York, a city whose commercial ties with the cotton states were so close that some banks accepted slaves as collateral. The financial community was sent into a panic by the readiness of Southern businesses to use South Carolina’s self-declared independence as an excuse to repudiate their debts. The New York Post denounced the practice as treachery, declaring, “The city of New York belongs almost as much to the South as to the North.” The victims of the financial crisis were not only New Yorkers. In Britain, investors had almost $400 million in U.S. stocks, bonds, and securities; Benjamin Moran lost most of his savings in a matter of weeks. But the impact went deeper and wider in New York, and included victims such as Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, whose hard-won funds for her women’s medical college simply evaporated. Mayor Fernando Wood was so anxious about the state of the financial markets that he briefly entertained a proposal for New York to secede from the Union and become a “free city.”

In late December, with Lincoln still in Illinois going through appointment lists and President Buchanan having retreated to his bedroom in the White House, Seward took the lead role in guiding the North’s response to the seceding states. Thurlow Weed’s prediction that Lincoln would “share” power—and the escalating crisis—had convinced Seward to put aside his hurt pride and agree to become secretary of state.10 His self-belief and ambition returned in full force once the decision was made: “I have advised Mr. L that I will not decline [the post],” Seward wrote to his wife on December 28. “It is inevitable. I will try to save freedom and my country.”11

The Senate had appointed the “Committee