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President Grant could not have dropped the indirect claims, even if he wanted to, without jeopardizing his reelection hopes in November. Yet the idea that the Alabama and her sister ships, the Florida, Georgia, and Shenandoah, were responsible for prolonging the war by two years, as Sumner claimed, was patently ludicrous. The proceeding stalled until Charles Francis Adams took it upon himself to prevent the tribunal from collapsing. He knew that neither government could be seen to back down, and therefore he persuaded the other judges on the panel to exclude the $2 billion claim from consideration.

Three months later, on September 14, 1872, the tribunal ruled that Britain owed $15.5 million, including interest, for the damage caused by the Confederate cruisers. Ironically, the sum was $500,000 more than the amount first proposed by Charles Sumner in 1869.epl.5 The American press complained that it was too little, the British press that it was too much, but there was a shared sense of pride in both countries that a high moral precedent had been set in allowing disputes to be resolved in an international court rather than on the battlefield.40 Adams is usually praised on the unfounded assertion that he prevented Britain from supporting the South, whereas his real triumph—when he transcended his own limitations and acted with visionary patriotism—was his brave decision to intervene at the Alabama tribunal in June 1872.

Before Adams returned home, he briefly visited England in order to say one last farewell to Lord Russell, and to reassure him that his reputation had not been sullied by Britain’s expression of regret for the escape of the Alabama or by the payment of the claims. This act of generosity toward Russell caused Adams to arrive back in the United States too late to say goodbye to Seward, who died on October 10. The former secretary of state’s death received respectful attention, but not the national mourning that he deserved considering his service to the country. Seward was too complex and contradictory a person to be easily categorized; he was not, as is now sometimes claimed, one of the greatest secretaries of state in U.S. history; his chronic and sometimes dangerous manipulation of foreign relations to boost his domestic agenda precludes him from that title. But after a disastrous beginning at the State Department, Seward became essential to the preservation of peace between America and Britain. His restraint of the forces that could have destroyed the fragile neutrality of the British government remains one of his outstanding achievements.

Two months after the ruling in Geneva, Sergeant Gilbert H. Bates, formerly of the 1st Wisconsin Heavy Artillery Regiment, traveled to Britain on a personal goodwill mission. Starting in Scotland on November 6, 1872, Bates walked the length of the country, bearing aloft the Stars and Stripes, to prove to Americans that the British bore no ill will toward the United States. He had performed a similar feat in 1868, marching through the South from Vicksburg to Washington. At Bolton, northwest of Manchester, Bates was accosted by a man who declared that he, too, was a Federal veteran and wished to carry the flag through the town; it was James Pendlebury. Surprised, Bates handed him the flag and Pendlebury was allowed to have his moment of glory. Bates received a hero’s welcome when he reached London on November 30. Addressing an appreciative crowd in front of the Guildhall in the City, he declared:

It has been asserted by the press that this is a Yankee test of English feeling towards the States, but as far as I am concerned, it is no test. It is only a proof that I was right … when I said the English people respected America.… I have met with nothing but the kindest treatment. I have not had even a cross look from any one. My own countrymen on the other side of the Atlantic have been watching the progress of the tour of my flag with the greatest interest, and therefore I am gratified that the English people have proved that I was right.41