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By Root 6779 0

of Thirteen,” and the House of Representatives the “Committee of Thirty-three,” to address Southern grievances. Seward not only dominated the Senate committee but also made sure that his supporters—particularly Charles Francis Adams—were among the thirty-three. Their work became all the more urgent after news reached Washington that the Southern states were seizing federal arsenals and forts. Seward’s strategy was to conciliate and delay for as long as possible. The South had been threatening to secede for years; he was convinced that if the hotheads could be contained, the moderates would gradually reassert control. He talked with such assurance that young Henry Adams felt he was in the presence of greatness.12 But to Charles Sumner, Seward’s willingness to guarantee the institution of slavery in order to save the Union was an insupportable betrayal of abolition principles. Sumner cornered Henry’s brother, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., when he visited the Senate and ranted at him like a “crazy man,” blaming “the compromisers, meaning Seward and my father.”13 As far as Sumner was concerned, his friendship with Adams was irreparably broken.

Seward ignored Sumner’s ravings, confident that his conciliation plan would work given sufficient time. But in early January, two delegations from the New York business community were told by Southern leaders in Washington that a movement had started that could not be stopped. Mississippi voted to secede on January 9, Florida on the tenth. Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana followed in quick succession; their senators left Washington and went to Montgomery, Alabama, where a special convention was due to begin on February 4. Texas followed on February 1, 1861, the seventh state to secede from the Union. On the morning of the third, Seward paid a surprise call on Lord Lyons, to reassure him that the South would be back in the fold in less than three months. Lyons had been wondering for several weeks when either the old or the new administration would remember the existence of the diplomatic community. He did not discount the value of being able to talk privately with the incoming secretary of state, but everything else about the interview made Lyons dread his future relationship with Seward. He sent two reports of the meeting to Lord John Russell. In the official dispatch, which would be printed for public consumption in the parliamentary “Blue Book,” he gave a bland description that only hinted at the threats and preposterous claims Seward had leveled at him. Seward had, wrote Lyons with classic understatement, “unbounded confidence in his own skill in managing the American people.”

In the separate dispatch marked “private and confidential,” however, Lyons admitted that he had been horrified by Seward’s mix of cynicism and naïveté. The secretary of state had tried to persuade him that there was enough federal patronage at his disposal to bribe the South back into the Union. As far as Seward was concerned, there was no need to discuss the international ramifications of the conflict because none existed. As long as there was no bloodshed, he told Lyons, the seceding states would eventually change their minds. Seward also repeated to him a recent conversation with the minister for Bremen (one of the smaller states of the German Confederation), “no doubt for my instruction.” The hapless diplomat had complained about the Republican Party’s election promise to place tariffs on foreign imports, saying that such a move would turn Europe against America at the moment when she most needed friends. Seward claimed to have replied that nothing would give him more pleasure, since he would then have the perfect excuse for an international quarrel, “and South Carolina and the seceding states would soon join in.” “I am afraid,” concluded Lyons, “that he takes no other view of Foreign Relations, than as safe levers to work with upon public opinion here.”14

A few days later, Lyons heard that Seward was trying to pass a message to him and the French minister that they should ignore anything he might say about