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of the West Indies as a possible result of the war: “The defence our West India Islands, also Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the St. Lawrence in spring, causes me much anxiety, but in so far as the force at my disposal will admit I will do all I can to defend them from aggression, but your Grace and the members of the Board must be aware the large naval force which these defensives will require, and that the efficiency of our ships will in a great measure depend on the supply of coal at the various stations.” December 22, 1861.

31. Kenneth Bourne, “British Preparations for War with the North, 1861–1862,” English Historical Review, 76/301 (Oct. 1961), pp. 600–632, at p. 609.

32. Some pessimists within the War Office feared that victory would be impossible without a deus ex machina–like intervention such as General MacClellan refusing to part with any troops until spring, Confederate activity tying down the majority of Federal troops, a cold winter inhibiting deployment, or New England states such as Maine turning against the Union.

33. Army Historical Research, vol.19, pp. 112–14, Lieutenant Colonel G. J. Wolseley to Major Biddulph, December 12, 1861.

34. G. H. Warren, Fountain of Discontent: The Trent Affair and Freedom of the Seas (Boston, 1981), p. 130.

35. Mitford (ed.), The Stanleys of Alderley, p. 274, Lord Stanley to Lady Stanley, December 20, 1861.

36. Bourne, “British Preparations for War with the North, 1861–1862,” p. 616.

37. Owen Ashmore (ed.), “The Diary of James Garnett of Low Moor, Clitheroe, 1858–65,” vol. 2: “The American Civil War and the Cotton Famine, 1861–65,” Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire for the Year 1971, 123 (1972), pp. 105–43, at p. 114, December 3, 1861.

38. MHS, Adams MSS, Diary of Charles Francis Adams, vol. 9, December 11, 1861.

39. W. C. Ford (ed.), A Cycle of Adams Letters, 1861–1865, 2 vols. (Boston, 1920), vol. 1, pp. 75–77, Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., November 30, 1861. Although Bright claimed to have a poor opinion of Lord Lyons, whom he had met once, when he had the opportunity to speak with him properly, he decided that Lyons was, “a sensible man, calm of temper and serious.” R.A.J. Walling (ed.), The Diaries of John Bright (New York, 1931), p. 407.

40. T. Wemyss Reid, Life of the Right Honorable William Edward Forster (London, 1888), p. 344, Forster to his wife, December 4, 1861.

41. Spectator, December 7, 1861. Bright was fortunate that no one knew or remembered how he had warmly greeted Senator Slidell when the latter visited England a few years before. Then, he wrote in his diary: “Thro’ the Park with Cobden. With him afterwards to dine at Fenton’s Hotel with Mr. Brown, M.P. Among those present was Mr. Slidell, American Senator, who appeared to be a sensible man with more of the Englishman than American in his manners.” Walling (ed.), The Diaries of John Bright, p. 151.

42. Deborah Logan (ed.), The Collected Letters of Harriet Martineau, 5 vols. (London 2007), vol. 4, p. 312, Martineau to Henry Reeve, December 4, 1861.

43. Sarah Agnes Wallace and Frances Elma Gillespie (eds.), The Journal of Benjamin Moran, 1857–1865, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1948, 1949), vol. 2, p. 922, December 12, 1861.

44. Warren, Fountain of Discontent, p. 142.

45. Wallace and Gillespie (eds.), The Journal of Benjamin Moran, vol. 2, p. 923, December 14, 1861.

46. “I am here quietly waiting the developments of events over which I have no control,” Adams complained to Motley, the minister to Austria, “and in which I had no participation.” Edward Chalfant, Both Sides of the Ocean (New York, 1982), p. 346.

47. Weed had assumed that Seward’s trip to London in 1859 had been a success. Instead, he discovered that “every idle word he spoke here, in society, is treasured up and a bad meaning given to it. For example, he made enemies of a Noble Household for laughing at the enormous sums of money paid for Paintings. At another Dinner Table he gave offense by insisting that English Books were absurdly expensive, and that