A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [474]
48. University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y., Rush Rees Library, Seward MSS, Mission Abroad, 1861–1862 [microform]; a selection of letters from Archbishop Hughes, Bishop McIlvaine, W. H. Seward, and Thurlow Weed; Weed to Seward, December 18, 1861.
49. The Times, December 6, 1861.
50. University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y., Rush Rees Library, Seward MSS, Weed to Seward, December 10, 1861.
51. “I am placed in a predicament almost as awkward as if I had not been commissioned here at all.” OR, ser. 2, vol. 2, p. 1123, Adams to Seward, December 11, 1861. Warren, Fountain of Discontent, p. 164.
52. Ibid., p. 152.
53. T. C. Pease and J. Randall (eds.), The Diary of Orville H. Browning, 1850–1881 (Springfield, Ill., 1925–31), December 10, 1861, p. 50.
54. Beverley Wilson Palmer (ed.), The Selected Letters of Charles Sumner, 2 vols. (Boston, 1990), vol. 1, p. 82, Sumner to Duchess of Argyll, November 18, 1861.
55. Ibid., pp. 88–89, Charles Sumner to Francis Lieber, December 24, 1861.
56. Jay Sexton, Debtor Diplomacy (Oxford, 2005), p. 96.
57. Columbia University, Blackwell MSS, Blackwell to Bodichon, December 30, 1861.
58. Frederick W. Seward (ed.), Seward at Washington (New York, 1891), p. 32.
59. Pease and Randall (eds.), The Diary of Orville H. Browning, 1850–1881, p. 51, December 15, 1861.
60. Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 331, December 16, 1861.
61. Martin Crawford (ed.), William Howard Russell’s Civil War: Private Diary and Letters, 1861–1862 (Athens, Ga., 1992), p. 207, Russell to John T. Delane, December 20, 1861.
62. The mood in the Senate was no different. Senator Orville Browning, for example, was adamantly against any kind of settlement. “We were clearly right in what we did,” he insisted. England could send as many troops as she liked. “We are determined, at all hazards, to hold on to the prisoners.…” Pease and Randall (eds.), The Diary of Orville H. Browning, p. 50, fn.
63. The United States did not have a naval plan against Britain. Admiral Milne, on the other hand, had already put his fleet on alert. His instructions from London were to end the blockade of the Southern ports (without directly cooperating with the Confederacy). How he achieved this was to be his own affair. Regis Courtemanche, No Need of Glory: The British Navy in American Waters (Annapolis, Md., 1977), p. 59, Admiral Milne to Sir Frederick Grey, December 1861. Milne’s strategy depended on a three-pronged attack. One force, under Commodore Dunlop, would sail from Veracruz and clear the Federal navy from the Gulf. The larger, Milne’s, would attack the U.S. blockading fleet and then proceed up the coast to the Northeast, where it would establish a blockade of the major Northern ports. Milne would be able to count on reinforcements, a sufficient number of coaling vessels, and a working dockyard in Bermuda. He thought that his plan had, in the short term, a good chance of success. A mere three months later, however, after the launch of USS Monitor, he felt that the advantage had started to turn in favor of the North and he looked back to the Trent affair as Britain’s most favorable moment.
64. Crawford (ed.), William Howard Russell’s Civil War, p. 207, Russell to John T. Delane, December 20, 1861.
65. Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 2008), vol. 2, p. 224.
66. Palmer (ed.), Selected Letters of Charles Sumner, vol. 2, p. 87, Sumner to Bright, December 23, 1861. “Are Mr. Mason and Mr. Slidell so irresistibly eloquent that we must not run the danger of hearing them speak?” asked the Duchess of Argyll in one of her letters to Sumner. MHS, Argyll Letters, p. 93, Duchess of Argyll to Charles Sumner, December