A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [50]
During his journey to Washington in March, Russell had shared a railway carriage with Henry Sanford, the new American minister to Belgium. They talked at great length; Russell had no idea that he was conversing with the future head of the U.S. secret service in Europe. Sanford, on the other hand, grasped Russell’s usefulness to the North and invited him to dine with Seward and his friends that evening. Seward dominated the dinner with his jokes and confidential anecdotes, giving Russell the opportunity to study him at length. He liked the way Seward’s eyes twinkled when he talked, although he suspected it was from self-importance rather than kindliness. Seward strutted as though he was “bursting with the importance of state mysteries, and with the dignity of directing the foreign policy of the greatest country—as all Americans think—in the world.”33
The following day Seward showed him around his kingdom, a plain brick building that housed the State Department. There were usually a hundred people scattered throughout its offices, but a recent purging of Southern sympathizers made the place seem almost devoid of activity. Seward’s own office was surprisingly modest in Russell’s view, merely a “comfortable apartment surrounded with book shelves and ornamented with a few engravings.” Also in evidence was his liking for cigars.34 In the afternoon, Seward introduced him to Lincoln. The president may have been new to the role of national leader, but he was an old hand at flattering men’s vanities. “Mr. Russell,” he said. “I am very glad to make your acquaintance, and to see you in this country. The London Times is one of the greatest powers in the world—in fact, I don’t know anything which has more power—except perhaps the Mississippi. I am glad to know you as its minister.”
Russell was “agreeably impressed with his shrewdness, humor, and natural sagacity.” But it was impossible for him to overlook the sheer ungainliness of the president. Lincoln was a “tall, lank, lean man,” he wrote, “considerably over six feet in height, with stooping shoulders, long pendulous arms, terminating in hands of extraordinary dimensions” that were exceeded only by his enormous feet. “He was dressed in an ill-fitting wrinkled suit of black, which put one in mind of an undertaker’s uniform at a funeral.” His ears were wide and flapping, his mouth unnaturally wide, his eyebrows preternaturally shaggy. Yet all was mitigated for Russell by the look of kindness in his eyes.35
The state dinner from which Charles Francis Adams had been excluded was fascinating to Russell for the view it provided of Lincoln’s relationship with his new cabinet. The formality of the occasion did not deter some of them from continuing their arguments with the president over the dispensing of patronage. Russell observed that the difference between Lincoln and politicians “bred in courts, accustomed to the world” was that they used sophisticated subterfuge to escape awkward situations whereas the president told shaggy dog stories. But the effect was the same: Lincoln disarmed his enemies without causing offense. As for the secretaries, they all seemed like men of ordinary or average ability, with the exception of Salmon Chase, the secretary of the treasury, who “struck me as one of the most intelligent and distinguished persons in the whole assemblage.” Mrs. Lincoln caught Russell’s attention for other reasons. She was not as ludicrous as the Washington gossips had led him to believe, but her energetic fanning and overuse of the word “sir” were a decided distraction.
Russell returned to his rooms at Willard’s after the dinner, unaware that Lincoln had asked the cabinet to remain behind for an emergency meeting. Fort Sumter had become the flash point in the tense relations between the North and South; the decision whether to abandon it or fight to preserve