A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [54]
Lord Lyons sided with Seward, not about the execution of Southern privateers, but about the blockade, since it would force the North to abide by the Declaration of Paris of 1856.3.4 He soon realized, however, that the secretary of state had no interest in knowing the Paris rules, let alone following them. Seward ignored or failed to carry out even the most basic responsibilities demanded by the declaration.49 Neither the U.S. ministers abroad nor the diplomatic community in Washington were given advance warning. When Seward finally sent an official notice to the foreign ministers on April 27, Lyons was dismayed by the vagueness of the document. It appeared to have been written on the fly, without addressing a single question as to how and when the blockade would be enforced.
Lyons had never quite given up hope that Britain might support the North, either actively or surreptitiously; it was part of the reason he was working so hard to keep the French in check. Henri Mercier had revealed that France was prepared to ignore the blockade if Britain agreed to the same policy. Having known Mercier since their Dresden days, when they used to partner each other in whist, Lyons thought it was typical of him to devise a plan so fraught with danger. He also disagreed with Mercier’s alternative, which was for Britain and France to respect the blockade until the beginning of the cotton season in September. This would be giving the South “a moral encouragement scarcely consistent with neutrality,” he reprimanded Mercier. Furthermore, it might “entail utter ruin upon the [Northern] Administration and their supporters.”50
Lyons could not go any further than this with Mercier; Seward’s behavior had made it impossible. “I confess I can see no better policy for us than a strict impartiality for the present,” he wrote sadly to Lord John Russell on May 6.
The sympathies of an Englishman are naturally inclined towards the North—but I am afraid we should find that anything like a quasi alliance with the men in office here, would place us in a position which would soon become untenable.… My feeling against Slavery might lead me to desire to co-operate with them. But I conceive all chance of this to be gone for ever.51
Seward’s earlier messages to ignore his public statements made Lyons fairly certain that the current display of aggression was for the benefit of the Northern public. It perplexed him that a man of Seward’s intelligence could not see the danger he was courting.52 With an army of 16,000 men and a navy of 9,000, the United States was a military midget compared to any of the Great Powers. “If Seward does not pick a quarrel with us,” wrote Lyons to Lord John Russell, it would not be because “of the insanity which doing so at this crisis … would seem to indicate.” Seward clearly had no intention of “conciliating the European Powers or at all events of not forcing them into hostility.”53 Charles Francis Adams, Jr., later admitted that his family had worshipped a false god. Seward was not the grand strategist or great statesman they had believed him to be. Seward had
found himself fairly beyond his depth; and he plunged! The foreign-war panacea took possession of him; and he yielded to it. The fact is, as I now see him, Seward was an able, a specious and adroit, and a very versatile man; but he escaped being really great. He made a parade of philosophy, and by it I was very effectually deceived.54
President Jefferson Davis declared an official state of war on May 6, the same day that Lyons decided Britain could not risk making common cause with the North. William Howard Russell saw the bill lying on Davis’s desk when he arrived to interview him for The Times. Davis proudly informed Russell that more than 400,000 volunteers had answered his call to arms, far more than they needed