A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [55]
Russell had witnessed for himself the Southern version of liberty. During a break in his journey to Montgomery, a slave girl, hardly more than ten years old, had begged him to take her away from “the missus.” She promised to serve him faithfully in return, since “she could wash and sew very well.”56 The incident helped Russell to clarify his feelings about the South. At first glance, its ruling class was just like the English aristocracy. “They travel and read, love field sports, racing, shooting, hunting, and fishing, are bold horsemen, and good shots,” he admitted. But behind the façade was not an enlightened society founded on the ideals of ancient Rome but “a modern Sparta—an aristocracy resting on helotry, and with nothing else to rest upon.… Their whole system rests on slavery, and as such they defend it.”57
Montgomery, Alabama, was dreary and hot. “I have rarely seen a more dull, lifeless place,” he wrote. “It looks like a small Russian town in the interior.”58 The ubiquitous slave auctions filled him with disgust. He was also unnerved by the discovery that he was the only white man in the city who was not carrying a loaded revolver. His interview with Davis had been a strange anticlimax. Both men were aware that the meeting could have far-reaching consequences. This was Davis’s first, and perhaps only, opportunity to speak directly to Great Britain. Thousands of miles away, there was an audience waiting to meet the man who could hold Britain’s textile industry for ransom should he so choose. Yet Davis was too proud to make a grand statement or appeal. “He proceeded to speak on general matters,” wrote Russell, “adverting to the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny.” But apart from asking the journalist whether “England [thought] there would be war between the two states,” Davis hardly mentioned the crisis at all. Their conversation was so ordinary that Russell padded out his report for The Times with a description of Davis’s appearance. The former secretary of war under President Pierce was “about fifty-five years of age,” wrote Russell, “his features are regular and well-defined, but the face is thin and marked on cheek and brow with many wrinkles, and is rather careworn and haggard. One eye is apparently blind, the other is dark, piercing and intelligent.”59 Russell avoided mention of Davis’s tic or his demeanor, which, though gentlemanly, was cold.60
Russell was equally disappointed with the Southern secretary of war, Leroy Walker, and the secretary of state, Robert Toombs. The former spat and chewed while talking mostly nonsense, not being a military man; the latter seemed earnest though dim. “Seward had told me,” Russell wrote, “that but for Jefferson Davis the secession plot could never have been carried out. No other man of the part had the brain, or the courage and dexterity.” Consul Bunch had said something similar to him during his stay in Charleston. In a frank appraisal protected by diplomatic seal, Bunch had commended Davis for his statesmanlike qualities but dismissed the rest of the Confederate cabinet as “the dead level of mediocrity.”61 Having now made their acquaintance, Russell agreed.
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The one Southern cabinet member who did make a forcible impression on Russell was Judah P. Benjamin. Russell disliked Jews in general, but he could not help warming to Benjamin, describing him as “the most open, frank, and cordial of the Confederates whom I have yet met.”62 Benjamin, he learned, was not a native Southerner. He had been born in the Caribbean on the island of St. Croix, which technically made him a British subject. His family moved to the South when Benjamin was a baby, eventually settling in Charleston when he was eleven years old. Benjamin’s undeniable brilliance