A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [69]
Yet for all the finger-pointing and public criticism of the North, the Southern envoys failed to make the slightest change in Britain’s policy. “We are satisfied that the Government is sincere in its desire to be strictly neutral in the contest,” Yancey repeated in his next letter to Secretary Toombs, “and will not countenance any violation of its neutrality.”75 Writing to a close friend in the South, Yancey admitted that the mission was not turning out the way he had envisioned: “In the first place, important as cotton is, it is not King in Europe.” Furthermore, he added, “The anti-Slavery sentiment is universal. Uncle Tom’s Cabin has been read and believed.”76
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4.1 The U.S. consulate in London was a separate entity from the legation in the nineteenth century, and dealt primarily with matters arising from shipping and trade.
4.2 It took ten days for a newspaper report in New York to be reprinted in The Times. There was a slightly quicker diplomatic route: if Lord Lyons needed to send an urgent message, he could send a telegram to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where it would be taken by steamer to Liverpool and telegraphed to London; this could cut the delay to eight or, in good weather, seven days.
FIVE
The Rebel Yell
William Howard Russell in New Orleans—Sam and Mary Sophia Hill volunteer—Elizabeth Blackwell inspires the U.S. Sanitary Commission—“On to Richmond”—The Battle of Bull Run—Not a fight but a stampede
“There is on the part of the South an enormously exaggerated idea of its own strength,” William Howard Russell wrote to Lord Lyons from New Orleans on May 21, 1861.1 The city was celebrating succession with parades and fireworks as though the war was already won. All the public buildings and many private houses were flying the new Confederate flag.5.1 There were no doubts here about the power of cotton. It was “not alone king but czar,” remarked the Times journalist after he was told for the dozenth time that the shipping season just past had been the most profitable in the city’s history.2
Russell was not enamored with the Deep South. The unceasing battle against mosquitoes, the crude sanitation, and the greasy food that typified Southern cuisine made him consume more alcohol than his liver could tolerate. “Too much talk, smoke & brandy & water” was becoming a frequent complaint in his diary.3 The South’s erratic postal service was also a source of torment. It had taken a month for a plaintive letter from his wife, Mary, to reach him. He knew she would assume he had not bothered to reply. “God comfort her,” he wrote sadly in his diary on May 25, “and make me worthy of her.”4
William Mure, the British consul in New Orleans, rescued Russell from many hours of lonely reflection by inviting him to stay at his house. The extensive commercial ties between New Orleans and Liverpool were reflected in the social prominence of the British consulate; Mure’s generosity gave Russell the best possible introduction to the South’s biggest and wealthiest city. New Orleans was the fourth-largest port in the world and a commercial juggernaut compared to Richmond, Virginia, which had been chosen as the Confederacy’s new capital. Known as the Crescent City because of the way it curved around a deep bend of the Mississippi River, New Orleans was the epicenter of the slave trade and the gateway not only for the majority of the South’s cotton crop, but also for its tobacco and sugar. As business opportunities came and went, so, too, did many of New Orleans’s foreign immigrants. The 1860 census had revealed that little more than half the population of 168,000 had been born in the South.5 Russell grasped at once how an outsider like Judah Benjamin could find opportunities here that were denied him elsewhere