A World on Fire_ Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War - Amanda Foreman [96]
The challenge for the Confederates lay in keeping the identity of the Fingal from Henry Sanford’s spies; otherwise the U.S. Navy would have no difficulty in tracking and capturing the cargo before it reached Savannah. They were helped by one of Anderson’s most important suppliers, who had a relative in the Foreign Office. “Money will accomplish anything in England,” wrote Anderson. “The bait took, and every night before I retired to bed I was thoroughly advised of all [Charles Francis Adams’s] operations for the day.”2 He was counting on the mole to give sufficient warning if the Fingal was discovered.
Anderson frequently passed Federal agents in the street, but he had learned to tell the difference between those who were genuine arms purchasers like himself and those whose real business was to keep a watch on his own movements. “My friend McGuire is indefatigable in his attentions towards me,” he observed. “His instructions must be very stringent for he posts himself opposite the very door of the Hotel.” Ignatius Pollaky, Sanford’s detective, insisted that he had a “fix on upon every agent of the rebellion,” but still the name and location of the Fingal remained a mystery.3 Sanford had been successfully intercepting the Confederates’ telegrams until clerks at the Liverpool telegraph office became suspicious and uncovered the operation. This blunder enabled the Confederates to lodge an official complaint with the authorities. Reports appeared in the press, accusing the U.S. legation of setting up an illegal “system of political espionage and terrorism” in Britain.4 Charles Francis Adams was mortified to be blamed for Sanford’s handiwork. The spying “has been productive of great evil,” raged Moran in his diary. “Not one farthing of good has it done us.”5
Adams had never imagined that his post would be so troublesome and difficult. “Indeed the position of a minister at this Court is far more important and responsible than I had supposed,” he admitted in his diary.6 It disturbed him that Seward would stoop to playing dirty tricks against his opponents. “Early training in the school of New York State politics” had blunted some of his finer qualities, Adams thought. “[This] shows itself in a somewhat brusque and ungracious manner towards the representatives of foreign nations … [and], in a rather indiscriminate appliance of means to an end.” Adams had no desire to be a part of Seward’s schemes, but equally he resented learning about them in the press.
A suspicion that Seward’s behavior was the real reason behind Lord Russell’s invitation to stay at Abergeldie Castle in Scotland made Adams extremely reluctant to accept. He had no wish to travel a thousand miles in order to be grilled about his wayward chief, especially since his confidence in Seward had declined over the summer. Benjamin Moran was delighted to have the opportunity to act as the minister’s conscience. “I have advised him to go, and he probably will,” he wrote complacently in his diary on September 21. Two days later, Adams reluctantly boarded the train for the overnight journey to Aberdeen.
Although Seward’s threats of war had died down since Bull Run, the substitution of high rhetoric for low-level harassment had made the British cabinet nervous about the U.S. secretary of state’s intentions. Knowing that Adams shared his dislike of ceremony, Lord Russell had asked him to his private retreat in Scotland in the hope that the informal setting would enable them to be frank toward each other; it had worked with John Lothrop Motley, who had visited earlier in the month before taking up his new post at the U.S. legation