A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War (18 page)

“When I came up,” Lyons reported, “I found him asking M. Mercier [the French minister] to give him a copy of his instructions to the French Consuls in the Southern States.” Unsure whether Seward was mad or just grossly ignorant, the Frenchman retreated behind a veil of diplomatic coyness, assuring him that the instructions contained nothing more than an exhortation to protect French commerce while observing strict neutrality. Seward then repeated the demand to Lyons, who employed the same device. This was tantamount to poking a rhinoceros. Seward lost control of himself. According to witnesses, he accused Lyons of threatening him with Britain’s acknowledgment of the South. “Such recognition will mean war!” he is said to have shouted. “The whole world will be engulfed and revolution will be the harvest.”
²²
Lyons avoided being specific in his own report, merely saying that Seward had become “more and more violent and noisy,” so he had turned away, taking “a natural opportunity, as host, to speak to some of the ladies in the room.”
²³

The French minister, Henri Mercier, was a large, hearty figure who did not cave easily. He was sufficiently irritated by Seward’s badgering to suggest to Lyons that they obtain discretionary power from their governments to recognize the South whenever they saw fit. Lyons was appalled by the idea and persuaded Mercier that it would put them in considerable personal danger from Northern and Southern extremists. He proposed a different plan—that they keep to a unified policy at all times. Seward would be less ready to pick a quarrel if it meant engaging America in a battle of two against one, and he would never be able to use one country as his tool against the other. Mercier agreed. A few days later, Lyons heard that there had been a “stormy sitting of the Cabinet” on the day of his dinner and assumed this was the reason for Seward’s outburst.

—

In only three weeks, Seward had changed from being the self-appointed “ruler” to the odd man out in Lincoln’s cabinet. He tried to maintain his old mastery while struggling to find a place in the new order. His ability to dictate to Lincoln had come down to thwarting Charles Sumner’s bid to become the minister to Great Britain. Seward managed to persuade Lincoln that Charles Francis Adams should have the post. William Dayton was once again moved around the checkerboard of patronage and given the Paris legation, despite being unable to speak French. It was a pyrrhic victory for Seward, however, since by staying in Washington, Sumner became the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. The post would give him great power and leverage against Seward, if he could change Lincoln’s impression of him as a pompous know-it-all. “Sumner,” Lincoln allegedly said after their initial meeting in late February, “is my idea of a Bishop.”
²⁴

Adams was no longer sure he wanted to be a minister when the telegram announcing his appointment arrived in Massachusetts. “The president had seemed so intent on the nomination of Dayton, that the news finally came on us like a thunderbolt,” recalled Charles Francis Jr. “My mother at once fell into tears and deep agitation; foreseeing all sorts of evil consequences, and absolutely refusing to be comforted; while my father looked dismayed. The younger members of the household were astonished and confounded.” Mrs. Adams was surprised, continued Charles Francis Jr.,

when presently every one she met, instead of avoiding a painful subject or commiserating her, offered her congratulations or expressions of envy. So she cheered up amazingly. As to my father, he had then lived so long in the atmosphere of Boston, that I really think the great opportunity of his life when suddenly thrust upon him caused a sincere feeling of consternation. He really felt that he was being called on to make a great personal and political sacrifice.
²⁵

Adams’s poor opinion of Lincoln had increased after the inauguration ball, when the president did not even pretend to recognize him. He traveled to Washington to accept his appointment in a state of deep pessimism. Breakfast with Seward on March 28 made him feel worse; “he spoke of my appointment as his victory,” complained Adams indignantly, “whilst he made a species of apology for the selection of Mr. Wilson which seemed to me a little lame.” Charles Wilson was to have the important post of legation secretary as compensation for missing out on the plum job of heading the Chicago Post Office, a position with a high salary and little responsibility.
²⁶
Seward admitted that the Illinois newspaper editor could hardly be less qualified or suited to work under Adams, but Lincoln had insisted on the move as a quid pro quo for replacing Dayton.

Seward accompanied Adams to the White House for his interview with Lincoln. Adams was shocked by the “ravenous crowd” of office seekers who milled around the building, blocking stairs and corridors.
²⁷
Inside Lincoln’s office they found the president in deep conversation with a congressman over other potential candidates to fill the much-discussed Chicago Post Office job. When Adams began to express his gratitude for the appointment to London, Lincoln hurriedly cut him short, saying it was all Seward’s doing. He then turned his back on Adams in order to engage Seward and the congressman in further discussion on “the Chicago case.” Adams waited, uncertain whether the conversation was over, until a gesture from Seward indicated he had been dismissed.
²⁸

Adams was insulted. “Such was his fashion of receiving and dismissing the incumbent of one of the two highest posts in the foreign service of the country!” he complained in his diary. Nor had he been invited to attend the first state dinner of the White House, taking place that night, a gross slight considering that Seward was bringing as his guest William Howard Russell of
The Times,
who had arrived in Washington shortly after Lincoln’s inauguration.

—

The forty-year-old war correspondent William Howard Russell, known to his friends as Billy, was the most famous journalist in the world. His honest and searing reports during the Crimean War had made a heroine of Florence Nightingale as they had rocked the Aberdeen administration.

Russell was the ideal choice to represent
The Times
in the United States. Overeating and excessive drinking were his chief vices—especially drinking, which had grown worse as his wife, Mary, became increasingly frail and dependent on him. Their four older children were in boarding school, but Russell had left her nursing their four-month-old son, Colin, who seemed as weak and poorly as his mother. After saying goodbye, “I went to the station in a storm of pain,” Russell wrote in his diary, feeling guilty that the night before he had been enjoying himself at the Garrick Club, where the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray proposed a toast in his honor.
²⁹

The qualities that made Russell an unsatisfactory husband to Mary were precisely those that John Thadeus Delane, the editor of
The Times,
hoped would endear him to the Americans. Russell was at his happiest in company; over dinner his round face and bright blue eyes would come alive as he amused his listeners with witty observations and stories. He could converse easily with anyone, which Delane knew was a vital prerequisite for success in democratic America.

Although the circulation of
The Times
was small by U.S. standards, hardly more than 65,000, the paper’s influence was felt around the globe. Unlike its newer rivals, such as the
Daily Telegraph
and the
Daily News, The Times,
which was founded in 1785, had the financial resources to provide the latest news from distant countries. There were many who resented its power: “What an absurd position we are in, so completely dictated to and domineered by one newspaper,” complained the MP Richard Cobden, who was nevertheless grateful when, in April 1859, a fellow passenger on a Mississippi steamboat, Senator Jefferson Davis, had offered to share his copy with him.

William Howard Russell soon discovered that celebrity in America had its drawbacks. A drunken night at the Astor Hotel with the Friendly Society of St. Patrick made the front pages. Apparently—since he could not remember the evening’s events—Russell had made a rousing speech in favor of the Union. He confessed in his diary: “O Lord, why did I do it?” When Delane learned of the episode, he asked him the same question. English writers had a poor reputation in the South for coming “with their three
p
’s: pen—paper—prejudices.”
³⁰
Russell had jeopardized the paper’s credibility and his own, which was not as high in America as he had assumed.
³¹
“I should imagine that you must be very perplexed in England,” a British immigrant in New York remarked to his relatives. “The idea is somewhat amusing to us here that Mr. Russell should be sent over specially to report on American politics, as we are perfectly confident no novice could possibly be acquainted with the ins and outs, schemes, shifts and knaveries of this glorious disunion.”
³²

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 federal control could no longer wait. The cabinet deliberations continued the next day. Seward tried every expedient to prevent Lincoln from forcing a decision: he had practically promised Southern negotiators that the president would sacrifice the fort in return for peace and loyalty to the Union. Seward saw dishonor facing him if his double-dealing became known, and his efforts to prevent troops from being sent became ever more serpentine.

Seward was conspicuously absent when William Howard Russell visited the White House again, on March 31, for a near-deserted reception given by Mrs. Lincoln. Nor did he attend Lord Lyons’s dinner that evening, which gave Charles Sumner the field to himself. The other missing person was Charles Francis Adams, who ought to have paid his respects at the British legation after accepting his post but had hurried home to Massachusetts instead. “My visit has changed my feelings much,” he wrote. “For my part I see nothing but incompetency in the head. The man is not equal to the hour.” Like William Howard Russell, he dismissed the rest of the cabinet as “a motley mixture, consisting of one statesman, one politician, two jobbers, one intriguer, and two respectable old gentlemen.”
³⁶
Adams was determined to avoid inconveniencing himself or his family any more than was necessary. Although the last of the Southern diplomatic envoys had already left for London, Adams could not see why he should chase after them. He was going to arrange his affairs, pack in an orderly fashion, and, most important of all, attend his oldest son’s wedding in Massachusetts. Decades later, his son Charles Francis Jr. severely criticized his father for being so petulant: