GREAT BRITAIN AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR



CHAPTER I

BACKGROUNDS

In 1862, less than a year after he had assumed his post in London, the
American Minister, Charles Francis Adams, at a time of depression and
bitterness wrote to Secretary of State Seward: "That Great Britain did,
in the most terrible moment of our domestic trial in struggling with a
monstrous social evil she had earnestly professed to abhor, coldly and
at once assume our inability to master it, and then become the only
foreign nation steadily contributing in every indirect way possible to
verify its judgment, will probably be the verdict made against her by
posterity, on calm comparison of the evidence[1]." Very different were
the views of Englishmen. The historian, George Grote, could write: "The
perfect neutrality [of Great Britain] in this destructive war appears to
me almost a phenomenon in political history. No such forbearance has
been shown during the political history of the last two centuries. It is
the single case in which the English Government and public--generally so
meddlesome--have displayed most prudent and commendable forbearance in
spite of great temptations to the contrary[2]." And Sir William
Harcourt, in September, 1863, declared: "Among all Lord Russell's many
titles to fame and to public gratitude, the manner in which he has
steered the vessel of State through the Scylla and Charybdis of the
American War will, I think, always stand conspicuous[3]."

Minister Adams, in the later years of the Civil War, saw reason somewhat