Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (81 page)

IV

Next to obtaining British intervention against the blockade, the main goal of Confederate foreign policy was to secure diplomatic recognition of the South's nationhood. In the quest for recognition, the Confederate State Department sent to Europe a three-man commission headed by William L. Yancey. As a notorious fire-eater and an advocate of reopening the African slave trade, Yancey was not the best choice to win friends in antislavery Britain. Nevertheless, soon after the southerners arrived in London the British government announced an action that misled Americans on both sides of the Potomac to anticipate imminent diplomatic recognition of the Confederacy.

Lincoln had proclaimed the rebels to be insurrectionists. Under international law this would deny the Confederacy status as a belligerent

20
. Quotation from Jenkins,
Britain and the War for the Union
, II, 262. For a study of the maritime legal issues involved here, see Stuart L. Bernath,
Squall Across the Atlantic: American Civil War Prize Cases and Diplomacy
(Berkeley, 1970).

power. But the North's declaration of a blockade constituted an act of war affecting neutral powers. On May 13 Britain therefore declared her neutrality in a proclamation issued by the Queen. This would seem to have been unexceptionable—except that it automatically recognized the Confederacy as a belligerent power. Other European nations followed the British lead. Status as a belligerent gave Confederates the right under international law to contract loans and purchase arms in neutral nations, and to commission cruisers on the high seas with the power of search and seizure. Northerners protested this British action with hot words; Charles Sumner later called it "the most hateful act of English history since Charles 2nd." But northern protests rested on weak legal grounds, for the blockade was a virtual recognition of southern belligerency. Moreover, in European eyes the Confederacy with its national constitution, its army, its effective control of 750,000 square miles of territory and a population of nine million people, was a belligerent power in practice no matter what it was in northern theory. As Lord Russell put it: "The question of belligerent rights is one, not of principle, but of fact."
²¹

Northern bitterness stemmed in part from the context and timing of British action. The proclamation of neutrality came just after two "unofficial" conferences between Lord Russell and the Confederate envoys. And it preceded by one day the arrival in London of Charles Francis Adams, the new United States minister. The recognition of belligerency thus appeared to present Adams with a
fait accompli
to soften him up for the next step—diplomatic recognition of southern nationhood. As Seward viewed it, Russell's meetings with Yancey and his colleagues were "liable to be construed as recognition." The South did so construe them; and the
Richmond Whig
considered the proclamation of neutrality "a long and firm [step] in exactly the direction which the people of the Southern States expected."
²²

All spring Seward had been growing more agitated by British policy. When he learned of Russell's meetings with the rebel commissioners, he exploded in anger. "God damn them, I'll give them hell," he told Sumner. On May 21 Seward sent an undiplomatic dispatch to Adams instructing him to break off relations if the British government had any

21
. Sumner quoted in Norman Graebner, "Seward's Diplomacy," unpublished ms., p. 6; Russell quoted in Robert H. Jones,
Disrupted Decades: The Civil War and Reconstruction Years
(New York, 1973), 363.

22
. Jenkins,
Britain and the War for the Union
, I, 104, 109.

more dealings with southern envoys. If Britain officially recognized the Confederacy, "we from that hour, shall cease to be friends and become once more, as we have twice before been forced to be, enemies of Great Britain."
²³

Lincoln had tried with only partial success to soften Seward's language. The president did compel Seward to allow Adams discretion to present the substance of this dispatch verbally rather than handing it intact to Lord Russell. After reading Seward's bellicose words, Adams decided that in this case discretion was indeed the better part of valor. Adams had been a superb choice for the London legation. His grandfather and father had preceded him there; Charles had spent much of his youth in the St. Petersburg and London legations. His reserve and self-restraint struck an empathic chord among Englishmen, who were offended by the braggadocio they attributed to American national character. Adams and Lord Russell took each other's measure at their first meeting, and liked what they saw. Adams concealed Seward's iron fist in a velvet glove. Equally urbane, Russell assured the American minister that Britain had no present intention of granting diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy. The foreign secretary conceded that he had twice met with the southern commissioners, but "had no expectation of seeing them any more."
²⁴

Nor did he. It took some time for this message to sink into the minds of the southern envoys, who continued to send optimistic reports to Richmond. In September 1861, however, Yancey grew restless and he resigned. At the same time the Confederate government decided to replace the commissioners with ministers plenipotentiary in major European capitals. Richmond sent James Mason of Virginia to London and John Slidell of Louisiana to Paris.

By so doing the South unwittingly set in motion a series of events that almost brought Anglo-American relations to a rupture. The departure of Mason and Slidell from Charleston by blockade runner was scarcely a secret. The U. S. navy was embarrassed by its failure to intercept their ship before it reached Havana, where the diplomats transferred to the British steamer
Trent
. Captain Charles Wilkes decided to redeem the navy's reputation. A forty-year veteran now commanding

23
. David Donald,
Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man
(New York, 1970), 21; Jenkins,
Britain and the War for the Union
, I, 104.

24
. Ephraim D. Adams,
Great Britain and the American Civil War, 2 vols
. (New York, 1925), I, 106.

the thirteen-gun sloop
U. S. S. San Jacinto
, Wilkes was a headstrong, temperamental man who fancied himself an expert on maritime law. Diplomatic dispatches could be seized as contraband of war; Wilkes decided to capture Mason and Slidell as the "embodiment of despatches."
²⁵
This novel interpretation of international law was never tested, for instead of capturing the
Trent
as a prize after stopping her on the high seas on November 8, Wilkes arrested Mason and Slidell and let the ship go on.

The northern public greeted Wilkes's act with applause; "the people," reported a journalist, "are glad to see John Bull taken by the horns." The House of Representatives passed a resolution lauding Wilkes. But after the first flush of jubilation, second thoughts began to arise. Few expected Britain to take this lying down. The risk of war sent the American stock market into a dive. Government bonds found no buyers. News from Britain confirmed fears of an ugly confrontation. The British expressed outrage at Wilkes's "impressment" of Mason and Slidell. The Union Jack had been flouted. The jingo press clamored for war. Prime Minister Palmerston told his cabinet: "You may stand for this but damned if I will."
²⁶
The cabinet voted to send Washington an ultimatum demanding an apology and release of the Confederate diplomats. Britain ordered troops to Canada and strengthened the western Atlantic fleet. War seemed imminent.

Although the Anglophobe press in America professed to welcome this prospect, cooler heads recognized the wisdom of Lincoln's reported words: "One war at a time." The Union army's capacity to carry on even that one war was threatened by an aspect of the
Trent
crisis unknown to the public and rarely mentioned by historians. In 1861, British India was the Union's source of saltpeter, the principal ingredient of gunpowder. The war had drawn down saltpeter stockpiles to the danger point. In the fall of 1861 Seward sent a member of the du Pont company to England on a secret mission to buy all available supplies of saltpeter there and on the way from India. The agent did so, and was loading five ships with 2,300 tons of the mineral when news of the
Trent
reached London. The government clamped an embargo on all shipments to the United States until the crisis was resolved. No settlement, no saltpeter.
²⁷

25
. Wilkes's official report,
Senate Exec. Docs
., 37 Cong., 2 Sess., III, 123.

26
. Norman B. Ferris,
The Trent Affair: A Diplomatic Crisis
(Knoxville, 1977), 29; Nevins,
War
, I, 388.

27
. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., "Du Pont, Dahlgren, and the Civil War Nitre Shortage," in
Military Analysis of the Civil War
(New York, 1977), 201–2.

This issue among others was very much on Lincoln's and Seward's minds during the tense weeks of December 1861. The problem was how to defuse the crisis without the humiliation of bowing to an ultimatum. Seward recognized that Wilkes had violated international law by failing to bring the
Trent
into port for adjudication before a prize court. In an uncharacteristic mood of moderation, Seward expressed a willingness to yield Mason and Slidell on the grounds that Wilkes had acted without instructions. Diplomatic hints had come from London that this face-saving compromise would be acceptable to the British. In a crucial Christmas day meeting, Lincoln and his cabinet concluded that they had no choice but to let Mason and Slidell go. Most of the press had reached the same conclusion, so release would not peril the administration's public support. Mason and Slidell resumed their interrupted trip to Europe, where they never again came so close to winning foreign intervention as they had done by being captured in November 1861. Their release punctured the war bubble. Du Pont's saltpeter left port and was soon turned into gunpowder for the Union army.

The afterglow of this settlement left Anglo-American relations in better shape than before the crisis. "The first effect of the release of Messrs. Mason and Slidell has been extraordinary," wrote young Henry Adams from the American legation in London, where he served as secretary to his father. "The current which ran against us with such extreme violence six weeks ago now seems to be going with equal fury in our favor."
²⁸
This new current was strengthened by reports of the northern victories along the Atlantic coast—and even more by news of remarkable Union military successes in the West.

28
. Worthington C. Ford, ed., A
Cycle of Adams Letters
, 1861–1865, 2 vols. (Boston, 1920), I, 99.

13
The River War in 1862

I

Before February 1862 there had been little fighting along the rivers south of Cairo, Illinois. But in the next four months these rivers became the scene of decisive action. The strategic value of the river network radiating from Cairo had been clear from the outset. This southernmost city in the free states grew into a large military and naval base. From there, army-navy task forces launched invasions up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers (southward) and down the Mississippi in 1862.

One reason for the success of these offensives lay in the harmonious teamwork of the navy and army commanders at Cairo: the God-fearing, teetotaling, antislavery Connecticut Yankee Flag-Officer Andrew H. Foote; and Brigadier-General Ulysses S. Grant, who may have feared God but was indifferent toward slavery and not noted for abstinence. It was lucky for the North that Grant and Foote worked well together, because the institutional arrangements for army-navy cooperation left much to be desired. On the theory that inland operations—even on water—were the army's province, the War Department built the first gunboats for western river operations. Naval officers commanded the vessels but army officers controlled their operations. Crews for these gunboats were a mixed lot—volunteer riverboatmen, soldiers detailed from the army, civilian steamboat pilots and engineers, and a few Jack Tars recruited from the salt-water navy. Not until the autumn of 1862 did Congress rectify this anomalous arrangement by placing the river squadrons under navy control. Yet the river fleet won its greatest victories during the early, makeshift months.

The gunboats of this navy were the creation of James B. Eads, the Ericsson of the fresh-water navy. A native of Indiana who had established a boat-building business in St. Louis, Eads contracted in August 1861 to construct seven shallow-draft gunboats for river work. When completed before the end of the year, these craft looked like no other vessel in existence. They were flat-bottomed, wide-beamed, and paddle-wheeled, with their machinery and crew quarters protected by a sloping casemate sheathed in iron armor up to 2.5 inches thick. Because this casemate, designed by naval constructor Samuel Pook, reminded observers of a turtle shell, the boats were nicknamed "Pook's turtles." Although strange in appearance, these formidable craft each carried thirteen guns and were more than a match for the few converted steamboats the South could bring against them.