The American war

“July 11, 1862 (To Mr. Sumner.)—It is a long time since I wrote to you. Indeed, to confess the truth, it is a painful task for me to keep up my correspondence with my American friends. But I have not been a less anxious observer of the events which have passed on your side. I shall now best serve the interests of humanity by telling you frankly the state and progress of opinion here. There is an all but unanimous belief that you cannot subject the South to the Union. Even they who are your partisans and advocates cannot see their way to any such issue. It is necessary that you should understand that this opinion is so widely and honestly entertained, because it is the key to the expression of views which might otherwise not be quite intelligible. Among some of the governing class in Europe the wish is father to this thought. But it is not so with the mass of the people. Nor is it so with our own Government entirely. I know that Gladstone would restore your Union to-morrow if he could; yet he has steadily maintained from the first that unless there was a strong Union sentiment, it is impossible that the South can be subdued. Now the belief is all but universal that there is no Union feeling in the South; and this is founded latterly upon the fact that no cotton comes from New Orleans. It is said that if the instinct of gain, with cotton at double its usual price, do not induce the people to sell, it is a proof beyond dispute that the political resentment is overwhelming and unconquerable.”

“Feb. 13, 1863. (To Mr. Sumner.)—If I have not written to you before, it is not because I have been indifferent to what is passing in your midst. I may say sincerely that my thoughts have been almost as much on American as on English politics. But I could do you no service, and shrank from occupying your over-taxed attention, even for a moment. My object in now writing is to speak of a matter which has a practical bearing on your affairs. You know how much alarmed I was from the first lest our Government should interfere in your affairs. The disposition of our ruling class, and the necessities of our cotton trade, pointed to some act of intervention; and the indifference of the great mass of our population to your struggle, the object of which they did not foresee and understand, would have made intervention easy, and indeed popular, if you had been a weaker naval power. This state of feeling existed up to the announcement of the President’s Emancipation Policy. From that moment our old anti-slavery feeling began to arouse itself, and it has been gathering strength ever since. The great rush of the public to all the public meetings called on the subject shows how wide and deep the sympathy for personal freedom still is in the breasts of our people. I know nothing in my political experience so striking, as a display of spontaneous public action, as that of the vast gathering at Exeter Hall, when, without one attraction in the form of a popular orator, the vast building, its minor rooms and passages, and the streets adjoining, were crowded with an enthusiastic audience. That meeting has had a powerful effect on our newspapers and politicians. It has closed the mouths of those who have been advocating the side of the South. And I now write to assure you that any unfriendly act on the part of our Government—no matter which of our aristocratic parties is in power—towards your cause, is not to be apprehended. If an attempt were made by the Government in any way to commit us to the South, a spirit would be instantly aroused which would drive that Government from power. This, I suppose, will be known and felt by the Southern agents in Europe, and if communicated to their Government, must, I should think, operate as a great discouragement to them.”

“April 2, 1863. (To Mr. Sumner.)—There are certain things which can be done and others which cannot be done by our Government. We are bound to do our best to prevent any ship-of-war being built for the Confederate Government, for a ship-of-war can only be used or owned legitimately by a government. But with munitions of war the case is different. They are bought and sold by private merchants for the whole world, and it is not in the power of governments to prevent it. Besides, your own Government have laid down repeatedly the doctrine that it is no part of the duty of governments to interfere with such transactions, for which they are not in any way responsible. I was therefore very sorry that Mr. Adams had persisted in raising an objection to these transactions, in which, by the way, the North has been quite as much involved as the South. If you have read the debate in the House on the occasion when Mr. Forster brought on the subject last week, you will see how Sir Roundell Palmer, the Solicitor-General, and Mr. Laird the ship-builder, availed themselves of this opening to divert attention from the real question at issue—the building of warships to the question of selling munitions of war, in which latter practice it was shown that you in the North were the great participators.”

“May 2, 1863. (To Mr. Sumner.)—I am in no fear whatever of any rupture between the two countries arising out of the blockade, or the incendiary language of the politicians or the Press on both sides of the Atlantic, though these may help to precipitate matters on another issue. But the fitting out of privateers to prey on your commerce, and to render valueless your mercantile tonnage, is another and more serious matter. Great material interests are at stake, and unless this evil can be put down the most serious results may follow. Now I have reason to know that our Government fully appreciates the gravity of this matter. Lord Russell, whatever may be the tone of his ill-mannered despatches, is sincerely alive to the necessity of putting an end to the equipping of ships of war in our harbours to be used against the Federal Government by the Confederates. He was bonâ fide in his desire to prevent the Alabama from leaving, but he was tricked, and was angry at the escape of that vessel. It is necessary that your Government should know all this; and I hope public opinion in England will be so alive to the necessity of enforcing the law, that there will be no more difficulty in the matter. If Lord Russell’s despatches to Mr. Adams are not very civil, he may console himself with the knowledge that the Confederates are still worse treated.”

“May 22, 1863. (To Mr. Sumner.)—I called on Lord Russell, and read every word of your last long indictment against him and Lord Palmerston, to him, He was a little impatient under the treatment, but I got through every word. I did my best to improve on the text in half an hour’s conversation. Public opinion is recovering its senses. John Bull, you know, has never before been a neutral when great naval operations have been carried on, and he does not take kindly to the task; but he is becoming graciously reconciled. He also now begins to understand that he has acted illegally in applauding those who furnished ships of war to prey on your commerce. It will not be repeated.”

“Midhurst, Aug. 7, 1863. (To Mr. Sumner.)—Though we have given you such good ground of complaint on account of the cruisers which have left our ports, yet you must not forget that we have been the only obstacle to what would have been almost a European recognition of the South. Had England joined France, they would have been followed by probably every other State of Europe, with the exception of Russia. This is what the Confederate agents have been seeking to accomplish. They have pressed recognition on England and France with persistent energy from the first. I confess that their eagerness for other European intervention in some shape has always given me a strong suspicion of their conscious weakness. But considering how much more we have suffered than other people from the blockade, this abstinence on our part from all diplomatic interference is certainly to our credit, and this I attribute entirely to the honourable attitude assumed by our working population.”

“Midhurst, Jan. 8, 1863. (To Mr. Paulton.)—.... Do you remember when that old slave-dealer, the Confederate envoy, breakfasted with you last spring, and we were discussing the vast preparations then making by the Federal government, that he remarked with considerable emphasis, when alluding to the incapacity of the Washington government, ’sir, I know these men well, and I tell you they are setting in motion a machine which they have not the capacity to control and guide.’ I have often thought of the truth of this remark when witnessing the frightful mismanagement at headquarters among the Federals during the last twelve months. If it were not for the negro element I should think it the most wild and chimerical dream that ever entered the human mind to think of subjugating the vast region comprised in the Southern Confederacy. But I have a suspicion that the much-despised ‘nigger’ is going to play the part of arbiter in this great conflict Neither party wishes to use him or consult him in the matter. Both parties will tolerate his intervention with bout equal disgust. But the North stands in the position of being able to make the first use of some half-million of men who are capable of being drilled into good soldiers, and bear the climate of the battle-ground without the average losses from disease.

“These black troops in posse will be more and more the temptation of the North to make the plunge for complete emancipation. It is indeed doubtful whether another army of Northern whites could be raised. If the Federal Congress bolt the black dose, and resolve to employ black regiments, it will be the beginning of the end of slavery. Is it not apparently tending to this? I would have rather seen the work done in almost any other way. But the Devil of battles will not, I hope, have it all his own way. God will, I hope, snatch something from the carnage to compensate us for this terrible work. And spite of the Times and the devil I hope the salve will get his freedom yet.”

“Midhurst, Jan. 18, 1863 (To Mr. Paulton.)—.... I join with you in all your horror of this vulgar and unscientific and endless butchery in America. Before the first shot was fired I wrote to Sumner to say that if I were a New Englander I would vote with both hands for a peaceful separation. But since the fighting began I have regarded the matter as beyond the control of reason or moral suasion, and I have endeavoured to keep my mind as free as I could from an all-absorbing interest in the struggle—simply on this utilitarian principle—that I can do no good there, and I want my faculties and energies to try and do something here.

“My only absorbing care in connexion with the civil war is to endeavour to prevent this country from interfering with it. To this end I think the anti-slavery direction in which the war is drifting will be favourable. I am not much afraid of any widespread acts of violence on the part of the Negroes. They are generally under religious impressions, and are not naturally ferocious. They will grow unsettled, and some of them unmanageable, and there will be great confusion and swaying to and fro. But though I don’t expect them to rise and commit desperate crimes, it is quite evident that Jefferson Davis feels all the force of the emancipation measure as a strategical act. He has allowed his passions to master him in the eyes of the world, as shown by his proclamation in advance.

“It will be a strange working of God’s Providence if the negro turns the scale for the North, after the whites on both sides are exhausted. It is clear that the able-bodied blacks will be a cheap resource for soldiers for the North for Southern stations. I hope you and Hargreaves have agreed not to get into an excitement on the subject. The issue is beyond European or human control now, and will go on to the bitter end.”