September 5, 1863—Son and grandson of Presidents who negotiated with the British lion during their days as diplomats, Charles Francis Adams, the American minister to the Court of St. James, warned Her Majesty’s government that if it allowed ironclad ships to sail to Confederate ports, it would mean war with the Union government.
As Americans today contemplate widening a grim war that has already exceeded many initial fears, they might remember another occasion when just such a possibility was contemplated. Likewise, it was a time when a President—a Republican President—and not just any Republican President, but the greatest of them all, Abraham Lincoln—was regarded with barely concealed contempt by foreign leaders.
The story of this incident has been told in any one of a number of books, but probably few with greater ironic wit than in The Education of Henry Adams, written by the son and private secretary of Charles Francis Adams.
Like his grandfather John and father John Quincy, Charles Francis Adams had been given the most important ambassadorial position—to Great Britain. Several years ago, when I visited the family ancestral home, Peacefield, a guide chuckled that the post must have seemed like a family inheritance.
It was an inheritance that had immediately tried Charles’ patience. British policy toward America was not so much blatantly hostile, as it had been with the earlier Adamses, as opportunistic. In this new way of thinking, no British serviceman needed to be put in harm’s way to dismember the nation that loomed as an ever-present threat to Canada. Instead, they could help the Americans destroy themselves—specifically, by aiding the Confederacy.
If you want an idea of how the Union government felt about British relations with the Confederacy, consider the episode of Cheers in which Frasier Crane appears on a talk show with Dr. Lilith Sternin. From what they appear to be saying, the two haughty shrinks seemingly disdain any interest in each other—until, the audience discovers to its astonishment, the two are actually playing footsie with each other!
From the start of the Civil War, the British government under Lord Palmerston had been doing likewise with agents of Jefferson Davis. The Trent Affair, in which the Union boarded and seized two Confederate agents bound for Britain, caused the initial strain in the relationship. A year later, though they denied it up and down (and keep doing so for another quarter century, when private papers released it for the world to see), Palmerston and his Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell, came very close to according diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy.
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, along with the Union victory at Antietam, made them reconsider the propriety of recognizing a slave state. It did not, however, make them the British elite rethink its opinion of the American President and his Secretary of State, William H. Seward. “In regard to these two men,” Henry Adams recalled in his autobiography, English society seemed demented. Defense was useless; explanation was vain; one could only let the passion exhaust itself. One’s best friends were as unreasonable as enemies, for the belief in poor Mr. Lincoln’s brutality and Seward’s ferocity became a dogma of public faith.”
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone, even made a speech in Newscastle in which he stated: “We may have our own opinions about slavery; we may be for or against the South. But there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made what is more than either, they have made a nation."
What rankled the American ambassador and his already perceptive son was this: that navy the Confederacy was “making” was being created with the help of the British, who were violating their own neutrality legislation passed in 1819. The so-called “Laird rams” brought the issue to the surface in 1863.
In Liverpool, Jefferson Davis had a very active naval officer and agent acting for him: James Dunwoody Bulloch, who had a little sickly, asthmatic nephew who would grow up to become Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Navy and, as President, send the Great White Fleet around the world--Theodore Roosevelt. Through a pretense, the British government allowed a whole slew of ships to be built under their own auspices, then armed separately by the Confederates—including the ship that would become feared by Northern shipping, the Alabama.
The two so-called “Laird rams”, however, finally brought the North and Adams to the boiling point. These were ironclads that, it soon became clear, could puncture holes in the Union blockade of the South. They were perceived as such a threat that the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for the North, Gustavus Fox, insisted that the rams needed to be stopped “at all hazards.” Seward went even further: the ships would “complicate the relations between the two countries in such a manner as to render it difficult…to preserve friendship between them.” That was diplomatese for stating that the two countries would be on the brink of war.
Over the summer, Adams continually faced off against Russell and Palmerston. He noted, for instance, that Queen Victoria’s ministers might want to reconsider its actions in light of the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Moreover, he presented affidavits proving the true intent of the rams.
Matters came to a head on September 1, when Russell informed Adams that there wasn’t enough existing information that necessitated the seizure of the ships, but the government would do so if trustworthy evidence could produce this. That was too much for the American to stomach, and he dashed off one of the most famous sentences in American diplomatic history on September 5: “It would be superfluous in me to point out to your lordship that this is war.”
Four days later, Adams was notified that the rams would be placed under surveillance. The following month, they were seized and later purchased by the British government, out of reach of the Confederacy.
A frightening prospect—threatening war with one nation—and that one with the greatest navy in the world—while in a death grapple at home. What would have happened if the British had accepted Adams’ annoyed challenge?
Fortunately, they didn’t. Historians now know, even though Russell and Palmerston were talking out of both sides of their mouths publicly, that privately they had already resolved not to help the Confederacy further along these lines.
War with Great Britain did not come, thankfully—and, just as thankfully, the Union blockade remained, however fitfully at times, in place to ruin the Confederate economy and, together with victories on the ground, bring the government of Jefferson Davis to its knees. And his blunt, highly undiplomatic message brought Adams, like his father and grandfather before him, hero status after a lifetime of at-times controversial public service.
As Americans today contemplate widening a grim war that has already exceeded many initial fears, they might remember another occasion when just such a possibility was contemplated. Likewise, it was a time when a President—a Republican President—and not just any Republican President, but the greatest of them all, Abraham Lincoln—was regarded with barely concealed contempt by foreign leaders.
The story of this incident has been told in any one of a number of books, but probably few with greater ironic wit than in The Education of Henry Adams, written by the son and private secretary of Charles Francis Adams.
Like his grandfather John and father John Quincy, Charles Francis Adams had been given the most important ambassadorial position—to Great Britain. Several years ago, when I visited the family ancestral home, Peacefield, a guide chuckled that the post must have seemed like a family inheritance.
It was an inheritance that had immediately tried Charles’ patience. British policy toward America was not so much blatantly hostile, as it had been with the earlier Adamses, as opportunistic. In this new way of thinking, no British serviceman needed to be put in harm’s way to dismember the nation that loomed as an ever-present threat to Canada. Instead, they could help the Americans destroy themselves—specifically, by aiding the Confederacy.
If you want an idea of how the Union government felt about British relations with the Confederacy, consider the episode of Cheers in which Frasier Crane appears on a talk show with Dr. Lilith Sternin. From what they appear to be saying, the two haughty shrinks seemingly disdain any interest in each other—until, the audience discovers to its astonishment, the two are actually playing footsie with each other!
From the start of the Civil War, the British government under Lord Palmerston had been doing likewise with agents of Jefferson Davis. The Trent Affair, in which the Union boarded and seized two Confederate agents bound for Britain, caused the initial strain in the relationship. A year later, though they denied it up and down (and keep doing so for another quarter century, when private papers released it for the world to see), Palmerston and his Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell, came very close to according diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy.
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, along with the Union victory at Antietam, made them reconsider the propriety of recognizing a slave state. It did not, however, make them the British elite rethink its opinion of the American President and his Secretary of State, William H. Seward. “In regard to these two men,” Henry Adams recalled in his autobiography, English society seemed demented. Defense was useless; explanation was vain; one could only let the passion exhaust itself. One’s best friends were as unreasonable as enemies, for the belief in poor Mr. Lincoln’s brutality and Seward’s ferocity became a dogma of public faith.”
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Gladstone, even made a speech in Newscastle in which he stated: “We may have our own opinions about slavery; we may be for or against the South. But there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made what is more than either, they have made a nation."
What rankled the American ambassador and his already perceptive son was this: that navy the Confederacy was “making” was being created with the help of the British, who were violating their own neutrality legislation passed in 1819. The so-called “Laird rams” brought the issue to the surface in 1863.
In Liverpool, Jefferson Davis had a very active naval officer and agent acting for him: James Dunwoody Bulloch, who had a little sickly, asthmatic nephew who would grow up to become Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Navy and, as President, send the Great White Fleet around the world--Theodore Roosevelt. Through a pretense, the British government allowed a whole slew of ships to be built under their own auspices, then armed separately by the Confederates—including the ship that would become feared by Northern shipping, the Alabama.
The two so-called “Laird rams”, however, finally brought the North and Adams to the boiling point. These were ironclads that, it soon became clear, could puncture holes in the Union blockade of the South. They were perceived as such a threat that the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for the North, Gustavus Fox, insisted that the rams needed to be stopped “at all hazards.” Seward went even further: the ships would “complicate the relations between the two countries in such a manner as to render it difficult…to preserve friendship between them.” That was diplomatese for stating that the two countries would be on the brink of war.
Over the summer, Adams continually faced off against Russell and Palmerston. He noted, for instance, that Queen Victoria’s ministers might want to reconsider its actions in light of the Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Moreover, he presented affidavits proving the true intent of the rams.
Matters came to a head on September 1, when Russell informed Adams that there wasn’t enough existing information that necessitated the seizure of the ships, but the government would do so if trustworthy evidence could produce this. That was too much for the American to stomach, and he dashed off one of the most famous sentences in American diplomatic history on September 5: “It would be superfluous in me to point out to your lordship that this is war.”
Four days later, Adams was notified that the rams would be placed under surveillance. The following month, they were seized and later purchased by the British government, out of reach of the Confederacy.
A frightening prospect—threatening war with one nation—and that one with the greatest navy in the world—while in a death grapple at home. What would have happened if the British had accepted Adams’ annoyed challenge?
Fortunately, they didn’t. Historians now know, even though Russell and Palmerston were talking out of both sides of their mouths publicly, that privately they had already resolved not to help the Confederacy further along these lines.
War with Great Britain did not come, thankfully—and, just as thankfully, the Union blockade remained, however fitfully at times, in place to ruin the Confederate economy and, together with victories on the ground, bring the government of Jefferson Davis to its knees. And his blunt, highly undiplomatic message brought Adams, like his father and grandfather before him, hero status after a lifetime of at-times controversial public service.
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