Part 56 (1/2)

Adams expressed to Seward doubts as to the propriety of his receiving such deputations and making replies to them. _The Index_ (Dec. 22, 1864, p. 808) was ”indignant” that Adams should presume to ”hector and threaten” England through his replies. But Adams continued to receive deputations.]

[Footnote 1259: Delane's position on the Civil War and the reasons for the importance of Savannah to him, personally, are described in Ch. XVIII.]

[Footnote 1260: Jan. 9, 1865.]

CHAPTER XVII

THE END OF THE WAR

”I think you need not trouble yourself about England. At this moment opinion seems to have undergone a complete change, and our people and indeed our Government is more moderately disposed than I have ever before known it to be. I hear from a member of the Government that it is believed that the feeling between our Cabinet and the Was.h.i.+ngton Government has been steadily improving[1261].”

Thus wrote Bright to Sumner in the last week of January, 1865. Three weeks later he again wrote in rea.s.surance against American rumours that Europe was still planning some form of intervention to save the South: ”_All parties and cla.s.ses_ here are resolved on a strict neutrality[1262]....” This was a correct estimate. In spite of a temporary pause in the operations of Northern armies and of renewed a.s.sertions from the South that she ”would never submit,” British opinion was now very nearly unanimous that the end was near. This verdict was soon justified by events. In January, 1865, Wilmington, North Carolina, was at last captured by a combined sea and land attack. Grant, though since midsummer, 1864, held in check by Lee before Petersburg, was yet known to be constantly increasing the strength of his army, while his ability to strike when the time came was made evident by the freedom with which his cavalry scoured the country about the Confederate capital, Richmond--in one raid even completely encircling that city.

Steadily Lee's army lost strength by the attrition of the siege, by illness and, what was worse, by desertion since no forces could be spared from the fighting front to recover and punish the deserters.

Grant waited for the approach of spring, when, with the advance northwards of the army at Savannah, the pincers could be applied to Lee, to end, it was hoped, in writing _finis_ to the war.

From December 20, 1864, to February 1, 1865, Sherman remained in Savannah, renewing by sea the strength of his army. On the latter date he moved north along the coast, meeting at first no resistance and easily overrunning the country. Columbia, capital of South Carolina, was burned. Charleston was evacuated, and it was not until March, in North Carolina, that any real opposition to the northward progress was encountered. Here on the sixteenth and the nineteenth, Johnston, in command of the weak Southern forces in North Carolina, made a desperate effort to stop Sherman, but without avail, and on March 23, Sherman was at Goldsboro, one hundred and sixty miles south of Richmond, prepared to cut off the retreat of Lee when Grant should at last take up an energetic offensive.

In the last week of March, Grant began cutting off supplies to Richmond, thus forcing Lee, if he wished still to protect the Southern capital, to come out of his lines at Petersburg and present an unfortified front.

The result was the evacuation of Petersburg and the abandonment of Richmond, Jefferson Davis and his Government fleeing from the city on the night of April 2. Attempting to retreat southwards with the plan of joining Johnston's army, Lee, on April 9, found his forces surrounded at Appomattox and surrendered. Nine days later, on April 18, Johnston surrendered to Sherman at Durham, North Carolina. It was the end of the war and of the Confederacy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE AMERICAN GLADIATORS-HABET! _Reproduced by permission of the Proprietors of ”Punch”_]

The rapidity with which Southern resistance in arms crumbled in 1865 when once Sherman and Grant were under way no doubt startled foreign observers, but in British opinion, at least, the end had been foreseen from the moment Sherman reached the sea at Savannah. The desperate courage of the South was admired, but regarded as futile. Equally desperate and futile was the last diplomatic effort of the Confederate agents in Europe, taking the form of an offer to abolish slavery in return for recognition. The plan originated with Benjamin, Southern Secretary of State, was hesitatingly approved by Davis[1263], and was committed to Mason for negotiation with Great Britain. Mason, after his withdrawal from London, had been given duplicate powers in blank for any point to which emergencies might send him, thus becoming a sort of Confederate Commissioner at Large to Europe. Less than any other representative abroad inclined to admit that slavery was other than a beneficent and humane inst.i.tution, it was felt advisable at Richmond not only to instruct Mason by written despatch, but by personal messenger also of the urgency of presenting the offer of abolition promptly and with full a.s.surance of carrying it into effect. The instruction was therefore entrusted to Duncan F. Kenner, of Louisiana, and he arrived in Paris early in March, 1865, overcame Mason's unwillingness to carry such an offer to England, and accompanied the latter to London.

The time was certainly not propitious, for on the day Mason reached London there came the news of the burning of Columbia and the evacuation of Charleston. Mason hesitated to approach Palmerston, but was pressed by Kenner who urged action on the theory that Great Britain did not wish to see a reconstruction of the Union[1264]. Slidell, in Paris, on receiving Mason's doubts, advised waiting until the Emperor had been consulted, was granted an interview and reported Napoleon III as ready as ever to act if England would act also, but as advising delay until more favourable news was received from America[1265]. But Mason's instructions did not permit delay; he must either carry them out or resign--and Kenner was at his elbow pressing for action. On March 13, therefore, Mason wrote to Palmerston asking for a private interview and was promptly granted one for the day following.

Both personal disinclination to the proposal of abolition and judgment that nothing would come of it made Mason cautious in expressing himself to Palmerston. Mason felt that he was stultifying his country in condemning slavery. Hence in roundabout language, ”with such form of allusion to the _concession_ we held in reserve, as would make him necessarily comprehend it[1266],” and turning again and again to a supposed ”latent, undisclosed obstacle[1267]” to British recognition, Mason yet made clear the object of his visit. The word slavery was not mentioned by him, but Palmerston promptly denied that slavery in the South had ever been, or was now, a barrier to recognition; British objections to recognition were those which had long since been stated, and there was nothing ”underlying” them. On March 26, Mason called on the Earl of Donoughmore, a Tory friend of the South with whom he had long been in close touch, and asked whether he thought Palmerston's Government could be induced by a Southern abolition of slavery to recognize the Confederacy. The reply was ”that the time had gone by now....” This time the words ”slavery” and ”abolition” were spoken boldly[1268], and Donoughmore was positive that if, in the midsummer of 1863, when Lee was invading Pennsylvania, the South had made its present overture, nothing could have prevented British recognition. The opinion clashed with Mason's own conviction, but in any case no more was to be hoped, now, from his overture. Only a favourable turn in the war could help the South.

There was no public knowledge in London of this ”last card” Southern effort in diplomacy, though there were newspaper rumours that some such move was on foot, but with a primary motive of restoring Southern fighting power by putting the negroes in arms. British public attention was fixed rather upon a possible last-moment reconciliation of North and South and a restored Union which should forget its domestic troubles in a foreign war. Momentarily somewhat of a panic overcame London society and gloomy were the forebodings that Great Britain would be the chosen enemy of America. Like rumours were afloat at Was.h.i.+ngton also. The Russian Minister, Stoeckl, reported to his Government that he had learned from ”a sure source” of representations made to Jefferson Davis by Blair, a prominent Unionist and politician of the border state of Maryland, looking to reconstruction and to the sending by Lincoln of armies into Canada and Mexico. Stoeckl believed such a war would be popular, but commented that ”Lincoln might change his mind[1269]

to-morrow.” In London the _Army and Navy Gazette_ declared that Davis could not consent to reunion and that Lincoln could not offer any other terms of peace, but that a truce might be patched up on the basis of a common aggression against supposed foreign enemies[1270]. Adams pictured all British society as now convinced that the end of the war was near, and bitter against the previous tone and policy of such leaders of public opinion as the _Times_, adding that it was being ”whispered about that if the feud is reconciled and the Union restored, and a great army left on our hands, the next manifestation will be one of hostility to this country[1271].”

The basis of all this rumour was Blair's attempt to play the mediator.

He so far succeeded that on January 31, 1865, Lincoln instructed Seward to go to Fortress Monroe to meet ”commissioners” appointed by Davis. But Lincoln made positive in his instructions three points:

(1) Complete restoration of the Union.

(2) No receding on emanc.i.p.ation.

(3) No cessation of hostilities ”short of an end of the war, and the disbanding of all forces hostile to the Government.”

A few days later the President decided that his own presence was desirable and joined his Secretary of State in the ”Hampton Roads Conference” of February 3. It quickly appeared that the Confederates did indeed hope to draw the North into a foreign war for a ”traditional American object,” using the argument that _after_ such a war restoration of the Union would be easily accomplished. The enemy proposed was not Great Britain but France, and the place of operations Mexico. There was much discussion of this plan between Seward and Stephens, the leading Southern Commissioner, but Lincoln merely listened, and when pressed for comment stuck fast to his decision that no agreement whatever would be entered into until the South had laid down its arms. The Southerners urged that there was precedent for an agreement in advance of cessation of hostilities in the negotiations between Charles I and the Roundheads.

Lincoln's reply was pithy: ”I do not profess to be posted in history. On all such matters I turn you over to Seward. All I distinctly recollect about the case of Charles I is that he lost his head in the end[1272].”

When news of the holding of this conference reached England there occurred a panic on the Stock Exchange due to the uncertainty created by the prospect of an immediate end of the American War. ”The consternation,” wrote Adams, ”was extraordinary[1273].” What did the United States intend to do? ”The impression is now very general that peace and restoration at home are synonymous with war with this country.” There existed an ”extraordinary uneasiness and indefinite apprehension as to the future.” So reported Adams to Seward; and he advised that it might be well for the United States ”to consider the question how far its policy may be adapted to quiet this disturbance”; due allowance should be made for the mortification of those leaders who had been so confident of Southern victory and for expressions that might now fall from their lips; it was possible that rea.s.surances given by the United States might aid in the coming elections in retaining the Government in power--evidently, in Adams' opinion, a result to be desired[1274].