30 Bridgeman Images

I

n November 1861, word swept

through London that an American

warship, James Adger,in port at

Southampton, was planning to put

to sea and intercept a British ship

bringing Confederate emissaries to

Europe. As a result, the American minister

to Great Britain found himself summoned

to see the British prime minister at his res-

idence at 94 Piccadilly. Charles Francis

Adams made his way through the yellow

gloom of a London fog and found Lord

Palmerston waiting for him in the library.

Palmerston immediately complained to

Adams that Adger’s captain and crew,

while “enjoying the hospitality of this

country, filling his ship with coals and

other supplies, and filling his own stom-

ach with brandy should, within sight of the

shore, commit an act which would be felt

as offensive to the national flag.”

Earlier in the year, President Abraham

Lincoln had proclaimed a blockade of

Southern ports, after which Great Britain

and France commenced a policy of neu-

trality that carried with it the rights of bel-

ligerent action by the Confederacy. It was

the only important concession made to the

Confederate states by European powers

during the war. The Confederate commis-

sioners in Britain at that time were a poor

lot, while the United States foreign minis-

ter, Adams, the son of former President

John Quincy Adams, was a skilled diplo-

mat who had been urged by Secretary of

State William H. Seward to be bold in

asserting American rights.

Confederate diplomacy in Europe was

more complacent, based on a belief in the

economic power of “King Cotton” upon

which British and French mills were

dependent. Confederate President Jeffer-

son Davis subscribed to this view. Prior to

the war, England and Europe had

imported nearly 85 percent of their cotton

from the South. Nearly one-fifth of the

British population earned its livelihood

from the cotton industry, while one-tenth

of Britain’s capital was invested in cotton

as well. However, there was no official

Confederate policy to produce a phony

cotton famine in Europe or rush cotton

abroad to fill the coffers of the South. It

would be a short war, in Davis’s view. If it

lasted longer, a concomitant cotton famine

would inevitably bring Great Britain into

the war to safeguard her economic inter-

ests and rescue the South.

William L. Yancey had resigned as Con-

federate envoy to Britain. In his place,

Davis assigned a pair of trusted political

cronies to represent Southern interests in

London and Paris. James M. Mason,

Yancey’s replacement, was a strange choice

in the view of well-connected political wife

Mary Boykin Chesnut, who wrote in her

diary: “My wildest imagination will not

picture Mr. Mason as a diplomat. He will

say ‘chaw’ for ‘chew’ and he will call him-

self ‘Jeems’ and he will wear a dress coat

to breakfast. Over here whatever a Mason

does is right. He is above the law.” His

Diplomatic

BY MARK SIMMONS

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