“It don’t seem hardly right, John,
     When both my hands was full,
     To stump me to a fight, John—­
     Your cousin, tu, John Bull! 
          Ole Uncle S., sez he, ’I guess
     We know it now,’ sez he,
     ’The lion’s paw is all the law,
     Accordin’ to J.B.,
     Thet’s fit for you an’ me[487]!’”

It was not the demand itself for the release of Mason and Slidell that in the end so stirred America as the warlike tone of the British press and the preparations of the Government.  Even after their surrender America was further incensed by British boasting that America had yielded to a threat of war, as in the Punch cartoon of a penitent small boy, Uncle Sam, who “says he is very sorry and that he didn’t mean to do it,” and so escapes the birching Britannia was about to administer.  America had, in all truth, yielded to a threat, but disliked being told so, and regarded the threat itself as evidence of British ill-will[488].  This was long the attitude of the American public.

In England the knowledge of America’s decision caused a great national sigh of relief, coupled with a determination to turn the cold shoulder to the released envoys.  On January 11, the Times recounted the earlier careers of Mason and Slidell, and stated that these two “more than any other men,” were responsible for the traditional American “insane prejudice against England,” an assertion for which no facts were offered in proof, and one much overestimating the influence of Mason and Slidell on American politics before secession.  They were “about the most worthless booty it would be possible to extract from the jaws of the American lion ...  So we do sincerely hope that our countrymen will not give these fellows anything in the shape of an ovation.”  Continuing, the Times argued: 

“What they and their secretaries are to do here passes our conjecture.  They are personally nothing to us.  They must not suppose, because we have gone to the very verge of a great war to rescue them, that therefore they are precious in our eyes.  We should have done just as much to rescue two of their own Negroes, and, had that been the object of the rescue, the swarthy Pompey and Caesar would have had just the same right to triumphal arches and municipal addresses as Messrs. Mason and Slidell.  So, please, British public, let’s have none of these things.  Let the Commissioners come up quietly to town, and have their say with anybody who may have time to listen to them.  For our part, we cannot see how anything they have to tell can turn the scale of British duty and deliberation.”

This complete reversal, not to say somersault, by the leading British newspaper, was in line with public expressions from all sections save the extreme pro-Southern.  Adams was astonished, writing privately:  “The first effect of the surrender ... has been extraordinary.  The current which ran against us with such extreme