[Footnote 572:  I have nowhere found any such statement by Seward.  Gregory’s reference is to a note from Seward to Lyons of May 27, 1861, printed in the Blockade Papers.  This merely holds that temporary absence of blockading ships does not impair the blockade nor render “necessary a new notice of its existence.”]

[Footnote 573:  A Cycle of Adams’ Letters, I, pp. 119-20.  Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., March 15, 1862.]

[Footnote 574:  This “three months” statement returned to plague Russell later, British merchants complaining that upon it they had based plans in the belief that the Government had something definite in view.  Spence’s reference to this “three months” idea, after his conferences in London, would indicate that Russell was merely indulging in a generalization due to the expected financial collapse of the North.  The Russian Ambassador in London gave a different interpretation.  He wrote that the Northern victories in the West had caused Great Britain to think the time near when the “border states,” now tied to the Union by these victories, would lead in a pacification on lines of separation from the Southern slave states.  “It is in this sense, and no other that Russell’s ‘three months’ speech in the Lords is to be taken.” (Brunow to F.O., March 3-15, 1862.  No. 33).  Brunow does not so state, but his despatch sounds as if this were the result of a talk with Russell.  If so, it would indicate an attempt to interpret Lincoln’s “border state policy” in a sense that would appear reasonable in the British view that there could be no real hope at Washington of restoring the Union.]

[Footnote 575:  Mason, Mason, p. 264.  Despatch No. 6.  March 11, 1862.]

[Footnote 576:  Ibid., p. 266.  Fort Henry was taken by Grant on February 6 and Fort Donelson on the 15th.  The capture of these two places gave an opening for the advance of the Western army southwards into Tennessee and Mississippi.]

[Footnote 577:  Mason Papers.  Spence to Mason, March 18, 1862.]

[Footnote 578:  Richardson, II, 207.  Slidell to Hunter, March 26, 1862.]

[Footnote 579:  Mason Papers.]

CHAPTER IX

ENTER MR. LINDSAY

The friendly atmosphere created by the lifting of the threatening Trent episode, appears to have made Secretary Seward believe that the moment was opportune for a renewal of pressure on Great Britain and France for the recall of their Proclamations of Neutrality.  Seizing upon the victories of Grant at Forts Henry and Donelson, he wrote to Adams on February 28 explaining that as a result the United States, now having access to the interior districts of Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas, “had determined to permit the restoration of trade upon our inland ways and waters” under certain limitations, and that if this experiment succeeded similar measures