Of somewhat like opinion up to the end of March, 1862, Lyons, in April, began to doubt his previous analysis of Northern temper and to write warnings that the end was not near.  Grant’s hard-won victory in the West at Shiloh, April 6-7, the first great pitched battle of the war, called out such a flood of Northern expressions of determination to drive the war to the bitter end as to startle Lyons and cause him, in a remarkably clear letter of survey, to recast his opinions.  He wrote: 

“The general opinion is that the Campaign of this Spring will clear up most of the doubts as to the result of the War.  If the Military successes of the North continue, the determination of the South, will (it is asserted) be at last really put to the test.  If notwithstanding great Military reverses, the loss of the Border States, and the occupation of the most important points on the Coast, the Southern men hold out, if they destroy as they threaten to do, their cotton, tobacco and all other property which cannot be removed and then retire into the interior with their families and slaves, the Northern Conquests may prove to be but barren.  The climate may be a fatal enemy to the Federal Armies.  The Northern people may be unable or unwilling to continue the enormous expenditure.  They may prefer Separation to protracting the War indefinitely.  I confess, however, that I fear that a protraction of the War during another year or longer, is a not less probable result of the present posture of affairs, than either the immediate subjugation of the South or the immediate recognition of its independence[590].”

This itemization of Southern methods of resistance was in line with Confederate threats at a moment when the sky looked black.  There was indeed much Southern talk of “retiring” into a hypothetical defensible interior which impressed Englishmen, but had no foundation in geographical fact.  Meanwhile British attention was eagerly fixed on the Northern advance, and it was at least generally hoped that the projected attack on New Orleans and McClellan’s advance up the peninsula toward Richmond would bring to a more definite status the conflict in America.  Extreme Southern sympathizers scouted the possibility of any conclusive Northern success, ignoring, because ignorant, the importance of Grant’s western campaign.  They “were quite struck aback” by the news of the capture of New Orleans, April 25.  “It took them three days to make up their minds to believe it[591],” but even the capture of this the most important commercial city of the South was not regarded as of great importance in view of the eastern effort toward Richmond.

News of the operations in the peninsula was as slow in reaching England as was McClellan’s slow and cautious advance.  It was during this advance and previous to the capture of New Orleans that two remarkable adventures toward a solution in America were made, apparently wholly on individual initiative, by a Frenchman in America and an Englishman in France.  Mercier at Washington and Lindsay at Paris conceived, quite independently, that the time had come for projects of foreign mediation.