mediation had been slow but steady.  Lindsay’s initial steps, resented as an effort in indirect diplomacy and not supported by France officially, had received prompt rejection accompanied by no indication of a desire to depart from strict neutrality.  With the cessation in late June of the Northern victorious progress in arms and in the face of increasing distress in Lancashire, the second answer to Lindsay was less dogmatic.  As given by Palmerston the Government desired to offer mediation, but saw no present hope of doing so successfully.  Finally the Government asked for a free hand, making no pledges.  Mason might be gloomy, Adams exultant, but when August dawned plans were already on foot for a decided change.  The secret was well kept.  Four days after the Cabinet decision to wait on events, two days after Russell’s refusal to produce the correspondence with Mason, Russell, on the eve of departure for the Continent, was writing to Palmerston: 

“Mercier’s notion that we should make some move in October agrees very well with yours.  I shall be back in England before October, and we could then have a Cabinet upon it.  Of course the war may flag before that.

     “I quite agree with you that a proposal for an armistice
     should be the first step; but we must be prepared to answer
     the question on what basis are we to negotiate[733]?”

The next movement to put an end to the war in America was to come, not from Napoleon III, nor from the British friends of the South, but from the British Ministry itself.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 654:  Bancroft, Seward, II, p. 204.]

[Footnote 655:  De Bow’s Review, Dec., 1857, p. 592.]

[Footnote 656:  Cited in Adams, Trans-Atlantic Historical Solidarity, p. 66.]

[Footnote 657:  Ibid., p. 64.]

[Footnote 658:  Cited in Smith, Parties and Slavery, 68.  A remarkable exposition of the “power of cotton” and the righteousness of slavery was published in Augusta, Georgia, in 1860, in the shape of a volume of nine hundred pages, entitled Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments.  This reproduced seven separate works by distinguished Southern writers analysing Slavery from the point of view of political economy, moral and political philosophy, social ethics, political science, ethnology, international law, and the Bible.  The purpose of this united publication was to prove the rightfulness, in every aspect, of slavery, the prosperity of America as based on cotton, and the power of the United States as dependent on its control of the cotton supply.  The editor was E.N.  Elliot, President of Planters’ College, Mississippi.]

[Footnote 659:  Jan. 26, 1861.  Cited in Maxwell, Clarendon, II, p. 237.]

[Footnote 660:  Am.  Hist.  Rev., XVIII, p. 785.  Bunch to Russell.  No. 51.  Confidential.  Dec. 5, 1860.  As here printed this letter shows two dates, Dec. 5 and Dec. 15, but the original in the Public Record Office is dated Dec. 5.]