[Footnote 1029:  State Department, Eng., Vol. 84, No. 492.  Adams to Seward, Sept. 8, 1863.]

[Footnote 1030:  U.S.  Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, Pt.  I, p. 370.  To Seward, Sept. 10, 1863.  Adams, looking at the whole matter of the Rams and the alleged “threat of war” of Sept. 5, from the point of view of his own anxiety at the time, was naturally inclined to magnify the effects of his own efforts and to regard the crisis as occurring in September.  His notes to Russell and his diary records were early the main basis of historical treatment.  Rhodes, IV, 381-84, has disproved the accusation of Russell’s yielding to a threat.  Brooks Adams (Mass.  Hist.  Soc. Proceedings, Vol.  XLV, p. 293, seq.) ignores Rhodes, harks back to the old argument and amplifies it with much new and interesting citation, but not to conviction.  My interpretation is that the real crisis of Governmental decision to act came in April, and that events in September were but final applications of that decision.]

[Footnote 1031:  Russell Papers.  Monck to Stuart, Sept. 26, 1863.  Copy in Stuart to Russell, Oct. 6, 1863.]

[Footnote 1032:  Ibid., Lyons to Russell, Oct. 16, 1863.]

[Footnote 1033:  Hammond wrote to Lyons, Oct. 17:  “You will learn by the papers that we have at last seized the Iron Clads.  Whether we shall be able to bring home to them legally that they were Confederate property is another matter.  I think we can, but at all events no moral doubt can be entertained of the fact, and, therefore, we are under no anxiety whether as to the public or Parliamentary view of our proceeding.  They would have played the devil with the American ships, for they are most formidable ships.  I suppose the Yankees will sleep more comfortably in consequence.” (Lyons Papers.) The Foreign Office thought that it had thwarted plans to seize violently the vessels and get them to sea.  (F.O., Am., Vol. 930.  Inglefield to Grey, Oct. 25, and Romaine to Hammond, Oct. 26, 1863.).]

[Footnote 1034:  F.O., Am., Vol. 929.  Marked “September, 1863.”  The draft summarized the activities of Confederate ship-building and threatened Southern agents in England with “the penalities of the law....”]

[Footnote 1035:  F.O., Am., Vol. 932, No. 1.  F.O. to Consul-General Crawford, Dec. 16, 1863.  The South, on October 7, 1863, had already “expelled” the British consuls.  Crawford was to protest against this also. (Ibid., No. 4.)]

[Footnote 1036:  Bonham. British Consuls in the South, p. 254.  (Columbia Univ.  Studies, Vol. 43.)]

[Footnote 1037:  Lyons Papers.  Russell to Lyons, Dec. 5, 1863.  Bullock, Secret Service, declares the British Government to have been neutral but with strong leaning toward the North.]

[Footnote 1038:  Hansard, 3rd Ser., CLXXIII, pp. 430-41, 544-50, 955-1021.  The Tory point of view is argued at length by Brooks Adams, The Seizure of the Laird Rams, pp. 312-324.]