[Footnote 1171:  Mason Papers.  Slidell to Mason, March 13, 1864.]

[Footnote 1172:  This came through a letter from Donoughmore to Mason, April 4, 1864, stating that it was private information received by Delane from Mackay, the Times New York correspondent.  The expected Southern victory was to come “in about fourteen days.” (Mason Papers.)]

[Footnote 1173:  Ibid.]

[Footnote 1174:  Mason Papers.  Lindsay to Beresford Hope, April 8, 1864.]

[Footnote 1175:  Ibid., Lindsay to Mason, May 10, 1864.]

[Footnote 1176:  July 18, 1864.]

[Footnote 1177:  Mason Papers.]

[Footnote 1178:  Sample letter in Mason Papers.]

[Footnote 1179:  Mason Papers.  Mason to Lindsay, May 29, 1864.]

[Footnote 1180:  Ibid., Lindsay to Mason, May 30, 1864.]

[Footnote 1181:  Editorials of May 28 and 30, 1864, painted a dark picture for Northern armies.]

[Footnote 1182:  Mason Papers.  Sample letter, June I, 1864.  Signed by F.W.  Tremlett, Hon. Sec.]

[Footnote 1183:  Ibid., Tremlett to Mason, June 2, 1864.]

[Footnote 1184:  State Department, Eng., Vol. 86, No. 705.  Adams to Seward, June 2, 1864.]

[Footnote 1185:  June 3, 1864.]

[Footnote 1186:  Mason Papers.  Mason to Slidell, June 8, 1864.  Mason wrote to Benjamin that Disraeli had said “to one of his friends and followers” that he would be prepared to bring forward some such motion as that prepared by Lindsay. (Mason’s Mason, p. 500.  To Benjamin, June 9, 1864.) Evidently the friend was Hunter.]

[Footnote 1187:  Mason Papers.  Slidell to Mason, June 9, 1864.]

[Footnote 1188:  Ibid., Mason to Slidell, June 29, 1864.]

[Footnote 1189:  Walpole, History of Twenty-five Years, Vol.  I, Ch.  VI.]

[Footnote 1190:  Mason’s Mason, p. 507.  Mason to Benjamin, July 14, 1864.]

[Footnote 1191:  Mason Papers, July 16, 1864.]

[Footnote 1192:  Ibid., To Mason, July 17, 1864.]

[Footnote 1193:  The Index, July 21, 1864, p. 457.]

[Footnote 1194:  Mason Papers.  Spence to Mason, July 18, 1864.]

[Footnote 1195:  Richardson, II, pp. 672-74.  Benjamin to Mason, Sept. 20, 1864.]

[Footnote 1196:  July 21, 1864.]

CHAPTER XVI

BRITISH CONFIDENCE IN THE SOUTH

After three years of great Northern efforts to subdue the South and of Southern campaigns aimed, first, merely toward resistance, but later involving offensive battles, the Civil War, to European eyes, had reached a stalemate where neither side could conquer the other.  To the European neutral the situation was much as in the Great War it appeared to the American neutral in December, 1916, at the end of two years of fighting.  In both wars the neutral had expected and had prophesied