4. Foreign Policy and England.

The question, what was his influence upon foreign policy, is more difficult than the general praise bestowed upon it might lead us to expect; because, though he is known to have exercised a constant supervision over Seward, that influence was concealed from the diplomatic world.

For at least the first eighteen months of the war, apart from lesser points of quarrel, a real danger of foreign intervention hung over the North.  The danger was increased by the ambitions of Napoleon III. in regard to Mexico, and by the loss and suffering caused to England, above all, not merely from the interruption of trade but from the suspension of cotton supplies by the blockade.  From the first there was the fear that foreign powers would recognise the Southern Confederacy as an independent country; that they were then likely to offer mediation which it would at the best have been embarrassing for the President to reject; that they might ultimately, when their mediation had been rejected, be tempted to active intervention.  It is curious that the one European Government which was recognised all along as friendly to the Republic was that of the Czar, Alexander II. of Russia, who in this same year, 1861, was accomplishing the project, bequeathed to him by his father, of emancipating the serfs.  Mercier, the French Minister in Washington, advised his Government to recognise the South Confederacy as early as March, 1861.  The Emperor of the French, though not the French people, inclined throughout to this policy; but he would not act apart from England, and the English Government, though Americans did not know it, had determined, and for the present was quite resolute, against any hasty action.  Nevertheless an almost accidental cause very soon brought England and the North within sight of a war from which neither people was in appearance averse.

Neither the foreign policy of Lincoln’s Government nor, indeed, the relations of England and America from his day to our own can be understood without some study of the attitude of the two countries to each other during the war.  If we could put aside any previous judgment on the cause as between North and South, there are still some marked features in the attitude of England during the war which every Englishman must now regret.  It should emphatically be added that there were some upon which every Englishman should look back with satisfaction.  Many of the expressions of English opinion at that time betray a powerlessness to comprehend another country and a self-sufficiency in judging it, which, it may humbly be claimed, were not always and are not now so characteristic of Englishmen as they were in that period of our history, in many ways so noble, which we associate with the rival influences of Palmerston and of Cobden.  It is not at all surprising that ordinary English gentlemen started with a leaning towards the South; they liked Southerners and there was much in the manners