Trent affair. News still travels slow abroad: “He [Seward] can have a war, if he wants one.”–Adams Family Letters, Charles Francis Adams, U.S. Minister to the U.K., to his son, Charles.

London, December 27, 1861

We watch the progress of events in America by the lurid glare of the passions that burn on this side of the ocean. The last news we have brings the Europa to Cape Race. The next will probably shew us your countenances on receiving the details. I have been so often deceived in my calculations of late that I do not pretend to foresee what the picture will be. You took the affair of the Nashville so amiably that perhaps you will laugh now. I have never before met with an instance so striking of provoking simplicity in a nation. You do not even resort to the most ordinary habit of judging of others by yourselves. Here is all Europe from end to end arrayed in opinion against you, and not a shade of suspicion that you may not be right yet rests upon your brows. Lord Stowell carries the day as if he were your legitimate ruler by the grace of God. It is unlucky for me that I was bred up in declared hostility to the arbitrary dogmas against neutral rights of that impersonation of Anglican egotism, so that I have never partaken of your security. A day or two will show whether the government will prove true to its ancient well-established principles, or whether under the paltry inducement of personal pique it will strike into a new path that will lead it neither to glory nor success. My own convictions still are that it will determine right. Thus far it has not shown a false color as I feared under the first popular impulse that it might. Yet I confess I dread the effect of the pressure to which it may be subjected. The result will soon be upon us. . . .

Apropos of this let me say a word about the notion you still seem to entertain that Mr. Seward means to bring on a war. Thus far I have always maintained that this was a mistake founded on a bad joke of his to the Duke of Newcastle at Governor Morgan’s dinner to the Prince of Wales. The Duke has however succeeded in making everybody in authority here believe it. Lord Lyons and Mr. Sumner have helped on the delusion at home. Yet I have no hesitation in my opinion, neither do I find that Mr. Thurlow Weed, with whom I compare notes, entertains any other. Be it as it may, now will be his chance. He can have a war, if he wants one. He has but to do what the Duke says he told him he meant to do, i.e. insult the British government in his answer, and he will have it to his heart’s content. In my opinion he will do no such thing. But if I am right, I trust that from that time no more reliance will be placed upon a poor pleasantry uttered after a hospitable entertainment, to a mischief-making guest. . . .

The people of Great Britain are just beginning to think that the Queen’s husband, though a German, was something of a person, after all. I am inclined to believe that they have not seen a royal personage equal to him since the days of William the Third. Had he lived the country would have felt more and more the influence of his presence. For parties are in process of disintegration, and personal qualities are growing more important. The old Whig dynasty will die out with Lord Palmerston, and the Tories will scarcely outlive Lord Derby. New issues will take the place of the old ones, just as they have done with us, but I hope for their sakes not to be attended with a similar convulsion. Yet just that is the thing they in their inmost hearts dread, and the poor people fancy they are going to avoid it by means of our calamities.