Adams Family Civil War letters; US Minister to the UK and his sons.

London, September 14, 1861

Your last letter containing principally suggestions on the cotton matter, reached me this week. Also a bundle of newspapers. At present I am busy in another direction, so that I can’t yet take up the subject you recommend, but when my immediate bubbles have burst, or have expanded brilliantly, I mean to see what I can do here. Yet I confess I do not promise myself much from the effort. The main principles which you aim at demonstrating, that the American monopoly of cotton is in fact a curse both to America and to Great Britain, and its destruction might be made the cause of infinite blessings to the whole range of countries under the torrid zone, this principle is and has always been an axiom here. It needs no proof, for the cotton-merchants themselves are the most earnest in asserting it. The real difficulty with regard to cotton does not lie there. It is never the hope of a future good, however great, that actuates people, when they have immediate evils such as this want of cotton will produce right before their eyes. Nor should I answer any real question by proving that in two years the world will be infinitely benefitted by our war, when what they alone ask is whether meanwhile England will not be ruined. My own belief is that she will be ruined. This next winter will, I fear, be a dreadful one in this country in any case, nor will it be bettered if they make war on us. It is not as if the cotton manufacture alone suffered, but the tariff and the war have between them cut off the whole American trade, export and import, and the consequence has been a very bad season, with a prospect of frightful pressure in the winter. Whole counties will have to be supported by subscription.

This is my idea of the real cotton problem in this country. I have no doubt that the suffering interests will make a violent push to solve it by urging the Government to attack our blockade. But that is merely the last struggle of a drowning man. The Government will not do it, I think, and most Englishmen speak of the idea as preposterous. If they did, it would only complicate matters still more and I doubt whether even then they got their cotton. The winter over, the new era will dawn on us; that cursed monopoly will be broken and with it the whole power of the South; the slave-trade will then be ended and slavery with it, for the negro will be of no use; and we may expect sunnier days and renewed prosperity. This is the only view that I could advocate, and this, a generally acknowledged truth, is at best but small comfort to a starving people.

Meanwhile we are getting on in these parts. Lord Russell has just answered the Chief’s Note, by refusing to dismiss Bunch; acknowledging that he acted under instructions; justifying the step as one which implied nothing and in which even pirates might be admitted to join (i.e. the neutral flag matter); accepting the responsibility for its acts and the consequences; but at the same time declaring that the Ministry has no present intention of recognizing the Southerners, or of leaving their old position.

Of course Seward will revoke Bunch’s exequatur, but that need make no trouble. But it is by no means so clear what also may result from this. By a pure accident it was discovered that the British Government were secretly entering into connections with the insurgents, and they are now compelled to acknowledge that they have really been acting behind our backs. This is no pleasant acknowledgment to make, for evidently secrecy was their object, and the implication is direct against their good faith. They feel that they have been found out, and this for an Englishman is anything but pleasant. The affair will hardly end here.

I have been lately hunting up the newspapers. The other day I called on the editors of the Spectator and had a long talk with them. I mean to call on or write to Hughes, the Tom Brown man, who has vigorously taken our side. The Star too we are in with. Miss Martineau writes for the News and she is an invalid, not to be seen. I may very likely myself turn up some of these days in the lists. . . .

London, September 7, 1861

Yours in answer to mine written after the Bull’s Run arrived last night and I answer it at once. Whatever weight your arguments might have had on me in ordinary times, just now they are entirely superseded by the new turn things have taken since that letter was written. I could not go home now if I would, nor would if I could. Work has increased to such an extent since our return from our excursion that I am absolutely necessary here. Things have taken a turn which makes it every day more probable that we must sooner or later come into collision with England, and of course with that prospect I can’t leave the Chief and the family in the lurch. So you need not at present feel any alarm about my blundering home, as you call it, for I promise you fair warning so that you may be down at the wharf to receive me with the towns-people.

Warning you to preserve it a profound secret, I will disclose to you some of the horrors of the prison-house. Remember, your finger ever on your lip.

You may or may not be informed that among the first instructions to the Chief from the Department was one directing him to offer to the British Government the adhesion of the United States to the four articles of the Treaty of Paris. They related as you know to privateering, neutral goods, neutral flags and blockades. The Chief obeyed instructions and ever since we have been here this matter has dragged its slow length along through strange delays, misunderstandings, and discussions that in so simple a matter were very curious and inexplicable. At last the Chief acting under repeated instructions, broke through all objections and brought it to such a point that he and Mr. Dayton were agreed to sign the Convention on the same day at Paris and London, with Earl Russell and with Mr. Thouvenel. The day alone remained to be fixed.

Such was the condition of the negotiation when we went off on our excursion. Before we had returned a note was received from the Foreign Office suggesting a convenient day for signing, but transmitting also the draft of a declaration outside the treaty itself, which Earl Russell proposed to read before signing. It ran as follows:

“In affixing his signature to the Convention of this day between H. M. the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and the U.S. of A. the Earl Russell declares by order of H. M. that H. M. does not intend thereby to undertake any engagement which shall have any bearing direct or indirect on the internal differences now prevailing in the United States.”

On receiving this Note the Chief sat down and wrote an elaborate reply. It was in his best style and was certainly an admirable paper. After tearing the whole thing up and placing, as it seems to me, the British Government in a very awkward and untenable position, he ended by breaking off the negotiation until further instructions from home should command him to resume it. This Note Earl Russell has never replied to. A few days after he sent an answer which sounded to me rather like an apology than anything else, but in this Note he said that he should defer the answer to another time.

So that passed away, but only to give place to a greater excitement. Last Monday a special messenger arrived from Seward bringing the package taken on Mure, directed to Lord Russell. But besides this, which was legitimate, or might be, as coming from the British Consul at Charleston, a great quantity of letters were found on Mure, and among others one that very gravely compromised the British Government. It seems that the British and French Consuls at Charleston have acted in concert in making a treaty with Jeff Davis, and that treaty nothing less than this very Convention of Paris.

Here was a pretty to-do. Whatever we might suspect, there was no direct proof against England or France nor was it our interest to make a quarrel. So the Chief sits down and writes a long despatch to Lord Russell complimenting very highly the perfect confidence to which the British Government were entitled, and returning to them the bag of despatches. In another short Note he quoted the letter I have mentioned, and demanded the Consul’s recall.

To these Notes no answer has yet been returned. No doubt the graveness of the matter will make a Cabinet meeting necessary, and just now every one is out of town. Lord John however was in Paris on Sunday. Was it to consult with the French Government? You see what a dreadfully tight place they’re in and how inevitably the inference of bad faith of a very gross nature is against them.

These are the signs of the times and will no doubt alarm you enough. I am myself more uneasy than I like to acknowledge in my public letters, but hope we shall worry through yet. They won’t like the idea of our privateers here when it gets near them.

As for your recommendation to set up here as letter-writer to the Times, you know not what you say. In the first place, all that I know comes from my position and without it I were nothing. In the second place, there are few beings lower in the social scale in England than writers to newspapers. I should destroy myself beyond a hope of redemption.

No, I am very well as I am. I shall gradually make way and worry along. London does not satisfy all my longings, but enfin it is an exciting, hard-working life here, and the Chief and I are as merry as grigs, writing in this delightful old study all day long, opposite to each other. When I say delightful I stretch a point, but it is not bad. . . .

London, September 7, 1861

The feeling here which at one time was leaning our way has been very much changed by the disaster at Bull’s run, and by the steady operation of the press against us. Great Britain always looks to her own interest as a paramount law of her action in foreign affairs. She might deal quite summarily with us, were it not for the European complications which are growing more and more embarrassing. There are clouds in the north and in the south, in the east and in the west, which keep England and France leaning against each other in order to stand up at all. The single event of the death of Napoleon, perhaps even that of Lord Palmerston, would set everything afloat, and make the direction of things in Europe almost impossible to foresee. Hence we may hope that these two powers will reflect well before they inaugurate a policy in regard to us which would in the end react most fatally against themselves. . . .

Boston, September 3, 1861

I Persuaded Hale to insert a leading article about Russell in the Advertiser, which I send to Henry. The folly of our press in assaulting so savagely an agency so formidable as Russell has troubled me, and I’m glad to see that McClellan is wiser and spares a few civil words where they can be so useful. In fact I think McClellan is showing a tact and power of managing men which reminds me of Seward. For already, even at this distance, I see that he has moulded Russell, Wilson and Sumner like wax in his fingers. This is very important and I expect before this reaches you McClellan’s finger will have been seen and wondered at in the columns of the Times. . . .

Boston, August 27, 1861

Your tone is too dull in your letters and I feel for you sincerely in your Bull-run panic in England. Here things certainly look much better and people feel much better. The money market is easy and our exportation of breadstuffs seems likely to continue. Finally, this steamer will advise you that at least the government is thoroughly in earnest and that spies and traitors can no longer enjoy immunity. Nor is this all. Last week we were in a terrible panic and Monday was the blackest day I ever saw; but now the Government is working for its life. McClellan has the complete confidence of the people, government securities are rising, money is plenty, and finally the indications are strong that the confederates are being ground to atoms by the very weight of their defensive preparations. Bull-run was a blessing to us, for it startled the people from the conceit, arrogance and pride which must have proved their ruin. There is a universal feeling of confidence abroad, and England may refuse our loan if she chooses to; but I don’t think she will for seven and three-tenths per cent is too much of the flesh-pots not to be longed for, and our securities must drift to England. . . .

Quincy, Sunday, August 25, 1861

In my letter I begged you to go to work and try to make the two countries understand each other, for to my eye our foreign relations look very formidable. Why, when England and France are collecting fleets in our southern waters, do we all of a sudden hear rumors of a joint Mexican protectorate? It would be a blessing to mankind, but how will it complicate our relations? This cotton question is beginning to pinch and soon, if ever, if you have any desire to be useful to your country, backed by any energy, you can be useful where you are.

In my letter I asked you to touch England through her pocket. For some time past I have been turning over in my mind an elaborate article on this cotton supply question, but necessarily to be of any good to any one it must be directed more to English eyes than to ours. I touched on it in my last letter, and now I should like to hand it over to you, to see if you can do anything with it. I would write it for the Edinburgh or some really influential review or magazine, but to have effect it should appear in November, when the cotton-shoe will begin to pinch dreadfully, and I would force it into print by laying the plan of it before Mr. Motley or the Governor, or any other person likely to have influence on editors. That done throw your soul into your work and write as if you meant what you said. You always affect in writing too much calmness and quaint philosophy. That will come to you in time, but you do it now at the price of that fresh enthusiasm which is the charm of young writers. If you write now, write as if you were pleading a cause and too much interested to be affected. Throw your soul into your work and say what you feel. If you don’t check it, your mannerism will ruin your style in less than five years.

However now for the subject. The books you ought to review, or rather hang your subject on, are Mann’s Manual of Cotton, a book of about one hundred pages; the third annual report of the Manchester Cotton Supply Association and the numbers for May and June of the Cotton Supply Reporter of Manchester, and any new book dealing of the troubles in this country. If you accept the subject I have many curious facts collected, which I will send you at once. Start at once with the paradox that, instead of desiring to break this blockade, England should pray it might last for two years and if necessary assist in enforcing it, as if enforced its inevitable result must be, after one or at most two years of high prices, to forever break down the price of cotton to a reasonable profit over the cost of its cheapest possible production. This opens the whole question of supply. Two things are necessary to the production of cotton — an abundance of labor and a cotton soil. Look into the question of soil first. A semi-tropical heat, with a distribution of rain, are the only essentials. India has not the last and will not do; but Central and South America, all Africa (which is not desert), Australia and the Fiji Islands are better than our cotton states and need only organized labor. This with all the necessary material of ships, channels of trade, custom and experience, our planters have to such a degree that while they would furnish a fair supply of cotton on moderate terms, they could kill competition. Now is England’s chance to free herself from what has been her terror for years. In India, in Egypt in Abyssinia and in South Africa, there is an unlimited amount of cotton land of the finest quality and labor is abundant, costing almost nothing, but unorganized. Two years’ competition will organize it and once organized it can sell the South. In Australia, the South Sea islands and Central America, there is no labor and here the cooley question rises. Properly regulated the trade would be a blessing, for the Chinese amalgamates and California is in point as well as Dana’s reflections on Cuba. The books I have mentioned will give you all the information necessary on these points. This would bring cotton down to the cost, with a profit, of its production in cheap labor countries, say three pence a pound. But it would also lead to immense indirect advantages. As a missionary scheme Africa would be opened up and Livingstone’s discoveries made of use; slavery in America would be killed and the slave-trade closed for ever, as the African would be more useful at home than abroad. You will find in the first few pages of a new book called Social Statics more curious facts and reflections on England’s efforts at the suppression of the slavetrade, and this leads to the amount yearly expended in its suppression in this way, and which the consequent withdrawal of the fleet would save that government, and the amount England could thus afford to pay to promote the enterprise. Finally it would open the untold tropical fertility of Africa to the commerce of the world and these advantages cannot be estimated. Thus cotton would be produced on both sides of the equator all the year round in unlimited quantities, and England would have by two years’ suffering cut the meshes which she could never have broken.

On the other hand England breaks the blockade, or the South is victorious, England may then as well hug her chains, for she must wear them. The Southern confederacy will be aggressive and more slaves and more cotton will be the cry. In spite of England the slave-trade will flourish and their system will spread over Mexico and Central America. Then with the advantages of their organization, slave labor will win the day and England may look for competition in vain. The cotton monopoly will stifle her in the end. They will pretend in Parliament that the recognition of the Confederate States will not extend the area of slavery and all that humbug. Expose this, for it will be a victory of slavery. Recognition will mean war and the prostration at the feet of slavery of free society in America. England can do this if she chooses, but let her not deceive herself and let the results of her action be patent.

Finally the importance of this struggle cannot be overestimated. On the inviolability of the blockade and the consequent cotton pressure throughout the world hangs the destruction of American slavery, the eternal suppression of the slave-trade, the emancipation of England from a thraldom under which her great industrial interest has groaned for fifty years, and finally the civilization and awakening from Barbarism of the great continent of Africa. Even America, deprived of her monopoly, would reap advantage from the result, and this I tried to show in my article in the Atlantic of last April. Are not these results worth the agony of two years of half labor in Lancashire? Are they not worth fighting for? Can England hesitate as to which side her interest favors — as to what course she will adopt?

Here is a general sketch of my idea. I think it would be of service in England and if written as a man should write who is writing for his country at such a time as this, it would surely command attention. Any assistance I can give you I gladly will; but I earnestly beg you, even if this subject does not please you, to make yourself useful in your present position in some way of this kind. You can’t tell how much effect here a sympathetic word from England has now, and you can be of the greatest use if you only will. . . .

Boston, August 23, 1861

I did n’t get your letter of the 5th until the steamer of the 21st was gone, so I telegraphed to Mr. Motley at Halifax, as I did n’t want to have you come blundering home under the impression that I had been ordered off, and now I will at once answer your letter. If you insist upon coming home and getting a commission, of course you are of age and no one can gainsay you. I don’t favor the idea myself for reasons which I will give you presently; but still if you insist I shall be glad to aid you and will do so. In this war some things are getting clear every day and one is that volunteers won’t do, and another that haste makes waste. If you insist on going, Ritchie advises that you should get a commission in the regular army and go into that. It will be cut down at the end of the war and meanwhile you’ll escape the curse, nuisance and danger of volunteers. If your mind is made up I will apply for you and you can doubtless get your commission and be ready for a winter campaign. Meanwhile you’ll gain nothing but blunders by rushing ahead so like the devil.

So much for that; and now allow me to state some considerations which should prevent your coming home at all. I have three in my mind, and first one relates to myself. I am trying, as well as I may, to do what strikes me as my first duty at home. It is very hard for me to stay here, and no one gives me credit for doing it for any cause save fear; but the truth is the Governor is abroad in the public service, and property was never so difficult of management as it now is. . .. Under these circumstances I concluded very reluctantly I ought to stay at home if I could, and I think you ‘ll agree I was right.

Have n’t I difficulties enough without your piling up new ones? If you insist on this step, I have no election but, at any sacrifice, must go too. The reason is obvious, for while I am single and robust and John remains at home, the world cannot go into these domestic questions, and your coming home in a hurry to get a commission, while I remained in Boston, would be regarded as a most decided implication on my courage. You can’t but see this, and as for your taking a commission under me, it’s bad enough to have a hundred men you don’t care for to look after; but when it comes to looking after a brother and having your attention taken up by what may be occurring to him, it would be intolerable. Besides I expect drafting will have to begin before long and then I have made up my mind to go, and if I go, I think the family in supplying two out of four to the public service does enough, and you ought to stay at home.

In the next place I think decidedly you ought to stay abroad and remain with your father and mother. No one knows what may happen in these days—a foreign war is possible, even an English war — and difficulties you do not now see may any day spring up, and for one I think most decidedly that while times are so troubled our father and mother have got to an age when they ought not to be deserted abroad by all of their children.

Finally, the most weighty consideration to my mind I reserve for the last. Of course you make this a question of usefulness and duty. You are not particularly well fitted for the army and your object, is to be of service to your country. As for distinction and all that sort of thing, when the whole country is rushing into the army it is hardly the place to look for a chance. Where can you be most useful in this emergency? The answer is to my mind too clear to admit of discussion. The rush for commissions is tremendous and you can only get one by shoving somebody equally capable with yourself aside, and you can really do no service, if you get one, which would not be equally well done if you were away. Where you now are you are useful to the whole country and, like a coward, you want to run home because our reverses make the post abroad into which fortune has thrown you very uncomfortable. You fight our battle in England and let us alone to fight it here. There are men enough here, but there your place, if you leave it, must remain empty.

You’ll say, you can’t do anything and have no opening. What could a second lieutenant in an infantry regiment do that would be so immense? Is that a prodigious opening? Go to work at once in England with all your energy and force your way into magazines and periodicals there and in America, so that you can make yourself heard. For there is going to be difficulty about this blockade and much bad feeling, though, God grant, no blows. For heaven’s sake try to influence that and don’t throw yourself away by rushing into this mob of bruisers. Try to raise people up a little. Look into the cotton supply question and try to persuade the English that our blockade is their interest. If they raise it and transfer it to our coasts, they have the power to do so, but they ally themselves with slavery — give it the victory, give the lie to their own protestations and secure to the South for years with the advantage of their system of labor and production that monopoly of cotton under which England groans. If the blockade lasts and forces supply, England will purchase, at the price of one year’s suffering, freedom and plenty for ever. Touch England through her pocket and help your country that way.

Then write to the Atlantic of the way fighting America appears in English eyes, of her boasting and bragging, her running and terror; tell us of the pain she causes her children abroad and how foolish her angry threats sound, and help your country that way. Here is your field, right before your nose, in which you could be of real service, and you want to rush away to do what neither education nor nature fitted you for — what others could do as well or better, and get your head knocked off without doing the least good. If you have any energy use it where you are and where it can be of value. If you have n’t any keep out of the army. Talk of backing the Governor up in the Times in these days! We’ve got beyond all that, I hope. For God’s sake take a broader view and make yourself heard where a voice is wanted. Don’t talk of your connection with the legation to me; cut yourself off if necessary from it and live in London as the avowed Times correspondent and force your way into notice of the London press that way. Wake up and look about you and make yourself useful and don’t jog on in this cart horse way, or brag over your harness and wish yourself a blood-horse, with McClellan, instead of a jackass who can’t break his traces. There, I have blown my blast and have done, and you can do as you see fit. Free from the legation you could earn a living by your pen in London and be independent, busy, happy and eminently useful. If you come home you won’t be of the slightest use to any one, and you will have deserted your post. Now if you want a commission let me know and I’ll do my best for you; but have nothing to say to Horace Sargent. He is n’t the man and I know him.’

We’ve had a bad panic, but it seems to be over now and I think they were wise in refusing the battle.