Authors: John Boyko
The Massachusetts men marched the rest of the way, often pelted with rocks and taunts. Lincoln was relieved to see them, but unnerved by the fact that no other troops followed. He stood on the roof of the White House and through a telescope saw Confederate tents amassing across the Potomac on the towering hills of Lee’s Arlington estate. He gazed southward and could see Confederate flags snapping on Alexandria’s rooftops. After a number of tense days and nights, regiments from New York and more from Massachusetts made it to Washington. Their arrival provided a welcome respite from his anxieties, but Lincoln still awaited his army.
As for Seward, although his enthusiasm and ambition often caused him to overstep his responsibilities, his primary job was to deal with foreign governments. Nonetheless, his most urgent task became stopping Jefferson Davis from achieving his ultimate goal—independence. If Davis’s newly established country were to survive and thrive, he would need Lincoln to allow the Confederacy to stand; but with little hope of that, and with war coming, he needed official recognition from other countries, most importantly from Britain and France. He addressed the Confederate Congress on
April 29, two weeks after Fort Sumter’s fall, and noted that he had sent commissioners to negotiate a process of peaceful separation with Seward and Lincoln but that they had been lied to and rebuffed. Davis then spoke of three commissioners who were at that point en route to negotiate with European leaders, seeking official recognition of the Confederacy. He said he expected recognition to come quickly, and concluded with his belief in the rightness of the South’s cause: “With a firm reliance on that Divine Power which covers with its protection the just cause, we will continue to struggle for our inherent right to freedom, independence, and self-government.”
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There were valid arguments for international recognition. The Confederacy had a functioning government, a constitution, an army, and about nine million people, if one included the approximately three and a half million slaves, all spread over 750,000 square miles of definable, defensible territory. If recognition came, the Confederacy could legally negotiate loans, buy arms from neutral countries, and put ships on the ocean with the right to search and seize enemy craft. Further, recognition would destroy Lincoln’s insistence that there was no Confederacy and thereby weaken the foundation upon which he hoped first to fight and then to re-unify and rebuild. Davis had to have recognition, and Lincoln and Seward could not let it happen. It was in that struggle to stop the recognition of the Confederacy that Seward’s desire to save the Union met his long-held beliefs in America’s commercial expansionism, and at that intersection of dreams, goals and strategic planning lay Canada.
Davis could count. He realized that the North’s vast superiority in population, gold, and industrial capacity meant that the Confederacy needed help. His bargaining chip was cotton. While France and others purchased southern cotton, fully one-sixth of Britain’s working population was tied to the textile industry. By 1860, 85 percent of the cotton upon which that industry relied came from the American south.
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The three-man commission that Jefferson had sent to Europe under the leadership of William Yancey focused on Britain, France and Russia, and offered an uninterrupted cotton supply in return for official recognition of the Confederate States of America.
Neither Seward nor Davis would learn until long after the war that Britain, and to a lesser extent other European powers, had taken actions to protect themselves from being cut off from supplies of southern cotton. Britain stockpiled it, rebuilt many of its looms to use a different type of fibre, bought cotton from other sources, and then during the war managed to sneak an estimated one- to one-and-a-half million bales of cotton through the Northern blockade, a good deal of it through Halifax.
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While the British economy was hurt and thousands suffered unemployment and hardship as a result of the slowing and closure of many mills, it was not crushed. The British government was certainly influenced, but not blinded, by a desire to renew a steady flow of Southern cotton. So-called King Cotton was important, but not to the extent Davis hoped or Seward feared.
With his goals for the Confederacy and Britain set and his long-term designs on Canada still clear, Seward’s bluffing, threatening, manipulating tactics came into play. At one moment he appeared to be a ruthless warmonger and at the next an inspired peacemaker. At his frequent dinner parties, no one quite knew when he was joking or stating policy. Through it all, he was Lincoln’s most valuable asset in dealing with Britain, Europe and Canada.
On April 16, just days after Sumter’s fall, Seward’s fears were realized when a motion was introduced in the British House of Commons supporting the recognition of the Confederacy. Foreign Secretary Russell managed to have debate delayed. But he also met unofficially with Confederate agents. Days later Davis announced that he would issue letters of marque to any sailor with a vessel who applied, thereby affording legal sanction for a navy of privateers charged with the task of disrupting Northern trade and, more important, running Lincoln’s porous blockade. Things were happening quickly and nothing was going as Seward had hoped. He needed to stop reacting and regain the initiative.
Seward knew about the military preparations in Canada and heard rumours of Canadians not only sympathizing with the Southern cause but acting to
help it by harbouring ships and supplying arms. He needed to know more. At an April 12 cabinet meeting, Seward was given permission to appoint former Massachusetts congressman George Ashmun as a secret agent. For ten dollars a day plus expenses, Ashmun was asked to travel to Canada on a three-month mission to determine Canada’s views on the war and to influence those views while also checking on material support for the South.
Ashmun was qualified for the job, as he knew Canada well and had just the month before visited Quebec City as a representative of the Grand Trunk Railway. While there, he had met with Governor General Sir Edmund Head. Having served as governor general for five years, Head was accustomed to dealing with the tangle of inoperable parts that was Canada’s government and the coiled spring that was its neighbour. Head worried about Seward. He had written to London regarding his suspicion that Seward would seek to indemnify the United States by annexing Canada or by waiting to take Canada once the problems with the South were solved.
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But Head was a cautious, professional man and so kept those suspicions to himself when meeting with Ashmun.
Ashmun had also met with a number of Canada East’s business elite and with political leaders such as Montreal financier, railway man, Macdonald’s minister of finance and future Father of Confederation, Alexander Galt. The two had spoken mostly about Canada’s desire to protect the Reciprocity Treaty, which had made steps toward free trade between Canada and the United States.
Ashmun left for Quebec City in mid-April, but while he was en route the
New York Herald
heard what he was up to and in a front-page article characterized his activities as a propaganda mission.
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Lyons, the British minister in Washington, went to Seward and insisted that his sending agents to Canada was an insult to Anglo-American relations, and demanded that Ashmun be recalled. Seward assured Lyons that there were no others like him in Canada and that Ashmun would indeed be asked to return home.
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Communications were such, however, that Seward’s note to Ashmun was a long time arriving. Even after receiving it, he remained in Canada as a private citizen doing much as he would
have done had his intent not been discovered. He met again with Head and members of the cabinet, including Galt and the increasingly powerful leader of Canada East, George Étienne Cartier. Ashmun left shortly afterward with nothing of value to report to Seward, who had been embarrassed by the entire debacle.
Shortly after having seen Ashmun, Governor General Head learned of rumours regarding talk of Canada’s annexation, complete with plans as to how it would come about and the work to be done once it was accomplished. According to reports, Seward was purchasing Canadian newspapers to promote the idea, believing that, once they were persuaded of the benefits of annexation, Canadians would ask to become Americans: Canadian businessman Hamilton Merritt would become the Canadian territorial governor in control of Canada, and New Brunswick’s Israel Andrews would lead a Maritime territory.
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The rumours were rubbish but nonetheless resulted in Head’s requesting additional military support for the attack that he believed to be inevitable.
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From London, Palmerston responded with an order to send another three regiments to Canada armed with modern artillery. A garrison was moved from China to British Columbia, and Queen Victoria issued a rare statement noting, “it is of great importance that we should be strong in Canada.”
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British Rear Admiral Sir Alexander Milne was told to bring an additional eight vessels to the American coast to prepare for possible engagement with the Americans in the defence of Canada. Milne reported that the British fleet was superior in both the quality of its ships and armaments, and in sheer numbers, to anything the Americans could throw at it. He developed a plan whereby the ships blockading Southern ports would be destroyed, and attacks on American commercial shipping would ensue.
Palmerston realized that the additional troops and naval preparations were still wholly inadequate should the United States invade, but these measures were meant to dissuade Lincoln and Seward while encouraging Canadians to increase their efforts at defending themselves.
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There was also a feeling among most in the British cabinet that, should war actually
come, it was the navy’s to win. Either that or, if Canada ended up falling to American troops, it could be retaken or negotiated for after the war’s end.
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While these preparations were being made, the British consul in Chicago informed Head that a group of men had entered Canada to buy weapons for Illinois regiments and noted that he hoped the weapons would be supplied. American consul J.E. Wilkins added that arms sales such as this would help Canada maintain good relations with the United States, and threatened that if the arms were not forthcoming the western states would reconsider their practice of shipping western grain through the St. Lawrence.
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Head ignored the threat and on April 21 told local authorities that there must be no arms sales. The next day, a gentleman named Amaziah Jones arrived in Head’s office at the behest of New York governor, E.D. Morgan, and politely asked to purchase fifty thousand Canadian rifles for use by New York regiments. The day afterward, the governor of Ohio asked to buy weapons. Head again refused to sell the arms, stating that it was against Canadian law to take arms meant for the Canadian militia out of the country and, besides, the militia barely had enough weapons as it was.
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Seward heard of the attempted purchases and wrote to Lyons demanding an explanation as to why they were not allowed. With a copy to Head, Lyons responded with a stern letter to Seward asking him again to keep agents out of Canada and repeated Head’s insistence that no surplus weapons existed and that even if they did, none would be sold to either the North or South.
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Attempts to procure arms from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia had met with similar rejections. Head’s strong stance and the cooperation of Canadian businesses who could have turned a profit but, for the time being at least, refused to involve themselves in the American war, demonstrated to Seward and the Northern press that Canada would not simply do as America wished.
Meanwhile, Palmerston and his cabinet struggled to determine Britain’s official position with respect to what had clearly become a civil war. The cabinet decision was finally announced on May 13, 1861, with Queen Victoria’s Proclamation of Neutrality. Britain would stay out of
the fight. Further, the proclamation brought the Foreign Enlistments Act of 1818 into effect, meaning that no British subject, including Canadians, could legally enlist in the Union or Confederate armies or navies, or help outfit either side with armaments of any kind. The proclamation also named the Confederate States of America as a belligerent. This designation was important. According to international law and precedent, a belligerent could arrange loans from foreign governments and get fuel and supplies from neutral ports, including those in Canada. France, Russia and Belgium quickly followed with their own similarly worded declarations of neutrality.
Seward was outraged and made no attempt to hide it. Massachusetts senator and chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Charles Sumner, later wrote that he had never seen Seward “more like a caged tiger, or more profuse of oaths in every form that the English language supplies, than when prancing about the room denouncing the Proclamation of Belligerency, which he swore he would send to hell.”
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The proclamation flew in the face of everything that Seward had been diplomatically demanding, and on which Lincoln had been politically insisting; for, in naming the Confederacy as a belligerent, Britain was stating that there was indeed a Confederate States of America with its own army and navy. The Proclamation was rightly interpreted as just short of official recognition.
Britain’s action was doubly insulting to Seward in that Palmerston had not even waited for the new American minister to London, Charles Francis Adams, Jr. to arrive and present his credentials. As the son and grandson of presidents, and having spent his formative years in British schools, Adams was uniquely qualified for his job, but the timing of the announcement had not allowed him to do it. He had arrived in Liverpool on the morning the proclamation was released and found out about it through reading a newspaper while on a train to London.