Learning Something New Every Day! What, Yet Again? Queen Victoria's Neutrality!

The Son Rise Morning Show will be airing a "best-of" program on Monday, May 25, Memorial Day, so I've moved my "Learning Something New Every Day" post up. On Tuesday, May 26, I'll post on Saint Philip Neri and Saint John Henry Newman. 

On Monday, June 1, we'll start a new series on the Son Rise Morning Show, with a topic Anna Mitchell suggested to me. More to come on that next week!

I saw a story about Queen Victoria's government not taking any side the U.S. Civil War and looked into the topic further. There is a connection to my second "Learning Something New Every Day" story because the U.S. Minister to the Court of Saint James in the United Kingdom during the Civil War era was Henry Adams's father, Charles Francis Adams, Sr. Henry was with his father in England.

Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman's "A Dangerous Neutrality" begins where Susan Hanssen's article about Henry Adams in 1912 began, with plans for a trans-Atlantic journey:

Charles Francis Adams, distinguished scion of Boston and son of John Quincy Adams, had heard the stories since childhood about his father’s and grandfather’s long, frightening trip to France in 1778. The surging, implacable Atlantic had tried to drown the emissaries even before their mission began. Now, in May 1861, it took little more than a week to cross the pond, and it was Charles’s turn to duel England as his country’s representative in London.

He had little time to lose; a major diplomatic crisis was unfolding. After the fall of Fort Sumter, President Lincoln blockaded the 3,000-mile coastline between Virginia and Texas. Foreign ships could no longer enter any port in the South, upon penalty of forfeiting both ships and cargo if caught. Yet Lincoln had not anticipated what to do if the Europeans objected to this interference of their profitable trade. And they did.

While Adams was en route, the United Kingdom declared neutrality with the result that the nation would trade with both the United States of America and the Southern states, under the name of the Confederate States of America:

Queen Victoria proclaimed neutrality in the American Civil War on the advice of her ministers. At a stroke, she granted parity to the Confederacy and the United States. Each belligerent could contract for munitions in English ports, sell goods confiscated from their enemy and purchase ships as long as they were not obviously outfitted for war.

The rest of article recounts different reactions to this neutrality in newspapers. Many in the United States of America were more than a little angry with the UK and accused it of hypocrisy over the issue of slavery. Hoffman describes Adams's reaction once he had arrived in England:

Charles Francis Adams reacted to England’s Neutrality Proclamation with uncanny calm. Renowned for his polite, stiffly formal manners, he adopted the cool tone set by Lord John Russell. It allowed him to relay unpleasant tidings, Adams observed, in “the most indifferent, businesslike, mechanical way, as if it was a matter of course and not particularly important.”

The unrecognized Confederate States of America nevertheless sent envoys seeking more than trade, according to this "story of diplomacy" from The National Museum of American Diplomacy, "The Trent Affair: Diplomacy, Britain, and the American Civil War":

Confederates, however, rejoiced in the news. The declaration was an opening to lobby European powers for full recognition. Recognition would allow the Confederates to borrow from international lenders to fund the war. Because of this, sending diplomatic envoys to Britain and France became a top priority for southern ambitions.

This particular diplomatic crisis for Charles Francis Adams came when a ship of the United States fired upon a British ship ("two shots across the bow") to seize two envoys from the CSA. Queen Victoria's government was not amused:

The British were furious at the United States for blatantly disrespecting their sovereignty. Prime Minister Palmerston and Foreign Secretary Earl Russell erupted in a fury at a cabinet meeting. Palmerston shouted, “I don’t know whether you are going to stand this, but I’ll be damned if I do!”

All Charles Francis Adams could do was send letters to Secretary Seward, letting him know of the hot temperature in London. Unable to speak on behalf of the U.S. government without instructions from Seward, Adams could only wait, watch, and avoid meetings with Lord Russell.

With counsel from the deathly-ill Prince Consort, the British demanded an apology and that the two envoys from the South, James Mason and John Slidell, be released to a British ship and allowed to proceed to England. While the apology the Queen's government received was couched mostly as disavowing Wilkes's actions, Mason and Slidell did proceed to England. 

As for Wilkes, he was placed on the retirement list at the end of the year, but later returned to service. While he was known as "a distinguished explorer, author, and naval officer"[33], "he also had a reputation as a stubborn, overzealous, impulsive, and sometimes insubordinate officer".[34] Treasury officer George Harrington had warned [Secretary of State] Seward about Wilkes: "He will give us trouble. He has a superabundance of self-esteem and a deficiency of judgment. When he commanded his great exploring mission he court-martialed nearly all his officers; he alone was right, everybody else was wrong."[35] He had taken a decision--entirely on his own--in this case that provoked a diplomatic, financial, and almost a military crisis (the British had troops in Canada, of course).

Cooler heads like Adams and even Prince Albert prevailed, however. 

Image Credit (Public Domain): Charles Francis Adams, 1861

Image Credit (Public Domain): Queen Victoria, 1860