Not long after the Sepoy rebellion was quelled, Prince Albert (S589)
died suddenly (1861). In him the nation lost an earnest promoter of
social, educational, and industrial reforms, and the United States a
true and judicious friend, who, at a most critical period in the Civil
War, used his influence to maintain peace between the two countries.
After his death the Queen held no court for many years, and so
complete was her seclusion that Sir Charles Dilke, a well-known
Radical, suggested in Parliament (1868) that her Majesty be invited to
abdicate or choose a regent. The suggestion was indignantly rejected;
but it revealed the feeling, which quite generally existed, that "the
real Queen died with her husband," and that only her shadow remained.
In the spring of the year 1861, in which Prince Albert died, the
American Civil War broke out between the Northern and Southern
States. Lord Palmerston, the Liberal Prime Minister, preferred to be
considered the minister of the nation rather than the head of a
political party. At the beginning of the war he was in favor of the
North. As the conflict threatened to be bitter the Queen issued a
proclamation declaring her "determination to maintain a strict and
impartial neutrality in the contest between the said contending
parties." The rights of belligerents--in other words, all the rights
of war according to the law of nations--were granted to the South
equally with the North; and her Majesty's subjects were warned against
aiding either side in the conflict.
The progress of the war caused terrible distress in Lancashire, owing
to the cutting off of supplies of cotton for the mills through the
blockade of the ports of the Confederate States. The starving
weavers, however, gave their moral support to the North, and continued
steadfast to the cause of the Union even in the sorest period of their
suffering. The great majority of the manufacturers and business
classes generally, and the nobility, with a few exceptions,
sympathized with the efforts of the South to establish an independent
Confederacy. Most of the distinguished political and social leaders,
in Parliament and out, with nearly all the influential journals, were
on the same side, and were openly hostile to the Union.[1]
[1] Lord John Russell (Foreign Secretary), Lord Brougham, Sir John
Bowring, Carlyle, Ruskin, and the London Times and Punch espouses the
cause of the South more or less openly; while others, like
Mr. Gladstone, declared their full belief in the ultimate success of
the Confederacy. On the other hand, Prince Albert, the Duke of
Argyll, John Bright, John Stuart Mill, Professor Newman, Lord
Palmerston, at least for a time, and the London Daily News defended
the cause of the North. After the death of President Lincoln, Punch
manfully acknowledged (see issue of May 6, 1865) that it had been
altogether wrong in its estimation of him and his measures; and
Mr. Gladstone, in an essay on "Kin beyond Sea" in his "Gleanings of
Past Years," paid a noble tribute to the course pursued by America
since the close of the war.
Late in Autumn (1861) Captain Wilkes, of the United States Navy,
boarded the British mail steamer Trent, and seized two Confederate
commissioners (Mason and Slidell) who were on their way to England.
When intelligence of the act was conveyed to President Lincoln, he
expressed his unqualified disapproval of it, saying: "This is the very
thing the British captains used to do. They claimed the right of
searching American ships, and taking men out of them. That was the
cause of the War of 1812. Now, we cannot abandon our own principles;
we shall have to give up these men, and apologize for what we have
done."
The British Government made a formal demand that the commissioners
should be given up. Through the influence of Prince Albert, and with
the approval of the Queen, this demand was couched in most
conciliatory language. Slidell and Mason were handed over to Great
Britain, and an apology was made by Secretary Seward.
During the progress of the Civil War a number of fast-sailing vessels
were fitted out in England, and employed in running the blockade of
the Southern ports, to supply them with arms, ammunition, and
manufactured goods of various kinds. Later, several gunboats were
built in British shipyards by agents of the Confederate government,
for the purpose of attacking the commerce of the United States. The
most famous of these vessels was the Alabama, built expressly for the
Confederate service by the Lairds, of Birkenhead, armed with British
cannon, and manned chiefly by British sailors.
Charles Francis Adams, the American Minister at London, notified Lord
Palmerston, the Prime Minister, of her true character. But Palmerston
permitted the Alabama to leave port (1862), satisfied with the pretext
that she was going on a trial trip.[1] She set sail on her career of
destruction, and soon drove nearly every American merchant vessel from
the seas. Two years later (1864) she was defeated and sunk by the
United States gunboat Kearsarge. After the war the Government of the
United States demanded damages from Great Britain for losses caused by
the Alabama and other English-built privateers.
[1] The Queen's advocate gave his opinion that the Alabama should be
detained, but it reached the Foreign Secretary (Lord Russell) just
after she had put out to sea.
A treaty was agreed to by the two nations; and by its provisions an
international court was held at Geneva, Switzerland (1872), to deal
with the demands made by the United States on Great Britain. The
court awarded $15,500,000 in gold as compensation to the United
States, which was duly paid. One very important result of this
decision was that it established a precedent for settling by
arbitration on equitable and amicable terms whatever questions might
arise in future between the two nations.[1]
[1] This treaty imposed duties on neutral governments of a far more
stringent sort than Great Britain had hitherto been willing to
concede. It resulted, furthermore, in the passage of an act of
Parliament, punishing with severe penalties such illegal shipbuilding
as that of the Alabama. See Sheldon Amos's "Fifty Years of the
English Constitution, 1830-1880."