President Lincoln vignettes in F.B. Carpenter's "Six Months at the White House"

[David Lockmiller]

A well-deserved compliment paid to Secretary of State William Seward by author Burton Hendrick in his book Lincoln's War Cabinet at page 213:

Of all Seward's threats, his masterpiece was delivered in 1863, when the so-called "rams," under construction by the Lairds of Liverpool as Confederate raiders, were nearing completion. The Alabama, secretly built by the same firm a year before, was wreaking vast destruction at that time on American merchant shipping. These new ships were much more powerful, and should they be permitted to "escape" from the Liverpool docks, in the manner of the Alabama, the American flag would have vanished from the seas. Charles Francis Adams, under instructions from Seward, had been bringing pressure for months on Lord John Russell, presenting unmistakable evidence that the ships were Confederate property and demanding their detention by the British government. Mr. Adams, in September 1862, presented his protest, concluding an eloquent state paper with the famous words that if the rams became part of the Confederate navy, "it would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war." This declaration, and the apparent British backdown in face of it, have become one of the legends of the Civil War. The fact is that Russell, five days before this menacing note was received, had ordered the seizure of the ships, had stationed British war vessels in Liverpool Harbor to prevent their escape - with orders to sink them, if the attempt were made - and, soon after, purchased them and made them part of the British Navy. It was not Adams's threat, but the more subtle maneuvering of Seward that had persuaded the British government to change its policy.