A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War

by Amanda Foreman

  On February 17, 1859, the grand ballroom at Willard’s was specially decorated with an Anglo-American theme. Flags and mirrors lined the walls, and two large portraits, one of George Washington, the other of Queen Victoria, hung majestically from the ceiling. A representation of Saint George and the Dragon, made of sand, covered the floor. It was, however, the lavish banquet that created the most excitement. The chef had fashioned the Napiers’ coat of arms out of spun sugar, as well as “dolphins in a sea of rock candy, and ices in every form, from a pair of turtle doves to a pillared temple.”3

  The Napiers made their appearance at 9:45 P.M. to the strains of “God Save the Queen” and were greeted with loud cheers and applause. Their evening dress was decidedly old-fashioned according to American tastes. Boldly resisting the trend among men for black evening attire, Lord Napier wore a royal blue jacket over a white waistcoat. Lady Napier’s dress was also characteristically idiosyncratic: rather than trying to compete with her wealthy friends, she had chosen to wear a white silk gown decorated with tulle and edged in black lace. “You did not hear ladies say of her, as of so many others: ‘What a splendid dress—how much did it cost!’ ” commented the New York Times reporter. “When will women learn that to beauty and perfection of attire, cost is but a small essential?” The gallant journalist was clearly ignorant of the sartorial revolution that had taken place during the previous year. On the inside, every woman of means was wearing one of W. S. Thompson’s new steel crinoline cages; on the outside, they were experimenting with the new range of colors made possible by the invention of synthetic dye. (Even Queen Victoria was not immune to the changes in fashion and had worn mauve to the wedding of her eldest daughter, Princess Victoria, to Prince Frederick of Prussia in January 1858.) Lady Napier’s elegant but austere dress reflected none of these developments and yet still managed to cause a sensation, not only on account of its simple design but also because amid the unavoidable clash of magentas and fuchsias the pure white cast all other colors in the shade.

  The enmity that had begun to poison social life in Washington went into suspension during the ball. The crush was so great that dancing had to take place in relays, the guests jamming the bars and corridors while they waited their turn to enter the ballroom. Decorated veterans from the Mexican War chatted sociably with bankers from New York, and the broad vowels of Mississippi intermingled with the clipped tones of Massachusetts. The reigning queens of society made a rare collective appearance: Mrs. John Slidell and Mrs. Rose Greenhow rotated around each other like brilliant stars, their orbits passing close by but never quite touching. It was said by Mrs. Greenhow’s rivals that she had adorned the British legation in much the same way as Lord Nelson’s mistress, Lady Hamilton, had adorned his ship.4

  Among the few who were missing from the ball was President Buchanan, who remained at home with a head cold. William Lowndes Yancey of Alabama was also indisposed; this was perhaps fortunate, since his booming voice could overpower a brass band—particularly when warming to his twin obsessions of slavery now and slavery forever. Charles Francis Adams, the congressman-elect from Massachusetts, had also stayed away, despite his family’s long association with British-American diplomacy.pr.2 Adams despised small talk, hardly drank, and never danced. Not even the disappointment of his wife, Abigail, could overcome his reluctance to attend.

  One of the highlights of the evening came when Lord Frederick Cavendish, second son of the seventh Duke of Devonshire, and the Hon. Evelyn Ashley, step-grandson of the former prime minister Viscount Palmerston, walked onto the dance floor. There were frissons among the debutantes as the two bachelors repaid many debts of hospitality accrued during their tour of America by dancing into the small hours of the morning. However, it was only in retrospect that the Napier ball became famous—not for its exalted guests or its lavish banquet, but as the last time Northerners and Southerners socialized together before the war.

  —

  Lord Napier’s replacement as the senior British diplomat in America, Lord Lyons, arrived in Washington at the beginning of April 1859. Even by English standards, the forty-two-year-old Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons was an eccentric character. Any display of emotion—including his own—made him uncomfortable. Women and servants tended to suffer from an excess of it, in his opinion, which made him dread close contact with either. He was reluctant to look people in the eye and knew the shoes and stockings of his servants far better than their faces. Though not a killjoy, Lyons had never developed a taste for alcohol, and smoking made him ill; this was less of a handicap in Europe, where his witty and erudite conversation made him a favorite of hostesses.5 But in Washington, his lack of interest in cigars and whiskey simply accentuated his strangeness. Napier did his best for Lyons during the short time they overlapped at the legation. With Congress in recess and mass departures from Washington already under way, he rushed to introduce Lyons to potential allies in the Senate before they scattered to their home states. But William Seward left Washington in late April to spend a couple of weeks with his family before embarking on an extended tour of Europe. Seward’s early departure prevented Napier from fostering any meaningful understanding between his friend and his successor.

  Ill.1 The Napier Ball at Willard’s Hotel, Washington, D.C., February 17, 1859.

  “Lord Napier has exerted himself very much to assist me in every way,” wrote Lyons gratefully in mid-April, “and has done all that was possible to start me well both socially and politically.”6 Privately, he was relieved that his education in the complexities and nuances of American politics had begun during the quiet season. Lyons had never previously heard of the term “Mason-Dixon Line,” yet every person he met described himself as living either above or below this boundary. Napier explained to him that it was the cultural as well as geographical divide between the North and South.pr.3 Although America was one country, Lyons would discover that it was two distinct regions whose ties were straining over the question of slavery. Above all else, warned Napier, a British minister must not become embroiled or be thought to take sides in this fractious debate.

  Napier used the term “minister” because there were no ambassadors or embassies in Washington. In the mid-nineteenth century there were only three British embassies abroad: Paris, Vienna, and Constantinople. The rest of the world had to make do with second-tier “legations,” which functioned in the same way, only with less pomp and a smaller budget. These were headed by a representative with the longwinded title of “British envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary,” or “minister” for short. Naturally, there was a hierarchy; the British minister to the United States ranked lower than his colleagues in Russia and Spain, but above those in Greece, Denmark, and Bavaria. Languishing below the legations were general consulates, which were reserved for countries of unproven stability in places like South America.7

  The British legation was the largest and most important of the diplomatic missions in Washington. With the exception of the French legation, the other twenty-one were insignificant establishments. The nine Latin American ministers were too impoverished to receive visitors; the Austrian legation consisted of one minister living in a hotel, and the Italian minister loathed the capital so much that he lived in New York.8 The burdens placed on the British minister were also greater than those faced by his foreign counterparts. Lyons was not only the conduit between London and Washington but also Her Majesty’s guardian over the two and a half million British expatriates living in America.9

  The tumultuous history between the two countries made every British minister a soft target for American politicians. Lyons was sent to Washington with the same set of instructions and warnings that had accompanied each of his predecessors. He was to improve relations between the two countries and must be prepared to accept that the kindness bestowed on him in private would be matched by untrammeled hostility in public. Lyons was also to expect a regular whipping from the White House and Congress.10

  Lyons was used to loneliness. “
A trained diplomatist is reserved while appearing open,” wrote a nineteenth-century journalist; “one who has the air of telling you everything, and yet tells you nothing; who seems to go with you all the way, yet advances never an inch beyond the line he has drawn for himself.”11 This described Lyons perfectly. He was tactful and discreet to the point of parody; outside his work he had few interests that could not be met by a comfortable chair and a warm fire. Many years later the Paris police compiled an intelligence report on Lyons that consisted of one line: On ne lui connait pas de vice (“He has no known vices”).12 His most regular female correspondents were his two sisters, particularly his youngest and favorite, Minna, who was married to the Duke of Norfolk. Lyons’s horror of “scenes” made him so reticent that for years he put up with the same breakfast every morning rather than risk upsetting his valet with a request for something different.13

  Lyons had hesitated to accept the Washington post for fear that he might prove to be a disappointment. Though the eldest of four children, he had always suffered in comparison to his younger brother, Edmund. Richard was portly, nonathletic, and incapable of stepping onto a boat without being sick. In contrast, Edmund was charismatic, adventurous, and loved the sea, like their father, the 1st Lord Lyons. The latter had forged a successful double career in the Royal Navy and the Foreign Office, which led to becoming a rear admiral in 1851 and receiving a peerage in 1856.

  Richard Lyons had entered the diplomatic service in 1839 after graduating from Oxford with a fourth-class degree and no other prospects. For five years he worked as an unpaid attaché for his father, who was serving as the British minister in Athens. In his sixth year, he was promoted to paid attaché, but there he remained long after his father moved on to more interesting posts. For thirteen years Richard worked quietly and efficiently, hoping that the Foreign Office would take notice of him. Finally, he could no longer bear his life at the conflict-riven legation or put up with the humiliation of being the oldest attaché in the service, and in 1852 he announced his intention to resign. His protest resulted in a rapid transfer to Dresden, though with the same rank.

  By 1857, Lyons was serving in the Florence legation, though still only ranked twenty-fourth out of the twenty-six secretaries in the service. This was a significant improvement in his fortunes, yet one that his father thought long overdue. Admiral Lyons’s beloved Edmund had been killed in 1855, in the waning months of the Crimean War, while carrying out his father’s order to attack the batteries of Sebastopol. The admiral’s health declined rapidly after Edmund’s death, but during his last years he continued to exert himself on Richard’s behalf, arguing his merits to former colleagues.14 His efforts were vindicated after Lyons surprised himself and others with his elegant resolution of a dispute between the Neapolitans and the Sardinians before it escalated into an international controversy. Overnight, he became the Foreign Office’s preferred man for difficult situations. Admiral Lyons died in November 1858, a few days after learning of his son’s promotion to the Washington legation.

  Lord Lyons would have arrived in Washington much sooner had not the settlement of the will detained him in England until mid-February 1859. There was a further delay caused by the Foreign Office’s parsimonious attitude to travel; Lyons had to cross the Atlantic on an inferior ship that burned through its coal halfway through the voyage. The crossing took a stomach-churning six weeks to complete instead of the usual ten days, sheer torture for a man who was terrified of water.15

  Lyons’s doubts about his fitness for his new post were shared by President James Buchanan, who resented the implication that Washington ranked next to Florence in importance—especially since 80 percent of Britain’s cotton supply came from America. The textile industry was one of the most important in Britain, and the cotton trade translated into a business worth $600 million a year, providing employment and financial security in England for more than 5 million men and women. This alone, believed Buchanan, merited a “first-rate man whose character is known to this country.”16 Lord Lyons’s courtesy call to the American legation in London before he sailed had unwittingly confirmed the U.S. administration’s suspicion that the British Foreign Office was sending a nonentity. “Sensible,” “unobtrusive,” and “short” were the legation’s chief impressions of Lyons.17

  Buchanan’s misgivings about the quality of his new British minister were mild compared to Lord Lyons’s judgment of his new place of residence. Washington was not a city at all, in his opinion. “It is in fact little more than a large village,” he wrote to Lord Malmesbury, the Conservative foreign secretary, a month after he arrived, “and when Congress is not sitting it is a deserted village.”18 The original political and strategic reasons for building the nation’s capital by the Potomac River had been obsolete for decades. The War of 1812 between Britain and America had demonstrated that the city could be invaded just as easily as New York. The Potomac had seemed to promise a thriving water trade, but the river proved too shallow for modern transports. Washington had been the geographic center when the Union consisted of only thirteen states; the country’s expansion to thirty-three now placed it on the periphery.

  Washington lacked the literary salons, studios, universities, and conservatories that distinguished the capitals of Europe. The theaters relied on touring productions from New York; the shops were small and understocked. There was no commercial or manufacturing district such as those found in the new industrial cities, though the levels of violence, drunkenness, and corruption were not dissimilar. There were few cultural amenities save for the Smithsonian Institution, which had been established in 1846 with a bequest from the British scientist James Smithson. (Strangely, Smithson had never even visited the United States, let alone Washington.) The majority of the city’s permanent residents were civil servants, lawyers, or saloon keepers. When Charles Dickens traveled to the capital in 1842, he thought the city had “Magnificent Intentions” but little else. It had “spacious avenues, that begin in nothing and lead to nowhere” and “streets [a] mile long, that only want houses, roads, and inhabitants.”19

  Fifteen years later, these intentions remained unfulfilled. “Most members of Congress live in hotels or furnished lodgings,” wrote an English tourist. “In consequence, there is no style about the mode of living.… The whole place looks run up in a night, like the cardboard cities which Potemkin erected.”20 The boundaries of Washington were still ragged and ill defined. A disagreement between the government and a local landowner had stranded the unfinished Capitol on top of a steep hill at the edge of town, facing the wrong way. Washington’s smart district lay two miles in the opposite direction, across marshland and noisome swamps that were breeding grounds for malaria in the summer. Elsewhere, the roads were still dirt tracks that frequently ended in piles of rubble or were interrupted by pastures. A pedestrian was in danger not only from one of the city’s unregulated hackney cabs, but also from being run over by wandering livestock. “On nine days out of every ten, the climate of Washington is simply detestable,” complained a British journalist. “When it rains, the streets are sloughs of liquid mud. In a couple of hours from the time the rain ceases, the same streets are enveloped in clouds of dust.”21

  The real political center of the city was Willard’s Hotel. Just a five-minute walk from the White House, this was where the “wire pullers,” the information seekers (and sellers), and those looking for employment seized the opportunity to mix with the temporary occupants of the Capitol. Here, on an average day, twenty-five hundred people passed through its doors. “Heavy persons, whom you have never seen before, with moist hands, eyes luminous with intoxicating beverages, break through the crowd and wildly shake your hand,” observed an anonymous journalist. “They convict you of having met them before somewhere. You say you have been there, whereupon you are instantly saddled with an acquaintance who grasps your hand fifty times a day, and whom you heartily wish at the—Antipodes.”22 The hotel’s regulars downed cocktails in one of its many saloons or puffed
themselves hoarse in the cigar bar, rendering real tourists appalled. “The tumult,” complained one English traveler, “the miscellaneous nature of the company, the heated, muggy rooms,” the revolting globs of tobacco spat on every surface, “despite a most liberal provision of spittoons,” made it “by no means agreeable to a European.”23

  Ill.2 The arrival of President Lincoln at Willard’s Hotel, February 23, 1861.

  The British legation was established in Rush House at 1710 H Street, only a block from Lafayette Square, where the White House, the State Department, and many of Washington’s grandest mansions were clustered. Rush House was large enough to accommodate the chancery, the business end of the legation, and was sufficiently imposing to impart an air of consequence to diplomatic functions. Lord Lyons’s arrival created a stir similar to the excitement described by Jane Austen after the leasing of Netherfield Hall. “The gossips at once set about predicting that the newcomer would capitulate to the charms of some American woman, and speculation was already rife as to who would be the probable bride,” wrote Mrs. Clay, the wife of Senator Clement C. Clay of Alabama.24

  It was soon discovered, however, that Lyons, with his little round face and droopy eyes, was neither a Mr. Bingley nor a Mr. Darcy. Mrs. Clay received a “formidable card to the first Senatorial dinner given by the newly arrived diplomat” and decided this was her chance to collar him for a Southern belle. “I soon became emboldened to the point of suggesting to him the possibility of some lovely American consenting to become ‘Lyonised.’ His Lordship’s prompt rejoinder and quizzical look quite abashed me, and brought me swiftly to the conclusion that I would best let this old lion alone.”25 Lyons had quoted Tristram Shandy at Mrs. Clay, but his arcane reference to Uncle Toby’s habit of sleeping “slantindicularly” not only passed over her head but made her wonder whether the new British minister was quite sane.