127 meditating a change: On July 29, 1862, Gladstone wrote to his wife that Palmerston “has come exactly to my mind about some early representation of a friendly kind to America, if we can get France and Russia to join.” Gladstone to Mrs. Gladstone, July 29, 1862, LWEG, ii, 75
127 sky-blue eyes: “Palmerston, whose eyes are sky-blue, she [Mrs. Beecher Stowe] calls dark-eyed.” Thomas Babington Macaulay in Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, ii, 367.
127 carefully dyed: Lytton Strachey, Queen Victoria (1921; New York: Harcourt Brace, 1978), 154.
127 improper relations: Blake, Disraeli, 434.
127 favor the South: “American Topics in England,” The New-York Times, Thursday, August 7, 1862, 4; The New-York Times, Saturday, August 9, 1862, 2.
127 “as a diminution”: Gladstone’s characterization of Palmerston’s position—EHA, 824.
127 “great competitor”: John Bigelow to Seward, April 17, 1863, RAL, i, 641.
127 “It is”: Philip Guedalla, Palmerston, 1784-1865 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1927), 464.
127 Intervention … would be popular: There were, it is true, many in England who sympathized with the North. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin had been a sensation in England as well as America; Queen Victoria was said to have wept over the story of Uncle Tom. The Times, the organ of the upper classes, was hostile to Lincoln; but the newspapers read by the merchants and lawyers of the provinces were in many instances sympathetic to the Union. The mute approbation of the mercantile and professional classes, however, was as nothing compared to the passionate avowals of many workingmen. In Manchester and Blackburn, workers with anxious wives and hungry children passed resolutions in favor of the preservation of the United States and the policy of Lincoln. Theirexpressions of sympathy touched both George Eliot, who paid tribute to the workers in her novel Daniel Deronda (1876), and Lincoln himself, who said that the workers “know that the destruction of the American Republic-whatever else it may mean-means no good to the common people.” Scholars have in recent years questioned the pervasiveness of sympathy for the Union cause among the workers; but James M. McPherson has argued persuasively that the “revisionist interpretation overcorrects the traditional view”—Sir Edward Cook, Delane of The Times (London: Constable, 1916), 131-32; The New-York Times, Wednesday, July 30, 1862, 2; Thursday, July 31, 1862, 3; George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1995), 124; and McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 550-51.
128 Red Ensign: MCCW, 238.
128 saltpeter: James McPherson, Battle Cry of freedom, 390.
128 anti-Union sentiment: John Lothrop Motley to Seward, June 18, 1864, SD NARA T157/ROLL 6.
128 “regarded the Washington Government”: EHA, 832, 831.
128 Commemoration Day: “English and American Aristocracy,” The New-York Times, Wednesday, July 30, 1862, 3.
128 “Johnny” Russell: “Intervention,” The New-York Times, Thursday, August 7, 1862, 4; EHA, 844, 868.
128 Early in August: Palmerston to Queen Victoria, August 6, 1862, in Jones, The Union in Peril, 150, 258 n. 23.
128 took the extraordinary step: EHA, 844.
128 “monkeys”: New-York Times, Tuesday, July 29, 1862, 1.
128 “Ha!”: EHA, 842.
129 First one: Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 2.
129 John Pope: Williams, Lincoln and the Radicals, 120, 122-23.
129 scared: So his calls “for reinforcements, for supplies, for guidance” on August 25, 1862, suggest—Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 2.
129 Where was Lee?: Ibid.
129 “melt away”: Ibid., 15.
129 slumped in a chair: Ibid., 11.
129 A cold rain: Browne, The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln, 521; Allan Nevins, The War for the Union: War Becomes Revolution, 1862-1863 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960), 181, 183.
129 All felt: REL, ii, 300-01, 309, 312-16.
130 sulk in his tent: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 525.
130 “a villain”: Ibid.
130 Ordered to assist Pope: Halleck to McClellan, August 27, 1862, MOS, 510.
130 The order was repeated: Halleck to McClellan, August 28, 1862, in Nevins, The War for the Union, 183.
130 “move out and fight”: “not a moment must be lost in pushing as a large a force as possible towards Manassas….”—Ibid.
130 Pope begged: See ibid., esp. note 28. Historians disagree in their estimate of McClellan’s motives during Second Manassas. T. Harry Williams argued that McClellan’s decision to withhold Franklin and Sumner was reasonable—Lincoln and His Generals, 163. Allan Nevins painted a darker picture of McClellan at this time—The War for the Union, 180-84. Lincoln himself, who was in some ways in a better position to judge than historians, believed that McClellan was deliberately “trying to break down Pope”—Williams, Lincoln and His Generals, 163. See also Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 4-6.
130 A newspaper correspondent: Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 8.
130 “He has acted badly”: ALH, vi, 23. See also W. D. Kelley, Lincoln and Stanton: A Study of the War Administration of 1861 and 1862 (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1885), 72.
130 “atrocious … unpardonable”: Nevins, The War for the Union, 185. Lincoln told Gideon Welles that “there has been a design, a purpose in breaking down Pope, without regard of consequences to the country. It is shocking to see this and know this; but there is no remedy at present. McClellan has the army with him”—Williams, Lincoln and His Generals, 163. Nevertheless, Lincoln let the matter drop. In November he told Orville Browning that he suspected no one’s good faith in the débâcle of Second Manassas other than Fitz-John Porter, whose fidelity he thought open to question—Orville Hickman Browning, Diary, November 29, 1862, in Browning, The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, ed. Theodore Calvin Pease and J. G. Randall, 2 vols. (Springfield, IL: Illinois State Historical Library, 1925-33), i, 589.
130 possessed the confidence: Kelley, Lincoln and Stanton, 71; Browne, The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln, 519.
130 skillful in managing the affections: Kelley, Lincoln and Stanton, 70-71.
130 artfully laid at the feet: See McClellan to Stanton, June 28, 1862, MOS, 425.
130 The American Consul: Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 40.
130 English warships: Ibid.
131 “last card”: Alien C. Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 171.
131 “I will play it”: Ibid.
131 public speaker: Bamberger, Count Bismarck, 39; Kissinger, “The White Revolutionary: Reflections on Bismarck,” D, vol. 97, no. 3 (Summer 1968), 890-91.
131 “You like speaking”: Golo Mann, The History of Germany Since 1789, trans. Marian Jackson (New York: Frederick Praeger, 1968), 157.
131 “cum grano salis”: Gedanken, i, 276.
131 “It is not to Prussia’s”: Gesammelten Werke, x, 140; Berliner Allgemeine Zeitung, October 2, 1862. The speech was not transcribed by an official stenographer; it was, however, reproduced with what Bismarck called “tolerable accuracy” in the newspapers—Gedanken, i, 283. Bismarck later reversed the order of the words and in January 1886 spoke of “blood and iron,” the more familiar formulation—James Wycliffe Headlam, Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1899), 166.
132 “the Government was actuated”: “Foreign Intelligence,” The Times, Thursday, October 2, 1862, 7; Bamberger, Count Bismarck, 69.
132 spray of olive: Headlam, Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire, 167.
132 “words of a very ominous description”: “Foreign Intelligence,” The Times, Monday, October 6, 1862, 8; see also “Foreign Intelligence,” The Times, Saturday, October 4, 1862, 9.
132 “witty ruminations”: Gedanken, i, 284.
132 even Lord Palmerston: Did Lincoln expect Palmerston to blanch? On this question, see Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End
of Slavery in America, 253-54.
132 “I cannot imagine”: Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 334.
132 McClellan’s personal intention: Must remain a mystery. On June 9, 1862, McClellan wrote to his wife: “The secretary [Stanton] and President are becoming quite amiable of late; I am afraid that I am a little cross to them, and that I do not quite appreciate their sincerity and good feeling…. How glad I will be to get rid of the whole lot”—MOS, 402 (emphasis added). Whether the last sentence refers to his departure from the service or to some darker intention is not clear. The language McClellan held, in his letter of August 9, 1861, is scarcely less ambiguous: “As I hope one day to be united with you for ever in heaven, I have no such aspiration [to dictatorship].”Yet: “I would cheerfully take the dictatorship and agree to lay down my life when the country is saved. I feel sure that God will give me the strength and wisdom to preserve this great nation …. I feel that God has placed a great work in my 85.
132 “to march upon”: Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 120.
132 “taking my rather large”: Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 38; Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 120.
133 With him, in the presidential carriage: DGW, i, 70-71; Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 124.
133 The President startled: Donald, Lincoln, 362.
133 “military necessity”: ALH, vi, 121-22.
133 meeting of the Cabinet: ALH, vi, 123-26.
133 done nothing more: The bill Lincoln signed in April 1862 freeing slaves in the District of Columbia did not interfere with slavery in particular states.
133 slaves states of the border: Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 34; Hans L. Trefousse, “Unionism and Abolition: Political Mobilization in the North,” ORTW, 105-08.
133 “corn-hog-whiskey”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 31, 493.
133 four hundred Irish: The New-York Times, August 5, 1862, 8.
134 prophecies: See Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 16, 53, 82, 135-36, 254.
134 “I felt”: ALH, vi, 128.
134 “as the last measure”: Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 136.
134 “supported by military”: Ibid., 137.
134 Lincoln was impressed: ALH, vi, 130.
134 Were emancipation perceived: Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 254.
134 “be considered our last”: Francis Bicknell Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1867), 22 (emphasis in original).
134 “the Pope’s bull”: Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 169.
134 intrigue and menace: Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 1.
134 “Things” he said, went: ALH, vi, 128.
134 McClellan was stronger: Kelley, Lincoln and Stanton, 74-75; Ellis Paxon Oberholtzer, Jay Cooke, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: G. W. Jacobs, 1907), i, 203-05.
135 The draft of the Emancipation: Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipatim Proclamation, 144. Guelzo raises doubts about the claim by David Homer Bates that Lincoln composed the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation in the cipher room of the War Department telegraph office—Ibid., 143-44.
135 Early in September: A. K. McClure, Abraham Lincoln and Men of War-Times: Some Personal Recollections of War and Politics During the Lincoln Administration (Philadelphia: Times Publishing, 1892), 167; ALH, vi, 21.
135 “greatest trial”: Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 164.
135 Secretary Stanton: Kelley, Lincoln and Stanton, 69-70.
135 a wavering voice: Nevins, The War for the Union, 186.
135 mildness of temper: Kelley, Lincoln and Stanton, 70.
135 “No, Mr. Secretary”: Browne, The Every-Day Life of Abraham Lincoln, 519.
135 “I made a solemn”: Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 169.
135 Jüterbogk: Gedanken, i, 283.
136 “Et après”: Gedanken, i, 284-85.
136 “Your Majesty”: Gedanken, i, 285.
136 “obligated”: Ibid.
136 “At your command”: Ibid.
136 “merry”: Gedanken, i, 286.
136 send them home: BMS, 58.
137 existing revenue laws: Norman B. Judd to Seward, February 2, 1864, SD NARA M44/ROLL 13.
137 “gap”: The technical questions raised by Articles 99 and 109 of the Prussian constitution are intricate and dull—see BGE, 54-55.
137 no Stuart king: In the seventeenth century each of the principal Continental powers maintained a large standing army; England, an island nation, did not. Charles II, the penultimate Stuart king, began to form a regular army; but at his death in 1685 it consisted only of about 7,000 infantry and 1,700 cavalry and dragoons—a number scarcely sufficient to protect Whitehall, and far fromthe number needed to awe a London mob. Charles’s brother, James II, the last of the Stuart kings, enlarged this force, and on the eve of his downfall was able to bring some 40,000 men into the field, exclusive of militia. In the same era, the Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia, then a state scarcely even of the second rank, was able to support 30,000 men in arms and idleness; and the army of Louis XIV of France included more than 300,000 regular soldiers, a force larger than any seen on the Continent since the days of the Roman Empire.
137 cheers: “Foreign Intelligence,” The Times, October 16, 1862, 10.
137 ceased to exist: Norman B. Judd to Seward, February 2, 1864, SD NARA M44/ROLL 13.
12. “God Has Decided the Question”
138 Biebrich: LRW, iii, 173. Extracts from Tristan und Isolde had, indeed, been performed before this date, but not the opera as a whole.
138 “a girl of genius”: LRW, iii, 297.
139 “passionate tenderness”: LRW, iii, 299.
139 Schopenhauer: George Santayana, Egotism in German Philosophy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916), 110-13.
139 “The last song”: LRW, ii, 434.
139 “bad, bad, bad”: LRW, ii, 434 (emphasis in original).
139 “Being-no-more”: LRW, ii, 476, 435.
139 “We may go”: LRW, ii, 435 (emphasis in original). The connection between Wagner’s music and German nationalism has been traced more recently by Joachim Köhler in Richard Wagner: Last of the Titans, trans. Stewart Spencer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 316-17, 532-33. For a different conception of the relation of Wagner’s music to German nationalism, see Roger Scruton, “Wagner: Moralist or Monster?” NC, vol. 23, no. 6 (February 2005).
139 Adolf Hitler: Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, 115-15.
140 Heine foresaw: Isaiah Berlin, “Nationalism,” in Berlin, Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 336; Berlin, “The Life and Opinions of Moses Hess, in ibid., 250; and Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 119.
140 “that within a very few”: “The Civil War in America,” The Times, Saturday, September 13, 1862, 9.
140 “got a very complete smashing”: Palmerston to Russell, September 14, 1862, LLJR, ii, 349.
140 “would it not be time”: Ibid.
140 attending Queen Victoria: Court Circular, The Times, Wednesday, September 10, 1862, 6.
140 “clear”: Russell to Palmerston, September 17, 1862, LLJR, ii, 349; Ephraim Douglass Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, 2 vols. (New York: Russell & Russell, 1925), ii, 38.
140 England should instantly: Russell to Gladstone, September 26, 1862, in Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, ii, 40.
140 “incarnate creation”: LBD, iv, 390.
140 the second rank: Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy (1869), in English Literature: The Victorian Period, ed. George Morey Miller (New York: Scribner’s, 1930, 1933), 439.
141 “My dear Russell”: Palmerston to Russell, September 23, 1862, LLJR, ii, 350.
141 a memorandum: LLJR, ii, 351.
141 The
day was warm: John M. Bloss, “Antietam and the Lost Dispatch,” in War Talks in Kansas (Kansas City, MO: Franklin Hudson, 1906), 83-84.
141 some cigars: Ibid., 84.
141 “Special Orders, No. 191”: MOS, 572-73; Williams, Lincoln and His Generals, 165-66.
141 In a short time: MOS, 572-73.
141 careless: Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 114-15.
141 customary caution: Ibid., 105-06.
141 “not less than”: Ibid., 106.
141 mystified: REL, ii, 410.
142 “Every body”: Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 193.
142 “The men are loading”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 540.
142 banners: REL, ii, 400-01.
142 stood ready: REL, ii, 405-06.
142 “Please”: ALH, vi, 145.
142 a Confederate straggler: REL, ii, 390.
142 ruining his army: REL, ii, 411.
142 But for the cigar: Sears, Landscape Turned Red, 67-68.
143 “Gentlemen”: Salmon P. Chase, Inside Lincoln’s Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase, ed. David Donald (London: Longmans, Green, 1954), 149-50.
143 “I think the time has come now”: Ibid.
143 “an instrument”: Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, 167.
143 “God”: Ibid., 172.
143 “I know”: Chase, Inside Lincoln’s Cabinet, 149-51.
143 Two minor changes: Donald, Lincoln, 375.
143 issued: “A Proclamation by the President of the United States … A Decree of Emancipation,” The New-York Times, Tuesday, September 23, 1862, 1.
144 “never poured”: Kenneth M. Stampp, “Lincoln and the Strategy of Defense in the Crisis of 1861,” JSH, vol. 11, no. 3 (August 1945), 297.
144 an odd man: HLL, 411.
144 “Mr. Lincoln”: HLL, 420.
144 one hundred and eighty pounds: HLL, 471.
144 “Well, I cannot”: Donald, Lincoln, 358.
144 Liquor: HLL, 96, 421.
144 “flabby and undone”: Benjamin P. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography (New York: Modern Library, 1968), 37.
144 “I never cared”: HLL, 411, 474.
144 “money sense”: HLL, 139, 279 (emphasis added).
144 the law itself: HLL, 485.
144 Shakespeare and the Bible: Lincoln to James H. Hackett, August 17, 1863, SW, 1859-1865, 493; HLL, 420, 777.
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