Bluff, Bluster, Lies and Spies: The Lincoln Foreign Policy, 1861-1865
336
Bluff, Bluster, Lies and Spies: The Lincoln Foreign Policy, 1861-1865
336eBookDigital Original (Digital Original)
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Overview
In the early years of the Civil War, Southern arms won spectacular victories on the battlefield. But cooler heads in the Confederacy recognized the demographic and industrial weight pitted against them, and they counted on British intervention to even the scales and deny the United States victory. Fearful that Great Britain would recognize the Confederacy and provide the help that might have defeated the Union, the Lincoln administration was careful not to upset the greatest naval power on earth.
Bluff, Bluster, Lies and Spies takes history buffs into the mismanaged State Department of William Henry Seward in Washington, DC, and details the more skillful work of Lords Palmerston, Russell, and Lyons in the British Foreign Office. It explains how Great Britain’s safety and continued existence as an empire depended on maintaining an influence on American foreign policy and how the growth of the Union navy—particularly its new ironclad ships—rendered her a paper tiger who relied on deceit and bravado to preserve the illusion of international strength.
Britain had its own continental rivals—including France—and the question of whether a truncated United States was most advantageous to British interests was a vital question. Ultimately, Prime Minister Palmerston decided that Great Britain would be no match for a Union armada that could have seized British possessions throughout the Western Hemisphere, including Canada, and he frustrated any ambitions to break Lincoln’s blockade of the Confederacy.
Revealing a Europe full of spies and arms dealers who struggled to buy guns and of detectives and publicists who attempted to influence opinion on the continent about the validity of the Union or Confederate causes, David Perry describes how the Civil War in the New World was determined by Southern battlefield prowess, as the powers of the Old World declined to intervene in the American conflict.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504040747 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Casemate Publishers |
| Publication date: | 08/16/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 336 |
| Sales rank: | 344,489 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Bluff, Bluster, Lies and Spies
The Lincoln Foreign Policy, 1861â"1865
By David Perry
Casemate Publishing
Copyright © 2016 David PerryAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4074-7
CHAPTER 1
THE ENIGMA AND THE MYSTERY
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
Sun Tsu, The Art of War, second century BCE
War and the threat of a "world wrapped in flames" can bring out the best and the worst in those expected to win the war and secure an honorable and lasting peace. During the American Civil War, guns and diplomacy needed to work skillfully together to achieve that objective. West Point graduates of high and low standing manned the guns while two college men, William Henry Seward and Judah Philip Benjamin, tried to work foreign relations in their favor. As secretary of state, Seward worked for Abraham Lincoln, and Benjamin for Jefferson Davis. Although Seward claimed that he was an enigma to himself, Benjamin was a brilliant Jewish lawyer who burned all of his personal papers after the war. We know him professionally though his official dispatches as secretary of war, and then secretary of state. We know him personally through the words of those who were close to him. Varina Davis was kind in her assessment, but The Richmond Examiner was not so generous. Personally, he remains a mystery. Seward sought publicity, and Benjamin ran from it. However, Jefferson Davis may be the least understood and most maligned of them all. As with both Seward and Benjamin, the newspapers were merciless in their criticism. Sometimes this was justified, and sometimes not. Davis suffered the same fate and thus remains an enigma and a "leader without a legend."
William Henry Seward, the "wise macaw", was a complex and entertaining man who enjoyed Havana cigars, swore like a company sergeant and worked with an impulsive speed that sometimes frustrated people like British minister Richard Lyons and thus impacted U.S. foreign relations during the American Civil War. Many who knew Seward commented that he also wrote quickly. Those letters in his own hand marked "personal and confidential" sometimes display impatience, and always show a barely legible script that suggests Seward was often in a hurry. If he couldn't be president, he would secure his place in history as the de facto president who saved the union and showed the seasoned diplomats of Europe "how it's done".
Henry Seward was a small man who always stood out. In the Frances Carpenter painting showing the Lincoln cabinet at the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, the scene is one of black broadcloth and serious faces. One figure, however, stands out. William Henry Seward sits right in the middle of the canvas wearing yellow pants that visually force everyone else into the background.
The Union representative in London, Charles Francis Adams, confirmed Seward's impulsivity. "Mr. Seward was never a learned man. In the ardor with which he rushed into affairs, the wonder is that he acquired what he did. To his faculty of rapid digestion of what he could read, he was indebted for the attainments he actually mastered." Adams and his sons were consistently inconsistent in their estimation of the talents of William Henry Seward. That inconsistent estimate of Seward is a common theme in the letters of those who knew him. That contradiction is a hazard through which the historian must navigate to understand the real man, and the true motivation behind him.
After battlefield losses and bread riots at home, Jefferson Davis also received little praise for his work. Many considered him cold, inflexible and difficult to work with. The same stress that etched those creases into the second life mask made of Lincoln also made Davis look older than he was. His right eye was covered with a cataract and he slept badly. "[Judah Benjamin and Varina Davis] shared a dangerous knowledge that must never be revealed to anyone: that the president could go for days unable to function, brought down into deep depression by war news and bedridden with neuralgia, causing him throbbing headaches and stomach pains." Davis and Lincoln took the heavy toll on young life personally. Nevertheless, the estimates of the administrative skills of Davis and Benjamin were consistently negative. Both men worked long hours together. Where Lincoln knew how to delegate, Davis took on a level of administrative responsibility that almost killed him. So, where Seward and Lincoln had both supporters and critics, Davis and Benjamin were more consistently condemned. With all four men, however, criticism made them focus more on their respective goals. Lincoln wanted to win on the field of battle and diplomacy. Davis wanted help from Europe so his Confederacy would be left alone to live as it wished.
But what else do we know of these men? The basic facts of the life of William Henry Seward are simple. He was born in Florida, New York on May 16, 1801. He was one of five children who grew up with black servants employed by his parents. Henry studied law at Union College and was admitted to the bar in 1821. A successful lawyer by 1826 earning almost $5,000 per year, Seward tired of the detail and the pace of jurisprudence. He was always in a hurry, and he preferred the excitement of politics and dealing directly with people. He was a small man with reddish hair, an unexpected husky voice and eyes that looked right through you and tried to read your mind. When he married Frances Miller, the daughter of his law partner, he moved and spent the rest of his life in Auburn, New York. He and Frances had five children. Seward served in the New York State senate and was elected governor in 1838. As senator and governor, he favored such progressive policies as prison reform and strong public education as then advocated by Horace Mann in Massachusetts.
Henry, an anti-slavery Whig, was elected U.S. senator from New York in 1849. In 1850, he acknowledged that slavery was protected by the Constitution, but claimed that there was a "higher law" that superseded the Constitution. Seward defended runaway slaves in court, and may have allowed his home in Auburn to be used as a hideout for slaves accessing the underground railroad. He joined the newly-formed Republican party in 1855, and looked forward to his expected nomination for president in 1860. Anticipating his election, he had already written his senate resignation speech. His loss to Lincoln shocked the political establishment, and humbled Seward to an extent that his optimistic personality had never experienced before. He was crushed, angry and confused. However, Seward accepted the most prestigious of cabinet posts, secretary of state. When not in Washington, Seward lived in a spacious house in Auburn, New York. His library was large with many volumes on diverse subjects. Henry Seward, as he was known by friends, was a smart man. Strangely, numbered pictures of kings, queens, politicians and powerful people lined the staircase wall leading to the second floor. Seward's collection contained 132 numbered pictures. Most of the people in the collection directly or indirectly represent every country with which the United States had a diplomatic relationship. It is revealing that Seward called those in the collection his "tormentors".
Among the images were the photographs of Lord Richard Lyons, British representative in Washington and Lord John Russell, foreign secretary. Initially, neither man trusted Seward; both expressed unkind words about him during the early days of the Civil War.
It is also interesting to note that Seward numbered the picture of Abraham Lincoln as "66", and the portrait of himself as "66 1/2". Does this suggest the relationship was a close personal one designed to mean that the secretary was almost the president? Was he the de facto president that Gideon Welles claimed that Seward considered himself to be? There may be some truth to both suggestions. In some respects, he was a surrogate president, friend, advisor, rival and enigma to Abraham Lincoln. Seward served Lincoln and Andrew Johnson as secretary of state until he retired in 1869 upon the election of Ulysses Grant. His counterpart in the Davis government was Judah Philip Benjamin, sometimes referred to by historians as the "Confederate Kissinger".
Judah Philip Benjamin may arguably be considered one of the most mysterious personalities of the entire Civil War period. Unlike Seward, we only know Benjamin vicariously through the eyes of those who knew and worked with him. William Seward left a long paper trail for historians to follow, but Benjamin left a short one. "I have never kept a diary or kept a copy of a letter written by me. No letters addressed to me by others will be found among my papers when I die ... for I have read so many American biographies which only reflected the passions and prejudices of their writers, that I do not want to leave behind me letters and documents to be used in such a work about myself."
After the war, Confederate archives were hidden in barns and attics. Attempts were made to sell them through their "owner", Col. John Pickett, to the federal government. However, when the representative of the U.S. government, William Henry Seward, was approached about purchasing what was left of the Confederate records, the secretary asked to see the archives first. Although Pickett never showed up with those documents, they were eventually sold to the U.S. for $50,000. Referred to as the "Pickett Papers", these records contain some official dispatches and correspondence of Benjamin both as secretary of war and secretary of state. Official dispatches are those which the sender was prepared to eventually publish and make public. As secretary of war, Benjamin's official dispatches shed considerable light on his legal focus and surprising lack of tact when dealing with the military.
Judah Philip Benjamin had many similarities with William Henry Seward. Both men were lawyers and senators, ambitious and smart. Both were also in a hurry.
Benjamin was born in the British Virgin Islands and moved as a young child to Charleston, South Carolina. He was Jewish, and lived at a time when Jews were suspect and stereotyped; the newspapers of the day oozed anti- Semitism. Benjamin went to Yale University at 14, but left under a cloud of suspicion two years later. He then moved to New Orleans, and became an attorney so successful that he earned $50,000 per year. Soon, he befriended John Slidell, argued successfully before the U.S. Supreme Court, and at 23 wrote what soon became a standard reference text on Louisiana common law. Before the first shot was fired in the Civil War, he turned down an offer to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice. Wishing to settle down, he married into a well-known Louisiana Creole family, built a large plantation and purchased 140 slaves.
Another enigmatic figure of the Civil War was Jefferson Davis. Contemporaries either respected him or hated him. Other than his family, few people loved him. A hero at Buena Vista in the war with Mexico, Davis was wounded, "his leg bloody and swollen, pieces of brass spur driven into the wound and imbedded there so that his boot filled with blood." Somehow, Judah Benjamin and Jefferson Davis worked together to the same extent that Lincoln and Seward did during the war. Davis respected and trusted Benjamin's great intellect and judgment. Seward was primarily an opportunist, but a skillful politician as well. Benjamin was a legal scholar who especially enjoyed legal research. He was most at home in the law library. By contrast, Davis is described by Varina Howell to her mother, "The fact is, he is the kind of person I should expect to rescue me from a mad dog at any risk, but to insist upon a stoical indifference to the fright afterward."
While Davis was a risk-taker in battle, Seward was a risk-taker in politics and loved to play the political game. He had no problem with playing for very high stakes. Later in life, Henry Seward was described on both sides of the Atlantic as a devious politician driven by personal ego. After marrying Frances Miller, Seward spent so much time in political pursuit that his marriage suffered. His wife felt that his children no longer knew him. One of his biographers, Glyndon Van Deusen, described Seward in terms that also describe aspects of the French emperor, Napoleon III:
"Politicians of the Seward stripe act from a mixture of motives. They have a real desire to serve the people, to make the country a better place than they found it. They are aggressive by nature, and at the same time seek to bolster self-esteem by political activity. Gamblers by instinct, they are fascinated by the element of chance in a political contest. They covet power, and if convinced that a given political course rides the wave of the future they will be loyal to it, even though its triumph may be of dubious social value. But they are reluctant to commit themselves to a cause the success of which is doubtful, and once convinced that it has outlived its usefulness they abandon it without reluctance."
Benjamin also neglected his marriage, but to an extent that his wife took other lovers, and ultimately moved to Paris with their only child. They were never divorced, but lived apart for the rest of their lives. Seward had six children, and after ten years of marriage, Benjamin had one daughter. Both men were dedicated to themselves and their work. Seward admitted that he was, "an enigma" to himself. Benjamin just maintained that constant, mysterious smile that many remarked upon. "Benjamin's voice seemed a silver thread woven amidst the warp and woof of sounds which filled the drawing room ... from the first sentence he uttered, whatever he said, attracted and chained the attention of his audience." Varina Davis spoke of Benjamin in a manner that could never be applied to either Lincoln or his secretary of state.
Seward's enigmatic personality manifested itself in many ways. He believed in union and graduated emancipation, but not at the price of war. He had a desire to serve the people, as long as that service suited his personal objectives. Seward was aggressive in the context of being a risk-taker who took chances to further advance his own agenda. He coveted power to the extent that he tried to act as an alternate president for a man who was so preoccupied by the Civil War that foreign policy devolved to one of the most polarizing personalities of the era. By contrast, Judah Benjamin actually acted as an alternate president when Davis was away or suffered such depression that he could not get out of bed, let alone hold cabinet meetings and plan strategy. Seward knew that some liked him and others hated him. He closed his letters to his friend Thurlow Weed, "Your friend who has faith in everybody, and enjoys the confidence of nobody." Seward knew many people on both sides of the Atlantic. Ironically, when traveling to Europe in 1859, he met and was entertained by his future antagonists, Henry Temple (Lord Palmerston), John Russell, and Louis Napoleon. Although he knew many, he lacked intimate friends. He, Benjamin and Davis remained enigmatic and mysterious figures.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Bluff, Bluster, Lies and Spies by David Perry. Copyright © 2016 David Perry. Excerpted by permission of Casemate Publishing.
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Table of Contents
- Cover Page
- Dedication
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 The Enigma and the Mystery
- 2 Alliances, Wild Cards and Don Quixote
- 3 Hoary and Shrewd Men
- 4 Whistling in the Wind
- 5 American Braggadocio
- 6 Dispatch No.10
- 7 One War at a Time
- 8 Cobden and Bright, et al.
- 9 Peterhoff
- 10 From Cottages to Castles
- Epilogue
- Image Gallery
- Endnotes
- Acknowledgments
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Appendices
- Index
- About the Author
- Copyright Page