lf and fulfilled
his appallingly delicate and difficult mission. He was an American who
knew how to behave himself, and he behaved himself all the time; while
the English had a way of turning their behavior on and off, like the
hot water. Mr. Adams was no admirer of "shirt-sleeves" diplomacy. His
diplomacy wore a coat. Our experiments in "shirt-sleeves" diplomacy fail
to show that it accomplishes anything which diplomacy decently dressed
would not accomplish more satisfactorily. Upon Mr. Adams fell some
consequences of previous American crudities, of which I shall speak
later.

Lincoln had declared a blockade on Southern ports before Mr. Adams
arrived in London. Upon his arrival he found England had proclaimed her
neutrality and recognized the belligerency of the South. This dismayed
Mr. Adams and excited the whole North, because feeling ran too high to
perceive this first act on England's part to be really favorable to us;
she could not recognize our blockade, which stopped her getting Southern
cotton, unless she recognized that the South was in a state of war with
us. Looked at quietly, this act of England's helped us and hurt herself,
for it deprived her of cotton.

It was not with this, but with the reception and treatment of Mr. Adams
that the true hostility began. Slights to him were slaps at us, sympathy
with the South was an active moral injury to our cause, even if it was
mostly an undertone, politically. Then all of a sudden, something that
we did ourselves changed the undertone to a loud overtone, and we just
grazed England's declaring war on us. Had she done so, then indeed it
had been all up with us. This incident is the comic going-back on our
own doctrine of 1812, to which I have alluded above.

On November 8, 1861, Captain Charles Wilkes of the American steam sloop
San Jacinto, fired a shot across the bow of the British vessel Trent,
stopped her on the high seas, and took four passengers off her, and
brought them prisoners to Fort Warren, in Boston harbor. Mason and
Slidell are the two we remember, Confederate envoys to France and
Great Britain. Over this the whole North burst into glorious joy. Our
Secretary of the Navy wrote to Wilkes his congratulations, Congress
voted its thanks to him, governors and judges laureled him with oratory
at banquets, he was feasted with meat and drink all over the place, and,
though his years were sixty-three, ardent females probably rushed forth
from throngs and kisse