cide at once, but
would wait some days for further intelligence.[S] Similar semi-official
assurances came from different persons about the emperor; and the
members of the Cabinet, with a single exception, showed little reserve
in their favorable expressions toward the Confederacy.

[Footnote S: _North American Review_, vol. cxxix, p. 347.]

A few weeks later Mr. Slidell had a conversation with M. Billault, the
minister _sans portefeuille_, one of the most conservative and cautious
men in the Cabinet, who represented the Government in the Chambers upon
all subjects connected with foreign affairs. Slidell read a note which
he had received from Sir Charles Wood, a leading Southern sympathizer in
England, denying that the British Government was unwilling to act in
American affairs--a denial to which some color is given by the
correspondence of Palmerston and Russell before mentioned. In answer, M.
Billault declared that the French Cabinet, with the possible exception
of M. Thouvenel, had been unanimously in favor of the South, and added
that if New Orleans had not fallen its recognition would not have been
much longer delayed; but, even after that disaster, if decided successes
were obtained in Virginia and Tennessee, or the enemy were held at bay
for a month or two, the same result would follow. After an interview
with M. Thouvenel, about the same time, Slidell reported that, though
that minister did not directly say so, his manner gave fair reason to
infer that if New Orleans had not been taken, and no very serious
reverses were suffered in Virginia and Tennessee, recognition would very
soon have been declared.[T]

[Footnote T: Ibid., vol. cxxix, p. 348.]

In its moral effect, therefore, the fall of the river forts and of New
Orleans, though not absolutely and finally decisive of the question of
foreign intervention, corresponded to one of those telling blows, by
which a general threatened by two foes meets and strikes down one before
the other comes up. Such a blow may be said to decide a campaign; not
because no chance is left the enemy to redeem his misfortune, but
because without the first success the weaker party would have been
overwhelmed by the junction of his two opponents. The heart-rending
disasters to our armies during the following summer does but emphasize
the immense value to the Union cause of the moral effect produced by
Farragut's victory. Those disasters, as it was, prompted the leaders of
the B