in the full flush of pride after Chancellorsville, he appealed
to the Emperor to cease waiting on other powers and recognize the
Confederacy. Napoleon accorded another gracious interview but still
insisted that it was impossible for him to act alone. He said that
he was "more fully convinced than ever of the propriety of a general
recognition by the European powers of the Confederate States but that
the commerce of France and the interests of the Mexican expedition would
be jeopardized by a rupture with the United States" and unless England
would stand by him he dared not risk such an eventuality. In point of
fact, he was like a speculator who is "hedging" on the stock exchange,
both buying and selling, and trying to make up his mind on which cast to
stake his fortune. At the same time he threw out once more the sinister
caution about the ships. He said that the ships might be built in France
but that their destination must be concealed.

That Napoleon's choice just then, if England had supported him, would
have been recognition of the Confederacy, cannot be doubted. The tangle
of intrigue which he called his foreign policy was not encouraging. He
was deeply involved in Italian politics, where the daring of Garibaldi
had reopened the struggle between clericals and liberals. In France
itself the struggle between parties was keen. Here, as in the American
imbroglio, he found it hard to decide with which party to break. The
chimerical scheme of a Latin empire in Mexico was his spectacular device
to catch the imagination, and incidentally the pocketbook, of everybody.
But in order to carry out this enterprise he must be able to avert or
withstand the certain hostility of the United States. Therefore, as he
told Slidell, "no other power than England possessed a sufficient navy"
to pull his chestnuts out of the fire. The moment was auspicious, for
there was a revival of the "Southern party" in England. The sailing of
the Alabama from Liverpool during the previous summer had encouraged
the Confederate agents and their British friends to undertake further
shipbuilding.

While M. Arman was at work in France, the Laird Brothers were at work
in England and their dockyards contained two ironclad rams supposed to
outclass any vessels of the United States navy. Though every effort had
been made to keep secret the ultimate destination of these rams, the
vigilance of the United States minister, reinforced by the zeal of
the "Northern