ssured that the vessel was designed for the
Sicilian fruit trade! As it is not diplomatic to say that gentlemen in
office are telling lies, the American minister could push the matter no
farther. The Florida, therefore, escaped, not to conduct commerce with
Sicily, but to destroy the commerce of the United States. At the same
time that she was fitting out, a mysterious craft, oddly known only as
the "290," was also building in the Liverpool docks, and against her Mr.
Adams got such evidence that the queen's ministers could not help
deciding that she must be detained. Unfortunately, however, and by a
strange, if not a significant chance, they reached this decision on the
day after she had sailed! She became the notorious Alabama. Earl Russell
admitted that the affair was "a scandal," but this did not interfere
with the career of Captain Semmes. In these incidents there was both
cause and provocation for war, and hot-headed ones cried out for it,
while prudent men feared it. But the President and the secretary were
under the bonds of necessity to keep their official temper. Just at this
juncture England would have found it not only very easy, but also very
congenial to her real sympathies, to play for the South a part like that
which France had once played for certain thirteen revolted colonies, and
thereby to change a rebellion into a revolution. So Mr. Lincoln and Mr.
Seward, not willing to give the unfriendly power this opportunity, only
wrote down in the national ledger sundry charges against Great Britain,
which were afterward paid, not promptly, yet in full!

Another provoking thing was the placing of

Confederate loans in London. This could not be interfered with. The
only comfort was that the blockaded South had much difficulty in laying
hands upon the proceeds of the bonds which English friends of the Slave
Empire were induced to buy. Yet time, always the faithful auxiliary of
the North, took care of this matter also. When the news of Gettysburg
and Vicksburg came, the investors, who had scarcely finished writing the
cheques with which to pay their subscriptions, were obliged to face a
drop of thirty per cent, in the market price of their new securities.
For many years after the war was over British strong boxes wasted space
in accommodating these absurd documents, while the idea of their
worthlessness was slowly filtering through the minds of their owners.

Another thing, which did no harm at all, but was excee