In order to ascertain public sentiment I visited certain ``discussion forums,'' as they are called, frequented by contributors to the press and young lawyers from the Temple and Inns of Court. In those places there was, as a rule, a debate every night, and generally, in one form or another, upon the struggle then going on in the United States. There was, perhaps, in all this a trifle too much of the Three Tailors of Tooley Street; still, excellent speeches were frequently made, and there was a pleasure in doing my share in getting the company on the right side. On one occasion, after one of our worst reverses during the war, an orator, with an Irish brogue, thickened by hot whisky, said, ``I hope that Republic of blackguards is gone forever.'' But, afterward, on learning that an American was present, apologized to me in a way effusive, laudatory, and even affectionate.
But my main work was given to preparing a pamphlet, in answer to the letters from America by Dr. Russell, correspondent of the London ``Times.'' Though nominally on our side, he clearly wrote his letters to suit the demands of the great journal which he served, and which was most bitterly opposed to us. Nothing could exceed its virulence against everything American. Every occurrence was placed in the worst light possible as regarded our interests, and even the telegraphic despatches were manipulated so as to do our cause all the injury possible. I therefore prepared, with especial care, an answer to these letters of Dr. Russell, and published it in London. Its fate was what might have been expected. Some papers discussed it fairly, but, on the whole, it was pooh-poohed, explained away, and finally buried under new masses of slander.
I did, indeed, find a few friends of my country in Great Britain. In Dublin I dined with Cairnes, the political economist, who had earnestly written in behalf of the Union against the Confederates; and in London, with Professor Carpenter, the eminent physiologist, who, being devoted to anti-slavery ideas, was mildly favorable to the Union side. But I remember him less on account of anything he said relating to the struggle in America, than for a statement bearing upon the legitimacy of the sovereign then ruling in France, who was at heart one of our most dangerous enemies. Dr. Carpenter told me that some time previously he had been allowed by Nassau Senior, whose published conversations with various men of importance throughout Europe had attracted much attention, to look into some of the records which Mr. Senior had not thought it best to publish, and that among them he had read the following:
``---- showed me to-day an autograph letter written by Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, not far from the time of the birth of his putative son, now Napoleon III. One passage read as follows: `J'ai le malheur d'avoir pour femme une Messalene. Elle a des amants partout, et partout elle laise des enfants.' ''
I could not but think of this a few weeks later when Isaw the emperor, who derived his title to the throne of France from his nominal father, poor King Louis, but whose personal appearance, like that of his brother, the Duc de Morny, was evidently not derived from any Bonaparte.
All the Jrome Napoleons I have ever seen, including old King Jrome of Westphalia, and Prince Na-poleon Jrome, otherwise known as ``Plon-Plon,'' whom I saw during my student life at Paris, and the eldest son of the latter, the present Bonaparte pretender to the Napoleonic crown of France, whom I saw during my stay as minister at St. Petersburg, very strikingly resembled the first Napoleon, though all were of much larger size.
But the Louis Napoleons, that is, the emperor and his brother the Duc de Morny, had no single Napoleonic point in their features or bearing.
I think that the most startling inspiration during my life was one morning when, on walking through the Garden of the Tuileries, I saw, within twenty feet of me, at a window, in the old palace, which afterward disappeared under the Commune, the emperor and his minister of finance, Achille Fould, seated together, evidently in earnest discussion. There was not at that time any human being whom I so hated and abhorred as Napoleon III.
He had broken his oath and trodden the French republic under his feet, he was aiding to keep down the aspirations of Italy, and he was doing his best to bring on an intervention of Europe, in behalf of the Confederate States, to dissolve our Union. He was then the arbiter of Europe.
The world had not then discovered him to be what Bismarck had already found him--``a great unrecognized incapacity,''
and, as I looked up and distinctly saw him so near me, there flashed through my mind an understanding of some of the great crimes of political history, such as Ihave never had before or since.[1]
[1] Since writing this I find in the Autobiography of W. J.
Stillman that a similar feeling once beset him on seeing this imperial malefactor,In France there was very little to be done for our cause.
The great mass of Frenchmen were either indifferent or opposed to us. The only exception of importance was Laboulaye, professor at the Collge de France, and his lecture-room was a center of good influences in favor of the American cause; in the midst of that frivolous Napoleonic France he seemed by far ``the noblest Roman of them all.''
The main effort in our behalf was made by Mr. John Bigelow, at that time consul-general, but afterward minister of the United States,--to supply with arguments the very small number of Frenchmen who were inclined to favor the Union cause, and this he did thoroughly well.
Somewhat later there came a piece of good fortune.
