The debate which followed was the last chance of the Southern party and, as events proved, the last chance of Napoleon. How completely the British ministry was now committed to the North appears in the fact that Gladstone, for the Government, opposed Roebuck's motion. John Bright attacked it in what Lord Morley calls "perhaps the most powerful and the noblest speech of his life." The Southern party was hardly resolute in their support of Roebuck and presently he withdrew his motion.
But there were still the ironclads at Liverpool. We have seen that earlier in the war, the carelessness of the British authorities had permitted the escape of ship 290, subsequently known as the Confederate commercedestroyer, Alabama. The authorities did not wish to allow a repetition of the incident.
But could it be shown that the Laird ships were not really for a French purchaser? It was in the course of diplomatic conversations that Mr. Adams, speaking of the possible sailing of the ships, made a remark destined to become famous: "It would be superfluous in me to point out to your lordship that this is war." At jest, the authorities were satisfied. The ships were seized and in the end bought for the British Navy.
Again Napoleon stood alone. Not only had he failed to obtain aid from abroad, but in France itself his Mexican schemes were widely and bitterly condemned. Yet he had gone too far to recede, and what he had been aiming at all along was now revealed. An assembly of Mexican notables, convened by the general of the invaders, voted to set up an imperial government and offered the crown to Napoleon's nominee, the Archduke Maximilian of Austria.
And now the Government at Washington was faced with a complicated problem. What about the Monroe Doctrine? Did the Union dare risk war with France? Did it dare pass over without protest the establishment of monarchy on American soil by foreign arms?
Between these horns of a dilemma, the Government maintained its precarious position during another year. Seward's correspondence with Paris was a masterpiece of evasion. He neither protested against the intervention of Napoleon nor acknowledged the authority of Maximilian. Apparently, both he and Lincoln were divided between fear of a French alliance with the Confederacy and fear of premature action in the North that would render Napoleon desperate. Just how far they comprehended Napoleon and his problems is an open question.
Whether really comprehending or merely trusting to its instinct, Congress took a bolder course. Two men prove the antagonists of a parliamentary duel--Charles Sumner, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and Henry Winter Davis, chairman of the corresponding committee of the House. Sumner played the hand of the Administration. Fiery resolutions demanding the evacuation of Mexico or an American declaration of war were skillfully buried in the silence of Sumner's committee. But there was nevertheless one resolution that affected history: it was a ringing condemnation of the attempt to establish a monarchy in Mexico. In the House, a joint resolution which Davis submitted was passed without one dissenting vote. When it came to the Senate, Sumner buried it as he had buried earlier resolutions. None the less it went out to the world attended by the news of the unanimous vote in the House.
Shortly afterwards, the American Ambassador at Paris called upon the imperial Foreign Secretary, M. Drouyn de L'huys. News of this resolution had preceded him. He was met by the curt question, "Do you bring peace or war?" Again, the Washington Government was skillfully evasive. The Ambassador was instructed to explain that the resolution had not been inspired by the President and "the French Government would be seasonably apprized of any change of policy...which the President might at any future time think it proper to adopt."There seems little doubt that Lincoln's course was very widely condemned as timid. When we come to the political campaign of 1864, we shall meet Henry Winter Davis among his most relentless personal enemies. Dissatisfaction with Lincoln's Mexican policy has not been sufficiently considered in accounting for the opposition to him, inside the war party, in 1864. To it may be traced an article in the platform of the war party, adopted in June, 1864, protesting against the establishment of monarchy "in near proximity to the United States." In the same month Maximilian entered Mexico City.
The subsequent moves of Napoleon are explained elsewhere.* The central fact in the story is his virtual change of attitude, in the summer of 1864. The Confederate agent at Paris complained of a growing coolness. Before the end of the summer, the Confederate Secretary of State was bitter in his denunciation of Napoleon for having deserted the South. Napoleon's puppet Maximilian refused to receive an envoy from the Confederacy. Though Washington did not formally protest against the presence of Maximilian in Mexico, it declined to recognize his Government, and that Government continued unrecognized at Washington throughout the war.
*Nathaniel W. Stephenson, "The Day of the Confederacy". (In "The Chronicles of America").
