Chapter XI. The Battle of the Rams (1863), The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams -- eText at LiteratureClassics.com

MINISTER ADAMS troubled himself little about what he did not see
of an enemy. His son, a nervous animal, made life a terror by seeing
too much. Minister Adams played his hand as it came, and seldom
credited his opponents with greater intelligence than his own. Earl
Russell suited him; perhaps a certain personal sympathy united them;
and indeed Henry Adams never saw Russell without being amused by his
droll likeness to John Quincy Adams. Apart from this shadowy personal
relation, no doubt the Minister was diplomatically right; he had
nothing to lose and everything to gain by making a friend of the
Foreign Secretary, and whether Russell were true or false mattered
less, because, in either case, the American Legation could act only
as though he were false. Had the Minister known Russell's determined
effort to betray and ruin him in October, 1862, he could have
scarcely used stronger expressions than he did in 1863. Russell must
have been greatly annoyed by Sir Robert Collier's hint of collusion
with the rebel agents in the Alabama Case, but he hardened himself to
hear the same innuendo repeated in nearly every note from the
Legation. As time went on, Russell was compelled, though slowly, to
treat the American Minister as serious. He admitted nothing so
unwillingly, for the nullity or fatuity of the Washington Government
was his idee fixe; but after the failure of his last effort for joint
intervention on November 12, 1862, only one week elapsed before he
received a note from Minister Adams repeating his charges about the
Alabama, and asking in very plain language for redress. Perhaps
Russell's mind was naturally slow to understand the force of sudden
attack, or perhaps age had affected it; this was one of the points
that greatly interested a student, but young men have a passion for
regarding their elders as senile, which was only in part warranted in
this instance by observing that Russell's generation were mostly
senile from youth. They had never got beyond 1815 Both Palmerston and
Russell were in this case. Their senility was congenital, like
Gladstone's Oxford training and High Church illusions, which caused
wild eccentricities in his judgment. Russell could not conceive that
he had misunderstood and mismanaged Minister Adams from the start,
and when after November 12 he found himself on the defensive, with Mr
Adams taking daily a stronger tone, he showed mere confusion and
helplessness.

Thus, whatever the theory, the action of diplomacy had to be the
same. Minister Adams was obliged to imply collusion between Russell
and the rebels. He could not even stop at criminal negligence. If, by
an access of courtesy, the Minister were civil enough to admit that
the escape of the Alabama had been due to criminal negligence, he
could make no such concession in regard to the ironclad rams which
the Lairds were building; for no one could be so simple as to believe
that two armored ships-of-war could be built publicly, under the eyes
of the Government, and go to sea like the Alabama, without active and
incessant collusion. The longer Earl Russell kept on his mask of
assumed ignorance, the more violently in the end, the Minister would
have to tear it off. Whatever Mr. Adams might personally think of
Earl Russell, he must take the greatest possible diplomatic liberties
with him if this crisis were allowed to arrive.

As the spring of 1863 drew on, the vast field cleared itself for
action. A campaign more beautiful -- better suited for training the
mind of a youth eager for training -- has not often unrolled itself
for study, from the beginning, before a young man perched in so
commanding a position. Very slowly, indeed, after two years of
solitude, one began to feel the first faint flush of new and imperial
life. One was twenty-five years old, and quite ready to assert it;
some of one's friends were wearing stars on their collars; some had
won stars of a more enduring kind. At moments one's breath came
quick. One began to dream the sensation of wielding unmeasured power.
The sense came, like vertigo, for an instant, and passed, leaving the
brain a little dazed, doubtful, shy. With an intensity more painful
than that of any Shakespearean drama, men's eyes were fastened on the
armies in the field. Little by little, at first only as a shadowy
chance of what might be, if things could be rightly done, one began
to feel that, somewhere behind the chaos in Washington power was
taking shape; that it was massed and guided as it had not been
before. Men seemed to have learned their business -- at a cost that
ruined -- and perhaps too late. A private secretary knew better than
most people how much of the new power was to be swung in London, and
almost exactly when; but the diplomatic campaign had to wait for the
military campaign to lead. The student could only study.

Life never could know more than a single such climax. In that
form, education reached its limits. As the first great blows began to
fall, one curled up in bed in the silence of night, to listen with
incredulous hope. As the huge masses struck, one after another, with
the precision of machinery, the opposing mass, the world shivered.
Such development of power was unknown. The magnificent resistance and
the return shocks heightened the suspense. During the July days
Londoners were stupid with unbelief. They were learning from the
Yankees how to fight.

An American saw in a flash what all this meant to England, for
one's mind was working with the acceleration of the machine at home;
but Englishmen were not quick to see their blunders. One had ample
time to watch the process, and had even a little time to gloat over
the repayment of old scores. News of Vicksburg and Gettysburg reached
London one Sunday afternoon, and it happened that Henry Adams was
asked for that evening to some small reception at the house of
Monckton Milnes. He went early in order to exchange a word or two of
congratulation before the rooms should fill, and on arriving he found
only the ladies in the drawing-room; the gentlemen were still sitting
over their wine. Presently they came in, and, as luck would have it,
Delane of the Times came first. When Milnes caught sight of his young
American friend, with a whoop of triumph he rushed to throw both arms
about his neck and kiss him on both cheeks. Men of later birth who
knew too little to realize the passions of 1863 -- backed by those of
1813 -- and reenforced by those of 1763 -- might conceive that such
publicity embarrassed a private secretary who came from Boston and
called himself shy; but that evening, for the first time in his life,
he happened not to be thinking of himself. He was thinking of Delane,
whose eye caught his, at the moment of Milnes's embrace. Delane
probably regarded it as a piece of Milnes's foolery; he had never
heard of young Adams, and never dreamed of his resentment at being
ridiculed in the Times; he had no suspicion of the thought floating
in the mind of the American Minister's son, for the British mind is
the slowest of all minds, as the files of the Times proved, and the
capture of Vicksburg had not yet penetrated Delane's thick cortex of
fixed ideas. Even if he had read Adams's thought, he would have felt
for it only the usual amused British contempt for all that he had not
been taught at school. It needed a whole generation for the Times to
reach Milnes's standpoint.

Had the Minister's son carried out the thought, he would surely
have sought an introduction to Delane on the spot, and assured him
that he regarded his own personal score as cleared off --
sufficiently settled, then and there -- because his father had
assumed the debt, and was going to deal with Mr. Delane himself. "You
come next!" would have been the friendly warning. For nearly a year
the private secretary had watched the board arranging itself for the
collision between the Legation and Delane who stood behind the
Palmerston Ministry. Mr. Adams had been steadily strengthened and
reenforced from Washington in view of the final struggle. The
situation had changed since the Trent Affair. The work was
efficiently done; the organization was fairly complete. No doubt, the
Legation itself was still as weakly manned and had as poor an outfit
as the Legations of Guatemala or Portugal. Congress was always
jealous of its diplomatic service, and the Chairman of the Committee
of Foreign Relations was not likely to press assistance on the
Minister to England. For the Legation not an additional clerk was
offered or asked. The Secretary, the Assistant Secretary, and the
private secretary did all the work that the Minister did not do. A
clerk at five dollars a week would have done the work as well or
better, but the Minister could trust no clerk; without express
authority he could admit no one into the Legation; he strained a
point already by admitting his son. Congress and its committees were
the proper judges of what was best for the public service, and if the
arrangement seemed good to them, it was satisfactory to a private
secretary who profited by it more than they did. A great staff would
have suppressed him. The whole Legation was a sort of improvised,
volunteer service, and he was a volunteer with the rest. He was
rather better off than the rest, because he was invisible and
unknown. Better or worse, he did his work with the others, and if the
secretaries made any remarks about Congress, they made no complaints,
and knew that none would have received a moment's attention.

If they were not satisfied with Congress, they were satisfied
with Secretary Seward. Without appropriations for the regular
service, he had done great things for its support. If the Minister
had no secretaries, he had a staff of active consuls; he had a
well-organized press; efficient legal support; and a swarm of social
allies permeating all classes. All he needed was a victory in the
field, and Secretary Stanton undertook that part of diplomacy.
Vicksburg and Gettysburg cleared the board, and, at the end of July,
1863, Minister Adams was ready to deal with Earl Russell or Lord
Palmerston or Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Delane, or any one else who stood
in his way; and by the necessity of the case, was obliged to deal
with all of them shortly.

Even before the military climax at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, the
Minister had been compelled to begin his attack; but this was
history, and had nothing to do with education. The private secretary
copied the notes into his private books, and that was all the share
he had in the matter, except to talk in private.

No more volunteer services were needed; the volunteers were in a
manner sent to the rear; the movement was too serious for
skirmishing. All that a secretary could hope to gain from the affair
was experience and knowledge of politics. He had a chance to measure
the motive forces of men; their qualities of character; their
foresight; their tenacity of purpose.

In the Legation no great confidence was felt in stopping the
rams. Whatever the reason, Russell seemed immovable. Had his efforts
for intervention in September, 1862, been known to the Legation in
September, 1863 the Minister must surely have admitted that Russell
had, from the first, meant to force his plan of intervention on his
colleagues. Every separate step since April, 1861, led to this final
coercion. Although Russell's hostile activity of 1862 was still
secret -- and remained secret for some five-and-twenty years -- his
animus seemed to be made clear by his steady refusal to stop the
rebel armaments. Little by little, Minister Adams lost hope. With
loss of hope came the raising of tone, until at last, after stripping
Russell of every rag of defence and excuse, he closed by leaving him
loaded with connivance in the rebel armaments, and ended by the
famous sentence: "It would be superfluous in me to point out to your
lordship that this is war!"

What the Minister meant by this remark was his own affair; what
the private secretary understood by it, was a part of his education.
Had his father ordered him to draft an explanatory paragraph to
expand the idea as he grasped it, he would have continued thus:--

"It would be superfluous: 1st. Because Earl Russell not only
knows it already, but has meant it from the start. 2nd Because it is
the only logical and necessary consequence of his unvarying action.
3d. Because Mr. Adams is not pointing out to him that 'this is war,'
but is pointing it out to the world, to complete the record."

This would have been the matter-of-fact sense in which the
private secretary copied into his books the matter-of-fact statement
with which, without passion or excitement, the Minister announced
that a state of war existed. To his copying eye, as clerk, the words,
though on the extreme verge of diplomatic propriety, merely stated a
fact, without novelty, fancy, or rhetoric. The fact had to be stated
in order to make clear the issue. The war was Russell's war--Adams
only accepted it.

Russell's reply to this note of September 5 reached the Legation
on September 8, announcing at last to the anxious secretaries that
"instructions have been issued which will prevent the departure of
the two ironclad vessels from Liverpool." The members of the modest
Legation in Portland Place accepted it as Grant had accepted the
capitulation of Vicksburg. The private secretary conceived that, as
Secretary Stanton had struck and crushed by superior weight the rebel
left on the Mississippi, so Secretary Seward had struck and crushed
the rebel right in England, and he never felt a doubt as to the
nature of the battle. Though Minister Adams should stay in office
till he were ninety, he would never fight another campaign of life
and death like this; and though the private secretary should covet
and attain every office in the gift of President or people, he would
never again find education to compare with the life-and-death
alternative of this two-year-and-a-half struggle in London, as it had
racked and thumb-screwed him in its shifting phases; but its
practical value as education turned on his correctness of judgment in
measuring the men and their forces. He felt respect for Russell as
for Palmerston because they represented traditional England and an
English policy, respectable enough in itself, but which, for four
generations, every Adams had fought and exploited as the chief source
of his political fortunes. As he understood it, Russell had followed
this policy steadily, ably, even vigorously, and had brought it to
the moment of execution. Then he had met wills stronger than his own,
and, after persevering to the last possible instant, had been beaten.
Lord North and George Canning had a like experience. This was only
the idea of a boy, but, as far as he ever knew, it was also the idea
of his Government. For once, the volunteer secretary was satisfied
with his Government. Commonly the self-respect of a secretary,
private or public, depends on, and is proportional to, the severity
of his criticism, but in this case the English campaign seemed to him
as creditable to the State Department as the Vicksburg campaign to
the War Department, and more decisive. It was well planned, well
prepared, and well executed. He could never discover a mistake in it.
Possibly he was biassed by personal interest, but his chief reason
for trusting his own judgment was that he thought himself to be one
of only half a dozen persons who knew something about it. When others
criticised Mr. Seward, he was rather indifferent to their opinions
because he thought they hardly knew what they were talking about, and
could not be taught without living over again the London life of
1862. To him Secretary Seward seemed immensely strong and steady in
leadership; but this was no discredit to Russell or Palmerston or
Gladstone. They, too, had shown power, patience and steadiness of
purpose. They had persisted for two years and a half in their plan
for breaking up the Union, and had yielded at last only in the jaws
of war. After a long and desperate struggle, the American Minister
had trumped their best card and won the game.

Again and again, in after life, he went back over the ground to
see whether he could detect error on either side. He found none. At
every stage the steps were both probable and proved. All the more he
was disconcerted that Russell should indignantly and with growing
energy, to his dying day, deny and resent the axiom of Adams's whole
contention, that from the first he meant to break up the Union.
Russell affirmed that he meant nothing of the sort; that he had meant
nothing at all; that he meant to do right; that he did not know what
he meant. Driven from one defence after another, he pleaded at last,
like Gladstone, that he had no defence. Concealing all he could
conceal -- burying in profound secrecy his attempt to break up the
Union in the autumn of 1862 -- he affirmed the louder his scrupulous
good faith. What was worse for the private secretary, to the total
derision and despair of the lifelong effort for education, as the
final result of combined practice, experience, and theory -- he
proved it.

Henry Adams had, as he thought, suffered too much from Russell
to admit any plea in his favor; but he came to doubt whether this
admission really favored him. Not until long after Earl Russell's
death was the question reopened. Russell had quitted office in 1866;
he died in 1878; the biography was published in 1889. During the
Alabama controversy and the Geneva Conference in 1872, his course as
Foreign Secretary had been sharply criticised, and he had been
compelled to see England pay more than L3,000,000 penalty for his
errors. On the other hand, he brought forward -- or his biographer
for him -- evidence tending to prove that he was not consciously
dishonest, and that he had, in spite of appearances, acted without
collusion, agreement, plan, or policy, as far as concerned the
rebels. He had stood alone, as was his nature. Like Gladstone, he had
thought himself right.

In the end, Russell entangled himself in a hopeless ball of
admissions, denials, contradictions, and resentments which led even
his old colleagues to drop his defence, as they dropped Gladstone's;
but this was not enough for the student of diplomacy who had made a
certain theory his law of life, and wanted to hold Russell up against
himself; to show that he had foresight and persistence of which he
was unaware. The effort became hopeless when the biography in 1889
published papers which upset all that Henry Adams had taken for
diplomatic education; yet he sat down once more, when past sixty
years old, to see whether he could unravel the skein.

Of the obstinate effort to bring about an armed intervention, on
the lines marked out by Russell's letter to Palmerston from Gotha, 17
September, 1862, nothing could be said beyond Gladstone's plea in
excuse for his speech in pursuance of the same effort, that it was
"the most singular and palpable error," "the least excusable," "a
mistake of incredible grossness," which passed defence; but while
Gladstone threw himself on the mercy of the public for his speech, he
attempted no excuse for Lord Russell who led him into the "incredible
grossness" of announcing the Foreign Secretary's intent. Gladstone's
offence, "singular and palpable," was not the speech alone, but its
cause -- the policy that inspired the speech. "I weakly supposed . .
. I really, though most strangely, believed that it was an act of
friendliness." Whatever absurdity Gladstone supposed, Russell
supposed nothing of the sort. Neither he nor Palmerston "most
strangely believed" in any proposition so obviously and palpably
absurd, nor did Napoleon delude himself with philanthropy. Gladstone,
even in his confession, mixed up policy, speech, motives, and
persons, as though he were trying to confuse chiefly himself.

There Gladstone's activity seems to have stopped. He did not
reappear in the matter of the rams. The rebel influence shrank in
1863, as far as is known, to Lord Russell alone, who wrote on
September 1 that he could not interfere in any way with those
vessels, and thereby brought on himself Mr. Adams's declaration of
war on September 5. A student held that, in this refusal, he was
merely following his policy of September, 1862, and of every step he
had taken since 1861.

The student was wrong. Russell proved that he had been feeble,
timid, mistaken, senile, but not dishonest. The evidence is
convincing. The Lairds had built these ships in reliance on the known
opinion of the law-officers that the statute did not apply, and a
jury would not convict. Minister Adams replied that, in this case,
the statute should be amended, or the ships stopped by exercise of
the political power. Bethell rejoined that this would be a violation
of neutrality; one must preserve the status quo. Tacitly Russell
connived with Laird, and, had he meant to interfere, he was bound to
warn Laird that the defect of the statute would no longer protect
him, but he allowed the builders to go on till the ships were ready
for sea. Then, on September 3, two days before Mr. Adams's
"superfluous" letter, he wrote to Lord Palmerston begging for help;
"The conduct of the gentlemen who have contracted for the two
ironclads at Birkenhead is so very suspicious," -- he began, and this
he actually wrote in good faith and deep confidence to Lord
Palmerston, his chief, calling "the conduct" of the rebel agents
"suspicious" when no one else in Europe or America felt any suspicion
about it, because the whole question turned not on the rams, but on
the technical scope of the Foreign Enlistment Act, -- "that I have
thought it necessary to direct that they should be detained," not, of
course, under the statute, but on the ground urged by the American
Minister, of international obligation above the statute. "The
Solicitor General has been consulted and concurs in the measure as
one of policy though not of strict law. We shall thus test the law,
and, if we have to pay damages, we have satisfied the opinion which
prevails here as well as in America that that kind of neutral
hostility should not be allowed to go on without some attempt to stop
it."

For naivete that would be unusual in an unpaid attache of
Legation, this sudden leap from his own to his opponent's ground,
after two years and a half of dogged resistance, might have roused
Palmerston to inhuman scorn, but instead of derision, well earned by
Russell's old attacks on himself, Palmerston met the appeal with
wonderful loyalty. "On consulting the law officers he found that
there was no lawful ground for meddling with the ironclads," or, in
unprofessional language, that he could trust neither his law officers
nor a Liverpool jury; and therefore he suggested buying the ships for
the British Navy. As proof of "criminal negligence" in the past, this
suggestion seemed decisive, but Russell, by this time, was
floundering in other troubles of negligence, for he had neglected to
notify the American Minister. He should have done so at once, on
September 3. Instead he waited till September 4, and then merely said
that the matter was under "serious and anxious consideration." This
note did not reach the Legation till three o'clock on the afternoon
of September 5 -- after the "superfluous" declaration of war had been
sent. Thus, Lord Russell had sacrificed the Lairds: had cost his
Ministry the price of two ironclads, besides the Alabama Claims --
say, in round numbers, twenty million dollars -- and had put himself
in the position of appearing to yield only to a threat of war.
Finally he wrote to the Admiralty a letter which, from the American
point of view, would have sounded youthful from an Eton schoolboy:
--