Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

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“ [197] detain them.” If there was anything wanting to complete the shame of this collapse, it was the shallow show of alacrity at concession, and the attempt to substitute a sense of justice for what all men of common discernment knew was the alarm of cowardice.

The concession of Mr. Seward was a blow to the hopes of the Southern people. The contemplation of the spectacle of their enemy's humiliation in it was but little compensation for their disappointment of a European complication in the war.¹ Indeed, the conclusion of the Trent affair gave a sharp cheek to the long cherished imagination of the interference of England in the war, at least to the extent of her disputing the blockade, which had begun to tell on the war-power and general condition of the Confederacy. The Trent correspondence was followed by declarations, on the Government side in the British Parliament, too plain to be mistaken. In the early part of February, 1862, Earl Russell had declared that the blockade of the American ports had been effective from the 15th of August, in the face of the facts that the despatches of Mr. Bunch, the English consul at Charleston, said that it was not so; and that authentic accounts and letters of merchants showed that any ships, leaving for the South, could be insured by a premium of seven and a half to fifteen per cent. But in the House of Commons, Mr. Gregory disputed the minister's statement, mentioned the evidence we have referred to, and asserted that England's non-observation of the Treaty of Paris was a deception for the Confederate States, and an ambuscade for the interests of commerce throughout the world.