s not
appalled us."

Mr. Adams must have perused this letter many times as he waited for the
meeting of the British Ministry,--which he learned had been called for
October 23,--to act upon the question of the Civil War in America. Indeed,
he had felt a strong impulse to call for his passports immediately after
the Gladstone speech at Newcastle, but had concluded to wait a few days
for formal action by the government to which he was accredited.

But now conditions and circumstances beyond the ken of diplomacy had
conspired to put the inevitable moment indefinitely forward. Whether, as
has been suggested, Gladstone, in his Newcastle speech, had intended to
force his colleagues into a position the only outlet of which was
recognition, or whether knowing their sentiments he had in mere exuberance
let the cat out of the bag, he had committed a grave breach of official
etiquette in thus speaking without express Cabinet sanction. It was a
false move, upon which Palmerston and Russell seized with eagerness
and,--it may be imagined,--private glee. Within a week Sir George
Cornewall Lewis, a member of the Cabinet, made, at Palmerston's express
direction, a public speech in which he adroitly gave the lie to Gladstone.
The fateful Cabinet meeting of the 23rd was postponed, and a new proposal
of Napoleon III that came at about this time,--a proposal looking to joint
mediation or intervention,--was rejected, on the ground that the time was
not yet ripe.

The British Ministry kept looking for the auspicious opportunity for
several months thereafter. Many thought it had come in the middle of
December, when the Fredericksburg disaster was described by the London
_Times_ correspondent as "a memorable day to the historian of the Decline
and Fall of the American Republic." But on the last day of the year was
begun the battle that was to show the British public,--what was sometimes
forgotten,--that there were armies outside of Virginia and territories
beyond the Alleghanies. Out of the mists which surrounded Stone's
River,--out of the uncertainty due to counter-claims of victory by the
rival commanders,--arose this definite fact: The Northern Army had
occupied the town that it set out to take, and the Southern Army had
retired almost to the borders of Tennessee and could not dispute the claim
of its enemy to the greater part of the area of that Commonwealth. Another
postponement seemed necessary. By this time also the leaven of Linco