, and were able to hurt us in the days when our
friends were not yet able to help us. They made welcome the Southerners
who came over in the interests of the South, they listened to the
Southern propaganda. Why? Because the South was the American version of
their aristocratic creed. To those who came over in the interests of
the North and of the Union they turned a cold shoulder, because they
represented Democracy; moreover, a Dis-United States would prove in
commerce a less formidable competitor. To Captain Bullock, the able
and energetic Southerner who put through in England the building
and launching of those Confederate cruisers which sank our ships and
destroyed our merchant marine, and to Mason and Slidell, the doors of
dukes opened pleasantly; Beecher and our other emissaries mostly had to
dine beneath uncoroneted roofs.

In the pages of Henry Adams, and of Charles Francis Adams his brother,
you can read of what they, as young men, encountered in London, and
what they saw their father have to put up with there, both from English
society and the English Government. Their father was our new minister to
England, appointed by Lincoln. He arrived just after our Civil War had
begun. I have heard his sons talk about it familiarly, and it is all to
be found in their writings.

Nobody knows how to be disagreeable quite so well as the English
gentleman, except the English lady. They can do it with the nicety of a
medicine dropper. They can administer the precise quantum suff. in every
case. In the society of English gentlemen and ladies Mr. Adams by his
official position was obliged to move. They left him out as much as
they could, but, being the American Minister, he couldn't be left
out altogether. At their dinners and functions he had to hear open
expressions of joy at the news of Southern victories, he had to receive
slights both veiled and unveiled, and all this he had to bear with
equanimity. Sometimes he did leave the room; but with dignity and
discretion. A false step, a "break," might have led to a request for
his recall. He knew that his constant presence, close to the English
Government, was vital to our cause. Russell and Palmerston were by
turns insolent and shifty, and once on the very brink of recognizing the
Southern Confederacy as an independent nation. Gladstone, Chancellor of
the Exchequer, in a speech at Newcastle, virtually did recognize it. You
will be proud of Mr. Adams if you read how he bore himse