s equal to the occasion. Great
Britain had ordered her navy on a war footing, dispatched eight thousand
troops to Canada to strike by land as well as sea, allowing us but seven
days in which to comply with all her demands or hand Lord Lyons his
passports.

The President immediately dictated a reply which forced her Prime
Minister to accept it and achieved for the Nation the establishment of a
principle for which we had fought in vain in 1812.

He ordered the prisoners returned and an apology expressed. His apology
was a two-edged sword thrust which Great Britain was compelled to take
with a groan.

"In 1812," the President said, "the United States fought because you
claimed the right to stop our vessels on the high seas, search them and
take by force British subjects found thereon. Our country in making this
surrender, adheres to the ancient principle for which we contended and
we are glad to find that Her Majesty's Government in demanding this
surrender thereby renounces an error and accepts our position."

Lord Palmerston made a wry face, but was compelled to accept the
surrender, and with it seal his own humiliation as a beaten diplomat.
War with England at this moment would have meant unparalleled disaster.
France had ambitions in Mexico and she was bound in friendship to
England. The two great Nations of Europe would have been hurled against
our divided country with the immediate recognition of the Confederacy.

The President forced this return of the prisoners and apparent surrender
to Great Britain in the face of the blindest and most furious outbursts
of popular rage.

Gilbert Winter rose in the Senate and in thunderous oratory voiced the
well-nigh unanimous feeling of the millions of the North of all parties
and factions:

"I warn the administration against this dastardly and cowardly surrender
to a foreign foe! The voice of the people demand that we stand firm on
our dignity as a Sovereign Nation. If the President and his Cabinet
refuse to listen they will find themselves engulfed in a fire that will
consume them like stubble. They will find themselves helpless before a
power that will hurl them from their places!"

The President was still under the cloud of public wrath over this affair
when the crisis of the problem of emancipation became acute. The gradual
growth of the number of his bitter foes in Washington he had seen with
deep distress. And yet it was inevitable. No man in his position could
a