Carolina of the Federal customs
house at the port of Charleston, and the attempt of the State
authorities to collect port dues customarily paid to Federal officials.
British shipowners appealed to Consul Bunch for instructions, he to
Lyons, and the latter to the American Secretary of State, Judge Black.
This was on December 31, 1860, while Buchanan was still President, and
Black's answer was evasive, though asserting that the United States must
technically regard the events in South Carolina as acts of violent
rebellion[67]. Black refused to state what action would be taken if
Bunch advised British shipowners to pay, but a way out of the
embarrassment was found by advising such payment to State authorities
"under protest" as done "under compulsion." To one of his letters to
Bunch on this topic, Lyons appended an expression indicative of his own
early attitude. "The domestic slavery of the South is a bitter pill
which it will be hard enough to get the English to swallow. But if the
Slave Trade is to be added to the dose, the least squeamish British
stomach will reject it[68]."

Nevertheless the vigorous action of South Carolina, soon followed by
other Southern States, made a deep impression on Russell, especially
when compared with the uncertainty and irresolution manifested in the
attempted compromise measures of Northern statesmen. In a private letter
to Lyons, January 10, 1861, he wrote "I do not see how the United States
can be cobbled together again by any compromise.... I cannot see any
mode of reconciling such parties as these. The best thing _now_ would
be that the right to secede should be acknowledged.... I hope sensible
men will take this view.... But above all I hope no force will be
used[69]." And again twelve days later, "I suppose the break-up of the
Union is now inevitable[70]." To Russell, as to most foreign observers,
it seemed that if the South with its great wealth, its enormous extent
of territory, and its five and one-half millions of population, were
determined to leave the Union, no force whatever could compel a return.
History failed to record any revolution on so large a scale which had
not succeeded. His desire, therefore, was that the North would yield to
the inevitable, and would not plunge into a useless civil war disastrous
alike to the prosperity of America and of foreign nations. Russell's
first hope was that the South would forgo secession; his second, this
accomplished, that there woul