Great Britain; and more especially and more recently he had been
reported to have expressed to the Duke of Newcastle a belief that civil
conflict in America could easily be avoided, or quieted, by fomenting a
quarrel with England and engaging in a war against her[197]. Earlier
expressions might easily be overlooked as emanating from a politician
never over-careful about wounding the sensibilities of foreign nations
and peoples, for he had been even more outspoken against the France of
Louis Napoleon, but the Newcastle conversation stuck in the British mind
as indicative of a probable animus when the politician had become the
statesman responsible for foreign policy. Seward might deny, as he did,
that he had ever uttered the words alleged[198], and his friend Thurlow
Weed might describe the words as "badinage," in a letter to the London
_Times_[199], but the "Newcastle story" continued to be matter for
frequent comment both in the Press and in private circles.

British Ministers, however, would have paid little attention to Seward's
speeches intended for home political consumption, or to a careless bit
of social talk, had there not been suspicion of other and more serious
evidences of unfriendliness. Lyons was an unusually able and
well-informed Minister, and from the first he had pictured the
leadership of Seward in the new administration at Washington, and had
himself been worried by his inability to understand what policy Seward
was formulating. But, in fact, he did not see clearly what was going on
in the camp of the Republican party now dominant in the North. The
essential feature of the situation was that Seward, generally regarded
as the man whose wisdom must guide the ill-trained Lincoln, and himself
thinking this to be his destined function, early found his authority
challenged by other leaders, and his policies not certain of
acceptance by the President. It is necessary to review, briefly, the
situation at Washington.

[Illustration: WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD (_From Lord Newton's "Life of Lord
Lyons," by kind permission_)]

Lincoln was inaugurated as President on March 4. He had been elected as
a Republican by a political party never before in power. Many of the
leading members of this party were drawn from the older parties and had
been in administrative positions in either State or National
Governments, but there were no party traditions, save the lately created
one of opposition to the expansion of slavery to t