duced into a position where the continuation of that policy would be
difficult.

Before entering upon an account of the bearing of the newly available
British materials on the negotiation--materials which will in themselves
offer sufficient comment on the theories of Henry Adams, and in less
degree of Bancroft--it is best to note here the fallacy in C.F. Adams'
main thesis. If the analysis given in the preceding chapter of the
initiation and duration of Seward's "foreign war policy" is correct,
then the Declaration of Paris negotiation had no essential relation
whatever to that policy. The instructions to Adams were sent to eight
other Ministers. Is it conceivable that Seward desired a war with the
whole maritime world? The date, April 24, antedates any deliberate
proposal of a foreign war, whatever he may have been brooding, and in
fact stamps the offer as part of that friendly policy toward Europe
which Lincoln had insisted upon. Seward's frenzy for a foreign war did
not come to a head until the news had been received of England's
determination to recognize Southern belligerency. This was in the second
week of May and on the twenty-first Despatch No. 10 marked the decline,
not the beginning, of a belligerent policy, and by the President's
orders. By May 24 probably, by the twenty-seventh certainly, Seward had
yielded and was rapidly beginning to turn to expressions of
friendship[272]. Yet it was only on May 18 that Russell's first
instructions to Lyons were sent, and not until late in June that the
"misunderstanding" cleared away, instructions were despatched by Seward
to push the Declaration of Paris negotiations at London and Paris. The
battle of Bull Run had nothing to do with a new policy. Thus chronology
forbids the inclusion of this negotiation, either in its inception,
progress, or conclusion, as an agency intended to make possible, on just
grounds, a foreign war.

A mere chronological examination of documents, both printed and in
archives, permits a clearer view of British policy on the Declaration of
Paris. Recalling the facts of the American situation known in London it
will be remembered that on May 1 the British Government and Parliament
became aware that a civil war was inevitable and that the South planned
to issue privateers. On that day Russell asked the Admiralty to
reinforce the British fleet in West Indian waters that British commerce
might be adequately protected. Five days later, May 6, he announ