"when such a proceeding might seem to me likely to be of use[583]."

Just at this time Seward was engaged in forwarding a measure no doubt
intended to secure British anti-slavery sympathy for the North, yet also
truly indicative of a Northern temper toward the South and its "domestic
institution." This was the negotiation of a Slave-Trade treaty with
Great Britain, by which America joined, at last, the nations agreeing to
unite their efforts in suppression of the African Slave Trade. The
treaty was signed by Seward and Lyons at Washington on April 7. On the
next day Seward wrote to Adams that had such a treaty been ratified "in
1808, there would now have been no sedition here, and no disagreement
between the United States and foreign nations[584]," a melancholy
reflection intended to suggest that the South alone had been responsible
for the long delay of American participation in a world humanitarian
movement. But the real purpose of the treaty, Lyons thought, was "to
save the credit of the President with the Party which elected him if he
should make concessions to the South, with a view of reconstructing the
Union[585]"--an erroneous view evincing a misconception of the
intensity of both Northern and Southern feeling if regarded from our
present knowledge, but a view natural enough to the foreign observer at
the moment. Lyons, in this letter, correctly stated the rising
determination of the North to restore the Union, but underestimated the
rapid growth of an equal determination against a restoration with
slavery. The real motive for Seward's eagerness to sign the Slave Trade
treaty was the thought of its influence on foreign, not domestic,
affairs. Lyons, being confident that Russell would approve, had taken
"the risk of going a little faster" than his instructions had
indicated[586].

In this same letter Lyons dwelt upon the Northern elation over recent
military successes. The campaign in the West had been followed in the
East by a great effort under McClellan to advance on Richmond up the
peninsula of the James river and using Chesapeake Bay as a means of
water transportation and supply. This campaign had been threatened by
the appearance of the iron-clad ram _Merrimac_ and her attack on the
wooden naval vessels operating in support of McClellan, but on March 9
the _Monitor_, a slow-moving floating iron-clad fortress, drove the
_Merrimac_ from her helpless prey, and removed the Southern threat to
McClellan's commu