news
of the capture of New Orleans, April 25. "It took them three days to
make up their minds to believe it[591]," but even the capture of this
the most important commercial city of the South was not regarded as of
great importance in view of the eastern effort toward Richmond.

News of the operations in the peninsula was as slow in reaching England
as was McClellan's slow and cautious advance. It was during this advance
and previous to the capture of New Orleans that two remarkable
adventures toward a solution in America were made, apparently wholly on
individual initiative, by a Frenchman in America and an Englishman in
France. Mercier at Washington and Lindsay at Paris conceived, quite
independently, that the time had come for projects of foreign mediation.

French opinion, like that expressed in England, appears to have been
that the Northern successes in the spring of 1862 might result in such a
rehabilitation of Northern self-esteem that suggestions of now
recognizing the _facts_ of the situation and acknowledging the
independence of the South would not be unfavourably received. In this
sense Thouvenel wrote to Mercier, privately, on March 13, but was
careful to state that the word "mediation" ought not to be uttered. His
letter dilated, also, on French manufacturing difficulties at home due
to the lack of cotton[592]. This was in no way an instruction to
Mercier, but the ideas expressed were broached by him in a conversation
with Seward, only to be met with such positive assertions of intention
and ability soon to recover the South as somewhat to stagger the French
Minister. He remarked, according to his report to Thouvenel, that he
wished it were possible to visit Richmond and assure himself that there
also they recognized the truth of Seward's statements, upon which the
latter at once offered to further such a trip. Mercier asserted to
Thouvenel that he was taken by surprise, having foreseen no such eager
acquiescence in a suggestion made _without previous thought_, but that
on consideration he returned to Seward and accepted the proposal,
outlining the substance of what he intended to say at Richmond. He
should there make clear that the anxiety of France was above all
directed toward peace as essential to French commercial interests; that
France had always regarded the separation of North and South with
regret; that the North was evidently determined in its will to restore
the Union; and, in repetition, that