as
improved, for he began, and thereafter maintained with vigour, the "high
moral purpose" argument as evinced in the emancipation proclamation.
"The interests of humanity," he wrote to Adams, "have now become
identified with the cause of our country[918]...."

That the material interests of Great Britain were still in Seward's
thought is shown by the celerity with which under Lincoln's orders he
grasped at an unexpected opening in relation to liberated slaves. Stuart
wrote in mid-September that Mr. Walker, secretary of the colony of
British Guiana, was coming from Demerara to Washington to secure
additional labour for the British colony by offering to carry away
ex-slaves[919]. This scheme was no secret and five days after the issue
of the proclamation Seward proposed to Stuart a convention by which the
British Government would be permitted to transport to the West Indies,
or to any of its colonies, the negroes about to be emancipated. On
September 30, Adams was instructed to take up the matter at London[920].
Russell was at first disinclined to consider such a convention and
discussion dragged until the spring of 1864, when it was again proposed,
this time by Russell, but now declined by Seward. In its immediate
influence in the fall of 1862, Seward's offer had no effect on the
attitude of the British Government[921].

To Englishmen and Americans alike it has been in later years a matter
for astonishment that the emancipation proclamation did not at once
convince Great Britain of the high purposes of the North. But if it be
remembered that in the North itself the proclamation was greeted, save
by a small abolitionist faction, with doubt extending even to bitter
opposition and that British governmental and public opinion had long
dreaded a servile insurrection--even of late taking its cue from
Seward's own prophecies--the cool reception given by the Government, the
vehement and vituperative explosions of the press do not seem so
surprising. "This Emancipation Proclamation," wrote Stuart on September
23, "seems a brutum fulmen[922]." One of the President's motives, he
thought, was to affect public opinion in England. "But there is no
pretext of humanity about the Proclamation.... It is merely a
Confiscation Act, or perhaps worse, for it offers direct encouragement
to servile insurrections[923]." Received in England during the Cabinet
struggle over mediation the proclamation appears not to have affected
that controvers