The Florida, therefore, escaped, not to conduct commerce with
Sicily, but to destroy the commerce of the United States. At the same
time that she was fitting out, a mysterious craft, oddly known only as
the "290," was also building in the Liverpool docks, and against her Mr.
Adams got such evidence that the queen's ministers could not help
deciding that she must be detained. Unfortunately, however, and by a
strange, if not a significant chance, they reached this decision on the
day after she had sailed! She became the notorious Alabama. Earl Russell
admitted that the affair was "a scandal," but this did not interfere
with the career of Captain Semmes. In these incidents there was both
cause and provocation for war, and hot-headed ones cried out for it,
while prudent men feared it. But the President and the secretary were
under the bonds of necessity to keep their official temper. Just at this
juncture England would have found it not only very easy, but also very
congenial to her real sympathies, to play for the South a part like that
which France had once played for certain thirteen revolted colonies, and
thereby to change a rebellion into a revolution. So Mr. Lincoln and Mr.
Seward, not willing to give the unfriendly power this opportunity, only
wrote down in the national ledger sundry charges against Great Britain,
which were afterward paid, not promptly, yet in full!
Another provoking thing was the placing of
Confederate loans in London.
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