III
Northern diplomats were disappointed by the initial skeptical response of many Englishmen to the Emancipation Proclamation. But as the real import of the edict sank in, and as Lincoln made clear on January 1 that he really meant it, British antislavery sentiment mobilized for the Union. Mass meetings took place throughout the kingdom. Confederate sympathizers were forced to lie low for a time. The effect of "this development of sentiment," noted Charles Francis Adams happily, "is to annihilate all agitation for recognition." Young Henry Adams, whose mood tended to swing from despair to euphoria, was thrilled by the outpouring of British pro-Union expressions. "The Emancipation Proclamation has done more for us here than all our former victories and all our diplomacy," wrote Henry with hyperbole to his brother Charles Francis, Jr., a cavalry captain in the Army of the Potomac. "If only you at home don't have disasters, we will give such a checkmate to the foreign hopes of the rebels as they never yet have had."51
But the Union armies did have more disasters. The foreign hopes as well as domestic prospects of the rebels rose again during this northern winter of discontent.
51. Ford, Cycle of Adams Letters, I, 243.