of his visit.  The word slavery was not mentioned by him, but Palmerston promptly denied that slavery in the South had ever been, or was now, a barrier to recognition; British objections to recognition were those which had long since been stated, and there was nothing “underlying” them.  On March 26, Mason called on the Earl of Donoughmore, a Tory friend of the South with whom he had long been in close touch, and asked whether he thought Palmerston’s Government could be induced by a Southern abolition of slavery to recognize the Confederacy.  The reply was “that the time had gone by now....”  This time the words “slavery” and “abolition” were spoken boldly[1268], and Donoughmore was positive that if, in the midsummer of 1863, when Lee was invading Pennsylvania, the South had made its present overture, nothing could have prevented British recognition.  The opinion clashed with Mason’s own conviction, but in any case no more was to be hoped, now, from his overture.  Only a favourable turn in the war could help the South.

There was no public knowledge in London of this “last card” Southern effort in diplomacy, though there were newspaper rumours that some such move was on foot, but with a primary motive of restoring Southern fighting power by putting the negroes in arms.  British public attention was fixed rather upon a possible last-moment reconciliation of North and South and a restored Union which should forget its domestic troubles in a foreign war.  Momentarily somewhat of a panic overcame London society and gloomy were the forebodings that Great Britain would be the chosen enemy of America.  Like rumours were afloat at Washington also.  The Russian Minister, Stoeckl, reported to his Government that he had learned from “a sure source” of representations made to Jefferson Davis by Blair, a prominent Unionist and politician of the border state of Maryland, looking to reconstruction and to the sending by Lincoln of armies into Canada and Mexico.  Stoeckl believed such a war would be popular, but commented that “Lincoln might change his mind[1269] to-morrow.”  In London the Army and Navy Gazette declared that Davis could not consent to reunion and that Lincoln could not offer any other terms of peace, but that a truce might be patched up on the basis of a common aggression against supposed foreign enemies[1270].  Adams pictured all British society as now convinced that the end of the war was near, and bitter against the previous tone and policy of such leaders of public opinion as the Times, adding that it was being “whispered about that if the feud is reconciled and the Union restored, and a great army left on our hands, the next manifestation will be one of hostility to this country[1271].”

The basis of all this rumour was Blair’s attempt to play the mediator.  He so far succeeded that on January 31, 1865, Lincoln instructed Seward to go to Fortress Monroe to meet “commissioners” appointed by Davis.  But Lincoln made positive in his instructions three points: