war party; no one in the Cabinet is strong enough to combat him.”  Britain, Lyons thought, should maintain a stiff attitude, prepare to defend Canada, and make close contacts with France.  He was evidently anxious to impress upon Russell that Seward really might mean war, but he declared the chief danger to lie in the fact of American belief that England and France could not be driven into war with the United States, and that they would submit to any insult.  Lyons urged some action, or declaration (he did not know what), to correct this false impression[213].  Again, on the next day, May 21, the information in his official despatch was repeated in a private letter to Russell, but Lyons here interprets Seward’s threats as mere bluster.  Yet he is not absolutely sure of this, and in any case insists that the best preventative of war with the United States is to show that England is ready for it[214].

It was an anxious time for the British Minister in Washington.  May 22, he warned Sir Edmund Head, Governor of Canada, urging him to make defensive preparation[215].  The following day he dilated to Russell, privately, on “the difficulty of keeping Mr. Seward within the bounds of decency even in ordinary social intercourse[216] ...” and in an official communication of this same day he records Washington rumours of a belligerent despatch read by Seward before the Cabinet, of objections by other members, and that Seward’s insistence has carried the day[217].  That Seward was, in fact, still smarting over his reverse is shown by a letter, written on this same May 23, to his intimate friend and political adviser, Thurlow Weed, who had evidently cautioned him against precipitate action.  Seward wrote, “The European phase is bad.  But your apprehension that I may be too decisive alarms me more.  Will you consent, or advise us to consent, that Adams and Dayton have audiences and compliments in the Ministers’ Audience Chamber, and Toombs’ [Confederate Secretary of State] emissaries have access to his bedroom[218]?”

Two interpretations are possible from this:  either that Seward knowing himself defeated was bitter in retrospect, or that he had not yet yielded his will to that of Lincoln, in spite of the changes made in his Despatch No. 10.  The former interpretation seems the more likely, for though Seward continued to write for a time “vigorous” despatches to Adams, they none of them approached the vigour of even the amended despatch.  Moreover, the exact facts of the Cabinet of May 21, and the complete reversal of Seward’s policy were sufficiently known by May 24 to have reached the ears of Schleiden, who reported them in a letter to Bremen of that date[219].  And on the same day Seward himself told Schleiden that he did “not fear any longer that it would come to a break with England[220].”  On May 27 Lyons himself, though still suspicious that an attempt was being made to separate France and England, was able to report a better tone from Seward[221].