and Bright and Forster had spoken for the United States, on July 13 Roebuck withdrew his maladroit motion.

A few days later came the news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg. The Southern sympathizers were at first incredulous. Even "The London Times" at first refused to credit the news. When at last it was impossible longer even to pretend to disbelieve it, there was great disappointment. Nor was the event without its effect upon the Government. Adams remarked that at the next official reception which he attended, Palmerston was more civil to him than he had ever been before since his arrival in London. Following this came the incident of the two ironclads, already related in the preceding chapter, with the conclusion of which in the early fall of 1863, the last danger of European intervention, of recognition of the Confederacy, or of war between any European nation and the United States over the Southern question, may be regarded as having passed away.

Two other interesting and important topics relating to those times remain to be considered. One is, the part which the British sovereign personally played in maintaining peace between the United Kingdom and the United States. On this subject there is probably no better authority than Charles Francis Adams, Jr., the son of the man who was American minister to England during the war.

Some years ago Abram S. Hewitt, a distinguished citizen of New York City, publicly stated, on what he declared to be his own personal knowledge, that the elder Adams received early in 1862 private information that the French government was about to induce the British government to recognize the independency of the Confederacy; and that thereupon he practically demanded an audience with the queen. Upon being received by her at Windsor he remonstrated as strongly as possible against the purposed action of her Government, whereupon she said to him, "Mr. Adams, give yourself no concern; my Government will not recognize the Confederacy." The younger Charles Francis Adams, on hearing this story, regarded it as intrinsically improbable, but set about investigating it in the most thorough manner. The result was that in 1904 he read to the Massachusetts Historical Society and then printed an elaborate paper on the subject. In this he neither confirmed

nor refuted Mr. Hewitt's story, but he did throw convincing light upon the attitude of the queen toward America during the war and her influence in behalf of the Union. His conclusion was that the queen, intervening at a critical moment, did thwart the inclination and probable intentions of her ministers to recognize the Confederacy, and that she took that momentous action not at Windsor, nor indeed in England, but at Gotha, in the early autumn of 1862. In support of this belief Mr. Adams marshaled an array of facts which certainly render its rejection difficult and its acceptance almost if not quite inevitable.

Mr. Adams related that on March 6, 1902, President Eliot of Harvard University, in conferring an honorary degree upon Prince Henry of Prussia, spoke as follows:

"Universities have long memories. Forty years ago the American Union was in deadly peril, and thousands of its young men were bleeding and dying for it. It is credibly reported that at a very critical moment the Queen of England said to her prime minister, 'My Lord, you must understand that I shall sign no paper which means war with the United States.' The grandson of that illustrious woman is sitting with us here." It appeared to Mr. Adams that the Eliot version of a traditional incident was, humanly speaking, at least possible, which could hardly be said of the Hewitt version, and he accordingly asked President Eliot for his authority. He received this highly interesting and valuable reply:

"In 1874 I was at Oxford for a week. Dr. Acland, to whom I had a letter, procured for me an invitation to lunch with Prince Leopold, who was then living with a tutor in a small house at Oxford and going to some lectures. Dr. Acland went with me, and we were four at the table. In the course of the luncheon the prince told the story of the queen's interview with Lord Russell, Dr. Acland prompting him to do so. He gave no authorities, and said nothing about the source of his information. He must have been a small boy at the time of this interview with the queen. Dr. Acland spoke of the story as if he believed it. Naturally, I remember the prince's statement, but I do not know that I ever have talked about it. Quite lately -that is, since last March-I heard somebody else attribute this statement to Prince Leopold, but I have now forgotten who

that somebody else was. I have never seen any real authority for it, and that is the reason I used the expression 'credibly stated.'

Now Sir Henry Acland had accompanied the Prince of Wales on his tour in this country in 1860, and in 1874 he was a professor at Oxford University and honorary physician to the queen's youngest son, Prince Leopold. He must therefore be regarded as a man competent to form an authoritative opinion and as so situated as to be conversant with the circumstances and facts of the case. Apparently he believed this story, and this evidence, as Mr Adams observed, "indicates clearly and indisputably that an accepted tradition prevailed in the royal family and about Windsor Castle that, at some period of crisis in the course of our Civil War, Queen Victoria did take a decided stand with the ministry in opposition to anything calculated to provoke hostilities with the United States. Accepted traditions are rarely without some foundation of fact."

It is probable that for several months after the death of her husband, in December, 1861, the queen had no occasion to deal personally with American questions, and because of her physical condition and great depression of spirit her ministers were anxious to relieve her as far as possible of the burdens of public business. She may, therefore, not have been aware of the direction in which their thoughts were tending during the spring and summer of that year. In September, however, while she was in Gotha, where her constant and often declared purpose to be guided in foreign affairs by her knowledge of Prince Albert's sympathies and convictions may naturally have been fortified by her environment, certain occurrences which must have come to her knowledge invited decisive action on her part. It was Mr. Adams's belief that, asserting her prerogative, she there and then compelled her ministers to reconsider a design which they were forming, and to continue a policy which was of vast moment to the United States.

During the early part of the Queen's stay in Gotha, Russell being the minister in attendance upon her there, letters passed between Russell and Palmerston in which they revealed to each other their views on the relations of Great Britain and the United States.