212 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 



those days, but the situation must have ap 

 pealed with strange bewilderment to such as 

 there were. Americans were splitting their 

 throats with joyous approval of a harsh, crude 

 exercise of the right of visitation and search; 

 Englishmen were girding up their loins for war 

 in defence of the rights of neutrals. The men 

 of 1812 Castlereagh, Canning, Madison, John 

 Quincy Adams would have been in sad straits 

 to adjust themselves to this extraordinary re 

 versal of national roles. What explained it 

 lay for the most part beneath the surface. The 

 Americans exulted not more over the capture of 

 two conspicuous domestic foes than over the 

 incidental flouting of the British flag, finding 

 in this latter a fitting retaliation for the hostile 

 haste in recognizing the Confederacy as a bel 

 ligerent. The British, for their part, took high 

 ground on the rights of the neutral flag less be 

 cause those rights were apparently assailed than 

 because the apparent assailant was the Yankees; 

 for there was persistently current in England 

 a suspicion that the Lincoln administration in 

 tended to make trouble with her for the sake of 

 improving its position in home politics. 



The course adopted by the Palmerston cab 

 inet left no room for diplomatic subtleties or for 



