THE CIVIL WAR PERIOD -1857 -1864 95 



placed in the worst light possible as regarded our in- 

 terests, and even the telegraphic despatches were manipu- 

 lated so as to do our cause all the injury possible. I there- 

 fore prepared, with especial care, an answer to these let- 

 ters of Dr. Russell, and published it in London. Its fate 

 was what might have been expected. Some papers dis- 

 cussed it fairly, but, on the whole, it was pooh-poohed, ex- 

 plained away, and finally buried under new masses of slan- 

 der. I did, indeed, find a few friends of my country in 

 Great Britain. In Dublin I dined with Cairnes, the polit- 

 ical economist, who had earnestly written in behalf of the 

 Union against the Confederates ; and in London, with Pro- 

 fessor Carpenter, the eminent physiologist, who, being 

 devoted to anti-slavery ideas, was mildly favorable to the 

 Union side. But I remember him less on account of any- 

 thing he said relating to the struggle in America, than for 

 a statement bearing upon the legitimacy of the sovereign 

 then ruling in France, who was at heart one of our most 

 dangerous enemies. Dr. Carpenter told me that some time 

 previously he had been allowed by Nassau Senior, whose 

 published conversations with various men of importance 

 throughout Europe had attracted much attention, to look 

 into some of the records which Mr. Senior had not thought 

 it best to publish, and that among them he had read the 

 following : 



- showed me to-day an autograph letter written by 

 Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, not far from the time 

 of the birth of his putative son, now Napoleon III. One 

 passage read as follows: 'J'ai le malheur d' avoir pour 

 femme une Messaline. Elle a des amants partout, et par- 

 tout elle laisse des enfants.' 



I could not but think of this a few weeks later when I 

 saw the emperor, who derived his title to the throne of 

 France from his nominal father, poor King Louis, but 

 whose personal appearance, like that of his brother, the 

 Due de Morny, was evidently not derived from any Bo- 

 naparte. All the Jerome Napoleons I have ever seen, in- 

 cluding old King Jerome of Westphalia, and Prince Na- 



