Henri Mercier and the American Civil War (Princeton Legacy Library) - Hardcover

Carroll, Daniel B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691045852 ISBN 13: 9780691045856

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1971

Synopsis

As French ambassador to the United States from July 1860 through December 1863, Henri Mercier was in an excellent position to observe, report, and influence the events of those crucial years. Through a description of Mercier's diplomacy, Professor Carroll gives a new account of the Civil War―the tenacious nationalism of the Lincoln-Seward government, the French economic distress caused by the loss of the cotton trade, the continental perspective on the War, the men and society of Washington and Richmond. He shows, in particular, that while maintaining friendly relations in Washington, Mercier seriously considered French recognition of the South, and intervention if necessary. Professor Carroll outlines the French peace proposals of 1862 and 1863, and also Mercier's ingenious plan for a North-South common market.

Originally published in 1971.

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About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Henri Mercier and the American Civil War

By David Carroll

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1971 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-691-04585-6

Contents

PREFACE, xi, 
A NOTE ON SOURCES, xv, 
I. BACKGROUND, 
France and America in 1860, 3, 
Henri Mercier in 1860, 5, 
II. LAST DAYS OF THE OLD REPUBLIC, 
Mercier's First Impressions, 11, 
The Autumn of James Buchanan, 16, 
Mercier and the Buchanan Policies, 26, 
The Impending Crisis, 33, 
III. MANEUVERS AND POSITIONS: March to September 1861, 
Before the War, 46, 
Seward the Warrior, 53, 
The Beginning of the War, 61, 
Interviews with Seward, 75, 
The Travels of Mercier and Prince Napoleon, 86, 
Diplomatic Business, 90, 
IV. THE TRENT AFFAIR, 
The Anglo-French Entente on the Eve of the Trent Crisis, 97, 
The Crisis, 99, 
V. THE BLOCKADE AND DIPLOMACY, 
The Posing of the Problem, 119, 
Thouvenel, Mercier, and the Blockade, 125, 
The Blockade after Trent, 132, 
Seward Reacts, 135, 
VI. THE TRIP TO RICHMOND, 
The Georgetown House Destroyed, 143, 
The Genesis of the Richmond Idea, 146, 
Diplomacy in Richmond, 155, 
Aftermath in Washington, 167, 
Reactions in Paris and London, 175, 
Evaluations of the Trip, 179, 
VII. RENEWED PRESSURE FOR PEACE: May to August 1862, 
New Orleans, 185, 
Fluctuations on the Battlefield and in Mercier's Mind, 194, 
Developments in Europe, 203, 
VIII. THE THREE-POWER PROPOSAL, 
Mercier at the Brink, 210, 
Antietam and Europe, 216, 
Emancipation, 219, 
Mercier and New York Politics, 227, 
Decision in Europe, 234, 
Mercier and Reaction in America, 241, 
IX. THE FRENCH PROPOSAL OF 1863, 
Mercier, Horace Greeley, and Peace Prospects, 251, 
Mercier and Drouyn de Lhuys Reach the Same Conclusion, 257, 
Mercier and the Aftermath of the French Note, 263, 
Mercier and France under Attack, 269, 
X. MEXICO, 
The Tripartite Convention of London, 275, 
The Growing French Involvement, 279, 
Mexico and American Public Opinion, 286, 
The Triumph of 1863, 291, 
Mercier's Secret Plan, 297, 
XI. A SEA OF TROUBLES, 
Mercier's Life in Corcoran's House, 304, 
Letters of Marque, 313, 
Poland, 315, 
The Union Army versus the Roebuck Motion, 319, 
Cotton and Tobacco, 326, 
Consuls and the Confederacy, 336, 
The New York State Excursion, 340, 
Shipbuilding in France, 342, 
XII. LAST WEEKS AND RETURN, 
The Last Few Weeks, 348, 
Mercier in France, 355, 
Mercier and Seward: Epilogue, 357, 
CONCLUSION, 364, 
BIBLIOGRAPHY, 375, 
INDEX, 389, 

CHAPTER 1

Background

France and America in 1860

In the year 1860, the position of envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of Emperor Napoleon III to the government of the United States was a post of limited importance and even less desirability. It was accepted as such, with reluctance and resignation, by the subject of this study.

For over a generation relations between the United States and France had been at ebb tide, receding quietly from the points of high excitement which had been reached in the eras of revolution, Federalists, and Virginia dynasty, of Louis XVI and Napoleon I. No action of France in 1860, it seemed, could equal in vital importance the midwife's help which had attended America's birth. Nothing could furnish raw material of such historical importance as the purchase of Louisiana. Seemingly no threat of French intervention could stimulate another Monroe Doctrine. Henri Mercier, certainly, could not anticipate even the clouded historical eminence of a Citizen Genet as a result of his stay in the New World. To a rising young diplomat, Washington in 1860 was at best a shaky rung on the ladder of career: a thing to be touched lightly, used, and transcended.

For the United States, whose main preoccupations were expansion and sectional tension, France had become a sort of minor irritant, an imperial monarchy whose friendship with Great Britain and dabbling in Latin America could annoy the expanding republic but not threaten her life. For France, whose main preoccupation was Italy, the United States was no longer the great counterweight, the balancing force against Britain, which she had been in Bourbon policy. The completion of Italian unification, the inauguration of the Cobden-Chevalier commercial treaty, the concern in England about France's naval growth and her annexation of Savoy and Nice: these were what mattered at the Quai d'Orsay in 1860.

In the Western Hemisphere the government of France had long since established an entente with Great Britain, a working relationship which had, for example, helped deny Cuba to Washington, though it could not do the same for Texas. What it might do if a Republican won the presidential election of 1860 was a question of no immediate worry in Paris in the early months of the year, though such concern would grow as the year wore on.

Henri Mercier could gain some hint of the sort of work which lay ahead by reviewing the actions of his predecessor, Count Eugene de Sartiges, who served in Washington through most of the 1850's. Sartiges worried much about the bumptious expansionism and ideological aggressiveness of the Yankees. In 1853 and 1854 he had warned Washington of what Britain and France might do if America tried to annex Hawaii; his own recommendation to Paris was an Anglo-French protectorate for the islands. Again in 1854 he had helped block an offer of United States mediation in the Crimean War, an offer surrounded with portentous talk about Russo-American cooperation against the Anglo-French front. By the end of the decade the exciting possibility of a sectional rupture appeared. Sartiges thought it would mean war. In the year between Sartiges' departure and Mercier's arrival, the French chargé in Washington was Viscount Jules Treilhard. He too foresaw the possibility of a civil war and thought it would be of vast international significance. And if that were so, it might matter a great deal what kind of man was coming to America to represent the imperial government.

Looking at it in personal terms, Sartiges as early as 1857 had had some thoughts about his successor. "Six years of studying liberty in this country," he wrote, "where the law protects the rogue and the honest man has to look out for himself, are enough for my political education; replace me with some retarded statesman so he can begin his."

Henri Mercier in 1860

The statesman to whom this unique educational opportunity would be offered was born Edouard Henri Mercier on 24 September 1816 in Baltimore, Maryland, where his father was serving as Louis XVIII's consul. The Mercier family was of the upper bourgeoisie and noted among its more interesting forbears the nurse of Louis XV, a lady whose influence at Versailles had enabled her to marry off her children well. Marie-Philippe, the consul, had been a prefect in Jerome Bonaparte's Westphalia before coming to America. His wife, Henri Mercier's mother, was Henriette Adèle Leroy.

Mercier was educated in Europe after the family's return there, most notably at the international school of Rodolphe Töpffer in Switzerland. His mother Henriette is remembered as a lady of charm who conducted a famous salon during the Orleans period, frequented by the Russian minister Prince Menshikov among other notables. Thus influenced and aided from both sides of his family, Mercier must have come quite easily to the decision to follow a career in government service. At the age of twenty-three he was sent to Mexico as unpaid attaché, and he filled out the 1840's as apprentice and journeyman diplomat in Madrid, Lisbon, and St. Petersburg.

The revolution of 1848, the coup of 1851, and the change of Louis Napoleon's title in 1852 advanced rather than stunted Mercier's career. He attained the rank of minister in 1852 as the prince-president's man in Dresden, and in 1854 he was promoted to the Athens legation. It was here in the East, during the sensitive period of the Crimean War, that a friendship, born in Madrid ten years earlier, grew between Mercier and his counterpart in Constantinople, Edouard Antoine Thouvenel.

Henri Mercier was a complicated man, perhaps more than normally so. His tone and temperament were active, outgoing, and generally optimistic, but his correspondence shows signs of sourness as well as laughter and wit. While given to large reflection, to economic, political, and socio-historical theorizing, his fine mind was quick about current matters, and he wanted to be up and doing. Traveling companions attest his uncomplaining good humor, but this was the positive satisfaction of the good traveler, not the serenity of slack nerves: Mercier was an intense, perhaps even mercurial, person. And he did know how to complain, as his superior Edouard Thouvenel had better reason to know than anyone else. The kind of heart-on-the-sleeve letters which passed from Stockholm and Washington to this old friend at the Quai d'Orsay betray a genuine, emotional nature, normally kept in check for official business, but apt to try the imprudent. Mercier was not reticent by nature, only by training, and Thouvenel had to worry about his rashness more than once.

At once hearty and discriminating, Mercier was famous as a host and a good companion in conversation; among those he met in America, several became his friends; he made no personal enemies. His appreciation of the good life and aristocratic preferences about ceremony were tempered by a mature detachment, for he was willing to "rough it." A man of the middle class, he was profoundly distrustful of democracy; he respected titles; and he valued order in society. His admiration for Napoleonic rule was deep and genuine, and in 1870 it was to cost him his career.

Mercier was above average in height, physically robust and athletic. In a photograph taken in February 1862 by Mathew Brady, he appears a few years younger than his actual forty-five. His large, longish head and dignified Roman nose are kept from being pompous by a half-closed right eye, the whole giving an impression of annoyance or suspicion. Thick, dark hair, thinning at the forehead, descends on either side into long sideburns and a handlebar moustache, without a beard. As posed, left hand gripping his vest pocket, he appears unheroically formal. The picture does not exactly mirror the man.

In June of 1856, Mercier married Cécile-Elisabeth Philibert Benoit de Lostende, a young lady of aristocratic lineage whose father, Baron Grégoire Benoît de Lostende, was one of the last to be given a title by Charles X. ( This title would eventually pass to Mercier in 1867: after his father-in-law's death he became Baron Mercier de Lostende.) The couple established themselves in Stockholm in 1857 where Mercier served for two and a half years as minister of Napoleon III. Here his first child, Madeleine, was born; Cécile-Élisabeth's delicate health gave the new father some concern, but mother and child did nicely. It was also in Stockholm, in the winter of 1859, that Mercier received in quick succession two remarkable pieces of news, one bad, the other good: he would have to leave the civilized legations of Europe and go to the United States; there he would execute the orders of his friend Thouvenel, who had just been named minister of foreign affairs.

Mercier wrote to congratulate him, praising the choice, disavowing any intention to flatter, and calling attention to his own sorry prospects:

This distant, fruitless assignment could not possibly be suitable for me in any way: it runs counter to my feelings, my interests, my tastes, my hopes; it deprives me of every advantage my experience and knowledge of personalities could bring to the diplomatic service. ... I am thunderstruck, and I have been thrown into a gloom which I hide as best I can but from which only your promotion to the ministry can rescue me.

The special close relationship which existed between Thouvenel and Mercier is apparent from the whole thrust of this uninhibited outburst; it is a factor which must be given due weight when we come to assess the correspondence they shared in the years ahead about things American.

Thunderstruck as he was, Mercier still prepared to return to the country of his birth. Last-minute ceremonial business made it necessary for him to stay in Stockholm briefly while Madame Mercier and Madeleine went home for a short vacation. He entrusted them to Thouvenel's hospitality:

As soon as she recovers from her trip, my wife will present her respects to Madame Thouvenel. Make her welcome, I beg you, and let her bring her pretty little Swedish girl to play with your two Turkish gallants. ... You are lucky to be in a climate where you can allow children to play outside.

Mercier joined his family about the middle of May. While he was in Paris for pretrip conferences, he frequently met Charles J. Faulkner of Virginia, whom President Buchanan has recently sent to replace John Y. Mason as the United States minister to France. Faulkner was favorably impressed with Mercier: "He is a gentleman of considerable experience in diplomatic life, of a frank and manly disposition, and impressed with sentiments of high admiration of our country and its institutions." Those sentiments of high admiration for the "distant and fruitless" country to which he had been sentenced came readily to the professional diplomat. In all the three and a half years' record which Mercier left in America, there is no evidence that any American knew the extent of his discomfort.

Mercier's worry must have increased considerably when he learned that Cecile-Elisabeth was expecting their second child. Her health was never good, or at least she thought not, and hypochondria could have the same depressing effect on her husband's outlook as physical trouble. The unhappy little family took passage on 20 June 1860, aboard the Cunard liner Adriatic. The seas ahead were rough in both a metaphorical and a literal sense.

CHAPTER 2

Last Days of the Old Republic

Merciers First Impressions

The Adriatic reached New York on the evening of Saturday, 30 June. Newspapers noted laconically the presence of the French minister, but were more taken with the new mammoth liner Great Eastern, which had preceded the Adriatic by only two days, and with the news from Europe of Garibaldi's "further successes" against the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Mercier left his wife and daughter in New York and went immediately to Washington to meet Treilhard and to present himself to the government.

The coincidence of dates made Mercier the central foreign figure at what might have been the last celebration of Independence Day by a united American nation. At noon on a hot, rainy 4 July, he was presented to the self-styled Old Public Functionary, James Buchanan. The presentation was made by Acting Secretary of State William Henry Trescot, who would be in Richmond within the year, along with many other of Buchanan's friends and aides.

Predictably, the president noted the significance of the date and delivered the usual platitude about France being America's oldest ally. No difficulty between the two countries could be foreseen, and he stood ready to intercept and smooth the unforeseen. Mercier found the president's cordiality a compensation for the lack of White House ceremony. In his report he told Thouvenel that since the other diplomats were fleeing the Washington heat, he too would leave and would take the opportunity to visit important cities and familiarize himself with the country.

Mercier's actual itinerary, however, was somewhat different. He was in New York, undoubtedly to be with his family and attend to details of moving, from 9 to 13 July, and he was back in Washington four days later. His activities were a hodgepodge of trivia and gravia, from seeing his brandy and cigars safely into the country to meditating on the American sectional tensions.

Among the substantive matters which Mercier had to address this early, the interests of Britain and France in Mexico stand out. There the liberal, anticlerical revolt of Benito Juarez against the Miramon government was well advanced, and in fact Juarez had been extended American recognition. In July, Mercier's British colleague Lord Lyons presented an invitation for the United States to join England and France in approaching both sides; the Mexicans would then elect a national assembly which would reconcile the factions enough to end the war. The Anglo-French entente was again at work, and in fact a similar proposal had already emanated from Paris and been relayed fruitlessly to the State Department before Mercier's arrival. James Buchanan, however, with his longstanding hope of American domination in Mexico and the Caribbean, was the last man to tie the United States to a European initiative there. Mercier predicted correctly that the British démarche would be rejected as the French had been.

As yet, of course, the problem of Mexico was not central to the main issue, the sectional issue, which was pregnant with possibilities in foreign relations. From his first dispatch to his last, Mercier probed and expounded this issue, but his earliest thinking was not set against the sultry, cluttered background of Washington. Mercier had thought of traveling in August and September to make soundings in various American cities. Instead, he went to Newport.

For a generation now, this pretty seaside town had been a summer retreat for affluent Americans, mostly from the South. In the early days accommodations had been meager enough, but the 1850's saw something of a building boom, and some New Englanders had taken notice of their local treasure. A Newport festival was held in 1859 to advertise the town, and many former residents returned for the climactic celebration that August. Culturally and intellectually it was a moneyed, Southern milieu in which the Merciers were to receive their American initiation.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1971
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691045852
• ISBN 13: 9780691045856
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 420