They had no
knowledge of Seward's instructions of April 24. When therefore Adams,
toward the conclusion of his interview, stated his authority to
negotiate a convention, he undoubtedly took Russell by surprise. So far
as he was concerned a suggestion to the North, the result of an
agreement made with France after some discussion and delay, was in fact
completed, and the draft finally drawn _two days before_, on the
sixteenth. Even if not actually sent, as Henry Adams thinks, it was a
completed agreement. Russell might well speak of it as an instruction
already given to Lyons. Moreover there were two points in Adams'
conversation of the eighteenth likely to give Russell cause for thought.
The first was Adams' protest against the British recognition of a status
of belligerency. If the North felt so earnestly about this, had it been
wise to instruct Lyons to make an approach to the South? This required
consideration. And in the second place did not Adams' offer again open
up the prospect of somehow getting from the North at least a formal and
permanent renunciation of privateering?
For if an examination is made of Russell's instruction to Lyons of May
18 it appears that he had not, after all, dropped that reference to
privateering which Thouvenel had omitted in his own instructions to
Mercier.
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