There was no public knowledge in London of this "last card" Southern
effort in diplomacy, though there were newspaper rumours that some such
move was on foot, but with a primary motive of restoring Southern
fighting power by putting the negroes in arms. British public attention
was fixed rather upon a possible last-moment reconciliation of North and
South and a restored Union which should forget its domestic troubles in
a foreign war. Momentarily somewhat of a panic overcame London society
and gloomy were the forebodings that Great Britain would be the chosen
enemy of America. Like rumours were afloat at Washington also. The
Russian Minister, Stoeckl, reported to his Government that he had
learned from "a sure source" of representations made to Jefferson Davis
by Blair, a prominent Unionist and politician of the border state of
Maryland, looking to reconstruction and to the sending by Lincoln of
armies into Canada and Mexico. Stoeckl believed such a war would be
popular, but commented that "Lincoln might change his mind[1269]
to-morrow." In London the _Army and Navy Gazette_ declared that Davis
could not consent to reunion and that Lincoln could not offer any other
terms of peace, but that a truce might be patched up on the basis of a
common aggression against supposed foreign enemies[1270].
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