Note 993 — Chapter XIII

American opinion knew little of this change. An interesting, if somewhat irrational and irregular plan to thwart Southern ship-building operations, had been taken up by the United States Navy Department. This was to buy the Rams outright by the offer of such a price as, it was thought, would be so tempting to the Lairds as to make refusal unlikely. Two men, Forbes and Aspinwall, were sent to England with funds and much embarrassed Adams to whom they discreetly refrained from stating details, but yet permitted him to guess their object. The plan of buying ran wholly counter to Adams' diplomatic protests on England's duty in international law and the agents themselves soon saw the folly of it. Fox, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, wrote to Dupont, March 26, 1863: "The Confederate ironclads in England, I think, will be taken care of." (Correspondence, I, 196.) Thurlow Weed wrote to Bigelow, April 16, of the purpose of the visit of Forbes and Aspinwall. (Bigelow, Retrospections, I, 632.) Forbes reported as early as April 18 virtually against going on with the plan. "We must keep cool here, and prepare the way; we have put new fire into Mr. Dudley by furnishing fuel, and he is hard at it getting evidence.... My opinion to-day is that we can and shall stop by legal process and by the British Government the sailing of ironclads and other war-ships." (Forbes MS. To Fox.) That this was wholly a Navy Department plan and was disliked by State Department representatives is shown by Dudley's complaints (Forbes MS.). The whole incident has been adequately discussed by C.F. Adams, though without reference to the preceding citations, in his Studies Military and Diplomatic, Ch. IX. "An Historical Residuum," in effect a refutation of an article by Chittenden written in 1890, in which bad memory and misunderstanding played sad havoc with historical truth.