Note 1030 — Chapter XIII
Reading edition
U.S. Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, Pt. I, p. 370. To Seward, Sept. 10, 1863. Adams, looking at the whole matter of the Rams and the alleged "threat of war" of Sept. 5, from the point of view of his own anxiety at the time, was naturally inclined to magnify the effects of his own efforts and to regard the crisis as occurring in September. His notes to Russell and his diary records were early the main basis of historical treatment. Rhodes, IV, 381-84, has disproved the accusation of Russell's yielding to a threat. Brooks Adams (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Vol. XLV, p. 293, seq.) ignores Rhodes, harks back to the old argument and amplifies it with much new and interesting citation, but not to conviction. My interpretation is that the real crisis of Governmental decision to act came in April, and that events in September were but final applications of that decision.