Note 1101 — Chapter XIV

In the same issue appeared a letter from the New York correspondent of the Times, containing a similar prediction but in much stronger terms. For the last half of the war the Times was badly served by this correspondent who invariably reported the situation from an extreme anti-Northern point of view. This was Charles Mackay who served the Times in New York from March, 1862, to December, 1865. (Mackay, Forty Years' Recollections, II, p. 412.) Possibly he had strict instructions. During this same week Lyons, writing privately to Russell, minimized the "scare" about Lee's advance. He reported that Mercier had ordered up a war-ship to take him away if Washington should fall. Lyons cannily decided such a step for himself inadvisable, since it would irritate Seward and in case the unexpected happened he could no doubt get passage on Mercier's ship. When news came of the Southern defeat at Gettysburg and of Grant's capture of Vicksburg, Lyons thought the complete collapse of the Confederacy an imminent possibility. Leslie Stephen is a witness to the close relations of Seward and Lyons at this time. He visited Washington about a month after Gettysburg and met Seward, being received with much cordiality as a verbal champion in England of the North. (He had as yet published no signed articles on the war.) In this conversation he was amused that Seward spoke of the friendly services of "Monkton Mill," as a publicist on political economy. (Maitland, Leslie Stephen, p. 120.)