Read Online Britannia's Fist: From Civil War to World War: An Alternate History by Peter G. Tsouras - Free Book Online Page B

of their own common and moral senses tell them.” His fist with the crumpled papers pounded the arm of his chair. 8
    “England will live to regret her inimical attitude towards us. After the collapse of the rebellion, John Bull will find that he has injured himself much more seriously than us.” 9
    Seward tried to lighten the mood. “I have this description from a fellow countryman of Russell’s, Sidney Smith. He said of Russell, ‘He would have been willing to have built St. Peter’s, commanded the Channel Squadron, or to have operated on a patient for the stone and would not have been deterred by the collapse of the sacred edifice, or the patient’s death.’” The corners of a few dour faces rose.
    “I’ve heard that Russell is only 5 foot 4 inches and barely weighs 8 stone. Why, Little Johnny Russell gives small men a bad name. He was once, as Smith said, ‘over six foot tall but he has been so constantly kept in hot water that he is boiled down to the proportions in which you now behold him.’” Half smiles broke into laughter.
    Lincoln had quickly shed his uncharacteristic anger, and he was not to be outdone in story telling. “That reminds me,” he began—for those around Lincoln, those three words—were very familiar “of a barber in Sangamon County. He had just gone to bed, when a stranger came along and said he must be shaved; that he had four days’ beard on his face and was going to a ball, and that the beard must come off. Well, the barber reluctantly got up, and dressed, and seated the man in a chair with a back so low that every time he bore down on him he came near dislocating his victim’s neck. He began by lathering his face, including his nose, eyes, and ears, stropped his razor on his boot, and then made adrive at the man’s countenance as if he had practiced mowing a stubblefield. He made a bold swath across the cheek, carrying away the beard, a pimple, and two warts. The man in the chair ventured the remark, ‘You appear to make everything level as you go.’ Said the barber, ‘Yes, and if this handle don’t break, I guess I’ll get away with what there is there.’ The man’s cheeks were so hollow that the barber could not get down into the valleys with the razor, and his ingenious idea occurred to him to stick his finger in the man’s mouth and press out the cheeks. Finally he cut clear through the cheek and into his own finger. He pulled the finger out of the man’s mouth, snapped the blood off it, glared at him and said, ‘There, you lantern-jawed cuss, you’ve made me cut my finger.’”
    Lincoln concluded with a twinkle in his eye, “Now, England will find that she has got the South into a pretty bad scrape by trying to administer to her, and in the end she will find that she has only cut her own finger.” 10
    The men burst out laughing. Even Gideon Welles nodded his great bushy beard. If ever there was a flinty New England Yankee, it was Welles. He was a good Navy Secretary and a War Democrat whom Lincoln brought into the cabinet to attract support for the effort to restore the Union. Welles had the wit to use Fox and did so now that Lincoln was in a good mood. “I would like Fox to discuss the potentialities of these ships.” Lincoln nodded, and an assistant went to fetch him.
    But Lincoln was on a roll and went on. “It makes me think of an Indian chief that we had out West. He was visited by an Englishman once who tried to impress him with the greatness of England. ‘Why,’ said he to the chief, ‘the sun never sets on England.’ ‘Humph!’ said the Indian. ‘I suppose it’s because God wouldn’t trust them in the dark.’” 11
    They were still laughing when Fox entered the room to lay out the facts in stark detail. The two rams were iron hulled, 230 feet in length by 45 feet in the beam. They carried 4.5 inches of armor on the hull, which was designed to be only 6 feet above the waterline. They carried four heavy 9-inch British rifled guns, two