he talked with a number of the city’s chivalry, including James Chesnut and John Manning. The conversation grew heated. Russell found the men full of confident menace not just toward Yankees, but also any potential British interference. They were convinced that Britain, once confronted with the loss of Southern cotton, would ally itself with the Confederacy—the “cotton is king” thesis famously articulated in the U.S. Senate by James Henry Hammond. Russell tried to persuade them otherwise, with no success. “I found this was the fixed idea everywhere. The doctrine of ‘cotton is king,’ to them is
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