On March 17, dur­ing his first day in New York City, William Rus­sell of the Lon­don Times was struck by the city’s pecu­liar­i­ties. He described the sight of forty or fifty Irish­men in green sash­es, march­ing to mass, con­trast­ed by the fash­ion­able attire of domes­tics and free Blacks. Despite the vibrant pub­lic life, the city bore the scars of winter—dirty snow and slush marked Broad­way as peo­ple crowd­ed the streets. Rus­sell not­ed par­tic­u­lar­ly the preva­lence of chew­ing tobac­co residue, a habit he found dis­taste­ful, rem­i­nis­cent of Charles Dick­ens’ descrip­tions from two decades ear­li­er, which he now observed to still infect pub­lic spaces, includ­ing ele­gant hotels.

As an esteemed cor­re­spon­dent, Rus­sell was wel­comed by influ­en­tial New York­ers, lead­ing to dis­cus­sions about the seces­sion cri­sis. Despite being in the North, he dis­cov­ered a pro-South sen­ti­ment in the city, where com­merce and cred­it were tight­ly inter­wo­ven with South­ern plan­ta­tions. At one din­ner, a for­mer gov­er­nor declared seces­sion a right, while oth­ers sup­port­ed the South against Lin­col­n’s gov­ern­ment. Rus­sell per­ceived the admin­is­tra­tion as adrift amid South­ern lead­ers’ deci­sive actions, prompt­ing his desire to trav­el south to gain first­hand knowl­edge of the sit­u­a­tion.

On March 25, Rus­sell depart­ed from New York, fac­ing dis­com­fort as he nav­i­gat­ed poor city streets to board an uncom­fort­ably crowd­ed train. After an ardu­ous jour­ney, he arrived in Wash­ing­ton, where he was over­whelmed by the bus­tle of the Willard Hotel, a hub of polit­i­cal maneu­ver­ing. While there, he dined with Hen­ry S. San­ford and met William Seward, Sec­re­tary of State, who dis­missed the seri­ous­ness of the seces­sion move­ment. Rus­sell not­ed Seward’s con­de­scend­ing view of the South’s cul­tur­al and social stand­ing, reveal­ing a pro­found dis­con­nect from the esca­lat­ing ten­sions.

Seward’s opti­mism seemed mis­placed, as Rus­sell rec­og­nized slav­ery as the core issue at hand—an endur­ing “curse” tying the South­ern states to a for­mer world, seem­ing­ly blind to impend­ing con­flict. This dis­cus­sion high­light­ed the inef­fi­ca­cy of the Lin­coln admin­is­tra­tion, as Rus­sell gath­ered insights vital to under­stand­ing the nation’s pre­car­i­ous posi­tion. The inter­ac­tion gave him a clear­er per­spec­tive of the chal­lenges fac­ing the gov­ern­ment, paving the way for his antic­i­pat­ed meet­ing with Pres­i­dent Lin­coln.