Ah well the entire world is wrong and Black Elk is right. Marx did work as correspondent for The Times and he did spend time in the U.S. while Lincoln was president, and every single biographer and historian of the era, except you, managed to miss it. How totally unforgivable of them. </sarcasm>
If the correspondent to whom you refer was surnamed Russell, he was probably the son of Lord Russell and therefore an unlikely press agent for Lincoln as well.
No, the correspondent in question was William Howard Russell, an Irishman as it happens and one of the most respected Times correspondent of the age and who covered the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, the War of Southern Rebellion, and the Franco Prussian War. He was of no relationship to the Earl of Russell whom you speak of.
Either Lord Russell or, more likely, Lord Palmerston then owned the London Times.
Neither man owned The Times. During the period of the War of Southern Rebellion, The Times was still owned by the same Walter family who had founded it in 1785.
It took Prince Albert of Coburg, Victoria's hubby, on his death bed to dissuade Palmerston and Russell of recognizing the Confederacy solely on the question of slavery, but not before the British laird Shipyards built and launched the magnificent Confederate rams Alabama and Tennessee.
Prince Albert died in December of 1861, almost a year before the Alabama was commissioned into confederate service. There were three ironclads named Tennessee in confederate service. The first was burned in the stocks before completion, the second was captured at New Orleans in 1862, and the third was captured at Mobile in 1864. None of the there was were built by the British, or ever left U.S. waters.
There was never any chance of the Palmerston government recognizing the confederacy.
What were your credentials as a conservative, if any??????
Considerably better than your credentials as an historian, if this post of your's is any indication.
Do you think he can admit any error on his part?