This editorial warns Southerners against using King Cotton as a weapon to force the British to support their cause and even reopen the international slave trade.
The article predicts that can't happen because John Bull has many other potential sources for cotton and so will refuse to bend to Confederate demands.
It calls those demands "arrogant", "visionary" and "ill considered".
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen “visionary” used in a derogatory sense. I’ll link to the item below. The NYT has it as part of the other editorial.
https://www.nytimes.com/1861/02/06/archives/tragedy-off-the-stage.html?searchResultPosition=1