Arthur had only just planted the seed of ambition in the heart of Prussia's future Iron Chancellor and begun contemplating how best to make an "angelic investment" in that rising northern kingdom, when an urgent dispatch from the United States crossed the Atlantic and landed upon his desk.
The letter came from Henry Fox, Britain's ambassador in Washington.
Curiously, its contents had little to do with the Federal Government itself. Instead, it carried the ultimatum of the corpulent slave-owning planters of the American South.
"Your Highness, the situation is dire!" the ambassador wrote, almost wailing. "The Southern 'Cotton Kings' have taken leave of their senses!"
"They have clashed violently with the industrial states of the North over the question of tariffs! The Northerners are desperate to raise duties on British manufactured imports in order to protect their own costly and inferior industries.
"The Southern gentlemen insist that such tariffs rob them blind. They wish to continue bartering their cheap cotton for the high-quality and low-cost goods of our British factories."
"The conflict has grown utterly irreconcilable! The South Carolina Assembly has openly begun to debate separating from the United States and going its own way!"
Arthur's brows lifted.
Already? It is only 1840, and the fuse of civil war is burning so brightly?
He read on.
"And the worst of it is this!" Fox continued. "To force our government to pressure the Northern states, the Southern planters have united and issued a warning:
"If Britain cannot persuade President Van Buren and Congress to lower tariffs on British goods within a month, then they shall—"
"—cut off all exports of raw cotton to the mills of the British Empire!"
Arthur felt the blow like a clap of thunder.
Cut the cotton supply?
These rustic American barons dared contemplate that?
No one understood better than Arthur Lionheart what cotton meant to nineteenth-century Britain.
It was not merely an agricultural commodity.
It was the very cornerstone of the Industrial Revolution. The lifeblood of millions of textile workers. The essential "munition" enabling Britain's global trade surplus.
From Manchester to Liverpool, fully eighty percent of the raw material feeding the Empire's clamouring mills—those steam-powered monsters that devoured day and night—came from the vast cotton plantations of the American South.
Should that supply be severed, the British textile industry would grind to a halt overnight. Millions would find themselves without work. Hungry crowds would spill into the streets. Riot would follow riot. The nation might well be swept into a revolution unlike any foreign war could provoke.
The consequences would be catastrophic.
"These fools…" Arthur muttered—though it was not the planters he cursed, but rather his own collection of penny-minded "in-laws": the Whig liberals led by Prime Minister Melbourne.
He suspected their fingerprints all over this folly.
The Whigs sympathised with the Southern planters, sharing their faith in "free trade" and scorning the protectionist Northerners.
They believed—naïvely—that "cotton is king", and that as long as Britain dominated the cotton trade, it could forever keep the rising American nation in check.
To that end, they had quietly encouraged the South's resistance.
And yet, these old men, trapped in the fog of classical political economy, failed entirely to grasp the immense energy the United States—unified, industrial, unstoppable—would one day unleash.
Nor did they understand the idiocy and danger of tying Britain's industrial survival to the rotten institution of slavery—an institution already widely condemned by moral society.
"It seems time to give these gentlemen a proper lesson in global strategy and risk hedging," Arthur murmured.
He held the letter to the candle flame and watched it curl into ash.
His expression did not betray the slightest anxiety. Instead, a cold, hunting smile touched his lips.
Crisis?
No.
To Arthur, this was a gift laid upon his pillow at the perfect moment.
An opportunity from heaven itself.
The ideal excuse to embed his influence deeply and irrevocably into the unpredictable chessboard of the New World.
He summoned his chief secretary at once.
"Two matters, immediately," Arthur commanded, his tone one that brooked no question.
"First: arrange discreetly, in my name, a meeting with Mr. Andrew Stevenson, the American ambassador in London. Tell him I should like to take coffee with him—informally—to discuss 'maize and grain'."
"Second"—a glint of cunning flashed in Arthur's eyes—"bring to Buckingham Palace the most fervent abolitionists of our Royal Promotion Association. Men like Mr. Wilberforce, who trumpets 'all men are equal before God' at every gathering. Tell them that Her Majesty has been moved by their noble sentiments, and wishes to hear their counsel on how best to free our 'poor black brethren' through practical action."
The secretary, though utterly unable to decipher the intricate web of strategy woven through these seemingly unrelated orders, stood rigidly at attention.
"Yes, Your Highness!"
Thus began the opening movement of a grand trans-Atlantic contest—a higher game played upon the axis of cotton, binding together the destinies of the British Empire and the United States.
And Arthur Lionheart, the chess player who saw farther than any man of his age, stood ready to make every other "player" dance to the steps of his design.