The career of the _Alabama_ was followed with increasing anger and chagrin by the North; this, said the public, was a British ship, manned by a British crew, using British guns and ammunition, whose escape from Liverpool had been winked at by the British Government.

What further evidence was necessary of bad faith in a professed strict neutrality?
Nor were American officials far behind the public in suspicion and anger.

At the last moment it had appeared as if the Government were inclined to stop the "290." Was the hurried departure of the vessel due to a warning received from official sources?
On November 21, Adams reported that Russell complained in an interview of remarks made privately by Bright, to the effect that warning had come from Russell himself, and "seemed to me a little as if he suspected that Mr.Bright had heard this from me[970]." Adams disavowed, and sincerely, any such imputation, but at the same time expressed to Russell his conviction that there must have been from some source a "leak" of the Government's intention[971].

The question of advance warning to Bullock, or to the Lairds who built the _Alabama_, was not one which was likely to be officially put forward in any case; the real issue was whether an offence to British neutrality law had been committed, whether it would be acknowledged as such, and still more important, whether repetitions of the offence would be permitted.

The _Alabama_, even though she might, as the American assistant-secretary of the Navy wrote, be "giving us a sick turn[972]," could not by herself greatly affect the issue of the war; but many _Alabamas_ would be a serious matter.