Hi Leftyhunter you asked:
Is there a link on a written notice to the British Prime Minister from Lincoln?
Lincoln appointed Charles Francis Adams Minster to England in March 1861 and was his representative throughout the Laird crisis.
Concerned that the Laird Rams may leave British waters for the Confederacy Captain Gustavus Fox, Assistant Secretary of the Union Navy, wrote to Adams; "You must stop [the Laird rams] at all hazards. We have no defence against them .... We have not one [gun] in the whole country fit to fire at [it]. ... It is a matter of life and death." Thus Lincoln left the burden of stopping the rams with Adams.
Adams threatened Lord Russell with the US Privateering Bill, and its realization if Britain continued building ships for the South. Exasperated at Russell’s inaction, Adams responded to Russell’s letter September 4, "I trust I need not express how profound is my regret at the conclusion to which her Majesty's Government have arrived . . . . It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war.”
You can find this account widely referenced from the original papers of Adams and Lord Russell in Duberman, Martin. Charles Francis Adams: 1807-1886. (California: Stanford University Press, 1960), pp. 256-57; Merli, F.J. Great Britain and the Confederate Navy: 1861-65 and Crook D. P. The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861–1865. New York: John Wiley and Sons.1974.