Lord Palmerston

A carte-de-visite portrait of Lord Palmerston (1784-1865).

Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerstone (1784- 1865) was in Parliament from 1807. Initially a Tory, he was Secretary of War from 1809 to 1827. He broke with the Tories in 1830 and sat in the Whig Cabinets of 1830-34, 1835-41 and 1846-51 as Foreign Secretary. He was Prime Minister from 1855 to 1858, during which time he rectified Lord Aberdeen's mismanagement of the Crimean War, suppressed the Indian Mutiny, and carried through the Second Opium War. He was Prime Minister again from 1859 to 1865, when he almost involved Britain in the American Civil War on the side of the South.

Photographed by Camille Silvy of London in 1860.