Palmerston, Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784-1865)

British politician. He was prime minister 1855-58 (when he rectified Aberdeen's mismanagement of the Crimean War, suppressed the Indian Mutiny, and carried through the Second Opium War) and 1859-65 (when he almost involved Britain in the American Civil War on the side of the South). Initially a Tory, in Parliament from 1807, he was secretary-at-war 1809-28. 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 became viscount in 1802.

Palmerston succeeded to an Irish peerage in 1802. He served under five Tory prime ministers before joining the Whigs. His foreign policy was marked by distrust of France and Russia, against whose designs he backed the independence of Belgium and Turkey. He became home secretary in the coalition government of 1852, and prime minister on its fall, and was responsible for the warship Alabama going to the Confederate side in the American Civil War. He was popular with the public and made good use of the press, but his high-handed attitude annoyed Queen Victoria and other ministers.