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 I UNITRI) STATES OF AMERICA. J 
 
REVIEW 
 
 OF 
 
 M'^ SEWARD'S DIPLOMACY. 
 
 BY 
 
 A NORTHERN MAN 
 
 ^/ 
 
 ft 
 
 " To a people who once have been proud and great, and great because 
 they were proud, a change in the national spirit is the most terrible of all 
 revolutions." — Burke. 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Page 17, third line from bottom, insert "of" before "anti-slavery." 
 Page 24, third line from bottom, for "enterprise" read "slaveholder. 
 
REVIEW OF MR. SEWARD'S DIPLOMACY. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln, in his Message of December last, said little 
 or nothing about the foreign relations of the United States. 
 In general phraseology, he attributed to European Govern- 
 ments unworthy motives iu the policy which he ascribed 
 to them, but as to their precise relations to us, and what we 
 had said or done to them, he was, if not silent, darkly 
 oracular.* 
 
 This silence of the Chief Magistrate on Foreign affairs 
 was not thoughtless. It would be unjust to him to suppose 
 it was. He delegated the duty to his Secretary of State, and 
 hence, for the first time in the history of the United States, 
 there was sent to Congress a mass of Foreign Relation corres- 
 pondence — extending, if not from " China to Peru," literally 
 from Japan to Chili — which, having been printed iu a huge 
 book of four hundred and twenty-five pages by the Secre- 
 
 * This was, at the time, the subject of criticism among his friends ; for one 
 of the leading, most judicious, most thorough-going, and able newspapers, 
 startled by the ominous omission, said : 
 
 " We cannot avoid expressing regret that more confident phrases were not 
 employed in the President's allusions to our foreign relations — not that what 
 he does say is particularly despondent, but there is an absence of allusion to 
 the special encouragement offered to us by many governments, which we 
 regret. It may be thought of little consequence, whether the formulas of 
 executive congratulation as regards foreign nations, are repeated, while we 
 have so much grave matter at home to attend to, but we believe the general 
 feeling would have been one of pleasure at their repetition now." — Philadelphia 
 North American, Dec. 4. 
 
 (3) 
 
tary himself and circulated to a certain extent, is open to 
 fair and patriotic criticism. Since this volume was published, 
 another instalment of diplomatic correspondence, connected 
 with the sad affair of the Trent, has been given to the 
 world ; and to the whole record, ending as we think it does, 
 in the realization of Mr. Burke's philosophy, that the most 
 terrible of revolutions is one which breaks a proud nation's 
 heart, in a spirit of genuine and rational loyalty, we 
 invite the attention of our readers. Philip, we are inclined 
 to hope, is fast becoming sober, and will listen. 
 
 That it is unusual, and on general principles inexpe- 
 dient, with no special call on one part, and without reserve 
 on the other, to lay wholesale diplomatic correspondence 
 before the watching and perhaps censorious world, and 
 especially the confidential instructions sent to all our 
 Ministers, will hardly be disputed. There is no precedent 
 for it, at home or abroad. Self-glorification, a greed 
 for literary or political laurels, is, at any time, a poor 
 motive. Here it is a mischievous one, and a few instances 
 will show how damaging to the public service such careless 
 revelations may be. 
 
 On the 22d of June, 1861, Mr. Seward wrote a despatch 
 of a most delicate nature, to Mr. Dayton, at Paris — at once 
 minatory and persuasive — concluding with these words : 
 "This despatch is strictly confidential." So Mr. Dayton 
 had a right to think it would be, and one may imagine his 
 surprise to find it so soon in print, without any call from 
 Congress, or any public exigency. The assurance that a 
 letter is confidential, even in private correspondence, is a 
 pledge which cannot be withdrawn but by mutual consent. 
 Still more sacred^should it be, when public interests are at 
 stake, and when public conduct ought to be regulated by ab- 
 solute confidence and good fuith. 
 
 The remark applies with greater force to the inculpatory 
 despatch of the Gth of July, 1861, in which he says to Mr. 
 Dayton : "^This paper is, in one sense, a conversation 
 
merely, between yourself and us. It is not to he made 
 public.'' Yet it, too, is spread before the world. 
 
 Again : On the 2d of September — it was most natural 
 that the Secretary should say to Mr. Adams, if such was 
 the fact — "Our supplies of arras are running low." But 
 one is at a loss to imagine why this destitution should be 
 published to the world. 
 
 Or again, and these instances are taken at random from 
 many others, may we not be excused for doubting the ex- 
 pediency, if not propriety, of giving publicity to the fact 
 that information sent by Mr. Adams from London was 
 used for detective police purposes in this country ? It may 
 be all right to get such information, and, if a Secretary of 
 State has any taste for police work, it may be all right to 
 use it. But is it conducive to the public interest, or credit- 
 able to the public character, or fair to a distant correspond- 
 ent, to make it known ? 
 
 A long time, some eighty-four years ago, Sir Joseph 
 Yorke was shrewdly suspected of abstracting Arthur Lee's 
 portfolios at the Court of Frederick the Great, and making 
 himself acquainted with their contents ; but we are not 
 aware that Lord North or Lord George Germaine ever pub- 
 licly thanked him for his "vigilant surveillance." Not 
 that it is for a moment imagined that Mr. Adams went 
 to this extent of zeal, or dreamed of being thanked for 
 such work, but he certainly sent home information of a 
 secret nature, which was used for police purposes, and the 
 fact is now revealed, for no conceivable or adequate reason, 
 and must discourage him from doing it again. " While I 
 regret," says Mr. Seward in the despatch now printed, 
 " with you, that the administration of the laws of Great 
 Britain is such as to render comparatively inelfectual your 
 efforts to defeat there the designs of parties in that country 
 injurious to the United States — I have great pleasure in 
 saying that the information we receive from you concerning 
 them is often very valuable, and enables us to put our own 
 
authorities here in a van of vigilant mrveiUance, which 
 promises good results." 
 
 So wrote Secretary Seward on the 14th of September : 
 and it was not very long after — the 14th of October — that 
 Lord Lyons sent to him the letter, in which he said: 
 " So far as appears to Her Majesty's government, the Secre- 
 tary of State of the United States exercises npon the reports 
 of spies and informers, the power of depriving British 
 subjects of their liberty, of retaining them in prison, or 
 liberating them by his own will and pleasure." The letter 
 now published throws a painful light on this incident, and 
 somewhat explains why Lord Lj^ons' insult, (for such it 
 would be to a man conscious of innocence,) was never 
 resented. Mr. Seward was engaged in police duty. 
 
 Again, and let it be borne in mind we are now only illus- 
 trating the folly, or worse than follj^, of publishing these 
 papers — there is a small but pregnant chapter devoted to 
 our relations w^ith Austria, whose favour, possibly with a view 
 to the conciliation of the Hungarians and Italians now en- 
 camped on the Potomac or in Missouri, Mr. Seward seems 
 especially anxious to secure. He assures Mr. Hulsemann, 
 not only of his personal consideration, but especially "of 
 the good will of this Government towards the Government 
 of Austria;" and Mr. Jones, that it is "our purpose to cul- 
 tivate the best understanding wnth all nations which respect 
 our rights, as Austria does;" and Mr. Motley, as late as 
 September 20th, is directed to " inform Count Rechberg, 
 that the friendly sentiments of this Government towards 
 Austria, remain unchanged" — and yet by the strange 
 fatality which can be demonstrated to attend all Mr. Sew- 
 ard's diplomacy, he (for it is his act) publishes in this 
 volume, an ethnological and political essay on the Austrian 
 empire, in the form of instructions to Mr. Burlingame, 
 which we venture to predict will astonish Count Rechberg 
 and Mr. Hulsemann, and we fear interfere with the success 
 of the eminent historian of the Revolt of the Netherlands, 
 
ot tlie Court of His Imperial Royal Catholic Majesty. Years 
 ago, Mr. Hiilsemann was justly aggrieved by being told in a 
 celebrated rhetorical despatch, that "Austria was a mere 
 patch on the earth's surface." He now has to learn from 
 the strange publication before us, and especially from the 
 following sentence, quoted literally, what sort of a ricketty 
 government he represents, and that while our country is tilled 
 Avith Magyars, and Jews, and Germans, every one is ashamed 
 to admit he is an Austrian. In point of fact, Mr. Seward may 
 be right. We repeat, we have only to do with his want of 
 reticence on tender topics. Telling Mr. Burlingame (whose 
 translation to China renders these psychological and ethno- 
 logical hints of no value to him) that Austria is " a field for 
 improvement;" that the Lombards, "whose provinces have 
 recently been lost," are "more mercurial than the Ger- 
 mans;" that while "an undue portion of Austria is moun- 
 tainous," nowhere " does agriculture derive more wealth 
 from hard soils and ungenial skies ;" he gracefully and 
 agreeably says, and now publishes, and we repeat, to satisfy 
 those who may pause in wonder and incredulity over some 
 of the words, we quote literally : 
 
 "Austria is not an imiquc coantry, with a homogeneous 
 people. It is a combination of kingdoms, duchies, pro- 
 vinces, and countries, added to each other by force, and 
 subjected to an Imperial head, but remaining at the same 
 time diverse, distinct and discordant. The empire is there- 
 fore destitute of that element of nationality, which is essen- 
 tial to the establishment of free intercourse with remote 
 foreign states. We meet everywhere here, in town and 
 country, Italians, Hungarians, Poles, Magyars, Jews, and 
 Germans, but no one has ever seen a confessed Austrian 
 amongst us."* 
 
 ^ There is no light shed by this volume on the facts connected with the 
 refusal of the Austrian Court to receive Mr. Burlingame. 
 
But iigain — and with this, we close the chapter of minor 
 criticism — indiscreet revelations are not conlined to Mr, 
 Seward's own compositions, over which he may think he 
 lias control, for he has published despatches from abroad 
 wdiich cannot fail to annoy and embarrass our Ministers at 
 the courts where, now more than ever, their position is 
 critical, and hold them up to the ridicule and obloquy of 
 Europe. Na}', further, these rash revelations may well 
 startle our own countrymen, and Mr. Lincoln himself, 
 when they discover that some of our Ministers have, at Mr. 
 Seward's bidding, or at least without his rebuke, commit- 
 ted the government to the policy of unconditional emanci- 
 pation and wholesale abolition — not the abolition which, as 
 a military necessity, is supposed to march in the van or follow 
 in the desolate track of armies — but sentimental abolition — 
 Exeter-Hall, New York-Tabernacle abolition. We have 
 room here but for a single instance of unhappy and 
 mischievous disclosure, and we make it from a tiiost re- 
 markable despatch from Mr. Cassius M. Clay, dated at St. 
 Petersburg, 21st June, 1861, of which we can only say 
 that we scarcely dare ask our readers to credit our cita- 
 tions, and beg them to verify what we quote by reference 
 to the originals, should those ordered by Congress ever 
 be printed. In this despatch, he narrates his being pre- 
 sented to the Emperor at Peterhoff by the master of 
 ceremonies, "who is the regular introducer," and the 
 further facts that "twice the Czar shook hands with him;" 
 that he compared him to Peter the Great ; and then adds 
 that the Emperor told him: "in addition to all former ties, 
 we are bound together by a common cause of emancipa- 
 tion," "He wanted to know if I thought England would 
 interfere? I told him we did not care what she did." 
 " The Emperor seemed to like my defiance of old John 
 Bull very much ;" and Mr. Clay's despatch concludes with a 
 passage on which no other comment is necessary than this, 
 that while we may not w^onder at such vulgar nonsense 
 
bein<!: written, we thought there was discretion enough in 
 the ohl clerks at what Mr. Seward somewhere describes as 
 "the modest little State Department," to prevent it being 
 published. 
 
 "I have already," writes Mr. Clay, "made this letter too 
 long, but I cannot conclude without saying how much more 
 and more I value the great and inestimable blessings of our 
 Government, and how I trust in God that no compromise 
 will be made of the great idea for which we have so long 
 fought, but that General Scott, following out the programme 
 of Mr. Lincoln's inaugural, will slowly and surely subdue 
 the rebellion, ' stock, lock and gun-barrel,' ' hook, line and 
 bob-sinker.' " 
 
 One might pause and smile, were it not the hour of our 
 country's agony and our country's shame, at such ineffable 
 trash as this, thus written and thus proclaimed. But it is 
 too solemn for levity. 
 
 And can it be possible, the reader may well ask, that 
 there is not injustice in imputing these discreditable revela- 
 tions to the desire of self-glorification in a single man ? 
 There is no wish to do wrong to anybody, least of all to the 
 distinguished official who, so long as the endurance of the 
 people and the amiable credulity of the Chief Magistrate 
 continue, must be looked on as our "organ" in the foreign 
 relations of the country, but there is proof, abundant and 
 conclusive, on these pages, that no other or higher motive 
 could have led to the publication. There is a mischievous 
 egotism throughout, which tells its own tale. Mr, Lincoln 
 has not yet discovered the extent of the restless ambition 
 that stirs the heart of his Foreign Secretary. He certainly 
 had not, when he consented to be measurably silent on 
 foreign affairs, and relegated them, with all their glories, to 
 Mr. Seward. 
 
 Mr. Seward evidently thinks that a Secretary of State is, 
 in the parlance of other countries, a "Prime Minister," a 
 "Premier," a "First Lord of the Treasury," and that a 
 
10 
 
 Prime Minister is something in foreign affairs which absorbs 
 or controls all governmental functions. This un-American, 
 unconstitutional theory crops out very often in this vol- 
 ume of his pet despatches. He is singularly fond of the 
 magnificent first person plural — that pseudo-modest pronoun 
 which kings and queens and critics and newspaper editors, 
 and sometimes pamphleteers, indulge in. Most Secretaries 
 in writing, say, "The President instructs me," "It is the 
 wish of the President," etc. This is the safe, modest 
 language of routine, but Mr. Seward soars fjir beyond the 
 stretch of decorous red tape, and tairly revels in "we" and 
 "our." "The opinions," he writes to Mr. Adams, "you 
 expressed on these matters, etc., are just, and meet our 
 approbation." "Our" instructions is a common phrase. 
 There is a little doubtful grammar in the following sentence 
 in a despatch to Mr. Dayton, but the pronoun has its usual 
 prominence : " The despatches of your predecessor, Koa. 
 117, 119 and 120, have been received ; the latter, (?) ac- 
 knowledging the receipt of our letter, requires no special 
 notice." And so throughout, until Mr. Seward's theory of 
 '■'■L'etat, c'est m.oi" freely translated, culminates in a despatch 
 to Mr. Marsh, of the 9th of May, where, either purposely 
 or from grammatical confusion, he leaves it doubtful who 
 constitutes the Sovereign of Italy, the King or Count 
 Cavour, though with an evident leaning to the side of the 
 Prime Minister. We note among the few instances in 
 which the President is not eclipsed by the Secretary, one 
 on which we may well pause in wonder and regret ; for 
 while no other Minister is equally honoured in these 
 despatches, we learn that the one so distinguished cannot be 
 induced to remain at his post. " These thoughts," says 
 Mr. Seward to Mr. Carl Schurz, " are presented to you by 
 direction of the President, not as exhausting the subject, but 
 only as suggestions to your own vigorous and comprehen- 
 sive mind, and he confidently relies on your a[)plying all 
 its powers to the full discussion of the subject, if it shall 
 
11 
 
 become necessury." If in the lacunae wliicli follow this 
 special compliment to Mr. Carl Schurz, there are hidden 
 stronger expressions of confidence and affection on the part 
 of the Chief Magistrate, the country may well regret that 
 Mr. Schurz no longer represents us at the Court of Her 
 Most Catholic Majesty. 
 
 Assuming, then, that the authorship of this volume was 
 meant to be claimed as one of the literary and political 
 trophies of the Secretary of State, we venture, with the 
 deference due to a high official, and a reserve prompted by 
 considerations of personal safety, to consider, from a literary 
 and a political point of view, the papers themselves. 
 
 First, of their literarj^ merits. 
 
 In the name of American scholarship and taste, which we 
 may be permitted to hope survive, in spite of the newspa- 
 pers and magazines we read, we protest against Mr. Seward 
 being taken as the representative of American scholars, or 
 his crude and tawdry effusions as fair specimens of Ameri- 
 can writing. If we had to choose, we much prefer the 
 homely, honest style of the President, no doubt characteristic 
 of the man and of his social meridian, through which a 
 meaning struggles for expression, to the ambitious, affected, 
 bungling rhetoric of the Secretary. When, in spite of 
 clumsy syntax, an idea is visible, we rest content ; but when 
 one reads a sentence, or a series of sentences, technically 
 correct and elaborately adorned, and finds no light or glimpse 
 of meaning, the very accuracy and finish make the disap- 
 pointment sharper. When Mr. Lincoln speaks of the doc- 
 trine of rebellion being "sugar-coated," we smile at the 
 illustration, but accept it ; but when, scorning all Saxon 
 phrase, Mr. Secretary Seward writes to Mr. Burlingame, 
 "that Austria is not an unique country," or that, "in the 
 intercourse of nations, each must be assumed by every other 
 to choose and will what it maintains, tolerates or allows," 
 or that " sedition has begun its incubation," or that " we 
 are so sound, so vigorous, and so strong;" or when writing 
 
/ 
 
 12 
 
 to Mr. Iliirrls at Yedo, he says : " I liavc lost no time in 
 assuring the British Government directly of the willingness 
 of the United States to co-operate with it in any judicious 
 measure it may suggest to insure safety hereafter to diplo- 
 matic and consular representatives of the Western Powers 
 in Japan, with due respect to the sovereignties, on whose 
 behalf their exposure to such grave perils is incurred ;" or 
 writing to Nicaragua, he talks of the " virgin domain of 
 Spanish America," and "the listless nations of the East;" 
 or when writing to Mr. Marsh, at Turin, he assures him 
 "that war cannot be waged successfully, without wisdom 
 as well as patriotism ;" or to the same gentleman, (an edu- 
 cated man, to whom such suggestions were hardly necessary,) 
 that "Botta and De Tocqueville" are clever writers, or 
 that "faction is incident to every state, because it is inhe- 
 rent in human nature," or that the American people "are 
 aroused, awakened, resolute and determined," or that time 
 was needed "to eliminate the disunionists from high posi- 
 tion ;" or to Mr. King, that the United States are like ancient 
 Rome, "because they are on the verge of civil war;" or to 
 Mr. Schurz, that Spanish intervention would be " an epi- 
 sode" of the war, or that "Iler Majesty's obligations shall 
 be meliorated," and those of the United States "similarly 
 meliorated;" or that the articles of the Declaration of Paris 
 are "benignant," or that "the fountains of discontent are 
 many, and some lie much deeper than others," with the 
 remarkable historical statement, over which De Tocqueville 
 might pause in perplexity, "that it was foreign intervention 
 which opened, and that alone could open similar fountains 
 in the memorable French Revolution ;"* that the " trans- 
 
 * Mr. Seward is not very precise or accurate in either geography or history. 
 Witness his description of the British Colonial Empire, as "extending from 
 Gibraltar, through the West Indies and Canada, till it begins again on the 
 southern extremity of Africa;" and the historical rf«c/a that "armed insur- 
 rections to overturn the Oovernment are frequent in Great Britain;" that 
 
13 
 
 action now goins; on in onr own country involves the pro- 
 gress of civilization and humanity, and that our attitude in 
 it is right;" that "domestic commotion has ripened into a 
 vast transaction;" or writing to the Minister in Switzer- 
 land, he exhorts him " to improve the calmness and candour 
 which the contemplation of nature inspires, to dissuade the 
 American from his unnatural course and pernicious convic- 
 tions," and to excite the loyal to return home as speedily 
 as possible, to speak, to vote, and, if need be, to enrol him- 
 self as a soldier or sailor, in the land or naval forces, for the 
 defence of the country, of freedom, and of mankind !" or 
 when he tells Mr. Schurz that his speech to the Queen of 
 Spain was "discreet in its points and felicitous in its ex- 
 pression;" or when linally, in the instructions to Mr. 
 Cassius Clay, the Secretary reaches a climax of mysterious 
 rhetoric, and announces a great ethnological and geographi- 
 cal truth, in these words, quoted, we assure the reader, 
 literally: "Russia and the United States may remain good 
 friends, until each, having made the circuit of half the 
 globe in opposite directions, they shall meet and greet each 
 other in the region where civilization first began, and where, 
 after so many ages, it ha? become now lethargic and help- 
 less." When, we repeat, one has to wade through unne- 
 cessary and grotesque platitudes such as these, silly and 
 inappropriate anywhere, but never so much so as in what 
 purport to be State papers, we revolt, and gratefully take 
 refuge in Mr. Lincoln's awkward grammar, and clumsy but 
 honest idioms. 
 
 "most of the wars in modern times have been insurrectionary wars;" that 
 <' the Government of the Netherlands is probably an ally of Japan;" or, 
 lastly, his singular obliviousness of the history of his own country, and of 
 what Silas Deane and Dr. Franklin and the Lees and John Adams were sent 
 to do and did, in Europe, eighty years ago, when he writes to Mr Schurz that 
 " it seems the necessity of faction in every country, that whenever it acquires 
 sufficient boldness to inaugurate revolution, it forgets alike the counsels of 
 prudence, and stifles the instincts of patriotism, and becomes a suitor to 
 foreign courts for aid and assistance," &c. 
 
14 
 
 Nay, further. Mr. ScwurcVs vicious style has what law- 
 yers call an inheritable and transferable quality. His son, 
 the Assistant Secretary, writes, if possible, worse than the 
 father, and one need only refer to Mr. Clay's despatches 
 from Russia, Mr. Fogg's marvellous speeches in Switzer- 
 land, and Mr. Perry's letters from Spain, to see with what 
 fidelity the wretched rhetoric of the Secretary is reflected 
 by his subordinates. Mr. Frederick W. Seward writes to 
 Mr. Adams, on the 27th of August, that "the capital is 
 beyond danger, and forces are accumulating, and taking on 
 qualities which will render them invincible.'' "The senti- 
 ment of disunion," he adds, "is losing its expansive force, 
 and every day grows weaker as a physical power." Mr. 
 Fogg, in addressing the President of the Swiss Confedera- 
 tion, says : " There are crises in the lives of nations, as well 
 as of individuals. Switzerland has had her crisis. The 
 United States has had her crises. When Washington led 
 her brave sons to maintain her right to be one of the 
 nations of the world, then was her crises. Her second 
 great crisis is now. This crisis shall be decided for liberty," 
 &c.; and Mr. Horatio Perry tells the Secretary that "seces- 
 sion is fiHibustering struck in," and that there is a class of 
 men in the South known as " mean whites." 
 
 Let no one suppose that this terrible deterioration in the 
 style of State papers is of little moment. A master of 
 vigorous English writing long ago said that the decrepitude 
 of language, in a nation's public utterajices, is a fatal sign ; 
 and we have lately somewhere seen the striking and truthful 
 remark that a debased tone in public documents is a preg- 
 nant symptom of political disease.''' So, we feel it to be, 
 with this volume before us. So, foreign and censorious 
 nations will regard it ; and the humbling contrast, in this 
 very article of literary merit, between Mr. Seward and all 
 
 * Walter Savas;e Landor. 
 
15 
 
 of his predecessors, from the time of General Washington's 
 administration, is too palpable to be overlooked. Every 
 Secretary of State who has left a name in our histor^^, 
 wrote vigorous, characteristic English, modified in mere 
 rhetorical completeness, by difference of culture. It is only 
 necessary to call the roll of the eminent men who have 
 conducted the foreign policy of this Government from 1789 
 to this moment to understand this, and to see that, until 
 Mr. Seward "assumed the seals," there was not one who 
 did not appear to advantage, by contrast or comparison 
 with the most accomplished statesmen on the other side of 
 the Atlantic. They were Jefferson, Edmund Randolph, 
 Pickering, Marshall, Madison, Monroe, Adams, Clay, Van 
 Buren, Louis M'Lane, Forsyth, Webster, Upshur, Calhoun, 
 Buchanan, Clayton, Everett, Marcy, Cass, and Black ; and 
 if, taking an illustration from the very volume before us, 
 any one yet doubts how far below the standard Mr. Seward, 
 as a writer, is, let him compare all or any of his despatches 
 with the one from Secretary Black, of the 28th February, 
 1801, now published, in which, with precision and clearness, 
 without pretension or affectation, but directly and earnestly, 
 he calls the attention of our Ministers abroad to the great 
 social and political convulsion then felt to be imminent, and 
 prescribes their duty. The great secret, said the poet 
 Gray, of study, and he might have added of composition, 
 is "never to fling away your time in reading inferior 
 authors, but to keep your mind in contact with master 
 spirits;" in plain English, to avoid low company. Mr. 
 Seward writes like a man who has been reading newspapers 
 and associating with half-educated politicians all his life, and 
 the character of American scholarship suffers, by his being 
 thought to be its representative. 
 
 Passing all this b}^, we approach the substance of these 
 despatches— the diplomatic conduct of Mr. J.incoln's cabi- 
 net—and we undertake to demonstrate that it has been, so 
 far at least as the action of the State Department is involved, 
 
16 
 
 a total failure, ending, as we fear is the case, either in a 
 foreign embroilment on false principles, or, what is worse, 
 in degradation by unmanly and inappropriate concessions. 
 This is strong language, but unless our estimate of the 
 ■evidence before us be wholly erroneous, quite warranted 
 by the truth. 
 
 Let us for a moment look a little into the recent past. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated on the 4th of March, 1861, 
 and Mr. Sev/ard became at once Secretary of State. His 
 first despatch bears date the 9th of March, being a circular 
 to all the Ministers of the United States abroad, containing 
 the assurance that " the President entertains a full confi- 
 dence in the speedy restoration of the harmony and the 
 unity of the Government." Mr. Black had said the same 
 thing ten days before. 
 
 From the 4th of March to the fall of Fort Sumter on the 
 13th of April, the secession, or revolt, or rebellion, (we do 
 not pause to quarrel with names or nicknames,) had extended 
 to but seven States. All as far south as North Carolina and 
 Tennessee were in the Union, and faithful to it. The Peace 
 Congress had just adjourned; the Corwin Constitutional 
 Amendment was just adopted; the vote of North Carolina 
 had been adverse to a convention ; Virginia, and Kentucky, 
 and Maryland, and Tennessee, had given no sign of dis- 
 loyalty. 
 
 Then it was that the President made his diplomatic 
 appointments, and made, be it remembered, not one from 
 the slaveholding or moderate States, except Mr. Cassius M. 
 Clay, an avowed and extreme, and we believe, conscientious 
 jibolitionist. All the Union men in the doubtful States 
 were proscribed in this distribution of what may be described 
 as the conlidential and complimentary patronage of the 
 Government, and instead of them, there were sent abroad to 
 represent us, at this " crisis " of our destiny, with the excep- 
 tion of England, France and Italy, whither men of capacity 
 and education were sent, a crowd of obscure and untrained 
 
17 
 
 men, fanatical stump speakers and newspaper purveyors, 
 from the North, exclusively, whose very names (the Pikes, 
 and Foggs, and Judds,) remind one of the grotesque nomen- 
 clature of one of Mr. Dickens' novels, and whose performan- 
 ces are recorded in the volume before us. There seemed to 
 be a studied insult to the moderate slaveholding States. A 
 correspondent or semi-editor of the New York Tribune was 
 sent to Holland, and to Spain, the most conservative, 
 religious, and perhaps bigoted court of Europe, was sent a 
 German adventurer (the word is not used in an offensive 
 sense), who, but a few months before, in a reported speech, 
 had said to the South : " When all mankind rejoice, you 
 tremble. What all mankind love, you hate. There is not 
 a man in the South, wdio if he can bye-and-bye, raise from 
 the dead, will not gladly exchange his epitaph for the 
 meanest of John Brown's followers."* 
 
 Nor was this unadvised; the Secretary of State, in one of 
 his speeches during the political canvass, had forshadowed 
 it, by saying, (vi^hat almost in terms, he repeats more than 
 once in these papers,) that, as the Courts of Europe had 
 heretofore, and especially during Mr. Buchanan's adminis- 
 tration, beentilledby Southern men and advocates of slavery, 
 the new era was to be marked by the choice of those who 
 would unite in the general reprobation of slavery, all over 
 the civilized \vorld. The selection as ambassadors, anti- 
 slavery agitators, and the proscription of all the moderate 
 South, was therefore not accidental. f 
 
 * Among Mr. Lincoln's ambassadors, no one appears to more advantage in 
 this volume than Mr. James E. Harvey, Avho attends to his duties quietly and 
 writes tolerably good English. Wo note in one insiance, a rather plaintive 
 allusion to the trouble he encountered on the threshold of his functions, when 
 he was defamed and threatened with sharp penalties, for doing the bidding of 
 his superiors. 
 
 fSo far as Mr. Buchanan's administration was affected by Mr. Seward's 
 assertion, that Southern or pro-slavery men were sent as ministers abroad, it 
 is simply untrue. Of the twelve leading European Missions, seven wore filled 
 by gentlemen from the Northern States, four from the border States, and but 
 one (Russia) by an extreme Southern man, and he (Mr. Pickens, of South 
 Carolina,) was Muoceeded by Mr. Appleton, of Maine. 
 
18 
 
 Having so dclegaiod these trusts, Mr. Seward set himsell'at 
 work to instruct his agents in their peculiar work, and the 
 first division of this volume of despatches, in character, if 
 not in order of time, comprises those instructions — such, 
 we mean, as, either prepared before the fall of Sumter, or 
 afterwards, have relation to other topics than the disruption 
 of the Union. 
 
 Mr. Seward has often said, in season and out of season, 
 that negro slavery is the canker of our institutions. He and 
 his school have so irritated, and worried, and inflamed it, 
 that they have made it a terrible and wasting affliction. It 
 was hardly to be expected, therefore, that when he became, 
 in his own estimation at least, the nation's "Premier," 
 and exponent of the views and policy of the Federal Gov- 
 ernment, that he should retract the opinions of a tolerably 
 long life, however offensive, on this one topic, or shun the 
 opportunity, from a new pulpit, to preach them to what he 
 lioped to be the admiring and sympathetic congregation of 
 the civilized world. Accordingl\-, we find in these de- 
 spatches, not a few specimens of abolition propagandism, 
 though it is fair to say, not as many as we looked for from 
 the antecedents of the writer, and that he very soon dropped 
 the subject, on finding that foreign statesmen had no incli- 
 nation to trouble themselves about it, and could not be 
 seduced into sentimentalism on the subject of the African, 
 at a time when they had other things, practically, to deal 
 with. It is curious to observe how little encouragement 
 Mr, Seward received on this thesis. In his instructions to 
 Mr. Adams and Mr. Judd, the only ones written before the 
 fall of Sumter, he says nothing about slavery, but on the 
 '22d of April, it breaks forth in a formal despatch to Mr. 
 Dayton, in Paris, and the whole topic of slavery in the 
 Territories, and the intiuence of slavery in the Government, 
 is discussed either for the enlightenment of a gentleman, 
 once a Senator and to be supposed familiar with our elemen- 
 tary history, or for that of the Imperial Government, to 
 
19 
 
 which he was accredited. One is really at a h)ss to imagine 
 to what end this inajjpropriate tirade was printed; but it is 
 due, as well to the distinguished and discreet gentleman 
 who represents us at Paris, as to the Imperial Foreign Min- 
 ister, to say that neither took the slightest notice of the 
 Secretary's anti-slavery homily, or even encouraged or 
 permitted the subject to be discussed or alluded to between 
 them. The whole bearing of Mr. Dayton on this, and, as 
 will be seen, on another subject, was that of an American 
 gentleman, who shrank from the humiliation of exhibiting 
 our lazar sores (as Mr. Seward, if he is consistent, must 
 think them) to the Courts of Europe.* 
 
 But the Secretary had instruments elsewhere, suited to 
 his purpose. They were Mr. Cassius Clay in Russia, Mr. 
 Fogg and Mr. Fay in Switzerland, Mr. Pike at the Hague, 
 and, we regret to say, Mr. Marsh at Turin. The only two 
 Europeans who seem to have referred to American 
 slavery, were the Emperor of Russia, if we understand Mr. 
 Clay's grotesque report, and the Baron Ricasoli, the Italian 
 or Sardinian Prime Minister, who told our Minister that he 
 hoped the authority of the Union would be re-established, 
 on terms which would secure the triumph of the principles 
 of freedom, and "the ultimate extinction of liuman slavery," 
 It was in communicating this that Mr. Marsh, true to his 
 ITew England origin, said to the Secretary: 
 
 "The favorable sentiments with which the present ad- 
 ministration of the Federal Government is regarded by most 
 continental statesmen, are founded, (independently of the 
 high personal regard felt for the President and his constitu- 
 tional advisers) partly on the opinion that he is sustaining the 
 
 * "If humiliation is the element in which we live, if it is become not only 
 our occasional policy, but our habit, no great objection can be made to the 
 modes in which it may be diversified ; though, I confess, I cannot be charmed 
 with the idea of our exposing our lazar sores where the court dogs will not 
 deign to lick them." — Letter on a Regicide Peace, p. 3G1. 
 
20 
 
 cause of constitutional authority, of the entirety of nationali- 
 ties, and of established order, against causeless rebellion, 
 violent disruption of a commonwealth essentially a unit, 
 and disorganizing and lawless misrule; but still more I 
 think, on the belief that the struggle in which it was in- 
 volved is virtually a contest between the propagandists of 
 domestic slavery and the advocates of emancipation and 
 universal freedom. If the civil war be protracted, I am 
 convinced that our hold upon the sympathy and good-will 
 of the Governments, and still more of the people of Europe, 
 will depend upon the distinctness with which this issue is 
 kept before them ; and if it were now proposed by the 
 Federal Government to purchase the submission of the 
 South, by any concession to their demands on this subject, 
 or by assuming any attitude but that of, at least, moral hos- 
 tility to slavery, I have no doubt that the dissolution of the 
 Union would be both desired and promoted by a vast ma- 
 jority of those who now hope for its perpetuation." 
 
 In Switzerland and Holland, the attempt to intrude aboli- 
 tion signally failed. It was to Switzerland that Mr. Seward 
 addressed some of the highest strains of his exaggerated 
 rhetoric, "Human nature," says he, writing to Minister 
 Fogg, " must lose not only the faculty of reason, which lifts 
 it above the inferior beings, but also the benevolence, which 
 lifts it up to commune with superior orders of existence, 
 when the security, welfare and happiness of the United 
 Slates shall have become a matter of indifference to Italy 
 or Switzerland. I salute Switzerland last among the Euro- 
 pean nations, only because we esteem and confide in her 
 the most." And then, in a more subdued and practical 
 tone, he hints to the Minister, whom we take to be an 
 author, how, in the leisure of his Alpine seclusion, he may 
 profitably occupy his time. " We very much want a good 
 history of the Swiss Confederacy, since its reformation, 
 especially showing how faction developes itself there, and 
 how the Government works in preventing or suppressing 
 
21 
 
 designs subversive of thc^^federal unity of the] republic. The 
 President hopes you will furnish it, as he knows your ability 
 for such a task." Thus instructed, Mr. Fogg reachedjBerne, 
 finding there Mr. Theodore Fay, a gentleman who had been 
 long abroad as a representative of Democratic administra- 
 tions, and who seems disposed to retain official functions if 
 it can be done by propitiating a different school of politics. 
 
 "My resignation," said Mr. Fay, in his address to the 
 President of the Confederation, " has not resulted from 
 difference of opinion with the President of the United 
 States. Our country is now occupied in a struggle with au 
 institution as unmanageable as the hydra of Hercules. It 
 is not my wish to misrepresent the proprietors of slaves. 
 Many of them are sincere, Christian gentlemen. But the 
 institution, in its present form, is irreconcilable with our 
 national existence, with the religious sentiment of the 
 majority, and with the Word of God. Ifothing can be 
 clearer than the right and duty of the American people to 
 protect themselves from its uncontrolled development, and 
 from being drawn downwards in their career of political 
 and religious civilisation. Man should not live by bread 
 alone, nor by cotton alone !" 
 
 After Mr. Fogg had added something in the same strain, 
 President Knuesel replied with dignity and precision, re- 
 ciprocating the kind feeling of the outgoing and incoming 
 Ministers, and their Government, but remaining reso- 
 lutely silent on the domestic grievance so inappropriately 
 introduced. A sharp critic might detect in the President's 
 language ideas with reference to Confederated States, which 
 have more the ring of Richmond than of Washington. 
 " Switzerland," said the President. " from the sincere 
 sympathy which she has for the welfare of the Union, looks 
 with anxiety upon the issue of events which now shake this 
 country. Switzerland passed through a similar crisis, four- 
 teen years ago, which threatened to tear asunder the then 
 loose connexion of the twenty-two cantons. But renewed 
 
22 
 
 rose the present Confederation from that tempest; strength- 
 ened internally and abroad, she now stands there esteemed 
 by the nations. May God grant that the connexion of the 
 States of the United States of America may also emerge, 
 renewed and strengthened, out of this crisis."* 
 
 But it was in Holland that the anti-slavery agitation was 
 most boldly attempted, and most signally failed, i^owhere 
 could it have been more inappropriate, the I^^etherlands 
 having colonies, in the West if not in the East, v.^here slavery 
 in a modified form yet exists, and is likely to continue, 
 notwithstanding a promise to abolish it two years hence. 
 At the Hague, the United States was represented, during 
 Mr. Buchanan's Administration, by a gentleman whom this 
 correspondence shows to be a man of sense and <liscretion, 
 and whose conduct seems to have extorted expressions of 
 confidence from those who certainly show no good will to 
 any one whom the late President trusted or appointed. He 
 honestly tells the truth, however unpalatable, and, looking 
 at what was the state of things in May, and now, one is 
 startled at what was said of the inclination and prescience 
 of the Dutch Government. 
 
 " It is not to be disguised," writes Mr. Murphy, on the 
 27th of May, 1861, "that public sentiment here is much 
 more favorable to the seceding States than it has been. 
 The message of Mr. Davis, recently delivered to the Con- 
 gress of those States, has been extensively published here, 
 in substance, not at full length, and has had much influ- 
 ence on the question, from the specious ground of the 
 
 * Mr. Fay's abolitionism seems to have won Mr. Fogg's heart. He writes 
 to the Secretary, on the 8th of July, 1861 : " Thoroughly sympathising with 
 the principles and purposes of the present Administration of the United States 
 Government, and possessing large experience and an enviable reputation in 
 Europe, I trust it may not be deemed impertinent in me to express the hope 
 that the State Department will not be a long time in finding some field where 
 his familiarity with international and diplomatic affairs will be a necessity to 
 the Government." 
 
28 
 
 Union being a mere coufedcrution of independent States. 
 Besides, Holland, or the Netherlands, has had a bitter 
 lesson of experience, under sin\ilar circiinistances. The 
 rebellion of Belgium, in 1830, was resisted with all the 
 power of this Government, which would probably have 
 succeeded in crushing it, if England and France had not 
 interfered, and the immense public debt with which this 
 country is oppressed, was then mostly incurred, while Bel- 
 gium was, notwithstanding, lost. Reasoning from this 
 point of view, there are not a few who regard the present 
 position of the Uni4:ed States an expensive and useless 
 eiFort." 
 
 Mr. James S. Pike, of the staif, we believe, of the N"ew 
 York 'i'ribune, succeeded Mr. Murphy, and in his first 
 official interview, informed the Butch Minister of Foreign 
 Afi:airs, "that the rebellion in America was merely a war in 
 behalf of the African slavery, and that if we had no slavery, 
 we should have no war and no rebellion. The Union of 
 the States can be maintained, whenever the Government 
 sees fit to render the institutions of the several States homo- 
 geneous ; for when thej^ were once made free States, there 
 would be no wish to separate, and no tendency to separa- 
 tion." ISTo answer of sympathy being made to this, on the 
 11th of September, Mr. Pike addressed an elaborate com- 
 munication to the Dutch Government, on the subject of the 
 visit of the Sumter at Curacoa. from which we quote a pas- 
 sage of acrid, and, as the result shows, most unwelcome 
 dogmatism. 
 
 "By doing so," (conceding belligerent rights to tha Con- 
 federate States,) "this Government may make an enemj^ of 
 the United States, through the consequences growing out 
 of that act. But Holland Avill not thereby make a friend of 
 the rash and misguided men, who lead the rebellion against 
 the American Government. For their object is to extend 
 and perpetuate African slavery. With this object, Holland 
 can have no sympathy. Your Government has just now 
 
24 
 
 determined to abolish that remnant of barbarism in your 
 colonial possessions." " The slave-holders' rebellion cannot 
 be successful. The United States has determined it shall 
 not be, and it will preserve the Union of States at whatever 
 cost. But even if we admit, for argument's sake, that some 
 of the slave-holding States should be allowed hereafter to 
 depart from the Union, still would the rebellion be unsuc- 
 cessful in its objects, and hospitality (sic) shown to its pro- 
 gress be unavailing. The United States would still be resolute 
 to defeat the purposes of the rebel slave-holder. They 
 would do this by their own unaided eflbrts. They might 
 readily co-operate with foreign powers to the same end. 
 Such of those powers as hold possessions in America, 
 wherein slavery has been abolished, would join in this ob- 
 ject from motives of justice and humanity, as well as from 
 considerations of policy and consistency. * * ^ com- 
 mon civilization throughout the world will look with tavor 
 on a common Union to crush the offeusive purposes of the 
 rebellious slave-holder. His success, therefore, is out of 
 the question. Unless the world is to go backward, and 
 history reverse its lessons, this rebellion in its leading pur- 
 pose, is foredoomed. Even Governments cannot save that 
 against which humanity revolts. Surrounded by commu- 
 nities on the North, on the South, on the West, that have 
 expelled slavery; the islands of the Carribean Sea, nearly 
 all emancipated from this pestilent system; the fabric of 
 the rebellious slave-holder, which he is so madly ambitious 
 to erect, were even its temporary establishment possible, 
 would soon be washed away by the attrition of surrounding 
 influence upon its crumbling foundations, and its remains 
 left a ruin in the world. It is thus neither just nor politic, 
 in any point of view, for the powers of Ij^urope to do any- 
 thing to encourage this abortive and criminal enterprise of 
 the rebellious American ®«4ei'pFise.".. 
 
 A diplomatic correspondence thus begun could end in no 
 good, and an examination of this part of the volume will 
 
show the reader tliat it resulted in a failure to extort the 
 practical redress which was sought iu the case of the Con- 
 federate privateer, and exposed our representative to a 
 rebuke, not the less severe because it was administered with 
 dignified moderation. 
 
 " It is needless," says Baron Van Zuylen to Mr. Pike, on 
 the l-5th of October, 1861, "to add that the Cabinet of the 
 Hague will not depart from the principles mentioned at the 
 close of my reply of the 17th September, of which you 
 demand the application; it does know and will know how 
 to act in conformity with the obligations of impartiality 
 and of neutrality, without losing sight of the care for its 
 own dignity. 
 
 " Called by the confidence of the King to maintain that 
 dignity, to defend the rights of the crown, and to direct the 
 relations of the state with foreign powers, I know not how 
 to conceal from you, sir, that certain expressions in your 
 communications above mentioned, have caused an un- 
 pleasant impression on the King's Government, and do not 
 appear to me to correspond with the manner in which I 
 have striven to treat the question now under discussion, or 
 with the desire which actuates the Government of the 
 Netherlands to seek for a solution perfectly in harmony 
 with its sentiments of friendship towards the United States, 
 and with the observance of treaties. 
 
 " The feeling of distrust which seems to have dictated 
 your last despatch of the 18th of this month, and which 
 shows itself especially in some entirely erroneous apprecia- 
 tions of the conduct of the Government of the Netherlands, 
 gives to the last, strong in its good faith and in its friendly 
 intentions, just cause for astonishment. So, then, the 
 Cabinet, of which I have the honor to form part, deems 
 that it may dispense with undertaking a justification, useless 
 to all who examine impartially and without passion, the 
 events which have taken place." 
 
 Such seems to have been the failure of Mr. Seward's 
 4 
 
26 
 
 diplomacy in tlie minor or more remote courts of tlie Old 
 World, and we now turn with deeper and more anxious 
 interest to the illustration of what he has done or tried, or 
 failed to do, in his relation to the two great Powers of 
 Western Europe, on wdiose mere will, at the moment these 
 w^ords are written, depend the great issues of war or 
 peace. 
 
 We desire to consider these without reference to the 
 Trent complication, though, for the full comprehension of 
 the stupendous folly, the worse than blindness to sure reali- 
 ties, of publishing these papers, it must be borne in mind 
 that the news of Captain Wilkes' feat reached this country 
 on the 16th November; that Mr. Seward's precautionary 
 letter about it, to Mr. Adams, was written on the 30th ; 
 and that tl.ese papers were not communicated to Congress 
 till the 3d of December, the date of the President's message. 
 They were therefore deliberately published to the world 
 after the news of the new difficulty had reached Washing- 
 ton. Mr. Seward desires the British Government to look 
 at the Trent affair (serious enough, one would think, by 
 itself,) in the light shed by these disclosures. It may at 
 least be said that they do not invigorate friendly feeling. 
 There is a whistling sort of defiance in this publication^ 
 wdiich is very characteristic. 
 
 There are, in onr poor opinion, two delusions under which 
 the Secretary of State entered upon the duties of his high 
 office, and of Avhich he has probably never rid himself. If 
 not delusions, they are ignorances. One is a belief that 
 Great Britain and France, especially the former, are ani- 
 mated by secret hostility to us, and a desire to see this 
 Union fall in ruins. The other, an absolute unconscious- 
 ness of the close relation actually subsisting, socially, eco- 
 nomically and politically, between the two countries, and a 
 self-complacent notion that, by some dexterous diplomacy 
 — some smart device — some adroit appeal to ancient ani- 
 mosity — this close relation can be severed. 
 
27 
 
 That we may not do injustice, let lis quote Mr, ScAvard's 
 well considered words. On the 15th of May he addressed 
 a despatch to the Minister in Switzerland, from which we 
 have already made an extract, in which he said: "I can 
 easily imagine that either Great Britain, France, Russia, 
 Austria, Prussia, Belgium, Spain, or even Denmark, might 
 even imagine that it could require some advantage, or at 
 least some satisfaction to itself, from a change that should 
 abridge the dominion, the commerce, the prosperity or in- 
 fluence of the United States, each of them might be supposed 
 to have envious sentiments toimrds us, ichich vouM delight in an 
 ojyportiinit)/ to do us hemn." The italics are our own, but 
 whether read with or without emphasis, the words show^ the 
 predominant thought of the writer, and it requires a very 
 slight collation of other portions of this volume to prove 
 that the suspicion is intensified in relation to Great Britain, 
 and hangs like a cloud over the darkened intelligence of 
 the Secretary, from tirst to hist. 
 
 ISTow we do not hesitate, drawing our convictions from 
 large and varied intercourse and correspondence with indi- 
 viduals of difterent classes, pursuits and political opinions, 
 to say that never was there greater injustice, or a more 
 vulgar prejudice, than to attribute liostile feeling or hostile 
 action to English statesmen during the anxious months 
 that elapsed from the fall of Sumter to the capture of the 
 Trent. AVe do not overrate the friendliness. We simply 
 deny, and cannot see the evidence of, the hostility. An 
 eminent British statesman, half a century ago, said that ro- 
 mantic sentiment among nations was impracticable, and we 
 do not, in attributing to Great Britain a friendly sympathy 
 Avith our sorrows, mean to exaggerate a sentiment.* It is 
 the simple truth, according to the light and experience the 
 writer of these pages has, that every public man in Eng- 
 land, of high intelligence, whether he be a Bright man, or a 
 
 L.n-.l Uroy's siK-cfli on Spaiii-^li A^;lil■^; in ]S10. 
 
Berbyite, ur ji Whig, or a frieiid of Jjord I'aliiierston, wluif- 
 ever may be his abstract satisfaction at the faikire of a 
 theory of government, looks npon the clo^^•nfa!l of the 
 Federal Union, as it used to be, with its constitutional 
 restraints and integrity, with sorrow, and u}»on the bloody 
 civil war with horror. The '■'■■projice tela mami, sanguis meus" 
 of Lord Chatham was on the lips of all who spoke.* I^o 
 pen wrote other words than those of sorrow. That this 
 sympathy and kind feeling have been chilled from time to 
 time, is true enough. That England and Englishmen saw 
 with wonder at least six of the seven institutions of civil 
 libert}' which, according to Mr. Sumner's last speech, Eng- 
 land gave to us, trampled under foot. — personal liberty, 
 judicial authority, freedom of the press — given up without 
 a murmur. t That she hears with w^onder eminent jurists, 
 on a question of Habeas Corpus, renounce English analogy ; 
 that she" sees in the ISTorth, where the Federal Constitution 
 is claimed to exist, men arbitrarily imprisoned and coolly 
 discharged, and the spirit of the victim so crushed and 
 impoverished that it fears to seek redress ; that England 
 and Englishmen see all this with affection and confidence 
 abated, is certainly and lamentably true, but it was not so 
 when Mr. Lincoln became President last March, and Mr. 
 Seward began despatch-writing. Li spite of all, the kind 
 
 * Lord Chatham's speech, January 20, 1775. 
 
 + On the 8th of .June, 1801, Mr. Seward wrote to Mr. Adams, "We honor 
 and respect the freedom of debate and the freedom of the press. We indulge 
 no apprehensions of danger to our rights or interests from any discussion to 
 which they may be subjected in either form, or any place!" And to Mr. 
 Schurz, he said, " The Spanish government knows that the several States 
 which constitute the Federal Union can respectively practice tyranny or 
 oppression upon individual citizens, and may even hinder and embarrass the 
 general Government, while, on the other liand, that Government being armed 
 with only a few though very important, powers, needful for pi'cserving domestic 
 peace and defence against Foreign nations, can neither oppress, nor impoverish, 
 nor annoy any member of the Union, or ani/ j)rivate citizen.''' 
 
2n 
 
 teeriuu' still exists, and no one can (}»assing by iutlannnatury 
 editoi-ials, very nmeli tlie same all over the world,) read a 
 newspaper now without achnittiiiij; it. The sorrow for the 
 lieavy personal bereavement, as the death of the Queen's 
 husband seems to be, which the British nation feels, is modi- 
 lied and shared by the regret at the possibility of another 
 fraternal war between them and ns. Within a month there 
 has been spoken in the Abbey Church of Westminster, by 
 the tongue of a gentle and accomplished christian minister 
 — a master of the pure English language, which we cannot, 
 if we would, renounce — words on which the eye has just 
 lighted, and which are reproduced here, to illustrate what 
 we are trying to say. It is sorrowing, sorely afflicted, not, 
 according to Mr. Sumner, "penitent England" that speaks 
 in the voice of one of her gentlest, purest sons : 
 
 "A little month ago, we might have had our passing 
 inquietudes, such as at our best state we can never be 
 actually without, but in the main, all appeared w^ell with us. 
 We looked down, with too little sympathy, perhaps, on 
 the nations around us ; we saw^ the cup of pain and tribula- 
 tion as it passed from the lips of one to those of another, 
 and almost deemed it was never destined for our own. We 
 compared, with perhaps, too much pride and complacency, 
 our lot with them. So fortunate at home, so fortunate 
 abroad, we said : ' Peace and safety are ours ; to-mor- 
 row will be as to-day, or its prosperity more abundant !' 
 But lo ! in a moment the huge black v»'ings of the tempest 
 had stretched across our whole horizon, shrouding it with 
 thickest darkness, and Christmas, on the eve of which we 
 stood, seemed almost to mock us with its untimely mirth, so 
 painfull}' did it contrast with all the sorrow and sadness in 
 our hearts. One great soitow has already overtaken us, 
 and there is another, j)erhaps, travelling uj) behind, the 
 tidings of Avliich may in)\\' l)e on their way to ns — Init in 
 God's mercy, may that threatening evil, an unna.tnral and 
 
30 
 
 IVatenial war, a war l)etweeii the cliildron of the same 
 mother, be averted."'* 
 
 But Mr. Seward doc* not believe one word of this. Hos- 
 tility to England was the staple of his poor joke to the Duke 
 of Xewcastle, at a dinner table. It is the animating spirit 
 of these unfortunate despatches, in which, from the Cabinet 
 at Washington, he instructed Mr. Adams and Mr. Da3-ton 
 how they were to comport themselves towards those hostile 
 powers of England and France. The fruits of the experi- 
 ment we have in the attitude they now hold. 
 
 From the 9tli of March, Avhen he addressed his circular 
 to our Ministers abroad, to the date of his despatch to Lord 
 Lyons, surrendering Messrs. Slidell and Mason, "at such 
 time and place as his Lordship should indicate," was an in- 
 terval of ten months. Excluding that incidental matter, 
 Mr. Seward had eight months for his diplomatic eftbrts. 
 Let us see what those efforts were, and what fruits they 
 liave borne. 
 
 There were two, and but two objects to be attained. 
 
 One Avas, to prevent even the indirect recognition of the 
 seceded States. 
 
 The other, to eft'ect a complete prohibition of privateering, 
 by obtaining permission for the United States to become 
 parties to the agreement of the Congress at Paris. 
 
 Mr. Seward has lamentably failed in both. 
 
 Let us reverse tlie order in Avhich Ave have enumerated 
 these objects, and consider the privateering /?V/6(0 first. 
 
 -^ Dean Trench's sermon on the death of Prince Albert, 22d December, 18H1. 
 In the life of Sir Charles Napier, occurs a passage of touching interest, now 
 ■when the hand of brother is raised against brother, showing how his soldier's 
 heart revolted from the bloody work. He had a command in Virginia in 1813, 
 at the very spot where was Hampton and is Great Betiiel. He writes in his 
 diai'y: "I would rather see two Frenchmen shot than one American. It is 
 quite shocking to have men who speak our own language brought in wounded; 
 one feels as if they Avere Engli:<h peasants and that wc are killing our own 
 people." Vol. T, p. -'2i. 
 
31 
 
 Tliis u-|'cat cluuiiiv ill tlic settled liv'lligereiit policy oftlie 
 iiatioM, it will 1)C ix'i'ollected, was first broug-lit to the atten- 
 tion of the eountrv by President Pierce, in his Annnal 
 Message of 1856. The attempted iiegociation on this and 
 kindred subjects of general maritime law, between Mr. 
 Marcy and Count Sartiges, when it occurred six years ago, 
 was deemed of sufficient importance to be mentioned in a 
 President's Message. Its failure was no reason for omitting 
 it, and Mr. Pierce explained at length, w^liat had been done 
 and attempted. Xot so Mr. Lincoln. Neither in his Mes- 
 sage of July, nor in that of December, do we find an ex- 
 planatory w^ord — indeed, only a singular, meagre, and not 
 very intelligible sentence, from w^hich one Avould hardly 
 infer that dtiring the short recess of Congress, if not 
 during the extra session, an elaborate attempt had been 
 made to ameliorate the whole code of sea law, wdth an otl^er 
 to surrender unconditionally a part of the Avar-making 
 power recognized in the Constitution, and that it had failed. 
 Yet, such these papers shoAV to l)e the fact.* 
 
 Its story may be l)riefly told. 
 
 Let it be rememl)ered, as we have said, that among the 
 poW'Crs conferred on Congress by the Constitution, is that 
 of " declaring w^ar and issuing letters of mai-que and re- 
 prisal." ^Ve are not aware that a question has ever been 
 suggested, hoAv far such a power of Congress could be 
 perpetually renounced by a treaty, but we arc content to 
 admit it might be. But w^e do not doubt that the surrender 
 of this great Aveapon of war, is of more than doubtful ex- 
 
 * " Some treaties, designed chiefly for the interests of commerce, and hav- 
 ing no grave political importance, have been negociated, and will be submitted 
 to the Senate for their consideration. Although we have failed to induce 
 some of the commercial powers to adopt a desirable melioration of maritime 
 war, we have removed all obstructions from the way of this humane reform, 
 except such as are of merely temporary and accidental occurrence." Presi- 
 dent Lincoln's Message of Decenibor 0, ISiil. 
 
}k'(1'k-iu'_v — oiiii-liT lu'vci' to l»e tliouu-lit oi', iiiik'ss aeeo]ii|i;i- 
 iiietl by a eoinplt'te abnegation of the captnre of }»rivate 
 property on the oeean, and its exemption from blockade 
 restrictions — and never was thought of, and never woiihl 
 have been suggested by Mr. Lincohi's Government, but for 
 the pressure of the Southern privateering. Wlien, in 1856, 
 the French Government, asked Mr. Marcy's adhesion to 
 the new doctrine, we all remember the language, so unlike 
 Mr. Seward's, in which the reply was expressed. It Avas a 
 frank, earnest decision. 
 
 "The policy of the law," said Mr. Marcy, "which allows 
 a resort to privateers, has been questioned, for reasons which 
 do not command the assent of this government. Without 
 entering into a full discussion on this point, the undersigned 
 will confront the ordinary and chief objection to that policy, 
 by authority which ^^^l\ be regarded Avith profound respect, 
 particularly in France, for it is Yalin who says, 'However 
 lawful and time-honored this mode qf warfare may be, it is, 
 nevertheless, disapproved of by some pretended philoso- 
 phers. According to their notions, such is not the way in 
 Avhich the state and sovereign are to be served ; whilst the 
 profits which individuals may dci'ive from the pursuits are 
 illicit, or at least disgraceful. But this is the language of 
 bad citizens, who, under the stately mask of a spurious wis- 
 dom and of a craftily sensitive conscience, seek to mislead 
 the judgment by a concealment of the surer motive which 
 gives birth to their indifference for the welfare and advan- 
 tage of the state. Such are as worth}' of blame as are those 
 entitled to praise who generously expose their property and 
 their lives to the dangers of privateering." ' 
 
 This was the accepted doctrine of the ITnited States, and 
 so Mr. Seward thought when he took office ; for, in the 
 instructions to Mr. Adams, dated on April 10th, he tells 
 him the only open questions with Great Britain relate to 
 Puget Sound and the Hudson Bay Company, Avhich are to 
 be discussed at Washington ; and that all he will have to 
 
38 
 
 do will be to wateli the maeliiuations of the ''Rebel"" emis- 
 saries, and to see that Lord Russell does not become a vic- 
 tim to their blandishments. On the 13th Fort Sumter fell. 
 On the 19th the Star of the West was captured, to become, 
 as was supposed, the nucleus 'of a privateer navy that might 
 sweep the seas ; and on the 24th Mr. Seward issued his 
 circular to all the leading courts of Europe, agreeing to 
 abolish privateering absolutely, from motives of " benevo- 
 lence and faith in human progress !" l^ay, so anxious was 
 he that he actually sent the draught of a convention to that 
 effect. The despatch thus closes, and we beg the reader to 
 note the very faint manner in which the wish for the Marcy 
 amendment is expressed, and the singular reason given for 
 not pressing it, — that Europe is on the verge of general 
 wars, or, as Mr. Seward expresses it, "quite general wars." 
 The language is this : 
 
 "For your own information, it will be sufficient to say 
 that the President adheres to the opinion expressed by my 
 predecessor, Mr. Marcy, that it would be eminently desirable 
 for the good of all nations that the property and eifects of 
 private individuals, not contraband, should be exempt from 
 seizure and confiscation by national vessels in maritime 
 war. If the time and circumstances were propitious to a 
 prosecution of the negociation, with that object in view he 
 would direct that it should be assiduously pursued. But 
 the right season seems to have passed, at least for the pre- 
 sent. Europe seems once more on the verge of quite gene- 
 ral wars. On the other hand, a portion of the American 
 people have raised the standard of insurrection, and pro- 
 claimed a provisional government, and, through their or- 
 gans, have taken the bad resolution to invite privateers to 
 prey upon the peaceful commerce of the United States, 
 Prudence and humanity combine in persuading the Presi- 
 dent, under the circumstances, that it is wise to secure the 
 lesser good oftered by the Paris Congress, without waiting 
 indetinitelv, in hope to obtain the greater one, offered 
 5 
 
u 
 
 to the maritime nations, by tlie President of the CTnited 
 States." 
 
 The instruction thus given in a panic, not, we admit, 
 unreasonable, to acceptthe Paris proposition, pure and simple, 
 and renounce our cherished maritime means of war, was so 
 received by Mr. Adams, who, in the intervals allowed him 
 from the anxious custody of intercepted despatch bags, ap- 
 plied himself to carrying it into effect, l^ot so Mr. Dayton ; 
 and here, studying these papers ^with an anxious desire to 
 weigh evidence and to ascertain truth, we admit a grievous 
 peqolexity on discovering that Mr. Dayton, though appa- 
 rently without other instructions than Mr. Adams, pursued 
 a widely different course, insisting on the Marcy amendment 
 to the last, and never giving it up till he was ordered to do 
 so from "Washington ; and thus we have the strange exhibi- 
 tion of an utter want of accord in our two ministers, though 
 each is accredited to a leading party to the Congress of 
 Paris, and who were onh- separated by a day's journey and 
 a few seconds of telegraphing. One need not wonder at the 
 failure of diplomacy thus directed or thus conducted. 
 
 Of it, there is but one of two solutions ; either that there 
 were instructions given to Mr. Dayton different from Mr. 
 Adams', which are not published, having for their aim the 
 fruition of some ambi-dextrous polic}^ of separating France 
 from EngUmd; or, what is far more probable, that Mr. Day- 
 ton, an able and earnest man, well educated in the political 
 historj' of his country, felt and acted under an honest con- 
 viction that the Marcy amendment ought not to be given 
 up without effort; and that, looking to the rugged horizon 
 and dark clouds around him, the chances, not of general 
 wars of i^urope, but the possible conflict between us and it, 
 he could not bear to give up our natural, constitutional 
 weapon of offence and defence, without a struggle for some 
 compensation. While this theory does not make the tech- 
 nical diplomacy better, or at all relieve the administration 
 from its panic-stricken and ineffectual concession, it very 
 much elevates Mr. Dayton as a patriot and statesman. Let 
 
35 
 
 us briefly trace tliis })art of the record, begging it to be un- 
 derstood our criticisms are only on what we have before us, 
 not on what we may imagine to be withheld. 
 
 Late in May, Mr, Dayton broached the subject to the 
 French government, and urged the Marcy amendment, on 
 account, he says, of his sense of "the great importance of 
 securing the principle, before the United States should give 
 up the right of privateering, and the repeated willingness 
 of the continental governments to agree to it." A few 
 weeks later he is startled by reading in the New York news- 
 papers that the government had permitted it to be known 
 that the amendment would not be insisted on. "I fear," 
 says he, writing to Mr. Seward, "this will prevent all chance 
 of better terms." On the 31st of May Mr. Dayton formally 
 proposed the amendment to M. Thouvenal. The answer 
 to this is not given, though we infer it to have been, that 
 the proposition should have been addressed, not to Franco 
 alone, but to all the powers, and on the same day Mr. Day- 
 ton more clearly stated his scruples to the department at 
 home. 
 
 " Our condition, as respects privateering and the bel- 
 ligerent rights conceded to the South, lias been so changed 
 by the action of Great Britain, France, and Spain, subse- 
 quent to the first declaration of Lord John Eussell, (stating 
 that such belligerent rights w^ould be conceded) that I know 
 not what may be the views of the Government of the United 
 States at this time, as respects an accession to the treaty of 
 1856, pure and simple. But, as I have learned that nothing 
 substantially has been done in that direction at other points, 
 and I do not see that the interests of the country will be 
 jeoparded by a little delay, I shall await further instructions 
 upon this subject. My first despatch, referring to this 
 matter, was dated 22d of May last, and I doubt not I shall 
 now receive an answer at an early day. If the Government 
 of the United States shall, in view of the circumstances, 
 direct me to make the proposition to the French Govern- 
 
ment to accede, to the Paris treaty, pure and simple, I will, 
 acting under such express direction, lose no time in "making 
 the proposition." 
 
 At a later date (Juh' 5th) he was still more explicit, and 
 stated his views of the whole affair in words not to be mis- 
 understood. 
 
 "It is due to frankness to say, that if a convention is to 
 be negociated for an accession by the 'United States to the 
 Treaty of Paris, without amendment to the first clause, I 
 would prefer it should be done at Washington, rather than 
 Paris. Still, I hold myself subject to the orders of the 
 Government, in this, as in other matters. I have already 
 said I should await further instructions from your depart- 
 ment on this subject." 
 
 There were then on their way to him, two despatches 
 from Mr. Seward of great import, and which were designed 
 to give him the "express direction" he needed. On the 
 15th of June, Mr. Mercier and Lord Lyons had called on 
 the Secretary with a joint communication as to a modified 
 recognition of the Confederates as belligerents, which, as is 
 well known, Mr. Seward refused to listen to ; and, on the 
 17th, he Avrote to Mr. Dayton, claiming vast credit for hav- 
 ing long before agreed to become a party to the Paris 
 compact. "While," said he, "willing and desirous to have 
 that further principle (the Marcy amendment) incorporated 
 in the law of nations, we, nevertheless, instructed you and 
 all our representatives to waive it, if necessary^ and to stipu- 
 late, subject to the concurrence of the Senate, our adhesion 
 to the declaration of Paris, as a whole and unmodified. 
 We have ever since been waiting for the responses of foreign 
 powers to this high and liberal demonstration on our part." 
 It is perfectly clear that the "if necessarj^" of the despatch 
 was an afterthought; for no such word is to be found in the 
 instructions, and all the while Mr. Adams had never dreamed 
 he was to make such an experiment, and never did make it. 
 
 On the 6th of July, there is a despatch to Mr. Dayton. 
 
ST 
 
 which may be described as ahnost petulant, and from which 
 we make a feAV extracts, sniiieiently indicative of this spirit. 
 The italics are ours. 
 
 "The instructions dated April 24, required you to tender 
 to the French Government, vnihoid delatj, our adhesion to 
 the declaration of the Congress of Paris, pure and simple." 
 
 "They waived," he says again in the same despatch, "the 
 Marcy amendment, and required you to propose our acces- 
 sion to the declaration of the Congress." "The matter 
 stood in this plain and intelligible way, until certain decla- 
 rations or expressions of the French Government induced 
 you to believe that they would recognize and treat the 
 insurgents as a distinct national power for belligerent 
 purposes. It was not altogether unreasonable that you, 
 being at Paris, should suppose that this Government would 
 think itself obliged to acquiesce in such a course by tlie 
 Government of France." "The case was peculiar, and in 
 the aspect in which it presented itself to you, portentious. 
 We were content that you might risk the experiment, so, 
 however, that you should not bring any responsibility for 
 delay upon this Government. But you now see you have 
 encountered the very difficulty which was at first foreseen by 
 us. It is no time for propagandism, but for • energetic acting 
 to arrest the worst of all national calamities. We, therefore, 
 expect you now to renew the proposition in the form originally 
 presented/^ 
 
 Early in August, Mr. Dayton received these peremptory 
 orders. There was no alternative but to obey. He thus 
 announced to the Secretary his reluctant acquiescence : 
 
 "By my note to Mr. Adams, written in London, you will 
 find your instructions were anticipated by my action ; that 
 immediately upon learning /rom a reliable source, what were 
 the views of the Government in regard to an accession to 
 the Treaty of Paris, expressed with full knowledge of facts 
 occurring since its original instructions to me, I at once 
 took measures to comply with them, without attempting to 
 
38 
 
 balance the suggestions of my own mind against its known 
 wishes. But I confess, in a matter of such grave importance, 
 as an accession by the United States to that treaty, I did 
 want those wishes expressed with full knowledge of the 
 facts." {Mr. Dayton to Mr. Seward, 2d August, 1861.) 
 
 The proposition "pure and simple," thus dictated, was 
 then made, but failed in consequence, as it seems, of the 
 English and French Governments desiring to incorporate 
 in the convention, a stipulation that it was to have no bear- 
 ing directly or indirectly on the question of our Southern 
 and domestic difficulty, Mr. Dayton, glad no doubt to be 
 relieved from the embarrassment in which he found him- 
 self, rejected this promptly, without waiting for instructions, 
 and Mr, Adams, between whom ami Earl Russell, had 
 arisen rather a delicate question of memory as to facts, 
 followed the examjDle, and thus l)roke down, like everything 
 else, this diplomatic enterprise ; and l>y no merit of his, Mr. 
 Seward's administration still holds in its hand the only 
 weapon which a thorough blockade of our large sea-ports 
 would leave us in the too probable event of a war with the 
 great maritime powers of Europe. 
 
 Whether the English and French Govennnents were 
 justified in wishing to interpolate this limitation on the new 
 code, is a question rather for them than for us. Their 
 reasons were thus, precisely, and one would think iuofl^en- 
 sively given by M. Thouvenal to Mr. Dayton. 
 
 " He said that both France and Great Britain had alread}^ 
 announced that they would take no part in our domestic 
 controversy, and they thought that a frank and open decla- 
 ration in advance of the execution of this convention might 
 save difficulty and misconception hereafter. He further 
 said, in the way of specification, that the provisions of the 
 Treaty standing alone, might bind England and France to 
 pursue and punish the privateers of the South as pirates ; 
 that they were unwilling to do this, and had already so 
 declared. He said that wp eonld deal with these people as 
 
39 
 
 we chose, and they could only express their regret on the 
 score of humanity, if we should deal with them as pirates, 
 but they could not participate in such a course. He said 
 further, that although both England and France w^ere 
 anxious to have the adhesion of the United States to the 
 declaration of Paris, that they would rather dispense with 
 it altogether, than be drawTi into our domestic controversy. 
 He insisted, somewhat pointedly, that I could take no just 
 exception to this outside declaration, simultaneous with the 
 execution of the Convention, unless we intended they 
 should be made parties to our controversy ; and that the 
 very fact of my hesitation w^as an additional reason why 
 they should insist upon making such contemporaneous 
 declaration." 
 
 And we confess the precaution was not unreasonable, for 
 turning to Mr. Seward's elaborate despatch of the 6th July, 
 we find that in tendering this accession to the agreement to 
 abolish privateering as the act of the Federal Government, 
 it w^as meant to make it "• obligatory equally upon disloyal 
 as loyal citizens;" or, in other words, to frame it so as 
 to enable us to call upon France and England to aid in 
 pursuing and punishing the privateers of the South as 
 pirates, wdiich, for the sake of humanity, the}' were deter- 
 mined not to do. In all this there is certainly no laurel 
 leaf for the Secretary's brow. 
 
 We have not allow^ed ourselves time to follow closely the 
 line of Mr. Sew'ard's policy on the graver question of the 
 recognition or quasi-recognition of the Confederates as 
 belligerents. It is to our mind a sad record. We can 
 afford room only for a few specimens of what has been said 
 and written. They fully sustain the opinion we have 
 formed, and show how^ natural it is that, at the end of ten 
 months of restless activity abroad and laborious rhetoric at 
 home, it is more a question than ever, what the leading 
 powders of Europe mean to do in this crisis of our destiny ; 
 the chances being rather against us. 
 
.40 
 
 Mr. Seward began his course of iustruction under mani^ 
 fest prejudice and no little self-deception. He had not a 
 •doubt the instruction would be over in a month or two. 
 He imagined that the public mind of Europe had been 
 poisoned by the machinations of the past, and it was in the 
 power of his magic pen to conjure down the evil spirit. 
 Now the truth is, there was not the slightest colour 
 for all this ; for, though in his first despatch to Mr. 
 Adams, speaking of the late Administration, he says, 
 that "disaffection lurked, if it did not avow itself, in every 
 department and every bureau, in every regiment and in 
 every ship of war, in the Post Office and in the Custom 
 House, and in every Legation and consulate, from London to 
 Calcutta," these very papers show that, in a majority of 
 Mr. Buchanan's ministers abroad, his successor found 
 fidelity, ability, zeal, and what in the new phrase of the day 
 is .known as exuberant "loyalty."'-' This was especially the 
 case, and so admitted to be, at Lonch^u, St. Petersburg, 
 Holland, Prussia, Austria, Switzerland, and Rome. — 
 Mr. Seward retracts the aspersion in particular cases, but 
 allows the general libel to stand and to be published to the 
 world. This may be the solution of the morbid temper in 
 which, in times requiring great coolness and magnaniniity, 
 he began his administrative career. The only possible ex- 
 ceptions to what we have said are the cases of Mr. Faulkner 
 at Paris, and Mr. Preston in Spain ; and yet to these gen- 
 tlemen, whatever may have been their conduct or their suf- 
 ferings since, these documents sh-ow great injustice has been 
 done. As far back as the 19th of March, Mr. Faulkner 
 wrote to the department as intelligent and "loyal" a de- 
 spatch as its archives can boast of, in which he narrated his 
 earnest protest "against the recognition of the seceded 
 
 * As to the disaffection in the depaianents oti :\ir. Lincoin's accession, it is 
 a question to he discussed by Mr. Seward with the present Secretary of War, 
 Mr. Stanton, once Mr. Buchanan's Attorney-General: Mr. Holt, his War 
 Minister ; and Major-General Dix, his Secretary of the Treasury. 
 
41 
 
 States as irreconcilable with any principle of international 
 law or courtesy, or consideration of public benefit;" but he 
 added, and this, we presume, was his offence: "You have 
 not, in your despatch, informed me what line of policy it is 
 the purpose of the Federal government to adopt towards 
 the seceding States, a fact most material in determining 
 my own action, as well as the views to be addressed to a 
 foreign power on the points presented by your instructions. 
 If I correctly construe the intentions of the government, it 
 looks to a pacific solution of the difficulties which now dis- 
 turb its relations with the seceding States. In other words, 
 it does not propose to resort to the strong arm of military 
 power to coerce those States into submission to the Federal 
 authority. If this be a correct view of its proposed action, 
 and all who understand the genius of our institutions and 
 the character of our people, must hope that it shall be such, 
 the only difficulty will be in making European governments 
 appreciate the spirit of such wise and conciliatory policy, 
 and comprehend the just application of the principles of 
 international jurisprudence to a state of facts so novel and 
 peculiar," with the Emperor's remark, that "He did not 
 misapprehend the spirit of conciliation which now actuates 
 the conduct of the Federal authorities. lie knows that 
 appeals lo the public judgment perform that function in our 
 republic which is elsewhere only accomplished by brute 
 force. And if armies have not been marshalled, as they 
 would have been ere this in Europe, to give effect to the 
 Federal authority, he is aware that it is not because the 
 general government disclaims authority over the seceding 
 States, or is destitute of the means and resources of war, 
 but from an enlightened conviction on its part that time 
 and reflection will be more efficacious than arms in re-es- 
 tablishing the Federal authority, and restoring that senti- 
 ment of loyalty to the Union w^hich was once the pride of 
 every American heart." 
 
 Mr. Preston wrote from Madrid in April : '-An interview 
 (J 
 
42 
 
 has taken place between the Minister of Foreign Affairs 
 and myself in reference to the subject embraced in 3'our 
 circular. The minister expressed pain at the posture of 
 affairs in the United States, but said that her Majesty's 
 government was informed that extensive military and naval 
 preparations were making in the North to enforce the Fede- 
 ral supremacy in the South, and that the consequences were 
 to be dreaded. I replied that I felt assured his information 
 was erroneous." 
 
 Now, let us see, recorded in this volume and never re- 
 tracted, what Mr. Seward himself was saying, twenty days 
 after Mr. Faulkner, and twelve days before Mr. Preston 
 uttered their "anti-coercion" heresies. 
 
 "The President," he writes to England on April 10, 1861, 
 " neither looks for nor apprehends an}' actual and perma- 
 nent dismemberment of the American Union, especially by 
 a line of latitude. He is not disposed to reject a cardinal 
 dogma of the South, namely, that the Federal Government 
 caunot reduce the seceding States to obedience by con- 
 quest, even although he were disposed to question that 
 proposition. But, in fact, the President willingly accepts 
 it as true. Only an imperial or despotic Government could 
 subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of 
 the State. This federal republican system of ours is, of all 
 forms of government, the very one which is most unfitted 
 for such a labor. Happily, however, this is only an imagi- 
 nary defect. The system has within itself adequate, peaceful, 
 conservative and recuperative forced. Firmness on the part 
 of the Government, in preserving and maintaining the public 
 institutions and property, and in executing the laws where 
 authority can be exercised without loaging war^ combined 
 with such measures of justice, moderation and forbearance 
 as will disarm reasoning opposition, will be sufficient to 
 secure the public safety until returning reflection, concur- 
 ring with the fearful experience of social evils, the inevitable 
 fruits of faction, shall bring the recusant members cheer- 
 
43 
 
 fully back into the fliraily, which, after all, must prove their 
 best and happiest, as it undeniably is their natural home. 
 The Constitution of the United States provides for that 
 return, by autliorizing Congress, on application to be made 
 by a certain majority of the States, to assemble a National 
 Conventioyi, in which the organic law can, if it be needful, 
 be revised so as to remove all obstacles to a re-union, so 
 suitable to the habits of the people, and so eminently con- 
 ducive to the common safety and welfare. Keeping that 
 remedy steadily in view, the President, on the one hand, 
 will not suffer the Federal authority to fall into abeyance, 
 nor will he, on the other, aggravate existing evils by attempts 
 at coercion which must assume the form of direet war against any 
 of the revolutionary States:' 
 
 The guns of Fort Moultrie, on the 13th of April, we are 
 bound in candour to presume, awakened the administration 
 from this dream of peace, frustrated disavowals of coercion and 
 the hope of a National Convention, and Mr. Seward at once 
 transferred his animosities and suspicions, and threats, from 
 Mr. Buchanan's expiring embassies to foreign governments, 
 and especially, and, as the result shows, most unfortunately, 
 to that power whose friendliness it was most important to 
 conciliate, and which Mr. Seward, as appears by a despatch 
 to his most confidential agent, Mr. Sanford, at Brussels, 
 admitted, "would take the lead in determining European 
 relations to the United States." 
 
 Let us briefly retrace the recent past, merely remarking at 
 the outset, that it seems incredible (and this we say in all 
 kindness) that the same pen which traced the letter to Lord 
 Lyons, surrendering Mr. Mason andMr. Slidell, in December, 
 could have written the blustering despatches of April, and 
 May, and June. Being recently and deliberately published, 
 however, we are bound to believe that the spirit of defiance. 
 as Mr. Cassius Clay says "to old John Bull," is still smoul- 
 dering in the Secretary's heart, the only incongruity being, 
 what we are loth to believe on mere newspaper report, that 
 
44 
 
 Biitish troops are at this moment passing, by consent, 
 over ]^ew England railroads, to reinforce the garrisons of 
 Canada. 
 
 There is a character in one of Sheridan's comedies, who, 
 when inditing a challenge to a courteous adversary*, pro- 
 poses to begin with an imprecation. Mr, Seward sets out 
 in his diplomatic correspondence witli Great Britain with 
 something kindred to one. He thunders terribly in the index. 
 "When the instructions to Mr. Adams were prepared, nothing 
 bad reached this country but expressions of kindness and 
 sympathy on the part of Great Britain, and at their very date 
 (April 9th) Mr. Dallas had written that Lord John Russell, 
 in conversation on the subject of recognizing the Confede- 
 rates, assured him, "with great earnestness, that there wa8 
 not the slightest disposition to grasp at any advantage which 
 might be supposed to arise from the unpleasant domestic 
 differences in the United States, but, on the contrary, he 
 would be highly gratified if those differences were adjusted, 
 and the Union restored to its former unbroken position." 
 With this, Mr. Dallas, a most amiable man, and one who, 
 from long experience, might be supposed capable of accu- 
 rately estimating official language, was apparently content, 
 or, at all events, he intimates no distrust. On the next 
 day, (April 10,) it is, that Mr. Seward fulminates his elabo- 
 rate instructions to Mr. Adams, from which some extracts 
 have been made. Their minatory spirit, however, is traceable 
 in sentences like the following, which bristle at intervals 
 throughout: 
 
 ''If you," says he, " unhappily find Her Majesty's Govern- 
 ment tolerating the application of the so-called seceding 
 States, or wavering about it, you will not leave them to 
 suppose for a moment that they can grant that application, 
 and remain the friends of the United States. You may 
 even assure them promptly in that case, that if they deter- 
 mine to recognize, they may at the same time prepare to 
 enter into alliance wnth the enemies of this Republic. You 
 
whmo will rcjiivscnl voiir t-ounti-v at London, unci you will 
 represent the whole of it there. When you are asked to 
 divide that duty with others, diplomatic relations between 
 the Government of Great Britain and this Government will 
 be suspended, and will remain so, until it shall be seen 
 which of the two is most strongly entrenched in the confi- 
 dence of their respective nations and of mankind." 
 
 And then again comes a sentence, not very intelligible, 
 especially in the part we venture to italicise: 
 
 "It might be enough to say on that subject, that as the 
 United States and Great Britain are equals in dignity, and 
 not unequal in astuteness in the science and practice of 'political 
 economy^ the former have good right to regard only their 
 own convenience and consult their own judgment in framing 
 their revenue laws."* 
 
 The concluding, or rather penultimate sentence, is this : 
 
 "The British empire itself is an aggregation of divers 
 communities, which cover a large portion of the earth, and 
 embrace one-fifth of the entire population. Some, at least, 
 of these communities, are held to their places in that system, 
 by bonds as fragile as the obligations of our own Federal 
 Union. The strain will sometime come, which is to try the 
 strength of these bonds, though it will be of a different kind 
 from that which is trying the cords of our confederation. 
 Would it be wise for Her Majesty's Government, on this 
 occasion, to set a dangerous precedent, or provoke retalia- 
 tion ? If Scotland and Ireland are at last reduced to quiet 
 contentment, has Great Britain no dependency, island or 
 province left exposed along the whole circle of her empire. 
 
 * The Secretary is fond of the un-English word " astuteness." He tells Mr. 
 Sanford, who seems to be a roving diplomatist, flying from his perch at 
 Brussels, to London, to Paris, to Turin, to Genoa, and to Caprera : "The 
 President willingly expects to rely on your astuteness in discovering points of 
 attack, and your practical skill and experience in protecting the interests of 
 tlie United States." 
 
from Gibraltar tlirougli the AVest Indies and Canada, till it 
 beg-ins ao-ain on tlie Soiitliern extremity of Africa?* 
 
 With Mr. Dallas' report of Lord John Russell's declara- 
 tion of sympathy, Mr. Seward was far from being satisfied. 
 Just before answering it, he had received a foolish letter 
 from Governor Hicks, of Maryland, which is part of the 
 history of the times, suggesting Lord Lyons as a mediator 
 between ITorth and South, and had replied tartly, "that no 
 domestic contention whatever, which mi2:ht arise amono- 
 the parties of this Republic, ought, in any case, to be referred 
 to any foreign arbitrament, least of all, to the arbitrament 
 of an European Monarchy." A bold annunciation which, 
 or at least that part of it, where he specially and scornfully 
 refuses monarchial mediation, he seemed to have forgotten, 
 when, a month later, he assured the French Emperor, that 
 if Foreign intercession was practicable, " so cordial is our 
 regard, and such our confidence in his wisdom and justice. 
 
 * Mr. Lovejoy, in a speech in the House of Representatives, on January 14, 
 18G2, elaborating Mr. SewanVs ideas said : 
 
 "I hate the British Government, I here now publicly avow and record that 
 hate, and declare that it shall be unextinguishable. I mean to cherish it 
 while I live, and to bequeath it to my children when I die, and if I am alive 
 when war with England comes, and if I can carry a musket in that war, I will 
 carry it. I have three sons, and I mean to chai-ge them, and do now charge 
 them, that if they shall have at that time reached the years of manhood and 
 strength they shall enter into that war. I believe there was no need for that 
 surrender, and I believe that the nation would rather have gone to war with 
 Great Britain than have suffered the disgrace of being insulted and being thus 
 unavenged. I have not reached the sublimation of Christianity — that exalta- 
 tion of Christianity which allows me to be insulted, abused and dishonored. 
 I can bear all that as a Christian, but to say that I do it cheerfully, is more 
 than I can bring myself to. I trust in God that the time is not far distant when 
 we shall have suppressed this rebellion, and be prepared to avenge and wipe 
 out the insult that we have received. We will then stir up Ireland, we will 
 appeal to the Chartists of England, we will go to the old French hahitans of 
 Canada, we will join hands with France and Russia to take away the Eastern 
 possessions of that proud empire, and will take away the crown from that 
 Government before we cease." — Netv Yerk Tribune. 
 
47 
 
 that liis mediatiou woiild be accepted."* Be that as it 
 may, co-iiicideiitly with the Maryland impertinence, came Mr. 
 Dallas' report of the interview at Downing Street, and at 
 once the Secretary sends hot words across the water : 
 
 "Her Britannic Majesty's Government is at liberty to 
 choose whether it will retain the friendship of this Govern- 
 ment by refnsing all aid and comfort to its enemies, now in 
 flagrant rebellion against it, as we think the treaties exist- 
 ing between the two countries require, or whether the 
 Government of Her Majesty will take the precarious benefits 
 of a different course." 
 
 We hope not to be misunderstood. There can be no 
 objection in diplomatic or any other kind of discussion, to 
 spirited, and it may be defiant words, but one ought to be 
 sure that the occasion warrants them — that they are never 
 used precipitately — and that once used, they are not in terror 
 withdrawn. The true rule is as old as Solomon, and Shaks- 
 peare for the one, tells us : 
 
 " He Weave 
 Of entrance to a quarrel ; but, being in,. 
 Bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee ;" 
 
 and the other, as if with reference to the Mr. Seward of 
 April, and the Mr. Seward of December, says : — " Go not 
 torth hastily to strife, lest thou know not what to do in 
 the end thereof, when thy neighbor hath put thee to shame." 
 The gentlest judgment we can pass on the Secretary is, that 
 in the prime of his ofiicial existence, he was in haste to 
 strife, little thinking of the end thereof. 
 
 But the complication soon thickened. In the first fort- 
 night of May, there arrived in London Mr. Seward's letter 
 of the 27th April, to which we have just referred, the 
 Southern commissioners or emissaries, and last of all, Mr. 
 Adams. Before Mr. Adams came, Mr. Dallas had another 
 interview with tlie Foreio'u Secretar\', wlio told liim : 
 
 Despatch Lo Mr. Dayton, May 30, 1861. 
 
4.S 
 
 ''That the three representatives of the Southern confede- 
 racy were here ; that he had not seen them, but was not 
 unwilling to do so, imofficially ; that there existed an under- 
 standing between this Government and that of France, 
 which would lead both to take the same course as to recog- 
 nition, whatever that course might be ; and he then referred 
 to the rumor of a meditated blockade of Southern ports, and 
 their discontinuance as ports of entry — topics on which I 
 had heard nothing, and could therefere say nothing." 
 
 On the 6th of May there was a discussion in the House 
 of Commons, to which Mr. Adams thus refers : 
 
 " The answer given by Lord John Russell, in the pro- 
 ceedings of the 6th of May, will of course have attracted 
 your attention, long before these lines meet your eye. I 
 need not say that it excited general surprise, especially 
 among those most friendly to the Government of the United 
 States. There seems to be not a little precipitation in at 
 once raising the disaffected States up to the level of a bel- 
 ligerent power, before it had developed a single one of the 
 real elements which constitute military efficiency outside of 
 its geographical limits. The case of the Greeks was by no 
 means a parallel case ; for the declaration had not been 
 made until such time had intervened as was necessary to 
 prove, by the very words quoted by Lord John Russell from 
 the instructions of the British Government, that the power 
 was sufficient ' to cover the sea with its cruisers.' Wliereas, 
 in the present instance, there was no evidence to show, as 
 yet, the existence of a single privateer afloat."* 
 
 * There is, in this despatch, a mysteriovis intimation, beyond our compre- 
 hension. After describing his presentation to the Queen, Mr. Adams says : 
 " Thus an end is put to all the speculations which have been set afloat, touch- 
 ing the prt.b b!e posiiion of the Minister of the United States at this Court." 
 What is meant by this? Mr. Adams, when he wrote this letter, could not 
 have studied carefully the history of the recognition of Greece by the 
 European Powers. It is on all fours with what is doing now. Mr. Seward is 
 our Reis Effendi, who, to use the language of a writer of that day, (1925,) 
 
49 
 
 When Mr. Adams opens tliis strange volume lie will be 
 amazed to find that twenty days before he so positively said 
 that there was not a Southern privateer afloat, his Secretaiy 
 of State had, in a formal despatch to Mr. Schurz at Madrid, 
 written : 
 
 " The revolutionists have opposed to us an army of inva- 
 sion, directed against this capital, and a force of privateers 
 excited to prey upon commerce, and ultimately, no doubt, 
 on the commerce of the world." 
 
 Mr. Dallas's letter of the 2d of May, with the intelligence 
 that Lord John Russell might possibly receive unotRcially 
 the Confederate Commissioners as individuals, just as he 
 would Poles, or ISTeapolitans, or Hungarians who happened 
 to be in London, produced another vehement despatch, 
 which, Mr. Adams is told, is not to be read to the British 
 Secretary; nor are any of its positions to be "prematurely, 
 unnecessarily, or indiscreetly" made known. "Its spirit is 
 to be your guide." Wliat that spirit is the reader may 
 judge from the following extracts : 
 
 "As to the recognition of the so-called Southern Con- 
 federacy, it is not to be made a subject of technical defini- 
 tion. It is, of course, direct recognition to publish an ac- 
 knowledgment of the sovereignty and independence of a 
 new power. It is direct recognition to receive its ambassa^ 
 dors, ministers, agents, or commissioners ofiicially. A con- 
 cession of belligerent rights is liable to be construed as a 
 recognition of them. No one of these proceedings will pass 
 unquestioned by the United States in this case. 
 
 "Happily, however, her Britannic Majesty's government 
 can avoid all these difficulties. It invited us, in 1856, to 
 accede to the declaration of the Congress of Paris, of which 
 
 " wrote like a man who holds the endeavors of neutral nations in contempt, 
 under the notion that the Greek question would shortly be settled by the 
 decided triumph of the Turkish arms." 
 
 7 
 
50 
 
 l3ody Great Britain was herself a member, abolishing priva- 
 teering everywhere, in all cases and forever. You already 
 have our authority to propose to her our accession to that 
 declaration. If she refuse it, it can only be because she is 
 willing to become the patron of privateering when aimed at 
 our devastation." 
 
 But the point of the threat, — ending in a specitic direc- 
 tion, which to this hour, we believe, has never been carried 
 into eiiect — is this : 
 
 "The President regrets that Mr. Dallas did not protest 
 against the proposed unoihcial intercourse between the Bri- 
 tish government and the missionaries of the insurgents. It 
 is due, however, to Mr. Dallas to say that our instructions 
 had been onh- to you and not to him, and that his loyalty 
 and fidelity, so rare in these times, are appreciated. Inter- 
 course of any kind with the so-called commissioners is liable 
 to be construed as a recognition of the authority which ap- 
 pointed them. Such intercourse woidd be none the less 
 hurtful to us, for being called unofficial, and it might be 
 even more injurious, because we should have no means of 
 knowing what points might be resolved by it. Moreover, 
 uuofHcial intercourse is useless and meaningless if it is not 
 expected to ripen into official intercourse and direct recog- 
 nition. It is left doubtful here whether the proposed unof- 
 ficial intercourse has yet actually begun. Your own ante- 
 cedent instructions are deemed explicit enough, and it is 
 hoped that you have not misunderstood them. You will, in 
 any event, desist from all intercourse lohatever, unofficial as well 
 as official, with the British governmeyit, so long as it shall continue 
 intercourse of either kind with the domestic enemies of this country. 
 When intercourse shall have been arrested for this cause, 
 you will communicate with this department and receive 
 further directions." 
 
 This letter appears not to have reached Mr. Adams till 
 the 14th of June ; and it would seem that in the interval, 
 with the exception of the Queen's proclamation, and some 
 
51 
 
 other minor interlocutory matters, nothing had occurred to 
 widen the apprehended breach ; and the fruit of several 
 interviews at the Foreign OiRce was, that Mr. Adams, on 
 the 7th of June, reported, with confidence, a considerable 
 amelioration of sentiment towards the United States. Of 
 one of the conferences he says, "that both in manner and 
 matter it was conducted in the most friendly spirit." So, 
 we very much incline to think, it would have continued but 
 for the irrepressible activity, the unceasing despatch writing 
 from this side of the Atlantic. There seemed an incapacity 
 for repose. 
 
 Mr. Seward's orders to remonstrate against Lord John 
 Russell's social relations were peremptory; and Mr. Adams, 
 with evident reluctance, obeyed them. He thus describes 
 the performance of this part of his duty, which he well calls 
 the most delicate portion of his task : 
 
 "I next approached the most delicate portion of my task. 
 I descanted upon the irritation produced in America by the 
 Queen's proclamation, upon the construction almost uni- 
 versally given to it, as designed to aid the insurgents, by 
 raising them to the rank of a belligerent state, and upon 
 the very decided tone taken by the President in my de- 
 spatches in case any such design was really entertained. I 
 added that, from my own observation of what has since 
 occurred here, I had not been able to convince myself of 
 the existence of such a design. But it was not to be dis- 
 guised that the fact of the continued stay of the pseudo- 
 commissioners in this city, and, still more, the knowledge 
 that they had been admitted to more or less interviews with 
 his Lordship, was calculated to excite uneasiness. Indeed, 
 it had already given great dissatisfaction to my government. 
 I added, as moderately as I could, that, in all frankness, 
 any further protraction of this relation could scarcely fail to 
 be viewed by us as hostile in spirit, and to require some 
 corresponding action accordingly. His Lordship then re- 
 viewed the course of Great Britain. He explained the mode 
 
52 
 
 in vvliicb they \v.\\ cousulted with Fraiice, prior to any action 
 at all, as to the reception of the deputation from the so- 
 called Confederate States. It had been the custom, both in 
 France and here, to receive such persons unofficially for a 
 long time back. Poles, Hungarians, Italians, &c. kc, had 
 been allowed interviews, to hear what they had to say. But 
 this did not imply recognition in this case any more than 
 in ours. lie added, that he had seen the gentlemen once, 
 some time ago, and once more, some time since ; he had 
 no expectation of seeing them any more." 
 
 Here, in the printed volume, follows a line of those mys- 
 terious asterisks, which indicate the suppression of some- 
 thing too dangerous or offensive for the outside world to 
 know. We are left to conjecture whether Lord John 
 reminded Mr. Adams of those days of exorbitant sympathy 
 hereabouts, when Repeal meetings were attended by emi- 
 nent Statesmen, when Kossuth was publicly received by 
 the Senate and a Secretary of State; or even alluded to 
 those later days, nearer our times, when fugitives from 
 English and European justice have been elevated over the 
 heads of native born citizens, to high military positions.* 
 All this is left for speculation. The interview, such as it 
 was, does not seem — and this without any fault of Mr. 
 Adams — to have done any particular good or promoted 
 kind feeling. Still Mr. Adams wrote cheerfully, as late as 
 the 21st and 28th of June. 
 
 "I am now, said he, earnestly assured on all sides, that 
 the sympathy with the Government of the United States is 
 general ; that the indignation felt in America, is not founded 
 in reason ; that the British desire only to be perfectly neutral, 
 
 * Without meaning to put Garibaldi in eitlier of these categories, it may not 
 be inappropriate to say that, on the 27th July last, in the fresh panic for Bull 
 Run, as we believe the archives of the State Department will show, Mr. Seward 
 offered to that chieftain a command of the highest rank in our army. The 
 ambulatory Mr. Sanford visited Caprera for this purpose early in September, 
 in a Genopsc fiteamer specially chartered for the occasion. 
 
58 
 
 giving no aid and comfort to the insurgents. 1 believe that 
 this sentiment is now growing to be universal. It inspires 
 her Majesty's ministers, and is not without its effect on the 
 opposition. Neither party would be so bold as to declare 
 its sympathy with a cause based upon the extension of 
 slavery; for that would at once draw upon itself the indig- 
 nation of the great body of the people. But the develop- 
 ment of a positive spirit in the opposite direction, will 
 depend far more upon the degree in which the arm of the 
 Government enforces obedience, than upon any absolute 
 affinity in sentiments. Our brethren in this country are, 
 after all, very much disposed to fall in with the opinion of 
 Voltaire, that, " Dieu est loujoars sur le cote des gros canons." 
 General Scott and an effective blockading squadron will be 
 the true agents to keep the peace abroad as well as to 
 conquer one at home. In the meanwhile, the self-styled 
 commissioners of the insurgents have transferred their 
 labors to Paris, where, I am told, they give out what they 
 would not venture publicly to say here, that this Govern- 
 ment will recognize them as a State. The prediction may 
 be verified it is true ; but it is not now likely to happen, 
 under any other condition than the preceding assent of the 
 United States."* 
 
 "On the whole, I think I can say, that the relations of 
 the two countries are gradually returning to a more friendly 
 condition. My own reception has been all that I could 
 desire., I attach value to this, however, only as it indicates 
 the establishment of a policy that will keep us at peace 
 during the continuation of the present convulsion." 
 
 All this, the Secretary of State seemed utterly unable to 
 
 * Besides bad English, there are specimens of very questionable French in 
 these papers. Mr. Adams does not quote Voltaire correctly ; for surely no 
 Frenchman ever said ''■ sur le, cole f and Mr. Sanford leaves us in perplexity, 
 when speaking of the Belgian authorities, he says, '•' They would in no case 
 make a treaty, which should bind them to the perpetual abolition of passports, 
 vis-a-vis to my nation." — Sanford in Seirard, July 3. 1861. 
 
54 
 
 estimate properly ; for in a despatch of July 1, he thus 
 sullenly refers to it : 
 
 " I conclude with the remark that the British Government 
 can never expect to induce the United States to acquiesce 
 in her assumed position of this Government as divided in 
 any degree, into two powers, for war more than for peace. 
 At the same time, if her Majesty's Government shall con- 
 tinue to practice absolute forbearance from any interference 
 in our domestic affairs, we shall not be captious enough to 
 inquire what name it gives to that forbearance, or in what 
 character it presents itself before the British nation, in 
 doing 80." 
 
 And again, as late as September 25th, he writes : 
 
 " I think that Great Britain will soon be able to see, what 
 she has hitherto been unwilling to see, that if she, like 
 ourselves, seeks peace and prosperity on this continent, she 
 can most effectually contribute to their restoration by 
 manifesting her wishes for the success of this Government 
 in suppressing the insurrection as speedily as possible." 
 
 But, between July and September, the dates of these 
 letters, new sources of annoyance had been opened. The 
 battle of Manassas— described by Mr. Seward in one letter 
 as a "deplorable reverse, equally severe and unexpected," 
 and in another as "appalling," had occurred. In the region 
 of diplomacy, affairs had become more cloudy. Mr. Seward 
 had actively resumed his police duties. He had, in con- 
 junction with the late Secretary at War, directed the arrest 
 of many individuals, without warrant, or judicial authority, 
 or investigation, and to this hour holds them in close cus- 
 tody, in a Northern fortress. Among them was a Mr. 
 Muir, a naturalized citizen, and therefore amenable to the 
 local laws, if properly directed against him, in whose pos- 
 session was found a Consular mail bag from Charleston, 
 directed to the English Foreign Office. Whether the break- 
 ing of its seals was or was not, according to the newspapers, 
 the subject of grave deliberation in the Cabinet at Washing- 
 
55 
 
 ton, or between the Secretnry and Lord Lyons, we have 
 no iDeans of knowing ; but one can hardly repress a smile, 
 on learning from the documents now given to the world, 
 that when it was at last formally delivered b}^ Mr. Adams 
 to Earl Russell and opened, its contents were found to be 
 entirely innocent, and to consist principally of letters from 
 English and Irish governesses and servant girls in South 
 Carolina, making their little remittances to their friends 
 and relatives in the old country.* It is true, however, that 
 this arrest did lead to the avowal of the fact, that before 
 September, the English and French Governments had di- 
 rected their consuls to approach the "so-called Confederate 
 States," and propose to them adhesion to the Treaty of 
 Paris, as to neutral rights, coupled however, with the ex- 
 press assurance that "Her Majesty's Government have not 
 recognized, and are not prepared to recognize, the so-called 
 Confederate States, as a separate and independent State." 
 But Mr. Muir's arrest, (perhaps more justifiable under 
 the circumstances than many others,) or, rather, the fact 
 that the Federal Government had, in this and other in- 
 stances, overturned nearly all Mr. Sumner's principles of in- 
 herited British law, and asserted an absolute military 
 authorit}^ over liberty and property, created an irritation, 
 and produced an impression abroad, as to which these de- 
 spatches give no light. It at once destroyed confidence in 
 American law, and, in doing so, fatally wounded American 
 credit. How far this distrust and irritation were reasonable, 
 this is not the place to inquire. The fact is so ; and we but 
 note in passing, that the many arrests and seizures which 
 were deemed necessary to save the country at home, did it 
 irreparable injury abroad. "There is," said Mr. Horsman, 
 a liberal opposition member, to his constituents, " what 
 seems to us a complete break-down of civil government. 
 
 ^"Mr. Bunch to Lord Russell, August 5, 1861. 
 
56 
 
 There is not a security that was established for liberty of 
 speech, writing or motion, which is not swept away." This 
 is rather overstated, but still the world regarded it with 
 wonder; the Confederate States, in the vigorous language 
 of Mr. Davis, "looked on with contemptuous astonish- 
 ment" at what was done and submitted to ; and we think 
 we may venture to aftirm that the Secretary of the Treasury, 
 in the very crisis of his early tinancial operations, felt the 
 great support of a foreign credit — the chance for a sale or 
 hypothecation of his stocks abroad — dragged from beneath 
 him, as faith in American law failed, and his colleagues 
 of the State and War Departments were playing with the 
 edge-tools of arbitrary arrests, and hurling their bolts at all 
 they judged their foes. 
 
 The arrest of Mr. Muir revealed the fact to Mr. Adams 
 that France and England had jointly made some advances 
 to the Confederate States. Mr. Seward knew it long 
 before ; for, as far back as the 15th of June, Lord Lyons 
 and M. Mercier made their visit to the Secretary, and com- 
 municated, or tried to do so, the intentions of their re- 
 spective Governments to act in concert for the future. How 
 Mr. Seward received that visit is well known, and need not 
 be referred to in detail here. To one portion only, of his 
 own account of it, do we allude now. It is the beginning 
 and the end of his despatch : 
 
 " On the 15th day of June instant. Lord Lyons, the 
 British Minister, and M. Mercier, the French Minister, re- 
 siding here, had an appointed interview with me. Each of 
 those representatives proposed to read to me an -instruction 
 which he had received from his Government, and to deliver 
 me a copy, if I should desire it. I answered that, in the 
 present state of the correspondence between their respective 
 Governments and that of the United States, I deemed it 
 my duty to know the characters and effects of the in- 
 structions respectively, before I could consent that they 
 should be officially communicated to this department. The 
 
57 
 
 Ministers, therefore, confidentially and very frankly, sub- 
 mitted the papers to me, for preliminary inspection. After 
 having examined thoni so far as to understand their pur- 
 pose, I declined to hear them read, or to receive official 
 notice of ihem." 
 
 It then conclndcs, sharply enough, with a fling at both : 
 " Hoping to have no occasion hereafter, to speak for the 
 hearing of fiiendly nations, upon the topics which I have 
 now discussed, I add a single remark by way of satisfying 
 the British Government that it will do wisely by leaving us 
 to manage and settle this domestic contro^'crsy in our own 
 way. The fountains of discontent in any society are many, 
 and some lie much deeper than others. Thus far, this un- 
 happy controversy has disturbed only those wdilch are 
 nearest the surface. There are others, which lie still 
 deeper, that may yet remain, as we hope, long undisturbed. 
 If they should be reached, no one can tell how or when they 
 could be closed. It was foreign intervention that opened, 
 and that alone could open, similar fountains in the memora- 
 ble French Revolution." 
 
 That a Secretary of State may absolutely decline to re- 
 ceive a communication, addressed to him in a disrespectful 
 or uncourtouQs manner, or even improperly superscribed, or 
 sent by an unsuitable messenger, no one can dispute. Na}--, 
 further, he would have a perfect right to refuse to listen to 
 a paper, unless the promise were given in advance, that a 
 copy should be left with him, and this for the obvious 
 reason that there would be no security to the listening 
 party otherwise. On this point, we put in a note, an 
 authority which may not be without interest.* But we 
 
 * Mr. Canning, in a letter to Lord Granville, at Paris, dated March 4, 1825, 
 says: "The last three mornings have been occupied partly in receiving the 
 three successive communications of Count Lieven, Prince Esterhazy and Baron 
 Maltzahn, of the high and weighty displeasure of their courts with respect 
 to Spanish America. Lieven led the way on Wednesday. He began lo 
 
 8 
 
venture to atKnii that no precedent can be found, from the 
 days of Frederick of Prussia and JSTapoleon — who were 
 very apt to do uncivil and aggravating things to Ministers 
 at their Courts — to Mr. Seward's, of a Secretary refusing to 
 listen to a paper, when a copy was promised, until he should 
 know what its contents were. That this was "frankly" 
 and readily acquiesced in, shows no extreme tenaciousness 
 on the part of those who sought the audience. We have 
 not space to dwell further on the contents and reasoning of 
 Mr. Seward's denunciatory letter, but simply note the facts 
 connected with it, as items in the great account of mistakes 
 and offences, for which, as it seems to us, he is responsible. 
 These were the incidents — this the style of correspond- 
 ence, antecedent to the 7th of November, when Captain 
 Wilkes boarded the Trent and seized the Confederate com- 
 missioners and their secretaries. 
 
 open a long despatch, evidently with the intention of reading it to me. I 
 stopped in limine, desiring to know if he was authorized to give a copy of it 
 He said no ; upon which I declined hearing it, unless he would give me his 
 word that no copy would be sent to any other court. He said he could not 
 undertake to say that it would not be sent to other Russian missions, but that 
 he had no notion that a copy of it would be given to the courts at which they 
 were severally accredited. I answered that I was either to have a copy of a 
 despatch which might be quoted to foreign courts, (as former despatches had 
 been,) as having been communi'iated to me and remaining unanswered ; or to 
 be able to say that no despatch had been communicated to me at all ' It was 
 utterly impossible for me,' I said, ' to charge my memory with the expressions 
 of a long despatch once read over to me, or to be able to judge on one such 
 hearing, whether it did or did not contain expressions which I ought not to 
 pass over without remark. Yet, by the process now proposed, I was responsi- 
 ble to the King and to my colleagues, and ultimately, perhaps, to Parliament, 
 for the contents of a paper which might be of the most essentially important 
 character, and of which the text might be quoted hereafter by tJiird parties as 
 bearing a meaning which I did not on the instant attribute to it, and yet, 
 which, upon bare recollection, I could not controvert.' Lieven was con- 
 founded. He asked me what he was to do ? I said, what he pleased, but I 
 took the exception now before I heard a word of his despatch, because I would 
 not have it thought that the contents of the despatch, whatever they might be. 
 had anything to do with that exception." 
 
59 
 
 Of this grave event, in any of its relations of law, of fact, 
 of probable consequences, we have neither space nor heart 
 to speak. It has been fully discussed. It is too serious in 
 its possible future. It is too mortifying in its past. A 
 single word is due to candour, and the spirit of frankness 
 in which these pages have been written. The act of 
 CaptaiD Wilkes was either right or it was wrong. It never 
 was heroic, and never would have been called so, out of the 
 heated, oratorical atmosphere of Boston, where wise and 
 grave and learned men seem more fond of intellectual 
 antics than anywhere else; and even atBoston wedid not find 
 such men as Winthrop and Appleton and Felton and Hillard 
 in the crowd of precipitate enthusiasts. It was either simply 
 right or terribly wrong. If right, it ought at all hazards to 
 have been maintained the more resolutely, if one tithe of 
 Mr. Seward's defiance of England were genuine. If wrong, 
 it should have been at once disavowed, gracefully and vol- 
 untarily. And let it be borne in mind, when, bye and bye, 
 the judgment of history is made up, that had it been disa- 
 vowed and the captives been restored, either on account of 
 the wrong committed in taking them, or because they are 
 "old men," as Mr. Charles Sumner is so fond of describing 
 them ; or, because, as Mr. Seward now says, they are 
 "valueless," Great Britain would have been absolutely in the 
 power of the North, without pretext or excuse, if she 
 needed one ; and all our diplomatic gibes and sarcasms 
 would have been condoned by this one act of frank self- 
 respect and magnanimous self-condemnation. The disa- 
 vowal of the attack of the Leopard on the Chesapeake, in 
 1807, and the apology made by the English Ministry, post- 
 poned war for five long years. We did neither. We hesitated 
 about the narrow and simple question of right and wrong, 
 and then surrendered under a querulous lawyerising pro- 
 test ; and at the moment these lines are written, no one is 
 able to say what sort of a future each coming mail from 
 Europe may reveal to us. 
 
60 
 
 The Review of our diplomatic papers is now completed — 
 imperfect as the writer feels it to be. Such as it is, ho 
 commends it to the generous judgment of his countrymen. 
 
 The challenge was thrown to the people of the North and 
 their representatives, when this volume w^as prepared and 
 published by the Secretary of State, and when tiie Chief 
 Magistrate went into voluntary or involuntary eclipse. It 
 has been taken up by one who has no thought, or hope, or 
 prayer, but for his country's honor — for reconstruction of 
 the Union, if it be possible, and if it be not — for honorable 
 peace; and v,'ho, next to disunion and protracted civil 
 war, deplores the disparagement of our good name, in 
 the estimate of foreign nations. It may be that on the 
 judgment and action of those nations, our future maj' de- 
 pend, and as to what that future can or ought to be, wise 
 and patriotic, and brave, and loyal men may widely difter. 
 
 If, by any method of war, the Government can be 
 restored to its condition before this dreadful strife began, 
 let us pray for its early consummation, w^ith the least possible 
 bloodshed, and with every merciful appliance of pardon, 
 and amnesty, and reconciliation, that can be devised; and 
 if it cannot — if peace and separation bo inevitable — let us 
 hope for the coming man amongst ourselves, who shall 
 have mental and moral elevation to see the reality soonest, 
 and not shrink from its recognition; who will bend all the 
 energies of a great mind, (for such must be his.) to let the 
 separation be made without further convulsion or more 
 ghastly scars. Let the sorrowing friends of the Union hope 
 at least for '■Euthanasia.' Let the Confederacies, if inevitable, 
 be the reality of a great poet's idea; 
 
 They parted, ne'er to meet again ! 
 
 But never either found another 
 
 To free the hollow heart from paining, 
 
 They stood aloof, the scars remaining, 
 
 Like cliflFs which had been rent asunder ; 
 
 A dreary sea now flows between ; 
 
 But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, 
 
 Shall wholly do away, I ween 
 
 Tke marka of that which once has been.