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disposed persons as more or less directly an insult to the nation in its present distress." He rejected it at once. The Government at Washington, of course, acquiesced in the decision. 'To admit such a new article," wrote Mr. Seward, "would, for the first time in the history of the United States, be to permit a foreign power to take cognizance of, and adjust its relations upon assumed internal and purely domestic differences existing within our own country. I forbear purposely," he added, "from a review of the past

and simple," as originally offered by the Treaty of Paris, seemed, at the end of July, on the point of adjustment. At the last moment Lord John Russell interposed the modest looking provision: "I need scarcely add that, on the part of Great Britain, the engagement will be prospective, and will not invalidate anything already done." The whole was now finally submitted to Mr. Seward, who at once saw the significance of the Russell proviso. Subjecting the latter to an acute examination, he required that an explanation should be asked correspondence, to ascertain the relative from its author. Before this request responsibilities of the parties for this reached London, Lord John Russell had failure of negotiation, from which I had answered the question in the draft of a hoped results would flow beneficial, not declaration to be appended to the treaty. only to the two nations, but to the whole It was that, "in affixing his signature to world-beneficial not in the present age the Convention, Earl Russell declares, only, but in future ages. It is It is my desire by order of her Majesty, that her Majes- that we may withdraw from the subject, ty does not intend thereby to undertake carrying away no feelings of passion, any engagement which shall have any prejudice or jealousy, so that in some bearing, direct or indirect, on the inter- happier time it may be resumed, and the nal differences now prevailing in the important objects of the proposed conUnited States." In other words, the vention may be fully secured. I believe treaty was to be made subject to the that that propitious time is even now not already conceded "belligerent rights" distant; and I will hope that when it -whatever they might be of the comes, Great Britain will not only willSouthern rebellion. The treaty, "pure ingly and unconditionally accept the adand simple," was evidently in conflict hesion of the United States to all the with the view which Great Britain benignant articles of the declaration of thought proper to entertain of the the Congress of Paris, but will even go sovereignty of the United States. There further, and, relinquishing her present were various diplomatic objections to objections, consent, as the United States this mutilated form of a convention, have so constantly invited, that the pribeside the covert blow at the integrity vate property, not contraband, of citizens of the Union. Mr. Adams needed no and subjects of nations in collision, shall consultation with Washington on a qual- be exempted from confiscation equally in ification which he could not fail to re- warfare waged on the land and in warmind Lord Russell would scarcely fare waged upon the seas, which are the fail to be regarded by many unfavorably common highways of all nations."*

* Lord John Russell to Mr. Adams. July 31, 1861. Papers on Foreign Affairs, p. 110.

Whilst these discussions and negotia

* Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams. Sept. 7, 1861.

will be your pleasing duty to confirm and strengthen these traditional relations of amity and friendship.

The reception of Mr. Clay on the part of the Emperor was marked by its cordiality. The American minister stated that the people whom he represented "looked with profound sympathy upon the great reforms which his Majesty was attempting in his empire, which, without considering the philanthropic view of the movement, by building up a middle class, he would add more to the physical power of his country than did Peter the Great by consolidation and extension; and that the success of his enterprise would, in the estimation of the western nations, place him even above that great ruler."

tions were going on with the various become now lethargic and helpless. It powers of Europe, one among them, in particular, separated by her position and the interests of her vast empire from any political or industrial rivalry with the United States, Russia, allied to the new world by her parallel territorial greatness and ambition of future grandeur, stood prepared to sympathize with the difficulties and embarrassments of the Government at Washington. In his first instructions to the new minister, Mr. Clay, Mr. Seward had eloquently dwelt upon the position of the two countries. Nations," said he, "like individuals, have three prominent wants: first, freedom; secondly, prosperity; thirdly, friends. The United States early secured the two first objects by the exercise of courage and enterprise. But although they have always practiced singular moderation, they nevertheless have been slow in winning friends. Russia presents an exceptional case. That power was an early, and it has always been a constant friend. This relationship between two nations, so remote and so unlike, has excited much surprise, but the explanation is obvious. Russia, like the United States, is an improving and expanding empire. Its track is eastward, while that of the United States is westward. The two nations, therefore, never come into rivalry or conflict. Each carries civilization to the new regions it enters, and each finds itself occasionally resisted by states jealous of its prosperity, or alarmed by its aggrandisement. Russia and the United States may remain good friends until, each having made a 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 has

To this the Emperor responded through his minister, Prince Gortchacow, when the formalities of the interview were relaxed by a little unceremonious conversation with regard to that recent foe of Russia, Great Britain. "The Emperor," writes Mr. Clay in his report of the reception, "wanted to know if I thought England would interfere. I told him we did not care what she did; that her interference would tend to unite us the more; that we fought the South with reluctance; we were much intermarried, and of a common history; but that the course of England had aroused our sensibilities towards her in no very pleasant manner. The Emperor seemed to like my seeming defiance of old 'John Bull' very much."+

The "liberal, friendly and magnanimous sentiments" of the Emperor, as they were acknowledged by Mr. Seward,

* Mr. Seward to Mr. Clay. Washington, May 6, 1861. + Mr. Clay to Mr. Seward. St. Petersburg, June 21, 1861.

DESPATCH OF PRINCE GORTCHACOW.

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ditional bond which is the basis and the very condition of their political existence. In any event, the sacrifices which they might impose upon themselves to maintain it are beyond comparison with those which dissolution would bring after it. United, they perfect themselves; isolated, they are paralyzed. The struggle which unhappily has just arisen can neither be indefinitely prolonged, nor lead to the total destruction of one of the parties. Sooner or later it will be necessary to come to some settlement, whatsoever it may be, which may cause the divergent interests now actually in conflict to coexist. The American nation would then give a proof of high political wisdom in seeking in common such a settlement before a useless effusion of blood, a barren squandering of strength and of public riches, and acts of violence and reciprocal reprisals shall have come to deepen an abyss between the two parties to the Confederation, to end definitively in their mutual exhaustion, and in the ruin, perhaps, irreparable, of their commercial and political power.

were presently shown in the earnest cause of this diversity, Providence seems words of sympathy and counsel which to urge them to draw closer the trahe caused to be addressed to the President of the United States and to the American people, through his Ministers at St. Petersburg and Washington. This document, which will always be regarded as one of the most interesting State papers which this crisis brought forth, addressed by Prince Gortchacow to Mr. De Stockl, was dated July 10, 1861, and read as follows :-"Sir: From the beginning of the conflict which divides the United States of America, you have been desired to make known to the Federal Government the deep interest with which our august master was observing the development of a crisis which puts in question the prosperity and even the existence of the Union. The Emperor profoundly regrets to see that the hope of a peaceful solution is not realized, and that American citizens, already in arms against each other, are ready to let loose upon their country the most formidable of the scourges of political society-a civil war. For the more than eighty years that it has existed, the American Union owes its independence, its towering rise, and its progress to the concord of its members, consecrated, under the auspices of its illustrious founder, by institutions which have been able to reconcile union with liberty. This union has been fruitful. It has exhibited to the world the spectacle of a prosperity without example in the annals of history. It would be deplorable that, after so conclusive an experience, the United States should be hurried into a breach of the solemn compact which, up to this time, has made their power. In spite of the diversity of their constitutions and of their interests, and perhaps, even, be

Our august master cannot resign himself to admit such deplorable anticipations. His Imperial Majesty still places his confidence in that practical good sense of the citizens of the Union who appreciate so judiciously their true interests. His Majesty is happy to believe that the members of the Federal Government, and the influential men of the two parties, will seize all occasions and will unite all their efforts to calm the effervescence of the passions. There are no interests so divergent that it may not be possible to reconcile them by

MESSAGE OF JEFFERSON DAVIS.

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which they were executed, were already known to you; but you could scarcely have supposed that they would be openly avowed, and their success made the subject of boast and self-laudation in an executive message. Fortunately for truth and history, however, the President of the United States details, with minuteness, the attempt to reinforce Fort Pickens, in violation of an armistice of which he confessed to have been informed, but only by rumors, too vague and uncertain to fix the attention of the hostile expedition despatched to supply Fort Sumter, admitted to have been undertaken with the knowledge that its success was impossible. The sending of a notice to the Governor of South Carolina of his intention to use force to accomplish his object, and then quoting from his inaugural address the assurance that "there could be no conflict unless these States were the aggressors," he proceeds to declare his conduct, as just related by himself, was the performance of a promise, so free from the power of ingenious sophistry as that the world should not be able to misunderstand it; and in defiance of his own statement that he gave notice of the approach of a hostile fleet, he charges these States with becoming the assailants of the United States, without a gun in sight, or in expectancy, to return their fire, save only a few in the fort. He is, indeed, fully justified in saying that the case is so free from the power of ingeni

his forces on the Potomac sufficiently demonstrated that his efforts were to be directed against Virginia, and from no point could necessary measures for her defence and protection be so effectively decided as from her own capital. The rapid progress of events, for the last few weeks, has fully sufficed to lift the veil behind which the true policy and purposes of the Government of the United States had been previously concealed. Their odious features now stand fully revealed. The Message of their President, and the action of their Congress during the present month, confess their intention of the subjugation of these States by a war, by which it is impossible to attain the proposed result, while its dire calamities, not to be avoided by us, will fall with double severity on themselves. Commencing in March last with the affectation of ignoring the secession of seven States, which first organized the Government; persevering in April in the idle and absurd assumption of the existence of a riot, which was to be dispersed by a posse comitatus; continuing in successive months the false representation that these States intended an offensive war, in spite of conclusive evidence to the contrary, furnished as well by official action as by the very basis on which this Government is constituted, the President of the United States and his advisers succeeded in deceiving the people of these States into the belief that the purpose of this gov-ous sophistry that the world will not be ernment was not peace at home, but con- able to misunderstand it. Under cover quest abroad; not defence of its own of this unfounded pretence, that the liberties, but subversion of those of the Confederate States are the assailants, people of the United States. The series that high functionary, after expressing of manœuvres by which this impression his concern that some foreign nations had was created; the art with which they so shaped their action as if they supwere devised, and the perfidy with posed the early destruction of the national