hostile or interested designs against any other state or nation whatever, and, on the contrary, we seek peace, harmony, and commerce with them all, and, consequently in desiring to remain undisturbed by them, we are defending the peace of the world.

Our policy in this emergency is a prudent, honest, direct, and generous one. We have raised large armies and a considerable navy. The reduction of Vicksburg, the possession of Chattanooga and the capture of Richmond, would close the civil war with complete success. All these three enterprises are going forward. The two former will, we think, be effected within the next ten days. For the third we require reinforcements, which are being rapidly and lavishly contributed at our call. The three hundred thousand additional troops will be in the field in sixty days, and within about the same period we shall have afloat as large an iron-clad fleet as any in the world. The war is becoming one of exhaustion to the insurgents, and they, not we, are hastening forward the rise of a servile population in arms on the side of the government. Under these circumstances, although we deprecate foreign interference, we deprecate it hardly less for the sake of other nations than for our own, and we deprecate it upon considerations of prudence and humanity, not at all from motives of fear or apprehension.

Having always contemplated the possibility of such interference, we shall be found not unprepared for it, if it must come. We have so conducted our affairs as to deprive it of all pretence of right or of provocation. We have interfered with the dominion or the ambitious designs of no nation. We have seen San Domingo absorbed by Spain, and been content with a protest. We have seen Great Britain strengthen her government in Canada, and we have approved it. We have seen France make war against Mexico, and have not allied ourselves with that republic. We have heard and redressed every injury of which any foreign state has complained, and we have relaxed a blockade in favor of foreign commerce that we might rightfully have maintained with inflexibility. We have only complained because an attitude of neutrality encouraging to rebellion among us, adopted hastily and unnecessarily, has not been relinquished when the progress of the war showed that it was as injurious as it was ill-advised.

Under these circumstances, if intervention in any form shall

come, it will find us in the right of the controversy and in the strong attitude of self-defence. Once begun, we know how it must proceed. It will here bring out reserved and yet latent forces of resistance that can never go to rest until America shall be reconquered and reorganized by Europe, or shall have become isolated forever equally from the industrial and governmental systems of that continent. European statesmen, I am sure, before waging war against us will consider their rights, interests, and resources, as well as our own. For ourselves, we do not believe that European domination is to be rebuilt here upon the foundation of African slavery.

Mr. Seward to Mr. Dayton.

July 15, 1862. The Comte de Paris and the Duc de Chartres, after a year's service in the army of the United States, in which they have conducted themselves with the utmost propriety and the highest gallantry, have returned to Europe. It is not to be doubted that they carry with them the affectionate gratitude of the American people. This, however, is a sentiment won by them, not for themselves alone, or even peculiarly, but, as in the case of Lafayette and Rochambeau, it is a sentiment won by them for France.

You need hardly be told that the generous course adopted towards us, in what seemed a critical hour, by the Prince Napoleon (Jerome), made an equal impression upon the country, and its best wishes attend him wherever he goes, and whatever may be the sphere of his action.

Although the policy of the Emperor during the contest has not been, in all respects, what we have claimed and wished, you are, nevertheless, not to be told now for the first time, that it has been interpreted by us in the most favorable light, and every generous, and even any forbearing, word that he has spoken to us personally or by Mr. Thouvenel, has awakened the kindest sentiments among the American people. We have wished so well to France and to her present government, that we have not suffered ourselves to attribute to the one or the other any of the unfriendly or unfeeling utterances of the press of Paris which have occasionally reached us. It appeared very early after the revolutionary war that the gratitude of the people of the United States for the aid they had received from France in that struggle was a sentiment too strong to allow them to divide themselves into parties upon the question who

shall rule in France. That same sentiment lives at this day. We leave that question to Frenchmen, and only desire that, to whomsoever the sway is confided, he may, by ruling France wisely and well, increase her power and advance her prosperity and happiness.

Mr. Seward to Mr. Webb.

July 21, 1862. Your able despatch brings into coincident review the aspects of slavery in the two countries, which, although very widely separated, are the two principal states on this continent, and the only two which tolerate that form of human bondage. This review, at the same time, derives great interest from the fact that it is made the basis for suggesting a philanthropic scheme for effecting the relief of both countries from the evils and dangers with which you assume that this toleration of slavery afflicts them. Although the political and social conditions of Brazil and the United States are very unlike, they do not entirely disagree. Each is found in what may be called a formative and not in a settled and fixed stage. In the former there are besides the slaves of African descent many who have been brought as captives from the African coast. In the latter, practically speaking, there are only native slaves of African derivation. In Brazil the slave is generally the only laborer, and he is found in every province. In the United States slaves are exceptional from the general prevailing system of free white labor, and are found in only a section and not throughout the whole country. Under the circumstances thus described, each of these two countries has accepted the conviction of the age that the African slave trade is injurious and inhuman, and has abolished it, and thus has closed the original fountain of supplies, leaving the cut-off streams replenished only from diminutive native springs, to shrink, stagnate, and dry up, if they will.

A great alteration of social laws, however inevitable and however ultimately beneficent, must necessarily be attended with immediate inconveniences, and often with violent disturbances and convulsions. Governments, in cases where the error is a fundamental one, must make the desired reform as early as possible, but at the same time with a wise moderation, so as to mitigate the immediate evil without losing the ultimate objects of safety and improvement. How to practise this moderation is really the problem now to be solved respectively by Brazil and the United States.

You tell me that the abolition of the African slave trade on the part of Brazil has resulted in producing a scarceness of labor and, of course, an enhancement of the value of the slaves; that at the same time, owing to a great increase in the world's consumption of coffee, there is an exalted demand for labor to produce it in Brazil; that owing to these circumstances the slaves are being rapidly transferred from the northern provinces, which produce little or no coffee, to the southern coffee-producing provinces; that discontent pervades, and even an organized conspiracy exists among the slaves to prevent the increase of their class, and that for this purpose they resort even to the fearful practice of infanticide. You tell me, also, what contemporaneous information confirms, that owing to some cause emigration from Europe into Brazil is practically unknown, and you add that unless some remedy is applied to these evils the northern provinces will be exhausted of laborers and will relapse into their early colonial condition, and attempts will then be made to revive the enslavement of the native Indians.

Casting about you for a remedy for these assumed evils in Brazil you not unnaturally turn to survey the condition and prospects of slavery as it lingers in the United States, where slaves increase rapidly in number instead of decreasing. You assume that many slaves here are by some process or other speedily to become free, and that owing to the native and exotic augmentation of free white men the slaves so becoming freedmen will be superfluous as laborers. I understand you, but perhaps erroneously, as also adopting an idea which to some extent prevails here, that policy requires the removal of such freedmen of African descent out of the country to some other, where they could be kindly welcomed and furnished with homes and facilities for self-support, and in a reasonable time elevated to the privileges of members of the political state. Warned, as well you may be, by this humanitarian aspect of the condition of the two countries, you think that you discern the finger of God pointing to the northern provinces of Brazil as the land of promise, rest, and restoration of the slaves now in the southern states of this Republic. Thus believing, you ask from the President power to negotiate a treaty to effect the removal of such freedmen from their present homes and their colonization upon most liberal principles in Brazil. The President cannot, without further consideration, accede to this request, yet you are not, there

fore, to suppose that he undervalues either the motives which suggested it or the grave considerations by which you have supported it. You are aware that the question of slavery is the experimentum crucis in American politics. Slavery is the cause of this civil war, and debates upon the present treatment and ultimate fate of slavery give to its abettors and to the government which is engaged in suppressing it much of their relative strength Their relative weakness results equally from the same debates.

I present the condition of the debates in general review, not deeming it either necessary or important to declare opinions on the part of the government upon any of the propositions involved. If we embrace in our view the insurrectionary, as well as the loyal regions of the United States, it may justly be said that even the question whether slavery is an eradicable evil is yet open and vehemently discussed. In what manner and by what process slavery shall be brought to an end, whether by the civil authority of the states which tolerate it only, or whether as a military necessity of the present civil war by the Federal authority; and, in either case, whether the abolition shall be immediate or gradual, with compensation or without; who shall pay such compensation, and the measure of it; whether the slaves emancipated shall be removed or be sufered to remain in their native homes; how removed, and at whose cost; whether their consent shall be required or waived; whether they shall be removed and colonized; whether they shall be colonized within our own jurisdiction, and on what terms, or in some region to be purchased for the purpose, and over which the Federal authority shall be extended for their protection, making them an outpost and support of the Republic, and, possibly, a burden; or whether in some central or South American country, with the consent of their government, and relinquishing to such government the benefits and the charges of the colony, what country or countries, in either case, shall be preferred? All these questions remain a subject of earnest but as yet very confused discussion. They are, at the same time, questions which are involved in the proposition you make. You know that, practically, the executive authority cannot lead but must follow the popular will on such great and vital questions as collected in our frequently recurring elections, and expressed by the Legislature and the Senate of the Union.

It must not, however, be inferred that the uncertainty of the