CHAPTER VII.

Complaints made by the American Government of the Proclamation of Neutrality.-Remonstrances of Mr. Adams; his Interviews with Earl Russell.-Ground taken by Mr. Seward.-Later Positions of the American Government.- Positions of the Government of Great Britain.-Observations.

MR. ADAMS, who had been appointed by President Lincoln to succeed Mr. Dallas as Envoy and Minister Plenipotentiary at the British Court, arrived at Liverpool on the 13th May, and proceeded on the same evening to London. He presented his credentials on the 16th, and on the 18th had an interview with Lord John Russell. His subsequent report of this interview to the American Secretary of State is extremely copious, and was evidently composed with care, and the views which he expressed on behalf of his Government may be most fairly stated in his own words. After referring to the observations which had fallen from Lord John Russell, in conversation with Mr. Dallas (respecting which he had been instructed to seek for explanations), he asked

"Whether it was the intention of Her Majesty's Ministers to adopt a policy which would have the effect to widen, if not to make irreparable, a breach which we believed yet to be entirely manageable by ourselves.

"At this point his Lordship replied by saying that there was no such intention. The clearest evidence of that was to be found in the assurance given by him to Mr. Dallas in the earlier part of the conversation referred to. With regard to the other portion, against which I understood him to intimate he had already heard from Lord Lyons that the

Chap. VII. President had taken exception, he could only say that he hardly saw his way to bind the Government to any specific course, when circumstances beyond their agency rendered it difficult to tell what might happen. Should the insurgent States ultimately succeed in establishing themselves in an independent position, of the probability of which he desired. to express no opinion, he presumed, from the general course of the United States heretofore, that they did not mean to require of other countries to pledge themselves to go further than they had been in the habit of going themselves. He, therefore, by what he had said to Mr. Dallas, simply meant to say that they were not disposed in any way to interfere.

"To this I replied by begging leave to remark that, so far as my Government was concerned, any desire to interfere had never been imputed to Great Britain; but in her peculiar position it was deserving of grave consideration whether great caution was not to be used in adopting any course that might, even in the most indirect way, have an effect to encourage the hopes of the disaffected in America. It had now come to this, that without support from here, the people of the United States considered the termination of this difficulty as almost entirely a question of time. Any course adopted here that would materially change that calculation would inevitably raise the most unpleasant feelings among them. For independently of the absolute influence of Great Britain, admitted to be great, the effect of any supposed inclination on her part could not fail to be extensive among the other nations of Europe. It was my belief that the insurgent States could scarcely hope for sympathy on this side the Atlantic, if deprived of any prospect of it here. Hence, anything that looked like a manifestation of it would be regarded among us as inevitably tending to develope an ultimate separation in America; and, whether intended or not, the impression made would scarcely be effaced by time. It was in this view that I must be permitted to express the great regret I had felt on learning the decision to issue the Queen's Proclamation, which at once raised the insurgents to the level of a belligerent State, and still more the language used in regard to it by Her Majesty's Ministers in both Houses of Parliament before and since. Whatever might be the design, there could be no shadow of doubt that the effect of these events had been to encourage the friends of the disaffected here. The tone of the press and of private opinion indicated it strongly. I then alluded more especially to the brief report of the Lord Chancellor's speech or Thursday last, in which he had characterized the rebellious portion of my country as a belligerent State, and the war that was going on as justum bellum.

"To this his Lordship replied that he thought more stress was laid upon these events than they deserved. That fact was that a necessity seemed to exist to define the course of the Government in regard to the participation of the subjects of Great Britain in the impending conflict. To that end the legal questions involved had been referred to those officers not conversant with them, and their advice had been taken in shaping

the result. Their conclusion had been that, merely as a question of fact, Chap. VII. a war existed. A considerable number of the States, at least seven, occupying a wide extent of country, were in open resistance, whilst one or more of the others were associating themselves in the same struggle, and as yet there were no indications of any other result than a contest of arms more or less severe. In many preceding cases, much less formidable demonstrations had been recognized. Under such cir cumstances is seemed scarcely possible to avoid speaking of this in the technical sense as justum bellum, that is, a war of two sides, without in any way implying an opinion of its justice, as well as to withhold an endeavour, so far as possible, to bring the management of it within the rules of modern civilized welfare. This was all that was contemplated by the Queen's Proclamation. It was designed to show the purport of existing laws, and to explain to British subjects their liabilities in case they should engage in the war. And however strongly the people of the United States might feel against their enemies, it was hardly to be supposed that in practice they would now vary from their uniformly humane policy heretofore in endeavouring to assuage and mitigate the horrors of war.

"To all which I answered that, under other circumstances, I should be very ready to give my cheerful assent to this view of his Lordship's. But I must be permitted frankly to remark that the action taken seemed, at least to my mind, a little more rapid than was actually called for by the occasion. It might be recollected that the new Administration had scarcely had sixty days to develope its policy; that the extent to which all departments of the Government had been demoralized in the preceding administration was surely understood here, at least in part: that the very organization upon which any future action was to be predicated was to be renovated and purified before a hope could be entertained of energetic and effective labour. The consequence had been that it was but just emerging from its difficulties and beginning to develop the power of the country to cope with this rebellion, when the British Government took the initiative, and decided practically that it is a struggle of two sides. And, furthermore, it pronounced the insurgents to be a belligerent State before they had ever shown their capacity to maintain any kind of warfare whatever, except within one of their own harbours, and under every possible advantage. It considered them a marine power before they had ever exhibited a single privateer on the ocean. I said that I was not aware that a single armed vessel had yet been issued from any port under the control of these people. Surely this was not the case in the instance which had been relied upon in his speech by his Lordship as authority for the present action. There the Greeks, however small as a people, had long been actively and effectually waging war before the interposition of Great Britain, and, to use the language of the Government, as quoted by himself, had covered the sea with cruisers.' It did seem to me, therefore, as if a little more time might have been taken to form a more complete estimate of the relative force

Chap. VII. of the contending Powers, and of the probabilities of any long-drawn issue. And I did not doubt that the view taken by me would be that substantially taken both by the Government and the people of the United States. They would inevitably infer the existence of an intention more or less marked to extend the struggle. For this reason it was that I made my present application to know whether such a design was or was not entertained. For in the alternative of an affirmative answer it was as well for us to know it, as I was bound to acknowledge in all frankness that in that contingency I had nothing further left to do in Great Britain. I said this with regret, as my own feelings had been and were of the most friendly nature.

"His Lordship replied by an assurance that he participated in those feelings; neither did he see the action that had been thus far taken at all in the light in which I saw it. He believed that the United States, in their own previous history, had furnished examples of action taken quite as early as that now complained of. He instanced two cases. The first I do not now remember, for it seemed to me not important at the time; the other was the insurrection in Hungary under Kossuth, at which period, he believed, they had gone so far as actually to send an agent to that country with a view to recognition, and that to the great dissatisfaction and against the remonstrances of Austria.

"I replied only to the second case, by remarking that the incidents attending that affair were not fresh in my mind, neither was I sure that I ever knew the whole action of the Government; but it was my impression that the object of the mission was only confined to the acquisition of the facts necessary to form an opinion, and that, after they were obtained, no public step of any kind had been taken. Neither could I myself recollect an instance in which ample time had not been given by the United States for the development of events sufficiently decisive to justify any action that might have followed; for I begged it to be understood that the Government did not mean at all to deny that there were cases in which recognition of a revolutionary government might be both expedient and proper. The rule was clear, that whenever it became apparent that any organized form of society had advanced so far as to prove its power to defend and protect itself against the assaults of enemies, and at the same time to manifest a capacity to maintain binding relations with foreign nations, then a measure of recognition could not be justly objected to on any side. The case was very different when such an interference should take place, prior to the establishment of the proof required, as to bring about a result which would not probably have happened but for that external agency.

"I proceeded to observe that I had come to England prepared to present the views of my Government on the general question, and that I should have done so in full but for the interposition of this more immediate despatch. At the present moment I should touch only upon one point

in connection with the acknowledgment of the insurgents even as a bel- Chap. VII. ligerent State. It seemed necesary to call the attention of his Lordship to the fact which must be obvious to him, that as yet they had not laid any foundation for Government solid enough to deserve a moment's confidence. They had undertaken to withdraw certain States from the Government by an arbitrary act which they called Secession, not known to the Constitution, the validity of which had at no time been acknowledged by the people of the United States, and which was now emphatically denied; but not content with this, they had gone on to substitute another system among themselves, avowedly based upon the recognition of this right of States to withdraw or secede at pleasure. With such a Treaty (sic), I would ask, where could be the vested obligation of Treaties with foreign Powers, of the payment of any debts contracted, or, indeed, of any act performed in good faith by the common authority for the time being established? For my own part, I fully believed that such a system could not deserve to be denominated, in any sense, a Government; and therefore I could not but think any act performed here, having a tendency to invest it in the eye of the world with the notion of form and substance, could be attended only with the most complete disappointment to all the parties connected with it.

"His Lordship here interposed by saying that there was not, in his opinion, any occasion at present for going into this class of arguments, as the Government did not contemplate taking any step that way. Should any such time arrive in the future, he should be very ready to listen to every argument that might be presented against it on the part of the United States. At this moment he thought we had better confine ourselves to the matter immediately in hand."1

The act of the British Government in declaring its neutrality had been "a little more rapid than was actually called for by the occasion." "It did seem as if a little more time might have been taken." It "had a tendency to invest" the Confederate Government “in the eyes of the world with the notion of form and substance;" and would probably lead the Government and people of the United States to suspect the existence of an intention to extend the struggle in which they were engaged. This was the whole substance of Mr. Adams's complaint. Was there, he asked, such an intention? The answer was prompt and decided. "There was no such intention." "A necessity seemed to exist to define the course of the Government in

1 Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward, 21st May, 1861.