is entitled to happiness. My fiery protest is simply the cry I await it. Accept, Monsieur le Président, the assurance of my pro- 5 found respect. EMILE ZOLA. ["At the sitting of the French chamber of deputies on the day of the appearance of the foregoing letter, Comte de Mun, a member of the chamber and representing the monarchical party, questioned the govern- 10 ment as to the measures which the minister of war intends to take, in consequence of the article published this morning by M. Emile Zola.' After a stormy debate and the suspension of the sitting, M. Méline, the prime minister, reluctantly declared the intention of the government to prosecute the author of the article. 15 Accordingly, on January 29, the assize court of the Seine served notice on M. Zola and M. Perrenx to appear before it at the Palais de Justice on the following February 7, and there answer to a charge of having publicly defamed the first council of war of the military government of Paris, the charge being based on the following passages from 20 the incriminated article: 'A council of war has dared to acquit an Esterhazy in obedience to orders, a final blow at all truth, at all justice. And now it is done! France has this stain upon her cheek; it will be written in history that under your presidency it was possible for this social crime to be com- 25 mitted.' They have rendered an iniquitous verdict which will weigh forever upon our councils of war, which will henceforth tinge all their decrees with suspicion. The first council of war may have been lacking in comprehension; the second is necessarily criminal.' 'I accuse the second council of war of having covered this illegality, in obedience to orders, in committing in its turn the judicial crime of knowingly acquitting a guilty man.' 30 On January 22, ‘L'Aurore' published a second letter from M. Zola, addressed to the minister of war, in which he complained that the 35 government had based its charge of defamation exclusively on those passages of his first letter which related to the trial of Major Esterhazy, carefully refraining from specification of those passages relating to the trial of Captain Dreyfus, lest thereby the truth about the latter should come to light and compel revision of his case." The jury found Zola guilty by a vote of 7 to 5, and the judge con 40 Zola demned him to imprisonment for a year, with a fine of $600. carried his case to the Supreme Court of Appeal on many counts, where the preceding trial was quashed on the ground that the indictment had not been signed by the proper persons. At the second trial, satisfied 5 at length that the truth would in time be known, Zola let the judgment go by default, and quitted France, to which, by French law, he could return at any time within five years and demand a fresh trial.] IX. W. H. SEWARD To C. F. Adams.1 ["From the election of Lincoln until three days preceding his inauguration, a period of nearly four months, embracing the whole drama 10 of public secession and the organization of the Montgomery Confederacy, not a word of information, explanation, or protest on these momentous proceedings was sent by the Buchanan Cabinet to foreign powers. They were left to draw their inferences exclusively from newspapers, the debates of Congress, and the President's messages till the last day 15 of February, 1861, when Secretary Black, in a diplomatic circular, instructed our ministers at foreign courts that this Government has not relinquished its constitutional jurisdiction within the territory of those [seceded] States and does not desire to do so,' and that a recognition of their independence must be opposed. France and England replied cour20 teously that they would not act in haste, but quite emphatically that they could give no further binding promise. Mr. Seward, on assuming the duties of Secretary of State, immediately transmitted a circular, repeating the injunction of his predecessor and stating the confidence of the President in the speedy restoration of 25 the harmony and unity of the Government. Considerable delay occurred in settling upon the various foreign appointments. The new minister to France, William L. Dayton, and the new minister to Great Britain, Charles Francis Adams, did not sail for Europe till about the first of May. Before either of them arrived at his post, both governments had 30 violated in spirit their promise to act in no haste. On the day Mr. Adams sailed from Boston, his predecessor, G. M. Dallas, yet in Lon 1 Reprinted, with the introductory material, by permission of the Century Co. from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln, IV, pp. 267–75. don, was sent for by Lord John Russell, her Brittanic Majesty's Minister of Foreign Affairs. 'He told me,' wrote Mr. Dallas, that the three representatives of the Southern Confederacy were here; that he had not seen them, but was not unwilling to do so, unofficially; that there existed an understanding between this Government and that of France which would lead both to take the same course as to recognition, whatever that course might be.' 5 The step here foreshadowed was soon taken. Three days later Lord John Russell did receive the three representatives of the Southern Confederacy; and while he told them he could not communicate with them 10 'officially,' his language indicated that when the South could maintain its position England would not be unwilling to hear what terms they had to propose. When Mr. Adams landed in England he found, evidently to forestall his arrival, that the Ministry had published the Queen's proclamation of neutrality, raising the Confederate States at once to the 15 position and privilege of a belligerent power; and France soon followed the example. In taking this precipitate action, both nations probably thought it merely a preliminary step; the British ministers believed disunion to be complete and irrevocable, and were eager to take advantage of it to 20 secure free trade and cheap cotton; while Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, already harboring far-reaching colonial designs, expected not only to recognize the South, but to assist her at no distant day by an armed intervention. For the present, of course, all such meditations were veiled under the bland phraseology of diplomatic regret at our mis- 25 fortune. When the communication which Lord John Russell made to Mr. Dallas was received at the State Department, the unfriendly act of the English Government, and more especially the half-insulting manner of its promulgation, filled Mr. Seward with indignation. In this mood be wrote a dispatch to Mr. Adams, which, if transmitted and 30 delivered in its original form, could hardly have failed to endanger the peaceful relations of the two countries. The general tone and spirit of the paper were admirable; but portions of it were phrased with an exasperating bluntness, and certain directions were lacking in diplomatic prudence. This can be accounted for only by the irritation under which 35 he wrote. It was Mr. Seward's ordinary habit personally to read his despatches to the President before sending them. Mr. Lincoln, detecting the defects of the paper, retained it, and after careful scrutiny made such material corrections and alterations with his own hand as took from it all offensive crudeness without in the least lowering its tone, 40 but, on the contrary, greatly increasing its dignity. . . .” When the President returned the manuscript to his hands, Mr. Seward somewhat changed the form of the despatch by prefixing to it two short introductory paragraphs in which he embodied, in his own phraseology, the President's direction that the paper was to be merely a confidential instruction not to be read or shown to anyone, and that [Mr. Adams] should not in advance say anything inconsistent with its 5 spirit. This also rendered unnecessary the President's direction to omit the last two paragraphs, and accordingly they remained in the despatch as finally sent." The two paragraphs are supplied from Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861.] IO SEWARD'S ORIGINAL DISPATCH, SHOWING MR. LINCOLN'S CORRECTIONS. [All words by Lincoln in margin or in text are in italics. between brackets was marked out.] SIR: DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Mr. Dallas in a brief dispatch of May 2nd, (No. 333) tells us that Lord John Russell recently requested an interview with him on 15 account of the solicitude which His Lordship felt concerning the effect of certain measures represented as likely to be adopted by the President. In that conversation the British Secretary told Mr. Dallas that the three repre20 sentatives of the Southern Confederacy were then in London, that Lord John Russell had not yet seen them, but that he was not unwilling to see them unofficially. He farther informed Mr. Dallas that an understanding exists between the 25 British and French Governments which would lead both to take one and the same course as to recognition. His Lordship then referred to the rumour of a meditated blockade by us of Southern ports, and a discontinuance of them 30 as ports of entry. Mr. Dallas answered that he knew nothing on those topics and therefore All matter Leave out. Leave out because it does could say nothing. He added that you were Mr. Dallas transmitted to us some newspaper 5 You will base no proceedings on parliamen- The President [is surprised and grieved] 15 not appear insurgents [as well as against the demand for ed. Leave out. Intercourse of any kind with the so-called 3 |