What ought Rome to do in regard to the United States? Just what I have thus said they will do in regard to Rome. We could not ask or consent to receive more, and the government of his Holiness will not propose to do less, for he is a friend to peace, to good order, and to the cause of human nature, which is now, as it always has been, our cause.

Let the government of Rome set this example and exercise its great influence in favor of a course of natural justice among nations, and the United States will still remain at peace with the whole world, and continue hereafter, as hitherto, to be the home of civil and religious liberty, and an asylum for the exiled and the oppressed.

Mr. Seward to Mr. Wood.

May 1, 1861. The one subject in all our foreign relations which most anxiously engages the President's attention is the possible action of other nations in regard to the domestic controversy which is raging within our own borders.

Parties long ago found it their apparent interest to appeal to local interests and prejudices, and they have persevered in that policy so far and with such effect that masses large enough to control the action of the state authorities have at last come to prefer disorganization and disunion, rather than to acquiesce in the will of the majority expressed in conformity with the provisions of the organic law.

To a well balanced mind it seems very strange that a citizen ever, without the excuse of intolerable oppression, passes the first stage of sedition, for it is at that very stage that the malcontent finds himself obliged to seek aid from aliens to defeat the equal laws and overthrow the beneficent institutions of his own country. Sedition in the United States is not merely unreasonable, it is altogether absurd. Human ingenuity has never yet devised, nor can it devise, a form of government in which the individual citizen can retain so large a portion of the natural rights of man, and at the same time receive so ample a protection against the dangers which so often threaten the safety and even the existence of nations. Nevertheless, an insurrection has broken out here; a pretended government has been constituted under the name of the Confederate States of America, and that government now has its agents abroad seeking to obtain a recognition of its sovereignty and independence.

It is hardly to be supposed that these agents will visit the capital of Denmark. They will seek the favor of powers supposed to be more capricious or more ambitious. Nevertheless, political action even of the more commanding or more active states is influenced by a general opinion that is formed imperceptibly in all parts of the Eastern continent. Every representative of the United States in Europe has, therefore, a responsibility to see that no effort on his part is wanting to make that opinion just, so far as the true position of affairs in his own country is concerned.

It cannot be necessary to discuss at large the merits of the unhappy controversy. It is sufficient to speak of its nature and its probable result. The insurrection strikes at the heart of the nation. The country, so long accustomed to profound tranquillity and universal loyalty, was slow to believe that a parricidal purpose could be contemplated where it felt satisfied there was no just cause for serious discontent. Our government is at once a purely representative and simply Federal one.

While the insurrection was gathering, the administration was practically paralyzed by the presence, in a very large proportion, of the plotters and abettors of the movement, in what, in Europe, would be called the ministry, in the legislature, in the army, in the navy, in the customs, in the post office, in the diplomatic and consular representations abroad.

Seventy years of almost unbroken peace had brought agriculture, mining, manufactures, and trade to the highest possible state of activity, and the people shrunk intuitively from a change of that peaceful activity, for not merely war, but needless and ruinous civil war, which even threatens to take on the revolting character of servile war.

The insurgents skilfully availed themselves of these doubts and fears, and by a course of affected moderation increased them. It seemed as if the nation would fall into ruins without even putting forth an effort to preserve its integrity. You could not, therefore, have been surprised at finding on your arrival in Europe that the same impression had obtained there, and that the Union of these states was assumed in European circles to be practically at an end. For a time loyal citizens occupied themselves with trying how, by compromise, to avert a civil war, rather than to accept as inevitable an event so unnatural and so fearful.

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The crisis, however, came at last, a few days after your departure from the country. The insurgents, with the force gathered through immense preparations around a fortress in their own locality, opened a terrible fire upon it, to prevent the handful of men which constituted the garrison from receiving supplies when on the verge of famine, and continued the cannonade, though the barracks were in flames, and the brave men, thus imperilled, were obliged to abandon defence against assault to save themselves from destruction in another form. The defending force consented to a capitulation dishonorable only to their assailants.

This last and most violent pressure reached at once the very centre where the elastic force of the national spirit lay concealed. The government accepted the issue of civil war, and sent forth its appeal to the patriotism of the people. Never in any age or country was such an appeal responded to with so much promptness, enthusiasm, and resolution; and certainly never did any nation disclose and offer up at once such exhaustless resources for its selfpreservation.

The revolution is already upon the recoil. Its failure is certain. All that remains is to see what shall be the measure of the disasters and calamities, affecting chiefly the insurgents themselves, which are to be endured before they consent to a restoration of peace, and to guarantee the inviolability of the Union.

Friendly nations may for a little time, perhaps, suffer some inconvenience from the blockade of the ports of the insurgent states, which this government has found it necessary to set on foot, as they will justly take alarm at the announcement that the revolutionary party have proclaimed their purpose to employ privateers to prey upon the commerce of the country. But the embarrassments attending the first measure will be mitigated by the strictness and efficiency with which it will be enforced, and it will not be maintained a day longer than is necessary. Our naval arm is already strong, and it will promptly be made stronger, so that the other evil will be, as we trust, effectually prevented.

Mr. Seward to Mr. Dayton.

May 4, 1861. In conversation Mr. Thouvenel, I am informed, asked Mr. Faulkner whether there is not some diversity of opinion in the cabinet of the President as to the proper mode of meeting

the difficulties which now disturb the relations of the states and the general government. Mr. Faulkner, in reply, said that he had no information on the subject.

The matter is of no great moment, yet it is desirable that there be no misapprehension of the true state of the government in the present emergency.

You may, therefore, recall that conversation to Mr. Thouvenel's memory, and then assure him explicitly that there is no difference of opinion whatever between the President and his constitutional advisers, or among those advisers themselves, concerning the policy that has been pursued, and which is now prosecuted by the administration in regard to the unhappy disturbances existing in the country. The path of executive duty has thus far been too plainly marked out by stern necessities to be mistaken, while the solemnity of the great emergency and the responsibilities it devolves have extinguished in the public councils every emotion but those of loyalty and patriotism. It is not in the hands of this adminstration that this government is to come to an end at all— much less for want of harmony in devotion to the country.

Mr. Thouvenel's declaration that the United States may rest well assured that no hasty or precipitate action will be taken on the subject of the apprehended application of the insurrectionists for a recognition of the independence of the so-called Confederate States is entirely satisfactory, although it was attended by a reservation of views concerning general principles applicable to cases that need not now be discussed.

In the unofficial conversation Mr. Faulkner says that he himself expressed the opinion that force would not be resorted to to coerce the so-called seceding states into submission to the Federal authority, and that the only solution of the difficulty would be found in such modifications of the constitutional compact as would invite the seceding states back into the Union, or a peaceable acquiescence in the assertion of their claim to a separate sovereignty.

The time when these questions had any pertinency or plausibility have passed away. The United States waited patiently while their authority was defied in turbulent assemblies, and in seditious preparations, willing to hope that mediation, offered on all sides, would conciliate and induce the disaffected parties to return to a better mind.

But the case is now altogether changed. The insurgents have instituted revolution with open, flagrant, deadly war to compel the United States to acquiesce in the dismemberment of the Union. The United States have accepted this civil war as an inevitable necessity. The constitutional remedies for all the complaints of the insurgents are still open to them, and will remain so. But, on the other hand, the land and naval forces of the Union have been put into activity to restore the Federal authority and to save the Union from danger.

You cannot be too decided or too explicit in making known to the French government that there is not now, nor has there been, nor will there be any the least idea existing in this government of suffering a dissolution of this Union to take place in any way whatever.

There will be here only one nation and one government, and there will be the same Republic, and the same constitutional Union that have already survived a dozen national changes, and changes of government in almost every other country. These will stand hereafter, as they are now, objects of human wonder and human affection.

You have seen, on the eve of your departure, the elasticity of the national spirit, the vigor of the national government, and the lavish devotion of the national treasures to this great cause. Tell Mr. Thouvenel, then, with the highest consideration and good feeling, that the thought of a dissolution of this Union, peaceably or by force, has never entered into the mind of any candid statesman here, and it is high time that it be dismissed by statesmen in Europe.

Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.

May 21, 1861. — This government considers that our relations in Europe have reached a crisis, in which it is necessary for it to take a decided stand, on which not only its immediate measures, but its ultimate and permanent policy can be determined and defined. At the same time it neither means to menace Great Britain nor to wound the susceptibilities of that or any other European nation. That policy is developed in this paper.

The paper itself is not to be read or shown to the British Secretary of State, nor are any of its positions to be prematurely, unnecessarily, or indiscreetly made known. But its spirit will be your guide. You will keep back nothing when the time arrives for its