or if they were not convinced that the system of slavery had been brought to an end. The Saturday Review, of the same date, in an article entitled "President Lincoln's Coup d'État," said that the proclamation would have been a crime, even if it had been strictly legal. "The President has virtually acknowledged his military failure, and his desperate efforts to procure military support will probably precipitate the ruin of his cause.

As Seward had foretold, the real danger of an antislavery policy was not in the direct effect upon European public opinion, but in the inferences that Europe would draw in case the administration should seem to lose power at home. It is certain that the Republicans did suffer in the elections of 1862 on account of the proclamation; and doubtless Napoleon's actions, already noticed, were somewhat influenced in consequence. But what had been overlooked too long was the fact that all Europeans held antislavery convictions, and were sure to see, sooner or later, that antislavery acts, although prompted solely by military or political considerations, were very desirable.' On October 10th Bigelow wrote, saying: "France is unanimously for emancipation, and our cause will now daily grow in grace here as it grows in age." Dayton thought the proclamation might have a bad effect at first, because of fear lest the production of cotton should be interfered with; but he was confident that in the end it would "commend itself to the enlightened conscience of the Christian world." But the most significant report was that from Adams, November 15th, saying that efforts were making in London to organize the antislavery sentiment in our interest."

Before the proclamation of emancipation was issued,

1 Weed wrote from Paris, January 26, 1862: "If ours was avowedly a war of emancipation, this government would sympathize with us and aid us."-3 Seward, 57. 2 Seward MSS. 4 Dip. Cor., 1863, 3.

* Dip. Cor., 1862, 394.

January 1, 1863, emancipation societies were forming in England; and by the time it had crossed the Atlantic all intelligent Englishmen were beginning to gain correct knowledge as to the cause of the war. January had not passed before the first waves of the antislavery storm in America were felt. In a few weeks more, English public opinion showed a surprising awakening. Great public meetings were held in the large cities, and famous speakers addressed audiences infused with the ardor and courage peculiar to national reform movements. The mass of laborers in mines and factories rapidly developed a bitter prejudice against the Confederacy. Impressive antislavery resolutions were passed unanimously, and addresses of congratulation were sent to the President of the United States. As Cobden wrote to Sumner, these remarkable demonstrations of sympathy for the cause of freedom "closed the mouths of those who have been advocating the side of the South.' The friends of the North felt thenceforth that they had a cause to plead.

99 1

The response from France was less impressive-for the Second Empire was unfavorable to the expression of public opinion-but it left the Confederacy no room to expect popular sympathy. Before the middle of February, 1863, seven hundred and fifty "Protestant pastors of France of every denomination" issued an address to the pastors and ministers of all evangelical denominations in Great Britain, asking them to lead and to "stir up altogether a great and peaceful demonstration of sympathy for the black race"--which meant to give the North all possible moral support. "An antislavery Conference of Ministers of Religion" was held in Manchester early in June, 1863. The British reply to the French pastors was signed by three thousand nine hundred and

1

2 Morley, 406.

21 Dip. Cor., 1863, 646.

ninety-seven clergymen.' Before the end of June the most reliable authority on this question made it clear that all France was awake-from the unscrupulous Napoleon III. to the most honest peasant. Edwin de Leon, the head of the Confederate press-agency in France, reported to Benjamin that men "connected with the government and enjoying the confidence of the Emperor," had often told him that France could not "take the lead in acknowledging the Southern Confederacy, without some promise for prospective emancipation." He called "the old cry of slavery" "the real béte noire of the French imagination," and more of a stumblingblock to recognition in France than in England."

By the summer of 1863 the utter hopelessness of obtaining recognition from Great Britain had become so manifest that on August 4th it was decided to bring Mason's mission to an end. From Paris he continued to keep up personal relations with some English sympathizers with the Confederacy. A Southern Independence Association was formed by the sanguine, but they felt compelled to promise to work for the extinction of slavery. The Confederates bewailed this as a fratricidal blow. Finally, in January, 1864, Mason concluded that there was no human influence that could touch men who had gone so far as to allow "the so-called antislavery feeling" to become "a 'sentiment' akin to patriotism "; who declined to accept his assurances that, after independence, when they came to know "the true condition of African servitude with us," "the film would fall from their eyes," and that meantime the Confederates ought to be regarded as the best judges of their own needs.'

Even Secretary Benjamin now realized that the once boasted "corner-stone" had become a mill-stone about

1 Address of the French Protestant Pastors, etc., 30. 2 Century, May, 1891, 118.

3

Century, May, 1891, 125.

the neck of the Confederacy. With apparent amazement, he stated that the first political writers of France employed abolition sentiments as if they were "philosophical axioms too self-evident to require comment "; they assumed that there was "nothing within the range of possibility except the subjugation of the South and the emancipation of the whole body of negroes." Napoleon favored recognition and peace, he believed; but what could he do "in direct contravention of the settled opinion of the people while hampered by the opposition of the English government"?1

It cannot be said, even as a figure of speech, that slavery was the cause of the death of the Confederacy, as it surely was of its birth; but after Lincoln's policy of emancipation was understood abroad nothing but great victories and positive evidences of increasing strength could have established Confederate independence. In fact, the new government was a scuttled ship, held back by a dragging anchor.

2

Probably another reason why Seward was not at first in sympathy with the aggressive antislavery movement was that he expected very important results from a treaty for the suppression of the slave-trade which he negotiated with Great Britain. In a long and elaborate letter of October 17, 1861, John Jay made many suggestions to Seward as to the importance of taking immediate steps to negotiate a treaty with foreign powers for the suppression of the slave-trade. Neither England nor France could well refuse such an offer, he said; if they should accede, they would acknowledge the integ rity of the United States government and make it more difficult to recognize the Confederacy on account of any temporary success. Such an attempt would show the

1

Century, May, 1891, 122.

2 Seward MSS.

true sentiments of the United States and tend to efface the unfavorable impression made in Europe by the re-, turn of fugitive slaves and the repudiation of Frémont's proclamation. A treaty of that kind would render nugatory the southern aim to revive the slave-trade, and it might make it impossible for any European power to recognize the Confederacy if it did not give its adhesion to the treaty itself. And the United States could free themselves from the suspicion that they were encouraging the trade by too strict a refusal to permit visitation in time of peace, if they would assent for a limited period to the mutual privilege of visitation within certain lines of latitude and longitude. The suggestion was certainly a sagacious one, and it just suited the peculiar circumstances in which Seward was placed. It gave him an antislavery cause of his own to champion.

The antislave-trade treaty was negotiated by Seward and Lord Lyons in April, 1862, and was subsequently ratified. It provided that the officers of specially instructed ships of the British and of the United States navies might visit such merchant vessels of the two nations as were under reasonable suspicion of being engaged in the African slave-trade. The right of search was to be exercised by vessels of war, and only within the distance of two hundred miles from the coast of Africa, and to the southward of 32° north latitude, and within thirty leagues of the coast of Cuba; and the of ficer making the search must declare that his sole object was to ascertain if the vessel was engaged in the African slave-trade. Provision was made for three mixed courts -at Sierra Leone, at the Cape of Good Hope, and at New York.

It is said that when Sumner brought to the Department of State the news of the ratification of the treaty without dissent, Seward leaped from the lounge on which he had been resting, and exclaimed: "Good God!