ment purpose, upon an American question in a sense which might be interpreted as one of intervention, if not of menace. It was to prevent all such unfortunate proceedings on the part of the representatives of the United States that the new restraints upon our ministers and consuls, of which you have already been advised, were imposed.

Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.

November 10, 1862. It is probable that the ground which the enemies of the Union in Europe will next assume, in prosecuting their war against it, will be an alleged defection of popular support of the government at the elections recently held in the loyal states. The reports of the results of these elections in the forms adopted by the press are calculated, though not designed, to give plausibility to this position. I observe that these reports classify the members of Congress chosen as union and democratic, or union and opposition. Such classifications, though unfortunate, do less harm here, where all the circumstances of the case are known, than abroad, where names are understood to mean what they express. Last year, when the war began, the republicans, who were a plurality of the electors, gave up their party name, and, joining with loyal democrats, put in nomination candidates of either party under the designation of a union party. The democratic party made but a spiritless resistance in the canvass. From whatever cause it has happened, political debates during the present year have resumed, in a considerable degree, their normal character, and while loyal republicans have adhered to the new banner of the union party, the democratic party has rallied and made a vigorous canvass with a view to the recovery of its former political ascendency. Loyal democrats in considerable number retaining the name of democracy from habit, and not because they oppose the Union, are classified by the other party as "opposition." It is not necessary for the information of our representatives abroad that I should descend into any examination of the relative principles or policies of the two parties. It will suffice to say that while there may be men of doubtful political wisdom and virtue in each party, and while there may be differences of opinion between the two parties as to the measures best calculated to preserve the Union and restore its authority, yet it is not to be inferred that either party, or any considerable portion of the people of the loyal states, is disposed to accept disunion under any circumstances, or

upon any terms. It is rather to be understood that the people have become so confident of the stability of the Union that partisan combinations are resuming their sway here, as they do in such cases in all free countries. In this country, especially, it is a habit not only entirely consistent with the Constitution, but even essential to its stability, to regard the administration at any time existing as distinct and separable from the government itself, and to canvass the proceedings of the one without the thought of disloyalty to the other. We might possibly have had quicker success in suppressing the insurrection if this habit could have rested a little longer in abeyance; but, on the other hand, we are under obligations to save not only the integrity or unity of the country but also its inestimable and precious Constitution. No one can safely say that the resumption of the previous popular habit does not tend to this last and most important consummation, if at the same time, as we confidently expect, the Union itself shall be saved.

Mr. Seward to Mr. Dayton.

November 30, 1862. — The President is far from asking the interference of France, or even her good offices, in a matter which disturbs the relations between the United States and Great Britain, and which, if no redress is given, would be a precedent for wide infractions of the law of nations. At the same time the President does not forget that in the case of the Trent, France, in a generous manner, appealed to the United States to redress the just complaint of Great Britain, and that both of those parties appreciated her interposition.

December 1, 1862 - It is expected that you will not suffer the cloud that has recently arisen, as it were, from under your own feet, to excite any alarm about the good fortune of our country. It is to the condition of affairs at home, not the condition of opinion in Europe, that we must look if we would understand the prospects of our country. The great problem of domestic slavery in the United States presented itself for solution when the war began. It is in process of solution and so the war goes on. It is not yet solved, and so the war is not yet ended. The people of the United States are intensely engaged in the difficult task. If it questions and rejects one process of solution after another, that does not prove that it is abandoning the task. On the contrary, it is the very act of per

formance of the task itself. If the performer seemed slow, let the observer ask where or when did any nation advance faster in a labor so complex and so difficult. The President's message will carry the public mind still more directly and more earnestly on its great work. The war would have had no terrors for the people if they had not feared that the Union could not endure the trial of solving that problem. Apprehensions of that kind are beginning now to be dismissed. In all the elements of strength, power and stability, the Union is stronger when Congress meets to-day than it was when Congress met a year ago. In all the same elements the insurrection is weaker. Revolutions do not revive their strength or their energy. They must succeed at first, or at least gain advantage continually, or they must perish. A year ago it seemed that any foreign nation might assail and destroy us at a blow. I am sure that no one foreign nation would now conceive such an attempt, while combination of several powers for that purpose is impossible.

December 29, 1862. The circumstances calculated to excite distrust of the friendly feeling of France towards the United States, to which you have heretofore directed my notice, are now fixing public attention in this country as well as in Europe. Some European observers who are unfriendly to us, or, to speak more accurately, who are jealous of a good understanding between France and the United States, are stimulating popular suspicions here, which, if they are without any just foundation, as the President believes, must be very deeply regretted in both countries. The form which these suggestions take is, that France has design to make of the war against Mexico only an introduction to aggressions against the United States in the Gulf of Mexico or on its coasts. The interpretation which is popularly given to the Emperor's late overtures to Great Britain and Russia for mediation in our affairs favors this alarm, and is consequently causing it to receive a very wide acceptance.

Satisfied that France, equally with the United States, desires that the mutual and almost fraternal sympathies that so long have prevailed in the two countries shall remain undisturbed, it becomes a grave question whether it is not expedient that Mr. Drouyn de l'Huys shall do or say something to correct the impressions to which I have adverted.

When the French government looks to the land and naval reinforcements which the President has just sent to New Orleans and the Mississippi, and to the now rapid departure of our iron-clad vessels to their southern destination, it must perceive that in no case do we expect to surrender that river or any part of the Gulf coast to insurgents or to any foreign power. The same inference will be justly drawn from the important change of the war policy in regard to slavery, which will be completely announced in the President's forthcoming proclamation of the first of January

next.

It is very generally understood that there is some peculiar sympathetic relationship between Louisiana and France, which has an important political significance in regard to the relations of the two countries. Nothing could be wider from the truth. New Orleans, in its early history, as a capital of the vast but wild French province of Louisiana, was French; but so was St. Louis, then as now an important trading post, situated a thousand miles above New Orleans, on the Mississippi River. With the annexation of Louisiana to the United States, if not before, French immigration stopped, and American immigration set in there. New Orleans is at this day American in the same fixed sense that New York, Boston, and Cincinnati are. There is a small French commercial interest in New Orleans, but so there is in New York. It is as completely exotic as if it had been lately engrafted on an American stock, instead of having an American graft set upon itself, which has absorbed the chief life of the community. The French relationship existing between New Orleans and France is now merely the relationship of a social class, perhaps I might say a creation of fashion. As proof of this you may refer to the fact that the French representation of New Orleans in both houses of Congress has dwindled away year after year until a Frenchman is rarely found in it. There is another proof: Even the insurgents, when they choose in New Orleans pretended representatives to go to France, take not Frenchmen, but natives or persons derived from the prevailing stocks of the other states. There is now no more a hook for a French intervention to grapple to in Louisiana than there is in any other state of this Union. This fact is even more palpable now than it has been heretofore. The war makes social and political changes here, as it nec

essarily must. They are none the less real because they escape for a time the attention of a class of observers who fasten themselves upon events which merely strike the imagination. If you could return home you would be surprised to find Baltimore and Washington so changed that you would scarcely perceive a difference in the tone of society there from what prevails in Chicago and Trenton.

There is a second consideration which the French government ought to understand. The attachment of the people of the United States to France differs from the sentiment they bear towards every other country. It is general, practically universal. But it is an attachment that has its roots not in natural affinity, nor yet in international motives. It is the fruit of two purely moral sentiments -justice and gratitude. We all have been educated to pity the fate of Louis XVI., who was our friend — to admire Lafayette, who was a chivalrous knight-errant in our Revolutionary cause-to admire Napoleon the First, who saved and restored France by his genius and his valor. We honor and love all France, because she has constantly cherished with pride and pleasure the memories of the period when we were allies, because she has been willing that we should endure, and hopeful of our social, political, and civil institutions. The affection of the American people is attended, not by any national sense of weakness, or dependence, or fear, or of interest, but by a luxuriant Americanism, or love of independence. It is more honorable to France for being so; for there is for nations no esteem that is worthy of pride, or that can be relied upon as a bond of friendship, but that which is the outgrowth of national magnanimity.

The fact that the national attachment of this country to France is so pure and so elevated, constitutes just the reason why it could be more easily supplanted by national insult or injustice than our attachment to any other foreign state could be. It is a chivalrous sentiment, and it must be preserved by chivalrous conduct and bearing on both sides. I deduce from the two positions which I have presented a conclusion which has the most solemn interest for both parties, namely, that any attempt at dictation - much more any aggression committed by the government of France against the United States would more certainly and effectively rouse the American people to an attitude of determined resistance than a sim