Part 20
“It is only the reflecting observer who habitually considers the course of events occurring in any one country as being determined, or at least materially influenced, by natural causes lying wholly or in part outside of that country, and which create a force commonly recognised under various names as the opinion of mankind, or the spirit or the genius of the age or of the times.”
After uttering this extraordinary sentence, one might expect the oracle to become exhausted; but not at all: it continues to pour forth pages of reasoning equally close and clear on this same 28th July. And what do our readers think of this splendid passage, written April 14th?—
“It is believed that this survey of the military position of the Government may serve to satisfy Great Britain that those statesmen here and abroad who, a year ago, mistook a political syncope for national death and dissolution, altogether misunderstood the resources, the character, and the energies of the American Union. The blood that at first retreated to the heart, is now coursing healthily through all the veins and arteries of the whole system; and what seemed at first to be a hopeless paralysis, was in fact but the beginning of an organic change to more robust and vigorous health than the nation has ever before enjoyed.”
And when M‘Clellan finally abandoned the peninsula with the wreck of his army, it is announced to Mr Adams, and to Mr Dayton, the Minister to France, in this way:—
“General Halleck, upon taking command of the army, made a careful survey of the entire military position, and concluded thereupon to withdraw the army of the Potomac from the peninsula, and to combine all our forces in front of Richmond. It is believed to have been substantially accomplished without any casualty. Our new levies are coming in in great numbers and in fine spirits. The gloom has passed away from the public mind. Although our arrangements for resuming offensive operations are yet incomplete, we have much confidence in being able to do so speedily and with decisive effect.... It is represented to us that the popular determination to maintain the Union has at no time been as unanimous and as earnest as it is now.”
And so on of all events, whether promising success or ending in disaster; the object being to persuade foreign Governments what a mistake they made in countenancing such a failing business as Secession. And when the prospect is especially cheerful—when patriots under arms are counted by hundreds of thousands, and when any successes call for a fresh enumeration of the triumphs of the Republic—a judicious menace is insinuated in the despatch, by hinting that as soon as the rebellion is crushed (which it is always just going to be) the shortcomings of those whose duty it was to assist the Union in its “hour of distress,” will not be forgotten by the victorious and thrice-potent Northern people. For instance, on January 31 he says:—
“I have observed that the British people were satisfied with the vigour and the energy of the preparations which their Government made for the war which they expected to occur between them and ourselves. _It may be profitable for us all to reflect_ that the military and naval preparations which have been made by this Government to put down the insurrection have, every day since the 1st of May last, equalled, if not surpassed, the daily proportion of those war-preparations which were regarded as so demonstrative in Great Britain.”
And again, 2d June 1862:—
“The President thinks it desirable that the Government of Great Britain should consider, before the war closes, what are likely to be the sentiments of the two nations in regard to each other after that event shall have occurred.”
We wonder whether it ever occurred to Mr Seward that if the imaginary injuries of one nation upon another are to be visited with such remote vindictiveness, it may be probable that very real and deep sufferings may leave still more indelible rancour behind them; and that there is a people at this moment not only undergoing treatment at the hands of the Union which excites the horror of civilised nations, but proving itself perfectly capable of executing future vengeance.
But in providing for the probability that Great Britain will be indifferent to the high moral ground which he indicates for giving her sympathies to the Union, Mr Seward does not trust entirely to threats. A lower argument, better suited to her defective moral sense, consists in pointing out that it is the interest of European countries to see the war terminate as quickly as possible; that it is also the interest of the Union to terminate the war as quickly as possible: _ergo_, the way to attain the common object is to unite in procuring it. But he omits to show why the same argument might not apply with equal force to an alliance with the South.
All this eloquence and logic has a double object—first, to avert the recognition of the South, followed by subsequent intervention; and, secondly, and chiefly, to induce the European Powers to retrace the step they had taken of acknowledging the South as a belligerent. The original protest against this step had been on the particular ground that the Government had taken it more hastily than was needful, and ought to have awaited the arrival of Mr Adams, charged with the reasons which the Federal Government might urge in protesting against it. As the measure was one of neutrality, it was manifestly proper that it should be adopted without hearing the arguments of one side only. However, the North considered itself injured, and expressed its sense of injury; but until we read these papers we had thought that the precipitation of the measure was the chief ground on which it was complained of. But so far from that being the case, the measure itself constitutes, down to the present time, the chief point of dispute. It is not going too far to say that, had the Federal Government accepted the position of neutrality of foreign Governments, and conducted its relations with them on that basis, the greater part of these despatches need never have been written. Nine-tenths of them are the result of looking at the same facts from two points of view—of looking at the war, on the one side, as a conflict between great sections, each possessed of power sufficient to maintain itself against the other, and to produce consequences highly important to neutrals; on the other side, as a domestic difficulty caused by a weak and failing faction, and which should not be noticed by foreign Powers any more than any other insignificant outbreak. Our Government saw in it the division of the Republic into portions, strongly defined by a territorial line, arming themselves for a conflict in which the balance of right was a subtle question open to opposite interpretations, but in which, it was evident, the Federal Government could never be victorious consistently with its own principles. The magnitude of the quarrel was such as powerfully to affect our own interests, and to render the probability imminent that the Queen’s subjects would be involved in the struggle, on the one side or the other, in such a manner as to compromise themselves, perhaps the Government. That the nature of the war was rightly estimated, events have more than sufficiently proved; that it was the first duty of the Government to protect its own subjects will probably be admitted by most moralists. But there is one moralist, Mr Seward, who thinks that the British Government, however bound to protect the interests of its own subjects, as it might be, he admits, in an inferior degree, is still more bound to consider the interests of the human race as involved in the maintenance of the Federal Union,—of the system, be it remembered, whose inevitable results have been to make a Lincoln the chief magistrate, and a Seward the chief minister—a system which has for years been the most corrupt ever known, and the inability of which to produce any kind of political merit is one of the wonders of the world.
Mr Seward’s view, which he insists that foreign Governments should adopt, is that they must not admit the existence of any war at all; that Bull’s Run and Fredericksburg, and all the disasters of M‘Clellan and Pope, are the work of a small insurrectionary faction; that the inability of the Federalists to recover authority in the South does not at all affect the integrity of the Republic; and that the millions of men whom he so complacently describes as determined to restore the Union have been called to arms to quell a few “misguided fellow-citizens” who have taken the “bad resolution” of seceding from its authority. But neither great defeats, nor vast armaments, nor huge debt, nor impending dissolution, can divert Mr. Seward from his singular efforts to persuade foreign Governments, chiefly ours, to adopt his extraordinary fiction as their rule of action. If mere acquiescence in his view were all that he demanded, it might be no great matter; but he requires that we shall not merely admit the fictitious view, but proceed to found thereon the extraordinary measures which we shall presently find indicated in his correspondence. What the view itself is may be gathered from a few extracts.
19th June 1861:—
“The United States are still solely and exclusively sovereign within the territories they have lawfully acquired and long possessed, as they have always been.... Great Britain, by virtue of these relations, is a stranger to parties and sections in this country, whether they are loyal to the United States or not; and Great Britain can neither rightfully qualify the sovereignty of the United States, nor concede nor recognise any rights or interests or power of any party, State, or section, in contravention to the unbroken sovereignty of the Federal Union.”
6th March 1862:—
“If Great Britain should revoke her decree conceding belligerent rights to the insurgents to-day, this civil strife, which is the cause of all the derangement of those relations, and the only cause of all apprehended dangers of that kind, would end to-morrow. The United States have continually insisted that the disturbers of their peace are mere insurgents, not lawful belligerents. This Government neither can nor is likely to have occasion to change this position; but her Majesty can, and it would seem that she must, sooner or later desire to relinquish her position. It was a position taken in haste, and in anticipation of the probable success of the revolution. The failure of that revolution is sufficiently apparent. Why should not the position be relinquished, and the peace of our country thus be allowed to be restored?”
10th March 1862:—
“Let the Governments of Great Britain and France rescind the decrees which concede belligerent rights to a dwindling faction in this country, and all their troubles will come to a speedy end.”
15th March 1862:—
... “We are brought to lament anew the precipitancy with which foreign Powers so unnecessarily conceded to the insurrection belligerent rights. The President trusts that you are sparing no efforts to convince Earl Russell that the time has come when that concession can be revoked with safety to Great Britain and advantage to the great material interests of that country.”
To which Mr Adams responds, 27th March:—
“I am bound to notice in several of your late despatches a strong disposition to press upon the British Government an argument for a retraction of its original error in granting to the rebels the rights of a belligerent. There may come a moment when such a proceeding might seem to me likely to be of use. But I must frankly confess that I do not see it yet.”
We will now show by a few other extracts what consequences Mr Seward expected to follow the adoption of his view.
6th March 1862—Mr Seward to Mr Adams:—
“Is it not worth your pains to suggest to him the inquiry whether it would not be wiser and better _to remove the necessity for our blockade_ than to keep the two nations, and even the whole world, in debate about the rightfulness or the expediency of attempting to break it, with all the consequences of so hostile a measure?”
2d April:—
“It is a matter of deep regret to us that our troubles at home render it hazardous to withdraw a part of our great land and naval forces from operating here, and send them to China to co-operate with the forces of the Allies there. As you are well aware, the continuance of the insurrection in the United States is due to the attitudes of Great Britain and France towards our country. It would seem to be desirable for those two States to have our co-operation in China in preserving a commerce of vast importance to them as well as to ourselves. _That co-operation we could give if we were relieved from the necessity for maintaining a blockade and siege of our southern ports._”
Whether Mr Seward desired that Great Britain should herself undertake the blockade of the Southern ports, or should pass a law, and persuade other States to pass similar laws, prohibiting all commercial intercourse with the South, and should enforce the prohibition, does not appear. But that he desired one of these measures to be adopted is clear, and the one would not be more extraordinary than the other.
Another operation of the adoption of Mr Seward’s fiction is seen in the case of the British Consul at Charleston. The British and French Governments agreed that it was expedient to communicate to the persons exercising authority in the Confederate States the desire of those Governments that certain articles of the Declaration of Paris should be observed by them in the prosecution of hostilities. Mr Seward remarks thereupon—
“It is enough to say that in our view the proper agents of the British Government to make known its interest here, are the diplomatic, not the consular agents of her Majesty; and that the only authority in this country to which any diplomatic communication whatever can be made is the Government of the United States itself.”
The articles to which France and England desired to call attention were those which relate to the capture of the property of neutrals at sea. It was very necessary to the protection of our commerce that they should be made known, and to do so was not in any way contrary to any of the pretensions of the Federal Government. Yet because the Powers had chosen the English Consul as their medium, instead of the Federal authorities, who did not acknowledge or maintain communications with the Southern Government, the Consul’s exequatur was withdrawn.
The case of the Trent is too well known, and that of the Alabama is too recent, to need recapitulation here. It is only necessary to remind the reader that in the late debate in Parliament it was shown that Mr Seward’s demands could only be complied with by passing a special law, having for its exclusive object to aid the Federal Government by stopping vessels, not on evidence, but on suspicion, that they were intended to become Confederate ships of war. In the case of the Emily St Pierre he expressly tells us his views. That vessel had been captured in attempting to run the blockade, and had then been recaptured from the prize-crew and brought into Liverpool. Whereupon the Federal authorities demanded that she should be restored to them by the British Government. Lord Russell replied that “neutral nations are not bound to punish their subjects for offences committed only against the laws of war as enforced by belligerents, nor to restore property rescued by their subjects from foreign captors.” When our Government communicated its decision declining to restore her, Mr Seward remarked—
“I think it proper to observe at present that the reasons seem to be limited to a want of power vested in the Government to restore, and do not bear at all on the justice or legality of the demand. Under such circumstances this Government has in more than one instance admitted the claim, _and appealed to legislative authority for the power to satisfy it_, and it has been promptly conferred and exercised.”
The American Minister was directed to press these demands for an alteration of the law. In reply, Lord John Russell, after adverting to the injury sustained by England in the blockade, says:—
“Yet Her Majesty’s Government have never sought to take advantage of the obvious imperfections of this blockade, in order to declare it ineffective. They have, to the loss and detriment of the British nation, scrupulously observed the duties of Great Britain towards a friendly State. But when Her Majesty’s Government are asked to go beyond this, and to overstep the existing powers given them by municipal and international law, for the purpose of imposing arbitrary restrictions on the trade of Her Majesty’s subjects, it is impossible to listen to such suggestions.... If, therefore, the United States consider it for their interest to inflict this great injury on other nations, the utmost they can expect is that European Powers shall respect those acts of the United States which are within the limits of the law. The United States Government cannot expect that Great Britain should frame new statutes to aid the Federal blockade, and to carry into effect the restrictions on commerce which the United States for their own purposes have thought fit to institute, and the application of which it is their duty to confine within the legitimate limits of international law.”
Mr Seward’s demand, that we should adopt his interpretation of the character of the war, would entail the consequences that we should ourselves enforce the Federal blockade; that we should refuse all Southern vessels admission to our ports, while allowing the freest use of them to the Federal ships; that we should stop all exports of commodities to the South, while granting fullest commercial intercourse with the North: and that we should alter our own laws for the purpose of making ourselves the agents of the belligerent interests of the Federal Government. His interpretation of neutrality in affording supplies to the belligerents is amusingly, though we daresay quite unintentionally, illustrated by himself in a couple of sentences. It will be recollected that, at the time of the Trent affair, Federal agents had bought up a great quantity of saltpetre here, and that, in expectation that this might be used against ourselves in case of war, the export of the article was prohibited by an Order in Council. This prohibition was withdrawn when the settlement of the Trent affair removed the apprehension of war. “It affords me pleasure,” says Mr Seward thereupon, “to know that the inhibition of saltpetre, which was so unnecessary, has been rescinded.”
“It has been only European sympathies and European aid,” he proceeds in the next sentence, “that have enabled our disloyal citizens to prolong the civil war.” The coupling of his pleasure at getting munitions of war from England with his complaint against European aid to the South, is too impudent not to be, we hope, accidental.
Now, does any foreign European statesman living think that it would be a light task to persuade England to restrain the liberty of her subjects, or to change her laws? Would any such statesman think that he was labouring for a practicable object, if he were to found his efforts on the assumption that such changes would be made at his suggestion? Would any European people, of whose Government he should be the agent, regard such efforts with other feelings than derision? Yet there are ministers of potent Governments who could show plausible reasons for expecting that their efforts might prevail, and who could urge their arguments with skill and eloquence. But even if, confident in their long experience and profound knowledge of diplomacy, they might venture on the experiment, is it possible to suppose that, when the failure should be manifest, they would, instead of abandoning the ground for surer footing, continue to build an entire policy on the shadowy foundation, though certain to see the baseless fabric sink as often as it should be raised? Yet such is the hopeless task in which the American Secretary persists with dreary pertinacity. Some malign spell seems to rule his course like that by which Michael Scott compelled the devil to make ropes of sand, and to bale out the sea with a limpet-shell. All his arguments, all his complaints, all his homilies, are based on the delusion that he can compel the British Government, by the marvellous force of his persuasive eloquence, to occupy with him a cloudland of his own creation; where a resolute people in arms is a dwindling faction; where a strife that drenches a continent in blood is a waning insurrection; where the victorious result always seems close, yet is always receding; where in the obstruction of a commercial system there is nothing which the partners in that system are entitled to take note of; where the Union, repelled at all points, and staggering under a load of debt, is said to exercise authority in all but a few rebellious spots, and to keep firm hold on the affections of all but a few misguided men; and where nefarious contracts, armies of mercenaries and deserters and plundering generals, are bright examples of the virtue and patriotism of a great people elicited in the hour of trial. All his instructions, all his remonstrances, all his prophecies, proceed upon the assumption that these delusions are facts. If it were not so, the vast volume of despatches would shrink to the size of a pamphlet; for every dispute, every argument, every feeling of injury, has its root in the shadowy standing-ground which he chooses to occupy. Of this he appears sensible himself when he says:—
“I have not failed to see that every wrong this country has been called to endure at the hands of any foreign Power has been a natural if not a logical consequence of the first grave error which that Power committed in conceding to an insurrection, which would otherwise have been ephemeral, the rights of a public belligerent. It has seemed, therefore, to be wise, as well as more dignified, to urge the retrogression upon that false step, rather than to elaborate complaints of the injuries that have followed it.”
It would have been well had he done so; but instead he has, without ceasing to urge retrogression, indulged in ceaseless complaints. Wrapt in his delusions, he drifts calmly on the tide of events that is bearing him and his despatches to chaos, and takes the crack of doom for a wholesome thunderstorm which is to clear the political atmosphere. Nothing can surpass the feeble complacency with which he records his perpetual illusions as incontrovertible facts. On Feb. 19, 1862, he writes to Mr Adams:—
“I was just about instructing you how to answer the querulous complaints in Parliament which you have anticipated, the chief of which is the assumed incompetency of Government to suppress the insurrection. But a very shrewd observer, a loyal, and at present exiled Virginian, fell in at the moment, and expressed to me the opinion that the end of the war is in sight; that there will be a short and rapid series of successes over a disheartened conspiracy, and then all will be over. I give you these opinions as entitling us to what is sometimes granted by candid tribunals—namely, a suspension of judgment.”
It is a pity that the name of the shrewd observer has not been preserved. So sagacious a man ought not to be anonymous.
On the 10th of February he tells us:—