Mr. Appleton to Mr. Black.
[Extract.]
St. Petersburg, December 31, 1860, (January 12, 1861.)
Sir:
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Here, as elsewhere in Europe, the late agitations in the United States, which have followed the election of the republican candidates for President and Vice-President, have been observed with the deepest interest. The President’s message was published in full as soon as it was received, together with copious comments on it from the leading journals of England and France. A weekly letter on American affairs is also published in the St. Petersburg Journal, purporting to come from New York, but doubtless made up in London, while on the arrival of every steamer from the United States the same journal receives by telegraph its most important items of news. Yesterday, for example, we had news from New York to December 28. Although the intelligence thus far, in reference to the preservation of the Union, has been uniformly bad, I think the general belief here is still favorable to some amicable adjustment. European statesmen have seen so many violent agitations spring up and subside in our country, that they expect to see this one take the same course. They cannot understand, moreover, how a great government like ours, whose career has been eminently prosperous, can be suddenly destroyed without any apparent cause, by the very people who are themselves a part of it, and who are daily receiving its benefits. They have never seen an American citizen abroad who did not glory in the American name, and boast, with honest pride, of our popular institutions. They have never seen an American journal either where this same spirit was not manifested of satisfaction with the American Constitution, and of attachment to the American form of government. Under this government they have seen our country advance in population, and territory, and wealth, and honor, as no nation on earth was ever before permitted to do, and this progress, instead of exhausting its energies, has seemed to them to inspire it with new vigor for its future growth. They have regarded it, also, as one of the striking peculiarities of our republic, that while its national developments and national glory have been thus marvellously grand, they represent, at the same time, an amount of individual advancement and personal happiness which can be found nowhere else beneath the sun. They cannot persuade themselves that a government thus idolized apparently by its citizens, under which these great results have been already worked out, and under which still greater results may fairly be anticipated, is really about to be destroyed in the midst of its usefulness and by the hands of its own people. Still less can they comprehend the method of peaceable secession [Page 298] by which this destruction is sought to be accomplished. They have no idea of a government which exists only at the will of a small minority of its citizens, or of a revolution in which weakness is permitted to triumph over greatly superior strength. They have no sympathy with the idea of State secession any more than with the system of negro slavery, and they will be slow, therefore, to give back their old confidence in the United States, even if the present difficulties there should be happily surmounted, unless, indeed, they can understand at the same time that the right of secession, which is now so earnestly claimed, has been substantially abandoned throughout the country, and is not likely to be again insisted on in any practical form. If, however, the existing difficulties shall not be surmounted, and under the influence of this doctrine the Union shall be broken up, the result will be hailed undoubtedly by the cabinets of Europe as a conclusive proof of the instability of popular institutions; and the destruction of the American government will be a calamity, therefore, not only to those who enjoy its benefits at home, but to those oppressed people also in the Old World, whose hearts are now cheered by the knowledge of its existence, and whose eyes are turned daily towards it for support and consolation. Yet those governments on this side of the Atlantic, who have looked to our republic as the only maritime check in the world upon Great Britain, will not be quite satisfied to see this counterpoise disappear, and that haughty power restored to its old position of mistress of the seas.
The great events which are now in progress in the United States will continue to be regarded, therefore, with the deepest interest throughout Europe, until they shall have reached their end. In the meantime I cannot describe to you the painful anxiety with which those Americans who are abroad await now the arrival of every mail from home. Amidst the wars and convulsions of Europe we have been accustomed to look towards the great republic as the assured and constant abode of tranquillity and happiness, and we have rejoiced always in the conviction that, by our right of citizenship there, we possessed a title and an honor which, making each American himself the equal of a king, could receive no added dignity from any royal order or imperial decoration. We have all had the happy consciousness, moreover, that when our duties abroad should be closed we had a country to return to, where we should find safety for our lives and property, and numerous avenues wide open to prosperity and honor and happiness. To see all this crumbling away before our eyes—our country breaking into pieces—our citizenship changing from a glory to a shame—our hopes in the future clouded over with doubt—anarchy, possibly, taking the place of good government—civil war substituted, perhaps, for peace and harmony—and ruin threatened to every valuable interest which man can cherish. The bare possibility, I say, of such results as these, deeply painful as it must be to our fellow-citizens at home, who yet have the consolation of being able to struggle step by step against them, is even more painful to those of us who are abroad, and who hear of events only at fixed intervals, without the preparation of their gradual approach, and without any power whatever to prevent them. Let us hope even yet that the God of our fathers will not permit their children to be the instruments and the victims of so vast a calamity, but that oil may yet be poured upon the heaving waters, and the ship of state may yet outride the storm. I am one of those who have never believed that it could be possible to dissolve the American Union. I thought it was protected by too much plighted faith, by too many sacred associations in the past, by too much admitted usefulness in the present, and by too many thick coming glories in the future, ever to be seriously in danger of destruction. If in this, however, I have been mistaken, and the earth is really to [Page 299] be shadowed now by the great calamity, may God have mercy upon those misguided men by whose folly and wickedness it will have been accomplished.
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I am, very respectfully, yours,
Hon. J. S. Black,
Secretary of State, Washington.