Mr. Seward (Secretary of State) to all the ministers of the United States.
Washington, March 9, 1861.
CIRCULAR.
Sir: My predecessor, in his despatch, number 10, addressed to you on the 28th of February last, instructed you to use all proper and necessary measures to prevent the success of efforts which may be made by persons claiming to represent those States of this Union in whose name a provisional government has been announced to procure a recognition of their independence by the government of Spain.
I am now instructed by the President of the United States to inform you that, having assumed the administration of the government in pursuance of an unquestioned election and of the directions of the Constitution, he renews the injunction which I have mentioned, and relies upon the exercise of the greatest possible diligence and fidelity on your part to counteract and prevent the designs of those who would invoke foreign intervention to embarrass or overthrow the republic.
When you reflect on the novelty of such designs, their unpatriotic and revolutionary character, and the long train of evils which must follow directly or consequentially from even their partial or temporary success, the President feels assured that you will justly appreciate and cordially approve the caution which prompts this communication.
I transmit herewith a copy of the address pronounced by the President on taking the constitutional oath of office. It sets forth clearly the errors of the misguided partisans who are seeking to dismember the Union, the grounds on which the conduct of those partisans is disallowed, and also the general policy which the government will pursue with a view to the preservation of domestic peace and order, and the maintenance and preservation of the federal Union.
You will lose no time in submitting this address to the Spanish minister for foreign affairs, and in assuring him that the President of the United States entertains a full confidence in the speedy restoration of the harmony and unity of the government by a firm, yet just and liberal bearing, cooperating with the deliberate and loyal action of the American people.
You will truthfully urge upon the Spanish government the consideration [Page 33] that the present disturbances have had their origin only in popular passions, excited under novel circumstances of very transient character, and that while not one person of well-balanced mind has attempted to show that dismemberment of the Union would be permanently conducive to the safety and welfare of even his own State or section, much less of all the States and sections of our country, the people themselves still retain and cherish a profound confidence in our happy Constitution, together with a veneration and affection for it such as no other form of government ever received at the hands of those for whom it was established.
We feel free to assume that it is the general conviction of men, not only here but in all other countries, that this federal Union affords a better system than any other that could be contrived to assure the safety, the peace, the prosperity, the welfare, and the happiness of all the States of which it is composed. The position of these States, and their mining, agricultural, manufacturing, commercial, political, and social relations and influences, seem to make it permanently the interest of all other nations that our present political system shall be unchanged and undisturbed. Any advantage that any foreign nation might derive from a connation that it might form with any dissatisfied or discontented portion, State, or section, even if not altogether illusory, would be ephemeral, and would be overbalanced by the evils it would suffer from a disseverance of the whole Union, whose manifest policy it must be hereafter, as it has always been heretofore, to maintain peace, liberal commerce, and cordial amity with all other nations, and to favor the establishment of well-ordered government over the whole American continent.
Nor do we think we exaggerate our national importance when we claim that any political disaster that should befall us, and introduce discord or anarchy among the States that have so long constituted one great pacific, prosperous nation, under a form of government which has approved itself to the respect and confidence of mankind, might tend by its influence to disturb and unsettle the existing systems of government in other parts of the world, and arrest that progress of improvement and civilization which marks the era in which we live.
The United States have had too many assurances and manifestations of the friendship and good will of her Catholic Majesty to entertain any doubt that these considerations, and such others as your own large experience of the working of our federal system will suggest, will have their just influence with her, and will prevent her Majesty’s government from yielding to solicitations to intervene in any unfriendly way in the domestic concerns of our country. The President regrets that the events going on here may be productive of some possible inconvenience to the people and subjects of Spain; but he is determined that those inconveniences shall be made as light and as transient as possible, and, so far as it may rest with him, that all strangers who may suffer any injury from them shall be amply indemnified. The President expects that you will be prompt in transmitting to this department any information you may receive on the subject of the attempts which have suggested this communication.
I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant,
W. Preston, Esq., Madrid.
The same, mutatis mutandis, to E. G. Fair, Esq., Brussels; Theo. S. Fay, Esq., Berne; Jos. A. Wright, Esq., Berlin; J. G. Jones, Esq., Vienna; J. Williams, Esq., Constantinople; Geo. M. Dallas, Esq., London; Chas. J. Faulkner, Esq., Paris; John Appleton, Esq., St. Petersburg; Henry C. Murphy, Esq., Hague.