Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward .

[Extracts.]

No. 2.]

Sir: At the close of my last despatch I stated my purpose to ask an early interview with Lord John Russell. A note to that effect was immediately sent to the foreign office. An answer was received on Saturday morning, saying that his lordship would be happy to see me, if I would take the trouble to go out to Pembroke Lodge, at Richmond, where he is retired for the present, on Monday at twelve or one o’clock, or, if I preferred it, he would see me at one o’clock on that same day, (May 18.) Although it was approaching eleven o’clock when I got the answer, and the distance exceeds [Page 91] nine miles from the city, I replied by accepting the earlier appointment, and was probably myself at the Lodge before he received my note.

Be this as it may, I found his lordship ready to receive me, so that I proceeded at once to business. After expressing the general feeling which I believed prevailing in the United States of good will towards Great Britain, and the confident expectations I had entertained, down to the period of my arrival, that these sentiments were fully reciprocated to my government on the part of the government here, I signified my sense of disappointment in not finding this quite so unequivocally manifested as I had hoped. There were now fewer topics of direct difference between the two countries than had probably existed at any preceding time, and even these had been withdrawn from discussion at this place to be treated on the other side of the water. I therefore came out here with little to do beyond the duty of preserving the relations actually existing from the risk of being unfavorably affected by the unfortunate domestic disturbances prevailing in my own country. It was not without pain that I was compelled to admit that from the day of my arrival I had felt in the proceedings of both houses of Parliament, in the language of her Majesty’s ministers, and in the tone of opinion prevailing in private circles, more of uncertainty about this than I had before thought possible. This sentiment alone would have impelled me to solicit an early interview; but I was now come under a much stronger motive. I had just received a despatch from my government, based upon a letter from Mr. Dallas, of much earlier date than any of the matters to which I had alluded. In that letter he had reported a conversation with his lordship, the close of which had been deemed so unsatisfactory that I had been directed at once to seek for a further elucidation of his meaning. It was the desire of my government to learn whether it was the intention of her Majesty’s ministers to adopt a policy which would have the effect to widen, if not to make irreparable, a breach which we believed yet to be entirely manageable by ourselves.

At this point his lordship replied by saying that there was no such intention. The clearest evidence of that was to be found in the assurance given by him to Mr. Dallas in the earlier part of the conversation referred to. With regard to the other portion, against which I understood him to intimate he had already heard from Lord Lyons that the President had taken exception, he could only say that he hardly saw his way to bind the government to any specific course, when circumstances beyond their agency rendered it difficult to tell what might happen. Should the insurgent States ultimately succeed in establishing themselves in an independent position, of the probability of which he desired to express no opinion, he presumed, from the general course of the United States heretofore, that they did not mean to require of other countries to pledge themselves to go further than they had been in the habit of going themselves. He therefore, by what he had said to Mr. Dallas, simply meant to say that they were not disposed in any way to interfere.

To this I replied by begging leave to remark that, so far as my government was concerned, any desire to interfere had never been imputed to Great Britain; but in her peculiar position it was deserving of grave consideration whether great caution was not to be used in adopting any course that might, even in the most indirect way, have an effect to encourage the hopes of the disaffected in America. It had now come to this, that without support from here, the people of the United States considered the termination of this difficulty as almost entirely a question of time. Any course adopted here that would materially change that calculation would inevitably raise the most unpleasant feelings among them. For independently of the absolute influence of Great Britain, admitted to be great, the effect of any supposed [Page 92] inclination on her part could not fail to be extensive among the other nations of Europe. It was my belief that the insurgent States could scarcely hope for sympathy on this side of the Atlantic, if deprived of any prospect of it here. Hence anything that looked like a manifestation of it would be regarded among us as inevitably tending to develope an ultimate separation in America; and, whether intended or not, the impression made would scarcely be effaced by time. It was in this view that I must be permitted to express the great regret I had felt on learning the decision to issue the Queen’s proclamation, which at once raised the insurgents to the level of a belligerent State, and still more the language used in regard to it by her Majesty’s ministers in both houses of Parliament before and since. Whatever might be the design, there could be no shadow of doubt that the effect of these events had been to encourage the friends of the disaffected here. The tone of the press and of private opinion indicated it strongly. I then alluded more especially to the brief report of the lord chancellor’s speech on Thursday last, in which he had characterized the rebellious portion of my country as a belligerent State, and the war that was going on as justum bellum.

To this his lordship replied that he thought more stress was laid upon these events than they deserved. The fact was that a necessity seemed to exist to define the course of the government in regard to the participation of the subjects of Great Britain in the impending conflict. To that end the legal questions involved had been referred to those officers most conversant with them, and their advice had been taken in shaping the result. Their conclusion had been that, as a question merely of fact, a war existed. A considerable number of the States, at least seven, occupying a wide extent of country, were in open resistance, whilst one or more of the others were associating themselves in the same struggle, and as yet there were no indications of any other result than a contest of arms more or less severe. In many preceding cases, much less formidable demonstrations had been recognized. Under such circumstances it seemed scarcely possible to avoid speaking of this in the technical sense as justum bellum, that is, a war of two sides, without in any way implying an opinion of its justice, as well as to withhold an endeavor, so far as possible, to bring the management of it within the rules of modern civilized warfare. This was all that was contemplated by the Queen’s proclamation. It was designed to show the purport of existing laws, and to explain to British subjects their liabilities in case they should engage in the war. And however strongly the people of the United States might feel against their enemies, it was hardly to be supposed that in practice they would now vary from their uniformly humane policy heretofore in endeavoring to assuage and mitigate the horrors of war.

To all which I answered that under other circumstances I should be very ready to give my cheerful assent to this view of his lordship’s. But I must be permitted frankly to remark that the action taken seemed, at least to my mind, a little more rapid than was absolutely called for by the occasion. It might be recollected that the new administration had scarcely had sixty days to develop its policy; that the extent to which all departments of the government had been demoralized in the preceding administration was surely understood here, at least in part; that the very organization upon which any future action was to be predicated was to be renovated and purified before a hope could be entertained of energetic and effective labor. The consequence had been that it was but just emerging from its difficulties, and beginning to develop the power of the country to cope with this rebellion, when the British government took the initiative, and decided practically that it is a struggle of two sides. And furthermore, it pronounced the insurgents to be a belligerent State before they had ever shown their capacity [Page 93] to maintain any kind of warfare whatever, except within one of their own harbors, and under every possible advantage. It considered them a marine power before they had ever exhibited a single privateer on the ocean. I said that I was not aware that a single armed vessel had yet been issued from any port under the control of these people. Surely this was not the case in the instance which had been relied upon in his speech by his lordship as authority for the present action. There the Greeks, however small as a people, had long been actively and effectually waging war, before the interposition of Great Britain, and, to use the language of the government, as quoted by himself, had “covered the sea with cruisers.” It did seem to me therefore as if a little more time might have been taken to form a more complete estimate of the relative force of the contending parties, and of the probabilities of any long drawn issue. And I did not doubt that the view taken by me would be that substantially taken both by the government and the people of the United States. They would inevitably infer the existence of an intention more or less marked to extend the struggle. For this reason it was that I made my present application to know whether such a design was or was not entertained. For in the alternative of an affirmative answer it was as well for us to know it, as I was bound to acknowledge in all frankness that in that contingency I had nothing further left to do in Great Britain. I said this with regret, as my own feelings had been and were of the most friendly nature.

His lordship replied by an assurance that he participated in those feelings; neither did he see the action that had been thus far taken at all in the light in which I saw it. He believed that the United States, in their own previous history, had furnished examples of action taken quite as early as that now complained of. He instanced two cases. The first I do not now remember, for it seemed to me not important at the time; the other was the insurrection in Hungary under Kossuth, at which period, he believed, they had gone so far as actually to send an agent to that country with a view to recognition, and that to the great dissatisfaction and against the remonstrances of Austria.

I replied only to the second case, by remarking that the incidents attending that affair were not fresh in my mind, neither was I sure that I ever knew the whole action of the government: but it was my impression that the object of the mission was only confined to the acquisition of the facts necessary to form an opinion, and that, after they were obtained, no public step of any kind had been taken. Neither could I myself recollect an instance in which ample time had not been given by the United States for the development of events sufficiently decisive to justify any action that might have followed; for I begged it to be understood that the government did not mean at all to deny that there were cases in which recognition of a revolutionary government might be both expedient and proper. The rule was clear, that whenever it became apparent that any organized form of society had advanced so far as to prove its power to defend and protect itself against the assaults of enemies, and at the same time to manifest a capacity to maintain binding relations with foreign nations, then a measure of recognition could not be justly objected to on any side. The case was very different when such an interference should take place, prior to the establishment of the proof required, as to bring about a result which would not probably have happened but for that external agency.

And here I stop for a moment to make two remarks upon this part of the conversation. The first of these is, that I have an impression that the agent to go to Hungary, alluded to by his lordship, was Mr. Mann, the same gentleman who is now figuring in the commission of the confederates at this [Page 94] place. If in this I am right, we can be at no loss for his lordship’s sources of information. The other remark is, that the Hungarian precedent was unquestionably one in which a very strong sympathy with the insurgent party actually existed in the United States. Are we therefore to infer a similar impulse to actuate the precipitate measure now taken here?

I did not say this to his lordship, though I might have done so; but I proceeded to observe that I had come to England prepared to present the views of my government on the general question, and that I should have done so in full but for the interposition of this more immediate despatch. At the present moment I should touch only upon one point in connexion with the acknowledgment of the insurgents even as a belligerent State. It seemed necessary to call the attention of his lordship to the fact which must be obvious to him, that as yet they had not laid any foundation for government solid enough to deserve a moment’s confidence. They had undertaken to withdraw certain States from the government by an arbitrary act which they called secession, not known to the Constitution, the validity of which had at no time been acknowledged by the people of the United States, and which was now emphatically denied; but not content with this, they had gone on to substitute another system among themselves, avowedly based upon the recognition of this right of States to withdraw or secede at pleasure. With such a treaty, I would ask, where could be vested the obligation of treaties with foreign powers, of the payment of any debts contracted, or, indeed, of any act performed in good faith by the common authority for the time being established. For my own part, I fully believed that such a system could not deserve to be denominated, in any sense, a government; and therefore I could not but think any act performed here, having a tendency to invest it in the eye of the world with the notion of form and substance, could be attended only with the most complete disappointment to all the parties connected with it.

His lordship here interposed by saying that there was not, in his opinion, any occasion at present for going into this class of arguments, as the government did not contemplate taking any step that way. Should any such time arrive in the future, he should be very ready to listen to every argument that might be presented against it on the part of the United States. At this moment he thought we had better confine ourselves to the matter immediately in hand.

I then remarked that there was another subject upon which I had received a despatch, though I should not, after so long a conference, venture to do more than open the matter to-day. This was a proposal to negotiate in regard to the rights of neutrals in time of war. The necessary powers had been transmitted to me, together with a form of a convention, which I would do myself the honor to submit to his consideration if there was any disposition to pursue the matter further. His lordship then briefly reviewed the past action of the two countries since the meeting of the congress at Paris, and expressed the willingness of Great Britain to negotiate; but he seemed to desire to leave the subject in the hands of Lord Lyons, to whom he intimated that he had already transmitted authority to assent to any modification of the only point in issue which the government of the United States might prefer. On that matter he believed there would be no difficulty whatever. Under these circumstances, I shall not press the subject further at this place until I receive new directions to that effect from the department.

His lordship then observed that there were two points upon which he should be glad himself to be enlightened, although he did not know whether I was prepared to furnish the information. They both related to the President’s proclamation of a blockade. The first question was upon the nature [Page 95] of the blockade. The coast was very extensive, stretching along the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico a great way. Was it the design of the United States to institute an effective blockade in its whole extent, or to make only a declaration to that effect as to the whole, and to confine the actual blockade to particular points? Considering the uniform doctrine of the government refusing to recognize the validity of mere paper blockades, he could hardly suppose they designed the latter.

To this I replied that I knew nothing directly of the President’s intentions on this subject; but that inasmuch as the government had always protested against mere paper blockades, I could not suppose that it was now disposed to change its doctrine. On the contrary, I had every reason for affirming that it was the intention to make an effective blockade; and this was more practicable than at first sight might appear from the fact that there were few harbors along the coast, however great its extent, and these were not very easy of access. I thought, therefore, that even though the blockade might not be perfect, it would be sufficiently so to come within the legitimate construction of the term.

His lordship then alluded to the other point, which was, that the proclamation assigned no precise date for the commencement of the blockade, which he believed was necessary; but he presumed that that defect might be remedied at any time. To which I added that I did not doubt any such omission of form would be supplied as soon as it was pointed out.

His lordship then made some remarks upon the adoption of the tariff; to which I replied that, in my belief, that law was mainly passed as a revenue measure, with incidental protection; that it was not in any way aimed in a hostile spirit to foreign nations; and that the people of the United States would always buy from Great Britain as much as they could pay for, and generally a good deal more. This last remark raised a smile; and thus ended his lordship’s series of inquiries.

Having thus disposed of these secondary questions, I returned once more to the charge, and asked him what answer I should return to the inquiry which I had been directed to make. In order to avoid any ambiguity, I took out of my pocket your despatch No. 4, and read to him the paragraph recapitulating the substance of Mr. Dallas’s report of his interview, and the very last paragraph. I said that it was important to me that I should not make any mistake in reporting this part of the conversation; therefore I should beg him to furnish me with the precise language. He said that he did not himself know what he was to say. If it was expected of him to give any pledge of an absolute nature that his government would not at any future time, no matter what the circumstances might be, recognize an existing State in America, it was more than he could promise. If I wished an exact reply, my better way would be to address him the inquiry in writing. I said that I was well aware of that, but I had hoped that I might be saved the necessity of doing so. On reflection, he proposed to avoid that by offering to transmit to Lord Lyons directions to give such a reply to the President as, in his own opinion, might be satisfactory. To this arrangement I gave my assent, though not without some doubt whether I was doing right. In truth, if I were persuaded that her Majesty’s government were really animated by a desire to favor the rebellion, I should demand a categorical answer; but thus far I see rather division of opinion, consequent upon the pressure of the commercial classes. Hence I preferred to give the short time demanded, as well as to place in the hands of the President himself the power to decide upon the sufficiency of the reply.

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[Page 96]

It may be as well to state that, both in matter and manner, the conference, which has been reported as fully and as accurately as my memory would permit, was conducted in the most friendly spirit.

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I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.

Hon. William H. Seward,
Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.