Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: If the surmises and apprehensions which prevail here are at all indicative of occurrences in Europe, then political society there is agitated and occupied by suggestions, schemes, and plans of intervention in our affairs. Passing by chronic affections of the public morals in Europe, I apprehend that it is now excited by some recent irritations. Congress has just now augmented our tariff of imports, on foreign merchandise. Since nearly all the positions at which we aimed have been attained and occupied, there is more decided resistance made by the insurgents upon the few which it remains for us to carry.
Our assault upon Richmond is for the moment suspended. No great and striking movements or achievements are occurring, and the government is rather preparing its energies for renewed operations than continuing to surprise the world with new and brilliant victories. The tone of the insurgents has been suddenly emboldened, while recent expressions of grief and sorrow, which naturally and justly follow battles attended by great losses of cherished lives, for the moment have seemed to indicate that the friends of the Union are less resolute and hopeful than heretofore. Cotton, the great want of Europe, has not flowed out of the ports which we have opened as freely as was unreasonably expected by the manufacturers of that continent, and their disappointment seems ripening into despondency.
It is not upon isolated events, much less upon transitory popular impulses, that governments are expected to build their policies in regard to foreign countries.
What I think is important, not less for foreign nations than for ourselves, is always to hold our civil war under contemplation, not merely as broken streams of unequal widths and intermitting currents, but as one continuous river, and so not to forget its source, its direction, and not only its immediate and local, but also its ultimate and universal effects.
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 recognized under various names as the opinion of mankind, or the spirit or the genius of the age or [Page 155] of the times. Even such observers, while directing the opinion of mankind towards the abolition of slavery in the countries which tolerated it, have habitually forgotten that foreign interests and agencies have co-operated with domestic ones in the planting, hedging, cherishing, and preserving of slavery, and equally so in aiding or hindering and retarding its removal. It is not unnatural, therefore, that those who, anywhere, have discussed the subject of slavery with a view to its removal have forgotten that a policy directed to that end must for a time materially affect private and public interests, reaching far beyond the direct action of the policy itself. There are two African slaveholding nations on the American continent—Brazil and the United States. The world has agreed that the practice of slavery by these two nations is, on their part, an error, perhaps I may say a crime, and has for more than half a century demanded its speedy and complete discontinuance. This impatient demand was inspired by convictions of natural justice and sentiments of universal humanity, and the United States and Brazil, in different degrees, according to natural circumstances and national sympathies, have responded. The empire of Brazil has interdicted the African slave trade, and slavery is declining there from that cause. The United States prohibited the African slave trade, but, owing to peculiar circumstances, slavery recovered from the blow, and alarmingly increased. The United States have, therefore, interdicted slavery in the new and unorganized portions of the republic, with the expectation that under that interdiction slavery would slowly, perhaps imperceptibly, but certainly, decline.
No sooner did these measures take effect than Brazil and the United States began to experience inconveniences resulting from them. This was expected; for it is a political truism that every political reform, in proportion to its magnitude and its ultimate benefits, is immediately followed by social inconveniences, losses, and sufferings. If it were otherwise, public virtue, or virtue in the conduct of nations, would be relieved of trials such as individual virtue never escapes. It is understood that in Brazil whole provinces in which the coffee tree is relatively unproductive are being depopulated by the removal of slaves to others more favorable to its culture, the price of labor increases, and the relative profits derived from it abate.
In the United States the slaveholders resist the reform, and wage civil war to overthrow the government. Brazil and the United States have not claimed from other nations any indemnity for, or even any sympathy in, these sacrifices. They would have exhibited a want not merely of magnanimity, but of common sense, if they had done so. But both of these countries have a right to expect that other nations will bear with equal magnanimity their own lesser shares of the inconveniences resulting from the measures which were adopted, in part at their own instance, and in the name of common justice and humanity. I think that this expectation has not been disappointed in the case of Brazil. J do not hear that any nation or people propose to disturb or destroy, or aid in disturbing or destroying, that empire because coffee has become relatively more scarce, and therefore more costly. All nations take cheerfully the coffee that Brazil can send them, and look elsewhere for supplies of the deficiency.
But in this country the slaveholding insurgents solemnly resolve to compel foreign nations to join them in overthrowing the government, and to guaranty boundless and endless African slavery on this continent by burning the cotton already produced, and preventing the production of more; and, strange to say, these nations are asked to entertain the question whether they shall not intervene to defeat the reform they so justly urged, at the cost of the national existence of the United States. The resistance of the [Page 156] slaveholders is thus seen to be not merely treason against this country, but a war against human nature itself, and the European nations not only claim to be neutral, but they are represented as hesitating whether, under the pressure of a want of cotton, they shall not become allies in that war.
What are the reasons urged upon those governments by short-sighted politicians for such a proceeding. They are various, but none of them will bear examination? First it was said that civil war among us endangers the commerce of foreign nations, and that they have a right to practice neutrality. So, indeed, they have, if their commerce is endangered, and if pronounced neutrality will save their commerce. But no slaveholding cruiser from this country ever attacked, or even menaced, the commerce of Europe before the attitude of neutrality was adopted. Then it was said that the United States resorted to a blockade, but the blockade is an application of force allowed by the laws of nations to all belligerents. Then the blockade was represented as being imperfect; but if it had been so. it was therefore the less injurious. Then it was too rigorous, and prevented the export of cotton and the import of fabrics. Is not this the lawful object of a blockade? Then it was alleged that the closing of the cotton ports by the blockade was continued too long. We opened them to trade, and invited it; the insurgents refuse to let cotton be sent forward to market. We apply all our means and energies, confessedly greater than any nation ever before applied, to suppress insurrection and restore the freedom of our inland and foreign commerce, and we gain victory after victory, yet this does not satisfy our enemies abroad. Defeats in their eyes prove our national incapacity. Victories won in conformity with the most humane practices of war are attended with such destruction of life as to shock and confound their sensibilities. Complaints against an increase of duties on foreign merchandise, and against the rigor of our taxation, come upon us in the very same breath with representations that our engagements will never be fulfilled, and our bonds not yet matured are advised to be forced back upon our newly filled money market for sale. The same voices which are proclaiming to the world that the preservation of the Union is a task too expensive for the government denounce the revenue measures adopted to secure the accomplishment of that task as hostile to foreign nations. At first the government was considered as unfaithful to humanity in not proclaiming emancipation, and when it appeared that slavery, by being thus forced into the contest, must suffer, and perhaps perish in the conflict, then the war had become an intolerable propagandism of emancipation by the sword.
I do not require you to complain, as these facts, perhaps, might warrant me in doing, that there seems a predisposition in western Europe, if not in favor of the slaveholders and their cause, at least against the Union and the cause of humanity that is now for weal or woe identified with its preservation.
I have brought this identification of the cause of humanity with that of our country thus prominently into view for the purpose of showing that the motives and the objects of those who oppose or seek to embarrass the latter, either at home or abroad, may be well understood and fairly weighed, and the moral as well as the material resources of the country may not be undervalued.
Having done this, it remains for me only to say further, that the purpose of the American government and people to maintain and preserve the Union and their Constitution remains unchanged; that the war in which they have been engaged, though it has been opposed by agencies and influences abroad which we had not foreseen, has been crowned with successes which are satisfactory to our calmer reason and judgment; that [Page 157] temporary disappointment of our expectations, with our grief over losses of valuable lives, unavoidable among a humane, affectionate, Christian people, has already culminated, and it is now declining; that our armies remaining in the field, with their appointments, excel by far all the forces which the insurgents have now, with any augmentation they can make; that, in addition to the present forces, the orders are issued, the machinery is in motion, for the immediate addition of three hundred thousand men, all of whom will come into camps with an alacrity equal to that which has heretofore been exhibited by the people; that inactivity is already giving place to new and effective exertions which will be sufficient for the termination of the war; that below these new ranks of volunteers there still remains a mass yet sedentary, and which is daily increased by immigration, which is equal to all that has been called forth, which will be prepared as a reserve, and, if necessary, will be brought up to decide the contest. Neither the government nor the country has experienced exhaustion, or even financial pressure, but in the midst of wars and campaigns the fiscal condition of both is satisfactory, and superior to that of any other government and people. We are a nation not chiefly of cotton-growers, but of farmers, manufacturers, and miners. We will induce or oblige our slaveholding citizens to supply Europe with cotton if we can. So far as we fail we fill up the deficiency promptly by sending bread and gold. We invite foreign products such as we need at prices which we can afford to pay, and we invite a premature return of all our bonds and stocks, and will promptly pay and redeem in gold, with which cotton may be bought wherever freemen can, with gold, be induced to raise it. Let the world judge whether more can be required of us. If we are not met by serious obstacles raised by foreign powers we shall speedily open all the channels of commerce, and free them from military embarrassments, and cotton, so much desired by all nations, will flow forth as freely as heretofore. We have ascertained that there are three and a half millions of bales yet remaining in the region where it was produced, though large quantities of it are yet unginned and otherwise unprepared for the market. We have instructed the military authorities to favor, so far as they can consistently with the public safety, its preparation for and despatch to the markets, where it is so much wanted; and now, notwithstanding the obstructions which have necessarily attended the re-establishment of the federal authority in that region against watchful and desperate public enemies, in whose hands the suppression of the cotton trade by fire and force is a lever with which they expect to raise up allies throughout Europe, that trade has already begun to revive, and we are assured by our civil and military agents that it may be expected to increase fast enough to relieve the painful anxieties expressed to us by friendly nations. The President has given respectful consideration to the desire informally expressed to me by the governments of Great Britain and France for some further relaxations of the blockade in favor of that trade. They are not rejected, but are yet held under consideration, with a view to ascertain more satisfactorily whether they are really necessary, and whether they can be adopted without such serious detriment to our military operations as would render them injurious rather than beneficial to the interest of all concerned. An answer will be seasonably given, which will leave foreign powers in no uncertainty about our course. Such are the expectations of this government. They involve a continued reliance upon the practice of justice and respect of our sovereignty by foreign powers. It is not necessary for me to say that if this reliance fails, this civil war will, without our fault, become a war of continents—a war of the world; and whatever else may revive, the cotton trade built upon slave labor in this country will be [Page 158] irredeemably wrecked in the abrupt cessation of human bondage within the territories of the United States.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.