Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: Your despatch of April 16 (No. 144) has arrived this morning, and the mail for Europe closes this evening.
I advised you by telegram, sent out by the last steamer, of the capture of New Orleans. I have now to inform you that Fort Macon has surrendered to our siege, and that Yorktown has just been relinquished to our army on the eve of an anticipated bombardment. General McClellan is marching up the Peninsula towards Richmond, and General McDowell is opening his way downward towards the same capital from Fredericksburg.
If our information is correct, the insurgent army is evacuating Corinth. The spurious congress of the insurgents has suddenly adjourned. Their fiscal system must by this time have exploded, and their military connexions are everywhere broken. It is a very pleasant addition to this news that two of the British steamers lately fitted out at Liverpool with ammunition and arms for the insurgents have been captured by our blockading fleet. Thus the tide of success seems to be flowing full and strong. Acting upon the confidence which it has produced, we have opened New Orleans to correspondence, and we are taking measures for an early opening of that and some other ports to trade under necessary limitations.
These concessions occur simultaneously with our ratification of a treaty with Great Britain designed to effect the suppression of the African slave trade.
Never were the influences of time and distance upon political opinions and proceedings illustrated more strongly than in the contrast which these transactions present to the course pursued and the sentiments avowed by tho British government as reported to us in your despatch.
[Page 83]The British government at London, on the 16th of April, reasoned and acted from the case as it stood here on the first of April. We are reviewing the proceedings and language of the British government in view of the case as it stands now on the 5th of May. We are sure, however, that Great Britain will not insist that the insurgents shall be regarded as a public belligerent after they shall have ceased to be able to maintain an organized war.
The President desires that, if it shall seem to you discreet, you recall the subject to Earl Russell’s attention, after the events which have recently occurred here shall have transpired in Europe. It will be a sufficient justification for the seeming impatience that the interests of both nations, and even the interests of humanity, require that a war which so severely, and yet so unnecessarily and so hopelessly, scourges society, should not be protracted through any seeming indifference to the evil on the part of the maritime powers.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, &c., &c., &c.