Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: The arrival of your despatch, No. 159, has been already acknowledged.
The Japanese ambassadors seem to have interrupted a very interesting conversation between yourself and Earl Russell on the subject of the relations existing between this country and Great Britain. I cannot but think that if it had been continued it would have been closed with beneficial results. I hope that Japan may have gained an equivalent for our loss resulting from the interruption.
Some materials for enforcing the views you so justly presented, with so much energy and so much candor, in that interview, have already been sent forward to you. There has just now fallen into our hands a very extraordinary document, being a report made by Caleb Huse, who calls himself a captain of artillery, and who is an agent of the insurgents in Europe, to the chief of the artillery of the war department of the insurgents. It recites purchases of arms, munitions of war, and military supplies, which have been shipped by him in England and elsewhere in the mad attempt to overthrow the federal Union. It reveals enough to show that the complaints you have made to Earl Russell fell infinitely short of the real abuses of neutrality which have been committed in Great Britain in the very face of her Majesty’s government. The revolution is now approaching its end, and it is just at this moment that the proof becomes irresistible that, if it had been successful, its success would have been due to the aid and assistance it derived from the people of Great Britain, notwithstanding the appeals and remonstrances of this government. The President of the United States has persistently expressed his anxiety throughout the whole distempered period which we have passed, that it might end in the preservation of friendly and cordial relations with all the states with which we have heretofore lived in amity, and especially with Great Britain. Whoever shall read the document I now send you will not wonder that the President thinks it desirable that the government of Great Britain should consider, before the war closes, what are likely to be the sentiments of the two nations in regard to each other after that event shall have occurred.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.