Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward.
SIR: * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * *
I have reason to believe that the removal of the casus belli in the Trent affair, has proved a most serious obstacle in the way of all the calculations made by the party disposed to sow dissension between the two countries. The expectations that have been raised of a pressure from the manufacturing classes to break the blockade in order to obtain cotton are likewise declining. The stock is yet quite large, and, taken in conjunction with what is known to be coming, it is believed to be sufficient to keep the mills going at the present rate for six months longer. The large manufacturers have become pretty well reconciled to the reduction of their product, from a conviction that the business had already been overdone, and must have ceased to yield any returns had it been continued longer on the former scale. Such being the ruined condition of the old programme, it has been found necessary to direct attention to the preparation of something new. The chief support of the latest schemes is to be traced to the supposed policy of the Emperor of the French. It is believed here that he has already made overtures to the British government to enter a protest against the blockade as in manner and substance too cruelly effective in some respects and very ineffective in others. It is also affirmed that he begins to consider it time to agitate the subject of recognition of the Confederate States. I cannot say that the evidence that has been furnished to me on these points is entirely satisfactory, but it is sufficiently so to make it my duty to mention it. Doubtless your sources of information in Paris will give you more precise knowledge of the truth than I can do here. My main purpose in alluding to it is to call your attention to a singular development made of the policy adopted by the confederate emissaries here with a view to fortify the movement of their allies in this country. The substance of it has been disclosed by a publication in the Edinburgh Scotsman, a well-conducted paper, whose sources of information I have heretofore found to be good. I take from its issue on Saturday last, the 11th of January, the following extract:
“There exists in London an active and growing party, including many M. P.’s, having for its object an immediate recognition of the southern confederacy, on certain understood terms. This party is in communication with the quasi representatives of the south in London, and gives out that it sees its way to a desirable arrangement. Our information is that the south, acting through its London agents, is at least willing to have it understood that, in consideration of immediate recognition and the disregard of the ‘paper blockade,’ it would engage for these three things: a treaty of free trade, the prohibition of all import of slaves, and the freedom of all blacks born hereafter. It will easily be seen that if any such terms were offered (but we hesitate to believe the last of them) a pressure in favor of the south would come upon the British government from more than one formidable section of our public.”
I have reason for believing that some such project as this has been actually entertained by the confederate emissaries. The pressure of the popular feeling against slavery is so great here that their friends feel it impossible to hope to stem it without some such plea in extenuation as can be made out of an offer to do something for ultimate emancipation. Of course no man [Page 17] acquainted with the true state of things in America can believe for an instant the existence of one particle of good faith in any professions of this kind that may be countenanced by the rebel emissaries here. But I have thought it might not be without its use to recommend that the fact of their sanction of such an agitation should be made known pretty generally in the United States, especially among the large class of friends of the Union in the border States. If the issue of this contest is to be emancipation with the aid of Great Britain, surely the object for which the rebellion against our government was initiated—the protection and perpetuation of slavery— ceases to be a motive for resisting it further. If the course of the emissaries here be unauthorized, it ought to be exposed here to destroy all further confidence in them. If, on the contrary, it be authorized, it should be equally exposed to the people in the slaveholding States. In either event the eyes of the people both in Europe and America will be more effectually opened to a conviction of the nature and certain consequences of this great struggle.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.