There is no change worthy of note in the state of affairs here during the
past week. The tone of the President’s message in treating of the
foreign relations regarded with more favor, for the reason that
something of a different kind had been anticipated in quarters where it
was hoped an interpretation might be made of it to our disadvantage. I
continue of the opinion that a gradual reaction is taking place in the
popular sentiment, which will be materially promoted by the accounts of
the very noble spirit manifested at New York towards the distressed
operatives in Lancashire. This reaction may become quite general in the
nation, if it should find support in the successful progress of our
arms; but without that nothing really beneficial can be expected.
On the other hand, the efforts making by the rebel emissaries and their
friends continue on the most extensive scale. An association has been
formed in this place called the London Confederate States Aid
Association, the objects of
[Page 21]
which are set forth in the little pamphlet, a copy of which is herewith
transmitted. An office has been opened in a house in the next street to
that in which I am writing, at which place meetings for discussion are
held every Wednesday evening. These are not, however, absolutely open to
the public at large. A card of admission is necessary, like that I send
herewith, needing, however, the countersign of the secretary, Rector
Smith, M. D., to make it available. Who this Dr. Smith is I do not know.
All that I can learn is that he came originally from Kentucky, but has
been settled here for some time as a practicing physician. He boasts of
having a brother in southern Illinois, who is an effective ally to the
rebel cause, and is frequently sent as far as Chicago on their business.
The meetings are held in a room not capable of accommodating many
persons. At one of the earlier ones one person appeared who ventured to
question some remark made by one of the speakers, for which act he was
immediately expelled. A box is placed at the entrance in the nature of a
poor’s box, intended to receive any anonymous contributions which may be
made by English sympathizers without committing themselves. A few small
sums are obtained that way. * * * * * * * * * * * * * I need not enlarge
upon the literal or logical peculiarities of their pamphlet. It is
enough to observe that it indicates a degree of despair and distress at
home, which I could scarcely have supposed the advocates of recognition
here would be willing to confess. The production has been rather
cautiously issued only to persons supposed to be inclined to sympathize.
I have obtained some copies which I have not feared to put into the
hands of leading gentlemen here. This organization is sanctioned by
Mason, Lieutenant Maury, and the rest of the active emissaries in
London, though I do not attribute the authorship of the production to
them. Its success thus far has not been much. But I am told they
contemplate larger operations presently, when an effort will be made to
carry a measure of recognition through Parliament.
Lieutenant Maury professes to have come here for the purpose of bringing
a son out for his education. He is really sent to forward the despatch
of five war vessels building at Liverpool and elsewhere for the rebels.
I learn, moreover, that as many more are building of iron at Bordeaux
and Nantes; but you doubtless have sources of more accurate information
as to those from France itself. We are watching the progress of the
English ones, and hope to be able to obtain in season the evidence on
which to base a new remonstrance to her Majesty’s government. In the
meanwhile the transmission of supplies goes on with unabated industry.
The steamer Princess Royal left last week with a very valuable cargo,
including all the armor plates intended for a vessel at Charleston. Her
nominal destination is Halifax, to take in coals, but she has a
Charleston pilot on board, and will attempt a direct voyage, if the
weather and other circumstances prove propitious. The difficulty in
preventing ingress and egress at that port seems to have proved so great
that I scarcely dare to hope she will be intercepted. From the number of
pilots sent out from that point I am led to infer they find it almost
their only dependence. Yet, in spite of all their success, the severity
of their distress sufficiently proves the general effectiveness of the
blockade. It is very much to be desired that within the next three
months some further results may be arrived at in obtaining their
remaining ports, which will render all the armament they are preparing
here to break the blockade of little worth.
[Pamphlet referred to.]
An address to the British public and
all sympathizers in Europe, from the London Confederate States
Aid Association.
We most earnestly and sincerely solicit your co-operation, aid, and
support to the cause of the Confederate States of America. They are
now engaged in a war of defence against a most fearful odds of
unscrupulous enemies.
Their immense coast is blockaded, and their entire communication cut
off from the rest of mankind. Their harbors have been destroyed,
their rivers and waters are in the possession of their enemies.
Laws have been passed confiscating their property, and forcing the
oath of allegiance under the pains and penalty of death.
Their women have been insulted, imprisoned, flogged, violated, and
outraged in a most inhuman and savage manner. Their homes and goods
have been destroyed, their houses forcibly entered, the helpless and
unresisting inmates murdered, the fleeing overtaken and cut down in
cold blood by their savage soldiery.
Respectable and peaceable unarmed citizens have been arrested and
imprisoned, others shot or hung in the presence of their families,
without a moment’s warning, or the slightest pretext or provocation
whatever. Their villages, towns, and cities have been destroyed and
made desolate plains; their once productive fields laid waste, made
barren, and crimsoned with their own blood.
That their invaders are bent on mischief, robbery, murder, arson, and
crimes of the most revolting nature, cannot be doubted. The past
history of this war demonstrates but too clearly their fiendish and
demoniacal purpose; they destroy everything they come in reach of,
both man and beast. They are now glutting their hellish rage against
the people they seek to destroy, in inflicting every kind of
torture, punishment, and misery that their fruitful minds can
invent, upon those that they fain would call fellow-citizens. In
this raid nothing seems so much to delight them as spreading wild
ruin, devastation, destruction, and universal desolation throughout
the land they have invaded, for the purpose of revenge and hatred.
In their fury, malice, and madness, they have spent millions to
destroy the natural channels of the waters that wash southern
shores. The atrocities, cruelties, crimes, and outrages committed
against the south in this war are without a parallel in the history
of the world. Added to these misfortunes and calamities, foreign
nations have treated them with unprecedented severity, oppression,
Unfairness and rigor; they have denied them a voice in their courts,
and refuse to have any communication with them whatever. The
Confederate States are left without an alternative, either
successful resistance or dishonored graves. This war can only
terminate in the entire destruction of the south and the
annihilation of her people, or in her ability to drive the enemy
from her territory, and establish and maintain her institutions
inviolate.
The United States of America, eighteen months ago, declared the
entire confederate coast blockaded; the declaration was not worth
the paper on which it was written without the approval of the great
powers of Europe; and though
[Page 23]
the law regulating the question as to what constituted a blockade,
and momentous interest was in direct opposition, all questions were
waived, the legality acknowledged, the blockade acquiesced in, and
made binding, thus cutting off all communication between us and what
was heretofore the largest producing, exporting, importing, and
consuming market in the world. This has had a most ruinous and
destructive influence on our commerce and prosperity, which is
beginning to be severely felt by all classes of society, but more
especially the manufacturing and laboring portion of the people; all
branches of business have been depreciated to ruinous rates, even to
suspension. The real necessities and wants of the people cannot be
supplied; untold numbers have been thrown out of work, and are
wandering about seeking employment in vain, until they are worn out
by hunger, thirst, and starvation. Our fundamental sources of
wealth, greatness, affluence, power, and independence have been, in
a great measure, suspended by yielding to the infamous acts of a
haughty tyrant.
The importance that we have heretofore attached to the trade of the
north has deceived us, and dwindles into insignificance when
compared to that of the south; the absurdity of their promise to
supply us with cotton through their ports can now be seen by every
one.
Most strange and extraordinary, every speaker and writer on the
subject of the cotton famine is giving the public mind the wrong
direction. It can only be found where it is, and can only be
produced regularly in large quantities where climate, soil, and
geographical position is favorable to its production, and that can
only be determined by the experience of a series of years.
After a careful and most thorough investigation of the subject, we
are irresistibly forced to the conclusion that no other country can
produce so good, cheap, and large supply as the old, well-tried
fields of the Confederate States of America; therefore we are of
opinion that this country cannot rely, with any degree of certainty,
on any other market. The emergency, necessity, and real wants of the
hour incontestably prove our conclusion to be well founded.
We have seen the absurdity and folly of relying on other markets for
supplies. Almost as soon as our old stock has been worked, our mills
have been compelled to stop; though fabulous prices have been
offered, no adequate quantity can be had. Notwithstanding our old
market has abundance and to spare, at the moderate price of
threepence per pound, and from that source the United States, and
those that sustain them in their policy, has denied us our ordinary
supplies, the want of which has been the direct cause of the
starvation and distress in Lancashire. It is hard that the innocent
should suffer to aid the cause of cruelty and tyranny in a crusade
against the unoffending south.
Every impartial mind must be convinced that if the south had had the
same facilities of obtaining war material from abroad as the north,
that the war would have been ended long since. We are of opinion
that peace can only be obtained by the success of confederate arms,
and that all the embarrassments thrown in their way will only
prolong the contest.
To what extent individuals and nations are responsible for permitting
the destruction of life and property that they could in their own
lawful right prohibit, is a question worthy the attention and
consideration of the civilized world. The indifference manifested in
the immense interest that we have at stake and involved in this war
is well calculated to alarm our fears, and awaken in us emotions of
the gravest character. The indications are certainly very clear that
our government intends to persist in the policy that they have seen
proper to adopt towards the belligerents, and it is equally clear to
our minds that, under that policy, the war will continue for many
long years. Under all their difficulties the confederate government
has grown stronger and stronger every day; unaided by any one, their
onward march to power and greatness seems inevitable under perhaps
the greatest sufferings that humanity was ever called to pass
through; heroically and nobly have they fought through many bloody
[Page 24]
battles; undaunted and
undismayed in defeat; calm, mild, and unexulting in victory; and
have shown themselves worthy of a place amongst the nations of the
earth.
We are persuaded that it is only necessary here to call your
attention to the great sufferings of our own people, and the
identity of interest that we have with the south in the war, and the
lamentable and desperate condition of the people of the Confederate
States of America are owing principally to the enormous unfairness
exerted against them, and the disadvantage that they labor under in
obtaining war material to defend themselves against vastly superior
numbers, to awaken you to a sense of the importance of arresting the
horrors of the bloodstained march of tyranny, and the reign of
crimes and terrors now carried on against the confederates by the
federals, and restore to them liberty, peace—and happiness to our
country. To the accomplishment of these ends and purposes we turn to
you in the name of suffering Lancashire, civilization, justice,
peace, liberty, humanity, Christianity, and a candid world; and by
the highest considerations that can call men to action, we beg you
to come forward to aid, contribute, and support a brave and valiant
people that are fighting for their homes, firesides, birthright,
lives, independence, sacred honor, and all that is near and dear to
mankind. By all the sorrows, deprivations, bereavements, losses,
hardships, and sufferings that now ingulph the confederate people,
we appeal to you to arouse and rush to their aid with your pence,
shillings, and pounds; give them your sympathy, countenance, and
influence to hurl the tyrants from their country, and obtain the
greatest boon to man—self-government.
Fairest and best of earth, for the sake of violated Innocence,
insulted virtue, and the honor of your sex, come in woman’s majesty
and omnipotence, and give strength to a cause that has for its
object the highest human aims, the amelioration and exaltation of
humanity.
At a meeting of the Confederate States Aid
Association, held at their rooms on the evening of Wednesday,
the 20th of August, 1862, the following
report was unanimously adopted.
It is notorious from the history of the late United States for the
last fourteen years that the laws of the land were not enforced
throughout a great portion of the northern section of the country.
It is undeniable that the government of Washington was wholly
impotent to compel obedience; and that the enactments of the federal
legislature, indorsed and expounded by the Supreme Court of
judicature, were in most of the northern States of the late federal
Union become a dead letter.
Ohio, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine,
Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, and others of the western States, by a
formal act of their legislatures, made it positively penal to
execute within their districts the federal laws of the land, and
forbade the officers of the federal government to execute them
within their borders. The message of President Franklin Pierce,
issued in 1856, proves this to demonstration.
The plain consequence of this action on the part of the northern
States amounted to a virtual dissolution of the Union, and absolved
the southern States from allegiance to the national compact, the
constitution of which indispensably provided for the administration
of the general laws enacted for the benefit of all.
For the whole of that period the southern States suffered much and
long the deprivation of their national rights for the sake of
preserving their common nationality, and from fear of the disruption
of the ties which bound the several States in a common national
federal Union. They found themselves without a government, save that
of their own individual States; neither life nor property was
secured to them by law outside their own borders, nor did the
national government possess power to protect either the one or the
other, as by the common
[Page 25]
laws
of mankind the supreme government is bound to be enabled to do. The
south held firmly to all the conditions of the national federation,
and religiously performed all the duties which were consequent upon
a partnership under a union of States, in a federal government, by
the common consent of such States, and formed upon the basis of
their mutual interests.
Such consent was destroyed by the regular and organized action of a
political conspiracy to contravene the obligations of the common and
national Union. The party now in power at Washington are the persons
who undeniably organized this conspiracy. With systematic disloyalty
to the federal laws, vigilant committees were formed in the northern
States to resist the law, until. they became strong enough to
nominate the chief officer of the nation the head of vigilant
committeeism, under a higher law than the laws of the land,
acknowledging no other restriction or obligation than that imposed
by their own conscience, and violently and successfully resisting
the plain terms of the compact of the national Union. Having made
every possible concession to the north for the sake of preserving
such Union, the south consented to the imposition of tariffs which
were seriously detrimental to their commercial interests; they
allowed the north, to monopolize the whole of their shipping and
carrying trade; they submitted to be shut out from free trade with
Europe and the rest of the civilized world, and to exchange the
products of one of the richest agricultural countries on the face of
the globe, only through the medium of the brokers of the north,
whose manufactures were exchanged with them under the most stringent
protective provisions, and unmistakably productive to the northern
interests. This they endured until long suffering ceased to be a
virtue, and the laws of self-defence imperatively called upon them
to act. The consequences had been long foreseen, and loudly
proclaimed by the ablest statesmen of both sections of the Union,
who, in the common interest of the nation, solemnly implored the
calm consideration of the consequences of an action which inevitably
tended to the disruption of the federal Union, but without
effect.
Compromise was again and again attempted, but without practical
result; at the very last an equitable adjustment of the differences
in question between the two sections was offered, and contemptuously
refused. The north appealed to force as its sole remedy, and at this
day we see what has been the result of the appeal. In the face of
her necessities, and with full consciousness of all the difficulties
and dangers that she run, the southern confederacy determined to
assert her independence. In the month of May, 1860, the federal
States of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida,
Mississippi, and Louisiana formed a national compact, by the regular
action of their people, under the provisions of the Constitution,
and in conformity with its regulations, to secede from the Union, by
and with the consent of the people.
It has been incessantly asserted that such consent was obtained by
violence and under restraint, but the whole facts of the contest
which ensued offer a plain contradiction to such an opinion, and
give the lie to such an assertion. The government then appointed
have peaceably and without interruption conducted the affairs of the
nation, then constituted, up to the present time; they have met with
no opposition within their borders; their government, their army,
their laws have been regularly and orderly arranged, constituted,
and administered One by one the border States, by regular
constitutional action, joined the seceding Confederate States, and
the government, which originally prepared at Montgomery to brave the
hostility of the rich and powerful northern States, found itself
enabled to establish itself permanently at Richmond, the capital of
the Old Dominion, the most noble and the most honored of the States
which formed the quondam Union. They were
without arms, without a navy, without founderies, and without
ammunition; they were cut off from all communication with other
nations by the overwhelming supremacy of the federal navy. Their
officers, the sons of then oldest families, who were on service in
the federal
[Page 26]
army and navy,
were arrested and committed to prison on their resigning a
commission which the national action of their homes left them no
alternative but to send in, and yet against all the odds of the
contest, against all the odds of the preparation, and the fearful
preponderance of military and scientific appliances, which the power
and wealth of the north and their undisputed possession of the sea
enabled them to procure from the markets of Europe, the Confederate
States, on the 21st July, 1861, succeeded in hurling back with loss
and destruction the invading army of the north, which had boasted
that in sixty days they would completely subjugate the country which
had dared to be free. Can any one, at the present day, venture to
dispute the right of the southern confederacy to a separate
existence, which she has equally maintained by the success of her
armies in the field and by the regular administration of the laws
and constituted authorities at home ?
Under these circumstances it becomes important to see what has been
the action of England towards the Confederate States. From the very
commencement of this war of independence, every newspaper, every
magazine, and almost every public organ of information, seem to have
accepted a retainer on the northern side.
The secession was termed a rebellion. Every telegram from the
government of Washington and every article from the press of New
York, dictated by their suggestion, was accepted as true by those
who professed to give intelligence of the events occurring on the
other side of the Atlantic. No single writer known to English
literature ventured to raise his voice in favor of a cause which
peculiarly recommended itself to British sympathies, as being a
struggle of freemen for independence.
The world seemed overwhelmed with the audacious assertion of the
northern organs of public opinion without demanding a tittle of
proof; morbid and over sensitive religious feeling accepted,
unquestioned, the accounts of Mrs. Beecher Stowe as a faithful
representation of the social status of the slaveholding country, and
looked upon the disruption as a violent attempt to perpetuate such a
condition of things and persons against the better sense of the
majority of the nation at large.
When Dr. Lempriere, in August, 1861, published his “American Crisis,”
his advocacy of the southern cause was greeted with an almost
universal shout of obloquy. The Edinburgh Review, which, in 1832,
had ventured to suggest that the people of England, if deprived by
the legislature of the electoral franchise they demanded, had a
right to arm themselves against the executive, expressed their
astonishment that a member of the bar and a fellow of the University
of Oxford should dare to advocate a cause which the common humanity
of Europe repudiated. Mr. Spence, of Liverpool, by his admirable
philosophical treatise on the American Union, staggered these
unthinking politicians, while his calm aud irresistible logic
dissipated all the fallacies unsparingly put forward to cloud the
intelligence of England from apprehending the true state of affairs.
Even the ludicrous piracy of the Trent, the monstrous propositions
of international law, and insolent defiance of England, consequent
on Commodore Wilkes’s seizure of Messrs. Mason and Slidell, all
seemed to be atoned by the submission of the Washington cabinet,
arrogant as it was. The government refused to listen to the
representations, forced upon them from all quarters, of the
insufficiency of the blockade of 3,800 miles of coast, by a navy
composed in a great part of merchant ships extemporized into
vessels-of-war, and although they were compelled by Lord Derby’s
irresistible definition of the right of the confederates to be
treated as belligerents, to treat both parties on an equal footing
as regards the Queen’s proclamation, they missed the only
opportunity that was ever afforded to them of asserting the right of
commerce, which all neutral nations, since 1798, have been by the
common consent of Europe allowed to exercise, with the sole
condition that they do not carry articles contraband of war.
[Page 27]
They proclaimed and have rigidly adhered to a policy which is
nominally perfect neutrality, but which in reality exclusively
favors the northern side. By the command of the sea the north has
been able to draw from England the whole of her munitions of war,
and to arm herself with every military appliance which the skill and
science of England was able to give them; while, on the other hand,
not a single cargo of the common necessaries of life, such as salt,
coffee, &c., &c., clothing, implements of husbandry, even
needles and sewing cotton, was able to reach the south without the
risk of being denounced in England, and being taken by the federal
cruisers long before it reached its destination. But though the
government has been thus consistently what they call neutral, the
people of England have gradually awakened to a better understanding.
On the one hand, the conquest by the south of a clear and
indisputable title to independence, the acquiescence and consent of
her people to the constituted authority of the government, the
statesmanship and order of her rulers, both military and civil, the
solemn and regular character of the proceedings of the legislature,
and the state papers which issued from the several governmental
bureaus, won the admiration of men who are nationally lovers of law
and of order. On the other hand, the continued falsehoods authorized
by the cabinet of Washington, the outrageous disregard of truth and
decency, as well in diplomatic correspondence as in the dispatches
of their military officers, the inhuman and brutal conduct of their
generals, the license of their troops, as well as their utter
inefficiency, tore aware the veil from a warfare which
meretriciously pretended to be the cause of constitutional law and
humanity, but which was in fact a lust of power regardless of
consequences, and reckless of the blood and treasure of their common
country.
From these causes Englishmen have learned to recognize the position
of men of their own blood fighting for the freedom of their country
and their homes against an invasion by hordes of mercenaries
collected from the scum of almost every nation, actuated by the
prospect of plunder, and officered by generals without the least
military pretensions, and whose public actions will consign their
names to infamy, and hand down their memory to the detestation of
all posterity. They have recognized the energies of the south in
having achieved one of the most stupendous efforts recorded in the
history of nations. That the confederacy, without preparation,
without arms, without ships, without founderies, without military
organization, cut off as she was from all communication with other
nations, not only maintained internally her separate existence, as
was proved by the cheerful allegiance of her citizens, but
triumphantly, by the success of her arms in the field, vindicated
her rights as a nation which dared to be free againt the largest and
most elaborately prepared armies that modern times have seen.
If, then, a sense of natural justice, a horror of tyranny and
oppression, a love of order and the protection of life and property
by the law of the land, continue, as they have ever done, to command
the sympathies of Englishmen, the southern confederacy has an
undeniable claim. She has not a rival either in commerce or in
glory; hers is a consuming and not a manufacturing country; her
lands supply the raw material from which the bread of millions here
is earned; she only demands liberty of free exchange of her natural
wealth with the products of the skill and labor of England; she has
at this moment upwards of 3,000,000 bales of cotton yet undestroyed,
and is crying loudly but in vain for a purchaser; she has the
turpentine and resin which this internecine war has almost wholly
withdrawn from the world’s trade; she has rice, sugar, tobacco,
hemp, maize, wheat, and Indian corn, in quantities which are almost
incredible. Lieutenant Maury, a reliable authority, informs us her
trade would require 20,000 ships and 200,000 sailors; that the
manufactured articles which she would draw from Europe, in cloth and
cotton goods, shoes, cutlery, implements of husbandry, salt, drugs,
&c., &c., would give labor for 4,000,000 of artisans.
[Page 28]
Is not such a commerce
worthy of consideration? Is not such an ally worthy of being saved
from annihilation, which is brutal, and is threatened to be total?
But not only is the sympathy of England claimed on account of the
natural rights of freemen, on an appreciation of the mutual
interests of both countries, on their consanguinity and the de jure as well as de
facto conquest of independence, we should never forget that
the hostility which, without any just cause of offence, and even
against the plainest dictates of reason and equity, has
characterized not only the words and actions of the public men in
the north, but seems to have poisoned the whole life blood of the
nation, will inevitably, on some future occasion, force England from
her attitude of neutrality.
Can we afford to reject a natural ally not only inviting us to terms
of amity; but imploring us with tears to help our own children, when
that ally and those children possess 3,800 miles of coasts indented
with harbors, into which are poured by giant rivers the riches of an
almost interminable continent, and still more when we consider that
her northwestern border is only ninety-seven miles distant from the
Canadian lakes, the frontier of our most valuable colony as well as
our imperial strength and dignity, will be called upon to defend
against irruption, which it is the favorite theme of the federals to
consider as the natural outlet for their new-found military
enthusiasm.
