Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: Your despatch of the 5th of June (No. 425) has been received. The several notes which you have addressed to Earl Russell on the subject of hostile naval armaments which are being prepared in British ports, copies of which notes are appended to the despatch, are approved. It is a source of profound regret that the prospect that these armaments will be prevented by her Majesty’s government is now by no means as hopeful as it seemed when the officers of the crown interposed to arrest the Alexandra.
I have placed your despatch and its accompaniments in the hands of the Secretary of the Navy, in the hope and belief that he will be able to prosecute the great work of enlarging our navy so as to be able to meet with constantly augmenting force the increasing number of our assailants. While we are thus steadily and regularly increasing our naval defences, we trust that her Majesty’s government will abate no effort that it can make to put the anti-foreigner enlistment laws of Great Britain in force against a class of persons whose enterprises will, as we feel assured, prove in the end to be as fruitful of evils to that country as they are to our own.
Let us suppose that, through the inefficiency of British administration or of British laws, the people of South Carolina and neighboring States should be able to bring a self-sustaining fleet upon the high seas from the British shores at a moment when, madly waging war against the United States, the system of slavery, which is confessedly to be the corner-stone of their projected social and political systems, is passing away forever. What could be expected in that case but the employment of that same naval force to cover a replantation of the cotton and sugar fields of the south through a revival of the African slave trade? Would the slaveholders of the insurgent States, once independent and sovereign, be any more tolerant of opposition from strangers in Europe than they now are of resistance by their own brethren in America? Would they enter into treaties with Great Britain to suppress the piracy, on the continuance of which they must depend for their very existence? Would they recognize and execute the [Page 315] treaties to that effect which we have made for them? Certainly not. What, then, would be before the world as the first fruit of the sovereignty of the insurgents? The restoration of the African slave trade. Where would the wicked and devastating traffic end? Would it be confined within the insurgent States? Would it turn aside from the shores of the gulf? Would it brook opposition in the British islands? If this danger seem imaginary, it can seem so only because, notwithstanding all the favor the insurgents are receiving in Europe, the maritime powers on that continent expect, and justly expect, that the United States will suppress the insurrection and maintain the federal Union. But those powers and all other existing powers have the same motives as the United States for preventing the renewal of the African slave trade. The conjuncture is favorable. If it were either liberal or just for other nations to increase the difficulties and embarrassments of the United States, would such a course be wise? The President has observed with much satisfaction that the anti-slave trade conventions which we have recently entered into with Great Britain have elicited ready approbation in the British legislature. This circumstance has suggested the thought that British statesmen might not be now altogether unprepared or unwilling to look at the possible tendency, which I have indicated, of the very injurious naval preparations which are going on in Great Britain with a design to overthrow the government of the United States.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.