Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: Your last despatches, like their immediate predecessors, have come within the hour appointed for the closing of the outgoing European mails. I acknowledge now the receipt of the more important one, which bears the date of December 18, and is numbered 275.
So much of this paper as relates to the transmission of supplies, and to naval preparations by the insurgents’ emissaries in Europe, will be immediately communicated to the Navy Department.
Our iron-clad steamers are now gathering upon the southern coast. We have [Page 54] lost the Monitor by her foundering at sea, and the accident justly produces a profound national regret. Her achievements had made her an object of pride— I might almost say an object of affection. But every one feels that she had already vindicated the invention and compensated the cost of her construction. Her place will be easily filled by another vessel, in which the fault to which we owe the loss of the Monitor has been corrected.
With the exception of the army of the Potomac, all our forces are now in a condition of activity. We are yet in a state of suspense about the result of a series of battles which occurred on the 31st December, and 1st, 2d, and 3d of January, in the neighborhood of Murfreesboro’. The telegraph thus far tells us of wonderful bravery, attended with varying phases of battle, and of great loss of life on both sides.
The forces of General Sherman, belonging to the army of General Grant, having descended the Mississippi, are besieging Vicksburg. Our latest advices do not inform us that the fleet under Admiral Farragut has as yet passed up the river from New Orleans. The force operating in Arkansas has been eminently successful. It is probable that the steamer which will convey this despatch will, at the time of her departure from Boston, receive later and more significant military information than any which it is now in my power to communicate.
While it would be unwise to promise immediate and decisive operations of our naval forces, I think you may rest assured that at least the rigor of the blockade already experienced at Charleston and Mobile is likely to be increased to such a degree as to defeat the aids which are proceeding to those ports from Europe.
The government of the United States has not recognized any obligation to justify its proceedings in the prosecution of the war against the insurgents. Still less would it in any case enter into the example set by its disloyal citizens in Europe by directing the attention of foreign states to the extraordinary severities decreed and practiced by the insurgents upon prisoners of war. The insurgents make up their records for themselves, and Christian people everywhere will judge whether the war waged against the government is entitled to sympathies so steadily invoked in the names of freedom and humanity.
Thus far no prisoner of war captured by the national military forces, nor any person arrested by the civil authority, has suffered any other penalty than mere duress for a limited period.
The intenseness of cruelty which reveals itself in the so-to-speak official utterances of the insurrectionary authorities indicates an alarm, a consciousness of exhaustion and of danger, which cannot be misunderstood. In the face of such utterances, appeals like that of the Confederate Aid Society in London, to which you have directed my attention, cannot excite sympathy among a people who, in every communication that they make to us, demand the most rigid observance of the rules of civil law and judicial administration.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.