Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the First Session Thirty-eighth Congress, Part II

Mr. Judd to Mr. Seward

No. 51.]

Legation of the United States, Berlin, September 9, 1863.

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your circular, No. 39, dated 12th of August. It has been published in most of the German newspapers, and is in the hands of almost all the intelligent readers of Europe.

We have news as late as General Gillmore’s report from Charleston to the 27th ultimo. Sumter is demolished. The “London Star” calls it the destruction of “the Plymouth rock of rebellion.” The sins of Charleston are so well stated in the London Star that I venture part of one of its articles.

Mr. Ruggles arrived here, after a passage impeded by fogs, on Monday, the 7th instant, and immediately took his seat in the international statistical congress. That body had commenced its session the day before, viz, Sunday, the 6th instant. He was in season to prevent the recognition of the existence of the confederacy in a most important report, the particulars of which he will explain. He has prepared a report on the resources of the United States, which is being printed and to be laid before the congress. It is characterized by his usual ability and broad and comprehensive views of the capacity of the United States to feed the world, and also to supply it with the precious metal, and the giant strides that they have made in the past in those directions.

The congress of German princes at Frankfort has closed its labors. The Austrian scheme has received the sanction of nearly all the princes, and they have now, in a joint letter, submitted it to the King of Prussia for his acceptance. It is, however, manifest that it will not be accepted, and that the scheme must fail, unless Austria can induce a number of princes to join it in a separate confederation, a course which, like secession in the United States, would result in war, and hence it will not be ventured upon.

His Majesty and the ministers returned in the forepart of this month. The King has by decree dissolved the chamber of deputies. The new election, according to the constitution, must take place within sixty days, the government fixing the precise time of the election.

No official programme has yet been laid before the public, but many rumors are rife as to the intentions and motives of the government in this course of action. It is useless to trouble you with these rumors, as they are all colored by the hopes or fears of the authors or repeaters. That the new election will give the government a chamber materially different in its composition from the one dissolved is entirely unlikely. Most of the present liberal members will be re-elected, and the majority against the government will be as large as before.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

N. B. JUDD.

Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State.

[Extract from London Star on Charleston.]

A southern paper complains with amusing simplicity that the Yankees get the largest possible guns to carry the heaviest possible shot, themselves keeping out of range of the confederate artillery. If the men who are thus overmatched were fighting in a good cause, we could profoundly pity them for the inferiority of their weapons. But it is not at Charleston that southern men can ask the sympathy or the compassion of Englishmen. Charleston has made itself infamous by the boldness of its blasphemy and its crime. It is a nest of man-stealers and women-floggers. It is the ringleader in rebellion against a government that excelled all others in the freedom it secured to its subjects. It is the capital of the new civilization, the cathedral of a new religion. It is the type and corner-stone of the doctrine that liberty and equality are hateful. It has set itself against all that we count true in morals and valuable in fact. If it perish, it will perish only in the hardihood of audacious wrong.