Mr. Fogg to Mr. Seward.
Sir: Your circular, dated March 9, transmitting the “resolutions of the Congress of the United States concerning foreign intervention in the existing rebellion,” and instructing me to make said resolutions known to the Swiss government by reading them to the minister of foreign affairs, or by delivering to him a copy thereof, was received a few days ago.
In pursuance of your instructions, I this day delivered in person to his excellency the President of the confederation and minister of foreign affairs a copy of said resolutions, accompanied with a carefully prepared French translation of the same. The President took this occasion to reiterate his previously expressed wishes for the welfare and prosperity of the United States, and for the suppression of the rebellion. He authorized me to inform the President of the United States that he entirely approved the course of our government in rejecting all propositions of foreign intervention, and in notifying the powers proposing such intervention that such propositions could not be regarded as evincing friendship for the United States. In this connexion he alluded to the offers of mediation which several of the great European powers made to Switzerland during the famous “Sonderbunds” war, and the advice which the government of the confederation then received from almost all quarters to consent to a secession of the rebellious cantons.
In this connexion I may add, for the encouragement of our own government to persist in the efforts to put down the present rebellion, that European opinion was in 1847 quite as unanimous against the practicability of maintaining or reconstructing the Swiss confederation as it is now on the point of the hopeless destruction of the American Union. Had the confederate authorities accepted this opinion and the “friendly mediation” then so generously offered, or been guided by the advice of foreign cabinets and statesmen, Switzerland would have ceased to be reckoned among the nations. She rejected them, crushed the rebellion by the arms of her loyal citizens, and saved her nationality.
That a similar history may be that of our own greater republic, hopes and prays your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State of the United States of America.