Mr. Fogg to Mr. Seward.

No. 47.]

Sir: Your circular No. 3.9, dated August 12, setting forth succinctly and clearly the progress of our government in circumscribing and crushing the rebellion, is received, and has been perused by me with great interest and satisfaction. Were not the governments of France and Great Britain committed to a policy hostile to the American Union, and had not the Emperor and the leading statesmen of both governments prophesied and proclaimed the success of the rebels, I should have no doubt that the progress and present condition of the “belligerents,” as exhibited by your circular, would convince them of the great mistake they made in the beginning, and of the duty of reconsidering and rescinding their action in the premises. As it is, and in view of the persistent aid and comfort accorded to the rebels in a [Page 1311] thousand ways by almost all the wealthy classes of one nation and by the government itself of the other, I have little expectation that any array of facts, or any appeals to their sense of justice, will extort the reversal of an act which was deliberately resolved on in the interest of the rebellion, and perpetrated at a moment and under circumstances which the most generous charity cannot palliate into less than a national insult.

When we shall have literally and utterly crushed out the rebellion, (a consummation which I pray God may not be far off,) then, and not till then, may we expect those two governments to repent of the wrong they have committed towards a friendly nation, and make reparation for that wrong. But so long as their concession of “belligerent rights” to the rebels can serve the rebellion and give credit and hope of ultimate triumph to the so-called southern confederacy, just so long will a deaf ear be turned to our representations and appeals.

I do not deem it, however, “love’s labor lost” to present to these powers, on every proper occasion, these exhibits of the progress made in putting down this gigantic rebellion. It is well to write history at the same moment that we are making it. Our nation’s day of sitting in judgment will come, and it will not be to our disadvantage to have a record already made up.

Earnestly and cordially congratulating you on the now moral certainty of a successful and righteous termination of our great struggle, and ardently praying that our beloved country may emerge from its baptism of blood and fire purer, freer, and greater than was possible without that baptism, I am your friend and obedient servant,

GEORGE G. FOGG.

Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State of the United States of America.