Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: Your despatch of the 27th of November (No. 545) has been received. We await with much interest the end of the prosecution in the case of the Alexandra. Meanwhile the bold and flagrant crime committed in the name of the insurgents here, by seizing the steamer Chesapeake, and using the British colonial coasts and waters as a base of their piratical operations, ought to bring home to the British government the discovery that its premature toleration of the anomalous belligerent is engendering a border war, which would be a sad and dangerous sequel to our unhappy insurrection.
Again, if the northern states of Europe are to become a theatre of a civil war in Denmark, with the intervention of foreign states on opposing sides, according to their sympathies or dynastic interests, it will soon become important to know by what code of neutrality our own conduct is to be regulated—whether the one we have set up, or the one that has been adopted by Great Britain and France in regard to ourselves.
The President thinks that her Majesty’s government cannot fail to see the importance of removing all existing causes of discontent between their own country and the United States. I learn from your despatch that the perverseness of disunion agitators in Great Britain still continues to manifest itself in operations designed to influence Parliament at its approaching session. The most effectual way to quiet them would be to publish as widely as possible the (so to speak) official expositions of the leaders of the insurrection given forth by the conspirators themselves at Richmond. We cannot properly address ourselves to the press in a foreign country. Perhaps the subject may be thought worthy of Earl Russell’s attention.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles F. Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.