Lord Lyons to Earl Russell.
My Lord: With reference to my despatch of the day before yesterday’s date, I have the honor to inform your lordship that Mr. Seward returned to Washington last night, and that I went to him this morning to confer with him upon the accounts which I had received since he left Washington of the proceedings of the United States officers in Nova Scotia in the affair of the Chesapeake. I related the events to him as they had really occurred, and said that I would not conceal from him that they had caused me a great deal of anxiety and distress. [Page 493] I added, however, that, bearing in mind the assurances given beforehand in his note to me of the 18th instant, I had determined to wait for his return to Washington, in order to discuss the matter with him in a friendly and confidential manner, before taking any further steps.
Mr. Seward said that the subject was altogether a painful one. The spirit shown by the people of Halifax in rescuing one of the pirates, and the facts that Braine, one of the chief of them, and he believed several others, were themselves Nova Scotians, and that a large number of rifles had been serit by confederate agents to Nova Scotia, rendered it necessary for the United States government to consider seriously whether it would not be necessary to adopt extraordinary precautions with respect to intercourse with that colony. Mr. Seward added, that he could not be expected to state specifically the course the United States government would take with regard to the proceedings of its officers in the case of the Chesapeake, until he had had time to make himself acquainted with all the facts; that he would, however, apply himself to the subject immediately, and that I might at once state with entire confidence to her Majesty’s government that the assurances which he had, by the President’s order, given in his note, would be acted up to.
I have, &c.,