Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the Second Session Thirty-eighth Congress, Part I
Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: I transmit the copy of a despatch of the 21st ultimo from the consul of the United States, at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and of the address of the workingmen and other inhabitants of that place, to the President of the United States, which accompanied it, together with a copy of the reply which the President proposes to make to it, should such reply meet with the approbation of Earl Russell, to whom you will informally submit these papers, Lord Lyons having declined to entertain the matter, preferring the reference now made.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles F. Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.
Mr. Jackson to Mr. Seward.
Sir: I have the honor, at the request and on behalf of a committee appointed by the memorialists, consisting of Hon. John Tobin, M. P. P., Rev. Dr. Pryor, and James Cochran, John W. Young, Joseph Jennings, John Gibson, Alexander James, and George McKenzie, esquires, to transmit to you for presentation to his excellency the President of the United States the enclosed memorial addressed to him, signed by 153 citizens of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Whilst the general feelings and sentiments of the citizens of Halifax are not in sympathy with the cause of the Union and of our country, but are hostile to it, it is nevertheless true, as the memorial sufficiently indicates, that among the citizens there are men, representing the various elasses of the community, and some of the highest standing, character, and influence, who throughout our noble struggle for freedom, humanity, and constitutional government, have warmly sympathized with the loyal people of the United States.
I beg leave, in connexion with the memorial, to call your attention to the enclosed communication from Donald Ross, esq., on behalf of the memorialists.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward Secretary of State.
Mr. Ross to Mr. Jackson.
Dear Sir: I send with this a letter to you with reference to the memorial to the President. You can prepare your letter to Mr. Seward, so as to have it ready for forwarding with the memorial per steamer.
The names given in the accompanying letter represent a large amount of wealth as well as respectability. Indeed, no community could furnish eight names more universally or deservedly respected.
[Page 126]The memorial will be sent up to your office this afternoon. I send a printed copy in the letter to you, which you should, I think, forward to Mr. Seward, along with the memorial. I send also a printed copy for your own use. In the event of the President making a reply, which no doubt he will, the acknowledgment of the memorial, if made to the gentlemen whose names are mentioned in the letter to you, would be better than if made to one individual; but all that will be arranged by Hon. Mr. Seward and yourself.
Yours, sincerely,
Hon. M. M. Jackson, United States Consul.
Mr. Ross to Mr. Jackson.
Dear Sir: I have been requested by the Rev. John Pryor, doctor of divinity, Halifax; John Tobin, esq., member of legislative assembly, Halifax; James Cochran, esq., J. P., merchant, Halifax; John W. Young, esq., merchant, Halifax; Joseph Jennings, esq., J. P., alderman for the city of Halifax; John Gibson, esq., merchant, Halifax; Alexander James, esq., barrister at law, Halifax; George McKenzie, esq., merchant, Halifax; and other merchants, mechanics and laborers who subscribed the accompanying memorial to his excellency Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, to hand the same over to you, and respectfully request that you will be pleased to forward the memorial to the Hon. Mr. Seward, at Washington, with the request of the above-named gentleman that he will be pleased to present the same in their name, and those with them subscribing, to his excellency the President of the United States.
And I have the honor to be, dear sir, your very obedient servant,
Hon. Mr. Jackson, United States Consul, Halifax, N. S.
To his Excellency Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America.
The memorial of the undersigned, citizens, workingmen, and others, inhabitants of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and neighborhood, showeth: That your memorialists, feeling themselves allied in race, language, literature, commerce, and civilization, as well as in geographical proximity, to the great American nation, over whose destinies a gracious Providence has called you to preside, regard themselves as vitally interested in the issue of the existing great conflict in your country, as one involving the extension or extinction of human and political freedom throughout the whole of the American nation.
Your memorialists have always deeply regretted the existence of slavery in the United States as the one foul blot on your country and Constitution; and therefore they feel deeply thankful to an all-wise Providence for the large measure of success which has attended the United States forces in suppressing the slaveholders’ rebellion, and for the gigantic strides which have recently been made by your government and people towards a total abolition of slavery.
Your memorialists rejoice in the advent to power of the great republican party, through whose anti-slavery policy these great and beneficial changes have been inaugurated; and they are fully convinced that the sympathies of all real [Page 127] lovers of liberty and of humanity, whether in Great Britain or in the British colonies, are due to that noble struggle on your part to maintain intact the Union, while determinedly resisting the infamous and insidious encroachments of the slaveholding faction in the rebel States.
Your memorialists desire earnestly to repudiate all sympathy with the treasonable attempt of the slaveholders to rend their country into two opposing sections, with the avowed aim and object of holding in perpetual and hopeless bondage many millions of human beings! While fervently desiring the speedy termination of the vast and unprecedented civil war which is desolating so large a portion of your country, your memorialists believe that the most effectual and practical way of attaining so desirable an end is by withholding all aid and sympathy from the rebels of the south, the authors of all these dire calamities, and lending all possible moral influence and strengthening in every possible way the executive government at Washington, to whose proper province belongs the suppression of the rebellion and the restoration of peace and order to your distracted land.
Your memorialists, therefore, rejoice that her Majesty’s government in Britain have recently taken very decisive measures to prevent the further issue from the shores of that country of steam rams, and other vessels, for the rebel confederates; which vessels would be used for attacking the commerce of the great American nation, with which Great Britain is, and (we sincerely believe) desires to remain, at peace.
Fervently as your memorialists desire that peace may return to your country, they trust it may be that peace which may come to remain with you, and therefore they hope that (no matter how protracted the struggle) under no conceivable circumstances will any compromise be effected between the contending parties which does not embrace or provide for the total abolition of slavery, as well as the maintenance, in all its geographical boundaries, of the integrity of the great American Union.
In conclusion, your memorialists wish to convey to your excellency their deep sense of the zeal, integrity, humanity, and thorough good faith with which you discharge those very onerous and important duties devolving upon you, not only as the Chief Magistrate of the United States of America, but also as commanderin-chief of the United States army and navy; and your memorialists pray that your excellency may be spared and strengthened for still further efforts in the cause of freedom and humanity, as against slavery and rebellion, until the last vestiges of that inhuman and iniquitous system be forever swept away from American soil, and until the United States flag shall again wave triumphantly over a free people in every State and Territory in your highly favored land.
[Untitled]
Gentlemen: I have had the honor to receive and to lay before the President of the United States the address which bears your signatures, and which was transmitted to this department by the American consul at Halifax. The President has received with sincere satisfaction the assurance of your desire for the preservation of peace between this country and your own, of your respect for the institutions of the United States, and your convictions that the counsels by which the government is conducted in this important national crisis are wise, just, and benevolent.
In reply to these generous sentiments, I can only say to you, as I am habitually saying on behalf of the President to the European government under whose honored protection you are living, that if the civil war with which God has been pleased to visit our country is now to be aggravated by the complication of a border war with the provinces of British North America, the record of this [Page 128] unhappy conflict shall bear unquestionable evidence that it was a war which was maintained on the part of the United States in necessary defence of the nation and of the cause of humanity.
The efforts of every citizen, of either state, to avert such an unreasonable conflict is of inestimable importance. I give you, therefore, the President’s sincere thanks for the tribute you have paid in your address to the interest of international peace and friendship between the two principal branches of a race that ought to devote itself wholly to the advancement of the world’s civilization.