Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the Second Session Thirty-eighth Congress, Part II
Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward.
Sir: I now have the honor to forward a copy of a note to Lord Russell, of the 6th instant, of the preparation of which I have already informed you in my despatch of last week, No. 769, of the 1st instant. In it I have endeavored to embrace all the principal points contained in your several despatches, No. 1025, of the 8th, No. 1035, of the 15th of July, and No. 1069, of the 15th of August, with the exception of such as appeared to rest on information not sufficiently authenticated at the time of writing. In regard to the facts, I have received some additional aid from an opportunity given to me by Mr. Morse, the consul here, to examine and to weigh the evidence contained in several depositions lately taken by him.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, &c., &c., &c.
Mr. Adams to Earl Russell.
My Lord: I have hitherto delayed to acknowledge the reception of the several notes I have had the honor to receive from your lordship of the 27th June, the 8th and 26th of July, in reply to mine of the 21st of June, on the subject of the interference of the owner of the yacht Deerhound, from a desire that the government which I have the honor to represent should be enabled, before instructing me to act, to gain as complete information of the facts in the case as possible. It is not until very lately that I have been placed in full possession of its views, after a full consideration of the evidence connected with that transaction. I shall now proceed to submit the substance of them to your lordship’s consideration.
To the better understanding of the case, I trust I may be pardoned if I recall your attention to the position heretofore taken by my government in regard to the vessel originally known as the gunboat No. 290, and latterly the Alabama.
The circumstances attending, the construction, outfit, armament, manning, and navigation of thai vessel are too well known and have been too fully exposed in the correspondence which I have heretofore had the honor to conduct with your lordship to need to be farther dwelt upon.
I am instructed to say that, in view of all these, my government adheres to its previous declarations, and does not. recognize the Alabama as a ship-of-war of a lawful belligerent power.
In connexion with this point, and to guard against injurious inferences, it is proper for me to add that the proceeding of Captain Winslow, in paroling and discharging the men who fell into his hands, has been formally disapproved.
Your lordship will now permit me to call your attention to the statement made by me in my former note. It was in substance this: That whilst engaged in a successful effort to destroy this piratical vessel, and to capture her crew, the owner of a British vessel belonging to the Eoyal Yacht Association, being a spectator, so far interposed his aid as to effect the escape of certain members of the crew well known to be the chief agents in the navigation of that vessel, and most bitter enemies of the people of the United States.
[Page 296]I regret to be compelled, after a survey of all the evidence since produced, to repeat this allegation, and to superadd another which appears still more grave, to wit, that this was done by him in connivance with the very officer and boat’s crew of the Alabama who had first been sent to the commander of the Kearsarge, for the purpose of surrendering them all as prisoners of war. Neither does it relieve this transaction of any of its gravity to know that the officer commanding that boat was a British subject.
Your lordship is pleased to remark, in your note of the 27th of June, concerning the act of the owner of the Deerhound, that he appears to have performed only a common duty of humanity in saving from the waves the captain and several of the crew of the Alabama, who would otherwise have been drowned, and thus would never have been in the situation of prisoners of war.
Unfortunately for this hypothesis, it does not appear that the owner of the Deerhound did rescue the principal persons from drowning. The only individual whose safety he appears to have taken pains to secure was Captain Semmes. The evidence seems to show that much the greater proportion were rescued by the commanders and the crews of the enemy’s three boats, the principal one of which had been sent to the Kearsarge to make a surrender and to ask for aid to rescue them. It further appears that after authority had been given to perform this common duty of humanity, great efforts were made to select the chief enemies of the United States, and transfer them, not, in accordance with the obligation originally incurred, to the Kearsarge, but to the hands of the owner of the Deerhound, another British subject, who had likewise been asked to assist, but who, instead of laboring further in the cause of humanity, hastened at once, on the reception of these obnoxious persons, paying no further regard to the large number of his own countrymen still left struggling with the waves, to place them where he believed they would be beyond the reach of recovery by the victor.
But I must pray permission to go further, and to question your lordship’s proposition that a third party, professing to be neutral, performs a common duty of humanity in, interposing in a struggle between combatants to save those only on one side. On the contrary, so far as he may be successful, he appears to make himself a party to a continuance of strife and bloodshed. The men engaged in the Alabama were all acting in deadly hostility to the people of the United States. They were either prisoners or desperately pursued by the Kearsarge. If they had perished, the latter would have had the advantage of a lawful destruction of so many enemies. If they had been rescued by the Kearsarge, with or without the aid of the Deerhound, then the surrender of those persons, already made, would have been perfected, and they would have been prisoners. In neither case would they have remained hostile combatants. The Deerhound, by conniving at the escape of these men, and furnishing the necessary means to it by carrying them within a foreign jurisdiction, deprived the United States to a corresponding extent of the fruits of a long and costly pursuit and successful battle.
It is not pretended that it is any part of the duty of a neutral to assist in making captures for a belligerent. It is, nevertheless, as confidently affirmed that, instead of neutrality, it is direct hostility for a neutral to interpose in a battle so far as to rescue men of one side, who have been driven to surrender, and then convey them away surreptitiously from under the guns of the victor, thereafter to resume their hostility just as if they never had been overcome.
The irritation naturally created by such a proceeding in any case is much more aggravated when it comes to be considered that this vessel was built, armed, manned, and equipped in the ports of a neutral country, to which the Deerhound itself belongs; that her departure and subsequent depredations were the consequence of a failure to perform a recognized duty of prevention, and that the harboring of these persons after a rescue so made is only likely to terminate [Page 297] in efforts to renew these offensive acts from the same country in which the wrong was first committed.
In view of all these circumstances, I regret to be compelled to communicate to your lordship the expression of the President’s surprise that her Majesty’s government does not find in the proceedings of the owner of the Deerhound cause of severe censure or regret. And this is the more sensibly felt, that that person has not hesitated to avow in his own letter that he was actuated by a desire to withdraw these enemies of the United States from the power of their conquering vessel.
I am, however, directed to say that my government does not for a moment believe that any of the proceedings referred to, whether relating to the chief wrong-doer commanding the hostile vessel, to the yacht Deerhound, or to those British subjects who have not scrupled either publicly to declare their sympathy with or privately to aid and abet the violators of her Majesty’s neutrality, are viewed with any other sentiments than those of regret and disapproval by the members of her Majesty’s government.
Nevertheless, it appears to be a solemn obligation of my government, in view of all the grave consequences of such a proceeding, to sum up the conclusions to which, from a full consideration of the facts, it has now arrived:
1. The incidents as heretofore explained confirm the soundness of the opinion previously insisted upon that the Alabama is justly to be regarded as to have attained at no point of time any other national character than that which may have attached to it from its construction, outfit, equipment, armament, and manning by British subjects out of British ports.
2. That the persons who escaped from this vessel thus fitted out by British subjects engaged in making unlawful war against the United States, after voluntary surrender as prisoners of war, by reason of the unlawful intervention of the commander of the British yacht Deerhound, and the conveyance of them within the jurisdiction of Great Britain, ought to be delivered up to the United States.
3. That the continuance of these persons to receive from any British authorities or subjects pecuniary assistance or supplies, or the regular payment of wages, for the purpose of more effectually carrying on hostile operations from this kingdom as a base, is a grievance against which it is my duty to remonstrate, and for which to ask a remedy in their conviction and punishment.
4. The occasion has been thought to warrant a direction to me to ask with earnestness of her Majesty’s government that it should adopt such measures as may be effective to prevent the preparation, equipment, and outfit of any further naval expedition from British shores to make war against the United States.
In making these representations I am instructed to assure your lordship that the President is far from seeking causes of offence on the part of Great Britain, But he is charged with the duty of maintaining the belligerent rights of the United States on the high seas as they are recognized by the law of nations against all lawless combinations and resistance. He therefore trusts that her Majesty’s government will consider the subject in a just and candid spirit, and himself as asking from it in this case only what, if the situation of the parties were reversed, would have been conceded to any similar request based on equally cogent considerations.
I pray your lordship to accept the assurances of the highest consideration with which I have the honor to be, my lord, your lordship’s most obedient servant,
Right Hon. Earl Russell, &c., &c., &c.