Office of the Historian

Mr. Dayton to Mr. Seward

No. 389.]
Paris, December 25, 1863.

Sir: I enclose a slip cut from a newspaper recently published here, the substance of which has made the round of the French and English journals, and will doubtless be recopied in the journals of the United States. Mr. Drouyn de l’Huys says he knows nothing of it, and has never heard of the pretended envoy therein referred to. He says, further, that should he find that any such person has arrived, he will not fail to let me know it; but at present he supposes the paragraph to be like all the other “trash” of this character which is put in circulation.

I referred in this connexion to the supposed outline or schedule of a treaty alleged to have been agreed upon, some two or three months since, between his Majesty and the rebel agents abroad, and communicated to you by Mr. Morse, our consul at London; a copy of whose communication was enclosed to me in your confidential despatch, No. 438.

Mr. Drouyn de l’Huys says there is no truth whatever in this statement, and that the Emperor has no such negotiation whatever with the confederates on foot.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

WILLIAM L. DAYTON.

Hon. William H. Seward Secretary of State, &c., &c., &c.

[From a Paris paper.]

M. Supervielle, who has just arrived in Paris, in the character of special envoy from the Confederate States, is a Frenchman by birth, who was formerly an advocate in the south of France, somewhere near Bordeaux. He has been living in Texas for the last seventeen years, and is now a naturalized American. He got away from Matamoras on board a French ship-of-war, which the admiral [Page 11] lent him to go to Vera Cruz, where he embarked in the transatlantic packet Florida for St. Nazairé. He is said to have a mission to notify to the French government the recognition by the Confederate States of the “empire” of Mexico, and also to try to persuade Napoleon III to recognize the south in return.