Mr. Dayton to Mr.
Seward
No. 412.]
Paris,
February 5, 1864.
Sir: Your despatches from No. 455 to No. 464,
both inclusive, are duly received.
The newspapers which you forwarded, purporting to contain a full copy of
the report of Mr. Mallory, acting as secretary of the navy to the rebels
of the south, was likewise received, and by me transferred to Mr. Drouyn
de l’Huys as a genuine copy of the rebel secretary’s full report. I now
enclose to you a statement, over the signature of M. F. Maury, cut from
Gallignani, which has or will go all over Europe, in which this
pretended report is denounced as a forgery. I sincerely hope that this
is not so. The truthfulness of our newspapers has been greatly impeached
in Europe, and a serious fabrication of this kind, even though
innocently used by the government, places us in an unpleasant and
awkward position. The legation at London, I am informed, believed the
report to be a forgery.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward
Secretary of State, &c., &c.,
&c.
[From the Herald.]
A northern trick.—We have received the
following.
Sir: Soon after the commencement of the
American war the Yankees resorted to the trick of getting up
fac-similes of Richmond papers in type, paper, and size, of copying
their advertisements, and then filling up with reading matter of
northern manufacture. These papers were then put into the mails,
received, copied from, and circulated without suspicion as southern
utterances. The English press is now the victim of another trick of
the same sort. A document copied from the northern papers is now
going the rounds of the continental and English press, which
purports to be the official report of Mr. Mallory, the confederate
secretary of the navy, to the congress in Richmond. It is a
take-in—it bears internal evidence of a hoax; and I know many of its
statements to be false. Please, therefore, assure your readers that
no such document has ever been uttered by the secretary of the
confederate navy, and so help me “to nail to the counter” the
spurious thing also.
Yours, truly,
