Mr. Seward to Mr. Motley.
Sir: I have received your despatch of November 24, No. 40, and I cannot too lavishly thank you for your careful and lucid exposition of the Schleswig-Holstein question. Although, fortunately, no responsibility rests upon this government to act, or even to declare itself upon that controversy, it has, nevertheless, been a subject of study on my part for some time. With the key you have put into my hands I shall be able to interpret the action of the several European powers in regard to the question, and form conclusions upon the chances of peace and war in Europe.
The attitude of the two leading maritime powers in regard to our civil war has been recently relieved of some portion of its unfriendliness. It yet remains, however, a cause of deep and serious concern. How singular are the instructions Prance and England have given us for the regulation of our conduct if war should unfortunately break out in Europe! In that case, if we follow the example, what is to restrain us from recognizing the war at once, and furnishing supplies, money, arms, material, ships-of-war, and men, and the harborage of our ports to the belligerents, however numerous and however friendly to ourselves they may be, irrespective of the safety of their states, the merits of their conflicts, or the commerce of the world? Even those powers, however, which have dealt so unkindly with us must now perceive that there is an irresistible logic of events which requires that Europeans shall confine their rule to the eastern continent, and that the American states must be left free to regulate political affairs within their own limits.
But if this claim is too broad, there is another that I think could not be well contested. Let us suppose that Denmark should become a theatre of civil war, and that Germany, and France, and Great Britain, and Russia, although intervening by arms, should fail to enforce peace in that unhappy state, in that case would any of the parties even then tolerate interference, or even counsel, from the United States? May we not derive from these circumstances, which disturb the European governments, the instruction that it is the right of every [Page 108] nation to be rigidly left alone to manage and regulate its own domestic affairs? If that principle could be accepted by all the European states, would they not be at liberty to reduce at once their respective armaments to the standard prescribed by the necessity for guarding against civil war?
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
J. Lothrop Motley, Esq., &c., &c., &c.