Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the First Session Thirty-ninth Congress, Part I
Mr. Adams to Mr. Hunter
Sir: I have received from Lord Russell a note in reply to mine of the 7th of April last, a copy of which was transmitted to the department with my No 927, of the 13th of April. Inasmuch as his lordship gives an official response to the two points of inquiry which I was instructed to propose, I send forward a copy of his note at once for the consideration of the President. Now that there seems to be very little left of the elements even of a defacto government in the insurgent States, the question raised is likely soon to expire by its own limitation. I perceive that in the House of Commons a question is about to be addressed to the government this evening relative to this subject. Should any reply of interest be elicited, I shall take care to furnish you a report of it.
In the note of Lord Russell he has thought it proper to expand the field of discussion by references to former events in a manner which appears to leave me no alternative to a reply. I am, therefore, now engaged in drawing up such a paper. This will leave entirely aside the two questions, the action upon which is of course reserved for the exclusive judgment of the government, and will relate only to the historical matter which has been brought into play. It will be impossible to get it prepared to send this week.
I am in hopes I shall be able to get a copy to you by the steamer of the next.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
William Hunter, Esq., Acting Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.
[Enclosure.]
Lord Russell to Mr. Adams, May 4, 1865.
[Page 356]Lord Russell to Mr. Adams
Sir: I have had the honor to receive your note of the 7th of April, forwarding a copy of a letter addressed by the consul of the United States at Rio de Janeiro to his government upon the proceedings of a vessel called the Sea King, or Shenandoah, which vessel you state has since been heard of at Melbourne, whence details have been received of outrages committed by her on the commerce of the United States. You then proceed to say: “Were there any reasons to believe that the operations carried on in the ports of her Majesty’s kingdom and its dependencies to maintain and extend this systematic depredation upon the commerce of a friendly people had been materially relaxed or prevented, you would not have had to announce to me the fact that your government cannot avoid entailing upon the government of Great Britain the responsibility for this damage.”
A British steamer, the City of Richmond, is next alluded to as having been allowed to take supplies from the port of London and to place them on board a French-built steam ram, known as the Stonewall; and you found, upon the circumstances to which you, have thus alluded, a charge against Great Britain of not only not checking improper depredations on United States commerce, but of aiming at the destruction of the whole mercantile navigation belonging to the people of the United States; and while giving credit to her Majesty’s government for endeavoring to check illicit proceedings of British subjects, you allege that the measures adopted in this respect by her Majesty’s government have never proved effective, and that the evil of which you complain has its origin in the fact that her Majesty’s government recognized the persons in arms against the United States as belligerents, and thereby improperly gave them a status which has led to a long continuance of hostilities; but as the ports held by them have fallen into the power of the United States, the President looked with confidence to a removal, by her Majesty’s government, of this ground of complaint. You conclude by expressing a hope that the ships-of-war of the United States will be welcomed in British waters in the same friendly manner as has been heretofore customary.
Allow me to observe, in the first place, that I can never admit that the duties of Great Britain towards the United States are to be measured by the losses which the trade and commerce of the United States may have sustained. The question is not what losses the United States have sustained by the war, but whether in difficult and extraordinary circumstances the government of her Majesty have performed faithfully and honestly the duties which international law and their own municipal law imposed upon them.
Let me remind you that when the civil war in America broke out so suddenly, so violently, and so extensively, that event, in the preparation of which Great Britain had no share, caused nothing but detriment and injury to her Majesty’s subjects, Great Britain had previously carried on a large commerce with the southern States of the Union, and had procured there the staple which furnished materials for the industry of millions of her people.
Had there been no war, the existing treaties with the United States would have secured the continuance of a commerce mutually advantageous and desirable. But what was the first act of the President of the United States? He Disclaimed, on the 19th of April, 1861, the blockade of the ports of seven States of the Union. But he could lawfully interrupt the trade of neutrals to the southern States upon one ground only, namely: that the southern States were carrying on war against the government of the United States; in other words, that they were belligerents.
Her Majesty’s government, on hearing of these events, had only two courses to pursue, namely: that of acknowledging the blockade and proclaiming the neutrality of her Maiesty, or that of refusing to acknowledge the blockade and insisting upon the rights of her Majesty’s subjects to trade with the ports of the south. Her Majesty’s government pursued the former course as at once the most just and the most friendly to the United States.
It is obvious, indeed, that the course of treating the vessels of the southern States as piratical vessels, and their crews as pirates, would have been to renounce the character of neutrals and to take part in the war: nay, it would have been doing more than the United States themselves, who have never treated the prisoners they have made either by land or sea as rebels and pirates, but as prisoners of war, to be detained until regularly exchanged.
So much as to the step which you say your government can never regard “as otherwise than precipitate,” of acknowledging the southern States as belligerents. It was, on the contrary, your own government which, in assuming the belligerent right of blockade, recognized the southern States as belligerents. Had they not been belligerents the armed ships of the United States would have had no right to stop a single British ship upon the high seas.
The next complaint (often repeated I must admit) is, that vessels built in British ports, and afterwards equipped with an armament sent from the British coast, have injured, and, according to your account, almost destroyed the mercantile marine of the United States.
Now, the only question that can be put on that subject is, whether Great Britain has performed faithfully the duties incumbent upon her. I must here ask you to recollect that our foreign enlistment act, as well as your foreign enlistment act, requires proof that the vessel has been, or is about to be, equipped or armed within our dominions for the purpose of assisting a state or a body of men making war on a state in amnesty with her Majesty. In [Page 357] the case of the Alabama, which is always referred to as affording the strongest ground of complaint against her Majesty’s government, the papers affording evidence of a design to equip the ship for the confederate service were furnished to me by you on the 22d, and more completely on the 24th of July, 1862. They were reported upon by the law officers on the 29th of that month. But on that very morning the Alabama was taken to sea on the false pretence of a trial trip.
I contend that in that case, as in all others, her Majesty’s government faithfully performed their obligations as neutrals. It must be recollected that the foreign enlistment act, though passed in the year 1819, had never been actually put in force, and that it is still doubtful whether the evidence furnished by you on the 22d and 24th of July, though it was deemed a sufficient ground for detaining the Alabama, would have been found sufficient to procure a conviction from a jury, or even a charge in favor of condemnation of the vessel from a judge. Again I repeat, the whole question resolves itself into this: whether the British government faithfully and conscientiously performed their duties as neutrals, or whether they, from any motives whatever, were guilty of a grave neglect of those duties?
Upon this point it might be sufficient for me to appeal to the unprejudiced judgment formed and expressed at the time by Mr. Seward, after every material fact had been communicated to him by your despatches of the 25th and 31st of July and 1st of August, 1862. “Writing to yourself on the 13th of August, 1863, he expressed the President’s approval of the action which you had taken with respect to the Oreto and the Alabama, (then called No. 290,) and added, “you will, on proper occasion, make known to Earl Russell the satisfaction which the President has derived from the just and friendly proceeding and language of the British government in regard to these subjects.”
In maintaining this view of our duties, I have the satisfaction of thinking that her Majesty’s government were supported by some of the highest authorities of the United States. In 1815 a correspondence began between the ministers representing Spain and Portugal and the United States government respecting the practice of fitting out privateers in the ports of the United States, putting them under a foreign flag and cruising against Spanish commerce. In January, 1817, Señor Onis, Spanish minister at Washington, says:
“It is notorious that although the speculative system of fitting out privateers and putting them under a foreign flag, one disavowed by all nations, for the purpose of destroying the Spanish commerce, has been more or less pursued in all the ports of the Union, it is more especially to those of New Orleans and Baltimore where the greatest violations of the respect due to a friendly nation, and, if I may say so, of that due to themselves, have been committed; whole squadrons of pirates having been sent out from thence in violation of the solemn treaty existing between the two nations, and bringing back to them the fruits of their piracies, without being yet checked in these courses either by the reclamations I have made, those of his Majesty’s consuls, or the decisive and judicious orders issued by the President for that purpose.”
It does not appear that any compensation was ever made for any of these seizures.
But the remonstrances of Portugal are still more applicable. On the 8th of March, 1818, Señor J. Correa de Serra brought to the knowledge of the United States government the case of three Portuguese ships which had been captured by privateers fitted out in the United States, manned by American crews and commanded by American captains, though under insurgent colors, and he demanded satisfaction and indemnification for the injury which had been done to Portuguese subjects, as well as to the insult which had been offered to the Portuguese flag. To this letter the American Secretary of State, after reciting the complaint of the Portuguese minister, replied as follows:
“The government of the United States having used all the means in its power to prevent the fitting out and arming of vessels in their ports to cruise against any nation with whom they are at peace, and having faithfully carried into execution the laws enacted to preserve inviolate the neutral and pacific obligations of this Union, cannot consider itself bound to indemnify individual foreigners for losses by capture over which the United States have neither control nor jurisdiction. For such events no nation can in principle, nor does in practice, hold itself responsible.”
The Secretary of State, who signed this despatch, bore a name most honorably known in the annals of the United States—the name of Adams.
The remaining events to be noticed in the history of the answers given by the United States to the complaints of Portugal during the wars of South America, and by Great Britain to the United States in the present war, may be recorded without any fear of comparison on the part of the government of her Majesty.
On the 20th of April, 1818, the amended act known as the American foreign enlistment act was passed.
On the 24th of November of that year, the Portuguese minister being asked by Mr. Adams to furnish a list of the names of the persons chargeable with a violation of the laws of the United States in fitting out and arming a vessel within the United States for the purpose of cruising against the subjects of his sovereign, and of the witnesses by Whose testimony the charge could be substantiated, replied to the following effect:
“He had found with sorrow multiplied proofs that many of the armed ships which had committed depredations on the property of Portuguese subjects were owned by citizens of [Page 358] the United States, had been fitted in ports of the Union, and had entered in several ports of the Union, captured ships and cargoes by unlawful means. Many of these citizens of the United States had the misfortune of believing that they did a meritorious action in supporting foreign insurrections, and offered great difficulties in the way of every prosecution instituted by a foreign minister. Prosecutions were ordered by the government of the United States, but did not appear to have had much effect in checking the depredations complained of.”
In March, 1819, the Portuguese minister alleges that, in contrast to the Spanish insurgents who had ports and a long line of coast at their disposal, Urtegas, the chief whose flag was borne by United States privateers, was wandering with his followers in the inland mountains of Corrientes. “The Urtegan flag,” he continues, “which has not a foot length of sea-shore in South America where it can show itself, is freely and frequently waving in the port of Baltimore. Urtegan cockades were frequently met with in that city in the hats of American citizens unworthy of that name.”
In another note, dated the 23d of November, 1819, the Portuguese minister says: “I do justice to, and am grateful for, the proceedings of the executive, in order to put a stop to these depredations, but the evil is rather increasing. I can present to you, if required, a list of fifty Portuguese ships, almost all richly laden, some of them East Indiamen, which have been taken by these people during the period of full peace. This is not the whole loss we have sustained, this list comprehending only those captured of which I have received official complaints; the victims have been many more, besides violations of territory by landing and plundering ashore with shocking circumstances.”
“One city alone on this coast,” he says, “has armed twenty-six ships, which prey on our vitals, and a week ago three armed ships of this nature were in that port waiting for a favorable occasion of sailing for a cruise.”
In July, 1820, the Portuguese minister proposed that the United States should appoint commissioners to confer and agree with commissioners of the Queen of Portugal, in what reason and justice might demand.
But Mr. Adams again says that for wrongs committed in United States territory, Portuguese subjects have a remedy in the courts of justice; “but for any acts of the citizens of the United States, committed out of their jurisdiction and beyond their control, the government of the United States is not responsible.”
To this most just principle, which was again referred to Mr. Secretary Clayton, and maintained against the government of Portugal to this hour, the United States must be held still to adhere. No matter how many rich Portuguese ships were taken; no matter even what flag was borne by the vessels which took them; for these acts of the citizens of the United States, acting as the captains, officers and crews of those cruisers, the United States government declared itself not responsible. Nor was that government induced to depart from that ground by the urgent representations of the Portuguese minister, in his letter to Mr. Webster, of the 7th of November, 1850, “that by due diligence on the part of the government and the officers of the United States, the evil might have been prevented;” and that “the fitting out of these vessels was not checked by all the means in the power of the government; but that there was a neglect of the necessary means of suppressing the expeditions.” With regard to Spain the case was somewhat different, as the United States had many outstanding claims against the government of Spain; and on the other hand, the claims of Spain were rested upon the interpretation placed by her on her treaty with the United States. The claims of the United States were used as a set-off against the claims of Spain on account of the depredations committed by the United States cruisers, commanded by United States captains, and in respect of other matters; and both orders of claims were renounced and abandoned by a treaty between Spain and the United States, concluded on the 22d of February, 1819.
Before I refer to the conduct of Great Britain during the present civil war, I must for a moment allude to an address of President Monroe, in regard to the South American insurrections.
“The revolutionary movement in the Spanish provinces in this hemisphere attracted the attention and excited the sympathy of our fellow-citizens from its commencement.” Such is the statement of President Monroe in his special message of the 8th of March, 1822. It must be acknowledged that in this country the gallantry of the people of the southern States, in their endeavors to give to those States an independent position in the world, excited a large amount of sympathy. It must be acknowledged, also, that the desire of large profits from the sale of cargoes induced many of the Queen’s subjects to engage in blockade-running. But, on the other hand, it must be said that no British subject appears to have commanded a confederate cruiser, while United States citizens seem frequently to have acted as captains of the privateers which, under the flag of Buenos Ayres, or some other South American state, committed depredations on Spanish and Portuguese commerce. Nor was the vigilance of her Majesty’s government at fault when, as in the case of the steam rams built at Birkenhead for a confederate agent, they were fully convinced that vessels-of-war were being constructed for purposes hostile to the United States. Indeed, so decided and so effective was the action of the government in detaining the vessels called the El Toussin and El Monassir, that it appears by the published parliamentary reports that a member of Parliament charged the government with having done, and with having done on their own confession, what was illegal and unconstitutional, without law, without justification, and without excuse. Unfounded [Page 359] as that charge was, yet, coming, as it appears, from high authority, it is obvious that nothing but the intimate conviction that those vessels were intended for confederate vessels-of-war, that unless detained they would attempt to break the blockade of the United States squadrons, and that such an act might have produced the gravest complications, could have sustained the government under the weight of charges thus urged.,
Let us compare this case, in which her Majesty’s government detained and seized the ships, with that of the Shenandoah, to which you refer, in which they did not interfere.
The Shenandoah was formerly the Sea King, a merchant or passage steamship, belonging to a mercantile company. She was sold to a merchant, and soon afterwards cleared for, China as a merchant ship. Not a tittle of evidence was ever brought before her Majesty’s government by you or any one else to show that she was intended for the service of the confederates. Had it been alleged even that her decks were stronger than usual, apparently for the purpose of carrying guns, it might have been plausibly answered that the China seas abounded with pirates, and that guns were necessary in order to drive them off.
But it is said that guns and men were sent to meet a confederate vessel at sea. So far as guns are concerned, this is not an offence against our laws; nor am I aware of any authority in international law according to which the British government could be bound to prevent it. So far as men are concerned, they could not be interfered with without evidence of an intention or engagement to serve as confederate seamen, and no such evidence was ever offered to her Majesty’s government. What if these guns and men were sent in a vessel which cleared for Bombay? Would it have been right for her Majesty’s government, without evidence, to seize such a vessel? Would not proceedings thus unauthorized by law or by any legal grounds of suspicion have been loudly and universally condemned? It is true that arms were sent to the Olinde, a French vessel, and that the Sea King, having changed its character at sea, appeared afterwards as a confederate ship-of-war. But, in the words of Mr. Adams in 1818, “For such events no nation can in principle, nor does in practice, hold itself responsible.”
With regard to the export of arms sent by individuals in this country to vessels on the high seas, it must not be forgotten that the government and courts of the United States have always upheld the legality of this traffic. On the subject of certain memorials of British subjects sent to the Secretary of State of the United States during the revolutionary war, Mr. Jefferson says, “We have answered that our citizens have always been free to make, send, or export arms; that it is the constant occupation and livelihood of some of them. To suppress their callings, the only means, perhaps, of their subsistence, because a war exists in foreign and distant countries, with which we have no concern, would hardly be expected. It would be hard in principle and impossible in practice.”
This, be it recollected, was not the opinion of Mr. Jefferson alone. He wrote by the direction of General (then President) Washington.
With respect to the alleged destruction of the mercantile navigation of the United States, it must be noted that it has been common to transfer Amerchant ships, without change of cargo o r of crew, nominally to British owners, in order to avoid the higher rates of insurance payable during war. With peace, the mercantile marine of the United States will, I have no doubt, be at least as numerous as before.
I am happy to see that you declare yourself by no means insensible to the efforts which her Majesty’s government have made, and are still making, to put a stop to such outrages in this kingdom and its dependencies, and that you cannot permit yourself to doubt the favorable disposition of the Queen’s ministers to maintain amicable relations with the government of the United States; nay, further, you state that the avoidance of the gravest of complications “been owing, in the main, to a full conviction that her Majesty’s government has never been animated by any aggressive disposition towards the United States, but, on the contrary, that it has steadily endeavored to discountenance, and, in a measure, to check the injurious and malevolent operations of many of her subjects.” The question, then, really comes to this: Is her Majesty’s government to assume or be liable to a responsibility for conduct which her Majesty’s government did all in their power to prevent and punish?—a responsibility which Mr. Adams, on the part of the United States government in the case of Portugal, positively, formally, and justly declined.
Have you considered to what this responsibility would amount? Great Britain would become thereby answerable for every ship that may have left a British port and have been found afterwards used by the confederates as a ship-of-war; nay, more, for every cannon and every musket used by the confederates on board any ship-of-war, if manufactured in a British workshop.
I now come to that part of your letter which relates to the future.
The late successes of the United States armies give us every reason to hope for a speedy termination of the war. In such case, the restrictions which have been imposed upon the vessels of the United States as belligerents will of course cease. In such case also it is to be presumed the cruisers and privateers of the confederates will be at once sold and converted into merchant vessels. But the present state of affairs does not allow me to speak with certainty upon this point.
The questions remain, however, first, whether the United States vessels-of-war will be now allowed to come into the harbors of her Majesty’s dominions without other restrictions than [Page 360] those usual in times of peace; and another question closely connected with it, namely, whether the confederates are still to be treated as belligerents.
My answers are the following: In regard to the first question, her Majesty’s government are quite willing that vessels-of-war of the United States shall be treated in the ports of her Majesty in the same manner as her Majesty’s vessels-of-war are treated in the ports of the United States, with this single exception, that if an enemy’s vessel-of-war should come into the same port, the vessel which shall first leave the port shall not be pursued by its enemy until twenty-four hours shall have elapsed.
Before answering the second question I wish to know whether the United States are prepared to put an end to the belligerent rights of search and capture of British vessels on the high seas? Upon the answer to this question depends the course which her Majesty’s government will pursue.
All that I can do further is to assure you that her Majesty’s government, who have lamented so sincerely the continuance of this painful and destructive contest, will hail with the utmost pleasure its termination, and will view with joy the restoration of peace and prosperity in a country whose well being and happiness must always be a source of satisfaction to the sovereign and people of these realms.
I nave the honor to be, with the highest consideration, sir, your most obedient, humble servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.