Mr. Perry to Mr. Seward
Sir: Allow me to congratulate you upon the re-election of President Lincoln to a second term of power. We have just received the telegrams which announce it. Nobly have our people responded to the principles set forth by you at Auburn. No doubt, from the extraordinary circumstances which preceded and surround this great act, it had come to signify the life and the strength or the decay and death of the American republic. We are saved; but that is not all.
The effect of this event upon Europe can hardly be overestimated. Never has the political action of any people fixed to a higher degree the anxious attention of the world outside their own limits.
It has been felt here that the great crisis had at length come; that after a career of unexampled prosperity, our republic, attacked in its vitals by the insurrection of a compact class strong enough to display a military and a political power and conduct such as have had no parallel in the history of insurrections, after a defence by the government incomparable also for the magnitude of the military resources displayed, now called upon by the organic law to submit to the people themselves, in the midst of this gigantic contest, the question of the renewal of the whole edifice of government from base to capital, forced to afford them an opportunity to shift a little upon their shoulders, if they pleased, the great burden of the war, of the finances, of the national fatigue; to yield a little, if they chose, only a little, of the eternal principles of justice and state polity for the hope of present ease, or to sustain those principles firmly, to carry that burden steadily—to save the republic—save the great, interests of mankind—and, instead of receding and declining, to bravely push the wheel of human progress forward over every obstacle, at the cost of every sacrifice—it was felt, I say, that the people of the American republic, called upon in these circumstances to quietly and freely manifest their true will and judgment in secret ballot, where all that there is great and noble in men, as well as all that there is small and dark, alike find expression, held in their hands, in fact, the practical solution of that historic question which has troubled the world’s statesmen for ages, whether the republic could rightfully be considered a permanent form of government; whether, in the great crisis of a nation’s history, a democratic republic offers in itself any sufficient guarantee of its own continuance; whether it can, notwithstanding the philosophic perfection of its theory, legitimately take its place alongside the monarchies and aristocracies which have subsisted in the world as a stable form of government.
The history of Athens and the little states of Greece is not favorable. Rome ‘never was a democratic republic; and when that’ democracy did shake off the patrician rule, it was only to give power to Caesar. Venice and the other oligarchic republics of the middle ages do not meet the question; Switzer land is more favorable, but does not solve it. The experience of France is fatal; the epoch of Cromwell in England was at once unsatisfactory and transitory.
The practical question remained yet for our time and for our people? Can a great democratic republic stand? Can it resist the ambition of those classes which a community of occupation or of interest will create? Can it resist the ambition of its statesmen, of its generals? Can it employ great armies? Can it stand the shock of civil war? Is there really in the masses of men, practically considered, that virtue and those qualities indispensable for the prolonged [Page 468] continuance in adversity as well as in prosperity of a state whose only political guarantee is the will of the whole people freely expressed?
That is the momentous question which has moved Europe profoundly in respect to us, and fixed the gaze of peoples upon our people at this moment with an intensity of interest you at home may not have appreciated.
In the fate of the United States went the hopes of men for a long period to come, and that fate, in the estimation of those outside our limits, hung notably upon the issue of this ballot.
The people of Spain like the rest have felt the pervading interest of this moment. I have not said a word to you officially whilst the great question was pending, but I send you now with my whole heart the expression of my own relief at this solemn verdict of our people, and I send you also the first shout of joy from Spain.
With sentiments of the highest respect, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William. H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington.