Mr. Burnley to Mr. Seward
Sir: Her Majesty’s government have had under their consideration, in communication with the proper law advisers of the Crown, the note which you did me the honor to communicate to me on the 5th of November last, respecting the case of Mr. Hardcastle, who was shot by a sentry in the Old Capitol prison, and it seems right and proper to state to you the final opinion of her Majesty’s government on this question as expressed in a despatch recently received from her Maiesty’s principal secretary of state for foreign affairs.
Her Majesty’s government consider that the answer of the United States government and of their Judge Advocate General does not in the slightest degree alter the opinion entertained by them, as set forth in previous correspondence on this subject.
In that correspondence the principles of international law, applicable to the facts of this case, are given at some length, and her Majesty’s government think that no advantage would result from a recapitulation of their former arguments.
The pretence that the word “safe-conduct” was used in a popular sense in the first instance, and the attempt to maintain that the safe conduct extended only to the passage between the lines of the enemy, indicate the determination of the United States government to avoid granting that compensation which it appears to her Majesty’s government international justice as well as comity demand at their hands, to the relations of this much injured man, whom, without the slightest evidence, except the allegations of his jailer, as to conversations with him in prison, (which the dead man cannot contradict,) the Judge Advocate General of the United States persists in calling “a most active and dangerous enemy; an avowed enemy to the United States, and a person whose hostility and treachery had caused him to forfeit all claim to the privileges of neutrality.” Her Majesty’s government cannot forbear pointing out the practical commentary upon some of the circumstances of this case which is contained in a publication recently issued and circulated by authority in the United States with reference’ to the treatment of United States prisoners by the government of the so-styled Confederate States.
[Page 45]In this publication, which is entitled “Narrative of privations and sufferings of United States officers and soldiers, while prisoners of war, in the hands of the rebel authorities; being the report of a commission of inquiry appointed by the United States Sanitary Commission, with an appendix containing the testimony,” among other alleged cruel practices, that of shooting United States prisoners for appearing at the windows of their prisons is mentioned. At pages 83, 84, the following passages occur:
“The cruel and unusual rule by which an approach to the windows from inadvertence, or for the most innocent purpose, is made death in the confederate prisons, is, it need hardly be said, unknown at Fort Delaware. It is hardly worthwhile to consider whether any were shot (i. e. in Delaware) for looking out of the windows. No such order was ever given in this or any United States station.”
And at page 197 there is a letter from Quartermaster General Meigs, of the United States army, dated July 6,1864, which contains the following passage:
“The Commissary General of Prisoners informs me that he has heard of no orders to shoot prisoners for being at the windows or near them; and he does not believe that orders of that character have anywhere been given; he has heard of no prisoners being shot, under such circumstances.”
It is sufficient to bring into mere juxtaposition with these passages the concluding sentence of Captain Nix’s report (25th May, 1863) to General Martin-dale of the circumstances of Mr. Hardcastle’s death, on the very day of its occurrence, which took place, it will be remembered, in the Carroll prison, at Washington, the capital of the United States.
“The instructions,” he says, “to the sentinel guarding the outer wall of the prison are that they shall warn all prisoners to keep their heads within the windows, and if they persist in disobeying, to fire their pieces.”
These in the last report of the Judge Advocate General upon the case, dated the 28th of October, 1864, are called “the salutary regulations of the prison.”
Her Majesty’s government cannot but think the last reply of the United States government entirely unsatisfactory, and containing no substantial answer whatever to the reasons upon which the claim for compensation was founded, and I am consequently instructed that this claim will not be abandoned by her Majesty’s government, but reserved.
I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient, humble servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, &c., &c., &c.