Mr. Seward to Mr. Bigelow
Sir: Your despatch of the 31st of August, No. 165, has been received. I have read carefully the account you have given therein of your conversation held with Mr. Drouyn de Lhuys on that day upon the special subject of the intercepted Gwyn correspondence and the general subject of Mexican relations.
I agree with the minister for foreign affairs in his concluding suggestion, that, so far as possible, direct and verbal communications upon such delicate matters are to be preferred over formal ones. I am, moreover, well pleased with the general spirit and tone manifested by Mr. Drouyn de Lhuys in that conversation. Beyond these points he will hardly expect a minister of the United States to coincide. The unpleasant interpellation about Dr. Gwyn, as Mr. Drouyn de Lhuys calls it, was a consequence, a remote one indeed, but still a consequence, of the Emperor’s giving private audience to Dr. Gwyn, a traitor acting in the interest of an insurrection against this government. Aware that such consequences must follow such suspected audiences, this department and this government decline in every case to give audience to such emissaries as Gwyn coming from states with which we are holding diplomatic relations.
It is well, I think, for both the French government and that of the United States, to avoid the giving and the unnecessary taking of offence. The object of each is to avert misunderstandings and not to make them. It is useless to try to do that unless we can successfully abstain from everything that might provoke irritation. It must be easy to see that the people of the United States have sensibilities as profound as those of the French people. The government of the United States may well be believed to have sensibilities as tender as those of France herself.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
John Bigelow, Esq., &c., &c., &c.