Mr. Dayton to Mr. Seward
Sir: I visited M. Drouyn de Lhuys yesterday, at the department of foreign affairs. The first words he addressed to me on entering the room were, “Do you bring us peace, or bring us war?” I asked him to what he referred, and he said he referred more immediately to those resolutions recently passed by Congress in reference to the invasion of Mexico by the French, and the establishment of Maximilian upon the throne of that country. I said to him, in reply, that I did not think France had a right to infer that we were about to make war against her on account of anything contained in those resolutions. That they embodied nothing more than had been constantly held out to the French government from the beginning. That I had always represented to the government here that any action on their part, interfering with the form of government in Mexico, would be looked upon with dissatisfaction in our country, and they could not expect us to be in haste to acknowledge a monarchical government built upon the foundations of a republic which was our next neighbor. That I had reason to believe you had held the same language to the French minister in the United States. This allegation he did not seem to deny, but obviously viewed the resolutions in question as a serious step upon our part; and I am told that the leading secessionists here build largely upon these resolutions as a means of fomenting ill feeling between this country and some others and ourselves. Mr. Mason and his secretary have gone to Brussels to confer with [Page 758] Mr. Dudley Mann, who is their commissioner at that place. Mr. Slidell, it is said, was to have goneto Austria, although he has not yet got off.
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I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, &c.