Mr. Sanford to Mr. Seward.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the last issue by the department of correspondence relating to Mexico, in response to the call of Congress. There is still great interest felt here in all that bears upon the subject of the origin, progress, and failure of the attempt to create an empire in that republic, and documents are daily coming to light, and are eagerly read by [Page 642] the public, calculated to keep up that interest in removing the veil from the secret history of that ill-starred enterprise.
It will not be out of place at this time to correct a popular error which ascribes to the late King Leopold I the part of a promoter or instigator of the so-called Mexican empire. I have good reason to believe that the contrary is the fact; and I may say further, and upon high authority, that from the moment of the offer of the imperial crown to the Archduke Maximilian the King determined to exercise no influence upon him or his daughter in that connection.
When the first overtures were made even, his Majesty said in familiar conversation that he did not believe they would favorably entertain them; and later, when Maximilian and the archduchess had the proposition under consideration, the King repeated again and again that his firm resolution was to leave them to act entirely in accordance with their own inclinations, and to abstain from any counsel in either sense.
I deem it due to the memory of a great and good man, to whose enlightened and friendly interest in the United States the archives of this legation bear frequent testimony, to make, this statement of record here, although the facts, communicated long since in a more informal manner, are not new to you.
That the King in his paternal solicitude, after the determination of his children to undertake this perilous adventure, favored the recognition of the “empire” and the formation of a Belgian legion of volunteers, who should serve as a protection for his daughter, is not to be gainsaid; but that he was directly or indirectly responsible for the scheme of a Mexican empire cannot with truth be ascribed to him in history.
I have the honor to be, with great respect, your most obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.