Mr. Yeaman to Mr. Seward.
Sir: Captain T. Morris Chester, the corresponding secretary of the Garnet League “for the education and religious elevation of the freedmen,” has recently visited Copenhagen in the prosecution of his agency in soliciting pecuniary aid for the accomplishment of that humane and commendable object. He has heretofore visited England, Russia, Holland, and Hamburg, for the same purpose, and with encouraging success. Such efforts have no relation to the government, and very little to the duty of its diplomatic agents abroad, their action in the matter being more an affair of disposition and choice than of official duty. But I take pleasure in noting the fact that he has been received in Denmark with distinguished kindness and liberality by the people, by the chief officials of the government, and by the King, who accorded him a very friendly and interesting audience. And this favorable reception here was not merely or entirely personal to him, as an intelligent and cultivated man, as the representative in blood and race of a people still laboring under the effects of their late condition, but it has also been the expression of a very lively interest in the labor to which he devotes himself. He has, in this community, reflected credit upon the people from whom he is sprung and whose cause he pleads, and his visit has brought to view in this capital a kind and enlightened interest in their development and elevation. That such views should so rapidly attain throughout the most civilized parts of the world must be as pleasing to the government of the United States as it is encouraging to a newly emancipated people.
I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.