Mr. Marcy to Mr. Dallas.
Washington, May 27, 1856.
Sir: The President has carefully considered the note of the 30th ultimo, addressed to you by the Earl of Clarendon, Her Majesty’s principal secretary of state for foreign affairs, relative to the questions which have arisen between this Government and that of Great Britain on the subject of recruiting within the United States for the British army, and has directed me to present to you his views thereon, for the purpose of having them made known to Her Majesty’s government.
[573] He has been much gratified by the conciliatory spirit of that note, and by the desire *manifested by the Earl of Clarendon to adjust the existing difficulties, and to preserve and strengthen the friendly relations between the United States and Great Britain. The vast interest which the government and people of both countries have in upholding and cherishing such relations cannot be more solemnly impressed upon Her Majesty’s government than it is upon that of the United States.
The unequivocal disclaimer by Her Majesty’s government of “any intention, either to infringe the law, or to disregard the policy, or not to respect the sovereign rights of the United States,” and their expression of regret “if, contrary to their intentions and to their reiterated directions, there has been any infringement of the laws of the United States,” are satisfactory to the President. The ground of complaint, so far as respects Her Majesty’s government, is thus removed.
[574] But the President extremely regrets that he cannot concur in Lord Clarendon’s favorable opinion of the conduct of some of Her Majesty’s officers who were, as this Government believed, and, after due consideration of all which has been offered in their defence, still believes, implicated in proceedings which *were so clearly an infringement of the laws and soverign rights of this country. In respect to such of these officers and agents as have no connection with this Government, it has nothing to ask from that of Her Majesty; but the case is different in relation to Mr. Crampton, Her Majesty’s envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to this Government, and the consuls at New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. The President is gratified to perceive that Her Majesty’s government would hot have hesitated to comply with the request to withdraw these officers from their official positions, if it had entertained the views here taken of their conduct in regard to recruiting contrary to the law and sovereign rights of the United States.
I scarcely need say that, in making this request, no interruption of the diplomatic relations between this Government and Great Britain was anticipated; but, on the contrary, the President was, and is, sincerely [Page 656] desirous to keep them upon a most friendly footing. Mr. Crampton’s withdrawal was asked for, expressly upon the ground that “his connection with that affair (raising recruits in this country for the British service) has rendered him an unacceptable representative of Her Britannic *Majesty near this Government.” For the same reason the withdrawal of the three British cousuls was also requested. These officers were, as this Government confidently believes, deeply implicated in proceedings contrary to the law and sovereign rights of the United States, and contrary, as it now appears, to the intentions and reiterated instructions of their own government. It was their personal acts, certainly not the less objectionable for having been done contrary to the direction of Her Majesty’s ministers, which rendered them, in their official characters and positions, unacceptable to this Government, and induced the President, for that cause, to solicit their recall, believing that by this course he was contributing to the common interest and harmony of the two governments. He has not, after the most mature deliberation, been able to change his view of their conduct, and cannot, therefore, change his purpose in relation to them. Though their conduct related to, and in fact originated, a difficulty which disturbed the cordial harmony and good understanding between the two countries, it constituted a decided objection to them, of a personal character, which loses none of its force by *the satisfactory adjustment of that difficulty. [575] [576]
The only embarrassment which attends the case is the differnce of opinion between the two governments as to the complicity of these officers in illegal proceedings within the United States. In reviewing this subject the President was disposed to avail himself of any reasonable doubts which could be raised in his mind, in order to bring his opinion in this respect into conformity with that of Her Majesty’s government; but after a careful reconsideration of the case he has been unable to change the conclusion to which he had previously arrived.
This difference of opinion may be, in some degree, ascribed to the difference in the views of the two governments in respect to the neutrality law and the sovereign rights of this country.
[577] It is not proposed, however, to continue the discussion upon that subject. The conclusions of the President, stated in my dispatch of the 28th of December to your predecessor, in regard to the construction of that law and the character and extent of those rights, remain unchanged, and he cannot forego the duty of using all proper means to sustain *and vindicate them.
The main cause of this difference of opinion is the different appreciation of the proofs by which the charges against Her Majesty’s diplomatic representative and consul are sustained.
Lord Clarendon asks this Government to regard the bare declarations of these officers as of sufficient weight to countervail the evidence against them. Their denials, as presented in his dispatch of the 30th of April—and that is all which has been communicated to this Government on the subject—seem to be special, and do not traverse all the allegations against them. They deny that they have infringed our neutrality law by enlisting persons within the United States for the British service, or hiring or retaining persons to leave the United States for the purpose of being enlisted in that service. The charges against them are much broader, and embrace the offense of violating the laws and sovereign rights of the United States by setting in operation, within our territory, and conducting an extensive system of recruiting, which was not and could not be carried into effect without infringing [Page 657] our laws and *rights, by employing numerous agents to engage persons, for pecuniary or other considerations, to leave the United States for the express purpose of entering into the British army, and by keeping these agents in this employment after it was well known that they were constantly infringing our laws. [578]
The denial of the implicated officers only covers a part of the delinquencies imputed to them; but, confining their exculpatory declaration to the simple charge of having violated the provisions of our neutrality act, it does not merit the consideration which Lord Clarendon has ascribed to it. By adopting Lord Clarendon’s construction of our neutrality law, contained in his note of the 10th of November, which renders it almost nugatory, and is contrary to that of this Government and of its judicial tribunals, these officers have not probably found much embarrassment in meeting the charges with a general denial.
[579] But, giving to the declaration of Mr. Crampton and the consuls all the consideration which can be fairly claimed for it under the circumstances of the case, it cannot counterbalance the unimpeached and well-sustained evidence which establishes the charges against *these officers of having infringed the laws and sovereign rights of the United States.
Lord Clarendon’s note to you of the 30th of April conveys the impression that the evidence by which these officers are implicated is derived from one or two witnesses whose credibility has been assailed. This, however, is not a correct view of the facts.
By the examination of my dispatch of the 28th of December it will be perceived that these witnesses were strongly corroborated, and that there are proofs, wholly independent of their testimony, abundantly sufficient to establish the complicity of Mr. Crampton and the consuls in the infringement in the laws and sovereign rights of the United States. I trust it will not be questioned that it belongs excl usively to this Government and its judicial tribunals to give a construction to its municipal laws, and to determine what acts done within its jurisdiction are infringements of those laws. This is a matter which concerns its internal administration, and it cannot allow the agents of any foreign power to controvert that construction and justify their conduct by a different interpretation of our laws, which virtually renders them ineffective for the purposes intended.
[580] The Earl of Clarendon informs you, in his note *of the 30th of April, that Mr. Crampton positively denies the charge of complicity in any of the acts of illegal enlistment in the United States, and that the three consuls inculpated do the same. He assumes that the charge against them is sustained mainly by the evidence of two persons, Strobel and Hertz, whom he conceives to be unworthy of credit; and he appeals to the American Government to accept, as conclusive, the declarations of the minister and consuls. I am instructed to say that these considerations do not relieve the President’s mind of the unfavorable impressions produced by the conduct of those gentlemen in relation to foreign recruitment in the United States.
It will be seen, by referring to my dispatch of the 28th of December, in which the grounds of charge against Mr. Crampton were fully stated, that the testimony of Strobel and Hertz was quite a secondary and an unimportant part of the evidence adduced; the charge being supported, independantly of their testimony, by other witnesses, by original letters of Mr. Crampton and others, and by undenied and undeniable acts of Mr. Crampton.
As to Strobel and Hertz, however, it may be observed that the [Page 658] documents transmitted by *Lord Clarendon, as proving those persons unworthy of credit, are entitled to but little weight, consisting, as they do, chiefly of ex parte affidavits, detailing matters mostly of mere hearsay. And whatever may have been the character of those persons, it by no means follows that they did not testify to the truth. They were agents selected and trusted by Mr. Crampton himself, and to them he committed most important concerns. Such an indorsement should countervail the impeachment of their veracity founded on loose hearsay reports. Nor does it seem to be a thing of much moment in relation to the present question, that Strobel, in consequence of imputed misconduct, was dismissed from employment by the lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, and afterward endeavored to obtain money from Mr. Crampton. The fact remains, that he held a commission in the British foreign legion, and that, as it is clearly proved and not denied, he maintained as a recruiting officer, and for a considerable period of time, association, personally or by correspondence, with Mr. Crampton. The employment of Strobel by Mr. Crampton, their long association in the joint work of recruiting in the United States for the foreign legion, the distinction of *her Majesty’s commission of captain in that corps conferred on Strobel, would seem at least to deprive Mr. Crampton of the right to array his credibility as a witness. [581] [582]
But there is a larger and more comprehensive class of considerations applicable to the particular question.
For a period of nearly five months, that is, from about the middle of March, 1855, to the 5th of August, 1855, the peace and order of this country were disturbed, especially in the cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati, by the unlawful acts of numerous persons engaged in raising recruits, or in being recruited for the British foreign legion. They were supplied with ample funds by British agents. They obstinately resisted and set at naught all the efforts of the local authorities of the United States to put a stop to their proceedings; nor did they desist until they received orders to that effect from the British government in the month of August. The recruits thus unlawfully raised in the United States during all that time were conveyed by British agents to Halifax, and there enrolled in the foreign legion.
All these acts, as well as their illegality, *were notorious. Long before the trial of Hertz in September, and of Wagner in October, they must have been brought to the particular notice of Mr. Crampton, the British consuls, and other agents, by preliminary judicial inquiries which took place both at New York and Philadelphia. [583]
In consequence of the steps to that effect taken by me on the 22d of March, the proper instructions were issued on the 23d, and prosecutions commenced in Philadelphia on the 30th of March, and in New York on the 5th of April.
As example of the character of these proceedings, their notoriety and their conclusive legal effect, which occurred in May, deserves particular notice.
[584] At New York on the 14th of May, a number of persons, namely, God-fried Wachter, Wilhelm Schumacher, Julius Parkus, Oscar Cromey, and Andrew Lutz were examined before Commissioner Betts on the charge, of recruitment for the service of Great Britain. Eminent counsel were employed by the parties accused, who argued that no offense had been committed, because it did not appear that any valid contract of enlistment had been consummated. *But this ground of defense was overruled by the commissioner, who, though he discharged [Page 659] Wachter for defective evidence, committed Lutz, Schumacher, Cromey, and Parkus.
At Philadelphia, on the 25th of May, three persons, Hertz, Perkins, and Bucknall, having been arrested on the charge of illegal recruiting in the service of Great Britain, applied to the circuit court of the United States, by habeas corpus, to be discharged from custody. The presiding judge, the Hon. John K. Kane, on examination of the evidence taken in the case before a commissioner, found that the proofs were sufficient to bring the acts of Hertz and Perkins within the condition of the law, but not so as to Bucknall. Accordingly, the latter was discharged, but the two former were committed for trial.
[585] Thus, so early as May, it was judicially shown that what was doing in this respect was unlawful. Mr. Crampton was acquainted with these proceedings, and was thus sufficiently admonished that the acts of recruitment carried on under his authority did, in fact, whatever may have been his intention, constitute a violation of the municipal law of the United States. This had been decided by the courts of the United States, and was publicly and extensively made known. It is not controverted, *indeed it is admitted, that he had the recruiting business in his charge and under his control, yet he permitted it to be continued, although judicially determined to be unlawful, through the months of May, June, July, into August.
Now this long series of acts, unlawful and otherwise prejudicial to the good name and the tranquility of this country, were performed by persons who were liberally paid by British officers, and many of whom actually entered the military service of Great Britain. That was incontestably proved on the trial of Hertz and Wagner by evidence which has not been, and cannot be, impeached; and, although the evidence adduced on these trials does not need corroboration, still it may not be amiss to add that much other evidence to the same effect is in the possession of this Government, some of which is annexed to this dispatch in the form of documents responsive to those accompanying the letter of the Earl of Clarendon.
[586] Who is to be held accountable for these unlawful acts? Were they all performed by volunteer and irresponsible persons, as argued in the Earl of Clarendon’s dispatch of the 16th of July? That cannot be admitted, for the conclusive reason that they received pay *from British officers, and of course were employed by some responsible agents of the British government.
The Earl of Clarendon, in behalf of Her Majesty’s government, disclaims all intention to violate the laws, compromise the neutrality, or disrespect the sovereignty of the United States by enlisting troops within their territory. The President unreservedly accepts, and is fully satisfied, with this disclaimer. Of course the unlawful acts in question were not authorized by the British government; but the fact is, nevertheless, well established that they were done, and done in the name and at the expense of the British government. Who, then, is responsible for those acts? Were there no direct proof—though there is much of that character—the inference would be irresistible that, not being authorized by the British government itself, they were the unauthorized acts of British agents in the United States. Such agents, having acted in willful disregard of the orders of their government in thus infringing our laws, may have failed to inform their government that what they had undertaken to do could not be done without infringing those laws; or by mismanagement, indiscretion, or over *zeal, they may have participated in such infringement, though well knowing [Page 660] it was contrary to the wishes and the express orders of their government. However this may be, it is certain that agents existed, because their acts appear. Who were those agents? [587]
Of this we are not left in doubt. In the documents on the subject recently laid before Parliament, it is distinctly stated that the enlistments in the United States did not stop until Mr. Crampton gave orders for their cessation on the 5th of August. He had power to stop the acts of enlistment; he knew the proceedings were, from the commencement, exceedingly offensive to this Government, and that it was devoting its active energies to arrest them; he was bound to know, he could not but know, what was notorious to all the world, that through the months of April, May, June, and July, the recruiting agents in various parts of the United States, and conspicuously in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati, were keeping up a most unseemly contest with the law officers of the United States, and that at least as early as May the illegality of the proceedings had been pronounced by the federal courts *in New York and Philadelphia; and yet, notwithstanding this, he permitted the unlawful acts in question to go on without check until the month of August. For thus giving countenance to these illegal proceedings he is distinctly responsible. [588]
But his accountability extends yet further; for the same documents show that the official suggestion to the British government of the untoward scheme of obtaining recruits in the United States came from the correspondence of Mr. Crampton, and of the consuls at New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati; and that to Mr. Crampton were the superintendence and execution of the scheme committed. And thus it is that he who directed had the power to stop the proceeding; and thus, from early in March until August, he is found busily occupied in superintending enlistments, partly in the United States and partly in Canada and Nova Scotia, and in issuing instructions to the agents engaged in that enterprise.
[589] It does not suffice for Mr. Crampton now to say that he did not intend to commit, or participate in the commission of, any infringement of the laws of the United States. He was *the directing head of long-continued infringements of the law; it was under superior authority from him that acts of continuous violation of law were perpetrated by the inferior agents; some of those agents are proved, by his own letters, to have held direct intercourse with him; and at every stage of inquiry, in numerous cases investigated by the American Government, there is reference, by letter and oral declaration, to the general superintendence of Mr. Crampton.
His moral and his legal responsibility are thus demonstrated. With full information of the stringency of the laws of the United States against foreign recruiting, with distinct perception of its being all but impossible to raise recruits here without infringing the laws, and with knowledge of the condemnatory judicial proceedings of April and May at New York and Philadelphia, yet he persisted in carrying on the scheme until August, when its obstinate prosecution had at length brought on a most unpleasant controversy between the United States and Great Britain. And it is not the least of the causes of complaint against Mr. Crampton, that by his acts of commission in this business, or in *failing to advise his government of the impracticability of the undertaking in which he was embarked, and the series of illegal acts which it involved, and in neglecting to observe the general orders of his government, and to stop the recruiting here the moment its illegality was pronounced by the proper legal authorities of [Page 661] the United States, he was recklessly endangering the harmony and peace of two great nations, which, by the character of their commercial relations, and by other considerations, have the strongest possible inducements to cultivate reciprocal amity. [590]
[591] The foregoing considerations substantially apply to the conduct of the British consuls at New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. Though of subordinate official character, they are not less responsible than Mr. Crampton. The continuous violation of the law proceeded within their respective consulates, month after month, under their eyes, not only without any apparent effort on their part to stop it, but with more or less of their active participation therein. The consulate at New York appears to have been the point at which the largest expenditures were made; *and it is proved by documents herewith trasmitted, that payments at that consular office to some of the recruiting agents continued to be made by the secretary of the consul and in the consul’s presence, from time to time, down to the very beginning of January of the present year.
The President, as has already been stated by me, cannot admit the force of the objection now urged of alleged want of respectability on the part of some of the witnesses by whom these facts were proved, and as to whom a prominent cause of such alleged want of respectability seems to be the fact that their evidence has inculpated their accomplices in the violation of law. The testimony which most directly inculpates the British consul at New York, as will be perceived by the inclosures herewith, is in the affidavits of the very persons relied on by Her Majesty’s government for proofs in this case, and whose depositions accompany Lord Clarendon’s note to you of the 30th of April.
[592] The Earl of Clarendon perfectly well understands that, in Great Britain as well as in the United States, it would be impossible to administer penal justice without occasionally receiving the evidence of accomplices. In Great *Britain, not only is evidence of this class received continually in state trials, as well as in inferior matters, but rewards and other special inducements are held out to such witnesses by not a few provisions of acts of Parliament. The competency of such persons as witnesses in a given case, and their credibility are, in both countries, questions upon which the court and jury, in their respective spheres of jurisdiction, ultimately pass. In the present case conclusions have been established on documentary proofs and other unimpeachable evidence, by proceedings before the proper tribunals of the United States, by the verdicts of juries, and by the rulings of judges, which must be held as final in the estimation of the President.
The Earl of Clarendon suggests, as a consideration pertinent to this question, that the minister and consuls had no means or opportunity of rebutting the charges thus indirectly brought against them, in the trial of the inferior recruiting agents.
[593] In regard to the consuls, the Earl of Clarendon errs in supposing that they had not full means and opportunity, if they saw lit, to appear and to confront and contradict any accusing witnesses. They *were not allowed to interfere in the trials by mere letters written for the occasion, which, indeed, they could not have done lawfully, had there been no such prohibition; but if, conscious of their own innocence, and that of the parties on trial, and that their own acts would bear examination, it was alike their duty and their right to appear and say so on oath, and to contradict by their testimony whatever was alleged against British officers or agents, if known to them to be untrue.
Nor is it any just cause of complaint that evidence was received upon [Page 662] these trials impugning the acts of Mr. Crampton. It was, in the due course of proceedings, required to be shown, as against the parties on trial, that the recruitments in which they were engaged were for the service of a foreign government. Mr. Crampton was himself privileged from trial for violation of the municipal law; but the persons whom he employed were not for that cause to go unpunished, nor was the administration of penal justice to be indefinitely suspended on account of his position, and the diplomatic immunities which that conferred. On the contrary, it was peculiarly proper that the facts by which he was implicated, but for which he could not be tried, should be verified in due form of law for the information of his own government, as well as that of the United States. [594]
The Earl of Clarendon remarks, in his letter of the 30th of April, that—
The intentions of the British government, and the arrangements made to carry those intentions into execution, were not concealed from the Government of the United States. Those intentions and arrangements were frankly stated by Mr. Crampton to Mr. Marcy in a conversation on the 22d of March, 1855; and the only observations which Mr. Marcy made in reply were, that the neutrality laws of the United States would be rigidly enforced, but that any number of persons who desired it might leave the United States and get enlisted in any foreign service.
It is incumbent on me to say that in this respect the Earl of Clarendon labors under serious misapprehension, which, while it serves in part to explain how it happened that the enlistments went on for so many months, in a manner contrary to the intentions and express orders of the British government, also serves to increase the weight of Mr. Crampton’s responsibility in this respect.
[595] *I repeat now, with entire consciousness of its accuracy, what I stated in my letter of the 28th of December last, that at that interview (on the 22d of March, the only one I ever had with Mr. C., as he admits, in which the recruitment business was alluded to) “he (Mr. Crampton) had satisfied me that his government had no connection with it, and was in no way responsible for what was doing in the United States to raise recruits for the British army;” “but I am quite certain that on no occasion has he intimated to me that the British government, or any of its officers, was, or had been, in any way concerned in sending agents into the United States to recruit therein, or to use any inducements for that purpose; nor did he ever notify me that he was taking, or intended to take, any part in furthering such proceedings. Such a communication, timely made, would probably have arrested the mischief at its commencement.”
[596] If he had then apprised me of the system of recruiting which had at that time been already arranged and put in operation within the United States by British agents, and under his superintending direction, he would have been promptly notified, in the most positive *terms, that such acts were contrary to the municipal law, incompatible with the neutral policy of the country, a violation of its national sovereignty, and especially exceptionable in the person of the representative of any foreign government. Mr. Crampton admits that I specially warned him against the violation of our neutrality laws, but blames me now for not then stating to him that my construction of that law differed from his own. But no such difference of opinion was then developed. Mr. Crampton on that occasion manifested a coincidence in the opinion as to the provisions of that law which I then held, and have since fully disclosed. He called upon me to show a letter which he had written on that day to the consul at New York, “disapproving the proceedings of a Mr. Angus McDonald, because I (he) thought those proceedings [Page 663] would or might be taken to constitute a violation of the act of 1818”—the neutrality law of the United States, What were the proceedings of Mr. McDonald which Mr. Crampton thought might constitute a violation of our neutrality? The simple issuing of a hand-bill specifying the terms on which recruits would be received at Halifax into the Queen’s service.
[597] *This opinion of Mr. Crampton ascribes as much, stringency to our neutrality acts as has ever been claimed for them by the Government or courts of the United States. I had then no suspicion, nor did Mr. Crampton give me any cause to suspect, that he was acting, or intended to act, upon an interpretation of that law which would justify the act of Mr. McDonald, which he then condemned, and make that law but little better than a dead letter. I could not but suppose that he viewed it in the same light as Lord Clarendon did when he wrote his dispatch to Mr. Crampton of the 12th of April thereafter, in which his lordship declared it to be “not only very just, but very stringent.”
To show that I was not mistaken in this respect, I quote a passage from a letter of Mr. Crampton, dated the 11th of March, to Sir G. Le Marchant: “Any advance of money by Her Majesty’s agents or others in the United States would constitute an infraction of the neutrality law.” The depositions which accompany this dispatch, made by some of the same persons who have furnished the British government with affidavits to impeach Strobel and Hertz, prove conclusively that Mr.
Crampton did disburse various sums of money to agents em*ployed in recruiting within the United States. [598]
It was, indeed, apprehended by me at that time that violations of that law would ensue. It could not fail to be seen that any organized scheme of a foreign government to draw recruits from the United States, though by mere invitation, would necessarily tend to and result in violations of the municipal law. So decided was my belief in this respect, that measures had already been taken by me in behalf of this Government, as it happened upon the very day of the interview with Mr. Crampton, to institute prosecutions against persons engaged in this business in New York and Philadelphia. I then notified Mr. Crampton of that fact, as he expressly admits in the report of that interview made to his government.
[599] An attempt is made to deduce an excuse for Mr. Cramp ton’s course in the business of recruiting in this country from the alleged fact that he communicated to me on that occasion the arrangements which had been made for that purpose, and that I did not disapprove them otherwise than by insisting upon the observance of the neutrality law of the United States. This allegation is hardly consistent with Mr. Crampton’s own statement of what then passed. In the defense of his conduct, recently sent by him to his *government, he makes admissions inconsistent with the allegation that there was no concealment on his part, and that the recruiting arrangements were communicated to me. He says that “it is perfectly true that I did not enter into any details of the means which were to be adopted by Her Majesty’s government to render available the services of those who tendered them to us in such numbers. There seemed to be obvious reasons for abstaining from this. Even if it had occurred to me, I should have been unwilling to do anything which might have borne the appearance of engaging Mr. Marcy in any expression of favor or approbation of a plan favoring the interests of one of the parties in the present war. All I could desire on his part was neutrality and impartiality.”
[Page 664]His reasons for withholding from me the details of the enlistment system—the most important part of it for this Government—are not satisfactory. If Mr. Crampton believed what he was doing, or intended to do, in the way of recruiting, was right, he could have had no reluctance to communicate it to me, for his instructions required him to make that disclosure.
[600] Acting in due frankness, and with a proper regard for the dictates of international comity, Mr. Crampton should, it would seem, have dis*closed to me ail the measures intended to be pursued within the United States by the agents of his government, including himself, in execution of the act of Parliament for raising the foreign legion. Nay, he was expressly commanded by his government to practice no concealment with the American Government on the subject. If he had obeyed these orders, all misunderstanding between the two governments would have been prevented.
Mr. Crampton was the more imperatively called upon to make full explanations on the subject, not only because he was commanded by his government so to do, but for the further reason that, immediately after the breaking out of the war between Great Britain and France on the one hand and Russia on the other, he had, by an official note, addressed to me, invoked the efforts of this government to enforce upon the inhabitants of the country, citizens or others, the necessity of observing the strictest neutrality toward the belligerent parties, and especially to enjoin upon them to abstain from taking part in armaments for the service of Russia, or in “any other measure opposed to the duties of a strict neutrality.” To this application the undersigned, by express direction of the President, replied, declaring that *the United States, “while claiming the full enjoyment of their rights as a neutral power, will observe the strictest neutrality toward each and all the belligerents.” Reference was made to the severe restrictions imposed by law, not only upon citizens of the United States, but upon all persons resident within its territory, prohibiting the enlisting men therein for the purpose of taking a part in any foreign war. It was added” that the President did not apprehend any attempt to violate the laws; but should his just expectation in this respect be disappointed, he will not fail in his duty to use all the power with which he is invested to enforce obedience to them.” [601]
[602] In view of this formal and solemn appeal by Mr. Crampton to the American Government, and of the assurance he received of its determination to maintain strict neutrality, it was not for a moment suspected that Mr. Crampton could misunderstand this purpose, or believe that he would be permitted to set on foot and execute, for a period of five consecutive months, a systematic scheme to obtain military recruits for the British service in the United States. That Mr. Crampton did enter most deeply into this scheme is proved by the evidence already submitted to Her Majesty’s government, but is still more conclusively established by the additional proofs which accompany this dispatch. Whatever detraction from the value of the testimony against Mr. Crampton may result from the attempt to discredit Strobel and Hertz, is much more than made up by the additional proofs now adduced. This body of strong cumulative evidence confirms the President’s former conclusion as to the complicity of Mr. Crampton and the British consuls at New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati in the illegal enterprise of recruiting soldiers for the British army within the United States; and the President does not doubt that when this new evidence shall be [Page 665] brought under the consideration of Her Majesty’s government, it will no longer dissent from this conclusion.
[603] The gratification which the President feels at the satisfactory settlement of the recruiting question, in so far as respects the action of the British government itself, has induced him to examine the case again, with a view to remove, if possible, from his mind the personal objections to Her Majesty’s minister and consuls. This examination has not produced that effect, but, on the contrary, has strengthened his conviction that the interests of both governments require that those persons should cease to hold their present official positions in the United States. He sincerely regrets that Her Majesty’s govern*ment has not been able to take the same view of the case, and to comply with his request for their recall; but it has not consented to do so.
If, in the earnest desire to act with all possible courtesy toward Her Majesty’s government, the President could have suspended his determination in the case, in order to submit the new testimony, which he is confident would have been found sufficient to induce compliance with his request for the recall of the British minister, he is precluded from any such thought of delay by the exceptional character of dispatches of that gentleman, copies of which, having been recently laid before Parliament, have thus come to the knowledge of this Government, and which are of a tenor to render further intercourse between the two governments, through that minister, alike unpleasant and detrimental to their good understanding.
[604] The President has, therefore, been constrained, by considerations of the best interests of both countries, reluctantly to have recourse to the only remaining means of removing, without delay, these very unacceptable officers from the connection they now have with this Government. *This course has been deemed necessary on account of their unfitness for the positions they hold, arising from the very active part they have taken in getting up and carrying out the system of recruiting, which has been attended with numerous infractions of our laws, which has disturbed our internal tranquillity, and endangered our peaceful relations to a nation with which this Government is most anxious to maintain cordial friendship, and intimate commercial and social intercourse.
He has, therefore, determined to send to Mr. Crampton, Her Majesty’s diplomatic representative, his passport, and to revoke the exequaturs of Mr. Mathews, Mr. Barclay, and Mr. Rowcroft, the British consuls at Philadelphia, New York, and Cincinnati.
I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant,
George M. Dallas, Esq., London.
[For inclosures see Sen. Docs., 1st and 2d sessions 34th Cong., vol. 14, 1855–’56.]