Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress with the Annual Message of the President, December 2, 1872, Part II, Volume I

[31] *Part II: Unfriendly course pursued by Great Britain toward the United States from the outbreak to the close of the Insurrection.

[undated.]

Relations of the United States with Great Britain prior to 1860. In 1860 the United States had been an independent nation for a period of eighty-four years, and acknowledged as such by Great Britain for a period of seventy-seven years.

During this period, while sharing to a remarkable extent in the general prosperity of the Christian Powers, they had so conducted their relations toward those Powers as to merit, and they believed that they had secured, the good-will and esteem of all. Their prosperity was the result of honest thrift; their exceptional increase of population was the fruit of a voluntary immigration to their shores; and the vast extension of their domain was acquired by purchase and not by conquest.

[32] [33] From no people had they better right to expect a just judgment than from the people of Great Britain. In 1783, the War of Separation had been closed by a treaty of peace, which adjusted all the questions then pending between the two Governments. In 1794, new questions having arisen, *growing out of the efforts of France to make the ports of the United States a base of hostile operations against Great Britain, a new treaty was made, at the instance of the United States, by which all the difficulties were arranged satisfactorily to Great Britain, and at the same time so as to preserve the neutrality and the honor of the United States. In the same year, also, the first neutrality act was passed by Congress,¹ prescribing rules and establishing the modes of proceeding to enable the United States to perform their duties as a neutral toward Great Britain and other belligerents. In 1812, they were forced into war with Great Britain, by the claim of that Power to impress seamen on the high seas from vessels of the United States. After three years the war ceased, and the claim has never since been practically enforced. In 1818, they met British negotiators more than half-way in arranging disputed points about the North American Fisheries. In 1827, having added to their own right of discovery the French and Spanish titles to the Pacific coast, they voluntarily agreed to a joint occupation of a disputed portion of this territory, rather than resort to the last arbitrament of nations. In 1838, when a serious rebellion prevailed in Canada, the Congress of the United States, at the request of Great Britain, *passed an act authorizing the Government to exercise exceptional powers to maintain the national neutrality. In 1842 the Government of the United States met a British Envoy in a spirit of conciliation, and adjusted by agreement the disputed boundary between Maine and the British Possessions. In 1846 they accepted the proposal of Great Britain, made at their own suggestion, to adopt the forty-ninth parallel as a compromise line between the two Columbias, and to give to Great Britain the whole of Vancouver’s Island. In 1850 they waived, by the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, the right of acquisition on the Isthmus, across which for many years the line of communication from one part of their dominions to the other must run. In 1854 they conferred upon the people of the British Possessions in North America the advantages of a free, full commercial intercourse with the United States for their products, without securing corresponding benefits in return. Thus a series of difficult questions, some of which might have led to war, had been peaceably arranged by negotiations, and the increasing intercourse of the two nations was constantly fostered by continuing acts of friendliness on the part of the Government of the United States.

Friendly relations of the two governments in 1860. [34] All the political relations of the United States with England, with the exception of the episode of the war of 1812, had been those of increasing amity and friendship, confirmed by a repeated *yielding of extreme rights, rather than imperil the cordial relations which the United States so much desired to maintain with their nearest neighbors, their best customers, and their blood relations. They had good right, therefore, to believe, and they did believe, that, by virtue of this friendly political understanding, and in consequence of the gradual and steady assimilation of the commercial interests and the financial policies of the two Governments, there was in Great Britain, in the summer of 1880, sympathy for the Government and affection for the people of the United States. They had equal reason to think that neither the British Government nor people would look with either ignorance or unconcern upon any disaster to them. Above all, they had at that time a right to feel confident that, in any controversy which might grow out of the unhappy existence of African slavery in certain of the Southern States, the British Government would not exercise its sovereign powers, questionably or unquestionably, in favor of the supporters of slavery.

The United States in 1860. [35] On the 6th day of November, in that year, the jurisdiction of the Government of the United States extended unquestioned over eighteen States from which African slavery was excluded;¹ over *fifteen States in which it was established by law;² and over a vast territory in which, under the then prevailing laws, persons with African blood in their veins could be held as slaves.

This large unsettled or partially settled territory, as it might become peopled, was also liable to be divided into new States, which, as they entered the Union, might, as the law then stood, become “Slave States,” thus giving the advocates of slavery an increased strength in the Congress of the nation, and more especially in the Senate, and a more absolute control of the National Government.

Since the date named three new States, entitled to a representation of six Senators in the National Senate, have been admitted into the Union from this territory;³ and the remainder of the great dominions of the United States is now divided into ten incipient political organizations, known as Territories, which, with one exception, may at some future time become States.⁴

[36] Election of Mr. Lincoln. * The general election for President of the United States, which took place on the 6th of November, 1800, was conducted in strict conformity with the provisions of the Constitution and laws of the country, and resulted in the choice of Abraham Lincoln. The party which elected him wag pledged in advance to maintain “that the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom,” and to “deny the authority of Congress, of a Territorial Legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States.”¹ The word “Territory” is here used in the above-mentioned sense of an incipient political organization, which may at some future time become a State.

Secession of South Carolina. Of Alabama. [37] This decision of the people of the United States was resisted by some of the inhabitants of the States where slavery prevailed. The people of South Carolina, with an undoubted unanimity, commenced the hostile movement. In the following month they proclaimed, through a State Convention, their purpose to secede from the Union, because the party about to come into power had “announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory.”² The State of Alabama, on the 11th of January, with *much less unanimity, (the vote in the Convention being 61 ayes to 39 nays,³) followed the example of South Carolina, giving as their reason that the election of Mr. Lincoln “by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions [i. e., slavery] of Alabama,” was “a political wrong of an insulting and menacing character.”⁴

Of Georgia arid other States. The State of Georgia followed after a much greater struggle, in which the party in favor of remaining in the Union resisted to the last, the final vote being 208 ayes to 89 nays.⁵ Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas each framed an ordinance of secession from the Union before the 4th of February, in each case with more or less unanimity.

Opposition to the territorial limitation of slavery the cause of secession. [38] On the 4th of February, 1861, representatives from some of the States which had attempted to go through the form of secession, and representatives from the State of North Carolina, which had not at that time attempted it, met at Montgomery,⁶ in the State of Alabama, for the purpose of organizing a provisional government, and having done so, elected Mr. Jefferson Davis as the Provisional President, and Mr. Alexander H. Stephens as the Provisional Vice-President of the proposed* Confederation. In accepting this office, on the 18th of February, Mr. Jefferson Davis said:⁷ “We have vainly endeavored to secure tranquillity and obtain respect for the rights to which we were entitled,” [i. e., the right to extend the domains of slavery.] “As a necessity, and not a choice, we have resorted to the remedy of separation.” * * Our industrial pursuits have received no check; the cultivation, of our fields progresses as heretofore; and even should we be involved in war, there would be no considerable diminution in the production of the staples which have constituted our exports, in which the commercial world has an interest scarcely less than our own. This common interest of producer and consumer can only be intercepted by an exterior force, which should obstruct its transmission to foreign markets—a course of conduct which would be detrimental to the manufacturing and commercial interests abroad.”

Mr. Stephens spoke with still more explicitness. He said¹ the “foundations [of the new government] are laid. Its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and moral condition.”

[39] *Having thus formally declared that the contemplated limitation of the territory within which negro slavery should be tolerated was the sole cause of the projected separation, and having appealed to the world to support them, the seceding States made efforts, which proved vain, to induce the other slave States to join them. No other States passed ordinances of seccession until after the fall of Fort Sumter. On the contrary, the people of the States of Tennessee² and Missouri³ before that time voted by large majorities against secession; and in the States of North Carolina and Virginia conventions were called and were in session when some of the events hereinafter referred to took place; and these bodies were known to be opposed to the revolutionary movements in South Carolina and the six States bordering on the Gulf of Mexico.

A party in the South opposed to secession. [40] [41] A large minority, if not a majority, of the people of the slave States known as Border States, and of the mountainous parts of the six States known as the Gulf States, did not desire separation. They were attached to the Union, which had fostered and protected their interests, and they expressed no dissatisfaction, except with the proposed policy as to the extension of slavery, and *many cases not even with that. Their feelings were forcibly expressed by the distinguished Alexander H. Stephens, Provisional Vice-President of the Montgomery Government, in a speech made in the Convention in Georgia before that State passed the ordinance of secession, and about two months before he accepted office at Montgomery. He said,⁴ “This step [of secession] once taken can never be recalled; and all the baleful and withering consequences that must follow will rest on the Convention for all coming time. When we and our posterity shall see our lovely South desolated by the demon of war, which this act of yours will inevitably invite and call forth; when our green fields of waving harvest shall be trodden down by the murderous soldiery and fiery car of war sweeping over our land $ our temples of justice laid in ashes; all the horrors and desolations of war upon us, who but this Convention will be held responsible for it, and who but him who shall have given his vote for this unwise and ill timed measure, as I honestly think and believe, shall be held to strict account for this suicidal act by the present generation, and probably cursed and execrated by posterity for all coming time, for the wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this act you now propose to perpe*trate? Pause, I entreat you, and consider for a moment what reasons you can give that will even satisfy yourselves in calmer moments; what reasons you can give to your fellow-sufferers in the calamity that it will bring upon us. What reasons can you give to the nations of the earth to justify it? They will be the calm and deliberate judges in the case, and what cause or overt act can you name or point to, on which to rest the plea of justification? What right has the North assailed? What interest of the South has been invaded? What justice has been denied? And what claim founded injustice and right has been withheld? Can either of you to-day name one governmental act of wrong, deliberately and purposely done by the Government of Washington, of which the South has a right to complain? I challenge the answer.”

[42] All the facts above referred to in this paper were patent to the whole world, were ostentatiously put forth by the insurgents, and were openly commented upon by the public press throughout the United States. It is, therefore, not unreasonable to presume that the British Government received from its representatives and agents in the United States full information concerning them as they took place. To suppose the *contrary would be to ignore the well-known fidelity of these officers.

Inauguration of Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln entered upon the duties of his office on the 4th of March, 1861. He found the little Army of the United States scattered and disintegrated; the Navy sent to distant quarters of the globe; the Treasury bankrupt; the credit of the United States seriously injured by forced sales of Government securities; the public service demoralized; the various Departments of the Government tilled with unfaithful clerks and officers, whose sympathies were with the South, who had been placed in their positions for the purpose of paralyzing his administration. These facts, which were known to the world, must have attracted the attention of the observant Representative of Great Britain at Washington, and must have enabled him to make clear to his Government the reasons why the Cabinet at Washington must pause before asserting its rights by force.

The British Government informed of his purposes. [43] The new Government took an early opportunity to inform the British Government of its purposes.¹ On the 9th of March, four days after the installment of Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Dallas, the Minister of the United States at London, was instructed to communicate to Lord Russell the inaugural Ad*dress of the President, and to assure him that the President entertained full confidence in the speedy restoration of the harmony and unity of the Government. He was further told that “the United States have had too many assurances and manifestations of the friendship and good will of Great Britain, to entertain any doubt that these considerations will have their just influence with the British Government, and will prevent that Government from yielding to solicitations to intervene in any unfriendly way in the domestic concerns of our country.”

Lord John Russell promises to await Mr. Adams’s arrival before acting.²Mr. Dallas, in complying with his instructions, (April 9, 1861,) pressed upon Lord Russel the importance of England and France abstaining, “at least for a considerable time, from doing what, by encouraging groundless hopes, would widen a breach still thought capable of being closed.” Lord Russell replied that the coming of Mr., Adams (Mr. Dallas’s successor)¹ “would doubtless be regarded as the appropriate and natural occasion for finally discussing and determining the question.”

[44] The United States therefore had reasonable ground to believe, not only in view of the great moral interests of which they were the exponents, and of the long-standing friendship between them *and Great Britain, but also in consequence of the voluntary promise of Lord Russell, that an opportunity would be afforded them to explain their views and purposes through their newly selected and specially trusted representative; and least of all had “they cause to anticipate that a Government which they supposed to be in sympathy with their policy as to African slavery, would precipitate a decision as to the insurgents, which was so obviously injurious to the United States, as to almost appear to have been designedly so.

Surrender of Fort Sumter. The delay upon which the Government of the United States relied to firmly secure the loyalty of the Border States, and their aid in inducing the peaceable return of the Gulf States, was interrupted by the attack upon Fort Sumter, made by order of the Government at Montgomery. This attack ended in the surrender of the garrison on the 13th of April. This was followed on the 15th of April by a¹ Proclamation of the President, calling out the militia and convening an extra session of Congress on the 4th day of the next July.

The insurgents to issue letters of marque. [45] On the 17th of April, Mr.²Jefferson Davis gave notice that letters of marque would be granted by the persons who had attempted to establish a *Government at Montgomery, by usurping the authority of the United States.

Proclamation giving notice of blockade. Objects of that proclamation. On the 19th of April President Lincoln issued a Proclamation declaring that a blockade of the ports within the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas would be established for the purpose of collecting the revenue in the disturbed part of the country, and for the protection of the public peace, and of the lives and properties of quiet and orderly citizens, until Congress should assemble. That body was summoned to assemble on the fourth day of the following July.

The full text of this Proclamation will be found in Vol. I, page 21.

In the course of the discussion between the two Governments growing out of the war, it has been repeatedly asserted that Her Majesty’s Government was induced to confer upon the insurgents in the South the status of belligerents, in consequence of the receipt of the news of the President’s Proclamation of April 19. The United States are therefore forced to invite the patience of the Board of Arbitrators, while they establish, from conclusive proof, that Her Majesty’s Government is mistaken in that respect.

The joint action of France invited by Great Britain. [46] Before any armed collision had taken place, there existed an understanding between Her Majesty’s *Government and the Government of the Emperor of the French, with a view to securing a simultaneous and identical course of action of the two Governments on American questions. It is within the power of the British Government to inform the Arbitrators when that understanding was reached. The fact that it had been agreed to by the two Governments was communicated to Mr. Dallas, by Lord John Russell, on the 1st day of May, 1861.³

There was nothing in the previous relations between Great Britain and the United States which made it necessary for Her Majesty’s Government to seek the advice or to invite the support of the Emperor of the French in the crisis which was threatened. The United States are at a loss to conjecture what inducement could have prompted such an act, unless it may have been the perception on the part of Her Majesty’s Government that it was in its nature not only unfriendly, but almost hostile to the United States.

[47] When the news of the bloodless attack upon Fort Sumter became known in Europe, Her Majesty’s Government apparently assumed that the time had come for the joint action which had been previously agreed upon; and, without waiting to learn the purposes of the United States, it *announced its intention to take the first step by recognizing the insurgents as belligerents.

When the President’s Proclamation was received in Great Britain. The President’s Proclamation, which has since been made the ostensible reason for this determination, was issued on the 19th of April, and was made public in the Washington newspapers of the morning of the 20th. An imperfect copy of it was also telegraphed to New York, and from thence to Boston, in each of which cities it appeared in the newspapers of the morning of the 20th.

The New York papers of the 20th gave the substance of the Proclamation, without the official commencement and close, and with several errors of more or less importance.

The Boston papers of the same date, in addition to the errors in the New York copy, omitted the very important statement in regard to the collection of the revenue, which appears in the Proclamation as the main cause of its issue.

[48] During the morning of the 19th of April, a riot took place in Baltimore, which ended in severing direct communication, by rail or telegraph, between Washington and New York. Telegraphic communication was not restored until the 30th of the month. The regular passage of the mails and trains was resumed about the same time. It; appears by a dispatch from Lord Lyons to Lord *John Russell that the mails had not been resumed on the 27th.¹

It is absolutely certain that no full copy of the text of the Proclamation could have left Washington by the mails of the 19th, and equally certain that no copy could have reached New York from Washington after the 19th for several days.

[49] On the 20th the steamer Canadian sailed from Portland, taking the Boston papers of that day, with the imperfect copy of the Proclamation, in which the clause in regard to the collection of the revenue was suppressed. This steamer arrived at Londonderry on the 1st of May, and the “Daily News” of London, of the 2d of May, published the following telegraphic items of news: “President Lincoln has issued a Proclamation, declaring a blockade of all the ports in the seceded States. The Federal Government will condemn as pirates all privateer-vessels which may be seized by Federal ships.” The Canadian arrived at Liverpool on the 2d of May, and the “Daily News,” of the 3d, and the “Times,” of the 4th of May, published the imperfect Boston copy of the Proclamation in the language as shown in the note below.² No other than the Boston copy of the* Proclamation appears to have been published in the London newspapers. It is not likely that a copy was received in London before the 10th, by the Fulton from New York.

Opinion of Law Officers taken on an imperfect copy. [50] It was on this meager and incorrect information that the advice of the British Law Officers was based, upon which that Government acted. On the evening of the 2d of May, Lord John Russell stated in the House of Commons that¹ “Her *Majesty’s Government heard the other day that the Confederated States have issued letters of marque, and to-day we have heard that it is intended there shall be a blockade of all the ports of the Southern States. As to the general provisions of the law of nations on these questions, some of the points are so new, as well as so important, that they have been referred to the Law Officers of the Crown for their opinions.”

Her Majesty’s Government decide on the 1st of May to recognize a state of war. It is with deep regret that the United States find themselves obliged to lay before the Tribunal of Arbitration the evidence that, when this announcement was made in the House of Commons, Her Majesty’s Government had already decided to recognize the right of the Southern insurgents to attack and destroy the commerce of the United States on the high seas. On the 1st day of May, 1861, (two days before they could have heard of the issue of the President’s Proclamation,) Lord John Russell wrote as follows to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty:²

“The intelligence which reached this country by the last mail from the United States gives reason to suppose that a civil war between the Northern and Southern States of that Confederacy was imminent, if indeed it might not be considered to have already begun.

[51] *“Simultaneously with the arrival of this news, a telegram, purporting to have been conveyed to Halifax from the United States, was received, which announced that the President of the Southern Confederacy had taken steps for issuing letters of marque against the vessels of the Northern States.”

* * * * *

“I need scarcely observe to Your Lordships that it may be right to apprise the Admiral that, much as Her Majesty regrets the prospect of civil war breaking out in a country in the happiness and peace of which Her Majesty takes the deepest interest, it is Her Majesty’s pleasure that nothing should be done by her naval forces which should indicate any partiality or preference for either party in the contest that may ensue.”

Lord John Russell and the insurgent commissioners discuss the recognition of Southern independence. [52] On the 4th of May³ Lord John Russell held an interview with some individuals, whom he described as “the three gentlemen deputed by the Southern Confederacy to obtain their recognition as an independent State.” Although he informed them that he could hold no official communication with them, he did discuss with them the question of recognition, and he indicated to them the points to which they must direct their attention in the discussion of the subject. Pie also *listened to their views in response thereto; and when on the termination of the interview they informed him “that they should remain in London for the present, in the hope that the recognition of the Southern Confederacy would not be long delayed,” he interposed no objections to such a course, and suggested no improbability of such a recognition.

Communication with the French Government. On the 5th of May the steamship Persia arrived at Liverpool with advices from New York to the 25th of April. Lord John Russell stated on Monday, the 6th of May, in a communication to Lord Cowley,¹ “that Her Majesty’s Government received no dispatches from Lord Lyons by the mail which has just arrived, [the Persia,] the communication between Washington and New York being interrupted.”

[53] Answer of the French Government. [54] When the President’s Proclamation was received by Great Britain. In the same-dispatch Lord Cowley is informed “that Her Majesty’s Government cannot hesitate to admit that such Confederacy is entitled to be considered as a belligerent, and as such invested with all the rights and prerogatives of a belligerent,” and he is instructed to invite the French Government to a joint action, and a line of joint policy with the British Government, toward the United States. Lord Cowley, under these instructions, had an interview on the 9th of May *with the French Minister for Foreign Affairs. The Tribunal may infer from the published correspondence that it was assumed at this interview that the two Governments should act together, and that the letters of marque which might be issued by the insurgents should be respected. Lord Cowley reported that² “His Excellency said further that in looking for precedents it had been discovered that Great Britain, although treating at the commencement of the American war letters of marque as piracy, had, alter a time, recognized the belligerent rights of the States in rebellion against her.” The answer to these instructions was received at the Foreign Office on the 11th of May. The United States are firmly convinced that no correct or complete copy of the President’s Proclamation could have been received there in advance of it. It is known that the official copy forwarded by Lord Lyons to his Government reached London on the 14th of May.³ The official copy sent by Mr. Seward to Mr. Dallas reached Southampton on the evening of the 9th of May, and London on the 10th. It is stated in the British notes on Mr. Fish’s instruction of September 25, 1869, to Mr. Motley, that the Proclamation was communicated officially by Mr. Dallas to Lord*John Russell on the 11th. There is no evidence of this fact in the archives of the Legation of the United States at London, or at the Department of State at Washington. But even if the statement in the notes be correct, still the British Government received in the afternoon of the 11th of May, 1861, its first complete and official copy of the President’s Proclamation, ten days after Lord John Russell had decided to award the rights of belligerency on the ocean to the insurgents, eight days after the subject had been referred to the Law Officers for their opinion, and five days after the decision of Her Majesty’s Government upon that opinion had been announced in the House of Commons, as hereinafter set forth.

[55] On the same day on which Lord John Russell wrote Lord Cowley (May 6th) he wrote to Lord Lyons,⁴ calling the United States “the northern portion of the late Union,” and reiterating that Her Majesty’s Government “cannot question the right of the Southern States to be recognized as a belligerent;” and in the House of Commons, on the same evening, he announced that the Attorney and Solicitor General, the Queen’s Advocate, and the Government had come to the conclusion that the Southern Confederacy of America must be treated as a belligerent. On the same evening, Lord Palm *erston said in the House of Commons,¹ “No one can regret more than I do the intelligence which has been received within the last few days from America; but at the same time, any one must have been short-sighted and little capable of anticipating the probable course of human events, who had not for a long time foreseen events of a similar character to those we now deplore. From the commencement of this unfortunate quarrel between the two sections of the United States, it is evident that the causes of disunion were too deeply seated to make it possible that separation would not take place, and it was also obvious that passions were so roused on both sides as to make it highly improbable that such separation could take place without a contest.”

Effect of recognition of a state of war. A question was asked in the House of Commons on the 7th of May,² the next evening, as to the extent of the belligerent rights at sea which would be acquired by the South, to which Lord Palmerston declined to make answer “until the Government should be in a condition, after consulting its legal advisers, to make some distinct communication on the subject.”

[56] On the 9th of May,² Sir George Lewis an*nounced that a proclamation would be issued, stating “the general effect of the common and statute law on the matter;” and on the 10th, Lord Granville³ repeated the declaration in the House of Lords. In the discussion there it was assumed by all the speakers that the insurgent Government might lawfully issue letters of marque.

[57] The Queen’s Proclamation. It is believed by the United States that it was well known to Her Majesty’s Government during all this time, that Mr. Adams was about to arrive with instruction from the new administration, and that he came possessed of its most confidential views on these important questions. On the 2d May Mr. Dallas wrote Mr. Seward thus:⁴ “The solicitude felt by Lord John Russell as to the effect of certain measures represented as likely to be adopted by the President, induced him to request me to call at his private residence yesterday. * * * I informed him that Mr. Adams had apprised me of his intention to be on his way hither in the steamship Niagara, which left Boston on the 1st of May, and that he would probably arrive in less than two weeks, by the 12th or 15th instant. His Lordship acquiesced in the expediency of disregarding mere rumor, and waiting the full knowledge to be brought by my successor.” The United States, for reasons already given, have no doubt *that, before that interview, Her Majesty’s Government had already decided upon their course of action. Mr. Adams did actually arrive in London on the evening of the 13th of May. The Queen’s Proclamation of neutrality was issued on the morning of that day.

Uncertainty of Her Majesty’s Government. [58] A careful examination of the published correspondence and speeches of Lord John Russell shows that Her Majesty’s Government was at that time by no means certain that there was a war in the United States. On the 1st of May,⁵ he directs the Admiralty as to the course to be pursued with reference to the insurgent cruisers in the war which, he thinks, may “have already begun.” On the 2d of May¹ he asks the Law Officers of the Crown what course the Government shall pursue. On the 1st of June, however, he is in doubt on the subject, and he writes to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, informing them of the rules to be observed by the British naval² forces “in the contest which appears to be imminent between the United States and the so-styled Confederate States of North America.” It would seem, therefore, that on the 1st of June, 1861, Her Majesty’s Government regarded only as “imminent” the hostilities which Her Majesty’s Proclamation of the 13th of the previous May alleged had “unhappily *commenced between the United States of America and certain States styling themselves the Confederate States of America.” In point of fact, Lord John Russell’s dispatch of the 1st of June described with fidelity the condition of things so far as then known in London; for at that time the intelligence of the exhilarating effect of the Queen’s Proclamation upon the insurgents, and its depressing effect upon the Government and loyal population of the United States, had not reached Europe.

Effect of the Queen’s Proclamation. Whatever Lord John Russell, and his colleagues in the Government, who decided to counsel Her Majesty to issue the Proclamation of May 13th, may have thought, the debates in Parliament removed any excuse for ignorance as to the effect of that instrument.

[59] As early as the 29th of April, in the House of Commons, an opposition member had said that “there could be no doubt that if the war should be continued in that country [the United States] there would be thousands of privateers hovering about those coasts;”³ to which the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Gladstone) immediately replied: “Ail that relates to the dangers which may arise between British merchant-ships and American or other privateers * * * I shall pretermit, not because I presume to say or think that they are *insignificant, but because I feel it my duty to address myself to those points which touch more directly and more practically [the Budget] the matter in hand.”⁴

In a debate in the House of Lords, on the 10th of May, Lord Hardwicke⁵ said that he “was anxious that the House should not enter too strong a protest against that which was a natural consequence of war, namely, that vessels should be fitted out by private individuals under letters of marque. That was, no doubt, privateering, but it did not by any means follow that inivateering was piracy. He believed that if privateering-ships were put in the hands of proper officers, they were not engaged in piracy any more than men-of-war. He thought that a feeble State engaged in a war with a powerful one had a right to make use of its merchant-vessels for the purpose of carrying on the contest, and there was no violation of the law of nations in such a proceeding.”

[60] In the more elaborate discussion which followed on the 16th of the same month in the House of Lords, the Lord Chancellor⁶ said: “If, after the publishing of the present proclamation, any English subject-were to enter into the service of either of the belligerents on the other side of the Atlantic, there could be no doubt that the *person so acting would be liable to be punished for a violation of the laws of his own country, and would have no right to claim any interference on the part of his Government to shield him from any consequences which might arise. There could, however, at the same time, be no doubt that, although he would be guilty of a breach of the laws of his own country, he ought not to be regarded as a pirate for acting under a commission from a State admitted to be entitled to the exercise of belligerent rights, and carrying on what might be called a justum bellum. Anybody dealing with a man under those circumstances as a pirate, and putting him to death, would, he contended, be guilty of murder.”

[61] The distinguished jurist, who then sat upon the woolsack, described in that speech one legal effect of this hastily issued Proclamation with undoubted correctness It relieved Englishmen or foreigners in England, and Englishmen on insurgent cruisers carrying on war against the United States, from the penalties of a high class of felonies. Lord Lyndhurst, one of the most eminent predecessors of Lord Campbell, in an opinion in the House of Lords in 1853, cited with respect by Sir George Cornwall Lewis, (himself one of Lord Palmerston’s Cabinet,) said: “If a number of British subjects were to combine and conspire together to excite revolt among the inhabitants of a friendly State, * * * and these persons, in pursuance of that conspiracy, were to issue manifestoes and proclamations for the purpose of carrying that object into effect; above all, if they were to subscribe money for the purpose of purchasing arms to give effect to that intended enterprise, I conceive, and I state with confidence, that such persons would be guilty of a misdemeanor, and liable to suffer punishment by the laws of this country, inasmuch as their conduct would tend to embroil the two countries together, to lead to remonstrances by the one with the other, and ultimately, it might be, to war.* * * Foreigners residing in this country, as long as they reside here under the protection of this country, are considered in the light of British subjects, or rather subjects of Her Majesty, and are punishable by the criminal law precisely in the same manner, to the same extent, and under the same conditions as natural-born subjects of Her Majesty. * * * The offense of endeavoring to excite revolt against a neighboring State is an offense against the law of nations. No writer on the law of nations states otherwise. But the law of nations, according to the decision of our greatest judges, is part of the law of England.”¹

[62] Mr. Bright’s views. [63]*The United States will close this branch of the examination by citing the language of Mr. Bright in the House of Commons, on the 13th of March, 1865.² “Going back nearly four years, we recollect what occurred when the news arrived of the first shot having been fired at Fort Sumter. That, I think, was about the 12th of April. Immediately after that time it was announced that a new minister was coming to this country. Mr. Dallas had intimated to the Government that, as he did not represent the new President, he would rather not undertake anything of importance; but that his successor was on his way, and would arrive on such a day. When a man leaves New York on a given day you can calculate to about twelve hours when he will be in London. Mr. Adams, I think, arrived in London about the 13th of May, and when he opened his newspaper next morning he found the Proclamation of Neutrality, acknowledging the belligerent rights of the South. I say that the proper course to have taken would have been to wait till Mr. Adams arrived here, and to have discussed the matter with him in a friendly manner, explaining the ground upon which the English Government had felt themselves bound to issue that proclamation, and representing that it was not done in any manner as an unfriendly act toward the United States Government. But no *precaution whatever was taken. It was done with unfriendly haste, and had this effect: that it gave comfort and courage to the conspiracy at Montgomery and at Richmond, and caused great grief and irritation among that portion of the people of America most strongly desirous of maintaining amicable and friendly relations between their country and England.”

The sovereign right to issue which a proclamation not denied. The United States have made this review of the course pursued by Great Britain in recognizing the insurgents as belligerents, with no purpose of questioning the sovereign right of that Power to determine for itself whether the facts at that time justified such a recognition. Although the United States strenuously deny that the facts as they then were known to Her Majesty’s Government did justify that Government in conferring upon the rebellious citizens of the United States the privilege of belligerents, and still less justified it in counseling France to do the same thing, yet they recognize and insist that (in the language of the President to Congress on the 6th day of December, 1869) a “nation is its own judge when to accord the rights of belligerency, either to a people struggling to free themselves from a government they believe to be oppressive, or to independent nations at war with each other.”¹

[64] But while thus firmly insisting upon the sover*eign rights of independent nationality, they also maintain “that the rightfulness of such an act depends upon the occasion and the circumstances, and it is an act, like the sovereign act of war, which the morality of the public law and practice requires should be deliberate, seasonable, and just, in reference to surrounding facts;”² and “they regard the concession of belligerency by Great Britain as a part of this case only so far as it shows the beginning and animus of that course of conduct which resulted so disastrously to the United States.”³

And issued with an unfriendly purpose. Viewed in this light, the United States, with deep and unfeigned regret, have been forced to conclude, from all the circumstances, that Her Majesty’s Government was actuated at that time by a conscious unfriendly purpose toward the United States.

Mr. Rolin-Jacque-mynaon the Queen’s proclamation. [65]In the language af a continental publicist, “L’Angleterre a été bien pressée de faire usage de son droit strict pour constater solenncllement que l’Union Américaine était ébranlée, et donner aux insurgés, ce que le monde entier a considéré tout au moins comme un appui moral; * * l’acte a été posé la veille du jour oú le nouvel ambassadeur américain, M. Adams, devait débarquer à Londres, et au moment oil positivement les insurgés n’existaieut pas comme puisance navale, oil ils n’avaient de marine et de tribuuaux de prise que sur le papier.”⁴

Unfriendly conduct of Great Britain as to the declarations of the Congress of Paris. This precipitate and unfriendly act of Great Britain did not go forth alone. On the 6th of May, 1861, five days before the receipt of the authentic copy of the President’s Proclamation, Lord John Russell instructed Lord Cowley, the British Ambassador at Paris, to ascertain whether the Imperial Government was disposed to make a joint endeavor with Her Majesty’s Government “to obtain from each of the belligerents [observe that the insurgents were styled “belligerents” seven days in advance of the Queen’s proclamation] a formal recognition of the second and third articles of the Declaration of Paris.”

Lord Cowley, on the 9th of May, informed Lord John Russell that “the Imperial Government concurred entirely in the views of Her Majesty’s Government, and would be prepared to join Her Majesty’s Government in endeavoring to obtain of the belligerents a formal recognition of the second and third articles, of the Declaration of Paris.”¹

[66] This proposition to open direct negotiations* with the insurgents was the second step in the joint action which had been agreed upon. For reasons which Her Majesty’s Government is in a position to explain, but which can only be conjectured by the United States and by the Tribunal, care appears to have been taken to prevent the knowledge of it from reaching the Government of the United States.

On the receipt of the information from Lord Cowley, Lord John Russell prepared at once a draught of instructions to Lord Lyons, the British Minister at Washington, and, on the 16th of May, sent them to Lord Cowley to be submitted to the Emperor’s Government.²

On the next day Lord Cowley replied that he had seen M. Thouvenel, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and added: “M. Thouvenel had already written to M. Mercier [the French Minister at Washington] in the same terms as your Lordship proposes to address your instructions to Lord Lyons. I need hardly add that His Excellency concurs entirely in the draught.”

[67] On the 18th of May Lord John Russell hastened to send his instructions to Lord Lyons.³ He told him “to encourage the Government” of the United States “in any disposition which they might evince to recognize the Declaration of Paris in *regard to privateering;” and he added that “Her Majesty’s Government do not doubt that they will, without hesitation, recognize the remaining articles of the declaration.” He continued: “You will clearly understand that Her Majesty’s Government cannot accept the renunciation of privateering on the part of the Government of the United States, if coupled with the condition that they should enforce its renunciation on the Confederate States, either by denying their right to issue letters of marque, or by interfering with the belligerent operations of vessels holding from them such letters of marque;” and he closed by instructing Lord Lyons to take such means as he might judge most expedient to transmit to Her. Majesty’s Consul at Charleston or New Orleans a copy of a previous dispatch of the same day, in order that it might be communicated to Mr. Jefferson Davis at Montgomery. Lord Lyons had no instructions to show to Mr. Seward the dispatch from which these citations have been made, and it evidently was contemplated that he should not exhibit it.

[68] He was, however, to read to him the previous instructions of the same date referred to in that dispatch, and to leave a copy with him, if desired. These previous instructions, numbered 136, may be found on the 107th page of the first of the accompanying volumes. It was not only to be shown to Mr. Seward, but a copy of it was to be shown to Mr. Jefferson Davis.³ The attention of the Tribunal of Arbitration is, in Ibis connection, particularly invited to the fact that these instructions, numbered 136, contain nothing indicating a design on the part of the British Government to put itself in communication with the insurgent authorities, nothing to induce Mr. Seward to think that they were other than what, on their face, they purported to be, a communication from the Government of Great Britain to the Government of the United States, through the ordinary diplomatic channel.

The instructions to Lord Lyons might have been regarded as a cause of war. It is not improbable that the Arbitrators may be of opinion that the use of the British Legation at Washington for such a purpose was an act which the United States would have been justified in regarding as a cause of war. It was, to say the least, an abuse of diplomatic privilege, and a violation, in the person of Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, of the duties of neutrality which Her Majesty’s Government was about to impose upon her subjects.

[69] Before relating what Lord Lyons did, under these instructions, it is necessary to pause in order that the Tribunal may be informed what Mr. Seward and Mr. Adams had been doing in the same * matter simultaneously with the proceedings which have been detailed.

Former negotiations regarding the Declaration of the Congress of Paris. In the year 1854 the Government of the United States submitted to the principal maritime nations two propositions, soliciting their assent to them as permanent principles of international law. These propositions were, that free ships should make free goods; and that neutral property on board an enemy’s vessel should not be subject to confiscation unless contraband of war.

Great Britain, being then at war with Russia, did not act upon these propositions; but in the Congress which assembled at Paris when the peace of 1856 was made, Great Britain and the other nations, parties to the Congress, gave their assent to them, and to two other propositions—the abolition of privateering, and the necessity’ of efficiency to the legalization of a blockade. It was also agreed that the four propositions should be maintained as a whole and indivisible, and that the Powers who might accede to them should accede to them as such.¹

[70] Great Britain then joined in inviting the United States to give its adhesion to the four indivisible points. The Washington Cabinet of that day replied that the United States was willing to assent to all the propositions, except the one re*lating to privateering, as being, in fact, recognitions of principles which had always been maintained by them; but that they could not consent to abolish privateering with, out a further agreement to exempt private property from capture on the high seas; and they proposed to amend the declaration of the Congress of Paris in that sense, and offered to give their adhesion to it when so amended.

In January, 1857, the proposals of the United States not having been acted upon, their Minister at London was directed to suspend negotiations until the new President, Mr. Buchanan, could examine the subject; and the suspension continued until after Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated.

On the 24th of April, 1861, less than two months after Mr. Lincoln’s accession to power, Mr. Seward resumed the suspended negotiations by instructing Mr. Adams² (similar instructions being given to the Ministers of the United States to the other maritime powers) to give an unqualified assent to the four propositions, and to bring the negotiation to a speedy and satisfactory conclusion.

[71] Owing, probably, to the interruption in the communications between Washington and New York when the dispatch of April 24 was written, Mr. Adams does not appear to have been able to *communicate his instructions to Lord John Russell before the 21st of May. He then informed Lord John that he had received instructions to negotiate, which he would “submit to his consideration if there was any disposition to pursue the matter further.” Lord John Russell “expressed the willingness of Great Britain to negotiate, but he seemed to desire to leave the subject in the hands of Lord Lyons, to whom he intimated that he had already transmitted authority to assent to any modification of the only point in issue which the Government of the United States might prefer.”¹ He did not inform Mr. Adams that he also proposed to open negotiations with the insurgents, nor had Mr. Adams reason to suspect that fact.

Matters were thus suspended in London, to enable Lord Lyons to work out Lord John Russell’s instructions at Washington and in Richmond.

[72] Lord Lyons received the dispatches of the 18th of May on the 2d of June,² and at once conferred with Mr. Mercier. It was agreed that they should try to manage the business so as to prevent “an inconvenient outbreak from the Government”³ of the United States. He then notified Earl Russell of what they proposed to do, and informed him of the instructions to Mr. Adams on this subject. He also intimated that it would be unreasonable *to expect that the insurgents should abandon privateering, unless “in return for some great concession.” What concession remained to be given except recognition of national independence?

Lord Lyons’s interview with Mr. Seward. It was not until the 15th of June that Lord Lyons and Mr. Mercier communicated the purport of their instructions to Mr. Seward in a joint interview, of which we have Mr. Seward’s account⁴ and Lord Lyons’s account,⁵ both dated the 17th of June. These accounts do not differ materially. The action as to the British Minister was this: Lord Lyons stated that he was instructed to read a dispatch to Mr. Seward and to leave a copy with him if desired. Mr. Seward refused to permit the dispatch to be read officially, unless he could first have an opportunity to acquaint himself with its contents. Lord Lyons handed him Lord John Russell’s No. 136 for the purpose of unofficial examination. Mr. Seward saw that it spoke of the insurgents as belligerents, and on that ground refused to permit it to be officially communicated to him. He added that he preferred to treat the question in London, and Lord Lyons left with him, unofficially, a copy of Lord John Russell’s 136, in order that he might more intelligently instruct Mr. Adams.

[73] The instructions thereupon written to Mr. *Adams are in the same tone.⁶ Mr. Seward expresses regret that the British and French governments should have seen fit to take joint action in the matter; he refuses to admit that there are two belligerent parties to the struggle; he expresses regret that Great Britain did not await the arrival of Mr. Adams before instructing Lord Lyons, as Mr. Adams’s instructions covered the whole ground; but he nowhere manifests a knowledge of the purpose of Great Britain to enter into communications with the insurgents at Richmond. That was studiously concealed from him.

Termination of negotiations with United States. The negotiations were then transferred again to London, to the “profound surprise”¹ of Mr. Adams. They were protracted there until the 19th of August, when Lord Russell informed Mr. Adams that Great Britain could only receive the assent of the United States to the Declaration of Paris upon the condition that Her Majesty should not thereby “undertake any engagement which should have any bearing, direct or indirect,” upon the insurrection. The United States declined to be put upon a different looting from that of the forty-two independent Powers enumerated in Lord Russell’s No. 136 to Lord Lyons, whose assent had been received without conditions, and the negotiations dropped.

[74] Great Britain desired to legalize privateering. *The arbitrators will thus perceive that Her Majesty’s Government, having recognized the insurgents as belligerents, felt itself bound to receive the assent of the United States to the declarations of the Congress of Paris only conditionally, so as to have no bearing upon letters of marque that might be issued by the insurgents. But they will also observe that the two steps of the recognition of belligerency and the invitations to assent to the second and third clauses in the declarations were taken simultaneously, in accordance with a previous arrangement for joint action; and it is not impossible that they may come to the conclusion that Her Majesty’s Government, when the insurgents were recognized as belligerents, contemplated that they would proceed to issue letters of marque, and intended to legalize those letters in the eye of British law, and to countenance the bearers of them in the destruction of American commerce.

Meanwhile Lord Lyons had not forgotten his instructions to secure the assent of Mr. Jefferson Davis to the second and third rules of the Declaration of Paris.

Negotiations at Richmond. [75]On the 5th of July he sent instructions to Mr. Bunch, British Consul at Charleston, to “obtain from the existing government in those [the insurgent] States securities concerning the proper treatment of neutrals.”¹ He inclosed a copy of *Lord Russell’s 136. He advised Mr. Bunch not to go to Richmond, but to communicate through the governor of the State of South Carolina and he accompanied this with “a long private letter on the same subject.”²The nature of that private letter may be gathered from what Mr. Bunch did.

[76] He put himself and his French colleague at once in communication with a gentleman who was well qualified to serve his purpose, but who was not the governor of South Carolina. They showed to this agent Lord John Russell’s dispatch to Lord Lyons, and Lord Lyons’s official and private letters to Mr. Bunch, and they told him that the step to be taken was one of “very great significance and importance.” The agent asked them whether they “were prepared to receive an official act which should be based upon their request, thus giving to the Confederate Government the advantage before the world of such an implied recognition as this would afford.”³They replied that they “wished a spontaneous declaration;” “that to make this request the declared basis of the act would be to proclaim this negotiation, and the intense jealousy of the United States was such that this would be followed by the revocation of their exequaturs,” which they wished to avoid; that could only look upon this step as the initiative toward a recognition, yet the object of their Government being to reach that *recognition gradually, so as not to give good ground for a breach, this indirect way was absolutely necessary.” And they added, All we have a right to ask is that you shall not give publicity to this negotiation; that, we nor our Governments should be upon the record.”¹

[77] Their agent, being thus possessed of their views, went to Richmond, with Lord Lyons’s letters and Lord Russell’s dispatch, and while there he secured the passage, in the insurgent congress, of resolutions partially draughted by Mr. Jefferson Davis, which declared their purpose to observe principles toward neutrals similar to the second and third rules of the Declaration of Paris: that blockades to be binding must be effectual; and that they “maintained the right of privateering.”² In communicating this result to Lord Lyons, Mr. Bunch said, “The wishes, of Her Majesty’s Government would seem to have been fully met, for, as no proposal was made that the Confederate Government should abolish privateering, it could not be expected that they should do so of their own accord, particularly as it is the arm upon which they most rely for the injury of the extended commerce of their enemy.”³ The United States think that the tribunal of Arbitration will agree with Mr. Bunch, that it was *not expected that the insurgents would abolish privateering.

[78] The Tribunal of Arbitration cannot fail to observe that the propositions which were made in these negotiations to the Government of the United States were communicated to the insurgents, while pains were taken to conceal from the United States the fact that negotiations were opened at Richmond; that Earl Russell refused to receive the assent of the United States to the Declaration of Paris, except upon conditions derogatory to their sovereignty; and that Lord Lyons was instructed to secure the assent of the Government of the United States to the four principles laid down by the Declaration of Paris, while he was instructed, as to the insurgents, to secure their assent only to the second, third, and fourth propositions; and had no instructions to take steps to prevent privateering or to induce the insurgents to accept the first rule in the Declaration of Paris, although it had been agreed that the rules should be maintained as a whole and indivisible, and that the Powers who might accede to them should accede to them as such. The practical effect of this diplomacy, had it been successful, would have been the destruction of the commerce of the United States, (or its transfer to the British flag,) and the disarming a principal weapon of the United *States upon the ocean, should a continuation of this course of insincere neutrality unhappily force the United States into a war. Great Britain was thus to gain the benefit to its neutral commerce of the recognition of the second and third articles, the rebel privateer cruisers were to be protected, and their devastation legalized, while the United States were to be deprived of a dangerous weapon of assault upon Great Britain.

When the whole story of these negotiations was understood by Mr. Adams, he wrote to his Government as follows:⁴

Mr. Adams’s comments. [79] [80] “It now appears plainly enough that he wanted, from the first, to get the first article of the Declaration of Paris out of the negotiation altogether, if he could. But he did not say a word of this to me at the outset, neither was it consistent with the position heretofore taken respecting the necessity of accepting the declaration ‘pure and simple.’ What I recollect him to have said on the 18th of May was, that it had been the disposition of his Government, as communicated to Lord Lyons, to agree upon almost any terms, respecting the first article, that might suit the Government of the United States. When reminded of this afterward, he modified the statement to mean that the article might be omitted altogether. It now *turns out, if we may judge from the instructions, that he did not precisely say either the one thing or the other. Substantially, indeed, he might mean that the general law of nations, if affirmed between the two Governments, would, to a certain extent, attain the object of the first article of the Declaration of Paris, without the adoption of it as a new principle. But he must have known, on the day of the date of these instructions, which is the very day of his first conference with me, and four days after the issue of the Queen’s Proclamation, that the Government of the United States contemplated, in the pending struggle, neither encouraging privateers nor issuing letters of marque; hence that such a proposition would only complicate the negotiation for no useful purpose whatever. Besides which, it should be borne in mind that the effect, if adopted, would have been, instead of a simple adhesion to the Declaration of Paris, to render it necessary to reopen a series of negotiations for a modification of it between all the numerous parties to that instrument. Moreover, it is admitted by his Lordship that no powers had been given to make any convention at all—the parties could only agree. Yet, without such powers, what was the value of an agreement? For the Declaratioo of Paris was, by its very terms, binding only between parties who acceded to it as *a whole. Her Majesty’s Government thus placed themselves in the position of a party which proposes what it gives no authority to perform, and which negotiates upon a basis on which it has already deprived itself of the power to conclude.

[81] “How are we to reconcile these inconsistencies? By the terms of the Queen’s Proclamation his lordship must have been aware that Great Britain had released the United States from further responsibility for the acts of its new-made belligerent that was issuing letters of marque, as well as from the possible offenses of privateers sailing under its flag; and yet, when the Government of the United States comes forward and declares its disposition to accept the terms of the Declaration of Paris, pure and simple, the Government of Her Majesty cannot consent to receive the very thing that they have been all along asking for, because it might possibly compel them to deny to certain privateers the rights which may accrue to them by virtue of their voluntary recognition of them as belonging to a belligerent power. Yet it now appears that, on the 18th of May, the same Government was willing to reaffirm the law of nations, which virtually involved the very same difficulty on the one hand, while on the other it had given no powers to negotiate a new convention, but contemplated a simple adhesion to the old declaration on *the part of the United States. The only way by which I can explain these various involutions of policy with a proper regard to Lord Russell’s character for straightforwardness, which I have no disposition to impugn, is this: He may have instructed Lord Lyons prior to the 18th of May, the day of our first conference. I certainly received the impression that he had done so. Or he may have written the paper before one o’clock of that day, and thus have referred to the act as a thing completed, though still within his power, in order to get rid of the proposition to negotiate directly here. Of that I do not pretend to judge. But neither in one case nor in the other was there the smallest intimation of a desire to put in any caveat whatever of the kind proposed in his last declaration. That seems to have been an afterthought, suggested when all other obstacles to the success of a negotiation had been removed.

“That it originated with Lord Russell I cannot credit consistently with my great respect for his character.

[82] “That it was suggested after his proposed consultation with his colleagues, and by some member who had in view the defeat of the negotiation in the interests of the insurgents, I am strongly inclined to believe. The same influence may have been at work in the earlier stages of the business * as well as the latest, and have communicated that uncertain and indirect movement which I have commented on, not less inconsistent with all my notions of his lordship’s character than with the general reputation of British policy.”

Contrast between conduct of Great Britain toward the United States, in the Trent affair, and toward violators of British neutrality in the insurgent interest. The partial purpose which was thus disclosed in the first official act of the Queen’s Government, after the issue of the proclamation of neutrality, appears often in the subsequent conduct of that Government.

Thus, when, a few months later, an officer of the Navy of the United States had taken from the deck of a British vessel on the high seas four prominent agents traveling on an errand that, if successful, would result in disaster to the United States, against which they were in rebellion, the course of the British Cabinet indicated an unfriendliness so extreme as to approach to a desire for war. The news of this reached both countries at about the same time. In the United States, while there was some excitement and some manifestation of pleasure, Lord Lyons bears witness to the moderation of the tone of the press.¹ Mr. Seward immediately wrote Mr. Adams to acquaint him that the act of Captain Wilkes was unauthorized, and Mr. Adams communicated this fact to Lord Russell.²

[83] *The excitement in England, on the contrary, was intense, and was fanned into animosity by the press. Although without information as to the purpose of the Government of the United States, peremptory instructions were immediately sent to Lord Lyons to demand the release of the four gentlemen, and to leave Washington with all the members of the legation, if the demand was not complied with in seven days.³

In anticipation of a refusal, vessels of war were hurriedly fitted out at the naval stations, and troops were pressed forward to Canada. In the midst of this preparation Lord Russell received from Mr. Adams official information that the act had not been authorized by the Government of the United States; but this intelligence was suppressed, and public opinion was encouraged to drift into a state of hostility toward the United States. The arming continued with ostentatious publicity; the warlike preparations went on, and the peremptory instructions to Lord Lyons were neither revoked nor in any sense modified.

[84] [85] [86] Contrast this conduct of Great Britain with reference to a violation of British sovereignty that had not been authorized or assumed by the Government of the United States, and that, to say the least, could be plausibly defended by reference to *the decisions of Sir William Scott,¹ with its course concerning the open, undisguised, oft-repeated, flagrant, and indefensible violations of British sovereignty by the agents of the insurgents in Liverpool, in Glasgow, in London, in Nassau, in Bermuda, it may almost be said wherever the British flag could give them shelter and protection. When the information as to the Florida was conveyed to Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, he interposed no objection to her sailing from Liverpool. When the overwhelming * proof of the complicity of the Alabama was laid before him, he delayed to act until it was too late, and then, by his neglect to take notice of the notorious criminals, he encouraged the guilty Laird to construct the two rebel rains—the keel of one of them being laid on the same stocks from which the Alabama had just been launched.² When the evidence of the character and destination of those rams was brought to his notice, he held it for almost two months, although they were then nearly ready to go to sea, and then at first refused to stop them. Wiser and more just counsels prevailed four days later.³ And when Mr. Adams, under instructions from his Government, transmitted to Earl Russell convincing proof of “a deliberate attempt to establish within the limits of this kingdom [Great Britain] a system of action in direct hostility to the Government of the United States,”⁴ embracing “not only the building and fitting out of several ships of war under the direction of agents especially commissioned for the purpose, but the preparation of a series of measures under the same auspices for the obtaining from Her Majesty’s subjects the pecuniary means essential to the execution of those hostile projects,”⁵ Lord Russell refused to see in the inclosed papers any *evidence of those facts worthy of his attention, or of the action of Her Majesty’s Government.⁶

It is not surprising that the consistent course of partiality toward the insurgents, which this Minister evinced throughout the struggle, should have drawn from Mr. Adams the despairing assertion that he was “permitting himself to be deluded by what I cannot help thinking the willful blindness and credulous partiality of the British authorities at Liverpool. From experience in the past I have little or no confidence in any application that may be made of the kind.”⁷ The probable explanation of Lord Russell’s course is to be found in his own declaration in the House of Lords: “There may be one end of the war that would prove a calamity to the United States and to the world, and especially calamitous to the negro race in those countries, and that would be the subjugation of the South by the North.”¹ He did not desire that the United States should succeed in their efforts to obtain that result. The policy of Great Britain, under his guidance, but for the exertions and sacrifices of the people of the United States, might have prevented it.

Mr. Rolin-Jacquemyns on the British neutrality. [87] The insincere neutrality which induced the Cabinet of London to hasten to issue the Queen’s Proclamation upon the eve of the day that Mr. *Adams was to arrive in London, and which prompted the counselings with France, and the tortuous courses as to the Declaration of the Congress of Paris which have just been unraveled, has been well described by Mr. Rolin Jacquemyns: “L’idéal du personage neutrarum partium, c’est le juge qui, dans l’apologue de l’hnitre et les plaideurs, avale le conteuu du mollnsque, et adjuge les écailles aux deux belligérents. Il n’est d’aueun parti, mais il s’engraisse scrupuleuseinent aux depens de tons deux. Une telle conduite de la part d’un grand peuple peut être aussi conforme aux précédents que celle du vénérable ma gist rat dont parie la fable. Mais quand elle se fonde sur une loi positive, sur une règie admise, c’est une preuve que cette règle est mauvaise, comme contraire à la science, à la dignité et à la solidarité humaine.”²

This feeling of personal unfriendliness toward the United States in the leading members of the British Government continued during a long portion or the whole of the time of the commission or omission of acts hereinafter complained of.

Proof of unfriendly feeling of members of the British Cabinet. [88] [89] Thus, on the 14th day of October, in the year 1861, Earl Russell³ said, in a public speech made at Newcastle: “We now see the two parties (in the *United States) contending together, not upon the question of slavery, though that I believe was probably the original cause of the quarrel, not contending with respect to free trade and protection, but contending, as so many States in the Old World have contended, the one side for empire and the other for independence. [Cheers.] Far be it from us to set ourselves up as judges in such a contest. But I cannot help asking myself frequently, as I trace the progress of the contest, to what good end can it tend? [Hear! Hear!] Supposing the contest to end in the reunion of the different States; supposing that the South should agree to enter again the Federal Union with all the rights guaranteed to her by the Constitution; should we not then have debated over again the fatal question of slavery, again provoking discord between North and South? * * * But, on the other hand, supposing that the Federal Government completely conquer and subdue the Southern States; supposing that be the result of a long military conflict and some years of civil war; would not the national prosperity of that country, to a great degree, be destroyed? * * * If such are the unhappy results which alone can be looked forward to from the reunion of these different parts of the North American States, is it not then our duty, though our voice, and, indeed, *the voice of any one in this country, may be little listened to—is it not the duty of men who were so lately fellow-citizens—is it not the duty of men who profess a regard for the principles of Christianity—is it not the duty of men who wish to preserve in perpetuity the sacred inheritance of liberty, to endeavor to see whether this sanguinary conflict cannot be put an end to?”

Mr. Gladstone also spoke at Newcastle on the 7th day of October, 1862. It is scarcely too much to say that his language, as well as much of the other language of members of Her Majesty’s Government herein quoted, might well have been taken as offensive by the United States. He said:¹ “We may have our own opinions about slavery; we may be for or against the South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army, They are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made what is more than either—they have made a nation. [Loud cheers.] * * * We may anticipate with certainty the success of the Southern States so far as regards their separation from the North. [Hear! Hear!] I cannot but believe that that event is as certain as any event yet future and contingent can be.” [Hear! Hear!]

[90] *In a debate in the House of Lords on the 5th of February, 1863, Lord Eussell said:²

“There is one thing, however, which I think may be the result of the struggle, and which, to my mind, would be a great calamity. That is the subjugation of the South by the North. If it were possible that the Union could be re-formed; if the old feelings of affection and attachment toward it could be revived in the South, I, for one, would be glad to see the Union restored. If, on the other hand, the North were to feel that separation was finally decreed by the events of the war, I should be glad to see peace established upon those terms. But there may be, I say, one end of the war that would prove a calamity to the United States and to the world, and especially calamitous to the negro race in those countries, and that would be the subjugation of the South by the North.”

[91] In a spirited debate in the House of Commons on the 27th of March, 1863, Mr. Laird, the builder of the Alabama, and of the rams which were afterward seized, arose and attempted to justify his course in a speech which was received with prolonged cheering and satisfaction by a large portion of the House. Among other things which he then said, and which were received as *expressive of the views and sentiments of those who cheered him, was the following:³

“I will allude to a remark which was made elsewhere last night—a remark, I presume, applying to me, or to somebody else, which was utterly uncalled for. [Hear!] I have only to say that I would rather be handed down to posterity as the builder of a dozen Alabamas than as the man who applies himself deliberately to set class against class [loud cheers] and to cry up the institutions of another country, which, when they come to be tested, are of no value whatever, and which reduced liberty to an utter absurdity.” [Cheers.]

Two years later, on the 13th day of March, 1865, the course of this member of the British House of Commons, and this extraordinary scene, were thus noticed by Mr. Bright:⁴

[92] [93] “Then I come to the last thing I shall mention—to the question of the ships which have been preying upon the commerce of the United States. I shall confine myself to that one vessel, the Alabama. She was built in this country; all her munitions of war were from this country; almost every man on board her was a subject of Her Majesty. She sailed from one of our chief ports. She is reported to have been built by a *firm in whom a member of this House was, and, I presume is, interested. Now, sir, I do not complain. I know that once, when I referred to this question two years ago, when my honorable friend, the member for Bradford, brought if forward in this House, the honorable member for Birkenhead [Mr. Laird] was excessively angry. I did not complain that the member for Birkenhead had struck up a friendship with Captain Semmes, who may be described as another sailor once was of similar pursuits, as being ‘the mildest mannered man that ever scuttled ship.’ Therefore I do not complain of a man who has an acquaintance with that notorious person, and I do not complain, and did not then, that the member for Birkenhead looks admiringly upon the greatest example which men have ever seen of the greatest crime which men have ever committed. I do not complain even that he should applaud that which is founded upon a gigantic trafficin living flesh and blood, which no subject of this realm can enter into without being deemed a felon in the eyes of our law and punished as such. But what I do complain of is this: that the honorable gentleman, the member for Birkenhead, a magistrate of a county, a deputy lieutenant—whatever that may be—a representative of a constituency, and having a seat in this ancient and honorable assembly—that *he should, as I believe he did, if concerned in the building of this ship, break the law of his country, driving us into an infraction of International Law, and treating with undeserved disrespect the Proclamation of Neutrality of the Queen. I have another complaint to make, and in allusion to that honorable member. It is within your recollection that when on the former occasion he made that speech and defended his course, he declared that he would rather be the builder of a dozen Alabamas than do something which nobody had done. That language was received with repeated cheering from the opposition side of the House. Well, sir, I undertake to say that that was at least a very unfortunate circumstance, and I beg to tell the honorable gentleman that at the end of the last session, when the great debate took place on the question of Denmark, there were many men on this side of the House who had no objection whatever to see the present Government turned out of office, for they had many grounds of complaint against them; but they felt it impossible that they should take the responsibility of bringing into office the right honorable member for Buckinghamshire or the party who could utter such cheers on such a subject as that.”

[94] On the 27th of March, 1863, in a debate in the *House of Commons on the fitting out of these piratical cruisers, Lord Palmerston said:¹

[95] “There is no concealing the fact, and there is no use in disguising it, that whenever any political party, whether in or out of office, in the United States, finds itself in difficulties, it raises a cry against England as a means of creating what, in American language, is called ‘political capital.’ That is a practice, of course, which we must deplore. As long as it is confined to their internal affairs we can only hope that, being rather a dangerous game, it will not be carried further than is intended. When a government or a large party excite the passions of one nation against another, especially if there is no just cause, it is manifest that such a course has a great tendency to endanger friendly relations between the two countries. We understand, however, the object of these proceedings in the present instance, and therefore we do not feel that irritation which might otherwise be excited. But if this cry is raised for the, purpose of driving Her Majesty’s Government to do something which may be contrary to the laws of the country, or which may be derogatory to the dignity of the country, in the way of altering our laws for the purpose of pleasing another gov*ernment, then all I can say is that such a course is not likely to accomplish its purpose.”

On the 30th of June, 1863, Mr. Gladstone, in the course of a long speech, said:¹

[96] “Why, sir, we must desire the cessation of this war. No man is justified in wishing for the continuance of a war unless that war has a just, an adequate, and an attainable object, for no object is adequate, no object is just, unless it also be attainable. We do not believe that the restoration of the American Union by force is attainable. I believe that the public opinion of this country is unanimous upon that subject. [No!] Well, almost unanimous. I may be right or I may be wrong—I do not pretend to interpret exactly the public opinion of the country. I express in regard to it only my private sentiments. But I will go one step further, and say I believe the public opinion of this country bears very strongly on another matter upon which we have heard much, namely, whether the emancipation of the negro race is an object that can be legitimately pursued by means of coercion and bloodshed. I do not believe that a more fatal error was ever committed than when men—of high intelligence I grant, and of the sincerity of whose philanthropy I, for one, shall not venture to whisper the smallest doubt—*came to the conclusion that the emancipation of the negro race was to be sought, although they could only travel to it by a sea of blood. I do not think there is any real or serious ground for doubt as to the issue of this contest.”

In the same debate, Lord Palmerston, with an unusual absence of caution, lifted the veil that concealed his feelings, and said:²

“Now, it seems to me that that which is running in the head of the honorable gentleman, [Mr. Bright,] and which guides and directs the whole of his reasoning, is the feeling, although perhaps disguised to himself, that the Union is still in legal existence; that there are not in America two belligerent parties, but: a legitimate government and a rebellion against that government. Now, that places the two parties in a very different position from that in which it is our duty to consider them.”

As late as the 9th of June, 1864, Earl Eussell said³ in the House of Lords:

[97] “It is dreadful to think that hundreds of thousands of men are being slaughtered for the purpose of preventing the Southern States from acting on those very principles of independence which in 1776 were asserted by the whole of America against this country. Only a few years ago the *Americans were in the habit, on the 4th of July, of celebrating the promulgation of the Declaration of Independence, and some eminent friends of mine never failed to make eloquent and stirring orations on those occasions. I wish, while they keep up a useless eereinony—for the present generation of Englishmen are not responsible for the War of independence—that they had inculcated upon their own minds that they should not go to war with four millions, five millions, or six millions of their fellow-countrymen who want to put the principles of 1776 into operation as regards themselves.”

[98] The United States have thus presented for the consideration of the Tribunal of Arbitration the publicly expressed sentiments of the leading members of the British Cabinet of that day. Lord Palmerston was the recognized head of the Government. Earl Russell, who, at the commencement of the insurrection, sat in the House of Commons as Lord John Russell, was during the whole time Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, specially charged with the expression of the views and feelings of Her Majesty’s Government on these questions. Both were among the oldest and most tried statesmen of Europe. Mr. Gladstone, the present distinguished chief of the Government, was then the * Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Lord Campbell, well known in both hemispheres as a lawyer and as a lover of letters, sat upon the woolsack when the contest began. Lord Westbury, who succeeded him in June, 1861, was the chief counselor of the policy pursued by the British Goverment. These gentlemen were entitled to speak the voice of the governing classes of the Empire and the United States have been forced with sincere regret to the conviction that they did express the opinions and wishes of much of the cultivated intellect of Great Britain.

[99] The United States would do great injustice, however, to the sentiments of their own people did they fail to add, that some of the most eloquent voices in Parliament were raised in behalf of the principles of freedom which they represented in the contest; and that members of the governing classes most elevated in rank and distinguished in intellect, and a large part of the industrial classes, were understood to sympathize with them. They cannot, however, shut their eyes to the fact, and they must ask the Tribunal of Arbitration to take note, that, with the few exceptions referred to, the leading statesmen of that country, and nearly the whole periodical press and other channels through which the British cultivated intellect is accustomed to influence public affairs, *sustained the course of the existing Government in the unfriendly acts and omissions which resulted so disastrously to the United States. The United States complain before this Tribunal only of the acts and omissions of the British Government. They refer to the expressions and statements from unofficial sources as evidence of a state of public opinion, which would naturally encourage the members of that Government in the policy and acts of which the United States complain.

[100] It is not worth while to take up the time of the Tribunal of Arbitration, by an inquiry into the reasons for this early and long-continued unfriendliness of the British Government, toward a goverment which was supposed to be in sympathy with its political and moral ideas, and toward a kindred people with whom it had long maintained the attitude of friendship. They may have been partly political, as expressed in Parliament by an impetuous member, who spoke of the bursting of the bubble republic,¹ (for which he received a merited rebuke from Lord John Russell)²; or they may have been those declared, without rebuke at a later date in the House of Commons by the present Marquis of Salisbury, then Lord Robert Cecil, when he said³ that “they [the people of the Southern States] were the natural allies of this country, as great producers of the articles we needed and great consumers of the articles we supplied. The North, on the other hand, kept an opposition-shop in the same departments of trade as ourselves;” or they may have been those announced by Earl Russell last year, when saying,¹ “It was the great object of the British Government to preserve for the subject the security of trial by jury, and for the nation the legitimate and lucrative trade of ship-building.”

Conclusions. [101] Without pursuing an inquiry in this direction, which, at the best, would be profitless, the United States invite the careful attention of the Arbitrators to the facts which appear in the previous pages of this Case. In appoaching the consideration of the third branch of the subjects herein discussed, in which the United States will endeavor to show that Great Britain failed in her duties toward the United States—as those duties will be defined in the second branch thereof—the Tribunal of Arbitration will find in these facts circumstances which could not but influence the minds of the members of Her Majesty’s Government, and induce them to look with disfavor upon efforts to repress the attempts of British subjects, and of *other persons, to violate the neutrality of British soil and waters in favor of the rebels.

Some of the members of the British Government of that day seem to have anticipated the conclusion which must inevitably be drawn from their acts, should the injuries and wrongs which the United States have suffered ever be brought to the adjudication of an impartial tribunal.

[102] Lord Westbury (appointed Lord High Chancellor on the death of Lord Campbell, in June, 1861) declared, in the House of Lords, in 1868, that “the animus with which the neutral Powers acted was the only true criterion. The neutral Power might be mistaken; it might omit to do something which ought to be done, or direct something to be done which ought not to be done; but the question was whether, from beginning to end, it had acted with sincerity and with a real desire to promote and preserve a spirit of neutrality. * * * He [Mr. Seward] said, in effect, ‘Whether you were a sincere and loyal neutral was the question in dispute, and that must be judged from a view of the whole of your conduct. I do not mean to put it merely upon the particular transaction relative to the Alabama. I insist upon it in that case undoubtedly but I contend that, from beginning to end, you had an undue preference and predilection for the Confederate States; *that you were therefore not loyal in your neutrality; and I appeal to the precipitancy with which you issued your Proclamation, thereby involving a recognition of the Confederate States as a belligerent power, as a proof of your insincerity and want of impartial attention.’ And now, could we prevent him from using that document for such a purpose? How unreasonable it was to say, when you go into arbitration, you shall not use a particular document, even as an argument upon the question whether there was sincere neutrality or not.”²

[103] Such is the use which the United States ask this Tribunal to make of the foregoing evidence of the unfriendliness and insincere neutrality of the British Cabinet of that day. When the leading members of that Cabinet are thus found counseling in advance with France to secure a joint action of the two governments, and assenting to the declaration of a state of war between the United States and the insurgents, before they could possibly have received intelligence of the purposes of the Government of the United States; when it is seen that the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs advises the representatives of the insurgents as to the course to be pursued to obtain the recognition of their independence, and at the same time refuses to await the arrival of the trusted representative of the United States before deciding to recognize them as belligerents; when he is found opening negotiations through Her Majesty’s diplomatic representative at Washington with persons in rebellion against the United States; when various members of the British Cabinet are seen to comment upon the efforts of the Government of the United States to suppress the rebellion in terms that indicate a strong desire that those efforts should not succeed, it is not unreasonable to suppose that, when called upon to do acts which might bring about results in conflict with their wishes and convictions, they would hesitate, discuss, delay, and refrain—in fact, that they would do exactly what in the subsequent pages of this paper it will appear that they did do.

1. For an abstract of this act see Vol. IV, pp. 102, 103.
1. Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Oregon.
2. Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Texas.
3. Nevada, Nebraska, Kansas. West Virginia was formed from a portion of the territory of Virginia, and for this reason does not come within the meaning of the text, though it became a State after the date mentioned.
4. New Mexico, Utah, Washington, Dakota, Colorado, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, District of Columbia. The territory known as the Indian Territory is without political organization, having neither Governor nor Delegate in Congress. It cannot be considered as coming within the meaning of the text.
1. Greeley’s American Conflict, Vol. I, page 320.
2. McPherson’s History of the Rebellion, page 16.
3. McPherson’s History of the Rebellion, page 4.
4. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopædia, 1861, page 10.
5. McPherson’s History of the Rebellion, page 3.
6. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopædia, 1861, Vol. 1, page 126.
7. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopædia, 1861, page 613.
1. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopædia, 1861, page 129.
2. Mcpherson’s History of the Rebellion, page 5.
3. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopædia, 1861, page 478.
4. McPherson’s History of the Rebellion, page 25.
1. Seward to Dallas, Vol. I, page 8.
2. Dallas to Seward, Vol. I, page 12.
1. Vol. I, page 16.
1. Vol. I, page 16.
2. Appleton’s Annual Cyclopædia, 1861, page 137.
3. Mr. Dallas to Mr. Seward, May 2, 1861. Vol. I, p. 33, 34.
1. Blue Bock, North America, No. 1, 1862, page 26.

2. The following is the President’s Proclamation of the blockade of the Southern ports:

   “An insurrection against the Government of the United States has broken out in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and the laws of the United States cannot be executed effectually therein conformably to that provision of the Constitution which requires duties to be uniform throughout the United States; and further, a combination of persons, engaged in such insurrection, have threatened to grant pretended letters of marque to authorize the bearers thereof to commit assaults on the lives, vessels, and property of good citizens of the country lawfully engaged in commerce on the high seas and in the waters of the United States; and whereas an Executive Proclamation has already been issued, requiring the persons engaged in these disorderly proceedings to desist, and therefor calling out the militia force for the purpose of repressing the same, and convening Congress in extraordinary session to deliberate and determine thereon, the President, with a view to the same purposes before mentioned, and to the protection of the public peace and the lives and property of its orderly citizens pursuing, their lawful occupations, until Congress shall have assembled and deliberated on said unlawful proceedings, or until the same shall have ceased, has further deemed it advisable to set on foot a blockade of the ports within the States aforesaid, in pursuance of the laws of the United States and the laws of nations in such cases provided. For this purpose a competent force will be posted, so as to prevent the entrance and exit of vessels from the ports aforesaid. If, therefore, with a view to violate such blockade, any vessel shall attempt to leave any of the said ports, she will be duly warned by the commander of one of said blockading vessels, who will indorse on her register the fact and elate of such warning; and if the same vessel shall again attempt to enter or leave a blockaded port, she will be captured and sent to the nearest convenient port for such proceedings against her and her cargo as may be deemed advisable.”

1. Vol. IV, page 482.
2. Vol. I, page 33.
3. Vol. I, page 37.
1. Vol. I, page 36; see also same volume, page 48.
2. Vol. I, page 49.
3. British Blue Book on the Blockade, 1861, page 1.
4. Vol. I, pages 36, 37.
1. Hansard’s Debates, 3d series, Vol. CLXII, pages 1622–23.
2. Vol. IV, page 484.
2. Vol. IV, page 484.
3. Vol. IV, page 486.
4. Vol. I, page 34.
5. Vol. I, page 33.
1. Vol. IV, page 482.
2. Vol. I, page 335.
3. Hansard’s Debates, 3d series, Vol. CLXII, page 1276.
4. Hansard’s Debates, 3d series, Vol. CLXII, page 1277.
5. Vol. IV, page 486.
6. Vol. IV, page 490.
1. On Foreign Jurisdiction and the Extradition of Criminals; by the Right Hon. Sir George Cornwall Lewis, Bart., M. P., London, 1859, page 66.
2. Vol. V, pages 639, 640.
1. Annual Message of the President to Congress, 1869.
2. Mr. Fish to Mr. Motley, September 25, 1869. Vol. VI, page 4.
3. Mr. Fish to Mr. Motley, May 15, 1869. Vol. VI, page 1.
4. De la neutralité de la Grande-Bretagne pendant la gnerrre civile américaine d’aprés M. Montague Bernard, par G. Rolin-Jacquemyns, page 11.
1. Vol. I, page 49.
2. Vol. I, page 50.
3. Vol. I, page 51.
1. 24th Protocol, April 16, 1856, Congress of Paris.
2. Vol. I, page 44.
1. Vol. 1, page 52.
2. Vol. I, page 55.
3. Vol. I, page 56.
4. Vol. I, page 60.
5. Vol. I, page 62.
6. Vol. I, page 205.
1. Vol. I, page 71.
1. Vol. I, page 71.
2. Vol. I, page 123.
3. Manuscript in Department of State.
1. Unpublished manuscript in the Department of State at Washington.
2. Vol. I, page 137.
3. Vol. I, page 136.
4. Vol. I, page 103.
1. Lord Lyons to Earl Russell, Nov. 25, 1881, Blue Book No. 5, North America, 1862, page 10.
2. Earl Russell to Lord Lyons. Same, page 11.
3. Earl Russell to Lord Lyons. Blue Book No. 5, North America, 1862, page 3.

1. The Atlanta, 6 Charles Robinson’s Reports, page 440. On the receipt of the news in London, the Times of November 28, 1861, published a leading article which contained some statements worthy of note. Among other things it said: “Unwelcome as the truth may be, it is nevertheless a truth, that we have ourselves established a system of International Law which now tells against us. In high-handed and almost despotic manner we have, in former days, claimed privileges over neutrals which have at different times banded all the maritime powers of the world against us. We have insisted even upon stopping the ships of war of neutral nations, and taking British subjects out of them; and an instance is given by Jefferson in his Memoirs in which two nephews of Washington were impressed by our cruisers, as they were returning, from Europe, and placed as common seamen under the discipline of ships of war. We have always been the strenuous asserters of the rights of belligerents over neutrals, and the decisions of our courts of law, as they must now be cited by our law officers, have been in confirmation of these unreasonable claims, which have called into being confederations and armed neutralities against us, and which have always been modified in practice when we were not supreme in our dominion at sea. Owing to these facts the authorities which may be cited on this question are too numerous and too uniform as to the right of search by belligerent ships of war over neutral merchant vessels to be disputed. * * * * * *

   “It is, and it always has been, vain to appeal to old folios and bygone authorities hi justification of acts which every Englishman and every Frenchman cannot but feel to be injurious and insulting.” See also the case of Henry Laurens, Dip. Cor. of Revolution, Vol. I, page 708, et seq.

2. Mr. Dudley to Mr. Seward, Vol. II, page 315.
3. Vol. II, page 363.
4. Vol. I, page 562.
5. Vol. I, page 562.
6. Vol. I, page 578.
7. Vol. I, page 529.
1. Vol. IV, page 535.
2. De la néutnilité de la Grande-Bretagne pendant la guerre civile américaine, d’aprés M. Montague Bernard, par. G. Rolin-Jacqncmyrs, page 13.
3. London Times, October 16, 1861.
1. London Times, October 9, 1862.
2. Vol. IV, page 535.
3. London Times, March 28, 1863.
4. Vol. V, page 641.
1. Vol. IV, page 530.
1. Vol. V, page 666.
2. Vol. V, page 695.
3. Vol. V, page 507.
1. Hansard, 3d series. Vol. 163, page 134.
2. Same, page 276.
3. Vol. V, page 671.
1. Earl Russell’s Speeches and Dispatches, Vol. II, page 266.
2. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3d series, Vol. CXCI, pages 347, 348.