No. 376.
Mr. Blaine to Mr. Drummond.
Washington, November 14, 1881.
Sir: Before you quit the temporary charge of Her Majesty’s legation at this capital, I desire to make the acknowledgment I should have sooner made of your note of the 20th ultimo, touching the order issued by the President at Yorktown for the salute given to the British flag on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of the close of the memorable struggle between the mother country and the colonies. I think I may very properly say that no act in his official sphere could give the President greater or more heartfelt satisfaction than thus publicly bearing witness to the community of interest and good-will which ever bind the two countries together, and which of late has been so strikingly evinced by the spectacle of two great nations of one blood sharing one another’s burden and bowing in touching grief over the bier of one whose life-work was a home-lesson to all Anglo-Saxons. At this time, especially, when one hundred years have passed since the tie which joined the two countries was severed through the arbitrament of war, it has seemed to our government and our people far more fitting to view the recurrence of the day as the anniversary of the beginning of an era of peace between Great Britain and America, and of the entrance of the two nations upon the path of intimate commercial and material relationship, whereby their interests and prosperity are reciprocally and completely interlinked. And in paying fitting tribute to this deep and cordial feeling which inspires the two peoples, the gratification felt by the President was greatly increased by the chance afforded him to make manifestation of respect for the large-hearted Queen, whose name is cherished in every American breast by reason of the warm, womanly sympathy she has shown for the widow and the fatherless in their late deep affliction.
I beg you, sir, to accept my personal thanks for the kindly expressions contained in your note, and I have, &c.,