It is not probable that many of our readers will meet with the volumes,
lately published in Washington, containing the correspondence of
American diplomatists during the period of the civil war; but, after
perusing some of the specimens we shall offer, they will no doubt agree
with us in thinking it a pity that these productions should not be
generally known. Under any circumstances, most people would find
something comical in a set of elderly gentlemen, engaged in important
business, exchanging by letter moral sentiments suited to a schoolboy’s
theme. But when the compositions thus embellished are of the kind known
to the world as State Papers, and when the writers, who thus aim, like
the interlocutors in a religious novel, at the instruction of the
universe through the medium of dialogue, are American politicians, the
effect produced is such as few professed humorists could hope to rival.
For most people are aware nowadays that the atmosphere through which
those politicians must pass before they can attain to that eminence, one
condition of which is the writing of state papers, is much more likely
to develop in them the wisdom of the serpent than the guilelessness of
the dove. Remembering the pushing and scrambling, the elbowing of vile
competitors, the truckling and corruption, the wire-pulling and
log-rolling, the acquaintance with all the small and dirty ramifications
of tickets and platforms, which success in politics demands in the
States, the very last vein of composition we should expect to find these
gentlemen especially cultivating would be that in which the sage Imlac
addresses Rasselas, or in which the good godmother improves every
occasion in a children’s story. A difficulty to believe in the existence
of craft or guile or self-interest as motives of political conduct,
yielding at last to a surprised and mournful conviction of the sad
truth, and a touching and simple style of moralising over human
delinquency, are the characteristics, on paper, of the diplomatists who
have particularly distinguished themselves in the pleasing and pastoral
pursuits we have attempted to enumerate. Everybody who has read American
speeches must have noticed in them a tendency to flowery sentiment and
to ancient and fish-like metaphors, such as the audiences of the Old
World would reject. Why the not very immaculate or poetical classes who
constitute a New York mob should especially relish this style of
oratory, we cannot explain; but it is the fact that it seems to succeed
in America whether the audience be a constituency, or a house of
assembly, or the population of a Boston lecture-room, or the
entertainers of an American celebrity, or a jury in a criminal case—and
all the scribes of their newspapers indulge in the same vein. That it
does succeed may appear to be a sufficiently good reason why the
parliamentary and stump orators of America should habitually launch at
their audiences such sentences as are, on this side of the water, never
addressed to any but the galleries at a Surrey melodrama. But directly
the speakers are placed in relation to foreign Governments, they think
it necessary to engraft on the florid Rosa-Matilda style which deals
with “star-spangled banners,” “great, glorious, and free people,” and
“the best Government the world ever saw,” the virtuous didactic style we
have attempted to describe, and which we suppose they imagine to be
particularly likely to influence the counsels of such guileless and
simple-minded statesmen as Gortchakoff, Rechberg, Russell, Palmerston,
and the Emperor Napoleon.
The principal agent in the pious attempt to inoculate mankind, through
their Governments, with virtuous principles, is Mr William Henry Seward.
The circumstances under which the benevolent sage perseveres in his
philanthropic efforts are not such as are favourable to placid
meditation or composition. His lucubrations must have been disturbed not
unfrequently by the booming of Confederate cannon. The sudden irruption
on his privacy of a distracted Finance Minister, a desperate War
Secretary, or a bewildered President, must have been extremely
unfavourable to the prosecution of the task. Yet that he struggled
successfully with those hostile influences is proved by the enormous
volume of his essays, which must, we estimate, be equal in bulk, for one
year, to about four volumes of the original edition of ‘The
Rambler’—under which title, indeed, they might not inappropriately have
been published. Seated at his desk, with the copybooks of his boyhood at
hand for quotation, in a glow of philanthropy that cannot fail to warm
what he would himself call the “moral atmosphere” of barbaric Europe, he
can shut his eyes to passing events, and find sermons in civil wars, and
good in everything. Immediately on his accession to office, he begins a
circular to all the Ministers at foreign courts in the following style:
“Sir,—The advocates of benevolence, and the believers in human progress,
encouraged by the slow though marked meliorations of the barbarities of
war which have obtained in modern times, have been, as you are well
aware, recently engaged,” &c.
Since that was written, the advocates of benevolence and the believers
in human progress have been further encouraged by the “meliorations” of
stone fleets, of corps of licensed plunderers, of the submersion of
great tracts of cultivated land, of the devastation of half a State, of
the incitement to servile insurrection, and of the rule of Benjamin F.
Butler at New Orleans—illustrations of his remark, which the eminent
essayist probably did not at that time expect.
In the early part of his correspondence, Mr Seward’s opinions of the
policy to be pursued towards the South are much more indulgent than at a
later period. “The Union,” he says, on March 22, 1861, “was formed upon
popular consent, and must always practically stand on the same basis.”
He says, on April 10, that Secession is “a bad enterprise,” and that the
Secessionists are “a misguided portion of our fellow-citizens.” But he
goes on to say that the President “would not be disposed to reject a
cardinal dogma of theirs (the citizens of the Southern States), namely,
that the Federal Government could not reduce the seceding States to
obedience by conquest, even although he were disposed to question that
proposition. _But, in fact, the President willingly accepts it as true.
Only an imperial or despotic government could subjugate thoroughly
disaffected and insurrectionary members of the State._ This Federal
republican system of ours is, of all forms of government, the very one
which is most unfitted for such a labour.” And he goes on to suggest the
following paternal method of bringing back the prodigal South, and
providing a fatted calf for it:—
“The system has within itself adequate peaceful, conservative, and
recuperative forces. Firmness on the part of the Government in
maintaining and preserving the public institutions and property, and
in executing the laws where authority can be exercised without waging
war, combined with such measures of justice, moderation, and
forbearance as will disarm reasoning opposition, will be sufficient to
secure the public safety until returning reflection, concurring with
the fearful experience of social evils, the inevitable fruits of
faction, shall bring the recusant members cheerfully back into the
family, which, after all, must prove their best and happiest, as it
undeniably is their most natural, home. The constitution of the United
States provides for that return by authorising Congress, on
application to be made by a certain majority of the States, to
assemble a national convention, in which the organic law can, if it be
needful, be revised so as to remove all real obstacles to a reunion,
so suitable to the habits of the people, and so eminently conducive to
the common safety and welfare.”
These be brave words and high sentiments; but their value as an
expression of conciliatory policy is a little diminished by the fact
that, as the seceding States were then seven out of thirty-four, the
concession spoken of, being dependent on the “application to be made by
a certain majority of the States” (two-thirds), was an impossibility.
And in fact one of the best arguments in favour of Secession is, that
the constitution provides no means whereby a minority, or indeed
anything but a large majority, of States can obtain a remedy for their
grievances, should the interests of the remainder render them adverse.
On the 19th of June, however, a change has come over the spirit of the
Secretary’s dream, leading him to retract even this visionary
compromise.
“What is now seen in this country,” he tells Mr Adams, “is the
occurrence, by no means peculiar, but frequent in all countries, more
frequent even in Great Britain than here, of an armed insurrection
engaged in attempting to overthrow the regularly constituted and
established Government. _There is, of course, the employment of force
by the Government to suppress the insurrection_, as every other
Government necessarily employs force in such cases. But these
incidents by no means constitute a state of war impairing the
sovereignty of the Government, creating belligerent sections, and
entitling foreign States to intervene or to act as neutrals between
them, or in any other way to cast off their lawful obligations to the
nation thus for the moment disturbed. Any other principle than this
would be to resolve government everywhere into a thing of accident and
caprice, and ultimately all human society into a state of perpetual
war.”
Here the facts of the Union, founded on consent, and of the President’s
acceptance of the dogma, together with the unfitness of the Federal
system for the task of subjugation—a task proper to imperial or despotic
governments—are suddenly lost sight of along with the benevolent scheme
for calling on the misguided citizens to abandon their “bad enterprise,”
and return within the fold of the Union; and this great, glorious, and
free Government is driven to confess that its only alternative is the
rude and barbarous one hitherto repudiated, of force, such as the most
abject monarchy might adopt. To such complexion must even the most
beneficent institutions come under the pressure of necessity. And this
change of Mr Seward’s tone is contemporaneous with his observation of
the sudden appearance of inflexible and enthusiastic resolve on the part
of the people of the North to put down the Secession by military power.
At this time two objects are diligently prosecuted by the high-minded
Seward, always on the highest grounds. The one is the task of convincing
the British Government that it has fallen into a grave error in
acknowledging the South as a belligerent, and warning it against
receiving the “missionaries of the insurgents,” as he terms the
commissioners of the Southern Confederacy. “The cause of the North,” he
says, “involves the independence of nations and the right of human
nature.” “We feel free to assume that it is the general conviction of
men, not only here, but in all other countries, that this Federal Union
affords a better system than any other that could be contrived to assure
the safety, the peace, the prosperity, the welfare, and the happiness of
all the States of which it is composed.” “It is a war,” he says
elsewhere, “against human nature;” and again, “The wit of man fails to
suggest, not merely a better political system, having the same objects
as the present Union, but even any possible substitute for it.” And on
the 21st July, “I cannot leave the subject without endeavouring once
more, as I have so often done before, to induce the British Government
to realise the conviction which I have more than once expressed in this
correspondence, that the policy of the Government is one that is based
on interests of the greatest importance and sentiments of the highest
virtue, and therefore is in no case likely to be changed, whatever may
be the varying fortunes of the war at home, or the action of foreign
nations on this subject, while the policy of foreign States rests on
ephemeral interests of commerce or ambition.” “Sure we are that the
transaction now going on in our country involves the progress of
civilisation and humanity, and equally sure that our attitude in it is
right, and no less sure that our press and our statesmen are equal in
ability and influence to any in Europe.”
Manifestly, to countenance any power hostile to so beneficent a system
would be almost as bad as to acknowledge Satan and the rebel angels as
belligerents. But lest “the cupidity and caprice of Great Britain,” to
which, he says, the disunionists will appeal, should render her blind to
such high considerations, he takes a lower ground with her, and
delivers, May 21, 1861, the following ominous and prophetic warning:—
“Great Britain has but to wait _a few months_, and all her present
inconveniences will cease with our own troubles. If she take a
different course, she will calculate for herself the ultimate as well
as the immediate consequences, and will consider what position she
will hold when she shall have for ever lost the sympathies and
affections of the only nation on whose sympathies and affections she
has a natural claim.”
It is a sad picture thus presented to us of the British Pythias
abandoned by the American Damon, and left alone and friendless in the
world. Yet with that direful consequence we are threatened unless we
accept the idea of neutrality entertained in common by Mr Seward and Mr
Bright, who regard it not as a “cold and unfriendly,” but as a highly
enthusiastic, condition.
But, as we said, this was not the only point to which the high-minded
Secretary at this period directed his efforts. At the Congress of Paris
in 1856 the maritime Powers of Europe had come to an agreement in order
to mitigate the severities of war, by which, among other stipulations,
privateering was abolished so far as the parties to the compact were
concerned. In this agreement America had refused to join, unless an
article, specially favourable to herself, should be introduced. But the
flame of philanthropy which glowed so ardently in Mr Seward’s breast,
now lit up the question which had been buried in obscurity since 1857,
and he proposed, of course from the most elevated motives, that America
should now join the convention. As provision had originally been made
for the admission of parties wishing subsequently to accede to it, no
difficulty appeared, and everything seemed to work smoothly—Ministers
arranging and conceding, conventions made ready for signature, and all
going merry as a marriage-bell.
But it had occurred to the suspicious mind of Lord Russell, whose
political morals had been debauched by long diplomatic intercourse with
the barbaric Cabinets of Europe, and who was incredulous of public
virtue even in the immaculate statesmen of America, that a great
advantage would accrue to the Northern Government by joining in the
Declaration at this juncture, because the abolition of privateering
would exclude the South from all the ports of Europe, which would of
course still be open to the regular navy of the North. Not that the
proposals of Mr Seward were likely to inspire the suspicion; for, taking
the lofty grounds of benefit to the human race, his papers on the
subject contained but two slight incidental allusions to the minor
point. The Provisional Government of the Confederates had, he said,
“taken the bad resolution to invite privateers to prey upon the peaceful
commerce of the United States.” And on the 21st May he says to Mr Adams,
“You already have our authority to propose to her our accession to that
Declaration. If she refuse it, it can only be because she is willing to
become the patron of privateering when aimed at our devastation.” These
are the only hints on the subject given to the American Ministers.
Towards foreign Governments the elevated tone of public virtue was never
for a moment jarred by the discordant note of immediate advantage.
But the crafty Russell, led by the low cunning of the European
diplomatic mind, had, while appearing to accede with perfect frankness
to the American proposal, made this seemingly casual remark, “I need
scarcely add that, on the part of Great Britain, the engagement will be
prospective, and will not invalidate anything already done”—meaning, of
course, We shall be happy to receive your adhesion to the compact, but
the prohibition of privateering must not apply to the Confederates, whom
we have already acknowledged as belligerents.
The manner in which the virtuous statesmen of the Republic viewed this
passage or “implied reservation” was highly characteristic. Incapable of
guile themselves, they could not suspect that they could be the objects
of suspicion. It was impossible to say what might be hidden behind the
mysterious words. Mr Seward professed himself totally in the dark, and
demanded explanation. Whereupon Lord John declares “that her Majesty
does not intend thereby to undertake any engagement which shall have any
bearing, direct or indirect, on the internal differences now prevailing
in the United States.”
If the high-minded Secretary was startled by the original passage, he
was deeply wounded by the explanation. To suppose that the American
Government were aiming at any petty advantage over the Confederates in
the matter was a point beneath notice. The Minister appointed to
conclude the convention says, indeed—
“The natural effect of such an accompaniment would seem to be to imply
that the Government of the United States might be desirous at this
time to take a part in the Declaration, not from any high purpose or
durable policy, but with the view of securing some small temporary
object in the unhappy struggle which is going on at home. Such an
inference would spoil all the value that might be attached to the act
itself.”
It might be supposed that the best way to restore the full value to the
act would have been to reject the petty despised advantage by accepting
the convention with the reservation. But so deeply have the virtuous
statesmen been wounded by the unworthy suspicion, that they have no
heart to proceed in the business. They have done their best for
humanity, and failed. The reservation was so unusual, so informal, and
it so complicated the matter, that the negotiation must be suspended,
said the American Secretary—hoping, however, with habitual pathos, that
it might be resumed “in some happier time.”
Britannia having thus, by the refusal of the American Government to
proceed with the negotiation, clearly constituted herself the patron of
privateering, and having also declined to accept Mr Seward’s
interpretation of neutrality, must henceforth expect him to regard her
as a Puritan conscious of being in a state of grace would regard some
wretched backslider still in the bonds of iniquity. But in the midst of
his homilies an event had occurred which had forced from him a very
natural expression of alarm, the effect of which in the state papers is
very much as if Mr Spurgeon, in the delivery of an eloquent sermon,
should howl with anguish on feeling a sharp twinge of the gout. Mr
Seward’s howl being a short one, we give it entire:—
“[_Confidential._]
DEPARTMENT OF STATE,
WASHINGTON, _July 26, 1861_.
“SIR,—My despatch, No. 42, dated July 21, was delayed beyond the
proper mail-day by circumstances entirely beyond my control. I trust,
however, that it will still be in time.
“Our army of the Potomac on Sunday last met a reverse equally severe
and unexpected. For a day or two the panic which had produced the
result was followed by a panic that seemed to threaten to demoralise
the country. But that evil has ceased already. The result is already
seen in a vigorous reconstruction upon a scale of greater magnitude
and increased enthusiasm.
“It is not likely that anything will now be done here hastily or
inconsiderately affecting our foreign relations.
“I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant,