Charles Francis Adams to William H. Seward, August 30, 1861

Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward.

Sir: It is not without regret that I am compelled to announce the failure of the negotiation which I am led, by the tenor of your despatches, Nos. 55 and 58, to infer you considered almost sure to succeed. I have now the honor to transmit the copy of a note addressed by me to Lord Russell on the the 23d instant, assigning the reasons why I felt it my duty to take the responsibility of declining to fix a day for signing the convention agreed upon between us, burdened, as it was to be, with a contemporaneous exposition of one of its provisions in the form of an outside declaration made by his lordship on behalf of her Majesty the Queen. I have gone so fully into the matter in that note as to render further explanation unnecessary. At the same time I take the liberty to observe that, in case the President should be of opinion that too much stress has been laid by me upon the objectionable character of that paper, an opening has been left by me for the resumption of the negotiation at any moment under new instructions modifying my views. I transmitted to Mr. Dayton a copy for his information immediately after the original was sent. I have not received any later intelligence from him; but I do not doubt that he will forward to the department by this mail his representation of the state of the corresponding negotiation at Paris, so that the whole subject will be under your eye at the same moment. From the tenor of his last note to me, I was led to infer that M. Thouvenel contemplated a parallel proceeding in the conclusion of his negotiation, and that he regarded it there very much in the same light that I did here.

From a review of the whole course of these proceedings I am led to infer the existence of some influence in the cabinet here adverse to the success of this negotiation. At the time of my last conference with Lord Russell I had every reason, from his manner, to believe that he considered the offer of the project as perfectly satisfactory. The suggestion of a qualification did not make its appearance until after the consultation with his colleagues, when it showed itself first in the enigmatical sentence of his note to me of the 31st of July, of which, in my despatch No. 22 to the department, I confessed my inability to comprehend the meaning, and afterwards in the formal announcement contained in his note of the 19th of August. That the failure of the measure, by reason of it, could not have been altogether unexpected I infer from Mr. Dayton’s report to me of M. Thouvenel’s language to him, to the effect that his government would prefer to lose the negotiation rather than to omit making the exception.

Although the matter is not altogether germane to the preceding, I will not close this despatch without calling your attention, to the copy of a letter of Lord John Russell to Mr. Edwardes, which I transmit as cut from a London newspaper, The Globe. It purports to have been taken from parliamentary papers just published, although I have not seen them, nor have I found it printed in any other newspaper. You will notice the date, the 14th of May, being the very day of my first, visit to his lordship in company with Mr. Dallas, when he did not see us, as well as of the publication of the Queen’s proclamation. I have reason to believe that the original form of that proclamation described the parties in America in much the same terms used by his Lordship, and that they were only qualified at a very late moment, and after earnest remonstrance. The tone of the letter corresponds very much with that used to me, a report of which was transmitted in my despatch No. 8.

I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,