Charles Francis Adams to William H. Seward, March 27, 1862

Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward.

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the reception from the department of despatches numbered from 199 to 208, inclusive.

It will have come to your knowledge, by the reception of my despatch No. 131, of the 13th of March, that I had already acted in conformity with the suggestions contained in your No. 207, dated on the 11th, by addressing, a note to Earl Russell in remonstrance against the notorious activity of the subjects of Great Britain in efforts to set at nought the blockade. To that communication I have not yet received a reply. The reception of a letter from Mr. Dudley, the consul at Liverpool, containing additional information to the same effect, supplied me with a new occasion to write to his lordship in the spirit of your despatch No. 196, of the 27th of February. A copy of this latest note, dated the 26th instant, is herewith transmitted. After a full conversation with Mr. Morse, we both arrived at the conclusion that the evidence in our possession would not sustain so broad a position as that contemplated in your letter; for, whatever may have been the purposes of the confederate emissaries and their friends pending the difficulties connected with the Trent case—and I am inclined to believe they went to the full extent indicated—I fancy they have shrunk within much smaller compass since that speck of war has disappeared. The activity is now mainly directed to the expediting of every species of supply through the means of steam vessels, which may themselves be turned to some account in the way of illicit trade or of piratical warfare. Of these last the Oreto seems to be the only one likely to prove formidable. I thought it, therefore, a good opportunity to place upon his lordship the responsibility of the consequences of permitting himself to be deluded by what I cannot help thinking the wilful blindness and credulous partiality of the British authorities at Liverpool. From the experience of the past, I have little or no confidence in the success of any application that may be made of the kind. It is not the less important, for all that, to perpetuate the testimony for future use. That Great Britain did, in the most terrible moment of our domestic trial in struggling with a monstrous social evil she had earnestly professed to abhor, coldly and at once assume our inability to master it, and then become the only foreign nation steadily contributing in every indirect way possible to verify its prejudgment, will probably be the verdict made up against her by posterity on a calm comparison of the evidence. I do not mean to say that such has been the course of the whole people. A considerable portion of them in all classes have been actuated by nobler views. There is, throughout England, a great deal of warm though passive sympathy with America. But there is likewise an extraordinary amount of fear as well as of jealousy. And it is these last passions which have pervaded the mass of the governing classes, until they have inscribed for the whole nation a moral and political record which no subsequent action will ever avail to obliterate.

I am bound to notice, in several of your late despatches, a strong disposition to press upon the British government an argument for a retraction of its original error in granting to the rebels the rights of a belligerent. There may come a moment when such a proceeding might seem to me likely to be of use. But I must frankly confess that I do not see it yet. The very last speech of Lord Russell in the House of Lords is, from beginning to end inspired by an opposite idea. The final disruption of the United States and the ultimate recognition of the seceding States are as visible in every word of that address as they were in the letter of the same nobleman to Mr. Edwards on the 14th of May last. Lord Palmerston has entertained the same conviction. * * * The foreign policy of the government, upon which its friends almost exclusively depend for what is left it of popularity in the nation, rests upon this basis. * * * For these reasons I respectfully submit to your consideration my doubts about the expediency of moving in this direction now. Indeed, should it so happen that the existing indications of an early termination of the struggle continue to multiply there will be little occasion for further remonstrance of any kind here; for the disposition to help a party once that it is felt to be certainly sinking is not very common among either political or commercial men; and there are no others in great Britain who would stop to shed a tear over the fallen fortunes of the quasi belligerent of their own creation.

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