Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward, December 4, 1862

Mr. Adams to Mr.
Seward.

Sir: I have to acknowledge the reception of
despatches from the department, numbered from 399 to 407, inclusive,
with the exception of No. 404; also despatch No. 396, noted as missing
last week.

Little has taken place here worthy of note since the date of my last.
Public attention has been much drawn to the state of affairs on the
continent, the effect of which is to divert it in a corresponding degree
from America. * * * So far events must be considered as looking
favorably for the United States. There is less appearance of a desire to
intermeddle with our differences. The distress in the manufacturing
districts has gradually reached a height sufficient to bring out a corresponding effort to
provide for it. It is more than likely that from this time it will
become less and less burdensome. Such engagements have been entered into
for a prospective supply of cotton from other sources than the United
States that a probability of a sudden reopening of our ports is
beginning to be viewed with quite as much of apprehension as desire. The
chief event that is looked for is the moment when the price of the
manufactured product will have risen so high as to render a resumption
of labor, under the ruling price of the raw material, profitable. Thus
far it is notorious here that all the markets of the world, to which the
English have access, had been, prior to the troubles, so much glutted
with their cotton goods as, in spite of the subsequent cessation of
manufacture, not yet to have recovered their equilibrium. But the
passage of each day now contributes to restore it. And though it may be
yet a great while before the manufacture will return to its pristine
proportions, there is strong reason to believe that it will not be long
before an expansion will take the place of the contraction of industry.
This commercial revolution, like the political one now going on in
America, has reached such a pass that it seems for the interest of the
whole world that there should be no falling back into it hereafter. The
establishment of various sources of supply of cotton, by other than
slave labor, is now rendered in the highest degree likely. The
restriction upon the exportation of it from America is not then to be
regarded as by any means an unmixed evil. Rather is it to be considered
as likely out of evil to educe a greater good. Had the rebels been as
successful in their labors of destruction of their own property as they
at one time pretended, I am not at all sure that they would not have
done everybody but themselves a most essential service.

I only fear the extent of their failure of performance. For, even at this
moment, any restoration of their old system of labor in producing this
commodity of cotton is to be regarded as one of the events the most to
be deprecated by all the highest interests of humanity everywhere on the
globe. It was an overweening confidence in the power of an apparent
monopoly which precipitated these misguided men into the abyss into
which they find themselves plunged. To extricate them, with the
retention of any means of reviving in them their former delusion, would
be no true charity to them, whilst it would endanger the peace and
happiness of everybody else.

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