Mr. Adams to Mr. Seward, May 21, 1861

Mr. Adams to Mr.
Seward.

Sir: At the close of my last despatch I stated
my purpose to ask an early interview with Lord John Russell. A note to
that effect was immediately sent to the foreign office. An answer was
received on Saturday morning, saying that his lordship would be happy to
see me, if I would take the trouble to go out to Pembroke Lodge, at
Richmond, where he is retired for the present, on Monday at twelve or
one o’clock, or, if I preferred it, he would see me at one o’clock on
that same day, (May 18.) Although it was approaching eleven o’clock when
I got the answer, and the distance exceeds nine miles from the city, I replied by accepting
the earlier appointment, and was probably myself at the Lodge before he
received my note.

Be this as it may, I found his lordship ready to receive me, so that I
proceeded at once to business. After expressing the general feeling
which I believed prevailing in the United States of good will towards
Great Britain, and the confident expectations I had entertained, down to
the period of my arrival, that these sentiments were fully reciprocated
to my government on the part of the government here, I signified my
sense of disappointment in not finding this quite so unequivocally
manifested as I had hoped. There were now fewer topics of direct
difference between the two countries than had probably existed at any
preceding time, and even these had been withdrawn from discussion at
this place to be treated on the other side of the water. I therefore
came out here with little to do beyond the duty of preserving the
relations actually existing from the risk of being unfavorably affected
by the unfortunate domestic disturbances prevailing in my own country.
It was not without pain that I was compelled to admit that from the day
of my arrival I had felt in the proceedings of both houses of
Parliament, in the language of her Majesty’s ministers, and in the tone
of opinion prevailing in private circles, more of uncertainty about this
than I had before thought possible. This sentiment alone would have
impelled me to solicit an early interview; but I was now come under a
much stronger motive. I had just received a despatch from my government,
based upon a letter from Mr. Dallas, of much earlier date than any of
the matters to which I had alluded. In that letter he had reported a
conversation with his lordship, the close of which had been deemed so
unsatisfactory that I had been directed at once to seek for a further
elucidation of his meaning. It was the desire of my government to learn
whether it was the intention of her Majesty’s ministers to adopt a
policy which would have the effect to widen, if not to make irreparable,
a breach which we believed yet to be entirely manageable by
ourselves.

At this point his lordship replied by saying that there was no such
intention. The clearest evidence of that was to be found in the
assurance given by him to Mr. Dallas in the earlier part of the
conversation referred to. With regard to the other portion, against
which I understood him to intimate he had already heard from Lord Lyons
that the President had taken exception, he could only say that he hardly
saw his way to bind the government to any specific course, when
circumstances beyond their agency rendered it difficult to tell what
might happen. Should the insurgent States ultimately succeed in
establishing themselves in an independent position, of the probability
of which he desired to express no opinion, he presumed, from the general
course of the United States heretofore, that they did not mean to
require of other countries to pledge themselves to go further than they
had been in the habit of going themselves. He therefore, by what he had
said to Mr. Dallas, simply meant to say that they were not disposed in
any way to interfere.

To this I replied by begging leave to remark that, so far as my
government was concerned, any desire to interfere had never been imputed
to Great Britain; but in her peculiar position it was deserving of grave
consideration whether great caution was not to be used in adopting any
course that might, even in the most indirect way, have an effect to
encourage the hopes of the disaffected in America. It had now come to
this, that without support from here, the people of the United States
considered the termination of this difficulty as almost entirely a
question of time. Any course adopted here that would materially change
that calculation would inevitably raise the most unpleasant feelings
among them. For independently of the absolute influence of Great
Britain, admitted to be great, the effect of any supposed inclination on her part could
not fail to be extensive among the other nations of Europe. It was my
belief that the insurgent States could scarcely hope for sympathy on
this side of the Atlantic, if deprived of any prospect of it here. Hence
anything that looked like a manifestation of it would be regarded among
us as inevitably tending to develope an ultimate separation in America;
and, whether intended or not, the impression made would scarcely be
effaced by time. It was in this view that I must be permitted to express
the great regret I had felt on learning the decision to issue the
Queen’s proclamation, which at once raised the insurgents to the level
of a belligerent State, and still more the language used in regard to it
by her Majesty’s ministers in both houses of Parliament before and
since. Whatever might be the design, there could be no shadow of doubt
that the effect of these events had been to encourage the friends of the
disaffected here. The tone of the press and of private opinion indicated
it strongly. I then alluded more especially to the brief report of the
lord chancellor’s speech on Thursday last, in which he had characterized
the rebellious portion of my country as a belligerent State, and the war
that was going on as justum bellum.

To this his lordship replied that he thought more stress was laid upon
these events than they deserved. The fact was that a necessity seemed to
exist to define the course of the government in regard to the
participation of the subjects of Great Britain in the impending
conflict. To that end the legal questions involved had been referred to
those officers most conversant with them, and their advice had been
taken in shaping the result. Their conclusion had been that, as a
question merely of fact, a war existed. A
considerable number of the States, at least seven, occupying a wide
extent of country, were in open resistance, whilst one or more of the
others were associating themselves in the same struggle, and as yet
there were no indications of any other result than a contest of arms
more or less severe. In many preceding cases, much less formidable
demonstrations had been recognized. Under such circumstances it seemed
scarcely possible to avoid speaking of this in the technical sense as
justum bellum, that is, a war of two sides,
without in any way implying an opinion of its justice, as well as to
withhold an endeavor, so far as possible, to bring the management of it
within the rules of modern civilized warfare. This was all that was
contemplated by the Queen’s proclamation. It was designed to show the
purport of existing laws, and to explain to British subjects their
liabilities in case they should engage in the war. And however strongly
the people of the United States might feel against their enemies, it was
hardly to be supposed that in practice they would now vary from their
uniformly humane policy heretofore in endeavoring to assuage and
mitigate the horrors of war.

To all which I answered that under other circumstances I should be very
ready to give my cheerful assent to this view of his lordship’s. But I
must be permitted frankly to remark that the action taken seemed, at
least to my mind, a little more rapid than was absolutely called for by
the occasion. It might be recollected that the new administration had
scarcely had sixty days to develop its policy; that the extent to which
all departments of the government had been demoralized in the preceding
administration was surely understood here, at least in part; that the
very organization upon which any future action was to be predicated was
to be renovated and purified before a hope could be entertained of
energetic and effective labor. The consequence had been that it was but
just emerging from its difficulties, and beginning to develop the power
of the country to cope with this rebellion, when the British government
took the initiative, and decided practically that it is a struggle of
two sides. And furthermore, it pronounced the insurgents to be a
belligerent State before they had ever shown their capacity to maintain any kind of warfare
whatever, except within one of their own harbors, and under every
possible advantage. It considered them a marine power before they had
ever exhibited a single privateer on the ocean. I said that I was not
aware that a single armed vessel had yet been issued from any port under
the control of these people. Surely this was not the case in the
instance which had been relied upon in his speech by his lordship as
authority for the present action. There the Greeks, however small as a
people, had long been actively and effectually waging war, before the
interposition of Great Britain, and, to use the language of the
government, as quoted by himself, had “covered the sea with cruisers.”
It did seem to me therefore as if a little more time might have been
taken to form a more complete estimate of the relative force of the
contending parties, and of the probabilities of any long drawn issue.
And I did not doubt that the view taken by me would be that
substantially taken both by the government and the people of the United
States. They would inevitably infer the existence of an intention more
or less marked to extend the struggle. For this reason it was that I
made my present application to know whether such a design was or was not
entertained. For in the alternative of an affirmative answer it was as
well for us to know it, as I was bound to acknowledge in all frankness
that in that contingency I had nothing further left to do in Great
Britain. I said this with regret, as my own feelings had been and were
of the most friendly nature.

His lordship replied by an assurance that he participated in those
feelings; neither did he see the action that had been thus far taken at
all in the light in which I saw it. He believed that the United States,
in their own previous history, had furnished examples of action taken
quite as early as that now complained of. He instanced two cases. The
first I do not now remember, for it seemed to me not important at the
time; the other was the insurrection in Hungary under Kossuth, at which
period, he believed, they had gone so far as actually to send an agent
to that country with a view to recognition, and that to the great
dissatisfaction and against the remonstrances of Austria.

I replied only to the second case, by remarking that the incidents
attending that affair were not fresh in my mind, neither was I sure that
I ever knew the whole action of the government: but it was my impression
that the object of the mission was only confined to the acquisition of
the facts necessary to form an opinion, and that, after they were
obtained, no public step of any kind had been taken. Neither could I
myself recollect an instance in which ample time had not been given by
the United States for the development of events sufficiently decisive to
justify any action that might have followed; for I begged it to be
understood that the government did not mean at all to deny that there
were cases in which recognition of a revolutionary government might be
both expedient and proper. The rule was clear, that whenever it became
apparent that any organized form of society had advanced so far as to
prove its power to defend and protect itself against the assaults of
enemies, and at the same time to manifest a capacity to maintain binding
relations with foreign nations, then a measure of recognition could not
be justly objected to on any side. The case was very different when such
an interference should take place, prior to the establishment of the
proof required, as to bring about a result which would not probably have
happened but for that external agency.

And here I stop for a moment to make two remarks upon this part of the
conversation. The first of these is, that I have an impression that the
agent to go to Hungary, alluded to by his lordship, was Mr. Mann, the
same gentleman who is now figuring in the commission of the confederates
at this place. If in this I am
right, we can be at no loss for his lordship’s sources of information.
The other remark is, that the Hungarian precedent was unquestionably one
in which a very strong sympathy with the insurgent party actually
existed in the United States. Are we therefore to infer a similar
impulse to actuate the precipitate measure now taken here?

I did not say this to his lordship, though I might have done so; but I
proceeded to observe that I had come to England prepared to present the
views of my government on the general question, and that I should have
done so in full but for the interposition of this more immediate
despatch. At the present moment I should touch only upon one point in
connexion with the acknowledgment of the insurgents even as a
belligerent State. It seemed necessary to call the attention of his
lordship to the fact which must be obvious to him, that as yet they had
not laid any foundation for government solid enough to deserve a
moment’s confidence. They had undertaken to withdraw certain States from
the government by an arbitrary act which they called secession, not
known to the Constitution, the validity of which had at no time been
acknowledged by the people of the United States, and which was now
emphatically denied; but not content with this, they had gone on to
substitute another system among themselves, avowedly based upon the
recognition of this right of States to withdraw or secede at pleasure.
With such a treaty, I would ask, where could be vested the obligation of
treaties with foreign powers, of the payment of any debts contracted,
or, indeed, of any act performed in good faith by the common authority
for the time being established. For my own part, I fully believed that
such a system could not deserve to be denominated, in any sense, a
government; and therefore I could not but think any act performed here,
having a tendency to invest it in the eye of the world with the notion
of form and substance, could be attended only with the most complete
disappointment to all the parties connected with it.

His lordship here interposed by saying that there was not, in his
opinion, any occasion at present for going into this class of arguments,
as the government did not contemplate taking any step that way. Should
any such time arrive in the future, he should be very ready to listen to
every argument that might be presented against it on the part of the
United States. At this moment he thought we had better confine ourselves
to the matter immediately in hand.

I then remarked that there was another subject upon which I had received
a despatch, though I should not, after so long a conference, venture to
do more than open the matter to-day. This was a proposal to negotiate in
regard to the rights of neutrals in time of war. The necessary powers
had been transmitted to me, together with a form of a convention, which
I would do myself the honor to submit to his consideration if there was
any disposition to pursue the matter further. His lordship then briefly
reviewed the past action of the two countries since the meeting of the
congress at Paris, and expressed the willingness of Great Britain to
negotiate; but he seemed to desire to leave the subject in the hands of
Lord Lyons, to whom he intimated that he had already transmitted
authority to assent to any modification of the only point in issue which
the government of the United States might prefer. On that matter he
believed there would be no difficulty whatever. Under these
circumstances, I shall not press the subject further at this place until
I receive new directions to that effect from the department.

His lordship then observed that there were two points upon which he
should be glad himself to be enlightened, although he did not know
whether I was prepared to furnish the information. They both related to
the President’s proclamation of a blockade. The first question was upon
the nature of the blockade. The
coast was very extensive, stretching along the Atlantic and the Gulf of
Mexico a great way. Was it the design of the United States to institute
an effective blockade in its whole extent, or to make only a declaration
to that effect as to the whole, and to confine the actual blockade to
particular points? Considering the uniform doctrine of the government
refusing to recognize the validity of mere paper blockades, he could
hardly suppose they designed the latter.

To this I replied that I knew nothing directly of the President’s
intentions on this subject; but that inasmuch as the government had
always protested against mere paper blockades, I could not suppose that
it was now disposed to change its doctrine. On the contrary, I had every
reason for affirming that it was the intention to make an effective
blockade; and this was more practicable than at first sight might appear
from the fact that there were few harbors along the coast, however great
its extent, and these were not very easy of access. I thought,
therefore, that even though the blockade might not be perfect, it would
be sufficiently so to come within the legitimate construction of the
term.

His lordship then alluded to the other point, which was, that the
proclamation assigned no precise date for the commencement of the
blockade, which he believed was necessary; but he presumed that that
defect might be remedied at any time. To which I added that I did not
doubt any such omission of form would be supplied as soon as it was
pointed out.

His lordship then made some remarks upon the adoption of the tariff; to
which I replied that, in my belief, that law was mainly passed as a
revenue measure, with incidental protection; that it was not in any way
aimed in a hostile spirit to foreign nations; and that the people of the
United States would always buy from Great Britain as much as they could
pay for, and generally a good deal more. This last remark raised a
smile; and thus ended his lordship’s series of inquiries.

Having thus disposed of these secondary questions, I returned once more
to the charge, and asked him what answer I should return to the inquiry
which I had been directed to make. In order to avoid any ambiguity, I
took out of my pocket your despatch No. 4, and read to him the paragraph
recapitulating the substance of Mr. Dallas’s report of his interview,
and the very last paragraph. I said that it was important to me that I
should not make any mistake in reporting this part of the conversation;
therefore I should beg him to furnish me with the precise language. He
said that he did not himself know what he was to say. If it was expected
of him to give any pledge of an absolute nature that his government
would not at any future time, no matter what the circumstances might be,
recognize an existing State in America, it was more than he could
promise. If I wished an exact reply, my better way would be to address
him the inquiry in writing. I said that I was well aware of that, but I
had hoped that I might be saved the necessity of doing so. On
reflection, he proposed to avoid that by offering to transmit to Lord
Lyons directions to give such a reply to the President as, in his own
opinion, might be satisfactory. To this arrangement I gave my assent,
though not without some doubt whether I was doing right. In truth, if I
were persuaded that her Majesty’s government were really animated by a
desire to favor the rebellion, I should demand a categorical answer; but
thus far I see rather division of opinion, consequent upon the pressure
of the commercial classes. Hence I preferred to give the short time
demanded, as well as to place in the hands of the President himself the
power to decide upon the sufficiency of the reply.

* * * * * *

* * * * * *

It may be as well to state that, both in matter and manner, the
conference, which has been reported as fully and as accurately as my
memory would permit, was conducted in the most friendly spirit.

* * * * * *

* * * * * *

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