Mr. Seward (Secretary of State) to all the ministers of the United States, March 9, 1861

Mr. Seward
(Secretary of State) to all
the ministers of the United
States.

CIRCULAR.

Sir: My predecessor, in his despatch, number
10, addressed to you on the 28th of February last, instructed you to use
all proper and necessary measures to prevent the success of efforts
which may be made by persons claiming to represent those States of this
Union in whose name a provisional government has been announced to
procure a recognition of their independence by the government of
Spain.

I am now instructed by the President of the United States to inform you
that, having assumed the administration of the government in pursuance
of an unquestioned election and of the directions of the Constitution,
he renews the injunction which I have mentioned, and relies upon the
exercise of the greatest possible diligence and fidelity on your part to
counteract and prevent the designs of those who would invoke foreign
intervention to embarrass or overthrow the republic.

When you reflect on the novelty of such designs, their unpatriotic and
revolutionary character, and the long train of evils which must follow
directly or consequentially from even their partial or temporary
success, the President feels assured that you will justly appreciate and
cordially approve the caution which prompts this communication.

I transmit herewith a copy of the address pronounced by the President on
taking the constitutional oath of office. It sets forth clearly the
errors of the misguided partisans who are seeking to dismember the
Union, the grounds on which the conduct of those partisans is
disallowed, and also the general policy which the government will pursue
with a view to the preservation of domestic peace and order, and the
maintenance and preservation of the federal Union.

You will lose no time in submitting this address to the Spanish minister
for foreign affairs, and in assuring him that the President of the
United States entertains a full confidence in the speedy restoration of
the harmony and unity of the government by a firm, yet just and liberal
bearing, cooperating with the deliberate and loyal action of the
American people.

You will truthfully urge upon the Spanish government the consideration
that the present
disturbances have had their origin only in popular passions, excited
under novel circumstances of very transient character, and that while
not one person of well-balanced mind has attempted to show that
dismemberment of the Union would be permanently conducive to the safety
and welfare of even his own State or section, much less of all the
States and sections of our country, the people themselves still retain
and cherish a profound confidence in our happy Constitution, together
with a veneration and affection for it such as no other form of
government ever received at the hands of those for whom it was
established.

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. The position of these States, and
their mining, agricultural, manufacturing, commercial, political, and
social relations and influences, seem to make it permanently the
interest of all other nations that our present political system shall be
unchanged and undisturbed. Any advantage that any foreign nation might
derive from a connation that it might form with any dissatisfied or
discontented portion, State, or section, even if not altogether
illusory, would be ephemeral, and would be overbalanced by the evils it
would suffer from a disseverance of the whole Union, whose manifest
policy it must be hereafter, as it has always been heretofore, to
maintain peace, liberal commerce, and cordial amity with all other
nations, and to favor the establishment of well-ordered government over
the whole American continent.

Nor do we think we exaggerate our national importance when we claim that
any political disaster that should befall us, and introduce discord or
anarchy among the States that have so long constituted one great
pacific, prosperous nation, under a form of government which has
approved itself to the respect and confidence of mankind, might tend by
its influence to disturb and unsettle the existing systems of government
in other parts of the world, and arrest that progress of improvement and
civilization which marks the era in which we live.

The United States have had too many assurances and manifestations of the
friendship and good will of her Catholic Majesty to entertain any doubt
that these considerations, and such others as your own large experience
of the working of our federal system will suggest, will have their just
influence with her, and will prevent her Majesty’s government from
yielding to solicitations to intervene in any unfriendly way in the
domestic concerns of our country. The President regrets that the events
going on here may be productive of some possible inconvenience to the
people and subjects of Spain; but he is determined that those
inconveniences shall be made as light and as transient as possible, and,
so far as it may rest with him, that all strangers who may suffer any
injury from them shall be amply indemnified. The President expects that
you will be prompt in transmitting to this department any information
you may receive on the subject of the attempts which have suggested this
communication.

I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant,