Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams, April 1, 1862

Mr. Seward to Mr.
Adams.

Sir: Your despatch of March 13, (No. 131,) has
been submitted to the President.

I have the pleasure of approving the manner in which you have presented
the case of the British steamer Miramon to the notice of her Majesty’s
government.

I am glad, also, to learn that you anticipated my instructions in asking
of Earl Russell explanations of the license allowed to underwriters in
Liverpool and London to insure British vessels engaged in violating the
blockade. Your remarks in alluding to that subject are sagacious and
just. It will, indeed, be well to have, in the end, a record of the
unfriendly demonstrations and proceedings of the British government and
people towards the United States during their present social
disturbance.

I confess, however, that, for my own part, I have not even thought of
connecting these unkindnesses into a series for ultimate review.
Impertinence, injustice, dictation, and violence abroad are naturally
provoked by divisions which produce imbecility at home, and they are a
part of the discipline by which generous, but erring nations, are
brought back to unity, harmony, independence, and self-respect.

Besides, I have not failed to see that every wrong this country has been
called to endure at the hands of any foreign power has been a natural,
if not a logical, consequence of the first grave error which that power
committed in conceding to an insurrection, which would otherwise have
been ephemeral, the rights of a public belligerent. It has seemed,
therefore, to be wise, as well as more dignified, to urge the
retrogression upon that false step, rather than to elaborate complaints
of the injuries which have followed it.

I shall not, in any case, be willing to assume as true the public
interpretation of the proceedings of the government which imputes their
origin to a sentiment of hostility on the part of the British people.
Such a sentiment would be so unworthy of a great nation, and so fatal to
all hopes of concert between that nation and our own in advancing the
interests of freedom, civilization, and humanity, that I prefer to find
the cause of any injustice of which we have to complain in a failure of
the British government itself to understand the true character and
condition of the unhappy civil strife in which we are engaged.

Earl Russell, in the House of Lords, in the debate to which you have
alluded, expressed the belief that this country is large enough for two
independent nations, and the hope that this government will assent to a
peaceful separation from the insurrectionary States. A very brief
sojourn among us, with an observation of our mountains, rivers, and
coasts, and some study of our social condition and habits, would be
sufficient to satisfy him, on the contrary, that the country is not too
large for one such people as this, and that it is and must always be too
small for two distinct nations until the people shall have become so
demoralized by faction that they are ready to enter the course which
leads through continued subdivision to ultimate anarchy. All the British
speculations assume that the political elements which have been brought
into antagonism here are equal in vigor and endurance. Nothing, however,
is more certain than that freedom and slavery are very unequal in these
qualities, and that when these diverse elements are eliminated, the
former from the cause of sedition, and the latter from the cause of the
government, then the government must prevail, sustained as it is by the
co-operating sentiments of loyalty, of national pride, interest,
ambition, and the permanent love of peace.

These opinions were early communicated to the British government, so far
as it was proper to express them in correspondence with a foreign state.
That government seems to have acted upon different convictions. The time
has probably come for the practical determination of the great issue
which has thus been joined. Although the past seventy years of the life
of the United States were years of prosperity, yet an unhappy alienation
prevailed during all that time between them and Great Britain. I see the
United States now resuming their accustomed career by a renewal of the
principles on which their
existence depends. I doubt not that their future progress will be even
more prosperous than the past. Let it be our endeavor to extirpate the
seeds of animosity and cultivate relations of friendship with a nation
that, however perversely it may seem to act for a time, can really have
no interest or ambition permanently conflicting with our own.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,