Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams, April 10, 1861

Mr. Seward to Mr.
Adams.

Sir: Although Great Britain and the United
States possess adjacent dominions of large extent, and although they
divide, not very unequally, a considerable portion of the commerce of
the world, yet there are at present only two questions in debate between
them. One of these concerns the line of boundary running through Puget’s
Sound, and involves the title to the island of San Juan. The other
relates to a proposition for extinguishing the interest of the Hudson’s
Bay and Puget’s Sound agricultural companies in the Territory of
Washington. The discussion of these questions has hitherto been carried
on here, and there is no necessity for removing it to London. It is
expected to proceed amicably and result in satisfactory conclusions. It
would seem, therefore, on first thought, that you would find nothing
more to do in England than to observe and report current events, and to
cultivate friendly sentiments there towards the United States.
Nevertheless, the peculiar condition of our country in the present
juncture renders these duties a task of considerable delicacy.

You will readily understand me as alluding to the attempts which are
being made by a misguided portion of our fellow citizens to detach some
of the States and to combine them in a new organization under the name
of the Confederate States of America. The agitators in this bad
enterprise, justly estimating the influence of the European powers upon
even American affairs, do not mistake in supposing that it would derive
signal advantage from a recognition by any of those powers, and
especially Great Britain. Your task, therefore, apparently so simple and
easy, involves the responsibility of preventing the commission of an act
by the government of that country which would be fraught with disaster,
perhaps ruin, to our own.

It is by no means easy to give you instructions. They must be based on a
survey of the condition of the country, and include a statement of the
policy of the government. The insurrectionary movement, though rapid in
its progress, is slow in revealing its permanent character. Only
outlines of a policy can be drawn which must largely depend on uncertain
events.

The presidential election took place on the 6th of November last. The
canvass had been conducted in all the southern or slave States in such a
manner as to prevent a perfectly candid hearing there of the issue
involved, and so all the parties existing there were surprised and
disappointed in the marked result. That disappointment was quickly
seized for desperate purposes by a class of persons until that time
powerless, who had long cherished a design to dismember the Union and
build up a new confederacy around the Gulf of Mexico. Ambitious leaders
hurried the people forward, in a factious course, observing conventional
forms but violating altogether the deliberative spirit of their
constitutions. When the new federal administration came in on the 4th of
March last, it found itself confronted by an insurrectionary combination of seven States,
practicing an insidious strategy to seduce eight other States into its
councils.

One needs to be as conversant with our federative system as perhaps only
American publicists can be to understand how effectually, in the first
instance, such a revolutionary movement must demoralize the general
government. We are not only a nation, but we are States also. All public
officers, as well as all citizens, owe not only allegiance to the Union
but allegiance also to the States in which they reside. In the more
discontented States the local magistrates and other officers cast off at
once their federal allegiance, and conventions were held which assumed
to absolve their citizens from the same obligation. Even federal judges,
marshals, clerks, and revenue officers resigned their trusts.
Intimidation deterred loyal persons from accepting the offices thus
rendered vacant. So the most important faculties of the federal
government in those States abruptly ceased. The resigning federal
agents, if the expression may be used, attorned
to the revolutionary authorities and delivered up to them public funds
and other property and possessions of large value. The federal
government had, through a long series of years, been engaged in building
strong fortifications, a navy yard, arsenals, mints, treasuries, and
other public edifices, not in any case for use against those States, but
chiefly for their protection and convenience. These had been
unsuspectingly left either altogether or imperfectly garrisoned or
guarded, and they fell, with little resistance, into the hands of the
revolutionary party. A general officer of the army gave up to them a
large quantity of military stores and other property, disbanded the
troops under his command, and sent them out of the territory of the
disaffected States.

It may be stated, perhaps without giving just offence, that the most
popular motive in these discontents was an apprehension of designs on
the part of the incoming federal administration hostile to the
institution of domestic slavery in the States where it is tolerated by
the local constitutions and laws. That institution and the class which
especially cherishes it are not confined to the States which have
revolted, but they exist in the eight other so-called slave States; and
these, for that reason, sympathize profoundly with the revolutionary
movement. Sympathies and apprehensions of this kind have, for an
indefinite period, entered into the bases of political parties
throughout the whole country, and thus considerable masses of persons,
whose ultimate loyalty could not be doubted, were found, even in the
free States, either justifying, excusing, or palliating the movement
towards disunion in the seceding States. The party which was dominant in
the federal government during the period of the last administration
embraced, practically, and held in unreserved communion, all
disunionists and sympathizers. It held the executive administration. The
Secretaries of the Treasury, War, and the Interior were disunionists.
The same party held a large majority of the Senate, and nearly equally
divided the House of Representatives. Disaffection lurked, if it did not
openly avow itself, in every department and in every bureau, in every
regiment and in every ship-of-war; in the post office and in the
custom-house, and in every legation and consulate from London to
Calcutta. Of four thousand four hundred and seventy officers in the
public service, civil and military, two thousand one hundred and
fifty-four were representatives of States where the revolutionary
movement was openly advocated and urged, even if not actually organized.
Our system being so completely federative and representative, no
provision had ever been made, perhaps none ever could have been made, to
anticipate this strange and unprecedented disturbance. The people were
shocked by successive and astounding developments of what the statute
book distinctly pronounced
to be sedition and treason, but the magistracy was demoralized and the
laws were powerless. By degrees, however, a better sentiment revealed
itself. The executive administration hesitatingly, in part, reformed
itself. The capital was garrisoned; the new President came in
unresisted, and soon constituted a new and purely loyal administration.
They found the disunionists perseveringly engaged in raising armies and
laying sieges around national fortifications situate within the
territory of the disaffected States. The federal marine seemed to have
been scattered everywhere except where its presence was necessary, and
such of the military forces as were not in the remote States and
Territories were held back from activity by vague and mysterious
armistices which had been informally contracted by the late President,
or under his authority, with a view to postpone conflict until
impracticable concessions to disunion should be made by Congress, or at
least until the waning term of his administration should reach its
appointed end. Commissioners who had been sent by the new confederacy
were already at the capital demanding recognition of its sovereignty and
a partition of the national property and domain. The treasury, depleted
by robbery and peculation, was exhausted, and the public credit was
prostrate.

It would be very unjust to the American people to suppose that this
singular and unhappy condition of things indicated any extreme favor or
toleration of the purpose of a permanent dissolution of the Union. On
the contrary, disunion at the very first took on a specious form, and it
afterwards made its way by ingenious and seductive devices. It
inculcated that the Union is a purely voluntary connexion, founded on
the revocable assent of the several States; that secession, in the case
of great popular discontent, would induce consultation and
reconciliation, and so that revolution, instead of being war, is peace,
and disunion, instead of being dissolution, is union. Though the
ordinances of secession in the seceding States were carried through
impetuously, without deliberation, and even by questionable majorities,
yet it was plausibly urged that the citizens who had remained loyal to
the Union might wisely acquiesce, so as ultimately to moderate and
control the movement, and in any event that if war should ensue, it
would become a war of sections, and not a social war, of all others, and
especially in those States, the form of war most seriously to be
deprecated. It being assumed that peaceful separation is in harmony with
the Constitution, it was urged as a consequence that coercion would,
therefore, be unlawful and tyrannical; and this principle was even
pushed so far as to make the defensive retaining by the federal
government of its position within the limits of the seceding States, or
where it might seem to overawe or intimidate them, an act of such
forbidden coercion. Thus it happened that for a long time, and in very
extensive districts even, fidelity to the Union manifested itself by
demanding a surrender of its powers and possessions, and compromises
with or immunity towards those who were engaged in overthrowing it by
armed force. Disunion under these circumstances rapidly matured. On the
other hand, the country was bewildered. For the moment even loyal
citizens fell naturally into the error of inquiring how the fearful
state of things had come about, and who was responsible for it, thus
inviting a continuance of the controversy out of which it had arisen,
rather than rallying to the duty of arresting it. Disunion, sustained
only by passion, made haste to attain its end. Union, on the contrary,
required time, because it could only appeal to reason, and reason could
not be heard until excitemeut should in some degree subside. Military
spirit is an element always ready for revolution. It has a fuller
development in the disaffected than in the loyal States. Thousands of
men have already banded
themselves as soldiers in the cause of disunion, while the defenders of
the Union, before resorting to arms, everywhere wait to make sure that
it cannot be otherwise preserved. Even this cautious and pacific, yet
patriotic disposition has been misunderstood and perverted by faction to
encourage disunion.

I believe that I have thus presented the disunion movement
dispassionately and without misrepresenting its proportions or its
character.

You will hardly be asked by responsible statesmen abroad why has not the
new administration already suppressed the revolution. Thirty-five days
are a short period in which to repress, chiefly by moral means, a
movement which is so active while disclosing itself throughout an
empire.

You will not be expected to promulgate this history, or to communicate it
to the British government, but you are entitled to the Presidents views,
which I have thus set forth in order to enable you to understand the
policy which he proposes to pursue, and to conform your own action to
it.

The President neither looks for nor apprehends any actual and permanent
dismemberment of the American Union, especially by a line of latitude.
The improvement of our many channels of intercourse, and the perfection
of our scheme of internal exchanges, and the incorporation of both of
them into a great system of foreign commerce, concurring with the
gradual abatement of the force of the only existing cause of alienation,
have carried us already beyond the danger of disunion in that form. The
so-called Confederate States, therefore, in the opinion of the
President, are attempting what will prove a physical impossibility.
Necessarily they build the structure of their new government upon the
same principle by which they seek to destroy the Union, namely, the
right of each individual member of the confederacy to withdraw from it
at pleasure and in peace. A government thus constituted could neither
attain the consolidation necessary for stability, nor guaranty any
engagements it might make with creditors or other nations. The movement,
therefore, in the opinion of the President, tends directly to anarchy in
the seceding States, as similar movements in similar circumstances have
already resulted in Spanish America, and especially in Mexico. He
believes, nevertheless, that the citizens of those States, as well as
the citizens of the other States, are too intelligent, considerate, and
wise to follow the leaders to that disastrous end. For these reasons he
would not be disposed to reject a cardinal dogma of theirs, namely, that
the federal government could not reduce the seceding States to obedience
by conquest, even although he were disposed to question that
proposition. But, in fact, the President willingly accepts it as true.
Only an imperial or despotic government could subjugate thoroughly
disaffected and insurrectionary members of the State. This federal
republican system of ours is of all forms of government the very one
which is most unfitted for such a labor. Happily, however, this is only
an imaginary defect. The system has within itself adequate, peaceful,
conservative, and recuperative forces. Firmness on the part of the
government in maintaining and preserving the public institutions and
property, and in executing the laws where authority can be exercised
without waging war, combined with such measures of justice, moderation,
and forbearance as will disarm reasoning opposition, will be sufficient
to secure the public safety until returning reflection, concurring with
the fearful experience of social evils, the inevitable fruits of
faction, shall bring the recusant members cheerfully back into the
family, which, after all, must prove their best and happiest, as it
undeniably is their most natural home. The Constitution of the United
States provides for that return by authorizing Congress, on application
to be made by a certain majority of the States, to assemble a national
convention, in which the organic
law can, if it be needful, be revised so as to remove all real obstacles
to a reunion, so suitable to the habits of the people, and so eminently
conducive to the common safety and welfare.

Keeping that remedy steadily in view, the President, on the one hand,
will not suffer the federal authority to fall into abeyance, nor will
he, on the other, aggravate existing evils by attempts at coercion which
must assume the form of direct war against any of the revolutionary
States. If, while he is pursuing this course, commended as it is by
prudence as well as patriotism, the scourge of civil war for the first
time in our history must fall upon our country during the term of his
administration, that calamity will then have come through the agency,
not of the government, but of those who shall have chosen to be its
armed, open, and irreconcilable enemies; and he will not suffer himself
to doubt that when the value of the imperilled Union shall be brought in
that fearful manner home to the business and the bosoms of the American
people, they will, with an unanimity that shall vindicate their wisdom
and their virtue, rise up and save it.

It does not, however, at all surprise the President that the confidence
in the stability of the Union, which has been heretofore so universally
entertained, has been violently shocked both at home and abroad.
Surprise and fear invariably go together. The period of four months
which intervened between the election which designated the head of the
new administration and its advent, as has already been shown, assumed
the character of an interregnum, in which not only were the powers of
the government paralyzed, but even its resources seemed to disappear and
be forgotten.

Nevertheless, all the world know what are the resources of the United
States, and that they are practically unencumbered as well as
inexhaustible. It would be easy, if it would not seem invidious, to show
that whatever may be the full development of the disunion movement,
those resources will not be seriously diminished, and that the revenues
and credit of the Union, unsurpassed in any other country, are adequate
to every emergency that can occur in our own. Nor will the political
commotions which await us sensibly disturb the confidence of the people
in the stability of the government. It has been necessary for us to
learn, perhaps the instruction has not come too soon, that vicissitudes
are incident to our system and our country, as they are to all others.
The panic which that instruction naturally produced is nearly past. What
has hitherto been most needful for the reinvigoration of authority is
already occurring. The aiders, abettors, and sympathizers with disunion,
partly by their own choice and partly through the exercise of the public
will, are falling out from the civil departments of the government as
well as from the army and the navy. The national legislature will no
longer be a distracted council. Our representatives in foreign courts
and ports will henceforth speak only the language of loyalty to their
country, and of confidence in its institutions and its destiny.

It is much to be deplored that our representatives are to meet abroad
agents of disunion, seeking foreign aid to effect what, unaided, is
already seen to be desperate. You need not be informed that their
success in Great Britain would probably render their success easy
elsewhere. The President does not doubt that you fully appreciate the
responsibility of your mission. An honored ancestor of yours was the
first to represent your whole country, after its independence was
established, at the same court to which you now are accredited. The
President feels assured that it will happen through no want of loyalty
or of diligence on your part if you are to be the last to discharge that
trust. You will have this great advantage, that from the hour when that
country, so dear to us all, first challenged the notice of nations,
until now, it has continually grown in their sympathy and reverence.

Before considering the arguments you are to use, it is important to
indidicate those which you are not to employ in executing that
mission:

First. The President has noticed, as the whole American people have, with
much emotion, the expressions of good will and friendship toward the
United States, and of concern for their present embarrassments, which
have been made on apt occasions by her Majesty and her ministers. You
will make due acknowledgment for these manifestations, but at the same
time you will not rely on any mere sympathies or national kindness. You
will make no admissions of weakness in our Constitution, or of
apprehension on the part of the government. You will rather prove, as
you easily can, by comparing the history of our country with that of
other states, that its Constitution and government are really the
strongest and surest which have ever been erected for the safety of any
people. You will in no case listen to any suggestions of compromise by
this government, under foreign auspices, with its discontented citizens.
If, as the President does not at all apprehend, you shall unhappily find
her Majesty’s government tolerating the application of the so-called
seceding States, or wavering about it, you will not leave them to
suppose for a moment that they can grant that application and remain the
friends of the United States. You may even assure them promptly in that
case that if they determine to recognize, they may at the same time
prepare to enter into alliance with the enemies of this republic. You
alone will represent your country at London, and you will represent the
whole of it there. When you are asked to divide that duty with others,
diplomatic relations between the government of Great Britain and this
government will be suspended, and will remain so until it shall be seen
which of the two is most strongly entrenched in the confidence of their
respective nations and of mankind.

You will not be allowed, however, even if you were disposed, as the
President is sure you will not be, to rest your opposition to the
application of the Confederate States on the ground of any favor this
administration, or the party which chiefly called it into existence,
proposes to show to Great Britain, or claims that Great Britain ought to
show to them. You will not consent to draw into debate before the
British government any opposing moral principles which may be supposed
to lie at the foundation of the controversy between those States and the
federal Union.

You will indulge in no expressions of harshness or disrespect, or even
impatience, concerning the seceding States, their agents, or their
people. But you will, on the contrary, all the while remember that those
States are now, as they always heretofore have been, and,
notwithstanding their temporary self-delusion, they must always continue
to be, equal and honored members of this federal Union, and that their
citizens throughout all political misunderstandings and alienations
still are and always must be our kindred and countrymen. In short, all
your arguments must belong to one of three classes, namely: First.
Arguments drawn from the principles of public law and natural justice,
which regulate the intercourse of equal States. Secondly. Arguments
which concern equally the honor, welfare, and happiness of the
discontented States, and the honor, welfare, and happiness of the whole
Union. Thirdly. Arguments which are equally conservative of the rights
and interests, and even sentiments of the United States, and just in
their bearing upon the rights, interests, and sentiments of Great
Britain and all other nations.

We freely admit that a nation may, and even ought, to recognize a new
State which has absolutely and beyond question effected its
independence, and permanently established its sovereignty; and that a
recognition in such a case affords no just cause of offence to the
government of the country from
which the new State has so detached itself. On the other hand, we insist
that a nation that recognizes a revolutionary State, with a view to aid
its effecting its sovereignty and independence, commits a great wrong
against the nation whose integrity is thus invaded, and makes itself
responsible for a just and ample redress.

I will not stop to inquire whether it may not sometimes happen that an
imperial government or even a federative one may not so oppress or
aggrieve its subjects in a province or in a State as to justify
intervention on the plea of humanity. Her Majesty’s government, however,
will not make a pretence that the present is such a case. The United
States have existed under their present form of government seventy and
more years, and during all that time not one human life has been taken
in forfeiture for resistance to their authority. It must be the verdict
of history that no government so just, so equal, and so humane, has ever
elsewhere existed. Even the present disunion movement is confessedly
without any better cause than an apprehension of dangers which, from the
very nature of the government, are impossible; and speculations of
aggressions, which those who know the physical and social arrangements
of this continent must see at once are fallacious and chimerical.

The disunionists will, I am sure, take no such ground. They will appeal,
not to the justice, or to the magnanimity, but to the cupidity and
caprice of Great Britain.

It cannot need many words to show that even in that form their appeal
ought to be promptly dismissed. I am aware that the revenue law lately
passed by Congress is vehemently denounced in Great Britain. It might be
enough to say on that subject that as the United States and Great
Britain are equals in dignity, and not unequal in astuteness in the
science and practice of political economy, the former have good right to
regard only their own convenience, and consult their own judgment in
framing their revenue laws. But there are some points in this connexion
which you may make without compromising the self-respect of this
government.

In the circumstances of the present case, it is clear that a recognition
of the so-called Confederate nations must be deemed equivalent to a
deliberate resolution by her Majesty’s government that this American
Union, which has so long constituted a sovereign nation, shall be now
permanently dissolved, and cease to exist forever. The excuse for this
resolution, fraught, if effectual, with fearful and enduring
consequences, is a change in its revenue laws—a change which, because of
its very nature, as well as by reason of the ever-changing course of
public sentiment, must necessarily be temporary and ephemeral. British
censors tell us that the new tariff is unwise for ourselves. If so, it
will speedily be repealed. They say it is illiberal and injurious to
Great Britain. It cannot be so upon her principles without being also
injurious to ourselves, and in that case it will be promptly repealed.
Besides, there certainly are other and more friendly remedies for
foreign legislation that is injurious without premeditated purpose of
injury, which a magnanimous government will try before it deliberately
seeks the destruction of the offended nation.

The application of the so-called Confederate States, in the aspect now
under consideration, assumes that they are offering, or will offer, more
liberal commercial facilities than the United States can or will be
disposed to concede. Would it not be wise for Great Britain to wait
until those liberal facilities shall be definitely fixed and offered by
the Confederate States, and then to wait further and see whether the
United States may not accord facilities not less desirable?

The union of these States seventy years ago established perfectly free
trade between the several
States, and this, in effect, is free trade throughout the largest
inhabitable part of North America. During all that time, with occasional
and very brief intervals, not affecting the result, we have been
constantly increasing in commercial liberality towards foreign nations.
We have made that advance necessarily, because, with increasing
liberality, we have at the same time, owing to controlling causes,
continually augmented our revenues and increased our own productions.
The sagacity of the British government cannot allow it to doubt that our
natural course hereafter in this respect must continue to be the same as
heretofore.

The same sagacity may be trusted to decide, first, whether the so-called
Confederate States, on the emergency of a military revolution, and
having no other sources of revenue than duties on imports and exports
levied within the few ports they can command without a naval force, are
likely to be able to persevere in practicing the commercial liberality
they proffer as an equivalent for recognition. Manifestly, moreover, the
negotiation which they propose to open with Great Britain implies that
peace is to be preserved while the new commerce goes on. The sagacity of
her Majesty’s government may be trusted to consider whether that new
government is likely to be inaugurated without war, and whether the
commerce of Great Britain with this country would be likely to be
improved by flagrant war between the southern and northern States.

Again, even a very limited examination of commercial statistics will be
sufficient to show that while the staples of the disaffected States do,
indeed, as they claim, constitute a very important portion of the
exports of the United States to European countries, a very large portion
of the products and fabrics of other regions consumed in those States
are derived, and must continue to be derived, not from Europe, but from
the northern States, while the chief consumption of European productions
and fabrics imported into the United States takes place in these same
States. Great Britain may, if her government think best, by modifying
her navigation laws, try to change these great, features of American
commerce; but it will require something more than acts of the British
Parliament and of the proposed revolutionary Congress to modify a
commerce that takes its composite character from all the various soils
and climates of a continent, as well as from the diversified
institutions, customs and dispositions of the many communities which
inhabit it.

Once more: All the speculations which assume that the revenue law
recently passed by Congress will diminish the consumption of foreign
fabrics and productions in the United States are entirely erroneous. The
American people are active, industrious, inventive, and energetic, but
they are not penurious or sordid. They are engaged with wonderful effect
in developing the mineral, forest, agricultural and pastoral resources
of a vast and, practically, new continent. Their wealth, individual as
well as public, increases every day in a general sense, irrespective of
the revenue laws of the United States, and every day also the habit of
liberal—not to say profuse—expenditure grows upon them. There are
changes in the nature and character of imported productions which they
consume, but practically no decline in the quantity and value of
imports.

It remains to bring out distinctly a consideration to which I have
already adverted. Great Britain has within the last forty-five years
changed character and purpose. She has become a power for production,
rather than a power for destruction. She is committed, as it seems to
us, to a policy of industry, not of ambition; a policy of peace, not of
war. One has only to compare her present domestic condition with that of
any former period to see that this new career on which she has entered
is as wise as it is humane and
beneficent. Her success in this career requires peace throughout the
civilized world, and nowhere so much as on this continent. Recognition
by her of the so-called Confederate States would be intervention and war
in this country. Permanent dismemberment of the American Union in
consequence of that intervention would be perpetual war—civil war. The
new confederacy which in that case Great Britain would have aided into
existence must, like any other new state, seek to expand itself
northward, westward, and southward. What part of this continent or of
the adjacent islands would be expected to remain in peace?

The President would regard it as inconsistent with his habitually high
consideration for the government and people of Great Britain to allow me
to dwell longer on the merely commercial aspects of the question under
discussion. Indeed he will not for a moment believe that, upon
consideration of merely financial gain, that government could be induced
to lend its aid to a revolution designed to overthrow the institutions
of this country, and involving ultimately the destruction of the
liberties of the American people.

To recognize the independence of a new state, and so favor, possibly
determine, its admission into the family of nations, is the highest
possible exercise of sovereign power, because it affects in any case the
welfare of two nations, and often the peace of the world. In the
European system this power is now seldom attempted to be exercised
without invoking a consultation or congress of nations. That system has
not been extended to this continent. But there is even a greater
necessity for prudence in such cases in regard to American States than
in regard to the nations of Europe. A revolutionary change of dynasty,
or even a disorganization and recombination of one or many States,
therefore, do not long or deeply affect the general interests of
society, because the ways of trade and habits of society remain the
same. But a radical change effected in the political combinations
existing on the continent, followed, as it probably would be, by moral
convulsions of incalculable magnitude, would threaten the stability of
society throughout the world.

Humanity has indeed little to hope for if it shall, in this age of high
improvement, be decided without a trial that the principle of
international law which regards nations as moral persons, bound so to
act as to do to each other the least injury and the most good, is merely
an abstraction too refined to be reduced into practice by the
enlightened nations of Western Europe. Seen in the light of this
principle, the several nations of the earth constitute one great federal
republic. When one of them casts its suffrages for the admission of a
new member into that republic, it ought to act under a profound sense of
moral obligation, and be governed by considerations as pure,
disinterested, and elevated as the general interest of society and the
advancement of human nature.

The British empire itself is an aggregation of divers communities which
cover a large portion of the earth and embrace one-fifth of its entire
population. Some, at least, of these communities are held to their
places in that system by bonds as fragile as the obligations of our own
federal Union. The strain will some time come which is to try the
strength of these bonds, though it will be of a different kind from that
which is trying the cords of our confederation. Would it be wise for her
Majesty’s government, on this occasion, to set a dangerous precedent, or
provoke retaliation? If Scotland and Ireland are at last reduced to
quiet contentment, has Great Britain no dependency, island, or province
left exposed along the whole circle of her empire, from Gibraltar
through the West Indies and Canada till it begins again on the southern
extremity of Africa?

The President will not dwell on the pleasing recollection that Great
Britain, not yet a year ago, manifested by marked attention to the
United States her desire for a cordial reunion which, all ancient
prejudices and passions being buried, should be a pledge of mutual
interest and sympathy forever thereafter. The United States are not
indifferent to the circumstances of common descent, language, customs,
sentiments, and religion, which recommend a closer sympathy between
themselves and Great Britain than either might expect in its intercourse
with any other nation. The United States are one of many nations which
have sprung from Great Britain herself. Other such nations are rising up
in various parts of the globe. It has been thought by many who have
studied the philosophy of modern history profoundly, that the success of
the nations thus deriving their descent from Great Britain might,
through many ages, reflect back upon that kingdom the proper glories of
its own great career. The government and people of Great Britain may
mistake their commercial interests, but they cannot become either
unnatural or indifferent to the impulses of an undying ambition to be
distinguished as the leaders of the nations in the ways of civilization
and humanity.

I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant,