Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams, February 10, 1862

Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams..

Sir: It seems a mockery to give you accounts of
military operations, insomuch as, though my advices are delayed until
the last hour before the departure of the mail, they are outstripped by
the telegraphic despatches going during two whole days from all parts of
the country to the very hour of the sailing of the steamer.

Cloudless skies, with drying winter winds, have at last succeeded the
storms which so long held our fleets in embargo and our land forces in
their camps.

The Burnside expedition has escaped its perils, and is now in activity on
the coast of North Carolina. The great victory at Mill Spring, in
Kentucky, has been quickly followed by the capture of Fort Henry, on the
Tennessee river, and the interruption of the railroad by which the
insurgents have kept up their communications between Bowling Green and
Columbus; and the divisions in the west are all in activity with
prospects of decisive achievements.

It is now nearly one year since the insurgents began their desperate
undertaking to establish a confederacy of the fifteen slave States. At
some time within the previous six months they had virtually displaced
the flag of the Union in thirteen of those States by stratagem or by
force, and it stood in apparent jeopardy in the fourteenth State.

But the process of preparation has steadily gone on in the loyal States,
while that of exhaustion has been going on in the disloyal. Only eleven
of the slave States are practically subject to the insurgents, and
already the flag of the Union stands, as we think, irremovably fixed
upon some points in every one of the thirty-four States, except Texas,
Alabama, and Arkansas. Congress has come fully up to the discharge of
its great responsibility of establishing the finances of the country on
a safe and satisfactory foundation. Notwithstanding the protestations of
the insurgents that the people of the insurgent States are unanimous in
their determination to overthrow the government, we have the most
satisfactory evidence that the Union will be hailed in every quarter,
just as fast as the army shall emancipate the people from the oppression
of the insurgent leaders.

Under these circumstances, you will judge how strangely the assumptions
of European papers and politicians that a preservation of the Union is
impossible sound to us when they reach this side of the Atlantic.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,