Such are historic instances illustrating Intervention by Recognition. As in other cases of intervention, the recognition may be armed or unarmed, with an intermediate case, where the recognition may seem unarmed, when in reality it is armed,—as when France simply announced recognition of the independence of the United States and at the same time prepared to maintain it by war.
Armed recognition is simply Recognition by Coercion. It is a belligerent act, constituting war, and can be vindicated only as war. No nation will undertake it, unless ready to assume all the responsibilities of war,—as in the recent cases of Greece and Belgium, not to mention the recognition of the United States by France. But an attempt, under guise of recognition, to coerce the dismemberment or partition of a country is in its nature offensive beyond ordinary war, especially when the country to be sacrificed is a republic, and the plotters against it are crowned heads. Proceeding from the consciousness of brute power, such an attempt is an insult to mankind. If armed recognition at any time can find apology, it is only where sincerely made for the protection of Human Rights. It would be hard to condemn that intervention which saved Greece to Freedom.
Unarmed recognition is where a foreign power acknowledges in some pacific form the independence of a colony or province against the claim of its original government. Although excluding all idea of coercion, yet it cannot be uniformly justified.
Here we are brought to that question of “time,” on which Mr. Canning so pointedly piqued himself, and to which President Jackson referred, when he suggested that “a premature recognition” might be “looked upon as justifiable cause of war.” Nothing is more clear than that recognition may be favored at one time, while it must be rejected at another. So far as it assumes to determine rights instead of facts, or to anticipate the result of a contest, it is wrongful. No nation can undertake to sit in judgment on the rights of another nation without its consent. Therefore it cannot declare that de jure a colony or province is entitled to independence, but, from the necessity of the case, and that international intercourse may not fail, it must ascertain the facts, carefully and wisely, and, on the actual evidence, it may declare that de facto the colony or province appears to be in possession of independence,—which means, first, that the original government is dispossessed beyond the possibility of recovery, and, secondly, that the new government has achieved a reasonable stability, with fixed limits, giving assurance of solid power. All this is simply fact and nothing more. But just in proportion as a foreign nation anticipates the fact, or imagines the fact, or substitutes its own passions for the fact, it transcends the well-defined bounds of International Law. Without the fact of independence, positive and fixed, there is nothing but a claim. Now nothing is clearer than, that, while the terrible litigation is still pending, and the trial by battle, to which appeal is made, remains undecided, the fact of independence cannot exist. There is only a paper independence, which, though reddened with blood, is no better than a paper empire or a paper blockade; and any pretended recognition of it is a wrongful intervention, inconsistent with just neutrality, since the obvious effect must be to encourage the insurgent party. Such has been the declared judgment of our country, and its practice, even under circumstances tempting in another direction; and such, also, was the declared judgment and practice of Great Britain with reference to Spanish America.
The conclusion, then, is clear. To justify recognition, it must appear beyond doubt that de facto the contest is finished, and that de facto the new government is established secure within fixed limits. These are conditions precedent, not to be avoided without open offence to a friendly power, and open violation of that International Law which is the guardian of the world’s peace, even if there be not another condition precedent which civilization in this age will require.
Do you ask now if foreign powers can acknowledge our Rebel embryo as an independent nation? There is madness in the thought. Recognition accompanied by the breaking of the blockade would be war, impious war, against the United States, where Slavemongers would be the allies and Slavery the inspiration. Of all wars in history, none more accursed, none more sure to draw down upon its authors the judgment alike of God and man. But the thought of recognition, under existing circumstances, while the contest is still pending, even without any breaking of the blockade or attempted coercion, is a Satanic absurdity, hardly less impious than the other. It would assume unblushingly, that, already Rebel Slavery had succeeded in establishing an independent nation with an untroubled government and a secure conformation of territory, when, in fact, nothing is established, nothing untroubled, nothing secure, not even a single boundary-line, and there is no element of independence except the audacious attempt,—when, in fact, the conflict is still waged on numerous battle-fields, and these pretenders to independence have been driven from State to State, driven away from the Mississippi which parts them, driven back from the sea which surrounds them, and shut up in the interior or in blockaded ports, so that only by stealth can they communicate with the outward world. Any recognition of such a pretension, existing only as pretension, scouted and denied by a whole people with invincible armies and navies embattled against it, would be a mockery of truth. It would assert independence as a fact, when notoriously it was not a fact. It would be an enormous lie. Naturally a power thus guilty would expect to support the lie by arms.