Sir: After what occurred at the first meeting of the Statistical Congress, I withdrew immediately from that body, intending to offer no reasons for my course, because, from what I saw, I judged that they would not be worth the paper on which they might be written. I reserved them, therefore, for my own government. After waiting a while to see what comments the papers would make upon the opening scenes of the Congress, I commenced my despatch to my government; but a friend, in whose opinions I have great confidence, said he thought I ought to address the people here in vindication of myself. Upon this intimation (for it was rather an intimation than counsel) I sat down, and, amidst a thousand doubts and interruptions, wrote the subjoined communication. I was just bringing it to a close for the press yesterday (Thursday), when I received information that, at the opening of the meeting on the day previous, Lord Brougham had explained his remarks at the first meeting, as I would see in a paper referred to, and the information came with a request that I would return to the Congress. I read the explanation in that paper and two others. They only differ in their reports of it, but they all concur in making his lordship disavow any intention to show any disrespect to the American minister or the United States; and they make him say that he merely meant to call to notice an interesting or a statistical fact, viz.: that there was a negro in the assembly. Now, I found myself in a very ticklish predicament. It was not his lordship’s remarks so much as the reception they met with, by all my associates of the Congress, that determined me to leave it. The signs were infallible that in that body I could not be received as an equal, either in country or in character, while the negro was received with open arms. They understood his lordship as I did. All the papers understood him in the same way, and some of them glory in the exposure of the American minister, and promise themselves a rich treat when the president shall discover in what contempt his minister is held here. All this remains precisely as it did before his lordship’s explanation. Of course, therefore, I cannot return to them. They would receive me courteously, no doubt,—possibly, now, with plaudits,—but why? Not from personal respect to me or my country, but to avoid schism in the society—to preserve its popularity. I am only three years removed from an Englishman (I date from the birth of my government), and I have too much English spirit in me to thrust myself into any company upon charity. Had the delegates received his lordship’s remarks with a silent smile (ill-timed as they were), and Dr. Delany’s response in the same way, I never should have left the Congress. But the plaudits came like a tempest of hail upon my half-English spirit. Nothing, then, in the piece needs qualification, but what refers to his lordship’s intentions. Learning these from his own lips, I sat down to correct it in all that imputed to him, directly or impliedly, wrong intentions and wrong feelings; but I found that they were so often referred to in a vast variety of ways, so often intermingled with sentiments void against the principal, but good against the indorsers, and in all respects good against the leading spirits of Europe and the Congress, and so essential to the harmony and grammatical construction, that if I undertook to correct generally, I should hardly leave it printable or readable. And yet the piece must now appear; for if not, it will go forth to all Europe that the United States delegate took offence, pro-slavery like, at an old man’s playful remark, left the Congress at the beginning, and that neither explanations nor entreaties could bring him back. I have neither time nor patience to remodel it, much less to rewrite it. I am called away to-day; I should have been off from London before. In my dilemma I have concluded to publish the piece just as I wrote it; not now as fairly representing his lordship, but as exactly representing my understanding of him when I left the Congress, and the reasons. I am at the bar now, and I am to be judged of by the reasonableness of my interpretations and of my conduct founded on them. I beg his lordship, in consideration of my situation, to indulge me in this. In return, I beg the reader to treat as revoked, and utterly null and void, every reference to his lordship that is in the slightest degree inconsistent with his explanation. I am not very far behind him in years; I have long been his debtor, and I esteem him almost reverentially; and if he is not debtor for his judicial reform bill to my native state, there is the most remarkable coincidence between the two systems that ever occurred since the world began. If he is, he ought to esteem me for my state’s sake. Be this as it may, we are too old to quarrel.
A. B. Longstreet.
To the Public.
Before I terminate my first and last visit to Europe, I deem it due to my country and myself to leave behind me a word of comment upon a most remarkable incident of that visit. It may be of some service to the people on both sides of the Atlantic. England owes to my country much respect—to my native state a little. I came hither as a delegate (and by accident the only delegate) from the United States to the International Congress, now in session at this place. The appointment was made by request of the authorities of this country. I am a native of the State of Georgia, the birthplace of the two gallant Tattnalls, the one well known to me, the other well known to England. He was that humane and chivalrous commodore, who, at the peril of his commission and his life, rescued the captain and the crew of Hope’s sinking ship from a watery grave at Peiho. He has received much praise for the deed, but not quite all that is due to him, for in yielding to his generous impulses, he forgot that his no less gallant brother was borne from the battle-field at Point Peter, severely wounded by British muskets. What is done in war should be, but is not, always forgotten in peace. The commodore’s conduct was approved by his government—that government which Mr. Dallas represents at the court of St. James.
The Statistical Congress convened, a preliminary meeting was held to appoint officers and arrange the order of business. All the foreign delegates were declared to be vice-presidents, and they took their seats on the platform with the presiding officer. Mr. Dallas, a complimentary visitor, took his seat to the right of the chair, Lord Brougham to the left. All things being now in readiness for the opening of the regular meeting, his royal highness, Prince Albert, appeared, took the chair, and opened the meeting with that admirable address which has been published, and which carries its highest commendation on its face. As soon as he had concluded, and the long-resounding plaudits ceased, Lord Brougham rose, and after a few remarks strongly and deservedly complimentary of the address, and after calling upon all present to testify their approval of it by holding up their hands, (!) he turned to the American minister, and addressing him across the table of his royal highness, said, “I call the attention of Mr. Dallas to the fact that there is a negro present, and I hope he will feel no scruples on that account.” This appeal to the American minister was received with general applause by the house. The colored gentleman arose, and said, “I thank his royal highness and your lordship, and have only to say that I am a man.” And this was received with loud applause.
Now, if the noble lord’s address to the American minister was meant for pleasantry, I must be permitted to say that the time, the subject, and the place were exceedingly unpropitious to such sallies. If it was meant for sarcasm, it was equally unfortunate in conception and delivery. If it was meant for insult, it was mercilessly cruel to his lordship’s heart, refinement, dignity, and moral sense. I could readily have found an apology for it in his lordship’s locks and wrinkles, if it had not been so triumphantly applauded. The European delegates understood it; the colored gentleman understood it; and from the response of the latter we can collect unerringly its import. It was meant as a boastful comparison of his lordship’s country with the minister’s. It was meant as a cutting reflection upon that country where negroes are not admitted to the councils of white men. This is the very least and best that can be made of it, and the dignity of the American minister’s character and office, his entire disconnection with slavery personally, and his peculiar position in the assembly, were no protection to his country from this humiliating assault; nay, he is selected as the vehicle of it before the assembled wisdom of Europe, who signify openly their approbation of it. All the city papers that I have seen differ from each other in their report of this matter, but they all soften its rugged features somewhat. The Times is the most correct, but at fault in making Lord Brougham preface his remarks to Mr. Dallas with, “I hope my friend, Mr. Dallas, will forgive me for reminding him,” &c., and in making Dr. Delany (the colored gentleman) say to Lord Brougham, “who is always a most unflinching friend of the negro.” If one or the other of these remarks were made, I did not hear it; the doctor would hardly have used the last.
Now, I take leave to say that a Briton was the last man on earth who should cast contemptuous reflections upon the United States, and the delegates the last men on earth who should have countenanced them. Not one of them, not a man on all the broad surface of Europe, can assail that country without assailing some near home-born friend of his own language and blood, or some kinsman by short lineage from a common ancestry. She spreads herself out from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Gulf to the Lakes, and through all her length and breadth she is one vast asylum for the poor, the oppressed, the down-trodden, the persecuted of the world. Her sons are a multitudinous brotherhood of all climes, religions, and tongues, living together in harmony, peace, and equality, so far as these can possibly prevail within her borders. Say what you may, think as you may, sneer as you may, at her “peculiar institutions;” she is, after all, the good Samaritan of nations. Do a people cry and waste from famine? She loads her ships with supplies, and lays them at the sufferer’s doors without money and without price. Do an oppressed people strike for liberty? You will find some of her sons under their flag. Does a wife’s cry come across the water for help to find a noble, long-missing husband? She fits out her ships; her volunteers man them; they search nearly to the pole; learn the husband’s fate; disburden the wife’s heart from suspense, and then lie down and die from the exposure and toils of the search. Does she find a nation’s sloop of war afloat, still sound but unmanned? She puts her in decent trim, and sends her to her owner in charge of her own men and at her own expense. “Bear with me.” If “I am become a fool in glorying, ye have compelled me, for I ought to have been commended to you.”
Such a nation is not to be taunted, certainly not by Great Britain. Her slavery is a heritage, not a creature of her own begetting. It was forced on her against her wishes, her prayers, and her protestations; screwed down upon her, pressed into her, until it has become so completely incorporated with her very being, that it is now impossible to eradicate it. The term “slave property,” is borrowed; it is not of her coinage. In all her slave states there are not ten men living (until very recently not one) who ever made a slave of a free man, counting the Hottentot a freeman. Their sin, then, is not in making slaves, but in not restoring them to liberty, in courtesy to the sensibilities of those who made them for us. Before they make this exaction of us, they surely ought to have the magnanimity of Judas, and lay the price at our feet. But let us look into this matter a little.