Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

Whatever may have been the estimate at home of the policy attributed to Mr. Seward, it was certainly one which would commend itself to the sympathy of a friendly nation, and one, to the success of which no neutral power would hesitate to contribute all the aid it could rightfully render. The dispatch of Lord Lyons was received in London on the 18th of February, and on the 20th Lord John Russell replied as follows: "The success or failure of Mr. Seward's plans to prevent a disruption of the North-American Union is a matter of deep interest to Her Majesty's Government, but they can only expect and hope. They are not called upon nor would they be acting prudently were they to obtrude their advice on the dissentient parties in the United States. Supposing however that Mr. Lincoln, acting under bad advice, should endeavor to provide excitement for the public mind by raising questions with Great Britain, Her Majesty's Government feel no hesitation as to the policy they would pursue. They would in the first place be very forbearing. They would show by their acts how highly they value the relations of peace and amity with the United States. But they would take care to let the government which multiplied provocations and sought for quarrels understand that their forbearance sprung from the consciousness of strength and not from the timidity of weakness. They would warn a government which was making political capital out of blustering demonstrations that our patience might be tried too far."

THREATS FROM LORD JOHN RUSSELL.

It is impossible to mistake the spirit or the temper of this dispatch. It is difficult to account for the manifest irritation of its tone except upon the ground that Lord John Russell saw in a possible reconciliation, between North and South, something that threatened the interest or jarred upon the sympathy of the British Government. It was at least sufficient and ominous warning of what the United States might expect from "the confidence and affection" which had only a few weeks before been outpoured so lavishly by Her Majesty's Government. The fact is worthy of emphasis that since the cordial interchange of notes touching the visit of the Prince of Wales there had not been a single word of unkindness in the correspondence of the two governments. But our embarrassments had been steadily deepening, and according to many precedents in the career of that illustrious statesman, Lord John seems to have considered the period of our distress a fitting time to assert that "British forbearance springs from the consciousness of strength and not from the timidity of weakness."

On the 4th of March, 1861, the administration of Mr. Lincoln assumed the responsibility of government. At that date the organization of the Southern Confederacy had not been perfected. Four States which ultimately joined it had not yet seceded from the Union. There had been no overt act of violence. The Administration still believed in the possibility of a peaceful settlement. But on the 12th of April Fort Sumter was attacked. On the 14th it was surrendered. On the 15th the President issued his Proclamation calling out seventy-five thousand militia and summoning Congress to meet on the 4th of July. On the 17th the President of the Confederacy authorized the issue of letters of marque. On the 19th the President of the United States proclaimed a blockade of the Southern ports and declared that privateers with letters of marque from the Southern Confederacy would be treated as pirates.

This condition of affairs rendered the relation of foreign powers to the Union and to the Confederacy at once urgent and critical. It is true that Fort Sumter had surrendered to a warlike demonstration, but fortunately no blood had been shed. It is true that letters of marque had been authorized, but none had been actually issued. It is true that a blockade had been proclaimed, but some time must elapse before it could be practically enforced. All that can be said is that the rebellion had organized itself with promptness and courage for a conflict. There was still a pause. Neither party thoroughly realized the horror of the work before them, though every day made it more clearly apparent. Until then the United States was the only organized government on our soil known to England, and with it she had for three-quarters of a century maintained commercial and political relations which had grown closer and more friendly every year. The vital element of that government was Union. Whatever might be the complicated relations of their domestic law, to the world and to themselves the United States of America was the indivisible government. This instinct of union had gathered them together as colonies, had formed them into an imperfect confederation, had matured them under a National Constitution. It gave them their vigor at home, their power and influence abroad. To destroy their union was to resolve them into worse than colonial disintegration.

But the separation of the States was more than the dissolution of the Union. For, treating with all due respect the conviction of the Southern States as to the violation of their constitutional rights, no fair-minded man can deny that the central idea of the secession movement was the establishment of a great slave-holding empire around the Gulf of Mexico. It was a bold and imperial conception. With an abounding soil, with millions of trained and patient laborers, with a proud and martial people, with leaders used to power and skilled in government, controlling some of the greatest and most necessary of the commercial staples of the world, the haughty oligarchy of the South would have founded a slave republic which, in its successful development, would have changed the future of this continent and of the world. When English statesmen were called upon to deal with such a crisis, the United States had a right to expect, if not active sympathy, at least that neutrality which would confine itself within the strict limit of international obligation, and would not withhold friendly wishes for the preservation of the Union.

RELATIONS OF ENGLAND AND THE UNION.

England had tested slowly but surely the worth of the American Union. As the United States had extended its territory, had developed in wealth, had increased in population, richer and richer had become the returns to England's merchants and manufacturers; question after question of angry controversy had been amicably settled by the conviction of mutual, growing, and peaceful interests. And while it had become a rhetorical truism with English historians and statesmen, that relations with the independent Republic were stronger, safer, and more valuable than those of the old colonial connection, her own principles of constitutional liberty were re- invigorated by the skill and the breadth with which they were applied and administered by her own children in a new country. England could not but know that all this was due to the Union,— the Union which had concentrated the weakness of scattered States into a government that protected the citizen and welcomed the immigrant, which carried law and liberty to the pioneer on the remotest border, which had made of provincial villages centres of wealth and civilization that would not have discredited the capitals of older nations, and which above all had created a Federal representative government whose successful working might teach England herself how to hold together the ample colonies that still formed the outposts of her Empire.

More than all, a Cabinet, every member of which by personal relation of tradition connection belonged to the great liberal party that felt the achievement of Emancipation to be a part of its historic glory, should have realized that no diminution of a rival, no monopoly of commerce, could bring to England any compensation for the establishment of a slave-holding empire upon the central waters of the world.

With this natural expectation the Government in less than sixty days after Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, sent its minister to London, confident that he would at least be allowed to present to the British Government for friendly consideration, the condition and policy of the Republic before any positive action should disturb the apparently amicable relations of the two countries. Mr. Charles Francis Adams, who was selected for this important duty, was instructed to explain to the British Government that the peculiar relation of the States to the Federal Government, and the reticence and reservations consequent upon a change of administration, had hitherto restrained the action of the President in the formation and declaration of his policy; that without foreign interference the condition of affairs still afforded reasonable hope of a satisfactory solution; and especially that it was necessary, if there existed a sincere desire to avoid wrong and injury to the United States, for foreign powers to abstain from any act of pretended neutrality which would give material advantage or moral encouragement to the organized forces of the rebellion.