December 27th.—This morning Mr. Seward sent in his reply to Lord Russell’s despatch—“grandis et verbosa epistola.” The result destroys my prophecies, for, after all, the Southern Commissioners or Ambassadors are to be given up. Yesterday, indeed, in an under-current of whispers among the desponding friends of the South, there went a rumour that the Government had resolved to yield. What a collapse! What a bitter mortification! I had scarcely finished the perusal of an article in a Washington paper,—which, let it be understood, is an organ of Mr. Lincoln,—stating that “Mason and Slidell would not be surrendered, and assuring the people they need entertain no apprehension of such a dishonourable concession,” when I learned beyond all possibility of doubt, that Mr. Seward had handed in his despatch, placing the Commissioners at the disposal of the British Minister. A copy of the despatch will be published in the National Intelligencer to-morrow morning at an early hour, in time to go to Europe by the steamer which leaves New York.
After dinner, those who were in the secret were amused by hearing the arguments which were started between one or two Americans and some English in the company, in consequence of a positive statement from a gentleman who came in, that Mason and Slidell had been surrendered. I have resolved to go to Boston, being satisfied that a great popular excitement and uprising will, in all probability, take place on the discharge of the Commissioners from Fort Warren. What will my friend, the general, say, who told me yesterday “he would snap his sword, and throw the pieces into the White House, if they were given up?”
December 28th.—The National Intelligencer of this morning contains the despatches of Lord Russell, M. Thouvenel, and Mr. Seward. The bubble has burst. The rage of the friends of compromise, and of the South, who saw in a war with Great Britain the complete success of the Confederacy, is deep and burning, if not loud; but they all say they never expected anything better from the cowardly and braggart statesmen who now rule in Washington.
Lord Lyons has evinced the most moderate and conciliatory spirit, and has done everything in his power to break Mr. Seward’s fall on the softest of eider down. Some time ago we were all prepared to hear nothing less would be accepted than Captain Wilkes taking Messrs. Mason and Slidell on board the San Jacinto, and transferring them to the Trent, under a salute to the flag, near the scene of the outrage; at all events, it was expected that a British man-of-war would have steamed into Boston, and received the prisoners under a salute from Fort Warren; but Mr. Seward, apprehensive that some outrage would be offered by the populace to the prisoners and the British Flag, has asked Lord Lyons that the Southern Commissioners may be placed, as it were, surreptitiously, in a United States boat, and carried to a small seaport in the State of Maine, where they are to be placed on board a British vessel as quietly as possible; and this exigent, imperious, tyrannical, insulting British Minister has cheerfully acceded to the request. Mr. Conway Seymour, the Queen’s messenger, who brought Lord Russell’s despatch, was sent back with instructions for the British Admiral, to send a vessel to Providence town for the purpose; and as Mr. Johnson, who is nearly connected with Mr. Eustis, one of the prisoners, proposed going to Boston to see his brother-in-law, if possible, ere he started, and as there was not the smallest prospect of any military movement taking place, I resolved to go northwards with him; and we left Washington accordingly on the morning of the 31st of December, and arrived at the New York Hotel the same night.
To my great regret and surprise, however, I learned it would be impracticable to get to Fort Warren and see the prisoners before their surrender. My unpopularity, which had lost somewhat of its intensity, was revived by the exasperation against everything English, occasioned by the firmness of Great Britain in demanding the Commissioners; and on New Year’s Night, as I heard subsequently, Mr. Grinell and other members of the New York Club were exposed to annoyance and insult, by some of their brother members, in consequence of inviting me to be their guest at the club.
The illness which had prostrated some of the strongest men in Washington, including General M‘Clellan himself, developed itself as soon as I ceased to be sustained by the excitement, such as it was, of daily events at the capital, and by expectations of a move; and for some time an attack of typhoid fever confined me to my room, and left me so weak that I was advised not to return to Washington till I had tried change of air. I remained in New York till the end of January, when I proceeded to make a tour in Canada, as it was quite impossible for any operation to take place on the Potomac, where deep mud, alternating with snow and frost, bound the contending armies in winter quarters.
On my return to New York, at the end of February, the North was cheered by some signal successes achieved in the West principally by gunboats, operating on the lines of the great rivers. The greatest results have been obtained in the capture of Fort Donaldson and Fort Henry, by Commodore Foote’s flotilla co-operating with the land forces. The possession of an absolute naval supremacy, of course, gives the North United States powerful means of annoyance and inflicting injury and destruction on the enemy; it also secures for them the means of seizing upon bases of operations wherever they please, of breaking up the enemy’s lines, and maintaining communications; but the example of Great Britain in the revolutionary war should prove to the United States that such advantages do not, by any means, enable a belligerent to subjugate a determined people resolved on resistance to the last. The long-threatened encounter between Bragg and Browne has taken place at Pensacola, without effect, and the attempts of the Federals to advance from Port Royal have been successfully resisted. Sporadic skirmishes have sprung up over every border State; but, on the whole, success has inclined to the Federals in Kentucky and Tennessee.
On the 1st March, I arrived in Washington once more, and found things very much as I had left them: the army recovering the effect of the winter’s sickness and losses, animated by the victories of their comrades in Western fields, and by the hope that the ever-coming to-morrow would see them in the field at last. In place of Mr. Cameron, an Ohio lawyer named Stanton has been appointed Secretary of War. He came to Washington, a few years ago, to conduct some legal proceedings for Mr. Daniel Sickles, and by his energy, activity, and a rapid conversion from democratic to republican principles, as well as by his Union sentiments, recommended himself to the President and his Cabinet.
The month of March passed over without any remarkable event in the field. When the army started at last to attack the enemy—a movement which was precipitated by hearing that they were moving away—they went out only to find the Confederates had fallen back by interior lines towards Richmond, and General M‘Clellan was obliged to transport his army from Alexandria to the peninsula of York Town, where his reverses, his sufferings, and his disastrous retreat, are so well known and so recent, that I need only mention them as among the most remarkable events which have yet occurred in this war.