We wonder whether it ever occurred to Mr Seward that if the imaginary injuries of one nation upon another are to be visited with such remote vindictiveness, it may be probable that very real and deep sufferings may leave still more indelible rancour behind them; and that there is a people at this moment not only undergoing treatment at the hands of the Union which excites the horror of civilised nations, but proving itself perfectly capable of executing future vengeance.
But in providing for the probability that Great Britain will be indifferent to the high moral ground which he indicates for giving her sympathies to the Union, Mr Seward does not trust entirely to threats. A lower argument, better suited to her defective moral sense, consists in pointing out that it is the interest of European countries to see the war terminate as quickly as possible; that it is also the interest of the Union to terminate the war as quickly as possible: ergo, the way to attain the common object is to unite in procuring it. But he omits to show why the same argument might not apply with equal force to an alliance with the South.
All this eloquence and logic has a double object—first, to avert the recognition of the South, followed by subsequent intervention; and, secondly, and chiefly, to induce the European Powers to retrace the step they had taken of acknowledging the South as a belligerent. The original protest against this step had been on the particular ground that the Government had taken it more hastily than was needful, and ought to have awaited the arrival of Mr Adams, charged with the reasons which the Federal Government might urge in protesting against it. As the measure was one of neutrality, it was manifestly proper that it should be adopted without hearing the arguments of one side only. However, the North considered itself injured, and expressed its sense of injury; but until we read these papers we had thought that the precipitation of the measure was the chief ground on which it was complained of. But so far from that being the case, the measure itself constitutes, down to the present time, the chief point of dispute. It is not going too far to say that, had the Federal Government accepted the position of neutrality of foreign Governments, and conducted its relations with them on that basis, the greater part of these despatches need never have been written. Nine-tenths of them are the result of looking at the same facts from two points of view—of looking at the war, on the one side, as a conflict between great sections, each possessed of power sufficient to maintain itself against the other, and to produce consequences highly important to neutrals; on the other side, as a domestic difficulty caused by a weak and failing faction, and which should not be noticed by foreign Powers any more than any other insignificant outbreak. Our Government saw in it the division of the Republic into portions, strongly defined by a territorial line, arming themselves for a conflict in which the balance of right was a subtle question open to opposite interpretations, but in which, it was evident, the Federal Government could never be victorious consistently with its own principles. The magnitude of the quarrel was such as powerfully to affect our own interests, and to render the probability imminent that the Queen’s subjects would be involved in the struggle, on the one side or the other, in such a manner as to compromise themselves, perhaps the Government. That the nature of the war was rightly estimated, events have more than sufficiently proved; that it was the first duty of the Government to protect its own subjects will probably be admitted by most moralists. But there is one moralist, Mr Seward, who thinks that the British Government, however bound to protect the interests of its own subjects, as it might be, he admits, in an inferior degree, is still more bound to consider the interests of the human race as involved in the maintenance of the Federal Union,—of the system, be it remembered, whose inevitable results have been to make a Lincoln the chief magistrate, and a Seward the chief minister—a system which has for years been the most corrupt ever known, and the inability of which to produce any kind of political merit is one of the wonders of the world.
Mr Seward’s view, which he insists that foreign Governments should adopt, is that they must not admit the existence of any war at all; that Bull’s Run and Fredericksburg, and all the disasters of M‘Clellan and Pope, are the work of a small insurrectionary faction; that the inability of the Federalists to recover authority in the South does not at all affect the integrity of the Republic; and that the millions of men whom he so complacently describes as determined to restore the Union have been called to arms to quell a few “misguided fellow-citizens” who have taken the “bad resolution” of seceding from its authority. But neither great defeats, nor vast armaments, nor huge debt, nor impending dissolution, can divert Mr. Seward from his singular efforts to persuade foreign Governments, chiefly ours, to adopt his extraordinary fiction as their rule of action. If mere acquiescence in his view were all that he demanded, it might be no great matter; but he requires that we shall not merely admit the fictitious view, but proceed to found thereon the extraordinary measures which we shall presently find indicated in his correspondence. What the view itself is may be gathered from a few extracts.
19th June 1861:—
“The United States are still solely and exclusively sovereign within the territories they have lawfully acquired and long possessed, as they have always been.... Great Britain, by virtue of these relations, is a stranger to parties and sections in this country, whether they are loyal to the United States or not; and Great Britain can neither rightfully qualify the sovereignty of the United States, nor concede nor recognise any rights or interests or power of any party, State, or section, in contravention to the unbroken sovereignty of the Federal Union.”
6th March 1862:—
“If Great Britain should revoke her decree conceding belligerent rights to the insurgents to-day, this civil strife, which is the cause of all the derangement of those relations, and the only cause of all apprehended dangers of that kind, would end to-morrow. The United States have continually insisted that the disturbers of their peace are mere insurgents, not lawful belligerents. This Government neither can nor is likely to have occasion to change this position; but her Majesty can, and it would seem that she must, sooner or later desire to relinquish her position. It was a position taken in haste, and in anticipation of the probable success of the revolution. The failure of that revolution is sufficiently apparent. Why should not the position be relinquished, and the peace of our country thus be allowed to be restored?”
10th March 1862:—
“Let the Governments of Great Britain and France rescind the decrees which concede belligerent rights to a dwindling faction in this country, and all their troubles will come to a speedy end.”