CHAPTER XII. Foreign Affairs

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

To the people who had been engaged in changing Illinois from a wilderness into a civilized State, Europe had been an abstraction, a mere colored spot upon a map, which in their lives meant nothing. Though England had been the home of their ancestors, it was really less interesting than the west coast of Africa, which was the home of the negroes; for the negroes were just now of vastly more consequence than the ancestors. So even Dahomey had some claim to be regarded as a more important place than Great Britain, and the early settlers wasted little thought on the affairs of Queen Victoria. Amid these conditions, absorbed even more than his neighbors in the exciting questions of domestic politics, and having no tastes or pursuits which guided his thoughts abroad, Mr. Lincoln had never had occasion to consider the foreign relations of the United States, up to the time when he was suddenly obliged to take an active part in managing them.

At an early stage of the civil dissensions each side hoped for the good-will of England. For obvious reasons, that island counted to the United States for more than the whole continent of Europe; indeed, the continental nations were likely to await and to follow her lead. Southern orators, advocating secession, assured their hearers that "King Cotton" would be the supreme power, and would compel that realm of spinners and weavers to friendship if not to alliance with the Confederacy. Northern men, on the other hand, expressed confidence that a people with the record of Englishmen against slavery would not countenance a war conducted in behalf of that institution; nor did they allow their hopes to be at all impaired by the consideration that, in order to found them upon this support, they had to overlook the fact that they were at the same time distinctly declaring that slavery really had nothing to do with the war, in which only and strictly the question of the Union, the integrity of the nation, was at stake. When the issue was pressing for actual decision, each side was disappointed; and each found that it had counted upon a motive which fell far short of exerting the anticipated influence. It was, of course, the case that England suffered much from the short supply of cotton; but she made shift to procure it elsewhere, while the working people, sympathizing with the North, were surprisingly patient. Thus the political pressure arising from commercial distress was much less than had been expected, and the South learned that cotton was only a spurious monarch. Not less did the North find itself deceived; for the upper and middle classes of Great Britain appeared absolutely indifferent to the humanitarian element which, as they were assured, underlay the struggle. Perhaps they were not to be blamed for setting aside these assurances, and accepting in place thereof the belief that the American leaders spoke the truth when they solemnly told the North that the question at issue was purely and simply of "the Union." The unfortunate fact was that it was necessary to say one thing to Englishmen and a different thing to Americans.

That which really did inspire the feelings and the wishes, and which did influence, though it could not be permitted fully to control, the action of England, had not been counted upon by either section of the country; perhaps its existence had not been appreciated. This was the intense dislike felt for the American republic by nearly all Englishmen who were above the social grade of mechanics and mill operatives. The extent and force of this antipathy and even contempt were for the first time given free expression under the irresistible provocation which arose out of the delightful likelihood of the destruction of the United States. The situation at least gave to the people of that imperiled country a chance to find out in what estimation they were held across the water. The behavior of the English government and the attitude of the English press during the early part of the civil war have been ascribed by different historians to one or another dignified political or commercial motive. But while these influences were certainly not absent, yet the English newspapers poured an inundating flood of evidence to show that genuine and deep-seated dislike, not to say downright hatred, was by very much the principal motive. This truth is so painful and unfortunate that many have thought best to suppress or deny it; but no historian is entitled to use such discretion. From an early period, therefore, in the administration of Mr. Lincoln, he and Mr. Seward had to endeavor to preserve friendly relations with a power which, if she could only make entirely sure of the worldly wisdom of yielding to her wishes, would instantly recognize the independence of the South. This being the case, it was matter for regret that the rules of international law concerning blockades, contraband of war, and rights of neutrals were perilously vague and unsettled.

Earl Russell was at this time in charge of her majesty's foreign affairs. Because in matters domestic he was liberal-minded, Americans had been inclined to expect his good-will; but he now disappointed them by appearing to share the prejudices of his class against the republic. A series of events soon revealed his temper. So soon as there purported to be a Confederacy, an understanding had been reached betwixt him and the French emperor that both powers should take the same course as to recognizing it. About May 1 he admitted three Southern commissioners to an audience with him, though not "officially." May 13 there was published a proclamation, whereby Queen Victoria charged and commanded all her "loving subjects to observe a strict neutrality" in and during the hostilities which had "unhappily commenced between the government of the United States and certain States styling themselves 'the Confederate States of America.'" This action--this assumption of a position of "neutrality," as between enemies--taken while the "hostilities" had extended only to the single incident of Fort Sumter, gave surprise and some offense to the North. It was a recognition of belligerency; that is to say, while not in any other respect recognizing the revolting States as an independent power, it accorded to them the rights of a belligerent. The magnitude very quickly reached by the struggle would have made this step necessary and proper, so that, if England had only gone a trifle more slowly, she would soon have reached the same point without exciting any anger; but now the North felt that the queen's government had been altogether too forward in assuming this position at a time when the question of a real war was still in embryo. Moreover, the unfriendliness was aggravated by the fact that the proclamation was issued almost at the very hour of the arrival in London of Mr. Charles Francis Adams, the new minister sent by Mr. Lincoln to the court of St. James. It seemed, therefore, not open to reasonable doubt that Earl Russell had purposely hastened to take his position before he could hear from the Lincoln administration.

When Mr. Seward got news of this, his temper gave way; so that, being still new to diplomacy, he wrote a dispatch to Mr. Adams wherein occurred words and phrases not so carefully selected as they should have been. He carried it to Mr. Lincoln, and soon received it back revised and corrected, instructively. A priori, one would have anticipated the converse of this.

The essential points of the paper were:--

That Mr. Adams would "desist from all intercourse whatever, unofficial as well as official, with the British government, so long as it shall continue intercourse of either kind with the domestic enemies of this country."

That the United States had a "right to expect a more independent if not a more friendly course" than was indicated by the understanding between England and France; but that Mr. Adams would "take no notice of that or any other alliance."

He was to pass by the question as to whether the blockade must be respected in case it should not be maintained by a competent force, and was to state that the "blockade is now, and will continue to be, so maintained, and therefore we expect it to be respected."

As to recognition of the Confederacy, either by publishing an acknowledgment of its sovereignty, or officially receiving its representatives, he was to inform the earl that "no one of these proceedings will pass unquestioned." Also, he might suggest that "a concession of belligerent rights is liable to be construed as a recognition" of the Confederate States. Recognition, he was to say, could be based only on the assumption that these States were a self-sustaining power. But now, after long forbearance, the United States having set their forces in motion to suppress the insurrection, "the true character of the pretended new state is at once revealed. It is seen to be a power existing in pronunciamento only. It has never won a field. It has obtained no forts that were not virtually betrayed into its hands or seized in breach of trust. It commands not a single port on the coast, nor any highway out from its pretended capital by land. Under these circumstances, Great Britain is called upon to intervene, and give it body and independence by resisting our measures of suppression. British recognition would be British intervention to create within our own territory a hostile state by overthrowing this republic itself." In Mr. Seward's draft a menacing sentence followed these words, but Mr. Lincoln drew his pen through it.

Mr. Adams was to say that the treatment of insurgent privateers was "a question exclusively our own," and that we intended to treat them as pirates. If Great Britain should recognize them as lawful belligerents and give them shelter, "the laws of nations afford an adequate and proper remedy;"--"and we shall avail ourselves of it," added Mr. Seward; but again Mr. Lincoln's prudent pen went through these words of provocation.

Finally Mr. Adams was instructed to offer the adhesion of the United States to the famous Declaration of the Congress of Paris, of 1856, which concerned sundry matters of neutrality.

The letter ended with two paragraphs of that patriotic rodomontade which seems eminently adapted to domestic consumption in the United States, but which, if it ever came beneath the eye of the British minister, probably produced an effect very different from that which was aimed at. Mr. Lincoln had the good taste to write on the margin: "Drop all from this line to the end;" but later he was induced to permit the nonsense to stand, since it was really harmless.

The amendments made by the President in point of quantity were trifling, but in respect of importance were very great. All that he did was here and there to change or to omit a phrase, which established no position, but which in the strained state of feeling might have had serious results. The condition calls to mind the description of the summit of the Alleghany Ridge, where the impulses given by almost imperceptible inequalities in the surface of the rock have for their ultimate result the dispatching of mighty rivers either through the Atlantic slope to the ocean, or down the Mississippi valley to the Gulf of Mexico. A few adjectives, two or three ever so little sentences, in this dispatch, might have led to peace or to war; and peace or war with England almost surely meant, respectively, Union or Disunion in the United States. In fact, no more important state paper was issued by Mr. Seward. It established our relations with Great Britain, and by consequence also with France and with the rest of Europe, during the whole period of the civil war. Its positions, moderate in themselves, and resolutely laid down, were never materially departed from. The English minister did not afterward give either official or unofficial audiences to accredited rebel emissaries; the blockade was maintained by a force so competent that the British government acquiesced in it; no recognition of the Confederacy was ever made, either in the ways prohibited or in any way whatsoever; it is true that bitter controversies arose concerning Confederate privateers, and to some extent England failed to meet our position in this matter; but it was rather the application of our rule than the rule itself which was in dispute; and she afterward, under the Geneva award, made full payment for her derelictions. The behavior and the proposal of terms, which constituted a practical exclusion of the United States from the benefits of the Treaty of Paris, certainly involved something of indignity; but in this the country had no actual rights; and to speak frankly, since she had refused to come in when invited, she could hardly complain of an inhospitable reception when, under the influence of immediate and stringent self-interest, her diplomatists saw fit to change their course. So, on the whole, it is not to be denied that delicate and novel business in the untried department of foreign diplomacy was managed with great skill, under trying circumstances. A few months later, in his message to Congress, at the beginning of December, 1861, the President referred to our foreign relations in the following paragraphs:--

"The disloyal citizens of the United States, who have offered the ruin of our country in return for the aid and comfort which they have invoked abroad, have received less patronage and encouragement than they probably expected. If it were just to suppose, as the insurgents have seemed to assume, that foreign nations, in this case, discarding all moral, social, and treaty obligations, would act solely and selfishly for the speedy restoration of commerce, including especially the acquisition of cotton, those nations appear as yet not to have seen their way to their object more directly or clearly through the destruction than through the preservation of the Union. If we could dare to believe that foreign nations are actuated by no higher principle than this, I am quite sure a sound argument could be made to show them that they can reach their aim more readily and easily by aiding to crush this rebellion than by giving encouragement to it.

"The principal lever relied on by these insurgents for exciting foreign nations to hostility against us, as already intimated, is the embarrassment of commerce. Those nations, however, not improbably saw from the first that it was the Union which made as well our foreign as our domestic commerce. They can scarcely have failed to perceive that the effort for disunion produces the existing difficulty; and that one strong nation promises more durable peace and a more extensive, valuable, and reliable commerce than can the same nation broken into hostile fragments.

"It is not my purpose to review our discussions with foreign states; because, whatever might be their wishes or dispositions, the integrity of our country and the stability of our government mainly depend not upon them but on the loyalty, virtue, patriotism, and intelligence of the American people. The correspondence itself with the usual reservations is herewith submitted. I venture to hope it will appear that we have practiced prudence and liberality toward foreign powers, averting causes of irritation, and with firmness maintaining our own rights and honor."

While this carefully measured language certainly fell far short of expressing indifference concerning European action, it was equally far from betraying any sense of awe or dependence as towards the great nations across the Atlantic. Yet in fact beneath its self-contained moderation there unquestionably was politic concealment of very profound anxiety. Since the war did in fact maintain to the end an entirely domestic character, it is now difficult fully to appreciate the apprehensions which were felt, especially in its earlier stages, lest England or France or both might interfere with conclusive effect in favor of the Confederacy. It was very well for Mr. Lincoln to state the matter in such a way that it would seem an unworthy act upon their part to encourage a rebellion, especially a pro-slavery rebellion; and very well for him also to suggest that their commerce could be better conducted with one nation than with two. In plain fact, they were considering nothing more lofty than their own material interests, and upon this point their distinguished statesmen did not feel the need of seeking information or advice from the Western lawyer who had just been so freakishly picked out of a frontier town to take charge of the destinies of the United States. The only matter which they contemplated with some interest, and upon which they could gather enlightenment from his words, related to the greater or less degree of firmness and confidence with which he was likely to meet them; for even in their eyes this must be admitted to constitute one of the elements in the situation. It was, therefore, fortunate that Mr. Lincoln successfully avoided an appearance either of alarm or of defiance.

But, difficult as it may have been skillfully to compose the sentences of the message so far as it concerned foreign relationships, some occurrences were taking place, at this very time of the composition, which reduced verbal manoeuvring to insignificance. A sudden and unexpected menace was happily turned into a substantial aid and advantage; and the administration, not long after it had firmly declared its resolution to maintain its clear and lawful rights, was given the opportunity greatly to strengthen its position by an event which, at first, seemed untoward enough. In the face of very severe temptation to do otherwise, it had the good sense to seize this opportunity, and to show that it had upon its own part the will not only to respect, but to construe liberally as against itself, the rights of neutrals; also that it had the power to enforce its will, upon the instant, even at the cost of bitterly disappointing the whole body of loyal citizens in the very hour of their rejoicing.

The story of Mason and Slidell is familiar: accredited as envoys of the Confederacy to England and France, in the autumn of 1861, they ran the blockade at Charleston and came to Havana. There they did not conceal their purpose to sail for England, by the British royal mail steamship Trent, on November 7. Captain Wilkes of the United States steam sloop of war San Jacinto, hearing all this, lay in wait in the Bahama Channel, sighted the Trent on November 8, fired a shot across her bows, and brought her to. He then sent on board a force of marines to search her and fetch off the rebels. This was done against the angry protests of the Englishman, and with such slight force as constituted technical compulsion, but without violence. The Trent was then left to proceed on her voyage. The envoys, or "missionaries," as they were called by way of avoiding the recognition of an official character, were soon in confinement in Fort Warren, in Boston Harbor. Everywhere at the North the news produced an outburst of joy and triumph. Captain Wilkes was the hero of the hour, and received every kind of honor and compliment. The secretary of the navy wrote to him a letter of congratulation, declaring that his conduct was "marked by intelligence, ability, decision, and firmness, and has the emphatic approval of this department." Secretary Stanton was outspoken in his praise. When Congress convened, on December 1, almost the first thing done by the House of Representatives was to hurry through a vote of thanks to the captain for his "brave, adroit, and patriotic conduct." The newspaper press, public meetings, private conversation throughout the country, all reechoed these joyous sentiments. The people were in a fever of pleasurable excitement. It called for some nerve on the part of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward suddenly to plunge them into a chilling bath of disappointment.

Statements differ as to what was Mr. Seward's earliest opinion in the matter. But all writers agree that Mr. Lincoln did not move with the current of triumph. He was scarcely even non-committal. On the contrary, he is said at once to have remarked that it did not look right to stop the vessel of a friendly power on the high seas and take passengers out of her; that he did not understand whence Captain Wilkes derived authority to turn his quarter-deck into a court of admiralty; that he was afraid the captives might prove to be white elephants on our hands; that we had fought Great Britain on the ground of like doings upon her part, and that now we must stick to American principles; that, if England insisted upon our surrendering the prisoners, we must do so, and must apologize, and so bind her over to keep the peace in relation to neutrals, and to admit that she had been wrong for sixty years.

The English demand came quickly, forcibly, and almost offensively. The news brought to England by the Trent set the whole nation in a blaze of fury,--and naturally enough, it must be admitted. The government sent out to the navy yards orders to make immediate preparations for war; the newspapers were filled with abuse and menace against the United States; the extravagance of their language will not be imagined without actual reference to their pages. Lord Palmerston hastily sketched a dispatch to Lord Lyons, the British minister at Washington, demanding instant reparation, but couched in language so threatening and insolent as to make compliance scarcely possible. Fortunately, in like manner as Mr. Seward had taken to Mr. Lincoln his letter of instructions to Mr. Adams, so Lord Palmerston also felt obliged to lay his missive before the queen, and the results in both cases were alike; for once at least royalty did a good turn to the American republic. Prince Albert, ill with the disease which only a few days later carried him to his grave, labored hard over that important document, with the result that the royal desire to eliminate passion sufficiently to make a peaceable settlement possible was made unmistakably plain, and therefore the letter, as ultimately revised by Earl Russell, though still disagreeably peremptory in tone, left room for the United States to set itself right without loss of self-respect. The most annoying feature was that Great Britain insisted upon instant action; if Lord Lyons did not receive a favorable reply within seven days after formally preferring his demand for reparation, he was to call for his passports. In other words, delay by diplomatic correspondence and such ordinary shilly-shallying meant war. As the London "Times" expressed it, America was not to be allowed "to retain what she had taken from us, at the cheap price of an interminable correspondence."

December 19 this dispatch reached Lord Lyons; he talked its contents over with Mr. Seward informally, and deferred the formal communication until the 23d. Mr. Lincoln drew up a proposal for submission to arbitration. But it could not be considered; the instructions to Lord Lyons gave no time and no discretion. It was aggravating to concede what was demanded under such pressure; but the President, as has been said, had already expressed his opinion upon the cardinal point,--that England had the strength of the case. Moreover he remarked, with good common sense, "One war at a time." So it was settled that the emissaries must be surrendered. The "prime minister of the Northern States of America," as the London "Times" insultingly called Mr. Seward, was wise enough to agree; for, under the circumstances, to allow discourtesy to induce war was unjustifiable. On December 25 a long cabinet council was held, and the draft of Seward's reply was accepted, though with sore reluctance. The necessity was cruel, but fortunately it was not humiliating; for the President had pointed to the road of honorable exit in those words which Mr. Lossing heard uttered by him on the very day that the news arrived. In 1812 the United States had fought with England because she had insisted, and they had denied, that she had the right to stop their vessels on the high seas, to search them, and to take from them British subjects found on board them. Mr. Seward now said that the country still adhered to the ancient principle for which it had once fought, and was glad to find England renouncing her old-time error. Captain Wilkes, not acting under instructions, had made a mistake. If he had captured the Trent and brought her in for adjudication as prize in our admiralty courts, a case might have been maintained and the prisoners held. He had refrained from this course out of kindly consideration for the many innocent persons to whom it would have caused serious inconvenience; and, since England elected to stand upon the strict rights which his humane conduct gave to her, the United States must be bound by their own principles at any cost to themselves. Accordingly the "envoys" were handed over to the commander of the English gunboat Rinaldo, at Provincetown, on January 1, 1862.

The decision of the President and the secretary of state was thoroughly wise. Much hung upon it; "no one," says Arnold, "can calculate the results which would have followed upon a refusal to surrender these men." An almost certain result would have been a war with England; and a highly probable result would have been that erelong France also would find pretext for hostilities, since she was committed to friendship with England in this matter, and moreover the emperor seemed to have a restless desire to interfere against the North. What then would have been the likelihood of ultimate success in that domestic struggle, which, by itself, though it did not exhaust, yet very severely taxed both Northern endurance and Northern resources? It is fair also to these two men to say that, in reaching their decision, instead of receiving aid or encouragement from outside, they had the reverse. Popular feeling may be estimated from the utterances which, even after there had been time for reflection, were made by men whose positions curbed them with the grave responsibilities of leadership. In the House of Representatives Owen Lovejoy pledged himself to "inextinguishable hatred" of Great Britain, and promised to bequeath it as a legacy to his children; and, while he was not engaging in the war for the integrity of his own country, he vowed that if a war with England should come, he would "carry a musket" in it. Senator Hale, in thunderous oratory, notified the members of the administration that if they would "not listen to the voice of the people, they would find themselves engulfed in a fire that would consume them like stubble; they would be helpless before a power that would hurl them from their places." The great majority at the North, though perhaps incapable of such felicity of expression, was undoubtedly not very much misrepresented by the vindictive representative and the exuberant senator. Yet a brief period, in which to consider the logic of the position, sufficed to bring nearly all to intelligent conclusions; and then it was seen that what had been done had been rightly and wisely done. There was even a sense of pride in doing fairly and honestly, without the shuffling evasions of diplomacy, an act of strict right; and the harder the act the greater was the honor. The behavior of the people was generous and intelligent, and greatly strengthened the government in the eyes of foreigners. By the fullness and readiness of this reparation England was put under a moral obligation to treat the United States as honorably as the United States treated her. She did not do so, it is true; but in more ways than one she ultimately paid for not doing so. At any rate, for the time being, after this action it would have been nothing less than indecent for her to recognise the Confederacy at once; and a little later prudence had the like restraining effect. Yet though recognition and war were avoided they never entirely ceased to threaten, and Mr. Chittenden is perfectly correct in saying that "every act of our government was performed under the impending danger of a recognition of the Confederacy, a disregard of the blockade, and the actual intervention of Great Britain in our attempt to suppress an insurrection upon our own territory."

FOOTNOTES:

Lord John Russell was raised to the peerage, as Earl Russell, just after this time, i.e., in July, 1861.

An effort was made to carry out this theory in the case of the crew of the privateer Savannah; but the jury failed to agree, and the attempt was not afterward renewed, privateersmen being exchanged like other prisoners of war.

Mr. Welles declares that Seward at first opposed the surrender; but Mr. Chittenden asserts that he knows that Mr. Seward's first opinion coincided with his later action; see Mr. Welles's Lincoln and Seward, and Chittenden's Recollections, 148.