Mr. Seward to Mr Adams
Sir. I have your despatch of the 2d of February, No. 868. In that paper you inform me that the accounts received in England of the agitation here of restrictive measures to operate in Canada are made the occasion for allegations in private conversation, and in the public press, that a determined spirit of enmity to Great Britain prevails throughout this country. You inform me, further, that a reconciliation between the insurgents and the national authorities is considered less impossible now than heretofore, and that it is assumed that the happening of this event will be simultaneous with a declaration of war by the United States against Great Britain, and a joint advance of the two armies now operating against each other upon Canada. After reading these statements, I am not surprised by the further one, that it begins to be whispered in certain political quarters that the really wise way to avert so grave a danger as the one thus indicated would be to anticipate it by sustaining the insurgents so far as to prevent their ruin, even though it should be at the hazard of a war.
I appreciate fully your suggestion, that we shall conform our policy towards Great Britain to the immediate exigency which the recurrence of the parliamentary elections has created; it being understood that in England our enemies [Page 181] are chiefly; found on what they there call the conservative side, while our friends range themselves under the so-called Liberal banner.
The difficulty consists not at all in following your advice, but in securing a fair and candid consideration of our proceedings by even the Liberals of Great Britain.
We have borne from subjects of Great Britain at home the virtual destruction of our foreign trade, and the feeding and arming of the insurgents from British ports and warehouses. We have maintained free trade and intercourse with the British subjects who dwell in Canada, until we have become unsafe on the border lakes and rivers. Our money was plundered from the banking-houses on the frontier, and all the hotels of the city of New York were simultaneously fired by incendiaries having shelter and protection in the British provinces, These perils and wrongs were incurred after three years of earnest and vigorous, but unsuccessful warning and remonstrance. It is thus seen that we have had not one. but many just causes of war against Great Britain. Nevertheless we have not made war, but have only discontinued reciprocal trade, and imposed some restrictions upon intercourse, reserving the power to relax or increase them as the course of Canada and the British government should become friendly or grow more hostile and injurious.
If the moderation thus practiced in regard to Canada is understood by the British nation as an indication of determined enmity to itself, what can we do to correct the impression? We are not able to endure more patiently or more meekly than we have endured, injuries in that quarter. Relaxation on our part, without receiving any guarantees from Canada, would expose us to new aggressions. The case is the same in regard to aggressions from Liverpool and the Clyde. We just now learn that Rumble, who got out the Rappahannock, is acquitted. That vessel is openly and flagrantly used, by persons harbored and protected in Great Britain, as a receiving ship, to man new piratical vessels, which threaten not only our few ships on the ocean, but our blockade and our cities. Mr. Dudley, our consul at Liverpool, writes us that the Ajax has just gone out; that another pirate, called her consort, will go out from a British port, and be armed by British subjects; and yet her Majesty’s government, if they pursue the same policy as heretofore, will not only treat those vessels, but even insist that we shall treat them, as lawful belligerent vessels.
Mr. Morse, our consul at London, writes us that the “No. 40,” alias Louisa Ann Fanny, a vessel as powerful as the Kearsarge, is likely soon to be afloat, fully armed and manned. The Rappahannock, the Tallahassee, the Chickamauga, and the Shenandoah, all recognized by her Majesty’s government as having a lawful belligerent character, are, as we understand, down to this day, standing in the registers of the British customs in the names of British owners, under their former names of Scylla, Atlanta, Edisto, and Sea King. And now comes, at this late hour, a new embarrassment. One of Arman’s rams, built at Bordeaux for the insurgents, clandestinely receives her armament from a British steamer off the coast of France.
It must be manifest that, under these circumstances, we are so far from being able to choose a less vigorous defensive policy in regard to Great Britain, that we must rather expect to be obliged to adopt more direct and vigorous measures of resistance to her hostile subjects. It seems to us that her Majesty’s government have control of the whole situation. Let them pursue and punish the British subjects who wage these endless and manifold hostilities, or, at least, abandon them to the fate of pirates and enemies of the human race, as they are. Let that government seek peace with us, as earnestly as we desire peace and good relations with Great Britain, and all apprehensions of enmity on the part of the United States will virtually be found to be groundless and chimerical. If any British politicians fear that we shall make hostility to Great Britain a condition of reconciliation with the insurgents, and an occasion for aggression, those politicians are the victims of a delusion which they themselves have created. It is [Page 182] true, I have intimations from not one, but many insurgent emissaries, that such a condition, if tendered, might be accepted, and that the two parties combined; on some such condition, might end this fearful domestic strife by a common war agaiust any European state we might choose for, an enemy. I say to you now, by direction of the President, as I have already said to Mr. Bigelow, that it is the intention of this government to fight the Battle through upon the present line, if no European state intervenes but I cannot, at the same time, omit to say, that the British government by its toleration of the hostilities of its subjects, forces upon the American people the question most difficult, all, of solution by popular judgment, whether Great Britain is, or not actually intervening in favor of the insurgents.
I have written this despatch with perfect freedom, as a transcriht of the feel ings of our administration. You will make such use of it; as your own discretion shall approve, with regard to the best interests of the two nations.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams. Esq., &c., &c., &c., London.