Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the First Session Thirty-ninth Congress
The Marquis de Montholon to Mr. Seward.
Sir: I have the happiness to hear of the return of your excellency to Washington at the very moment when I am in receipt of the note which Mr. Drouyn de Lhuys addresses to me, in answer to yours of the 6th December last, after having taken the orders of the Emperor in respect thereof. I hasten, Mr. Secretary of State, to place in the hands of your excellency the answer of Mr. Drouyn de Lhuys, praying you to be so good as to lay it before his excellency the President, Mr. Johnson.
Accept, Mr. Secretary of State, the assurances of my high consideration.
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, &c., &c., &c.
[Translation]
Mr. Drouyn de Lhuys to the Marquis de Montholon
Mr. the Marquis de Montholon: I have already charged you, by order of the Emperor, to make known to the cabinet of Washington the views of his Majesty’s government on the affairs of Mexico, and you have, conformably with my instructions, made known to Mr. Seward the despatch I had the honor to write to you under date of 18th October. The Secretary of State has answered that despatch by a communication which he was pleased to address to you on the 6th of December, and from which I believe it to be my duty here to reproduce the leading points.
According to Mr. Seward, the presence of a foreign force in a country neighboring to the Union could not but be a source of uneasiness and disquiet. This state of things draws along with it on the federal government embarrassing outlays, and may lead to collisions. At all events, the principal cause of the dissatisfaction of the United States is not that there is in Mexico a foreign army; much less that such army is French. The cabinet of Washington recognizes in every sovereign nation the right to make war, provided the use of this [Page 806] right does not menace the security and legitimate influence of the Union. But the French army has gone to Mexico to overthrow a national republican government, and with the avowed aim of founding on its ruins a foreign monarchical government. Mr. Seward states, on this subject, how much the people of the United States are attached to the institutions they bave given themselves, and, repelling any idea of propagandism in favor of these institutions, he claims for the various nations of the New World the right to secure to themselves this form of government at their convenience. He would consider as inadmissible that European powers should interfere in these countries with the idea of destroying the republican form in order to substitute kingdoms and empires. “Having thus frankly defused our position” adds Mr. Seward, “I submit the question to the judgment of France, sincerely hoping that great nation will find it compatible with its true interests, as well as with its so highly exalted honor, to abandon the aggressive attitude it has taken in Mexico.”
Mr. Seward recalls in closing, as a reason for his hope of arriving at a happy solution, the ancient affection of the United States for France, and the value which every American citizen constantly attached in past time, and attaches in the future, to our friendship.
I have not failed to place this communication before the Emperor. After having maturely examined the considerations set forth by Mr. Seward, the government of his Majesty remains convinced that the divergence of views between the two cabinets is, above all, the result of an erroneous appreciation of our intentions.
Our expedition—need I say it?—had in it nothing hostile to the institutions of the nations of the New World, and assuredly still less to those of the Union. France could not forget that she has contributed with her blood to found them; and of the number of glorious memories which the ancient monarchy has bequeathed to us, there is not one of which Napoleon I showed himself more proud, and which Napoleon III can be less inclined to repudiate. If, moreover, we could have been influenced by a malevolent thought toward this republic, would we have sought in the beginning to obtain the concurrence of the federal government, which had, as well as ourselves, reclamations to make available? Would we have observed neutrality in the great crisis which the United States have passed through? And to-day would we be disposed, as we declare with the greatest frankness, to hasten, as much as it will be possible for us, the moment for the recall of our troops? Our only aim has been to follow up the satisfactions to which we had right, on recurring to coercive measures, after having exhausted all others. It is known how numerous and legitimate the claims of French subjects were. It was in presence of a series of flagrantly vexatious measures, and of glaring denials of justice, that we took up arms.
The wrongs to the United States were certainly less numerous and less important when they were led—they also—some years ago, to employ force against Mexico. The French army did not carry monarchical traditions in the folds of its flag.
The cabinet of Washington is not ignorant that there were in that country for many years a number of men of influence, who, despairing of obtaining order out of the conditions of the then existing rule, nourished the idea of falling back upon monarchy. Their thoughts were shared in by one of the last presidents of that republic, who even offered to use his power to favor the re-establishment of royalty.
On witnessing the degree of anarchy into which the government of Juarez had fallen, they deemed the moment had arrived to make appeal to the opinion of the people, tired out as they were with the state of dissolution in which their resources were being exhausted.
We did not think it a duty to discourage this supreme effort of a powerful party, the origin of which dates long anterior to our expedition; but faithful to the maxims of public right which we hold in common with the United States, we declared that question rested solely on the suffrages of the Mexican people.
The idea of the government of the Emperor has been defined by his Majesty in person in a letter addressed to the commander-in-chief of our army after the talking of Puebla. “Our object you know,” wrote the Emperor, “is not to impose on the Mexicans a government against their will, nor to make our success aid the triumph of any party whatever. I desire that Mexico may revive to a new life, and that, soon regenerated by a government founded on the national will, on principles of order and of progress, on respect for the law of nations, she may acknowledge by her friendly relations that she owes to France her repose and her prosperity.”
The Mexican people have spoken—the emperor Maximilian has been called by the will of the country. The government has appeared to us to be of a nature to restore peace to the interior and good faith to international relations. We have given it our support.
We went then to Mexico, there to exercise the right of war, which Mr. Seward fully recognizes in us, and not in virtue of any principle of intervention, about which we profess the same doctrine as the United States. We went there not to bring about a monarchical proselytism, but to obtain reparation and guarantees which we ought to claim, and we sustain the government which is founded on the consent of the people because we expect from it the satisfaction of our wrongs, as well as the securities indispensable to the future. [Page 807] As we do not seek the satisfaction of an exclusive interest, nor the realization of an ambitious thought, our most sincere wish is to bring about, as soon as possible, the moment when we shall be able, with safety to our countrymen and with due respect for ourselves, to recall what remains in that country of the army corps which we have sent there.
As I have told you in the despatch to which the communication from Mr. Seward replies, it depends much on the federal government to facilitate in this respect the accomplishment of the desire which he expresses to us. The doctrine of the United States, resting as ours does on the principle of the national will, has in it nothing incompatible with the existence of monarchical institutions; and President Johnson in his message, as well as Mr. Seward in his despatch, repels all thought of prooagandism, even on the American continent, in favor of republican institutions. The cabinet of Washington holds friendly relations with the court of Brazil, and did not refuse to form relations with the Mexican empire in 1822. No fundamental maxim—no precedent in the diplomatic history of the Union, therefore, creates any necessary antagonism between the United States and the form of government which has replaced in Mexico a power whose reign was nothing but a continual and systematic violation of its most positive obligations towards other nations.
Mr. Seward seems to make a double reproach to the government of the emperor Maximilian of the difficulties it encounters, and of the assistance it borrows from foreign forces, but the resistances which it has been obliged to wrestle with have in them nothing especial against the form of the institutions.
It undergoes the lot quite ordinary to new powers, and it is, above all, its misfortune to have to bear the consequences of disorders produced under previous governments, which lot is in effect that of those governments which have not found armed competitors and have enjoyed in peace an uncontested authority.
Revolts and intestine wars were, therefore, the normal condition of the country, and the opposition made by some military chiefs to the establishment of the empire is only the natural sequence of such habitudes of want of discipline and of anarchy of which the powers to whom this succeeds have been victims.
As for the support which the Mexican government receives from our army, and what is also lent to him by Belgian and Austrian volunteers, it causes no hindrance to the freedom of its resolutions nor the perfect independence of its actions. What state is there that needs not allies, whether to form it or to defend it? And the great powers, such as France and England for example, have they not constantly almost maintained foreign troops in their armies? When the United States fought for their emancipation, did the aid given by France to their efforts cause that great popular movement to cease to be truly national? And shall it be said that the contest with the south was not in like manner a national war, because the thousands of Irishmen and Germans were fighting under the flag of the Union? Tue character of the Mexican government, therefore, cannot be contested, nor the resistance which it must overcome to consolidate itself, or the foreign troops which shall have aided in bringing forth again safety and order in a country so long and deeply distracted, be considered a reason for disaffection toward it. Such an undertaking is surely worthy to be appreciated by a nation so enlightened as the United States, especially called on to gather the advantage.
In place of a country unceasingly in trouble, and which has given them so many subjects for complaint, and against which they have themselves been obliged to make war, they will find a pacific country, offering henceforth pledges of security and vast openings to their commerce. Far from injuring their rights or hurting their influence, they, above all, are those who must profit by the work of reorganization which is being accomplished in Mexico.
In recapitulation, marquis, the United States acknowledges the right we had to make war on Mexico. On the other part we admit, as they do, the principle of non-intervention; this double postulate includes, as it seems to me, the elements of an agreement. The right to make war, which belongs, as Mr. Seward declares, to every sovereign nation, implies the right to secure the results of war. We have not gone across the ocean merely for the purpose of showing our power, and of inflicting chastisement on the Mexican government; after a train of fruitless remonstrances it was our duty to demand guarantees against the recurrence of violence from which our countrymen had suffered so cruelly, and these guarantees we could not look for from a government whose bad faith we had proven on so many occasions.
We find them now engaged in the establishment of a regular government, which shows itself disposed honestly to keep its engagements. In this relation we hope that the legitimate object of our expedition will soon be reached, and we are striving to make with the emperor Maximilian arrangements which, by satisfying our interests and our honor, will permit us to consider as at an end the service of our army on Mexican soil.
The Emperor has given me orders to write in this sense to his minister in Mexico.
We fall back from that moment on the principle of non-intervention, and from that [Page 808] moment accept it as the rule of our conduct; our interest, no less than our honor, commands us to claim from all the uniform application of it. Trusting in the spirit of equity which animates the cabinet at Washington, we expect from it the assurance that the American people will themselves conform to the law which it invokes, by observing, in regard to Mexico, a strict neutrality. When you shall have informed me of the resolution of the federal government on this subject, I shall be able to indicate to you the results of our negotiations with the emperor Maximilian for the return of our troops.
I request you to remit a copy of this despatch to Mr. Seward, in answer to his communication of the 6th December last, begging him to have the goodness to lay it before President Johnson; and I rely with confidence for the examination of the consideration it embraces in the traditional sentiments recalled to notice in the note of the Secretary of State of the Union.
Accept, marquis, the assurances of my high consideration.
Monsieur le Marquis de Montholon,
Minister of France, near Washington.