Mr. Seward to Mr. Van Valkenburgh.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your dispatch of the 3d of July, No. 65, which is accompanied by a copy of a note which, on the 2d of that month, you transmitted to their excellencies Hizen Jijin and Higaski Kuse Chinjo, ministers for foreign affairs in the Mikado’s government, and in which you declined to transfer the Stonewall to that government for the present, and until you shall have received further instructions from this government.
I thank you for the account you have given me of the interesting conversation which you have had with the Enomoto Idsumi-no-Kami, naval commander-in-chief of the Tokugawa party. That conversation seems to confirm the views you have given me of the prudential counsels of the Tokugawa party. It is quite unnecessary, at least at this moment, to consider the question Enomoto Idsumi-no-Kami raised in regard to the right of the Tokugawa party as a clan or faction to receive the Stonewall instead of her being delivered to the sovereign of the empire. Certainly this government dealt with the Tycoon, not as the head of a clan, but as the executive head of the Japanese empire. What we now wait for is to have the people of Japan ascertain for us who is the head of that empire, a question which the late procceedings in Japan have rendered very difficult and perplexing to strangers.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
R. B. Van Vankenburgh, Esq., &c., &c., &c.