Mr. Seward to Mr. Clay. No. 12.] DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, August 12, 1861. SIR: Your despatch of 21st of June (No. 4) has been received. The account which it gives us of your reception by the Emperor of Russia, and of the just purposes and friendly wishes expressed by him in relation to the United States, is eminently satisfactory. I sincerely hope that the good understanding which now exists between the two governments may continue. I am sure you need no new instructions to enable you to say that we rejoice in the peaceful progress of the means which the Emperor has initiated for meliorating the condition of the people of Russia. Your suggestions concerning certain modern improvements of rifled cannon have been commended to the consideration of the Secretary of War. We wait with interest upon your negotiation on the subject of the rights of neutrals in maritime war, which your despatch leads us to suppose you will already have commenced before this communication shall have reached St. Petersburg. I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant, CASSIUS M. CLAY, &c., &c., &c WILLIAM H. SEWARD. Mr. Seward to Mr. Clay. No. 13.] DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, September 3, 1861. SIR: Your despatch of the 3d of August (No. 5) has been received. I have been quite well aware that our relations to Great Britain and France, in this crisis of our domestic difficulties, are attended by complications and dangers which altogether surpass any that we can have to encounter in our intercourse with Russia and other northern European powers. We hope and expect to be always in relations of amity and real friendship with those powers, and are very willing to negotiate with them, and especially with Russia, upon the basis of the declaration of the congress of Paris, either with or without the Marcy amendment, though greatly preferring that that amendment shall be incorporated into the treaty. At the same time, it is well that you should know that thus far the propositions for similar treaties with Great Britain and France have not yet been acceded to by those governments. If the imperial government, for any reason, prefer to delay acting upon the subject until the decisive results of our negotiations with the two other powers named, we shall not expect you to be urgent upon the subject. We simply desire to act justly and candidly with all other nations, so as to give them all reasonable guarantees for the security of commerce during the continuance of our civil war. This done, we can cheerfully abide the coming of events, never doubting for a moment the complete restoration of the authority and high prestige of the federal Union. Your remarks upon the subject of Mexico are very interesting, and they will have due weight in forming any determination which the rapid course of political events there shall require us to adopt. I wish that it were compatible with my many cares at this critical moment to impart to each of our ministers abroad a full knowledge of the condition of our negotiations and discussions with all foreign powers. If I could do so, you would probably be satisfied that you are laboring under apprehensions of some imaginary foreign dangers. But such a proceeding is absolutely impossible, and I must be content to advise you, when necessary, of the President's wishes in regard to your own mission, and leave you, as to the rest, to await ultimate, and yet seasonable, developments. I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant, WILLIAM H. SEWARD. CASSIUS M. CLAY, Esq., &c., &c., &c. Prince Gortchacow to Mr. De Stoeckl. [Translation.] ST. PETERSBURG, July 10, 1861. SIR: From the beginning of the conflict which divides the United States of America you have been desired to make known to the federal government the deep interest with which our august master was observing the development of a crisis which puts in question the prosperity and even the existence of the Union. The Emperor profoundly regrets to see that the hope of a peaceful solution is not realized, and that American citizens, already in arms against each other, are ready to let loose upon their country the most formidable of the scourges of political society-a civil war. For the more than eighty years that it has existed the American Union owes its independence, its towering risc, and its progress to the concord of its members, consecrated, under the auspices of its illustrious founder, by institutions which have been able to reconcile union with liberty. This union has been fruitful. It has exhibited to the world the spectacle of a prosperity without example in the annals of history. It would be deplorable that, after so conclusive an experience, the United States should be hurried into a breach of the solemn compact which, up to this time, has made their power In spite of the diversity of their constitutions and of their interests, and perhaps, even, because of this diversity, Providence seems to urge them to draw closer the traditional bond which is the basis and the very condition of their political existence. In any event, the sacrifices which they might impose upon themselves to maintain it are beyond comparison with those which dissolution would bring after it. United, they perfect themselves; isolated, they are paralyzed. The struggle which unhappily has just arisen can neither be indefinitely prolonged nor lead to the total destruction of one of the parties. Sooner or later it will be necessary to come to some settlement, whatsoever it may be, which may cause the divergent interests now actually in conflict to coexist. The American nation would then give a proof of high political wisdom in seeking in common such a settlement before a useless effusion of blood, a barren squandering of strength and of public riches, and acts of violence and reciprocal reprisals shall have come to deepen an abyss between the two parties to the confederation, to end definitively in their mutual exhaustion, and in the ruin, perhaps irreparable, of their commercial and political power. Our august master cannot resign himself to admit such deplorable anticipations. His Imperial Majesty still places his confidence in that practical good sense of the citizens of the Union who appreciate so judiciously thelr true interests. His Majesty is happy to believe that the members of the federal government and the influential men of the two parties will seize ail occasions and will unite all their efforts to calm the effervescence of the passions. There are no interests so divergent that it may not be possible to reconcile them by laboring to that end with zeal and perseverance in a spirit of justice and moderation. If, within the limits of your friendly relations, your language and your councils may contribute to this result, you will respond, sir, to the intentions of his Majesty the Emperor in devoting to this the personal influence which you may have been able to acquire during your long residence at Washington, and the consideration which belongs to your character as the representative of a sovereign animated by the most friendly sentiments towards the American Union. This Union is not simply, in our eyes, an element essential to the universal political equilibrium. It constitutes, besides, a nation to which our august master and all Russia have pledged the most friendly interest; for the two countries, placed at the extremities of the two worlds, both in the ascending period of their development, appear called to a natural community of interests and of sympathies, of which they have already given mutual proofs to each other. I do not wish here to approach any of the questions which divide the United States. We are not called upon to express ourselves in this contest. The preceding considerations have no other object than to attest the lively solicitude of the Emperor in presence of the dangers which menace the American Union, and the sincere wishes which his Majesty entertains for the maintenance of that great work, so laboriously raised, which appeared so rich in its future. It is in this sense, sir, that I desire you to express yourself, as well to the members of the general government as to influential persons whom you may meet, giving them the assurance that in every event the American nation may count upon the most cordial sympathy on the part of our august master during the important crisis which it is passing through at present. Receive, sir, the expression of my very distinguished consideration. GORTCHACOW. Mr. DE STOECKL, &c., &c., &c. Mr. Seward to Mr. De Stoeckl. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Washington, September 7, 1861. The Secretary of State of the United States is authorized by the President to express to Mr. De Stoeckl, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of his Majesty the Emperor of Russia, his profound sense of the liberal, friendly, and magnanimous sentiments of his Majesty on the subject of the internal differences which for a time have seemed to threaten the American Union, as they are communicated in the instruction from Prince Gortchacow, and by him read, by his Majesty's direction, to the President of the United States and Secretary of State. Mr. De Stoeckl will express to his government the satisfaction with which the President regards this new guarantee of a friendship between the two countries, which had its beginning with the national existence of the United States. The Secretary of State offers to Mr. De Stoeckl renewed assurances of his high consideration. WILLIAM H. SEWARD. Mr. EDWARD DE STOECKL, &c., &c., &c. No. 2.] Mr. Seward to Mr. Wood. [Extract.] DEPARTMENT OF STATE, SIR: The one subject in all our foreign relations which most anxiously engages the President's attention is the possible action of other nations in regard to the domestic controversy which is raging within our own borders. Parties long ago found it their apparent interest to appeal to local interests and prejudices, and they have persevered in that policy so far and with such effect that masses large enough to control the action of the State authorities have at last come to prefer disorganization and disunion, rather than to acquiesce in the will of the majority expressed in conformity with the provisions of the organic law. To a well-balanced mind it seems very strange that a citizen, ever without the excuse of intolerable oppression, passes the first stage of sedition, for it is at that very stage that the malcontent finds himself obliged to seek aid from aliens to defeat the equal laws and overthrow the beneficent institutions of his own country. Sedition in the United States is not merely unreasonable, it is altogether absurd. Human ingenuity has never yet devised, nor can it devise, a form of government in which the individual citizen can retain so large a portion of the natural rights of man, and at the same time receive so ample a protection against the dangers which so often threaten the safety and even the existence of nations. Nevertheless, an insurrection has broken out here; a pretended government has been constituted under the name of the Confederate States of America, and that government now has its agents abroad seeking to obtain a recognition of its sovereignty and independence. It is hardly to be supposed that these agents will visit the capital of Denmark. They will seek the favor of powers supposed to be more capricious or more ambitious. Nevertheless political action even of the more commanding or more active States is influenced by a general opinion that is formed imperceptibly in all parts of the Eastern continent. Every representative of the United States in Europe has, therefore, a responsibility to see that no effort on his part is wanting to make that opinion just, so far as the true position of affairs in his own country is concerned. It cannot be necessary to discuss at large the merits of the unhappy controversy. It is sufficient to speak of its nature and its probable result. The insurrection strikes at the heart of the nation. The country, so long accustomed to profound tranquillity and universal loyalty, was slow to believe that a parricidal purpose could be contemplated where it felt satisfied there was no just cause for serious discontent. Our government is at once a purely representative and simply federal one. While the insurrection was gathering, the administration was practically paralyzed by the presence, in a very large proportion, of the plotters and abettors of the movement, in what, in Europe, would be called the ministry, in the legislative, in the army, in the navy, in the customs, in the post office, in the diplomatic and consular representations abroad. |