resulting from these reverses. The gallant troops so ably commanded in the States beyond the Mississippi, inflicted repeated defeats on the invading armies in Louisiana and on the coast of Texas. Detachments of troops and active bodies of partisans kept up so effective a war on the Mississippi River as practically to destroy its value as an avenue of commerce. The determined and successful defence of Charleston against the joint land and naval oprations of the enemy, afforded an inspiring example of our ability to repel the attacks even of the iron-clad fleet, on which they chiefly rely, while on the Northern frontier our success was still more marked. Chattanooga, where his imperilled position had the immediate effect of relieving the pressure of the invasion at other points, forcing the concentration, for his relief, of large bodies of troops withdrawn from the armies in the Mississippi valley and in Northern Virginia. The combined forces thus accumulated against us in Tennessee so greatly outnumbered our army as to encourage the enemy to attack. After a long and severe battle, in which great carnage was inflicted on him, some of our troops inexplicably abandoned positions of great strength, and, by a disorderly retreat, compelled the commander to withdraw the forces elsewhere successful, and, finally, to retire with his whole army to a position some The able commander who conducted the cam- twenty or thirty miles to the rear. It is bepaign in Virginia determined to meet the threat-lieved that if the troops, who yielded to the asened advance on Richmond-for which the ene-sault, had fought with the valor which they had my had made long and costly preparations-by displayed on previous occasions, and which was forcing their armies to cross the Potomac and manifested in this battle on other parts of the fight in defence of their own capital and homes. lines, the enemy would have been repulsed with Transferring the battle-field to their own soil, he very great slaughter, and our country would have succeeded in compelling their rapid retreat from escaped the misfortune and the army the mortiVirginia, and, in the hard-fought battle of Get-fication of the first defeat that has resulted from tysburgh, inflicted such severity of punishment misconduct by the troops. In the mean time, as disabled them from early renewal of the cam- the army of General Burnside was driven from paign as originally projected. Unfortunately, all its field positions in Eastern Tennessee, and the communications on which our General relied forced to retreat from its intrenchments at Knoxfor receiving his supplies of munitions were in-ville, where, for some weeks, it was threatened terrupted by extraordinary floods, which so swelled the Potomac as to render impassable the fords by which his advance had been made, and he was thus forced to a withdrawal, which was conducted with deliberation, after securing large trains of captured supplies, and with a constant but unaccepted tender of battle. On more than one occasion the enemy has since made demonstrations of a purpose to advance, invariably followed by a precipitate retreat to intrenched lines on the approach of our forces. The effective check thus opposed to the advance of invaders at all points was such as to afford hope of their early expulsion from portions of the territory previously occupied them, when the country was painfully surprised by the intelligence that the officer in command of Cumberland Gap had surrendered that important and easily defensible pass without firing a shot, upon the summons of a force still believed to have been inadequate to its reduction, and when reënforcements were within supporting distance and had been ordered to his aid. The entire garrison, including the commander, being still held as prisoners by the enemy, I am unable to suggest any explanation of this disaster, which laid open Eastern Tennessee and South-Western Virginia to hostile operations, and broke the line of communication between the seat of government and Middle Tennessee. This easy success of the enemy was followed by an advance of General Rosecrans into Georgia, and our army evacuated Chattanooga and availed itself of the opportunity thus afforded of winning, on the field of Chickamauga, one of the most brilliant and decisive victories of the war. This signal defeat of General Rosecrans was followed by his retreat into with capture by the forces under General Longstreet. No information has reached me of the final result of the operations of our commander, though intelligence has arrived of his withdrawal from that place. While, therefore, our success in driving the enemy from our soil has not equalled the expectations confidently entertained at the commencement of the campaign, his further progress has been checked. If we are forced to regret losses in Tennessee and Arkansas, we are not without ground for congratulations on successes in Louisiana and Texas. On the sea-coast he is exhausted by vain efforts to capture our ports; while, on the Northern frontier, he has in turn felt the pressure and dreads the renewal of invasion. The indomitable courage and perseverance of the people in the defence of their homes have been nobly attested by the unanimity with which the Legislatures of Virginia, North-Carolina, and Georgia have recently given expression to the popular sentiment; and like manifestations may. be anticipated from all the States. Whatever obstinacy may be displayed by the enemy in his desperate sacrifices of money, life, and liberty, in the hope of enslaving us, the experience of mankind has too conclusively shown the superior endurance of those who fight for home, liberty, and independence, to permit any doubt of the result. FOREIGN RELATIONS. I regret to inform you that there has been no improvement in the state of our relations with foreign countries since my message in January last. On the contrary, there has been a still greater divergence in the conduct of European nations from that practical impartiality which alone deserves the name of neutrality, and their action, in some cases, has assumed a character positively unfriendly. You have heretofore been informed, by common understanding, the initiative in all action touching the contest on this continent had been left by foreign powers to the two great maritime nations of Western Europe, and that the governments of these two nations had agreed to take no measures without previous concert. The result of these arrangements has, therefore, placed it in the power of either France or England to obstruct at pleasure the recognition to which the Confederacy is justly entitled, or even to prolong the continuance of hostilities on this side of the Atlantic, if the policy of either could be promoted by the postponement of peace. Each, too, thus became possessed of great influence in so shaping the general exercise of neutral rights in Europe, as to render them subservient to the purpose of aiding one of the belligerents, to the detriment of the other. I referred, at your last session, to some of the leading points in the course pursued by professed neutrals, which betrayed a partisan leaning to the side of our enemies; but events have since occurred which induce me to renew the subject in greater detail than was then deemed necessary. In calling to your attention the action of these governments, I shall refer to the documents appended to President Lincoln's messages, and to their own correspondence, as disclosing the true nature of their policy, and the motives which guided it. To this course no exception can be taken, inasmuch as our attention has been invited to those sources of information by their official publication. In May, 1861, the Government of her Britannic Majesty informed our enemies that it had not "allowed any other than an immediate position on the part of the Southern States," and assured them "that the sympathies of this country (Great Britain) were rather with the North than with the South." On the first day of June, 1861, the British government interdicted the use of its ports "to armed ships and privateers, both of the United States and the so-called confederate States," with their prizes. The Secretary of State of the United States fully appreciated the character and motive of this interdiction, when he observed to Lord Lyons, who communicated it: "That this measure, and that of the same character which had been adopted by France, would probably prove a death-blow to Southern privateering." On the twelfth of June, 1861, the United States Minister in London informed Her Majesty's Secretary for Foreign Affairs, that the fact of his having held interviews with the Commissioners of this Government "had given great dissatisfaction," and that a protraction of this relation would be viewed by the United States "as hostile in spirit, and to require some corresponding action accordingly." In response to this intimation, Her Majesty's Secretary assured the Min ister that "he had no expectation of seeing them any more." By proclamation, issued on the nineteenth and twenty-seventh of April, 1861, President Lincoln proclaimed the blockade of the entire coast of the Confederacy, extending from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, embracing, according to the returns of the United States Coast Survey, a coast line of three thousand five hundred and fortynine statute miles, on which the number of rivers, bays, harbors, inlets, sounds, and passes, is one hundred and eighty-nine. The navy possessed by the United States for enforcing this blockade was stated, in the reports communicated by President Lincoln to the Congress of the United States, to consist of twenty-four vessels of all classes in commission, of which half were in distant seas. The absurdity of the pretension of such a blockade, in the face of the authoritative declaration of the maritime rights of neutrals made at Paris in 1856, was so glaring, that the attempt was regarded as an experiment on the forbearance of neutral powers, which they would promptly resist. This conclusion was justified by the fact that the governments of France and Great Britain determined that it was necessary for their interests to obtain from both belligerents " securities concerning the treatment of neutrals." In the instructions which " confided the negotiations on this matter" to the British Consul at Charleston, he was informed that "the most perfect accord on this question exists between Her Majesty's Government and the Government of the Emperor of the French;" and these instructions were accompanied by a copy of the despatch of the British Foreign Office of the eighteenth May, 1861, stating that there was no difference of opinion between Great Britain and the United States as to the validity of the principles enunciated in the fourth article of the declaration of Paris in reference to blockades. Your predecessors of the provisional Congress had therefore no difficulty in proclaiming, nor I in approving, the resolutions which abandoned in favor of Great Britain and France our right to capture enemy's property when covered by the flags of these powers. The "securities" desired by those governments were understood by us to be required from both belligerents. Neutrals were exposed, on our part, to the exercise of the belligerent right of capturing their vessels when conveying the property of our enemies. They were exposed, on the part of the United States, to interruption in their unquestioned right of trading with us by the declaration of the paper blockade above referred to. We had no reason to doubt the good faith of the proposal made to us, nor to suspect that we were to be the only parties bound by its acceptance. It is true that the instructions of the neutral powers informed their agents that it was "essential, under present circumstances, that they should act with great caution in order to avoid raising the question of the recognition of the new Confederacy," and that the understanding on the subject did not assume, for that rea ing from nine to eleven States of the Union, have now, for more than twelve months, endeavored to maintain a blockade of three thousand miles of coast. This blockade, kept up irregularly, but when enforced, enforced severely, has seriously injured the trade and manufactures of the United to the poor rates for subsistence, owing to this blockade. Yet Her Majesty's government has never sought to take advantage of the obvious imperfections of this blockade in order to declare it ineffective. They have, to the loss and detriment of the British nation, scrupulously observed the duties of Great Britain toward a friendly state." son, the shape of a formal convention. But it was not deemed just by us to decline the arrangement on this ground, as little more than ninety days had then elapsed since the arrival of our Commissioners in Europe, and neutral nations were fairly entitled to a reasonable delay in acting on a subject of so much importance, Kingdom. Thousands are now obliged to resort and which, from their point of view, presented difficulties that we, perhaps, did not fully appreciate. Certain it is that the action of this government on the occasion, and its faithful performance of its own engagements, have been such as to entitle it to expect, on the part of those who sought in their own interests a mutual understanding the most scrupulous adherence to their own promises. I feel constrained to inform you, that in this expectation we have been disappointed, and that, not only have the governments which entered into these arrangements yielded to the prohibition against commerce with us, which has been dictated by the United States, in defiance of the laws of nations, When, in view of these facts, of the obligations but that this concession of their neutral rights, of the British nation to adhere to the pledge to our detriment, has, on more than one occa- made by their government at Paris in 1856, and sion, been claimed, in intercourse with our ene-renewed to this Confederacy in 1861, and of these mies, as an evidence of the friendly feeling toward them. A few extracts from the correspondence of Her Majesty's Chief Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, will suffice to show marked encouragement to the United States to persevere in its paper blockade, and unmistakable intimations that Her Majesty's government would not contest its validity. Again, on the twenty-second of September, 1862, the same noble Earl asserted that the United States were "very far indeed" from being in "a condition to ask other nations to assume that every port of the coasts of the so-styled confederate States is effectively blockaded." repeated and explicit avowals of the imperfection, irregularity, and inefficiency of the pretended blockade of our coast, I directed our Commissioner at London to call upon the British government to redeem its promise and to withhold its moral aid and sanction from the flagrant violation of public law committed by our enemies, who were informed that Her Majesty's government On the twenty-first of May, 1861, Earl Russell could not regard the blockade of the Southern pointed out to the United States Minister in Lon-ports as having been otherwise than “ practically don that "the blockade might no doubt be made effective" in February, 1862, and that "the maneffective, considering the small number of har- ner in which it has since been enforced gives to bors on the Southern coast, even though the ex-neutral governments no excuse for asserting that tent of three thousand miles were comprehended in terms of that blockade." the blockade has not been effectually maintained." We were further informed, when we insisted that On the fourteenth of January, 1862, Her Majes- by the terms of agreement no blockade was to be ty's Minister in Washington communicated to considered effective unless "sufficient really to his government that in extenuation of the bar- prevent access to our coast," that the declaration barous attempt to destroy the port of Charleston of Paris was, in truth, directed against blockades by sinking a stone-fleet in the harbor, Mr. Sew- not sustained by any actual force, or sustained ard had explained "that the Government of the by a notoriously inadequate force, such as the United States had, last spring, with a navy very occasional appearance of a man-of-war in the offlittle prepared for so extensive an operation, un-ing, or the like. dertaken to blockade upward of three thousand It was impossible that this mode of construing miles of coast. The Secretary of the Navy had reported that he could stop up the large holes' by means of his ships; but that he could not stop up the small ones.' It has been found necessary, therefore, to close some of the numerous small inlets by sinking vessels in the channel." an agreement, so as to make the terms mean almost the reverse of what they conveyed, could be considered otherwise than as a notification of the refusal of the British government to remain bound by its agreement, or longer to respect those articles of the declaration of Paris, which had been repeatedly denounced by British statesmen, and had been characterized by Earl Russell as "very imprudent" and "most unsatisfactory." On the sixth of May, 1862, so far from claiming the right of British subjects as neutrals to trade with us as belligerents, and to disregard If any doubt remained of the motives by which the blockade on the ground of this explicit con- the British Ministry have been actuated in their fession of our enemy of his inability to render it conduct, it would be completely dissipated by effective, Her Majesty's Secretary of State of the distinct avowals and explanations contained Foreign Affairs claimed credit with the United in the public speech recently made by Her MaStates for friendly action in respecting it. His jesty's Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In comLordship stated that "the United States Gov-menting on the remonstrances of this government ernment, on the allegation of a rebellion pervad-against the countenance given to an ineffective blockade, the following language is used: "It is blockade of 1807, by an acquiescence in the Fedsaid we have, contrary to the declarations of eral illegal blockade of 1861. The most alarmParis, contrary to international law, permitted ing feature in this statement is its admission of the blockade of three thousand miles of American a just claim on the part of the United States to coast. It is quite true we did so, and the pre-require of Great Britain, during this war, a dissumable cause of complaint is quite true, that although the blockade is kept up by a sufficient number of ships, yet these ships were sent into the United States navy in a hurry, and are ill fitted for the purpose, and did not keep up, so completely and effectively as was required, an effective blockade." This unequivocal confession of violation, both of agreement with us and international law, is defended on grounds the validity of which we submit with confidence to the candid judgment of mankind. These grounds are thus stated: "Still looking at the law of nations, it was a blockade we as a great belligerent power in former times, should have acknowledged. We, ourselves, had a blockade of upward of two thousand miles, and it did seem to me that we were bound in justice to the Federal States of America to acknowledge that blockade. But there was another reason which weighed with me. Our people were suffering severely for the want of that material which was the main staff of their industry, and it was a question of self-interest whether we should not break the blockade. But in my opinion the men of England would have been for ever infamous if, for the sake of their own interest, they had violated the law of nations and made war in conjunction with these slaveholding States of America against the Federal States." regard of the recognized principles of modern public law, and of her own compacts, whenever any questionable conduct of Great Britain "in former times," can be cited as a precedent. It is not inconsistent with respect and admiration for the great people whose Government have given us this warning, to suggest that their history, like that of mankind in general, offers exceptional instances of indefensible conduct "in former times," and we may well deny the morality of violating recent engagements through deference to the evil precedents of the past. After defending, in the manner just stated, the course of the British government on the subject of the blockade, Her Majesty's Foreign Secretary takes care to leave no doubt of the further purpose of the British government to prevent our purchase of vessels in Great Britain, while supplying our enemies with rifles and other munitions of war, and states the intention to apply to Parliament for the furtherance of this design. He gives to the United States the assurance that he will do in their favor not only "every thing that the law of nations requires, every thing that the present Foreign Enlistment act requires," but that he will ask the sanction of Parliament "to further measures that Her Majesty's ministers may still add." This language is so unmistakably an official exposition of the policy adopted by the British government in relation to our affairs, that the duty imposed on me by the Constitution, of giving you, from time to time, “information of the state of the Confederacy," would not have been performed if I had failed to place it distinctly before you. In the second of these reasons our rights are not involved; although it may be permitted to observe that the conduct of governments has not heretofore, to my knowledge, been guided by the principle that it is infamous to assert their rights whenever the invasion of those rights creates se- I refer you for fuller details on this whole subvere suffering among their people and injuriously ject to the correspondence of the State Departaffects great interests. But the intimation that ment, which accompanies this Message. The relations with these States would be discreditable facts which I have briefly narrated are, I trust, because they are slaveholding, would probably sufficient to enable you to appreciate the true have been omitted if the official personage who nature of the neutrality professed in this war. has published it to the world had remembered It is not in my power to apprise you to what exthat these States were, when colonies, made slave-tent the government of France shares the views holding by the direct exercise of the power of Great Britain, whose dependencies they were, and whose interests in the slave-trade were then supposed to require that her colonies should be made slaveholding. But the other ground stated is of a very grave character. It asserts that a violation of the law of nations by Great Britain in 1807, when that Government declared a paper blockade of two thousand miles of coast, (a violation then defended by her courts and jurists on the sole ground that her action was retaliatory,) affords a justification for a similar outrage on neutral rights by the United States in 1861, for which no palliation can be suggested; and that Great Britain "is bound, in justice to the Federal States," to make return for the war waged against her by the United States in resistance of her illegal so unreservedly avowed by that of Great Britain, no published correspondence of the French government on the subject having been received. No public protest nor opposition, however, has been made by His Imperial Majesty against the prohibition to trade with us, imposed on French citizens by the paper blockade of the United States, although I have reason to believe that an unsuccessful attempt was made on his part to secure the assent of the British government to a course of action more consonant with the dictates of public law and with the demands of justice toward us. The partiality of Her Majesty's government in favor of our enemies has been further evinced in the marked difference of its conduct on the subject of the purchase of supplies by the two belligerents. This difference has been conspicuous DOCUMENTS. the pretension can rest, without one line or word As by the confidence and affection of its citizens, the since the very commencement of the war. early as the first May, 1861, the British Min- Confederacy has lacked no element which distinister in Washington was informed by the Secre-guishes an independent nation, according to the tary of State of the United States that he had principles of public law. Its legislative, execusent agents to England, and that others would tive, and judicial departments, each in its sphere, go to France, to purchase arms, and this fact was have performed their appropriate functions with communicated to the British Foreign Office, which a regularity as undisturbed as in a time of proYet, in October of the found peace, and the whole energies of the peointerposed no objection. same year, Earl Russell entertained the com- ple have been developed in the organization of plaint of the United States Minister in London, vast armies, while their rights and liberties have that the confederate States were importing con- rested secure under the protection of the courts traband of war from the island of Nassau, di- of justice. This Confederacy is either independrected inquiry into the matter, and obtained a ent or it is a dependency of the United States, report from the authorities of the island deny- for no other earthly power claims the right to Without one historic fact on which ing the allegations, which report was inclosed to govern it. Mr. Adams, and received by him as satisfactory evidence to dissipate suspicion naturally thrown upon the authorities of Nassau by that unwarrantable act." So, too, when the confederate government purchased in Great Britain, as a neutral country, (and with strict observance both of the law of nations and the municipal law of Great Britain,) vessels which were subsequently armed and commissioned as vessels of war, after they had been far removed from British waters, the British government, in violation of its own laws and in deference to the importunate demands of the United States, made an ineffectual attempt to seize one vessel, and did actually seize and detain another which touched at the island of Nassau, on her way to a confederate port, and subjected her to an unfounded prosecution at the very time when cargoes of munitions of war were being openly shipped from British ports to New-York, to be used in warfare against us. Even now the public journals bring intelligence that the British government has ordered the seizure, in a British port, of two vessels, on the suspicion that they may have been sold to this government, and that they may be hereafter It is due to you and to our country that this armed and equipped in our service, while British subjects are engaged in Ireland by tens of thou- full statement should be made of the just grounds sands to proceed to the United States for war- which exist for dissatisfaction with the conduct fare against the Confederacy, in defiance both of of the British government. I am well aware that the law of nations and of the express terms of we are unfortunately without adequate remedy the British statutes, and are transported in Bri- for the injustice under which we have suffered at tish ships, without an effort at concealment, to the hands of a powerful nation, at a juncture the ports of the United States, there to be armed when our entire resources are absorbed in the with rifles imported from Great Britain, and to defence of our lives, liberties, and independence, Claiming no be employed against our people in a war for con- against an enemy possessed of greatly superior quest. No royal prerogative is, invoked, no ex-numbers and material resources. ecutive interference is interposed against this flagrant breach of municipal and international law, on the part of our enemies, while strained constructions are placed on existing statutes, new enactments proposed and questionable expedients devised, for precluding the possibility of purchase, by this government, of vessels that are useless for belligerent purposes, unless hereafter armed and equipped outside of the neutral jurisdiction of Great Britain. For nearly three years this government has exercised unquestioned jurisdiction over many millions of willing and united people. It has met and defeated vast armies of invaders, who have in vain sought its subversion. Supported favor, desiring no aid, conscious of our own abil- |