I observe, finally, that the United States and Great Britain are two of the leading national powers in this age. The events of the last five years have conclusively proved that harmony between them is indispensable to the welfare of each. That harmony has been, as we think, unnecessarily broken, through the fault of Great Britain; nor does there exist the least probability that it can ever be completely renewed and restored unless the serious complaint which you are now again to bring to the notice of the British government shall be amicably and satisfactorily adjusted. Such an adjustment would be acceptable, we think, to the friends of peace, progress, and humanity throughout the world; while the benignant principles upon which it shall be based, being conformable to the law of nations, will constitute a guide for the conduct of commercial states, in their mutual intercourse, which will every where be conducive to international peace, harmony, and concord.

Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.

January 12, 1867. A copy of a despatch written by Lord Stanley contains a review of my despatch of August 27, 1866, concerning so-called Alabama claims.

You will please lay before Lord Stanley this reply.

The President appreciates the consideration and courtesy manifested by her Majesty's government. I shall be content, on this occasion, with defending such of my former statements as Lord Stanley has disallowed. I think it unnecessary to disclaim a purpose of impugning the motives of the late or of the present ministry. Governments, like individuals, necessarily take their measures with reference to facts and circumstances as they, at the time, appear. The aspect often changes with further development of events. It is with ascertained facts, and not with intentions, that we are concerned; and it is of Great Britain as a state, and not of ter or ministry, that we complain.

any minis

Lord Stanley justly reminds me that the Sumter was of American, not of British origin, and that she began her career by escaping from New Orleans, and not from a British port. I think, however, The that the correction does not substantially affect the case. Sumter, belonging to loyal owners, was employed in trade between New York and New Orleans. Insurgents seized and armed her there, and sent her out through the blockade. She captured sev

eral United States merchant vessels, and sent them into Cienfuegos. On the 30th of July, 1861, she entered the British port of Trinidad, in the West Indies, ostentatiously displaying an insurgent flag, which had not then, nor has it ever since, been recognized as a national ensign, either by the United States or by Great Britain, or by any other state. Being challenged, she presented a pretended commission, signed, not by the President of the United States, but by Jefferson Davis, an insurgent chief. The Governor of Trinidad exhibited the British standard as a compliment to the insurgent visiThe Sumter was entertained there six days, and supplied with

tor. coal.

After renewed depredations she took shelter, on the 19th of January, 1862, in the British port of Gibraltar, in continental Europe. Being effectually locked in there for months by United States cruisers, she was, against the protest of this government, allowed to be sold to British buyers for the account and benefit of the insurgents. She then hoisted the British flag, and under it was received at Liverpool, within the British realm.

It is, indeed, true, as Lord Stanley has observed, that the Alabama, when she left England, was wholly unarmed and not fully equipped as a war vessel. It is also true that she received an armament, a further equipment, a commander and a crew in Angra Bay, Azores a possession of the Crown of Portugal -- where the British government had no jurisdiction, and could exercise no lawful control, even if they had an opportunity. But, on the other hand, it is to be remembered that, not only was the vessel built at Liverpool, but the armament and the supplemental equipment were built and provided there also, simultaneously and by the same British hands, and also that the commander and crew were gathered and organized at the same time and the same place; the whole vessel, armament, equipment, commander and crew were adapted, each part to the other, and all were prepared for one complete expedition. The parts were fraudulently separated in Liverpool, to be put together elsewhere, and they were fraudulently conveyed thence to Angra Bay and there put fraudulently together by her Majesty's subjects, not less in violation of British than of Portuguese obligations to the United States. The offenders were never brought to justice by her Majesty's government, nor complained of by that government to the Queen of Portugal. The Alabama, from the laying of her timbers in Liverpool until her destruction by the

Kearsarge, off Cherbourg, never once entered any port or waters of the United States. Whatever pretended commission she ever had as a ship of war must have been acquired either in Great Britain or some other foreign country at peace with the United States, or on the high seas. Nevertheless, the Alabama was received, protected, entertained, and supplied in her devastating career in the British ports of Capetown and Singapore in the East, and when she was finally sunk in the British channel, her commander and crew were, with fraudulent connivance, rescued by British subjects and ostentatiously entertained and caressed as meritorious but unfortunate heroes at Southampton. With these explanations I leave the affair of the Alabama where it was placed in the representation of Mr. Adams.

Lord Stanley says that the Florida, under the original name of Oreto, left England unarmed and unequipped. It must not be forgotten, however, that while building she was denounced to her Majesty's government by Mr. Adams. Lord Stanley also says that the Shenandoah left England unobserved, and therefore unquestioned, and, for anything that had transpired, on a legitimate voyage, and that she was only armed, equipped, and manned as a war vessel off Funchal, within Portuguese dominion. I am sure that it must be unnecessary to refer here to the fact that the building of the Florida, the Georgia, and the Shenandoah in British ports, and the arming and equipment of them outside of British jurisdiction, were fraudulent in the same manner that has been specially described in regard to the Alabama. The Shenandoah was received, protected, and supplied, in defiance of our protest, at Melbourne, in Australia. She proceeded thence to the Arctic seas, where she destroyed twenty-nine United States merchant vessels, and finally, after the end of the rebel hostilities here, she returned to Liverpool, the place from which she had first gone forth, and there surrendered herself to her Majesty's government as to an ally or a superior.

Lord Stanley excuses her Majesty's government in part upon the ground that sufficient evidence or notice was not presented by the United States, in part on the ground of accidental hindrances or embarrassments, while in one place he seems to imply that the only devastating vessels of which we complain are the Sumter, the Alabama, the Florida, and the Shenandoah. In regard to the first ex

cuse, I have to say that British complaints of lack of vigor on our part would, under any circumstances, be unreasonable. International as well as municipal laws depend for their execution in Great Britain upon her Majesty's government, and not upon our own. Again, I think that Lord Stanley will find, by referring to unpublished records in the Foreign Office, what certainly appears in our confidential archives, that at the time when the fraudulent building, arming, and equipping of those vessels were going on in England, we were required, out of tenderness to British sensibilities and with the approval of her Majesty's government, to relax rather than increase our vigilance, then called by the repulsive name of espionage.

In relation to the second excuse, I think that the alleged hinderances and embarrassments were nothing else than the skilful machinations of the offending parties themselves. In enumerating certain vessels in my former communication, I wrote of them not as all the vessels complained of, but by way of describing the class of which we complained. There were many others. There were many others. The Nashville, stolen from loyal owners at Charleston, after having evaded the blockade, and after having captured the Harvey Birch, arrived at Southampton on the 20th of November, 1861. She was entertained there until February 3, 1862, and then left the harbor, protected from the United States cruiser Tuscarora by her Majesty's war frigate Shannon. She was afterwards hospitably entertained at the British ports of Bermuda and Nassau, in the West Indies. The Alabama improved her own crafty experience. Having in one of her cruises captured the United States merchant ship Conrad, near the Cape of Good Hope, on the 21st of June, 1863, she commissioned the Conrad as a "Confederate" pirate on the high seas, under the name of the Tuscaloosa. In like manner, the Florida captured the merchant ship Clarence upon the ocean, and commissioned her, and gave her an armament, force, and equipment of a 12-pound howitzer, twenty men, and two officers. Afterwards the Florida transferred the same authority, armament, and equipment to the Tacony on the high seas, which vessel captured, bonded, and destroyed ten United States merchant vessels off the Atlantic coast.

Having recalled these facts, I must now beg leave to reaffirm as substantially correct my former statement, the statement to which Lord Stanley has excepted, namely: the Sumter, the Alabama, the

Florida, the Shenandoah, and other ships of war, were built, armed, equipped, and fitted out in British ports, and despatched therefrom by or through the agency of British subjects, and were harbored, sheltered, provided, and furnished, as occasion required, during their devastating career, in ports of the realm or in ports of the British colonies in nearly all parts of the globe.

Lord Stanley excuses the reception of the vessels complained of in British ports subsequently to their fraudulent escapes and armament, on the ground that when the vessels appeared in those ports they did so in the character of properly commissioned cruisers of the government of the so-styled Confederate States, and that they received no more shelter, provisions, or facilities than was due to them in that character. This position is taken by his lordship in view of the facts that, with the exception of the Sumter and the Florida, none of the vessels named were ever found in any place where a lawful belligerent commission could either be conferred or received. It would appear, therefore, that in the opinion of her Majesty's government, a British vessel, in order to acquire a belligerent character against the United States, had only to leave the British port where she was built clandestinely, and to be fraudulently armed, equipped,, and manned anywhere in Great Britain or in any foreign country or on the high seas, and in some foreign country or upon the high seas to set up and assume the title and privileges of a belligerent, without even entering the so-called Confederacy or ever coming within any port of the United States. I must confess that if a lawful belligerent character can be acquired in such a manner, then I am unable to determine by what different course of proceeding a vessel can become a pirate and an enemy to the peace of nations.

Lord Stanley defends the Queen's proclamation of neutrality by quoting against me certain utterances of the Supreme Court of the United States and of the District of Columbia, of which he says her Majesty's government has seen no refutation. Certainly it is not my purpose to refute these utterances. They were made by learned and loyal tribunals. Moreover, Lord Stanley understands them correctly as showing that, at the time they were pronounced, it was the opinion of those courts that a civil war was actually existing in the United States, and that it was existing at the time when the causes of action arose in the cases which the courts were adjudicat