Lord Campbell had survived to hear his noble friend make this utterance, he must have wondered at the notice taken of his own (supposed?) advice, that the proclamation of blockade had left but one course to pursue!*

But the case against Earl Russell, founded upon contemporaneous evidence furnished by himself, by no means stops with his speech in Parliament of the 6th of May, announcing the government's decision, nor with the respective accounts of his first interview with Mr. Adams. Unfortunately for the foreign secretary, on the very day on which he announced in the House of Commons the ministerial determination to recognize the rebels as belligerents, he indited two dispatches, printed in the Parliamentary Blue Book for 1862, "North America, No. 3," in which he confidentially makes known to the English ambassadors at Paris and at Washington the motives which actuated the home government in coming to their decision. In that to Lord Cowley, (p. 1,)† he says: "The accounts which have reached them from some of her Majesty's consuls, coupled with what has appeared in the public prints, are sufficient to show that a civil war has broken out among the States which lately composed the American Union. Other nations have, therefore, to consider the light in which, with reference to that war, they are to regard the confederacy into which the southern States have united themselves; and it appears to her Majesty's government that, looking at all the circumstances of the case, they cannot hesitate to admit that such confederacy is entitled to be considered as a belligerent, and, as such, invested with all the rights and prerogatives of a belligerent." And, more pointedly still, in that to Lord Lyons, he writes (p. 2) as follows:

[Lord J. Russell to Lord Lyons.]

"FOREIGN OFFICE, May 6, 1861.

"MY LORD: Her Majesty's government are disappointed in not having received from you, by the mail which has just arrived, any report of the state of affairs, and of the prospects of the several parties with reference to the issue of the struggle which appears unfortunately to have commenced between them; but the interruption of the communication between Washington and New York sufficiently explains the non-arrival of New York dispatches.

"The account, however, which her Majesty's consuls at different ports were enabled to forward by the packet coincide in showing that whatever may be the final result of what cannot now be designated otherwise than as the civil war which has broken out between the several States of the late Union, for the present, at least, those States have separated into distinct confederacies, and as such are carrying on war against each other.

The question for neutral nations to consider is, what is the character of the war; and whether it should be regarded as a war carried on between parties severally in a position to wage war, and to claim the rights and to perform the obligations attaching to belligerents?

"Her Majesty's government consider that that question can only be answered in the affirmative. If the government of the northern portion of the late Union possesses the advantages inherent in long-established governments, the government of the southern portion has nevertheless duly constituted itself and carries on in a regular form the administration of the civil government of the States of which it is composed.

"Her Majesty's government, therefore, without assuming to pronounce upon the merits of the question on which the respective parties are at issue, can do no less than accept the facts presented to them. They deeply deplore the disruption of a confederacy with which they have at all times sought to cultivate the most friendly relations; they view with the greatest apprehension and concern the misery and desolation in which that disruption threatens to involve the provinces now arrayed in arms against each other; but they feel that they cannot question the right of the southern States to claim to be recognized as a belligerent, and, as such, invested with all the rights and prerogatives of a belligerent.

"I think it right to give your lordship this timely notice of the view taken by her Majesty's government of the present state of affairs in North America, and her Majesty's government do not wish you to make any mystery of that view.

"I shall send your lordship by an early opportunity such further information on these matters as may be required for your guidance; at present I have only to add that no expression of regret that you may employ at the present disastrous state of affairs *I would notice, in passing, how defective must have been the foreign secretary's memory of dates en this occasion, in coupling dispatches from the English admirals asking for instructions how to treat confederate cruisers with a period prior to May 6th, when the secretary himself had not yet received his official copy of the President's proclamation, and when Lord Lyons, in the dispatch inclosing it, of the date of April 22, (the same, received May 10, about which Historicus makes so great a demonstration,) only speaks of his (Lord Lyons) losing no time in communicating the proclamation to Admiral Milne. It is hard to see how Admiral Milne's answer to this communication could have got the start of Lord Lyons's dispatch, unless the admiral happened to be ashore at Halifax, and then it would be at most a single admiral, and not "admirals,” who had asked for instructions.

See Vol. I, page 36 of this compilation.

I give this dispatch entire, believing that it will constitute hereafter a memorable document in the history of the American civil struggle. See further comments on it hereafter, p. 30.

will too strongly declare the feelings with which her Majesty's government contemplate all the evils which cannot fail to result from it.

"I am, &c.,

"J. RUSSELL.”

These grave utterances have never before been reprinted in the United States, that I am aware of. The dispatches from which they are taken well deserve the attention of the American reader as tending to show (in judicial phraseology)-I will not go so far as to say as absolutely proving-that it was England, and not France, which took the initiative in recognizing the belligerency of the confederates. As a matter of fact, England, as is well known, issued her proclamation of neutrality a month earlier than the French Emperor his. But I would ask any reader, English or American, if there is anything here which sounds like "interfering with neutral commerce" by an American blockade, as spoken of by Earl Russell in his late apology for the motives for recognition, or anything that sounds like the opinion quoted by him on the part of the lord chancellor, "that there was no course but one to pursue, namely, to regard the blockade on the part of the United States as the exercise of a belligerent right"? On the contrary, is there not matter enough here to have disturbed the conscience of Lord Russell when he read such a sentence as that reported in Mr. Bright's speech in the Times of March 14?

"Is there not a consciousness in your heart of hearts that you have not behaved generously toward your neighbor? [Loud cries of 'No! and some cries of Hear, hear.'] Do we not feel in some way or other a reproving of conscience? [Renewed cries of 'No!] And in ourselves are we not sensible of this, that conscience tends to make us cowards at this particular juncture? ['No, no.']"

To put my readers for a moment in possession of the facts upon which the British secretary for foreign affairs was making these utterances, namely, that a flagraut subsisting war between the two "distinct confederacies of the late Union," and the constitution of the southern confederacy into a duly organized form of government, were the grounds upon which her Majesty's government "feel that they cannot question the right of the southern States to claim to be recognized as a belligerent," I would state that the assault upon Fort Sumter was made April 12, and that it surrendered two days after, the 14th. This was the first intimation that the government at Washington had that the insurrectionists were preparing to push matters so far as to take up arms. Then, as I believe, every American will bear me out in asserting the general belief at the North was that the act was only one of "State-right" hotheads, which the great body of secessionists would repudiate immediately, and that the insurrection, if it called for the use of arms to suppress it, would be entirely local in its character and easily subdued. At this time the federal government had not a soldier in the field, nor had it taken the first step in arms toward avenging the gross insult offered to its flag. Lord Lyons, himself, writing to Earl Russell, under date of April 15, (received in London April 30, Blue Book, No. 1, p. 19,) speaks of the President's "only having resolved to adopt coercive measures against the South," not of having actually taken any steps in that direction, down to the date of the 13th. Now there was just six days' interval between the receipt of this letter and the announcement in Parliament of the cabinet determination to recognize the confederates as belligerents.

Was it ever heard of before in history that insurgents who were only known to have been in arms one week, and against whom it was not yet certain that the present government would adopt any other coercion than that of an external blockade, or, perhaps, a "repossessing itself of the forts, places, and property which had been seized from the national authority," were to be recognized as belligerents on the ground of a subsisting flagrant war, and that they had become a duly organized government?

But of course it will not be left out of view that the irresistible and inevitable necessity which is alleged to have constrained the acknowledgment of confederate belligerency, and so of confederate equality, must have arisen out of the rebels' ability to carry on war by sea as well as by land; since it was only on the sea that the steps taken to encounter and suppress their insurrectionary proceedings would touch upon the interests of England and France. Had the insurrection been purely inland, I suppose that it might have gone on for twenty years, and even assumed larger proportions than it did, without disturbing the equanimity of the two great western powers. I believe the world have not yet heard that the great struggle of the Poles for independence within the last two or three years necessitated any recognition of Polish belligerency. Now, how was the fact in regard to the marine struggle between "the two distinct confederacies of the late Union," as Lord Russell styles them on the 6th day of May, 1861?

It will hardly be pretended, I suppose, that there was on that day any subsisting war on the ocean between the two confederacies, nor even, I believe, that there was a probability of any such war for some time to come, unless the confederates could subsidize a show of naval force by hiring or buying vessels from abroad. But is England a convert to the doctrine of fighting naval wars by proxy? Quite recently we have heard of the proposal of Switzerland to buy or hire a seaport on the Mediterranean and hoist a nautical national flag. Is England so far prepared to accept the maxim in the

commercial law of agency that qui facit per alium facit per se, that she is ready to come into a European understanding to acknowledge Switzerland as a naval power in case of future continental wars, supposing that she can carry out her proposed extra-territorial arrangement? Does England recognize the right of her New Zealand rebels at the present moment to come to Europe or America and hire fighting ships to beat off her blockade of their island?

However the decision of England may be on these points, Earl Russell and Historicus cannot alter the fact, that at the inception of the rebellion the confederates had no naval armament of their own, and had no reasonable expectation of ever procuring any one that could for a moment withstand the Union marine. Down to the present moment, can the operations of even such pseudo war vessels as the Alabama and the Florida be said to have amounted to a state of organized belligerency against the North? I will not ask whether those skulking corsairs have been able to maintain any show of contention on an equal footing, but whether they have been able to keep up anything which approached an existing state of organized warfare? Has it not been buccaneering and marauding, on their part, even within Historicus's own admission, rather than a state of legitimate naval warfare?

But at the date of May 6th, 1861, Jefferson Davis, as Historicus urges, had threatened to issue letters of marque and reprisal, and the safety of British seamen and British commerce required his instantaneous recognition as a marine belligerent. As if Captain Kidd should have laid claims to the honors of war, because he had thought to enlarge his field of usefulness by granting commissions to others to encourage them to imitate his own prowess! Does Historicus say in earnest that England had anything to fear from Davis's privateers, either in assailing British ships of war, or in pillaging British merchantmen? If he does, I can only pronounce it, in my estimation, a deception and a pretense. For confederate cruisers to assail their good friends, the British, at that day of their embryo existence, is an absurdity too glaring to deserve a moment's reflection. But, then, to see the remedy actually applied! There was danger of having unrecognized privateers visit and search British merchantmen; and so, to guard against it, these privateers must needs be raised to the full rank of belligerents, and the whole fleet of British merchant ships enjoined by her Majesty's proclamation to yield a passive submission to whatever overhauling and turning upsidedown it might please Mr. Davis's employés to inflict upon them! An extraordinary mode of getting rid of an evil, that of swallowing it whole!

But to go a step further in estimating British sincerity in protecting British commerce from the aggressions of privateers. The United States, as is well known, at the very earliest outbreak of the rebellion, hastened to propose to the two Western European powers to come into the declaration of Paris and abolish privateering-the only point of resistance upon which the federal government had hitherto stood out. What was the English and French answer to the proposal? "We will not accept your proposal without the reservation of the full rights of your insurgent subjects to commission these privateers; for, otherwise, we should not be treating them on a footing of equality with you." So that England and France purposely kept alive the prospect of privateering depredations, and for the avowed object of enabling the rebels to carry on war to better advantage against their lawful government. I think very little of warding off a threatened commercial danger by such a process of purposely keeping it on foot and insisting upon its indefinite increase.

But what danger had England and France to dread from aggressions on the part of northern cruisers, if that bugbear is to constitute the constraining motive for recognition of belligerency at their hands? I believe I can best answer this question by requesting my reader to put himself into the current of events at the date of the occurrence of the Trent affair, and to bring before his mind the condition of things connected with that event. That memorable historical incident occurred in November, 1861, some seven or eight months after the attack on Sumter. Recalling, then, the relative attitude of the two countries, England and the United States, toward each other at that period, and remembering the sensation excited by that (probably) first act of visitation and search by an American war ship of an English merchantman-a case where, in the American view, Captain Wilkes fell short of his duty in not bringing in the Trent for adjudication, instead of letting her go again after a few hours' detention-can the reader believe for a moment that English commerce up to that point had experienced much annoyance from northern cruisers, though the right of visitation and search on their part had then been in full force for upward of seven months?

If Historieus quotes the fable of the wolf and lamb to illustrate any part of the relations subsisting between the two countries during the civil struggle-an illustration which he thinks pertinent to this complaint about premature recognition-I submit whether England, on this occasion of the Trent affair, should not justly take the part of the wolf, standing ready from the 6th day of May, 1861, till the 3d day of December following, to snap up any American lamb that should happen to trouble the stream of her commercial navigation. At any rate, with her lamb-like redress of the Trent injury, as Historicns would probably call it, is it very probable that she had previously suffered

from many antecedent aggressions upon her neutral rights by American public ships, or that if any such had really occurred, she had let them go by unnoticed?

But since Earl Russell and Historicus challenge an inquiry into the friendliness of the motives which impelled this sudden stroke of British diplomacy in recognizing confederate belligerency before there had been any speck of war on the sea and none on the land of more than six days' duration, by their new theory of protection to British maritime rights, I beg to call attention to another contemporaneous exposition of the reasons of state which probably prompted the measure, quite at variance with those now set up by them for the first time.

A debate occurred in the House of Lords on the 16th of May, 1861, three nights after the announcement of the proclamation of neutrality, and in which the inquiry was, what would be its effect upon privateering and upon Englishinen who should take part on the confederate side. The declarations made by the leading peers upon this head were so significant and decisive, that I desire to urge them upon the attention of any who are disposed to conclude that English recognition of confederate belligerency was a necessity and not a choice.

Says Lord Derby, who struck the key-note of the measure, (I quote from Hansard, v. 162, p. 2082, &c.:)

"The northern States must not be allowed to entertain the opinion that they are at liberty so to strain the law as to convert privateering into piracy and visit it with death. The punishment under such circumstances of persons entitled to her Majesty's protection would not be viewed with indifference, but would receive the most serious consideration by this country."

Lord Chelmsford (ex-Lord Chancellor) was still more explicit :

*

*

"He should wish to know from his noble and learned friend, (Lord Brougham,) whether he meant to contend, that if an English ship were commissioned by those States, (the confederate,) and fitted out as a privateer against the federal government, her crew would under such circumstances be guilty of piracy? British subjects so engaged would no doubt be answerable to the laws of their own country for an infraction of the foreign enlistment act; but it was perfectly clear, on principles of international law, that they would not be liable to be treated as pirates.

*

If, he might add, the southern confederacy had not been recognized by us as a belligerent power, he agreed with his noble and learned friend that any Englishman aiding them by fitting out a privateer against the federal government would be guilty of piracy."

So, Lord Chancellor Campbell, the very authority quoted by Earl Russell for the declaration of neutrality being based on President Lincoln's proclamation of blockade, expressed himself with equal explicitness and significance:

"If, after the publishing of the present proclamation, any English subject were to enter the service of either of the belligerents, there could be no doubt,

that although he would be guilty of a breach of the laws of his own country, he ought not to be regarded as a pirate for acting under a commission from a state admitted to be entitled to the exercise of belligerent rights, and carrying on which might be called a justum bellum. Anybody dealing with a man under these circumstances as a pirate and putting him to death, would, he contended, be guilty of murder."

Certainly the Lord Chancellor does not speak here as if the protection of British commerce required an immediate manifesto to the American government, warning them against interfering with British merchant ships and British nentral rights, but, on the contrary, the protection sought for seems to be that of confederate privateersmen, whom Lord Derby would not allow to be hung, and the protection of British shipbuilders and British sailors from the penalties of piracy, to which both the Lord Chancellor and the ex-Lord Chancellor say they would have been liable, but for this measure of British foresight and British self-aggrandizement.

On this evidence, I submit to my readers, with entire confidence, whether it is not an afterthought on Earl Russell's and Historicus's part, in contending at this late day that there was no unfriendliness on the part of the British government in hastening to recognize the confederates as belligerents, but that they were constrained to do so in consequence of the establishment of the American blockade. I ask, rather, whether these two propositions are not so far made to appear:

1. That England hastened to raise the confederates to the status of a belligerent power under the pretence of an existing state of war, when as yet only an insurrectionary blow had been struck at Fort Sumter, and no more than one week was known to have elapsed within which the American government could decide whether the insurrection would need suppression by arms, and when as yet that government had not put the first soldier into the field nor fired the first gun toward such a suppression.

2. That the motive for recognition of southern belligerency was much more to throw protection over confederate privateers and their crews, and to aid the rebel cause with contributions of English volunteers and English naval armaments and equipments, than to guard English commerce from being harassed or interfered with by American cruisers.

II. THE AMERICAN PROCLAMATION OF BLOCKADE NOT THE OCCASION OF THE RECOGNITION OF CONFEDERATE BELLIGERENCY, BECAUSE, SUPPOSING THE FORMER TO HAVE BEEN OFFICIALLY COMMUNICATED, IT WAS NOT KNOWN TO HAVE BEEN ENFORCED AT THE DATE OF THE LATTER; AND FURTHERMORE, IF ENFORCED, WAS NOT SUCH AN ACT AS OUGHT TO HAVE BEEN INTERNATIONALLY TREATED AS AN ACT OF WAR.

I have to say, on this second head, that no such justification can be set up for the recognition of confederate belligerency as that of the establishment of the American blockade, because no such blockade was known in England to have been established at that date; and because the proclamation for a prospective blockade was just such an act as called for explanation from international comity, before being treated with the harsh construction that raised a band of insurrectionists to the level of equality with their rightful government.

Dates are of importance again on this head. President Lincoln issued two proclamations of blockade, the first dated April 19, and announcing an intention to blockade the ports of seven States-South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas; and the second, dated April 27, including in addition to the above the two States of Virginia and North Carolina, which had since given in their adhesion to the rebellion. Both these proclamations, I now submit, were only prospective in their nature, and on their face intended merely for measures for the suppression of domestic insurrection, but (more importantly for present purposes) were never actually enforced till the 30th day of April.

This last point is established on British authority, by evidence of British consuls resident in America, collected in the Blue Books for 1862 ("North America, No. 8.") The earliest blockade was that established at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay by Commodore Pendergrast, April 30. Other points were blockaded at the following dates: Charleston, May 13; Mobile, May 27; New Orleans, May 28, &c.

If further corroboration were wanted of the fact that the earliest date at which the American blockade took effect was April 30, it will be found in the decision of the United States Supreme Court in "the Prize Cases," reported in 2d Black's Reports, p. 635, where the precise question of this date arose, involving captures of many hundreds of thousands of dollars in value. So that we may proceed in this discussion with the accepted starting-point, that no American blockade took effect till April 30, 1861; and that then there was the further grace of fifteen days for outward-bound vessels, and of being warned off for the first time for inward-bound vessels, ignorant of the establishment of the blockade.

Now, it needs no great amount of calculation to demonstrate that an event occurring at sea on the American coast April 30, and so not known on shore till some time later, could not have been known in England so soon as May 6. The submarine telegraph had long before ceased to operate, and we may safely assume that Commodore Prendergast's operations were not known in England at that date, nor even as early as May 13. The determination to issue the proclamation of neutrality, I conclude, then, with perfect confidence, did not rest upon any knowledge of the American blockade being actually in force.

I next submit that the President's proclamation of April 19 (and there is no difference in this respect with regard to the proclamation of the 27th) is merely prospective in its nature-declaratory of an intent to establish a blockade in future-and that it purports to be a mere municipal or domestic measure for the collection of revenue and the restoration of domestic good order.

That it was merely prospective in its nature and declaratory of a future intent is judicially settled by the federal Supreme Court in the case just quoted from the 2d of Black's Reports. Both portions of the bench, the majority who gave the decision of the court, and the dissenting minority, harmonize in opinions on this point. If it were worth while; I would stop to cite strong dicta by both sets of judges to corroborate this statement; but I deem it quite unnecessary, because I find that Earl Russell took the same view of it in the dispatch which he wrote to Lord Cowley, the British ambassador at Paris, May 6, already quoted. In that dispatch (p. 1) * he says: "President Lincoln, in behalf of the northern portion of the late United States, has issued a proclamation declaratory of an intention to subject the ports of the southern portion of the late Union to a rigorous blockade," &c.

So that on the very day of resolving to declare neutrality in the existing American war, Earl Russell was well aware that the American proclamation was only prospective. The same thing was well understood by Lord Lyons on the other side of the water, who, writing home to the foreign secretary as late as May 4, reports to him that Mr. Seward had written to say "that the proclamation is mere notice of an intention to carry the blockade into effect, and the existence of the blockade will be made known in proper form by the blockading vessels."

Having thus established that the blockade was merely a prospective measure, and so understood at the time, I would ask if Earl Russell, or Historicus, or any other

* See Vol. I, p. 36, of this compilation.