Foreign Office of the date at which the document to which it is prefixed first reaches the government in London. Thus, in this instance, this dispatch of Lord Lyons's of April 27, 1861, with its inclosure, is shown to have been received in Downing street "May

14," 1861.

Here, then, by this clerical indorsement of three words, made in the ordinary routine of business, at the moment of receiving the dispatch from the hands of the courier, is the voucher to all time that the British government did not wait to be officially notified of the proclamation of the American blockade, much less of the actual establishment of the blockade, before deciding upon their attitude toward the American struggle, but hurried out with their announcement of rebel belligerency and their own declaration of British neutrality twenty-four hours in advance of any such notification actually reaching them. The British government, to be sure, had several days earlier, viz: May 6, announced through Lord Russell, in Parliament, their intention to take this step; but here is proof positive of the actual consummation of that intention without waiting for any formal communication of the action of the United States as to the blockade in either particular. And it may be added to this statement of British precipitancy that this hurried haste to proclaim a state of war was demonstrated, notwithstanding that government had been already notified that an official notification of the proclamation of the United States blockade might be expected in London any moment.

And yet, in contravention of this great historical fact, which I am ready to believe had for the moment been overlooked by his lordship, as well as by his prompter Historicus, (who held forth to the same effect in the Times the day before,) Lord Russell made the deliberate and unqualified assertion in the British House of Lords on the 23d day of March, 1865, that British neutrality in the American struggle, as inaugurated by the Queen's proclamation of May 13, 1861, was the necessary constrained result of the prior proclamation by President Lincoln of the first American blockade of April 19, and that Lord Chancellor Campbell and the other law advisers of the Crown had given the Cabinet an opinion at that time, prior to May 6, 1861, that this latter step on the part of the United States government not only justified but necessitated the British manifesto. This declaration of the foreign secretary's, passing unchallenged and uncontradicted by any utterance on either side of the Atlantic for several weeks, became formalized into an accepted and very convenient dogma for the purposes of the ministry, and so was again affirmed with more confidence than before both by Earl Russell in the House of Lords, and by Lord Palmerston, the prime minister, in the House of Commons, on the night of May 15 following.

It was the communication in the Boston Advertiser of May 3, 1865, on "Hasty recognition of rebel belligerency," that constituted, so far as I am aware, the first denial of this position of the British ministry that ever appeared. That article only reached London a day or two after the debate of May 15 (last referred to) came off, and first set a-going, in a very private and limited sphere, a contradiction of the new doctrine, unfortunately not to the same extent and with the same satisfactory conclusiveness which it would have had if I had at that moment been aware of the existence of the dispatch marked "received May 14," before referred to.

As it was, I must confess that it was no little mortification that, long after the publication of my pamphlet in May, 1865, and long after Historicus, in October of that year, had attempted (as I must characterize it) to answer the exposé of dates there put together, and long after Lord Russell, in his official correspondence with Mr. Adams touching this same subject-matter, (I refer particularly to his letter to Mr. Adams, of August 30, 1865,) had pleaded specially to these dates, I discovered that I had left out nearly half of my case through overlooking the important document which is now brought forward for the first time. I had failed to meet with that paper, partly through supposing that the British Blue Books for 1862 gave the whole of the parliamentary documents relating to our civil war up to that date, [the Blue Books for 1862, in fact, gave much earlier documents relating to the American civil war than this of April 27, 1861,] and partly through Historicus's own unfair citation (as I must consider it) of a prior dispatch of Lord Lyons to Lord Russell, of April 22, 1861, quoted by Historiens in his letter to the Times of March 22, 1865, already alluded to, and to which I shall again presently recur more at large.

I bespeak the reader's patience for a few minutes longer, if he begins to fear that I have in view only the correction of a narrow point in chronology, by the stress which I lay upon the precise dates of certain diplomatic communications. A few words more, and I believe he will be satisfied that the discussion connects itself with points of ger eral interest and of current international importance.

Now, say the late British foreign secretary, Lord Russell, and his devoted thoug not always reliable champion, Historicus, to my exposé of the document marked "received May 14," in effect: "Why be so precise about dates and forms, when it is an acknowledged fact that the British ministry had some actual knowledge of the declared intention of the United States government to establish a blockade ?" But what knowledge, and how much, I ask? That is just the point to be inquired into.

If, as the British government contend, (and they have never yet retracted their

assertion,) rebel recognition was an inevitable necessity, forced upon them by President Lincoln's first blockade proclamation, and that step was one, the consequences of which to us might be a prolongation of the civil war for years-to say nothing of the thousands of lives and the untold millions of treasure which it actually cost us-ought not at least these two things to have been ascertained about the American proclamation, before its constraining necessity was yielded to-first, that the British cabinet were in possession of the whole text of the American state paper; and, secondly, that what they had of it came duly vouched for under official forms, as the declared announcement by the United States of their solemn resolve?

Let us see what actual knowledge the Palmerston ministry had of the American blockade at the date of May 6, 1861, the date of Lord Russell's parliamentary announcement of the government's intent to acknowledge rebel belligerency, or even down to May 10, the date which his lordship afterward selected as the best on which to make a stand in justification of British recognition.

Says Historicus, rearguing the matter in his late paper of January 24, (Times of the 25th,) with all of his usual boldness, not to say recklessness of expression:

"The very terms of the proclamation of blockade of April 19, 1861, were published in the Times of May 4, 1861, nine days before the proclamation of neutrality was signed, and eleven days before it was published."

So far, Historicus, I have looked at the Times of May 4, 1861, and the obscure paragraph on its fifth page of that day, headed, "The Blockade of the Southern Ports," which must be the one referred to, as there is no other pretense of an American proclamation in that paper, and invite all interested in this discussion, if they have opportu nity, to do the same. Having done so, I would next beg them to compare the paragraph there given with the authentic text of President Lincoln's blockade proclamation, as printed in the United States Statutes at Large, appendix to volume twelve, or in the Parliamentary Blue Book of 1861, as the inclosure to Lord Lyon's dispatch of April 27 of that year, before quoted. I would take the liberty to ask the favor of you, Mr. Editor, to reprint the two papers side by side, as an annex to this article, if I thought the capacity of your journal would permit of the necessary incumbrance.

As it is, will it be believed by my readers, who have not the time or opportunity to make the comparison suggested for themselves, and who are willing to take my word for the result instead, that the supposed reprint of "the very terms of the blockade proclamation contains more than twenty errors of omission and interpolation-one of these omissions covering three paragraphs and ten entire lines; that the reprint altogether leaves out the belligerent characteristics of "prize” and “piracy”—the gist, as one would suppose, of belligerent recognition, if there is any belligerency about it; that it drops any mention of an intended enforcement of the "revenue" laws, which the genuine instrument sets forth as the justifying occasion of its own promulgation; and that, finally, it does not even purport to bear the official signatures of the President and Secretary of State of the United States as vouchers of a regular State paper? No wonder that the Times passed by such a poor apology for the text of so important a State paper as this for one day (the London dailies generally gave it on the 3d) and condemned it on the next to the most obscure corner of its sheet, in small type! No wonder, also, that when it finally printed it, it altogether omitted to give any credible source from which it had derived such an extraordinary document.

Is it upon such a poor piece of governmental authenticity as this that Lord Russell will say that he and his ministerial associates, after legal consultation, officially acted, when with so pronounced an emphasis they declared themselves called upon to recog nize the rebels as a belligerent power, and " as such invested with all the rights and prerogatives of a belligerent;" and for four long years held the United States to the rigor of the game, as over a foreign public war, with all its accompanying responsibilities to foreign nations? Will Sir Roundell Palmer (the only survivor of the law-advisers of the Crown of that date, as I believe) acknowledge that it was upon this fine-print paragraph, in an almost unnoticeable corner of the Times, that he gave his opinion as a jurist and as a statesman that Great Britain was required to treat both parties in this civil strife, barely three weeks old, as equals?

And yet I venture to assert, with the greatest confidence, that, down to May 6, 1861, and even till May 10-twenty-one days after the actual publication of the full text of the President's proclamation in the Washington National Intelligencer of April 20, 1861— no other scrap of knowledge in reference to the true nature of that State paper, this imperfect telegraphic summary of the Times of the 4th, and of the other London papers of the 3d of May, was in the possession of the British government, or of any private person in the United Kingdom.

As this matter may appear somewhat surprising to any one who merely takes into account the mere lapse of time, between April 19 and May 10, it may be worth pausing a moment to clear it up. I have once before, however, gone quite fully into the subject, (in a note to page 6 of the pamphlet referred to,) and that explanation I am quite sure inust at some time have met Historicus's eye, inasmuch as he refers to that pam

phlet by way of reflection on Lord Hobart at a point only two lines before making that sweeping assertion about the accurate reprint of the Times, which I have just noticed. In explanation, then, of its taking twenty-one days (between April 19 and May 10, 1861) for the full text of the American proclamation to reach London, and only then, after such an interval, in newspaper form, it is to be borne in mind that on the 19th of April occurred that interruption of communication between Washington and New York which followed the attack of the Baltimore mob upon the Massachusetts troops passing through that city to the defense of the capital, and which cut off all transmission of telegraphic and postal news to the northern cities for upwards of a week. On the morning of April 20, however, before the telegraph had finally ceased working, the agent of the Associated Press telegraphed to the leading newspapers of New York and other Atlantic cities what purported to be a summary or abstract of the proclamation then just issued. This summary contained just the imperfections, or substantially the same, with those specified in the reprint published in the Times of May 4, and went across the Atlantic by the steamer which reached Queenstown May 2.

Now between the 20th and the 27th of April, no other American newspaper besides the Washington Intelligencer, so far as I am aware, undertook to reprint the veritable and literal text of the President's proclamation of the 19th. Indeed, to this day, I doubt whether any other newspaper in the United States except the Intelligencer contains it. On or after the 27th of April, 1861, however, when the embargo on communication between Washington and New York had been removed, a dispatch from Lord Lyons, dated April 22, and containing a newspaper copy (doubtless the National Intelligencer) of the proclamation, went forward to the Foreign Office. It only reached the Foreign Office, however, on the 10th day of May, and is the dispatch which I erroneously supposed in my pamphlet of 1865 (p. 5)* to contain the officially-communicated copy of that document, and there so spoke of it. I was mainly misled into this mistake, as I think, by what I consider Historicus's uncandid quotation of this dispatch in his letter of March 22, 1865, which letter I commented on at large in the body of the pamphlet, and reprinted in full in the appendix. It was this letter, also, as I believe, which mainly led Lord Russell into his parliamentary declaration of March 23, 1865, above referred to, and which again led both Lord Russell and Lord Palmerston into their repetition of the same error, May 15, following.

As Historicus says, in his late letter of the 24th ultimo, that he writes "to justify his own accuracy and fair dealing," and as Lord Russell has been about as uncandid as Historiens in quoting this letter in his official communication on this subject to the United States, I beg again a moment's delay to expose the omission complained of and to connect it with the current line of my discussion.

Says Lord Lyons, in his letter of April 22, 1861, just referred to, (which reached the Foreign Office May 10, but only by means of a special messenger between Washington and New York, as I have heard,) after mentioning the fact of inclosing in that dispatch the President's first blockake proclamation:

"I am informed that an official notification of the blockade will be sent to the foreign legations here in the course of the day." (Blue Book, 1862, North America, No. 1, p. 23.)

It was the omission in Historicus's letter (of March 18, 1865,) of this passage in italics, just cited, when he was apparently quoting the whole body of Lord Lyons's dispatch, which led me to believe that the copy of the proclamation mentioned by Lord Lyons as being inclosed in that dispatch must be an officially communicated copy, constituting the regular notification by the American Executive to the British government of the intended American blockade. Afterwards in reading over (in some other connection) the whole text of Lord Lyons's dispatch, I was put upon inquiry as to the “official notification" there expected, and found the subsequent genuine diplomatic notification in the collection of Parliamentary papers for 1861, volume 65, as before alluded to. For some reason or other it seems that the "official notification" did not take place "in the course of the day," as Lord Lyons anticipated, but was deferred till the 27th.

Now, I will not stop to consider Historicus's "accuracy and fair dealing" in omitting-I might say suppressing-such a paragraph as this, when the very question under consideration at that moment was the "premature concession of belligerent rights" -Historicus's object in that communication being to convict Mr. John Bright of trumping up an American grievance; but I pass on to notice an almost equal want of candor in the foreign secretary, in his dispatch to Mr. Adams of August 30, 1865, as already hinted at. Says his lordship, officially discussing this same subject of hasty recognition: "The course of her Majesty's government followed the course of events in America. "It appears by the Times of the 3d of May, 1861, that I stated in the House of Commons on the preceding day, (May 2,) her Majesty's government heard the other day that the Confederate States have issued letters of marque, and to-day we have heard that it is intended there shall be a blockade of all the ports of the southern States!

"On the 6th of May, I stated in the House of Commons the intention of the government, formed after due deliberation, to recognize the southern States as belligerents.

*See pp. 15, 16, ante.

"On the 10th of May I received a dispatch from Lord Lyons, making the following announcement: I have the honor to inclose copies of a proclamation of the president of the southern confederacy, inviting application for letters of marque; and also a proclamation of the President of the United States, declaring that southern privateers will be treated as pirates, and announcing a blockade of the southern ports!

"Thereupon the intention of her Majesty's government, previously announced, was carried into effect, and the proclamation of the 13th May, 1861, was issued."

No mention here of "I am informed that an official notification of the blockade will be sent to the foreign legations here (Washington) in the course of the day;" nor again of his (the foreign secretary's) receipt, four days later, of the official notification marked "Received May 14!" Had not his lordship, like myself, been put upon notice that the regular official communication of the President's blockade proclamation was to have been expected in London any day after "May 10;" or had he perchance been reading Historicus's quotation of Lord Lyons's dispatch of April 22, with that paragraph left out? If, on the other hand, statesman-like, Earl Russell contented himself with nothing short of the inspection of the original dispatches themselves, when he sat down to pen his important reply to Mr. Adams of August 30, 1865, from which I have just quoted, had not his lordship's attention unavoidably been turned by the full text of Lord Lyon's letter of April 22, (including the suppressed passage,) to the discovery of the fact that the copy there spoken of was not the officially communicated copy, and so been directed to Lord Lyons's later dispatch, dated April 27, wherein he found the veritable governmental notification inclosed, and whereon he found indorsed those inconvenient words and figures, "Received May 14?"

Did or did not Earl Russell come to a knowledge of this dispatch of April 27 in the way suggested; or (what is more probable) had he not a distinct and perfect recollection of its contents and of the date of the official receipt by himself of the first American proclamation of blockade, by the unaided exercise of memory, without reference to official dispatches or to any imperfect abstracts of them by newspaper correspondents! If he had not such knowledge, or did not care to possess himself of it, was he qualified to be her Majesty's principal secretary of state for foreign affairs? If he had such knowledge, was it exactly candid and ingenuous for him to say that "the course of her Majesty's government followed [the italics are mine] the course of events in America;" and then, after quoting from the dispatch of April 22, what he calls "a proclamation of the President of the United States, announcing a blockade of the southern ports," [the italics are here his lordship's,] to add "Thereupon the intention of her Majesty's government was carried into effect" and the neutrality proclamation issued? [The italics in the last paragraph are again my own.] I ask is it quite fair for Earl Russell to write history like this, unless he means to be understood that the proclamation to which he refers as inclosed in Lord Lyons's dispatch was only a newspaper copy of President Lincoln's state paper, and that upon that newspaper copy-" thereupon," in his lordship's phrase—her Majesty's government proclaimed neutrality?

I need not ask whether Earl Russell-veteran and able British foreign secretary, as he has been at various long periods of English history-is in the habit of practicing diplomacy upon intelligence gathered from the newspapers, nor whether, when it is a question of the due and legal establishment of a blockade by a foreign government, he is in the habit of searching the Times for such paragraphs as that which I have shown seems to satisfy Historicus's requirements. The "paper blockades" which Lord Russell has been accustomed to hear spoken of in his political life. of half a century and upward, I fancy were never synonymous in his understanding with newspaper blockades. But must not his lordship concede that if "her Majesty's government thereupon carried into effect" their previously announced intention upon anything contained in Lord Lyons's dispatch of April 22, 1861, that, for the first time within his experience, the British government, speaking through his own words, had recognized the binding efficacy of a newspaper blockade? Or is Earl Russell prepared to add to the science of public law the new classification of: 1. Blockades; 2. Paper blockades; and 3. Newspaper

blockades?

But if anything were wanting to show the difference between newspaper reports of a blockade and the necessary formalities attending the notification and recognition of one for governmental purposes, it is strikingly furnished by another diplomatic document, making part of this same Blue Book for 1861, containing the dispatch "received May 14." The document has never before been reprinted in this country, and will be read with curious interest by my readers, I think, as illustrative of the sharpness of the game to which British ministers and diplomatists held us accountable over the establishment of the blockade. The document which I am now about to quote follows on immediately after that "received May 14" at the next page of the Blue Book, and reached the Foreign Office "May 17." Its purport speaks for itself. I give so much as is appropriate to my purpose, taking again the liberty to emphasize a few lines by

italics:

"[No. 2.]

"Lord Lyons to Lord J. Russell. (Received May 17.)

"WASHINGTON, May 2, 1861.

"MY LORD: I have the honor to inclose a copy of the note by which I acknowledged the receipt of Mr. Seward's note of the 27th ultimo, announcing the intention of this government to set on foot a blockade of the southern ports. I was careful so to word my note as to show that I accepted Mr. Seward's communication as an announcement of an intention to set on foot a blockade, not as a notification of the actual commencement of one. I believe that most of my colleagues made answers in the same sense.

#

*

"LYONS."

I subjoin Lord Lyons's note to Mr. Seward, carrying out the purpose indicated. I fear that not one in ten of my readers will be able to take the point of it, yet I beg them to try. There was a grip intended, however, and actually enforced. If the reader will be so good as to emphasize for himself the two words "will be " before "set on foot" in the middle of the letter, he will appreciate Lord Lyons's diplomacy.

"[Inclosure 1 in No. 2.]

"Lord Lyons to Mr. Seward.

"WASHINGTON, April 29, 1861. "The undersigned, her Britannic Majesty's envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the United States, has the honor to acknowledge the receipt of a note of the day before yesterday's date from the Secretary of State, communicating to him a proclamation which announces among other things that a blockade of the ports of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, will be set on foot in pursuance of the law of the United States and the law of nations, and that for this purpose a competent force will be posted so as to prevent the entrance and exit of vessels.

The Secretary of State has, moreover, done the undersigned the honor to inform him in the same note that it is intended to set on foot also a blockade of the ports of Virginia and North Carolina.

"Hon. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, &c., §c.”

. "LYONS.

Now can any one read over this simply-worded and yet bitingly-severe diplomatic communication and not feel pursuaded that the agents of the British government, at the very moment of the first announcement of the American blockade, well understood and practiced on the strictness of the forms of the law of blockade? Is there any doubt that her Majesty's foreign secretary at London would have been as wary, in general, in accepting notification of the American proclamation of blockade as the British minister was at Washington, in the particular of its being only accepted “as an announcement of an intention to set on foot a blockade, not as a notification of the actual commencement of one?" Let us suppose that the case were reversed, and that for some reason or other the United States had been insisting, for their own advantage, that the British government had received actual notice of the proclamation of the American blockade at as early a day as May 4, and for this purpose were urging such an argument as that put forward by Lord Russell in his dispatch of August 13, 1865. What do my readers believe would have been the answer of the British foreign secretary to such a plea on the part of the American government? Do they believe that Lord Russell would have answered, "that the advisers of her Majesty's government had read the fine print republication by the Times of the American State paper, and were satisfied with its sufficiency ?" Or "that her Majesty's ministry had sent them by somebody a National Intelligencer of April 20, with President Lincoln's proclamation set out at full length, and would therefore consider themselves duly notified?"

But I will not abuse my reader's patience with the further pursuit of such an inquiry. I leave it to his candid judgment whether, on the whole, Lord Russell must not be considered in all probability to have been fully cognizant of the date of the official receipt at the Foreign Office of the governmental notification of the American blockade on May. 14, 1861, at the moment of penning the paragraphs which I have quoted from his dispatch of August 30, 1865; and whether with that knowledge he was not attempting to set forth an uncandid, not to say unfair, connection between British neutrality and the initiative step in the promulgation of the American blockade.

Of course I do not leave out of sight in my reproduction of Lord Lyons's note to Mr. Seward, (dispatch "No. 2, received May 17,") that here is proof positive that Lord Lyons at the very moment of receiving the official notification of the American proclamation, understood it to be only a declaration of an intent on the part of the United States government to establish a future blockade, and took care to signify that the British