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CHAPTER XVI

CIVIL WAR

HE key-note of Civil War diplomacy was the counterpart of military, tactics. Each strove to isolate

the South. Each "muddled through" to final victory. But with both the issue was for long uncertain. In diplomacy as on the battlefield, the weapons must be forged. But in the former the choice of agents was more happy. Here the government selected wisely from the first. Whereas for service on the battlefield, the rush of civilian volunteers under political commanders necessitated a winnowing of wheat from chaff not completed fully till the closing months of war.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD

The first place in the cabinet went naturally and properly to the President's chief rival, the disappointed candidate at the Convention in Chicago, William H. Seward, of New York, a man of much political experience as Governor of his State, and of late its Senator at Washington, a man capable of growth in his new office and destined to win a place as one of the greatest men who ever held it, but handicapped at first by serious limitations. It was unfortunate, for example, that Seward should approach his task with the conviction of his own superiority to Lincoln. Discipline and esprit de corps required subordination, which Lincoln tactfully secured. Nor when he was first called to office had Seward quite thought through the situation. He did not comprehend how utterly the North and South had grown apart. A narrow formula of traditional diplomacy which holds that when internal politics prove troublesome the proper remedy is foreign war became with Seward somewhat of a shibboleth. He fancied that a war with England

would unite the sundered sections, and even contemplated bringing one about. Had he not been over-ruled, secession would have been victorious then and there.1

But even in the process of finding himself, Seward made one decision of infinite wisdom and importance. On Great Britain's action, more than that of any other power, hung the issue of European recognition of the Confederate States. The mission to the Court of St. James was therefore of supreme importance. On its conduct depended in reality the fate of the Union. For a post so critical the administration made a brilliant choice in Charles Francis Adams, son and grandson of a President, their equal fully in service to his country. The credit here is wholly Seward's, for in his audience to the departing minister the President was scarcely courteous, and made upon his agent a most unfavorable impression, apparently indifferent to his opportunity to impress himself and his policies upon the intelligent ambassador.2

In a further sense, the choice was Seward's own, for though Adams did not know it, Charles Sumner was opposed. As Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate, he was, moreover, immediately concerned. As Henry Adams, who accompanied his father as a secretary, wrote long afterward, "Minister Adams had no friend in the Senate; he could hope for no favors, and he asked none. He thought it right to play the adventurer as his father and grandfather had done before him, without a

The minister sailed for England May 1, 1861, two weeks after the attack upon Fort Sumter. On May 13th, the British Government recognized the Confederacy as belligerent. This was not the full recognition which the South desired, but it marked a preliminary move in that direction and was to that extent a blow to the Union cause. That it was so

1 Adams, Charles Francis, Charles Francis Adams (Boston, 1900), 179-181.

2 Ibid. 144-146.

3 Adams, Henry, The Education of Henry Adams (Boston, 1918), p. 113.

intentioned could not be doubted. The ruling classes as a whole believed what Gladstone later put in words that Jefferson Davis was creating a new nation. The idea gave them pleasure.

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS AND HIS MISSION

The blow which thus on his arrival confronted Adams was the worst he had to face. From then until December his labors were in the nature of detail. An item possibly transcending this category, however, was the sudden decision of the United States to adhere to the Declaration of Paris of 1856. Five years earlier Secretary Marcy and the Pierce administration had refused adherence. The subject dropped; Buchanan and his Secretary Cass did not revive it. Those provisions of the "Declaration" which covered privateering, neutral goods, neutral flags, and blockades seemed restrictive to a country which in normal times avoided armament, but in times of stress relied on privateers. In the exigencies of Civil War it soon became apparent, though, that the Federal Government was destined to maintain a close blockade, and that the Confederates alone would have incentive to outfit privateers. Seward's willingness to accept the "Declaration" was therefore a belated effort to subscribe, on behalf of all the States including those seceding, to a doctrine which would deprive the latter of a useful weapon, or else impose upon the privateers the status of a pirate.5

Acting under Seward's instructions, our ministers at London and Paris agreed upon a date with Earl Russell and M. Thouvenel, foreign secretaries respectively, for signing simultaneously the Paris Declaration. But just when other obstacles appeared to be removed, the British minister safeguarded Southern interests, and the "belligerency" which Great Britain had previously recognized, by a supplementary declaration. It read as follows: "In affixing his signature to the Convention of this day between H. M. the Queen of

Great Britain and Ireland and the U. S. of A. the Earl Russell declares by order of H. M. that H. M. does not intend thereby to undertake any engagement which shall have any bearing direct or indirect on the internal differences now prevailing in the United States." " In other words Great Britain would not impose an ex post facto ruling on a state whose belligerency she recognized. To the Federal Government, however, the amendment of Lord Russell was wholly unacceptable. Adams refused it. And the United States has never yet become formally a party to the Paris Declaration, though its principles have been operative since 1898.

In spite of Seward's non-adherence to the Declaration of Paris, the nations most concerned, Great Britain and France, in the interests of their own commerce thus exposed to the hazards of war, endeavored to secure adoption by both the United States and the Confederacy of two provisions of the Declaration, namely that a neutral flag protects the goods of a belligerent, and that neutral goods are safe from seizure even when found on the ship of an enemy.

Lord Lyons, the British minister at Washington, could negotiate direct with Seward. The Confederacy he tried to reach through Robert Bunch, the British consul at Charleston. A consul is, of course, a mere commercial agent. His exequatur bestows no diplomatic status. In carrying on a diplomatic correspondence with revolutionists, the consul was guilty of a double indiscretion. Nevertheless through William H. Trescot he did communicate with President Davis. The Executive referred the issue to the Confederate Congress. And on August 13, 1861, the latter accepted the two articles in question, in fact the whole Declaration of Paris, reserving only a "right of privateering" which, so far as the two Europeans were concerned, offered no immediate inconvenience."

Lothrop, Thornton Kirkland, William Henry Seward (Boston and New York, 1899), p. 290, and Ford, Worthington Chauncey, A Cycle of Adams Letters 1861-1865 (2 vols., Boston, 1920), I, 41.

7 Cf. Bonham, Milledge L., The British Consuls in the Confederacy, (New York, 1911).

The activities of Bunch afforded Seward opportunity to embarrass Russell. The Secretary asserted that Bunch's conduct was a long step toward recognition of the Confederacy. Davis, it may be added, thought so too. Russell denied that recognition was at all intended. Seward rejoined that consuls could not be accepted as diplomatic agents. And as for Russell's claim that having recognized the Confederates as belligerents, it was logical to discuss with them the rights of neutrals, Seward declared that could not be admitted. Great Britain must uphold her obligations toward the Federal Government. Seward persisted in intent to revoke the consul's exequatur. But he assured Lord Russell that it would be cheerfully renewed "to any successor whom her Majesty may appoint, against whom no grave personal objections shall exist." Russell did not readily accept these views. He thought it hard that Britain should treat concerning issues in the seceding states with a government that had no authority over them. But Seward had his way.

It was apparent by the end of September, 1861, that British recognition, even if it should be granted, would not be immediate. Minister Adams learned from Lord Russell that Great Britain was restraining Spain from anything like rashness in Mexico. She was, moreover, treating Adams personally with increased consideration, and the outlook seemed more hopeful than at first. Henry Adams, whose entire outlook is nothing if not critical, assigned the credit for most of this improvement to Seward's masterful diplomacy. "I do assure you," he is writing to his brother Charles, "and I do pretend to knowledge on this point, that his direction of the foreign affairs of the nation has been one of very remarkable ability and energy, and to it we are indebted now in no small degree; in a very large degree, rather; to the freedom from external influence which allows us to give our whole strength to this rebellion. Never before for many years have we been so creditably represented in Europe or has the foreign policy of our

8 Ibid.