DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 



391 



Louisiana. The national forces hold even this small 

 territory in close blockade and siege. 



This Government, if required, does not hesitate to 

 submit its achievements to the test of comparison ; 

 and it maintains that in no part of the world, and in 

 no times, ancient or modern, has a nation, when ren- 

 dered all unready for combat by the enjoyment of 

 eighty years of almost unbroken peace, so quickly 

 awakened at the alarm of sedition, put forth energies 

 so vigorous, and achieved successes so signal and ef- 

 fective as those which have marked the progress of 

 this contest on the part of the Union. 



M. Drouyn de 1'Huys, I fear, has taken other light 

 than the correspondence of this Government for his 

 guidance in ascertaining its temper and firmness. He 

 has probably read of divisions of sentiment among 

 those who hold themselves forth as organs of public 

 opinion here, and has given to them an undue impor- 

 tance. It is to be remembered that this is a nation of 

 thirty millions, civilly divided into forty-one States 

 and Territories, which cover an expanse hardly less 

 than Europe ; that the people are a pure democracy, 

 exercising everywhere the utmost freedom of speech 

 and suffrage ; that a great crisis necessarily produces 

 vehement as well as profound debate, with sharp col- 

 lisions of individual, local, and sectional interests, sen- 

 timents, and ambitions ; and that this heat of contro- 

 versy is increased by the intervention of speculations, 

 interests, prejudices, and passions from every other 

 part of the civilized world. It is, however, through 

 such debates that the agreement of the nation upon 

 any subject is habitually attained, its resolutions form- 

 ed, and its policy established. "While there has been 

 much difference of popular opinion and favor concern- 

 ing the agents who shall carry on the war, the princi- 

 ples on which it shall be waged, and the means with 

 which it shall be prosecuted, Si. Drouyn de 1'Huys has 

 only to refer to the statute book of Congress and the 

 Executive ordinances to learn that the national activity 

 has hitherto been and yet is, as efficient as that of any 

 other nation, whatever its form of government, ever 

 was, under circumstances of equally grave import to 

 its peace, safety, and welfare. Not one voice has been 

 raised anywhere, out of the immediate field of the in- 

 surrection, in favor of foreign intervention, of media- 

 tion, of arbitration, or of compromise, with the relin- 

 quishment of one acre of the national domain, or the 

 surrender of even one constitutional franchise. At the 

 same time, it is manifest to the world that our re- 

 sources are yet abundant, and our credit adequate to 

 the existing emergency. 



What II. Drouyn de 1'Huys suggests is that this 

 Government shall appoint commissioners to meet, on 

 neutral ground, commissioners of the insurgents. He 

 supposes that in the conferences to be thus held, recip- 

 rocal complaints could be discussed, and in place of 

 the accusations which the North and South now 

 mutually cast upon each other, the conferees would be 

 engaged with discussions of the interests which divide 

 them. He assumes, further, that the commissioners 

 would seek, by means of well-ordered and profound 

 deliberation, whether these interests are definitively 

 irreconcilable, whether separation is an extreme that 

 can no longer be avoided, or whether the memories of 

 a common existence, the ties of every kind which have 

 made the North and the South one whole Federative 

 State, and have borne them on to so high a degree 

 of prosperity, are not more powerful than the causes 

 which have placed arms in the hands of the two popu- 

 lations. 



The suggestion is not an extraordinary one, and it 

 may well have been thought by the Emperor of the 

 French, in the earnestness of his benevolent desire for 

 the restoration of peace, a feasible one. But when M. 

 Drouyn de 1'Huys shall come to review it in the light 

 in which it must necessarily be examined in this coun- 

 try, I think he can hardly fail to perceive that it amounts 

 to nothing less than a proposition that, while this Gov- 

 ernment is engaged in suppressing an armed insurrec- 

 tion, with the purpose of maintaining the constitutional 

 national authority, and preserving the integrity of the 



country, it shall enter into diplomatic discussion 

 with the insurgents upon the questions whether that 

 authority shall not be renounced, and whether the 

 country shall not be delivered over to disunion, to be 

 quickly followed by ever increasing anarchy. 



If it'were possible for the Government of the United 

 States to compromise the national authority so far as 

 to enter into such debates, it is not easy to perceive 

 what good results could be obtained by them. 



The commissioners must agree in recommending 

 either that the Union shall stand or that it shall be 

 voluntarily dissolved ; or else they must leave the vital 

 question unsettled, to abide at last the fortunes of the 

 war. The Government has not shut out knowledge of 

 the present temper, any more than of the past pur- 

 poses of the insurgents. There is not the least ground 

 to suppose that the controlling actors would be per- 

 suaded at this moment, by any arguments which na- 

 tional commissioners could offer, to forego the ambition 

 that has impelled them to the disloyal position they are 

 occupying. Any commissioners who should be ap- 

 pointed by these actors, or through their dictation or 

 influence, must enter the conference imbued with the 

 spirit and pledged to the personal fortunes of the insur- 



ent chiefs. The loyal people in the insurrectionary 

 tates would be unheard, and any offer of peace by this 

 Government, on the condition of the maintenance of 

 the Union, must necessarily be rejected. 



On the other hand, as I have already intimated, this 

 Government has not the least thought of relinquishing 

 the trust which has been confided to it by the nation 

 under the most solemn of all political sanctions ; and 

 if it had any such thought, it would still have abundant 

 reason to -know that peace proposed at the cost of dis- 

 solution would be immediately, unreservedly, and in- 

 dignantly rejected by the American people. It is a 

 great mistake that European statesmen make, if they 

 suppose this people are demoralized. Whatever, in 

 the case of an insurrection, the people of France, or of 

 Great Britain, or of Switzerland, or of the Netherlands 

 would do to save their national existence, no matter 

 how the strife might be regarded by or might affect 

 foreign nations, just so much, and certainly no less, 

 the people of the United States will do, if necessary to 

 save for the common benefit the region which is 

 bounded by the Pacific and the Atlantic coasts, and by 

 the shores of the Gulfs of St. Lawrence and Mexico, 

 together with the free and common navigation of the 

 Rio Grande, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Ohio, St. 

 Lawrence, Hudson, Delaware, Potomac, and other 

 natural highways by which this land, which to them is 

 at once a land of inheritance and a land of promise, is 

 opened and watered. Even if the agents of the Amer- 

 ican people now exercising their power should, 

 through fear or faction, fall below this height of the 

 national virtue, they would be speedily, yet constitu- 

 tionally, replaced by others of sterner character and 

 patriotism. 



I must be allowed to say, also, that M. Drouyn de 

 1'Huys errs in his description of the parties to the 

 present conflict. We have here, in the political sense, 

 no North and South, no Northern and Southern 

 States. We have an insurrectionary party, which is 

 located chiefly upon and adjacent to the shore of the 

 Gulf of Mexico ; and we have, on the other hand, a 

 loyal people, who constitute not only Northern States, 

 but also Eastern, Middle, Western, and Southern 

 States. 



I have on many occasions heretofore submitted to 

 the French Government the President's views of the 

 interests, and the ideas more effective for the time 

 than even interests, which lie at the bottom of the de- 

 termination of the American Government and people 

 to maintain the Federal Union. The President has 

 done the same thing in his Messages and other public 

 declarations. I refrain, therefore, from reviewing that 

 argument in connection with the existing question. 



M. Drouyn de 1'Huvs draws to his aid the con- 

 ferences which took place between the Colonies and 

 Great Britain in our Revolutionary War. He will al- 

 low us to assume that action in the crisis of a nation 



