268 



DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE AND FOREIGN RELATIONS. 



were going on in England, we were required, out of 

 tenderness to British sensibilities, and with the ap- 

 proval of her Majesty's Government, to relax rather 

 than increase our vigilance, then called by the re- 

 pulsive name of espionage. 



In relation to the second excuse, I think that the al- 

 leged hinderanees and embarrassments were nothing 

 else than the skilful machinations of offending par- 

 ties themselves. In enumerating certain vessels in 

 my former communication, I wrote of them not as 

 all the vessels complained of, but by way of describ- 

 ing the class of which we complained. There were 

 many others. The Nashville, stolen from loyal 

 owners at Charleston, after having evaded the block- 

 ade, and after having captured the Harvey Birch, 

 arrived at Southampton on the 20th of November, 

 18S1. She was entertained there until February 2, 

 1862, and then left the harbor, protected from 'the 

 United States cruiser Tuscarora by her Majesty's 

 war-frigate Shannon. She was afterward 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 " Con- 

 federate" pirate on the high-seas, under the name 

 of the Tuscaloosa. In like manner, the Florida cap- 

 tured 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. Afterward the Florida trans- 

 ferred the same authority, armament, and equipment 

 to the Tacony on the high-seas, which vessel cap- 

 tured, 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 tbe statement to which Lord Stanley has 

 excepted, namely: The Sumter, the Alabama, the 

 Florida, the Sheuandoah, and other ships-of-war, 

 were built, armed, equipped, and fitted out in British 

 ports, and dispatched therefrom by or through the 

 agency of British subjects, and. were harbored, shel- 

 tered, 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 these ports they 

 did so in the character of properly commissioned 

 cruisers of the Government of the so-styled Con- 

 federate 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 full 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, there- 

 fore, that in the opinion of her Majesty's Govern- 

 ment, a British vessel, in order to acquire a belliger- . 

 ent character against the United States, had only 

 to leave the British port where she was built clan- 

 destinely, 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. 



[The Secretary here replies to Lord Stanley's cita- 

 tion of certain utterances of the courts, that civil 



law existed in the United States, as a defence for the 

 Queen's neutrality proclamation, and says :] 



''But I must insist, first, that neither of the 

 judicial utterances referred to asserts or admits that 

 the President's proclamation expressly declared or 

 recognized the existence of civil war ; and, in the 

 second place, that both of these judicial utterances 

 unmistakably imply the contrary. * * * * The 

 Queen's proclamation of neutrality had appeared 

 before either court pronounced its opinion, and be- 

 fore either cause of action arose. British subjects 

 were claimants in some, and other foreigners were 

 claimants in others, of these litigations. Among the 

 facts of which the Supreme Court took notice, and 

 which they set forth as the grounds of their opinion, 

 is the following : ' As soon as the news of the attack 

 on Fort Sumter, and the organization of a govern- 

 ment of the seceding States assuming to act as bel- 

 ligerents, could become known in Europe, to wit, on 

 the 13th of May, 1861, the Queen of England issued 

 her proclamation of neutrality, recognizing hostilities 

 as existing between the Government of the United 

 States of America and certain States styling them- 

 selves the Confederate States of America. This 

 was immediately followed by similar declarations or 

 silent acquiescence by other nations.' " 



The issue between the United States and Great 

 Britain, which is the subject of the present corre- 

 spondence, is not upon the question whether a civil 

 war- has recently existed in the United States ; nor 

 is the issue upon that other question, namely, 

 whether such a civil war was actually existing here 

 at the date of the Queen's proclamation of neutrality. 

 Certainly there is a stage when a civil commotion, 

 although attended by armed force, is nevertheless in 

 fact only a local insurrection, as it is also true that 

 local insurrections often transcend municipal bounds, 

 and become civil wars. It is always important, and 

 generally difficult and perplexing, to recognize and 

 definitely determine the transition stage with abso- 

 lute precision. The disturbed nation suffers a 

 serious loss of advantages if recognition is pre- 

 maturely made. The insurrectionary party may 

 suffer a serious loss if it be too long and unjustly 

 withheld. Strangers who may be dealing with one 

 or the other may be injuriously affected in either 

 case. Now, what is alleged on the part of the United 

 States is, that the Queen's proclamation, which, by 

 conceding belligerent rights to the insurgents, lifted 

 them up for the purpose of insurrection to an equality 

 with the nation which they were attempting to over- 

 throw, was premature because it was unnecessary, 

 and that it was in its operation unfriendly because it 

 was premature. * * * * 



The President earnestly desired her Majesty's 

 Government not to intervene in any unfriendly way 

 in the domestic concerns of this country. He dis- 

 tinctly stated, further, that he would take care in 

 every case to render any possible injuries which 

 foreigners might suffer as light as possible, and fully 

 to indemnify them. In answer to this latter com- 

 munication, her Majesty's Government, on the 8th 

 of April, 1801, said that the matter seemed not yet 

 ripe for decision, one way or the other, and this was 

 all that at that moment they could say. They added, 

 however, a statement that English opinion seemed to 

 be tending to the theory that a peaceful separation 

 of the American Union might work beneficially for 

 both groups of States, and might not injuriously 

 affect the rest of the world. It was then made known 

 that the subject was to be debated on that very day 

 in the House of Commons, and that six days there- 

 after a motion for absolute recognition of the pre- 

 tended Confederacy, otherwise called there a new 

 nation, would be "pressed in Parliament. When 

 these facts became known to this Government, care 

 was taken to reply, that the answer of the Foreign 

 Secretary of State was by no means satisfactory, and 

 her Majesty's Government was therefore advised 

 that they were at liberty to choose whether they 



