712 



UNITED STATES. 



was delivered to the secretary of the commis- 

 sioners, who had been directed by the commis- 

 sioners to call there for it. Reasons for this 

 delay are stated by the commissioners in their 

 subsequent communication, dated April 9. It 

 was as follows : 



WASHINGTON, April 9, 1S61. 



Hon. Wm. H. Seward, Secretary of State of the United 

 States, Washington. 



The "memorandum," dated Department of State, 

 Washington, March 15, 1861, has been received 

 through the hands of Mr. J. T. Pickett, Secretary to 

 this Commission, who, by the instructions of the un- 

 dersigned, called for it on yesterday at the Depart- 

 ment. 



In that memorandum you correctly state the pur- 

 port of the official note addressed to you by the under- 

 signed on the 12th ult. Without repeating the con- 

 tents of that note in full, it is enough to say here that 

 its object was to invite the Government of the United 

 States to a friendly consideration of the relation be- 

 tween the United States and the seven States lately 

 of the Federal Union, but now separated from it by 

 the sovereign will of their people, growing out of the 

 pregnant and undeniable fact that those people have 

 rejected the authority of the United States and estab- 

 lished a government of their own. Those relations 

 had to be friendly or hostile. The people of the old 

 and new Governments, occupying contiguous terri- 

 tories, had to stand to each other in the relation of 

 good neighbors, each seeking their own happiness and 

 pursuing their national destinies in their own way, 

 without interference with the other, or they had to be 

 rival and hostile nations. The Government of the 

 Confederate States had no hesitation in electing its 

 choice in this alternative. Frankly and unreservedly, 

 seeking the good of the people who had intrusted 

 them with power, in the spirit of humanity, of the 

 Christian civilization of the age, and of that American- 

 ism which regards the true welfare and happiness of 

 the people, the Government of the Confederate States, 

 among its first acts, commissioned the undersigned to 

 approach the Government of the United States with the 

 olive branch of peace, and to offer to adjust the great 

 questions pending between them, in the only way to 

 be justified by the consciences and common sense of 

 good men, who had nothing but the welfare of the 

 people of the two Confederacies at heart. 



Your Government has not chosen to meet the un- 

 dersigned in the conciliatory and peaceful spirit in 

 which they are commissioned. Persistently wedded 

 to those fatal theories of construction of the Federal 

 Constitution always rejected by the statesmen of the 

 South, and adhered to by those of the Administration 

 school, until they have produced their natural and 

 often predicted result of the destruction of the Union, 

 under which we might have continued to live happily 

 and gloriously together, had the spirit of the ancestry 

 who framed the common Constitution animated the 

 hearts of all their sons ; you now, with a persistence 

 untaught and uncured by the ruin that has been 

 wrought, refuse to recognize the great fact presented 

 to you of a complete and successful revolution ; you 

 close your eyes to the existence of the Government 

 founded upon it, and ignore the high duties of mod- 

 eration and humanity which attach to you in dealing 

 with this great fact. Had you met these issues with 

 the frankness and manliness with which the under- 

 signed were instructed to present them to you and 

 treat them, the undersigned had not now the melan- 

 choly duty to return home and tell their Government 

 and their countrymen, that their earnest and ceaseless 

 efforts in behalf of peace had been futile, and that the 

 Government of the United States meant to subjugate 

 them by force of arms. Whatever may be the result, 

 impartial history will record the innocence of the 

 Government of the Confederate States, and place the 

 responsibility of the blood and mourning that may 

 ensue, upon those who have denied the great funda- 



mental doctrine of American liberty, that " govern- 

 ments derive their just powers from the consent of the 

 governed," and who have set naval and land arma- 

 ments in motion to subject the people of one portion 

 of the land to the will of another portion. That that 

 can never be done while a freeman survives in the 

 Confederate States to wield a weapon, the undersigned 

 appeal to past history to prove. These military de- 

 monstrations against the people of the seceded States 

 are certainly far from being in keeping and consist- 

 ency with the theory of the Secretary of State, main- 

 tained in his memorandum, that these States are still 

 component parts of the late American Union, as the 

 undersigned are not aware of any constitutional power 

 in the President of the United States to levy war with- 

 out the consent of Congress, upon a foreign people, 

 much less upon any portion of the people of the United 

 States. 



The undersigned, like the Secretary of State, have 

 no purpose to " invite or engage in discussion " of the 

 subject on which their two Governments are so irre- 

 concilably at variance. It is this variance that has 

 broken up the old Union, the disintegration of which 

 has only begun. It is proper, however, to advise you 

 that it were well to dismiss the hopes you seem to en- 

 tertain that, by any of the modes indicated, the people 

 of the Confederate States will ever be brought to sub- 

 mit to the authority of the Government of the United 

 States. You are dealing with delusions, too, when 

 you seek to separate our people from our Government 

 and to characterize the deliberate, sovereign act of 

 the people, as a " perversion of a temporary and par- 

 tisan excitement." If you cherish these dreams yon 

 will be awakened from them, and find them as unreal 

 and unsubstantial as others in which you have recent- 

 ly indulged. The undersigned would omit the per- 

 formance of an obvious duty were they to fail to 

 make known to the Government of the United States 

 that the people of the Confederate States have declared 

 their independence with a full knowledge of all the 

 responsibilities of that act, and with as firm a deter- 

 mination to maintain it by all the means with which 

 nature has endowed them, as that which sustain ed-their 

 fathers, when they threw off the authorito of the Brit- 

 ish crown. * 



The undersigned clearly understand that yon have 

 declined to appoint a day to enable them to lay the 

 objects of the mission with which they are charged, 

 before the President of the United States, because so 

 to do would be to recognize the independence and 

 separate nationality of the Confederate States. This 

 is the vein of thought that pervades the memorandum 

 before us. The truth of history requires that it should 

 distinctly appear upon the record that the under- 

 signed did not ask the Government of the United 

 States to recognize the independence of the Confeder- 

 ate States. They only asked audience to adjust, in a 

 spirit of amity and peace, the new relations springing 

 from a manifest and accomplished revolution, in the 

 Government of the late Federal Union. Your refusal 

 to entertain these overtures for a peaceful solution, the 

 active naval and military preparations of the Govern- 

 ment, and a formal notice to the commanding general 

 of the Confederate forces in the harbor of Charleston, 

 that the President intends to provision Fort Sumter 

 by forcible means, if necessary, are viewed by the 

 undersigned, and can only be received by the world, 

 as a declaration of war against the Confederate States; 

 for the President of the United States knows that Fort 

 Sumter cannot be provisioned without the effusion of 

 blood. The undersigned, in behalf of their Govern- 

 ment and people, accept the gage of battle thus thrown 

 down to them ; and appealing to God and the judg- 

 ment of mankind for the righteousness of their cause, 

 the people of the Confederate States will defend their 

 liberties to the last against this flagrant and open at- 

 tempt at their subjugation to sectional power. 



This communication cannot be properly closed with- 

 out adverting to the date of your memorandum. The 

 official note of the undersigned, of the 12th March, was 

 delivered to the Assistant Secretary of State on the 13th 



