16 THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON, 



tliose gigantic proportions, wLicli served to render it 

 so costly of blood and of treasure to the whole Union, 

 and so specially disastrous to the Southern States 

 themselves. 



AVe charged and we believed that, in all this. Great 

 Britain, through her Government, had disregarded 

 the obligations of neutrality imj^osed on her by the 

 law of nations to such manifest deo-ree as to have af 

 forded to the United States just and ample cause of 

 war. 



The United States, through all these events, with 

 William H. Seward, as Secretary of State, and Charles 

 Francis Adams, Minister at London, had not failed to 

 address continual remonstrances to the British Gov- 

 ernment, demanding reparation for past Avrong and 

 the cessation from continuous wrons:: Avhich remon- 

 strances did, in fact, at length awaken tbe British 

 Government to greater vigilance in the discharge of 

 its international duties, but could not induce it to 

 take any step toward reparation so long as Earl Rus- 

 sell [then Lord John Russell], by whose negligence or 

 misjudgment the injuries had hai~>pened, remained in 

 chartre of the foreiccn affairs of the Government. That 

 statesman, wOiile, on more than one occasion, expressly 

 admitting the wrong done to the United States, still 

 persisted, with singular obtuseness or narrowness of 

 mind, in maintaining that the lionor of England would 

 not permit her to make any reparation to the United 

 States. 



Never, in the history of nations, has an occasion ex- 

 isted where a powerful people, smarting imder the 



