ALABAMA CLAIMS, 17 
consciousness of injury, manifested greater magnanim- 
ity than was displayed in that emergency by the 
United States. 
We had on the sea hundreds of ships of war or of 
transport; we had on land hundreds of thousands of 
veteran soldiers under arms; we had officers of land 
and sea, the combatants in a hundred battles: all this 
vast force of war was in a condition to be launched 
as a thunderbolt at any enemy; and, in the present 
case, the possessions of that enemy, whether conti- 
nental or insular, lay at our very door in tempting 
helplessness. 
But neither the Government and people of the 
United States, nay, nor their laurel-crowned Gener- 
als and Admirals, desired war as a choice, nor would 
accept it but as a necessity; and they elected to con- 
tinue to negotiate with Great Britain, and to do what 
no great European State has ever done under like cir- 
‘cumstances,—that is, to disarm absolutely, and make 
thorough trial of the experiment of generous forbear- 
ance before having recourse to the dread extremity 
of vengeful hostilities against Great Britain. 
NEGOTIATIONS BY MR. SEWARD. 
The event justified our conduct. To the prejudiced 
and: impracticable Lord Russell, there succeeded in 
charge of the foreign affairs of the British Govern- 
ment, first, Lord Stanley [now the Earl of Derby], 
and then the Earl of Clarendon, who, more wise and 
just than he, successively entered upon negotiations 
with the United States on that very basis of arbitra- 
B 
