i86i.] LETTER TO MR. SEWARD. 



259 



benefit New England cotton lords and Pennsylvanian iron- 

 masters, while they keep up the Fugitive Slave Law and put 

 down slave insurrections. Whatever right the Thirteen had 

 to fight against England, that same right, and infinitely more, 

 the slaves have to fight against their masters. Though I 

 always told them, in the South, I did not believe in fighting, 

 and counselled patience and industry. ... It was a noble act 

 of your people, not quartering the soldiers on the Smithsonian : 

 a tribute to its cosmopolitan character, which may it always 

 preserve." 



When, after the seizure of the Southern Commissioners by 

 Captain Wilkes, there was a danger of war between England 

 and the United States, Philip wrote as follows to Mr. Seward, 

 then Secretary of State (November 30, 1861) : — "At this 

 momentous crisis, when your Government has the power, and 

 may possibly have the will, to plunge our two nations into 

 war, I make no apologies for taking up a few moments of 

 your time. I have enjoyed the hospitalities of your house ; 

 but as you will not be likely to remember me, I refer you to 

 Professor Henry or to Hon. Charles Sumner, to show that I 

 am not impertinent in addressing you. I have travelled and 

 lived among your nation, North and South, rich and poor : I 

 also am thoroughly well acquainted with the heart of the 

 English people, and especially of the manufacturing operatives. 



" You complain that English sympathy has been with the 

 South rather than the North. Please to remember that the 

 English heart sympathizes with all people who defend their 

 native soil from invasion, and does not care for a mere political 

 instrument called the Constitution of the United States. They 

 recognize the same right in the South to secede from the North, 

 //they choose (which we all consider them foolish in doing), as 

 in the original United States to secede from England. But 

 there is no sympathy with the objects of the Southern Confederacy 

 as such, except in the very secondary matter of Free Trade, 

 in which, of course, we consider the North in the wrong. A 

 Government based on slavery is utterly repugnant to the English 

 heart. I am now wearing myself out with lecturing on what 



