Twenty Years of Congress Volume I Part 43

ENGLAND, FRANCE, PRUSSIA, AND AUSTRIA.

The painful event impressed upon the Government of the United States a profound sense of its isolation from the sympathy of Europe.

The principle of maritime law, which was so promptly and rigorously applied, was one for which the United States had contended in its weakness against the usages of the world and against the arms of Great Britain. There was apparent now an eager resolution to enforce it, when that enforcement was sure to embarra.s.s us and to provoke a spirit of derisive triumph in our foes. It was clear that no effort would be spared to restrict our belligerent rights within the narrowest possible limits. Not content with leaving us to settle this question with England, France and Prussia and Austria hastened to inform us in language professedly friendly, that England would be supported in her demand for reparation, cost what it might to us in prestige, and in power to deal with the Rebellion at home.

At this time there was but one among the great nations of the world which adhered to an active and avowed friendship for us. "We desire above all things the maintenance of the American Union as one indivisible nation," was the kindly and always to be remembered greeting that came to us from the Emperor of Russia.

The profound ability exhibited by Mr. Seward as Secretary of State has long been acknowledged and emphasized by the admiration and grat.i.tude of the country. In the _Trent_ affair he acted under a pressure of circ.u.mstances more hara.s.sing and perplexing than had ever tested the skill of American diplomacy. It is with no disposition to detract from the great service rendered by him that a dissent is expressed from the ground upon which he placed the surrender of Mason and Slidell. It is not believed that the doctrine announced by Mr. Seward can be maintained on sound principles of International Law, while it is certainly in conflict with the practice which the United States had sought to establish from the foundation of the Government. The restoration of the envoys on any such apparently insufficient basis did not avoid the mortification of the surrender; it only deprived us of the fuller credit and advantage which we might have secured from the act. It is to be regretted that we did not place the restoration of the prisoners upon franker and truer ground, viz., that their seizure was in violation of the principles which we had steadily and resolutely maintained--principles which we would not abandon either for a temporary advantage or to save the wounding of our National pride.

The luminous speech of Mr. Sumner, when the papers in the _Trent_ case were submitted to Congress, stated the ground for which the United States had always contended with admirable precision. We could not have refused to surrender Mason and Slidell without trampling upon our own principles and disregarding the many precedents we had sought to establish. But it must not be forgotten that the sword of precedent cut both ways. It was as absolutely against the peremptory demand of England for the surrender of the prisoners as it was against the United States for the seizure of them.

Whatever wrong was inflicted on the British Flag by the action of Captain Wilkes, had been time and again inflicted on the American flag by officers of the English Navy,--without cause, without redress, without apology. Hundreds and thousands of American citizens had in time of peace been taken by British cruisers from the decks of American vessels and violently impressed into the naval service of that country.

Lord Castlereagh practically confessed in Parliament that this offense against the liberty of American citizens had been repeated thirty-five hundred times. According to the records of our own department of State as Mr. Sumner alleges "the quarter-deck of a British man-of-war had been made a floating judgment-seat six thousand times and upwards, and each time some citizen or other person was taken from the protection of our national flag without any form of trial whatever." So insolent and oppressive had British aggression become before the war of 1812, that Mr. Jefferson in his somewhat celebrated letter to Madame de Stael-Holstein of May 24, 1813, said, "No American could safely cross the ocean or venture to pa.s.s by sea from one to another of our own ports. _It is not long since they impressed at sea two nephews of General Washington returning from Europe, and put them, as common seamen, under the ordinary discipline of their ships of war_."

After the war of 1812 these unendurable insults to our flag were not repeated by Great Britain, but her Government steadily refused to make any formal renunciation of her right to repeat them, so that our immunity from like insults did not rest upon any better foundation than that which might be dictated by considerations of interest and prudence on the part of the offending Power. The wrong which Captain Wilkes committed against the British flag was surely not so great as if he had seized the persons of British subjects--subjects, if you please, who were of kindred blood to one who stands as high in the affection of the British people as Washington stands in the affection of the American people,--if indeed there be such a one in English tradition.

The offense of Captain Wilkes was surely far below that in the essential quality of outrage. He had not touched the hair of a British subject's head. He had only removed from the hospitality and shelter of a British ship four men who were bent on an errand of destruction to the American Union. His act cannot be justified by the canons of International Law as our own Government has interpreted and enforced them. But in view of the past and of the long series of graver outrages with which Great Britain had so wantonly insulted the American flag, she might have refrained from invoking the judgment of the civilized world against us, and especially might she have refrained from making in the hour of our sore trial and our deep distress, a demand which no British Minister would address to this Government in the day of its strength and its power.

FRIENDLY POSITION OF THE QUEEN.

It would be ungracious to withhold an expression of the lasting appreciation entertained in this country of the course pursued by Her Majesty, the Queen of England, throughout this most painful ordeal. She was wiser than her Ministers, and there can be little doubt but for her considerate interposition, softening the rigor of the British demand, the two nations would have been forced into war. On all the subsequent occasions for bitterness towards England, by reason of the treatment we experienced during the war, there was an instinctive feeling among Americans that the Queen desired peace and good will, and did not sympathize with the insidious efforts at our destruction, which had their origin in her dominions.

It was fortunate that the disposition of the Queen, and not of her Ministry, was represented in Washington by Lord Lyons. The good sense and good temper of His Lordship were of inestimable value to both countries, in making the task of Mr. Seward practicable, without increasing the resentment of our people.

It was well that the Government and people of the United States were so early taught that their value to the world of foreign principles, foreign feeling, and foreign interests was only what they could themselves establish; that in this contest they must depend upon themselves; and that the dissolution of their National Unity and the destruction of their free, popular Government from the lack of courage and wisdom in those whose duty it was to maintain them, would not be unwelcome to the Princ.i.p.alities and Powers that "were willing to wound, but yet afraid to strike." This is not the time to describe the vacillating and hesitating development of this hostile policy; but as the purpose of the United-States Government grew more steady, more resolute, and more self-reliant, a sickening doubt seemed to becloud the ill-concealed hope of our ruin. It was not long until the brave and deluded rebels of the South learned that there was no confidence to be placed in the cruel and selfish calculation which encouraged their desperate resistance with the show of sympathy, but would not avow an open support or make a manly sacrifice in their behalf.

This initial policy of foreign powers had developed its natural consequences. It not only excited but it warranted in the Southern Confederacy the hope of early recognition. It seemed impossible that, with this recognized equality between the belligerents, there would not occur somewhere just such incidents as the seizure of the _Trent_ or the capture of the _Florida_ which would render it very difficult to maintain peaceful relations between foreign Powers and the United States. The neutrality laws were complicated. Men- of-war commanded by ambitious, ardent, and patriotic officers would sometimes in the excitement of honorable feeling, sometimes in mistaken sense of duty, vindicate their country's flag; while it was the interest of the officers of the Confederate cruisers, as bold and ingenious men who ever commanded ship, to create, wherever they could, difficulties which would embarra.s.s the interests of neutrals and intensify between the United States and foreign Powers the growing feeling of distrust. Thus from month to month the Government of the United States could never feel secure that there would not arise questions which the indignation of its own people and the pride and latent hostility of foreign government would place beyond the power of friendly adjustment. Such questions did arise with England, France, Brazil, Spain, and even with Mexico, which the common disinclination to actual war succeeded in postponing rather than settling. But as the civil war went on, three cla.s.ses of questions took continuous and precise shape. Their scope and result can be fully and fairly considered. These were--

1. The building and equipping of Confederate cruisers and their treatment as legitimate national vessels of war in the home and colonial ports of foreign powers.

2. The establishment at such ports as Na.s.sau, in the immediate vicinity of the blockaded ports of the Southern States, of depots of supplies, which afforded to the Confederates enormous advantages in the attempt to break the blockade.

3. The distinct defiance of the traditional policy of the United States by the invasion of the neighboring Republic of Mexico for the avowed purpose of establishing there a foreign and monarchical dynasty.

SECRET SERVICE OF THE CONFEDERACY.

No sooner had Her Brittanic Majesty's proclamation, recognizing the belligerent rights of the Southern Confederacy, been issued, than a naval officer of remarkable ability and energy was sent from Montgomery to Liverpool. In his very interesting history of the services rendered by him, that officer says: "The chief object of this narrative is to demonstrate by a plain statement of facts that the Confederate Government, through their agents, did nothing more than all other belligerents have heretofore done in time of need; namely, tried to obtain from every possible source the means necessary to carry on the war in which they were engaged, and that in so doing they took particular pains to understand the munic.i.p.al law of those countries in which they sought to supply their wants, and were especially careful to keep with the statutes. . . .

"The object of the Confederate Government was not merely to build a single ship, but it was to maintain a permanent representative of the Navy Department abroad, and to get ships and naval supplies without hindrance so long as the war lasted. To effect this purpose it was manifestly necessary to act with prudence and caution and to do nothing in violation of the munic.i.p.al law, because a single conviction would both expose the object and defeat the aim." His solicitor "therefore drew up a case for counsel's opinion and submitted it to two eminent barristers, both of whom have since filled the highest judicial positions. The case was submitted; was a general and not a specific proposition. It was not intimated for what purpose and on whose behalf the opinion was asked, and the reply was therefore wholly without bias, and embraced a full exposition of the Act in its bearing upon the question of building and equipping ships in Her Majesty's dominions.

"The inferences drawn from the investigation of the Act by counsel were put in the following form by my solicitor:--

"'1. It is no offense (under the Act) for British subjects to equip, etc., a ship at some country _without_ Her Majesty's dominions though the intent be to cruise against a friendly State.

"'2. It is no offense for _any_ person (subject or no subject) to _equip_ a ship _within_ Her Majesty's dominions if it be _not_ done with the intent to cruise against a friendly State.

"'3. The mere building of a ship _within_ Her Majesty's dominions by any person (subject or no subject) is no offense, _whatever may be the intent of the parties_, because the offense is not in the _building_, but the _equipping_.

"'Therefore any ship-builder may build any ship in Her Majesty's dominions, provided he does not equip her within Her Majesty's dominions, and he had nothing to do with the acts of the purchasers done _within_ Her Majesty's dominions without his concurrence, or without Her Majesty's dominions even with his concurrence.'"-- [BULLOCK's _Secret Service of the Confederate States_, vol. i, pp.

65-67.]

It is an amazing courtesy which attributes to the eminent counsel a complete ignorance of the object and purpose for which their weighty opinion was sought in the construction of British law.

Such ignorance is feigned and not real, and the pretense of its existence indicates either on the part of the author or the counsel a full appreciation of the deadly consequences of that malign interpretation of England's duty for which two ill.u.s.trious members of the English Bar were willing to stand sponsors before the world.

Conceding, as we fairly may concede, that the decision in the case of the _Alexandra_ is confirmatory of the opinion given by these leaders of the British bar, the result was simply the establishment and administration of the Naval Department of the Confederacy in England. There was its chief, there were its financial agents, there its workshops. There were its vessels armed and commissioned.

Thence they sailed on their mission of destruction, and thither they returned to repair their damages, and to renew their supplies.

Under formal contracts with the Confederate Government the colonial ports of Na.s.sau and the Bermudas were made depots of supplies which were drawn upon with persistent and successful regularity. The effects of this thoroughly organized system of so-called neutrality that supplied ports, ships, arms, and men to a belligerent which had none, are not matters of conjecture or exaggeration; they have been proven and recorded. In three years fifteen million dollars'

worth of property was destroyed,--given to the flame or sunk beneath the waters,--the shipping of the United States was reduced one- half, and the commercial flag of the Union fluttered with terror in every wind that blew, form the whale-fisheries of the Arctic to the Southern Cross.

MINISTER DAYTON'S INDIGNANT PROTEST.

With this condition of affairs, permitted and encouraged by England and France, our distinguished minister at Paris was justified in saying to the Government of Louis Napoleon on the reception of the Confederate steamer _Georgia_ at Brest, in language which though but the bare recital of fact was of itself the keenest reproach to the French Government:--

"The _Georgia_, like the _Florida_, the _Alabama_, and other scourges of peaceful commerce, was born of that unhappy decree which gave the rebels who did not own a ship-of-war or command a single port the right of an ocean belligerent. Thus encouraged by foreign powers they began to build and fit out in neutral ports a cla.s.s of vessels constructed mainly for speed, and whose acknowledged mission is not to fight, but to rob, to burn, and to fly. Although the smoke of burning ships has everywhere marked the track of the _Georgia_ and the _Florida_ upon the ocean, they have never sought a foe or fired a gun against an armed enemy. To dignify such vessels with the name of ships-of-war seems to me, with deference, a misnomer. Whatever flag may fly from their mast-head, or whatever power may claim to own them, their conduct stamps them as piratical.

If vessels of war even, they would by this conduct have justly forfeited all courtesies in ports of neutral nations. Manned by foreign seamen, armed by foreign guns, entering no home port, and waiting no judicial condemnation of prizes, they have already devastated and destroyed our commerce to an extent, as compared with their number, beyond any thing known in the records of privateering."

It would seem impossible that such a state of things could be the result of the impartial administration of an honest neutrality.

It must be attributed to one of two causes;--either the munic.i.p.al law of foreign countries was not sufficient to enable the governments to control the selfishness or the sentiment of their people,--to which the reply is obvious that the weakness and incompetence of munic.i.p.al law cannot diminish or excuse international obligations: or it must have been due to a misconception of the obligations which international law imposes. How far there may have been a motive for this misconception, how far the wish was father to the thought of such misconstruction, it is perhaps needless now to inquire. The theory of international law maintained by the foreign Powers may be fairly stated in two propositions:--

1. That foreign Powers had the right, and in due regard to their own interests were bound, to recognize belligerency as a fact.

2. That belligerents once recognized, were equals and must be treated with the same perfect neutrality.

It is not necessary to deny these propositions, but simply to ascertain their real meaning. In its primary and simple application, the law of belligerency referred to two or more belligerents, equally independent. Its application to the case of insurgents against an established and recognized government is later, involves other and in some respects different considerations, and cannot even now be regarded as settled. To recognize an insurgent as a belligerent is not to recognize him as fully the equal of the government from which he secedes. This would be simply to recognize his independence. The limitation which international law places upon this recognition is stated in the English phrase, "the right to recognize belligerency as a fact;"--that is, to recognize the belligerent to the extent of his war capacity but no farther. The neutral cannot on this principle recognize in the belligerent the possession of any power which he does not actually possess, although in the progress of the contest such power may be developed.

The Southern Confederacy had an organized government and great armies. To that extent its power was a fact. But when foreign governments recognized in the insurgents the rights of ocean belligerency, they went beyond the fact. They were actually giving to the Confederacy a character which it did not possess and which it never acquired. For the Confederacy had not a ship or an open port. Whenever an insurgent power claims such right, it must be in condition to a.s.sume and discharge the obligation which such rights impose. When any power, insurgent or recognized, claims such right,--the right to fly its flag, to deal in hostility with the commerce of the world, to exercise dangerous privileges which may affect the interests and complicate the relations of other nations,--it must give to the world a guaranty that it is both able and willing to administer the system of maritime law under which it claims such rights and powers, by submitting its action to the regular and formal jurisdiction of Prize Courts. Strike the Prize Court out of modern maritime law and the whole system falls, and capture on the sea becomes pure barbarism,--distinguished from piracy only by the astuteness of a legal technicality. The Southern Confederacy could give no guaranty. Just as it undertook to naturalize foreign seamen upon the quarter-deck of its roving cruisers, so it undertook to administer a system of maritime law which precluded the most solemn and important of its provisions-- a judicial decision--and converted the humane and legal right of capture into an absolute and a ruthless decree of destruction. No neutral has the right to make or accept such an interpolation into the recognized and essential principles of the law of maritime warfare.

ENGLAND'S MALIGNANT NEUTRALITY.

The application of this so-called neutrality to both the so-called belligerents was not designed nor was it practicable. In referring to the obligation of the neutral to furnish no a.s.sistance to either of the belligerents, one of the oldest and most authoritative of international law writers says: "I do not say to give a.s.sistance equally but to give no a.s.sistance, for it would be absurd that a state should a.s.sist at the same time two enemies. And besides it would be impossible to do it with equality: the same things, the like number of troops, the like quant.i.ty of arms and munitions furnished under different circ.u.mstances are no longer equivalent succors." a.s.sistance is not a theoretical idea; it is a plain, practical, unmistakable fact. When the United States had, at vast cost and by incredible effort, shut the Southern Confederacy from the sea and blockaded its ports against the entry of supplies, when that government had no resources within its territory by which it could put a ship upon the ocean, or break the blockade from within, then it was that England allowed Confederate officers to camp upon her soil, organize her labor, employ her machinery, use her ports, occupy her colonial stations, almost within sight of the blockaded coast, and to do this continuously, systematically, defiantly.

By these acts the British government gave the most valuable a.s.sistance to the South and actually engaged in defeating the military operations of the United States. There was no equivalent a.s.sistance which Great Britain could or did render to the United States. They might have rendered other a.s.sistance, but none which would compensate for this. Let it be supposed for one moment that Mexico had practiced, on the other side of the Rio Grande, the same sort of neutrality,--that she had lined the bank of the river with depots of military supplies; that she had allowed officers of the Confederate army to establish themselves and organize a complete system for the receipt of cotton and the delivery of merchandise on her territory; that her people had served as factors, intermediaries, and carriers,--would any reasonable interpretation of international law consider such conduct to be impartial neutrality? But ill.u.s.tration does not strengthen the argument. The naked statement of England's position is its worst condemnation. Her course, while ingeniously avoiding public responsibility, gave unceasing help to the Confederacy --as effective as if the intention had been proclaimed. The whole procedure was in disregard of international obligation and was the outgrowth of what M. Prevost-Paradol aptly charaterized as a "malignant neutrality."

It cannot be said in reply that the Governments of England and France were unable to restrain this demonstration of the sympathy, this exercise of the commercial enterprise of their people. For the time came when they did restrain it. As soon as it became evident that the Confederacy was growing weaker, that with all its marvelous display of courage and endurance it could not prevent the final success of the Union, there was no longer difficulty in arresting the building of the iron-clads on the Mersey; then the watchfulness of home and colonial authorities was quickened; then supplies were meted out scantily; then the dangers of a great slave empire began to impress Ministerial consciences, and the same Powers prepared to greet the triumph of the Union with well-feigned satisfaction. But even if this change had not occurred the condition of repressed hostility could not have lasted. It was war in disguise --not declared, only because the United-States Government could not afford to multiply its enemies, and England felt that there was still uncertainty enough in the result to caution her against a.s.suming so great a risk. But the tension of the relation was aptly described by Mr. Seward in July, 1863, when he said,--

"If the law of Great Britain must be left without amendment and be construed by the government in conformity with the rulings of the chief Baron of the Exchequer [the _Alexandra_ case] then there will be left for the United States no alternative but to protect themselves and their commerce against armed cruisers proceeding from British ports as against the naval forces of a public enemy. . . . British ports, domestic as well as colonial, are now open under certain restrictions to the visits of piratical vessels, and not only furnish them coals, provisions, and repairs, but even receive their prisoners when the enemies of the United States come in to obtain such relief from voyages in which they have either burned ships they have captured, or have even manned and armed them as pirates and sent them abroad as auxiliaries in the work of destruction.

Can it be an occasion for either surprise or complaint that if this condition of things is to remain and receive the deliberate sanction of the British Government, the navy of the United States will receive instructions to pursue these enemies into the ports which thus in violation of the law of nations and the obligations of neutrality become harbors for the pirates? The President very distinctly perceives the risks and hazards which a naval conflict thus maintained will bring to the commerce and even to the peace of the two countries. But he is obliged to consider that in the case supposed, the destruction of our commerce will probably amount to a naval war, waged by a portion at least of the British nation against the government and people of the United States--a war tolerated although not declared or avowed by the British Government.

If through the necessary employment of all our means of national defense such a partial war shall become a general one between the two nations, the President thinks that the responsibility for that painful result will not fall upon the United States."

ENGLAND'S MALIGNANT NEUTRALITY.

The truth is that the so-called neutral policy of foreign Powers was the vicious application of obsolete a.n.a.logies to the conditions of modern life. Because of the doctrine of belligerent recognition had in its origin referred to nations of well established, independent existence, the doctrine was now pushed forward to the extent of giving ocean belligerency to an insurgent which had in reality no maritime power whatever. It was an old and recognized principle that the commercial relations of the neutral should not be interfered with unless they worked positive injury to the belligerent. The new application made the interests of neutral commerce the supreme factor in determining how far belligerent rights should be respected.

The ship-building and carrying-trade of England were to be maintained and encouraged at any cost to the belligerent. Under the old law, a belligerent had the right to purchase a ship and a cargo, or a neutral might run a blockade, taking all the risk of capture. By the new construction, power was to be given to a belligerent to transfer the entire administration of its naval service to foreign soil, and to create and equip a navy which issued from foreign waters, ready not for a dangerous journey to their own ports of delivery, but for the immediate demonstration of hostile purpose.

No such absurd system can be found in the principles or precedents of international law; no such system would be permitted by the great powers of Europe if to-morrow they should engage in war.

The principle of this policy was essentially mercenary. It professed no moral sense. It might be perfectly indifferent to the high or the low issues which the contest between the belligerents involved; it was deaf to any thing which might be urged by justice of humanity or friendship; it was the cynical recognition of the truth of the old proverb that "It is an ill wind which blows good to no one."

It was the same principle upon which England declares with audacious selfishness that she cannot sacrifice that portion of her Indian revenue which comes from the opium trade or the capital which is invested in its growth and manufacture, and that China must therefore take the poison which diseases and degrades her population. But selfish as is this market-policy, it is a policy of circ.u.mstance.

It may be resisted with success or it may be abandoned because it cannot succeed. It creates bitterness; it leads to war; it may in its selfishness cause the destruction of a nation, but it does not necessarily imply a desire for that destruction. But there was in the foreign policy of Europe towards the United States during the civil war the manifestation of a spirit more intense in its hostility, more dangerous in its consequences. It was the spirit of enmity to the Union itself, and the emphatic demonstration of this feeling was the invasion of Mexico for the purpose of converting the republic by force into an empire. Louis Napoleon's enterprise was distinctly based on the utter destruction of the American Union.

The Declaration of Independence by the British Colonies in America was something more than the creation of a new sovereignty. It was the foundation of a new system both of internal government and foreign relation, a system not entirely isolated from the affairs of the Old World but independent of the dynastic complications and the territorial interests which controlled the political conflicts of Europe. At first, with its material resources undeveloped, its territorial extension limited and surrounded by the colonies of the great Powers, this principle although maintained as a conviction, could not manifest itself in action. But it showed itself in that abstinence from entangling alliances which would avoid the dangers of even a too friendly connection. In time our territory expanded.

The colonies of foreign nations following our example became independent republics whose people had the same aspirations, whose governments were framed upon the same basis of popular right. The rapidity of communication, supplied by the railroad and the telegraph, facilitated and concentrated this political cohesion, and there had been formed from the borders of Canada to the Straits of Magellan a complete system of republics (to which Brazil can scarcely be considered an exception) professing the same political creed, having great commercial interests in common, and which with the extinction of some few jealousies, were justified in the antic.i.p.ation of a prosperous and peaceful future. There was not an interest or an ambition of a single one of these republics which threatened an interest or an ambition of a single European power.