on the part of his Government to shield him from any consequences that might ensue. But there could be no doubt that he ought not to be regarded as a pirate for acting under a commission from a State admitted to be entitled to belligerent rights and carrying on what might be called a justum bellum. * When, on June sixth. Mr. Crawford asked Mr. Gregory whether it was his intention to bring on his motion with reference to a recognition of the Southern Confederacy to-morrow, and whether the Foreign Secretary thought it desirable that it be discussed. Mr. Gregory said he did. Lord Russell thereupon stated that he did not think a discussion desirable, but having asked postponement on several occasions could make no further objection. The House was so manifestly opposed to a discussion that, on June seventh, Mr. Gregory postponed his motion sine die. To Russell the Queen's Proclamation was a necessary act Davis had issued letters of marque, and in a little while privateers would be roaming the sea and must be treated as pirates or recognized as belligerents. Lincoln had declared a blockade of Southern ports. These were acts of war and must be treated as such. "It is not our practice,” he said, "to treat five millions of freemen as pirates, and to hang their sailors if they stop our merchantmen. But unless we meant to treat them as pirates and to hang them we could not deny them belligerent rights. This is what you and we did in the case of the South American Colonies of Spain. Your own President and Courts of Law decided this question in the case of Venezuela.” † On the day on which the Queen's Proclamation was made public Charles Francis Adams, the new Minister from the United States to the Court of St. James, reached London. His coming was known to Lord Russell. Indeed, Mr. Dallas, the retiring Minister, had arranged for the first interview. Courtesy should have led Russell to defer publication until 2098. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, May 16, 1861, vol clxii, pp. 2077– + Russell to Everett, July 12, 1861. C. F. Adams, Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, vol. xlv, p. 77. 1861 THE QUEEN'S PROCLAMATION. 105 after Adams had arrived and been heard on a matter of such great importance to his country. But the proclamation was out and Adams was forced to confine himself to what was little more than idle comment. He objected to the words justum bellum used in a speech in Parliament. Action, he thought, had been taken a little more rapidly than circumstances required. The new Administration in the United States had found a great insurrection well under way, and all departments of government demoralized. Yet, before it had time to restore order, before it had time to develop a policy, when it had been but a little more than sixty days in power, Great Britain had taken the initiative and decided there were two sides to the struggle. She had declared the insurgents to be a belligerent Power before they had even shown their capacity to maintain any kind of warfare whatever. She had considered them a maritime Power before they had a single privateer at sea. Russell replied that the United States had taken similar action quite as early and cited the case of Kossuth and Hungary. A necessity seemed to exist to define the course of the Government in regard to the participation of Her Majesty's subjects in the coming conflict. To this end the legal questions involved had been referred to those most conversant with them and their advice taken. They decided that "as a question merely of fact, a war existed." Seven States covering a wide extent of country were in open resistance. In many previous cases far less formidable demonstrations had been recognized. Under the circumstances it seemed scarcely possible to avoid speaking of the contest, in a technical sense, as justum bellum, a war of two sides. This was all that was intended by the Queen's Proclamation. It was to show the purport of existing laws, and explain to British subjects their liabilities if they took part in the war. * Seward objected because the Proclamation had been issued the very day Adams reached London, though his arrival had been anticipated and his reception by Russell arranged; and because it seemed in a vague way to recognize, and did recog Adams to Seward, May 21, 1861. Senate Executive Documents. 37th Congress, 2nd Session, vol. i, pp. 92, 93. nize, the insurgents as a belligerent national Power.* The question of the privateers, he said, "is exclusively our own. We treat them as pirates. They are our own citizens preying on the commerce of our country." But he would make no protest, because Adams was fully able to present the general views of his Government on the matter, and because Thouvenel had announced that communications setting forth the attitude to be taken by France and Great Britain in regard to the insurrection would soon be addressed to the United States. + News of the indignation of the North aroused by the Proclamation, Adams wrote, was not without effect on public opinion in England. Men of all classes united in declaring that such a measure was unavoidable, and were equally united in declaring it was no evidence of ill will. They thought the complaints of the North unreasonable, and were profound in expression of sympathy. But the idea was still held that there would never be any actual conflict; that the Union might be cemented on the basis of measures hostile to Great Britain. § The delusion that there would be no fighting was dispelled one day early in August when the steamers brought accounts of the defeat at Bull Run. In England the news was read with regret, for it seemed to foretell a long and bloody war, and the ruin of her cotton trade. We wish we could see in the battle, it was said, something on which we could congratulate either the victor or the vanquished. We wish we could see in it the probable cause of early peace. We can see in it nothing but what must inflame the evil passions of both combatants. || The Southerners will now accept nothing more nor less than independence and the acknowledgment of their right to secede. The war may drag on for years, but this must be * Seward to Adams, May 21, 1861. Senate Executive Documents, 37th Congress, 2nd Session, vol. i, p. 97. + Ibid., p. 89. Ibid., June 3, 1861, pp. 97, 98. § Adams to Seward, June 21, 1861. Ibid., p. 110. || London Times, August 5, 1861. 1861 THE NEWS OF BULL RUN. 107 the result at last. Let us not be diverted from our endeavors to get cotton from our dependencies by the idle hope that the American War will soon be over. Let it not be said the Northerners fight for the abolition of slavery, for they do not. Slavery is doomed, but it is not to fall by Northern arms.* Defeat of the North shuts the door to compromise. The Union is bound to conquer now. The spirit of New England and the North will rise to the occasion, and we of the old race shall not be surprised if our kinsmen never rest until they have turned defeat into victory.† A drawn battle would have made pacific results possible. Had the North triumphed, the South might have been brought to invite an arrangement. As it is, the war must go on. The North must persevere to the end and the end must be the utter destruction of the Union, or complete consolidation. The crash of a new political world, said the London Times, is an awful phenomenon. War has dashed like a comet upon the great American Republic, and all the institutions and destinies of that mighty Union seem scattered in fragments around. It is impossible to predict the formations which may survive after the convulsion has passed away, but all that we now see tends irresistibly to convince one that we shall never again behold that specimen of political organization which so amazed us with its growth, and impressed us with its apparent vigor. The United States of North America has ceased to be. The conquest of the South by the North has now become a most improbable event. All the incidents of the war appear to have been in favor of the Confederate States. Every day detracts from the chances of compromise except on a basis of a recognized separation. § We are disposed to think that the period of Union had reached its limit, and that the States of the overgrown Confederacy could not have been long kept together. Indeed, the experiment which has broken down was a hopeless one from the beginning. No such mighty federation of people as *Liverpool Courier, August 5, 1861. † London News, August 6, 1861. the American Union has ever yet been kept together. Indeed it may be said that for twenty years the Union has been gradually breaking up. The least quarrel between parties in America was sufficient to bring a threat of secession into the mouths of one of them. Separation, in one way or the other, must soon have come to pass. Thirty large and powerful States, some of them equivalent to so many European Kingdoms, with various and conflicting interests and pursuits, were not to be held by the bounds of an artificial Confederacy. Instead of giving and taking for the common good, they look at things from a lower ground, believe they understand their own interests best, and could do better alone. Then comes divorce, or subjugation. One of these results will happen in the case before us. We cannot think it will be subjugation. There will then be an end of the Great American Republic, and it will be made clear that no advantage of geographical position, or novelty of political institutions, can save a people from the operation of natural laws.* A little later, in a reply to an article in the Atlantic Monthly; "Why has the North felt aggrieved at England?" the Times restated its belief. We do believe, it said, and shall continue to do so, that the secession of the South has destroyed the Federal Union and that, let the victory be with whichever side it may, reconstruction on the old basis is impossible; that the contest on the side of the North is for empire, and on the side of the South for independence, and that in this respect we see a close analogy between the North and the Government of George III; and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Colonies. + Bulwer Lytton, speaking at a meeting of the Herts Agricultural Society, said he did not understand how any farthinking statesmen could conceive that a fourth part of the earth could long be held under one imperial form of government. The separation between North and South America, which was then being brought about by civil war, he had long foreseen and foretold to be inevitable, and he ventured to predict that the younger men there present would live to * London Times, September 19, 1861. † Ibid., November 7, 1861. |