US Presidency
1865

The United States did not present the subject as an impeachment of thegood faith of a power which was professing the most friendly dispositions, but as involving questions of public law of which the settlement is essentialto the peace of nations; and though pecuniary reparation to their injuredcitizens would have followed incidentally on a decision against Great Britain, such compensation was not their primary object. They had a higher motive, and it was in the interests of peace and justice to establish importantprinciples of international law. The correspondence will be placed beforeyou. The ground on which the British minister rests his justification is, substantially, that the municipal law of a nation and the domestic interpretationsof that law are the measure of its duty as a neutral, and I feel boundto declare my opinion before you and before the world that that justificationcan not be sustained before the tribunal of nations. At the same time;I do not advise to any present attempt at redress by acts of legislation.