# The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (book)/Volume Two/Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI
I STOPPED in London long enough to call upon the American Minister, Mr. Charles Francis Adams, for the purpose of obtaining from him the latest information about the attitude of European powers concerning the United States. I had never seen Mr. Adams before. The appearance of the little bald-headed gentleman with the clean-cut features and blue eyes, to whom I introduced myself with some diffidence as a colleague, reminded me strongly of the portraits I had seen of President John Quincy Adams, his father. What I had read of the habitual frigidity of the demeanor of the father served me to interpret rightly the manner in which the son received me. He said that he was very glad to see me, in a tone which, no doubt, was intended for kindness. It was certainly courteous. But there was a lack of warmth and a stiffness about it, which, as I afterwards told one of Mr. Adams's sons, to his great amusement, made me feel as though the temperature of the room had dropped several degrees. Of course, Mr. Adams could have no reason for desiring to chill me, and I concluded that this prim frigidity was purely temperamental and normal. When we began to talk about public business, he did, indeed, not exactly “warm up,” but he spoke to me with a communicativeness which touched me as confidential and therefore complimentary. He told me very minutely the story of the “precipitate” proclamation of neutrality by the British Government and of the “unofficial” reception of the “Confederate Commissioners,” and described to me in a manner which betrayed grave apprehensions on his part, the unfriendly, if ​not positively hostile, influences he had to contend with—influences the strength of which depended in a great measure upon the strength of the wide-spread belief that the existence of slavery was not involved in our home struggle.
I left Mr. Adams with the highest impression of his patriotism, of the clearness and exactness of his mind, of the breadth of his knowledge, and his efficiency as a diplomat. History has since pronounced its judgment on his services. He was, in the best sense of the term, a serious and sober man. Indeed, he lacked some of the social qualities which it may be desirable that a diplomat should possess. While he kept up in London an establishment fitting the dignity of his position as the representative of a great republic, and performed his social duties with punctilious care, he was not a pleasing after-dinner speaker, nor a shining figure on festive occasions. He lacked the gifts of personal magnetism or sympathetic charm that would draw men to him. Neither had he that vivacity of mind and that racy combativeness which made his father, John Quincy Adams, so formidable a fighter. But his whole mental and moral being commanded so high a respect that every word he uttered had extraordinary weight, and in his diplomatic encounters his antagonists not only feared the reach and exactness of his knowledge and the solidity of his reasoning, but they were also anxious to keep his good opinion of them. He would not trifle with anything, and nobody could trifle with him. His watchfulness was incessant and penetrating without becoming offensive through demonstrative suspiciousness, and his remonstrances commanded the most serious attention without being couched in language of boast or menace. The dignity of his country was well embodied in his own. It is doubtful whether a fitter man could have been found to represent this Republic during the great crisis in its ​history near a government the attitude of which was to us of such vital importance.
In Paris I saw our Minister, Mr. Dayton, whose account of the uncertainty of the French Emperor's policy with regard to the United States was decidedly disquieting. My wife wished to pay a visit to our relatives at Hamburg, and it was thought best that she should remain there with our children until the autumn, when the summer heat at Madrid would be over. I therefore set out for Spain alone. The railroad system of Spain being at that period still very incomplete, I was advised to travel by rail to Marseilles and from there by steamboat to Alicante, where I would find direct railway communication with Madrid. This I did. At Madrid I was received by Mr. Perry, the Secretary of Legation, a gentleman five years older than I, of very prepossessing appearance and pleasant address. My arrival relieved him of considerable anxiety. He informed me that Queen Isabella was on the point of leaving Madrid for Santander, a seaside place, and that if I had not arrived before her departure, my official reception would have had to be delayed for several weeks. He had conferred upon this matter with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Don Saturnino Calderon Collantes, and the Queen had consented to receive me at the royal palace that very evening at half-past nine o'clock. Mr. Perry impressed upon me that this arrangement was to be accepted by me as a great favor. He had secured quarters for me at the hotel “de los Embajadores.” After my installment there we went together to the office of the American Legation, which was situated at some distance in the Calle de Alcalá. I sat down to compose the little speech with which I was to present my letter of credence, addressed by the President to the Queen of Spain. This done, I put some official papers which I had brought with me into the desk ​assigned to me. Mr. Perry then took me to the foreign office for my first official call, and then to the hotel where I was to rest while he showed the draught of my speech to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. On the way to the hotel Mr. Perry remarked something about the official dress in which we were to appear that evening. It being at that time still the rule that the Ministers of the United States should wear a certain uniform at foreign courts—a richly embroidered dress-coat with correspondingly ornamented trousers, a cocked bat, and a court-sword—I had ordered those articles at the establishment of a tailor at Paris who seemed to have the custom of American diplomats, but they were not ready when I left Paris for Madrid. They were to be sent after me in a few days. I could, therefore, appear before the Queen only in an ordinary gentleman's evening attire.
Mr. Perry seemed to be much disturbed by this revelation. He did not know how the “Introductor de los Embajadores,” a high court-official who had to supervise the ceremonial of such state functions, would take it. He feared that there would be difficulty. However, he would lay the state of things before that dignitary and do his best to arrange matters. An hour or two later Mr. Perry returned with the report that the Introductor de los Embajadores, a very solemn and punctilious grandee, had at first grown pale at the idea of a foreign minister being received by her Majesty in plain evening clothes. He doubted whether such a thing had ever happened in the history of the Spanish monarchy, and whether it was compatible with the dignity of the Spanish throne. Mr. Perry then hurried to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who succeeded in persuading the Introductor de los Embajadores that the exigencies of the situation would justify a departure from ever so solemn a rule, but as that official still insisted that he could not ​permit such a departure without special permission from her Majesty, the matter was hurriedly submitted by the Minister to the Queen, who graciously consented. This crisis being happily passed, I was to rest in peace until nine in the evening, when Mr. Perry was to call for me with a carriage to take me to the palace.
At the appointed hour Mr. Perry arrived and found me in faultless evening attire, ready for action. I had only to put the “letter of credence” to be presented to the Queen, in my pocket. But—good heavens!—where was that letter of credence? Not to be found! Could it have been among the papers which I had locked up in my desk at the office of the Legation? It must have been so. But what was now to be done? To drive to the Legation and from there to the palace was impossible. We could not have arrived at the palace until half an hour after the time appointed by the Queen. That the Queen should be made to wait for a foreign gentleman in plain evening clothes could not be thought of. Only a bold stroke could save the situation; and such a stroke I resolved upon. I took a newspaper and put it carefully folded into a large envelope of the official size which I inscribed to “Doña Isabella, Queen of Spain.” This envelope I would hand to her Majesty at the ceremonial, and I asked Mr. Perry to have a short aside with the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the purpose of informing him of what had happened, of excusing me as best he could, and of requesting him not to open the envelope in her Majesty's presence, after she had handed it to him. The real letter of credence would surely be presented to him the next morning. Fortunately Mr. Perry, who had a Spanish wife and spoke the language perfectly, was well acquainted with Don Saturnino, and so we hoped that this new crisis would be safely passed, too.
​Thus armed and equipped we drove to the palace. At the foot of the great staircase stood two halberdiers in gorgeous mediæval costume to guard the passage to the rooms of state. When they saw me in plain evening dress, the dignity of the Spanish throne must have occurred to them, too, for they crossed their halberds and refused to let us ascend. Mr. Perry wore the uniform of a Secretary of Legation, but this did not satisfy the halberdiers, who looked at me with evident disapproval and suspicion. Mr. Perry, putting on a proud and indignant mien, and assuming a tone of command, called upon one of the flunkeys who stood on the stairs, instantly to run up and report to the Introductor de los Embajadores the outrage that had been inflicted on the Minister of the United States. The Introductor came rushing down with an expression of consternation on his face, threw apart the crossed halberds with his own hands, poured forth a torrent of Spanish words which obviously were meant for apologies, and we ascended the great staircase in triumph.
In the hall of state we found Sir John Crampton, the new British minister, with his staff, who was also to present his credentials. As he had called at the foreign office a little earlier than I, he was entitled to precedence. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was also on hand; and, as we were waiting for the Queen, Mr. Perry had time to communicate to him in a few hurried words our embarrassment concerning the letter of credence and the expedient I had resorted to. The Minister looked grave, but nodded. A door was flung open, a gorgeously attired official shouted something into the hall, and the Queen appeared, a portly dame with a fat and unhandsome but good-natured looking face. Sir John Crampton went through the ceremony, and as I looked on I could study his performance as a model for what I had to do. When my turn ​came, I made as good a bow as Sir John had made, delivered my little speech in English, of which the Queen did not understand a word, and presented the envelope containing a newspaper to the Queen, who held the precious object in her hand while she delivered a little speech in Spanish to me, of which I did not understand a word, whereupon she, with a grand swing, turned the envelope unopened over to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He took it, bowing profoundly. While he did so, I caught Don Saturnino's eye and saw a knowing smile flitting across his features. Then, according to custom, the Queen spoke to me conversationally in French, expressing the hope that I was well and would be pleased with Spain, and I said something polite in response. Then another bow, and the ceremony was over.
QUEEN ISABELLA OF SPAIN AND THE PRINCE CONSORT
​ But I was told that I was to present myself also to the King, Don Francisco de Assisi. He was, in fact, only the Prince Consort to the Queen, but had, by an arrangement of courtesy, received the title of “King” and “his Majesty” on the occasion of his marriage to the Queen. His only political function consisted in his presenting himself to the world as the official father of Isabella's children. The affair of Isabella's marriage had created great excitement in Europe, in the early forties, owing to the anxiety of some powers lest some other power gain an advantage by a family alliance with the Spanish dynasty. It was at last thought safest that Isabella marry some Spanish Bourbon, and then Don Francisco appeared to be the only available candidate, although he was a very disagreeable person to Isabella herself. Thus the ill-matched couple were united in wedlock for so-called “state reasons.”
The “King” was not present in the great hall where the foreign ministers were received by the Queen, and I was ​conducted through long corridors to his apartments. Suddenly a door was opened, and I almost stumbled over a very little man standing on the threshold of a small, dimly lighted room. I was greatly surprised to find myself the next moment presented to this little person as “his Majesty, the King.” The conversation that followed, carried on in French, was simple in the extreme. The King spoke in a cracked soprano voice, somewhat like the scream of a young hen. He said that he was very glad to see me, that he hoped my long journey all the way from America to Spain had been a pleasant one, and he hoped especially that I had not been very seasick. Did I ever get very seasick? I was happy to assure his Majesty that my journey had been throughout a pleasant one, and that I had not at all been seasick, and I hoped his Majesty was in good health. His Majesty replied that he was entirely well, but he thought never to get seasick was a rare thing. It was a great gift of nature—a very valuable gift indeed. After this utterance, our theme seemed to be exhausted, and I was permitted to withdraw. When thinking over the events of the day before falling asleep, my introduction into diplomatic life in Madrid appeared to me very much like an act in an opera bouffe—a comical prelude to serious business.
The following day I delivered the genuine letter of credence to Don Saturnino Calderon Collantes, and had a long conversation with him. He was a little gentleman, with large features, somewhat stern when in repose, and looked rather like a high-grade schoolmaster than a political leader, or a Castilian Caballero. He spoke French with the accent peculiar to the Spaniards, but fluently enough to make conversation easy. Although somewhat inclined to be solemn in his attitude, he had sense of humor enough to appreciate the ludicrousness of yesterday's proceedings with the pretended letter of ​credence, and referred to it with a twinkle in his eye. It was rather an advantage to me to have that funny reminiscence in common with him, for to have been engaged together in a secret adventure of that sort is apt to put men upon a footing a little more confidential than it would have been without such an occurrence.
It was my business to place the situation of my country in the most favorable light in the eyes of the government to which I was accredited. In Spain I could not, of course, appeal to any anti-slavery feeling, because at that time slavery still existed in the Spanish colonies. But as the friendship and good will of the United States was a matter of great importance to Spain on account of the proximity to our shores of the Spanish possessions in the West Indies, I sought to impress the Minister with the immense superiority of the resources of the North to those of the South, which made the eventual suppression of the rebellion inevitable, whereupon the Republic would be more powerful and its friendship more important to its neighbors than ever before. Nor did I forget to mention that the desire to annex Cuba existed hardly at all in the North, but almost exclusively in the South, and that if, by a wonder, the Southern Confederacy should succeed in establishing its independence, it would certainly strive to strengthen itself territorially, and turn its eyes toward Cuba at once. Don Saturnino recognized this as probable, although he was proudly confident that Spain would always be powerful enough to hold her own.
But as to the superiority of our North to the Southern insurgents, he had his doubts. The North being a manufacturing country and the South an agricultural country, the North thus depending upon the South for breadstuffs and other agricultural products, he could not see how the North ​could carry on a war against the South for any length of time without exposing itself to great distress. Don Saturnino seemed greatly surprised when I explained to him that the North was by no means an exclusively manufacturing country; that, on the contrary, agriculture was the greatest source of Northern wealth; that, instead of the North depending upon the South for breadstuffs, the South depended in a large measure upon the North; and that, in fact, the North exported a considerable quantity of breadstuffs to European countries, and even to the Spanish colonies, that needed them. This seemed to be to Don Saturnino an entirely new view of the case, and he expressed his evident surprise by an occasional ejaculation, “Ah! ah!” Whether I convinced him or not, I did not know, but he assured me that it was the settled policy of his government to maintain the strictest neutrality between the two belligerent parties, and that this policy would be adhered to in absolute good faith. To impress me, I suppose, with the importance to the United States of such a resolution on the part of such power as Spain, Don Saturnino told me much of the successes recently achieved by Spain over the Moors in Africa, of the great victory at Tetuan, and of the old and new glories of Spanish arms; and he actually stated in the course of his remarks, as a universally known fact about which there could be no reasonable dispute, that Spain was not only the most civilized, but also the most powerful country in Europe. In saying this with a face that could not have been more serious, he was no doubt perfectly sincere.
A veritable treasure I found in my Secretary of Legation, Mr. Horatio I.J. Perry. He was a native of New Hampshire, a graduate of Harvard, and a remarkably handsome man. He had come to Spain in 1849 as Secretary of the American Legation, under the administration of President Taylor, and had ​married a Spanish lady, Doña Carolina Coronado. After having ceased to be connected with the diplomatic service, he remained in Spain on account of his wife, who could not make up her mind to migrate to the far-away United States. I have reason for believing that, although his social position in Madrid was very agreeable, he never ceased to pine for his native land, and, when the news of the great conflict in America came, he eagerly longed for an opportunity to make himself useful in the service of his government. No fitter man could have been found for the position that was given him. He spoke and wrote Spanish as fluently and correctly as his native tongue. He had a large knowledge of Spanish ways of thinking and politics, and personal acquaintance with all the public men of importance, and was generally respected. There was nothing profusely demonstrative in the manner in which he received me, but a warmth of sincerity which I instantly felt. My first conversations with him satisfied me that I could have the fullest confidence in his ability as well as in the genuineness of his devotion, and that confidence was never betrayed in the slightest degree during the time we worked together. I say “we worked together,” for our relations soon became those of co-operation and official comradeship. I have never known a more sincere and zealous patriot, a warmer and more trustworthy personal friend in the position of an official subordinate, and a more watchful and efficient servant of his government. It was sometimes pathetic to observe how the yearning created by his long involuntary separation from his country inflamed his desire to serve it in its hour of peril. After my return to America I was grieved to hear that he had some troublesome disagreements with one of my successors in office, Mr. John P. Hale, who, I apprehend, in some way greatly underrated Mr. Perry's true value. Not many years later it was Mr. Perry's sad fate ​to die in Spain, without having seen his native country again—one of the truest and most enthusiastic of Americans sleeping in foreign soil.
The Perry family had rented a house and garden in the outskirts of Madrid, called “La Quinta,” “the country house,” because it was the only place of the kind in the immediate vicinity of the capital city. The quaint old house, which had belonged to the famous Queen Christina, and had been occasionally inhabited by her, was large beyond the needs of the Perrys, and pleased me so much that I took a suitable part of it, containing a spacious salon with ante-chamber, dining-room, library, and several bed-chambers, off their hands, there to establish my own quarters. The agreement was easily made and I was thus fittingly housed. “La Quinta,” was so odd, so “Spanish” a place, that I cannot refrain from describing it. One entered through a wide wrought-iron gate into a large, square enclosure surrounded by a high brick wall, containing some eight or ten acres of ground, covered in large part by unhealthy-looking trees and shrubbery, a small area being cultivated as a vegetable garden. In one corner of the square there stood a little stone pavilion, dark and gloomy, like the corner turret of a fortified mediæval castle, with narrow slits of windows, little wider than embrasures for musketry would have been, permitting an outlook upon a lane outside the brick wall. Through these windows, so I was told, Queen Christina used to observe the wild bulls which were occasionally driven from their corral to the “Plaza de toros”—the amphitheater for the bull-fights. Queen Christina was said to have been a great connoisseur in fighting bulls, and a lover of the sport. In another corner of the enclosure stood the house, a long, two-story building with a projecting wing at one end. One entered the house by a large arched gateway, which would ​admit a carriage. On the left there were stables for horses and cows. On the right, kitchens and store-rooms, and sleeping-rooms for the servants. Between these a winding flight of stone steps leading to the upper floor, ascending which one reached a square landing lighted by a lantern which was suspended from the ceiling. Tall, whitish plaster figures of saints standing in the corners gave this room a spectral effect. From there one entered a vestibule opening into various corridors to the right and left, and immediately in front was a reception-room called the “sala de las cabezas”—salon of the heads—so called because each of the four corners was ornamented with a huge plaster-head representing some mythological figure. There was something uncanny about these large, empty suites of rooms, in each of which it was said that a duel, or a murder, or something else terrible, had taken place. The windows were all guarded with heavy iron bars to protect the house against robbers. The gate was carefully locked and fastened with a crossbeam every night for the same purpose. When I asked whether such precautions were needed, the answer was that indeed they were; and when one warm evening I wished to take a walk on the grounds, the Perrys begged me to desist, because it would not be safe, for suspicious human shapes had been repeatedly seen stealthily moving in the shrubbery after nightfall. I obeyed, although those gruesome stories seemed to me slightly imaginative. But some time later, after I had left Spain, I learned that an attaché of the Legation, Mr. Irving van Wart, who then lived with the Perrys, was actually attacked and robbed by footpads at the entrance of the “Quinta” when he came home alone and on foot one night.
The “Quinta” was characteristic of Spain in another respect. The trees and shrubberies on the grounds could not live, nor would the kitchen garden be productive, without ​frequent artificial irrigation. That irrigation, as well as the water supply for the house, was furnished by a well which was worked with a big scoop-wheel studded on its circumference with buckets which emptied their contents into a trough. This ancient piece of machinery was kept in motion by a mule going round and round the better part of each day. It was called the “Noria.” An old gardener superintended it. His name was Don Pepe. He looked like a dull-witted rustic, and not at all like a nobleman entitled to the appellation of Don. But Doña Carolina, as Mrs. Perry was called by her friends, told me that he was one—that there were villages in Spain where every inhabitant was noble, and Don Pepe had come from such a village. But he had to work like any other poor peasant. I saw him turn the soil in the vegetable garden with a kind of plow such as might have been in use at the time of Julius Cæsar. It consisted of a wooden pole, one end of which was charred for the purpose of hardening it. About the middle of its length another pole was fastened at an acute angle so as to stick out parallel with the ground. To the outer end of this pole a mule was hitched, and with this instrument Don Pepe did his plowing. There was not an ounce of iron on the whole implement. I inquired whether it would not be more economical to provide Don Pepe with a more modern plow. But the answer was that Don Pepe understood his old ancestral plow and no other, and that it was not advisable to confuse his mind with newfangled contrivances. I had occasion to observe, however, that Don Pepe did not stand alone in his stolid fidelity to ancient customs. From the windows of my bedroom in the “Quinta” I overlooked a wheat field belonging to a farm immediately outside of the city. When the wheat had been cut a threshing-floor was prepared in the open field by beating a little piece of ground hard. On this the wheat crop was spread ​out and a number of horses were driven over it, round and round, to stamp out the grain with their hoofs. This was the threshing method of the time of Abraham, and Don Pepe would have instinctively distrusted any other.
But nobleman though he was, his title did not secure to him any privileged treatment on the part of his employers. One day, when he had done something particularly stupid, I heard Doña Carolina say to him: “Oh, Don Pepe, tu es tan bestia!” (Oh, Don Pepe, what a stupid brute you are!) She said this to him, not in an excited tone of anger, but quietly, as if to convey to him a piece of useful information, or to pass the compliments of the day. And he took it very quietly, too, as if he had been accustomed to that kind of conversation, and then went on with his work as stupidly as before. Doña Carolina shrugged her shoulders and smilingly left him.
For a little while I tried to keep house for myself in my part of the “Quinta.” I had my major domo and other servants in customary style. But soon I discovered that I was being robbed most mercilessly. I had not only to pay incredible prices for everything that was bought for me, but also my small belongings, such as shirts, neckties, handkerchiefs, and similar things, disappeared with amazing rapidity. It was a great relief to me when the Perrys offered to take charge of my domestic affairs, and the arrangement worked well beyond my anticipation.
This was owing to Doña Carolina's many excellent qualities. She was the daughter of a nobleman in Estremadura, slight in stature, with somewhat masculine features, large, dark, fiery eyes, and exquisitely fine little hands and feet. Her literary talents had brought her to Madrid. She had written poems and novels which had attracted attention. On some public occasion she had, as a poetess, been crowned ​with a laurel wreath, if I remember rightly, by the hands of the Queen herself, with whom she remained a great favorite. Her literary renown spread over the country, and she told me how, when she visited her native Estremadura, the peasants, having heard of her laurel crown, would gather in the village taverns in which she stopped on her journey, and insist that she should show them her “habilidades,” that is, recite her poems for them or improvise new ones. Her various mental faculties were unevenly developed. She had no mathematical capacity at all, no sense of numbers. She admitted to me with a laugh that she could not count much beyond ten without getting confused. When she went out shopping, she would take a handful of beans in her pocket with her to aid her in figuring out her change. In spite of all this, she was an exact housekeeper, and always kept her accounts in perfect order. How she did it, I cannot imagine. But the household under her rule actually went like clockwork. We conversed together in French. Her French was very peculiar in its grammatical construction, but always intelligible, fluent, and not seldom elegant in expression. When she could not find the French word for what she wished to say, she promptly took the Spanish equivalent, giving it a French sound in pronunciation. This usually served her purpose, but sometimes it would produce amusing mistakes. With all this, her conversation had a singularly piquant charm. She was full of poetic fancies, which occasionally would bubble up in picturesque imagery. Of human affairs in the larger sense she knew little, and the views she expressed about them were frequently very naïve and crude. But she possessed an instinctive knowledge of men which was amazing. Now and then, when Mr. Perry and I discussed, this or that person in her hearing, she would suddenly break in: “I hear you mention the name of So-and-So. Do you trust him? Do not. He is not a good ​man. He does not mean what he says. He is false.” “But, Carolina,” Mr. Perry would say, “how can you say that? You are hardly acquainted with him.” The answer was: “I have seen him. I have looked into his eyes. I have heard his voice. I have felt his atmosphere. I know him.” In the same way she would sometimes express her confidence in persons whom we distrusted. I expressed to Mr. Perry my surprise at the positiveness of her utterances. He replied that he had been no less astonished when he had first heard her say such things; that her judgments had at times run directly counter to his, but that, in the end, he had always found her to be absolutely right, and that she certainly possessed a wonderful intuitive knowledge of men. My own experience, as far as it went, was the same. On two or three occasions, when she had observed some strangers who called upon me, she expressed opinions about them which at first greatly startled me, but which afterwards I found to be entirely correct.
Although she had married a Protestant, and was tolerant and liberal in her opinions and sympathies as to heretics and unbelievers, she was very devout. Whenever she met a high prelate of the church on the street, she knelt down and kissed his hand. She wore an amulet around her neck for her protection, and prayed fervently to the Holy Virgin. Although she had read much, and freely imbibed the enlightened opinions of the age, she was very superstitious. Several times she had fallen down in church in a swoon because, as she said, she had seen the ghost of her father standing at the altar. We followed the Court to one of the Queen's summer residences at San Ildefonso, in the Guadarrama Mountains, and one afternoon the Perrys and I promenaded in the palace gardens and entered a dark grotto or little cave, which was one of the ornaments of the place. Suddenly Doña Carolina uttered a scream and ran ​back into the light as fast as her feet would carry her. We found her standing there, breathing hard, and in a state of bewilderment. What was the matter? Had we not seen, she asked, those two burning eyes right ahead of us in the dark of the cave, one in green, the other in red fire, eyes fierce and terrible, like those of the devil?
One night I was sitting in the dining-room of the “Quinta,” reading. Mr. Perry was out. From my seat in the dining-room I looked into the “sala de las cabezas” and two further rooms behind it, which were but very dimly lighted. At the end of the suite a side door led into the apartments occupied by the Perry family. Suddenly I was startled by a piercing shriek, and saw Doña Carolina in a white night-robe, with a burning candle in her hand, her eyes wide open, her features expressing terrible fright, rushing out of that side door and running the whole length of that suite of rooms towards me. On the threshold of the dining-room, she fell headlong in a fainting fit. I rang for the servants, and we laid her upon a couch and sprinkled her face with water. When she had recovered consciousness, she looked about with a vague gaze, and then told me that, in passing from the sleeping-chamber of her children into her sitting-room, the ghost of her father had been standing in the door and held her by the sleeve of her dress. When she had become more composed she accepted my offer to conduct her back to her apartment. Leaning on my arm, she walked slowly with me through the “sala de las cabezas” and the adjoining rooms, and as we passed through her door, I saw at once what it was that “had held her sleeve.” It was the large old-fashioned door-handle in which the flowing sleeve had caught as she was passing through. I gently pushed her towards it, and the sleeve caught again. She started, but as, looking up, she saw me smile, she smiled, ​too, and permitted me to say, without contradiction, that there had been no ghost at all, but only a door-handle.
She greatly respected Mr. Perry's American patriotism, and like to hear and read about the United States and the American people. But Mr. Perry could never persuade her to visit his native land with him. She dreaded the long sea-voyage, and protested that she could not live in a country where it was so cold and snowed so much. It would snow in Madrid, too, sometimes, but only a little, and then the snow did not cover the ground long. When it did begin to snow, Doña Carolina would begin to weep, and she shut herself up in her room until the snow had melted away. She was a thorough Spaniard, but not blind to the faults of her people. She abhorred the bloody sport of the bull-fight as a relic of barbarism. She was eloquent in the advocacy and prediction of a higher civilization for her people. Her principles and sentiments were noble and refined, and in the light of those principles she set out to educate her two little daughters. But she was a genuine child of the South, with the fine gifts and noble inspirations, and also with many of the extravagant vivacities of temperament, the bizarre whimsicalities of mental structure, and the singular contradictions between thought and feeling which are often bred by the Southern sun.
The social intercourse which my diplomatic position opened to me was agreeable but not extraordinarily interesting. It is believed by many, and I had shared that belief, that a diplomatic corps near a government of any importance must be composed of persons of superior ability, knowledge, and culture—a high school of state-craft, in which the intimate secrets of the art might be learned. I approached the circle with a certain awe, but found myself at ease much sooner than I had anticipated. My colleagues received me very ​pleasantly, notwithstanding my revolutionary antecedents; and as I was by far the youngest member, the baby of the guild, some of the oldest veterans among them good-naturedly volunteered to take me patronizingly under their wings. The most benevolent among them was the minister of one of the smaller European States who had been in Madrid twenty-five or thirty years, and had grown gray in the service. He invited me with the warmest urgency to visit him in his bachelor quarters, where we then might have a quiet talk about things of interest to me.
I gladly responded, thinking that his long experience at the Spanish Court must have given him a deep insight into the elements at work in Spanish politics, and that I might learn from him something valuable. But after having plied him with questions to the best of my ability, I concluded that he never had bestowed any study on such things, and could not give me any information of value about them. What he did reveal to me with an air of mysterious importance was the contents of a finely-chiseled silver box, which formed the principal ornament on the table of his drawing-room. This box he unlocked carefully with a beautiful little silver key, and then took from it the decorations he had at various times received from kings and emperors. Holding them up one by one, and making them glitter in the light, he told me the story of each cross and star, how it had been bestowed upon him, and what distinction it conferred. When this subject was exhausted, he initiated me into the current gossip of the diplomatic corps, and in the “chronique scandaleuse” of the Spanish Court for thirty years back. This was my first distinctly professional lesson in practical diplomacy.
Here I struck the type of the small diplomat, whose delight is the social tittle-tattle, who, having no affairs of real ​consequence to attend to, always strives to magnify his little routine business into great transactions of state, and affects mysterious wisdom by the knowing wink and the smile of the augur. Most of my colleagues were serious and well-informed men—not, indeed, statesmen of the highest order—but attentive observers and good reasoners, of whom one could learn something. The minister with whom my relations became most agreeable was Count Galen, remarkable to tell—the representative of the Prussian Government which only a few years before had prosecuted me as a revolutionary offender, a state-criminal. Count Galen, a Westphalian, was a kinsman of the Count Wolf-Metternich, whose tenant my grandfather had been, and in whose castle I was born. Count Galen had, as a young man, been a visitor in the Gracht, the “Burg” of Liblar, and he remembered my grandfather, the “Burghalfen,” quite well. That I, the grandson of that “Burghalfen,” should now turn up at the Spanish Court as the diplomatic colleague of Count Wolf-Metternich's kinsman, seemed to us a fantastic, but also a propitious, whim of fortune, and our common memories of the “Burg” at Liblar and its inhabitants formed the subject of many a pleasant talk. Count Galen took a lively interest in American affairs, and from his utterances I could form an intelligent conclusion as to the true nature of the attitude of the Prussian Government with regard to our internal conflict. A considerable portion of the Prussian nobility, as well as many officers of the army, hating democracy and wishing that the Republic of the United States, as the greatest and most attractive example of democracy, should fail, and also believing that our slave-holders as a class corresponded most nearly to the aristocracy in European countries, instinctively sympathized with the insurgent Southern Confederacy. But all the rest of the Prussian people, that is, an ​overwhelming majority of them, comprising the most intelligent, active, and progressive elements, were decidedly and vigorously in sympathy with the North and the Union. Moreover, the traditional policy of Prussia was to cultivate the most friendly relations with the United States. The government and the people at large were thus united in this sentiment. The attitude of the Prussian Government was therefore not only one of neutrality, but one of distinctly amicable, well-wishing neutrality. And this friendly feeling Count Galen seemed heartily to share.
I had less intercourse with Spanish politicians than I desired. This was partly owing to the circumstances that only a comparatively small number of public men in Spain could converse in any but their own language, while I, of course, could not master the Spanish in the twinkling of an eye. With Calderon Collantes, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who spoke French, my relations grew more communicative and cordial the more we saw of one another. Some of the other ministers of the Crown did not leave any distinct impression upon my mind—except O'Donnell, the Prime-Minister, a military man of cold and reticent demeanor. I was visited by Rivero, a leader of the Democrats, who had, in his appearance and manners as well as in his address, much of the well-bred but easy-going man of the people. I came into contact with Olozaga, leader of the Moderate Liberals, whose thoughtful, calm, well-poised speech impressed me as that of a real statesman. I was also visited by Emilo Castelar, who, at that period, was still a modest young college professor, but had already attracted wide attention by the singular charm of his oratory. As he spoke French with difficulty, sometimes struggling with doubtful success to find proper expression for his thoughts, his conversation in that language was not fluent. ​But he made me feel his poetic enthusiasm for the great American Republic, and the fervor of his wish that the champions of human liberty would triumph over the uprising of the slave-holders. There was something in his being that created a sympathetic atmosphere around him. The timbre of his voice touched the nerves with a peculiar caressing effect, and I can well imagine how the poetic flights of his eloquence, poured forth by that voice in the most gorgeously musical of all languages, could produce among his hearers a certain intoxication of feeling which, while the spell lasted, made them forget all differences of opinion. With these impressions of Castelar still vivid in my mind, I found it quite intelligible when I read, at a later period, of the commotions his eloquence achieved in the Cortes; how, after he had closed a speech, even the deputies of the opposition would jump up from their seats, rush down upon him to embrace and kiss him, and break out in thundering cheers for the “hijo de España,” the son of Spain, and then, a few hours later, pronounce against him when the question was put to a vote. At the time when I knew him, a little volume of his speeches appeared in print, which he presented to me as a keepsake, with an inscription by his own hand.
According to custom, the diplomatic corps followed the Court to the Queen's summer residence, La Granja at San Ildefonso, and thence to the Escorial, where the Queen was to stop a few days for the purpose of visiting the tombs of her ancestors and doing penance. Of the “opera bouffe” part of my diplomatic life in Spain, those days formed the climax. Here was the Escorial palace, looking like a huge penitentiary in somber gray stone, surmounted by a majestic church cupola—the whole edifice breathing the atmosphere of the gloomy and terrible Philip II, the devout and bloody executioner of the Inquisition,—in it a little balcony overlooking the interior ​of the church, itself like a dungeon-cell, in which Philip used to sit at mass; and deep down, surrounded by high and dark stone walls like an airshaft, a little court-yard, damp and chill, into which no sunbeam could even penetrate, but which was said to have been Philip's favorite place for taking a walk, like a bear or a tiger in a pit. And then the crypt with the tombs of Philip and the other Spanish royalties. And “doing penance” in these surroundings, there was the gay Isabella, the dissoluteness of whose life was so universally admitted that it may be said to have been accepted history. But the circumstances under which the gay Isabella was then “doing penance” were more than ordinarily peculiar. There was a story running from mouth to mouth, which nobody contradicted, and which, as far as I was aware, everybody believed. It was to the effect that, right then and there, while doing penance, Queen Isabella had experienced a change of heart—that is—not that she had turned to sackcloth and ashes in repenting of her sins, but that she had changed her heart from her old lover to a new one. Her recognized favorite for some time had been Don Juan Tenorio, her private secretary. Desiring to rid herself of Juan, Queen Isabella offered him the embassy to the Papal Court at Rome. But Don Juan, of whom it was said that he was really attached to the Queen with a sentimental affection, and that he was now consumed by jealousy, declined the offer, and simply retired to solitude in which to nurse the agonies of jilted love.
Nothing could have been more characteristic than the manner in which this story was passed on from hand to hand. The diplomats received it with that ironical smile which they always have for the weak points of the countries to which they are accredited, and regarded it as a fine bit of gossip upon which they could exercise their wit when they were among ​themselves. But the more or less loyal subjects of her most gracious majesty, so far as we could observe them, seemed to be highly amused by the humor of the situation. They discussed it in the cafes and on the promenades, with a cynical grin if not with outright laughter. Some of the generals attending the Court enjoyed it hugely. Even the cautious courtier could not altogether resist the droll effect of that singular combination of elements in the farce—the gloomy and solemn Escorial, the gay Queen doing penance at the tombs of her ancestors, and the dismissal of the sentimental favorite for a handsomer swain. By many the discarded lover, taking the matter tragically, was considered the most ludicrous figure of all. But not a word was heard of righteous wrath at the scandal which disgraced the throne of Spain, and, if unresented, also the Spanish nation. Such a feeling may have existed deep down somewhere, but, so far as could be observed, it did not rise to the surface at the time. Nor was the poor King thought of in connection with this affair, although it might be supposed that he had, in a certain sense, some interest in it.
Poor Don Francisco with the chicken voice! A little later I saw him again at the state function, the “besa mañnos,” in the royal palace at Madrid, where the Spanish grandees kissed the unlovely hand of the Queen. She then passed along the line of the diplomats, addressing a few pleasant commonplaces to each; and then came his miserable majesty the “King,” with the royal children, passing along the same line, pointing out those little “infantes” and “infantas” to the representatives of the foreign powers, as if the royal family relations had been in the best of order. And while this grotesque performance went on, the diplomats exchanged glances among themselves, which, if they had been translated into words, would have ​expressed a good deal of pity for the forlorn and wretched “King,” not unmingled with contempt. Whether the story of the burlesque enacted at the Escorial ever got into the newspapers or otherwise became known to the great public in Spain, I cannot say. But although that Spanish public was not unaccustomed to Court scandals, Isabella managed to sink so low in the estimation of the best part of the Spanish people that when, some years later, she was swept from the throne, the absolute lack of respect for her no doubt made the work of the revolutionary movement against her very much easier than it otherwise would have been. While I am writing this, Isabella is said to enjoy in Paris the life of a Queen in exile. Poor “King” Don Francisco, who in Madrid hung about the Court somewhat like a charity boarder with a title, has recently died a quiet death without leaving a void.
It is impossible to describe the gloom cast upon our Legation by the news of the disastrous battle of Bull Run. I well remember the day when it struck us in Madrid like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky. I had, indeed, not anticipated an easy and very speedy suppression of the insurrectionary movement. Although bound to present our case in the most favorable light, I had not, in my representation to the Spanish Government, indulged in any oversanguine prophesies for the near future—mindful of the rule that it is unwise to make confident predictions upon the fulfillment of which your credit depends, unless you are perfectly sure of the fulfillment. I had, therefore, confined myself to insistence upon the immense superiority of our resources, which would command ultimate success. This was tenable enough. But the disaster at Bull Run, as my despatches indicated and the newspapers elaborately described it, went far beyond what we had thought possible. It not only was a disaster, but it appeared as a disgrace. It put in doubt ​the fighting capacity of the Northern soldier. Our detractors in Europe, who had always predicted that the Northerner would, after having played the braggart, turn out to be a coward in actual conflict, shouted at the top of their voices: “There, now, do you see?” And not a few of our well-wishers anxiously asked themselves: “Can it be that what has been said of the Yankees is, after all, true?” Some of the Spanish newspapers, which had so far treated us with decent respect, began to crack jokes about us. One of the quips current in the cafés was that the battle should be called the battle of “Patassas” (of the feet), instead of battle of Manassas (of the hands). The Spanish army, officers and soldiers, seemed to be especially amused by the speed of the Yankees in running. We were in evident danger of being ridiculous. I could not see a Spaniard smile without suspecting that he was laughing at our Bull Run rout. I noticed that my colleagues of the diplomatic corps, who would have talked with me more or less freely, and perhaps even sympathetically, about an ordinary national misfortune, refrained from mentioning the battle of Bull Run in my presence, as people refrain from mentioning a family disgrace in the presence of the husband or father concerned. The only one who visited me and made inquiries about the event in a tone of a frank and sympathetic friend, was the Prussian Minister, Count Galen. I could not tell him more than he already knew from the public prints, except that I was confident the American Government and people would rise with undaunted determination to the duty of the hour, and thus repair the disaster.
The distress of mind I suffered in those days I cannot describe. Not knowing at that time that, after the battle, the Southern army, too, had been in a state of confusion, rendering a vigorous pursuit impossible, I tormented myself by ​imagining how the victors, on the heels of our routed forces, would sweep down upon Washington without finding any effective resistance. I knew that our enemies in Europe were already enjoying this spectacle in anticipation. I cursed the hour when I had accepted the honors of my diplomatic post. I envied the men at home who, although staggering under this unexpected blow, had at least an opportunity for exerting all their energies in serving the country to some purpose on the spot. Had I been there, I could have helped them to rouse up the people from their dejection, and have shared the fate of those who went forward to bear the brunt of the struggle in the field. But here I was, unable to do anything but tell the Minister of Foreign Affairs that this mishap, although temporarily awkward, would only have the effect of making the government and the loyal people of the Union put forth their whole irresistible strength—which the Minister might believe or not. I could induce some friendly journalists to address newspaper articles to the same effect to an unsympathetic public. And then, having done this, I could do nothing but pace up and down in my room like a wild animal in a cage.
One afternoon soon after the arrival of the Bull Run tidings, I took an aimless walk outside of the “Quinta” grounds, and passed by a circus tent within which a performance was going on. Suddenly I heard the band strike, up the tune of “Yankee Doodle.” I rushed in and saw one of the “artists” on a wildly running horse waving an American flag. I applauded with a passionate vigor that may have astonished the natives. I shouted for a “da capo,” and my shout was taken up by a sufficient number to bring on a repetition of the feat. I could have embraced the “artist” and kissed his rouged cheeks. Whether the tune or the flag meant anything to the audience, I do not know. To me it was like an inspiration of ​new courage and hope. I do not think I have ever greeted the Stars and Stripes with greater enthusiasm.
My longing to go back to the United States grew stronger every day. The elegant ease of my life in Spain chafed me like a reproach. It became more and more intolerable to me to think of leading a lounging existence at this post with an activity more apparent than real, while those with whom I had worked for the anti-slavery cause were painfully struggling against adverse fate, many at the hourly peril of their lives. All my time not demanded by my official duties—which left me much leisure—was devoted to the study of military works. The campaigns of Frederick the Great, of the Archduke Charles, and of Napoleon, and the works of Jomini and Clausewitz, together with minor books on tactics, I had studied before. I now took the last French campaign in Italy that ended with the battle of Solferino, and some writings of Marshal Bugeaud. I even translated a new work on tactics from French into English, with the intention of publishing it, which, however, I never did. At the same time I made every possible effort to inform myself about the effect which the Bull Run disaster might have produced on public opinion in Europe, especially in those states from which interference with our struggle in the way of a recognition of the independence of the Southern Confederacy might have been apprehended. The advocates of such a policy were, indeed, disappointed at the news from the United States following that of the battle of Bull Run. The victorious rebel army had not taken Washington. The government of the Union had not gone to pieces. The people of the North had not given up their cause in despair. Government and people were simply recognizing the fact that this would be a long and arduous war, and were, with dogged resolution, going to work to prepare themselves for that sort ​of conflict. While these things were giving great encouragement to our friends the world over, our enemies were taking comfort in the belief that the Confederates, too, would not be remiss in calling all their resources into play, and that their superiority in generalship and fighting spirit, as demonstrated at Bull Run, would amply make up for their inferiority in men and means. The agitation for the recognition of the Southern Confederacy proceeded, therefore, rather more vigorously than before; and it was not unreasonable to predict that such a recognition would soon be followed by a concerted effort of foreign powers to break up our blockade of the Southern ports and by other acts of interference highly dangerous to the Union cause.
There was, indeed, no reason to fear that Spain would, of her own initiative, launch out in such a policy. She was restrained, not, perhaps, by any love for the United States, but by her weakness in point of military and naval resources, and by the exposed situation of her colonial possessions in the West Indies. She would, at that period, have had more to fear from the aggressiveness and land-greed of an independent slave-holding Confederacy than from a Union in which the slave-holding element was held in check by more potent influences. It was, therefore, the manifest interest of Spain to remain on good terms with the Union; and when the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs assured me of the friendly sentiments of his government, he was, no doubt, sincere. It would have required a very strong impulse from France and England to push Spain into a change of her attitude. The important question, therefore, was, what France and England would do. If France and England abstained from recognizing the Southern Confederacy and from unfriendly interference, Spain certainly would. Spain had, indeed, taken advantage of a ​successful revolutionary movement in Santo Domingo—perhaps she had to some extent instigated, or at least fostered, that movement—to re-establish her rule over that island. But she had emphatically disclaimed any intent hostile to the United States in connection with it, and Mr. Seward, after having first indulged in some strong language concerning it, finally contented himself with a mere formal protest. This fancy—it was nothing more than that—to recover some of her ancient prestige, in fact cost Spain dearly in blood and money, and then, in a few years, resulted in utter failure. Thus Spain's ambitious dream of renewed strength ended with a painful demonstration of her real weakness.
Neither was there any intent hostile to the United States in the agreement she entered into with England and France to enforce by a naval and military demonstration, the long-deferred payment by the Republic of Mexico of certain claims. Here again the fond delusion that this enterprise might possibly lead to some restoration of Spanish prestige may have lurked in the background. But there was no scheme prejudicial to the fairness of her attitude with regard to our internal struggle. Of this matter I shall have something more to say in another part of this narrative. Here I merely wish to emphasize that the question of the recognition of the Southern Confederacy as an independent power was to be decided in France and in England, and not in Spain.
As I could gather from the newspapers, as well as from my correspondence, there were several influences in France and England pressing for action unfavorable to our cause: the anti-democratic element, naturally sympathizing with anything that promised to demonstrate the failure of the great democratic experiment in the new world; business interests both in France and England depending upon the regular ​supply of raw cotton which was interrupted by our blockade of the Southern ports; the displeasure created by our new tariff on imports—the so-called Morrill tariff—which disturbed the commerce between European countries and the United States, while the Confederate Government was profuse in its free-trade professions; and finally the widespread belief that the breaking up of the Union was an established and irreversible fact; that the task the Government of the United States had assumed, to subjugate so large an extent of country, defended by a united and warlike population, was a hopeless undertaking, involving absolutely useless shedding of blood and destruction of property; and that it would be rendering a service to humanity to stop such a war which was denounced as almost criminal because of its evident futility. Views not unlike these were entertained and expressed even by such a Liberal as Gladstone.
This formidable combination of influences found vigorous and persuasive support in the press. The London Times, in its magisterial, heavy-artillery style, preached the cause of the Southern Confederacy day after day, and a host of journals, both in England and France, followed suit. The current talk in clubs and cafés gradually took the same direction. The emissaries of the Southern Confederacy in London and Paris spared no effort to feed the fire. The plausibility of the argument was immensely strengthened by the demonstration of our military weakness which the Bull Run rout seemed to betray. Thus a strong appeal was made not only to political jealousy and commercial interest, but also to humanitarian feeling. It looked as if it were only a question of time when such an appeal, pressed upon the governments of France and England, might be successful. In France the decision as to the action of the government would depend, in a great ​measure, on the view the Emperor Louis Napoleon took of his personal or dynastic advantage. His sympathies were instinctively with the Southern Confederacy. He harbored in his mind vague schemes of aggrandizement, the execution of which would have been much facilitated by the dismemberment of the United States. He would, therefore, have been glad to break our blockade of the Southern ports, and even to interfere directly in our struggle in favor of the Southern Confederacy, could he have done so without running counter to a strong public opinion in his own country, and also without the risk of entangling himself, single-handed, in a conflict of such magnitude that it might compromise the position of France among the powers of Europe. For this reason he was anxious to obtain the co-operation of Great Britain in the enterprise. He sought that co-operation with great solicitude. With England, therefore, the final decision rested.
In England the government depended upon public opinion to a far greater extent than in France. If public opinion in England distinctly demanded the recognition of the Southern Confederacy and active interference in its behalf, those things would certainly come. If public opinion distinctly forbade them, they would certainly not come. The question now was,—what arguments could be brought forth in our favor to overcome those that were so assiduously and so effectively marshaled against us? The answer to that question, as I conceived it, was simply that we should tell the world the plain truth about the real nature of our struggle, and, upon that statement, appeal to the moral sense and the enlightened judgment of civilized mankind.
The truth to be brought home to the European mind so that it could not be obscured or lost sight of was simply this: that the election which made Mr. Lincoln President of the ​United States turned upon the question of human slavery; that the Southern States seceded from the Union, not on account of any metaphysical point of States' rights, but simply because the election had gone against the slave-holding interest, it having demonstrated that the slave-holding interest would no longer be permitted to rule the Union; that the secessionists had set up an independent confederacy, not to vindicate the constitutional liberty of the citizen and the right of man to govern himself, but to vindicate the right of one man to enslave another man, and, as they themselves boastingly confessed, to “found an empire upon the cornerstone of slavery”; and that our civil war, although conducted on our side, primarily and in conformity with our legal position, for the purpose of maintaining or restoring the Union, would, if decided in favor of the secessionists, result in the real establishment of that empire founded on the “cornerstone of slavery,” while, if it were decided in favor of the Union, human slavery would inevitably perish as a result of our victory. If, therefore, this having been made clear, any European power chose to countenance the Southern Confederacy, it could do so only with the distinct understanding that it was taking sides with the cause of human slavery in its struggle for further existence and dominion. What European government depending to any extent on the approval of public opinion would—cotton or no cotton, commerce or no commerce, war, long or short, victory, certain or uncertain—range itself on the side of human slavery in the face of the moral sense of civilized mankind?
In this respect the attitude of our government appeared unhappily ambiguous. The home situation was prolific of complicated embarrassments, while every clear-minded person recognized that the war was bound to result ultimately in the total destruction of slavery, and the spirit of “abundant caution” in ​the administration insisted upon keeping the anti-slavery tendency of the conflict in the background in order to spare the sensitiveness of the Union men in the border States and of the war Democrats, who would assuredly protest against the “war for the Union” being turned into “an abolition war.” But whether that caution was demanded, or even justified by the home situation, certain it is that it grievously impaired the moral strength which our cause would otherwise naturally have had in the world abroad.
Hardly anything could, in this respect, have been more important than the official interpretation of the national aspirations given by our Secretary of State, who was charged with the duty of speaking for us to the outside world. In fact, the operations of Seward's mind at this period may be ranked among the most curious puzzles of history. Having been regarded as one of the most radical anti-slavery men before Lincoln's election, he became, after that event, apparently, at least, one of the most timid. As appears from his private correspondence, since published, he regarded himself as appointed by Providence as well as by the tacit consent of both political parties to “compose” the trouble created by the secession movement. He seemed to believe that this composition might be effected by mutual concessions, by compromise with regard to slavery. But when the question arose what concession he would offer, it turned out that he could offer only the advice to let the slavery question alone and to think and talk of something else. He incurred the displeasure of the anti-slavery men by assuming the attitude of a compromiser, and the displeasure of the real compromisers by having no substantial compromise to offer. What he had in his mind, as subsequently revealed by Nicolay and Hay's account of his memorandum of April 1st, was a plan of pulling the seceders ​back into the Union, a plan so amazing in its fatuity that nobody would believe its conception possible, were it not on undeniable record.
WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD AND HIS DAUGHTER FANNY
From a photograph made about 1861
​ I have already mentioned that paper addressed by Seward to President Lincoln in which he proposed that the slavery question be put out of sight, and that categorical inquiries be thrust at France, Great Britain, Russia, and Spain, such as ordinarily are followed by a declaration of war,—his idea being that conflicts with foreign powers would serve to excite in the seceded States an enthusiastic national outburst, an America-against-the-world-furor in the South as well as the North, sufficiently strong to make the Southern people forget their quarrel with the North and to range them and the Northern brethren side by side in a common fight against the foreigner. And this at the moment when nothing would have delighted the Southern secessionists more than to see the Union entangled in a conflict with a strong foreign power, which foreign power would then have been the natural ally of the Confederacy! How anyone could hope that, under such circumstances, an actual conflict between those powers and the United States, the very thing our secessionists ardently desired in the interest of Southern independence, would re-unite the South and the North in a common national enthusiasm, passes understanding.
When Lincoln had buried in discreet and generous silence Seward's policy of war against the world, Seward contented himself with making foreign governments understand that they could not recognize the Southern Confederacy as an independent nation without incurring the active resentment of the United States. He did this in language which was always earnest and eloquent, and sometimes even rose to oratorical fervor. This was well as far as it went, and no doubt had the ​effect of convincing the French Emperor and the leading statesmen of Great Britain that they could not defy the United States without running the risk of complications which might become very serious to them, for the time being, however disastrous they would be, in the end, to us. He probably deterred the French Emperor from taking any offensive steps without the consent and co-operation of Great Britain. But the greatness of the risk involved to them in such complications would depend upon the ability of the United States to hold the field against European enemies and against the Southern Confederacy at the same time, and this ability would in its turn depend upon the fortunes of war in our civil conflict. Unless we gained advantages in that conflict great enough to give us a decided superiority in our own country, Seward's bold words, sometimes bordering upon actual menace, would lose their impressive force and finally sound only like hollow thunder. And therein was danger—a danger which was visibly increasing after our defeat at Bull Run and several other mishaps on the field of military operations soon following it. It may have been ever so true that, as Seward said, the people of the North would not have given up their cause even if foreign powers had intervened in favor of the Southern Confederacy. But it must have been clear to every sober mind that against the combination of European powers and the Southern Confederacy the chances of the Union would have been desperate, almost to hopelessness.
All the more desirable did it appear that the moral power of the Union cause should be brought into action—and here Mr. Seward not only failed to do that which would have strengthened us abroad, but he actually did things which greatly weakened us. It could not, indeed, be expected of him that in addressing foreign powers he should have positively ​proclaimed our war for the maintenance of the Union to be a war for the abolition of slavery as a primary object, for our government did not take that position at home. But in the instructions given to our ministers, and especially those representing the United States in England and France, he not only forbade them “to draw into debate any opposing moral principles which may be supposed to lie at the foundation of the controversy between those—(the seceding)—States and the Federal Union”—that is, ever to mention the subject of slavery, but he actually asserted that “the Territories will remain in all respects the same, whether the revolution shall succeed or fail; the condition of slavery in the several States will remain just the same, whether it succeed or fail.” He thus positively stripped our cause of its peculiar moral force, and he did this by going so far as to say a thing which not only a cautious politician would have found it unnecessary to say, but which, as his own philosophical sense must have told him, could not be true.
The fact is that Mr. Seward's mind was befogged by a most curious misapprehension. He thought that cotton ruled the world, to the exclusion of moral principle and human sympathy. He actually believed that the dependence of their cotton industries upon the supply of the raw material to be furnished by our Southern States would be the decisive element to determine the policy of England and France. Incredible as it now would seem in the retrospect, were it not verified by documentary evidence, even as late as July, 1862, when Lincoln first revealed to the Cabinet his intention to issue a proclamation of emancipation, Seward feared that, if we attempted to free the slaves, Europe would interpose for the purpose of keeping them in bondage. There is a written memorandum by Secretary Stanton referring to the debates in the Cabinet on ​the emancipation policy, of July 22d, 1862, which reads: “Seward argues, that foreign nations will intervene to prevent the abolition of slavery for the sake of cotton. We break up our relations with foreign nations and the production of cotton for sixty years.” This view appears so egregiously preposterous that one might think Stanton must have misunderstood Seward—as I thought, when I first saw Stanton's memorandum—had not a “private” despatch addressed by Seward to Motley, on July 24, come to light, in which he asked this question: “Are you sure that to-day, under the seductions and pressure which could be applied to some European populations, they would not rise up and resist our attempt to bestow freedom upon the laborers whose capacity to supply cotton and open a market for European fabrics depends, or is thought to depend, upon their continuance in bondage?” Whereupon Motley promptly answered, “A thousand times NO!”
In the summer of 1861 it was not known to how great an extent Mr. Seward's mind was warped by such strange conceptions—I might almost say hallucinations—but to those who, like myself, were occupying posts of observation in Europe, it became painfully evident that the manner in which the slavery question was, at that time, being treated in Washington, and especially the interpretation Mr. Seward so bluntly gave to that treatment, was gravely prejudicial to the Union cause in European opinion. Persons of importance who, on anti-slavery grounds, would have been our staunch friends, and would have made that friendship tell, were sorely puzzled as to what to say for us. They could not advance the strongest moral argument in our favor, if we did not advance that argument ourselves. Those who secretly wished to see the Union disrupted and thus to be relieved of a strong rival power, but would have hesitated to plead the cause of an “independent ​empire founded upon slavery,” could say, and did say, that, as we ourselves admitted, the matter of slavery had nothing to do with our struggle, and that it was merely a contest between the desire of the Southern people to be free and independent, and the Northern people who insisted upon subjugating and ruling them. Nay, the emissaries of the Southern Confederacy in London and Paris promptly availed themselves of their opportunity to take what little anti-slavery wind there was left, out of our sail. They cleverly pointed to the fact that the Republican administration at Washington did not show itself more hostile to slavery than the secessionists themselves, and this ocular demonstration gave great plausibility to their pretense that slavery really had nothing to do with the origin of the secession movement. They even went so far as to throw out a hint that, practically, they might prove even more anti-slavery than the Washington Government, if Great Britain and France would only give the Confederacy active support. In one word, a general survey of public sentiment as it manifested itself in the public press as well as in private conversation and correspondence, led to the conclusion that if any European government for any reason desired to recognize and aid the Southern Confederacy, the anti-slavery sentiment was fast losing its power to act as a restraining force.
Under these circumstances I thought it my duty to communicate to my government the result of my inquiries and my reflections thereon, and as the despatch I wrote has been noticed in historical works as “the first impressive warning of this danger,” I may be pardoned for quoting here the principal part of it:—
It is my conviction, and I consider it a duty to communicate it to you, that the sympathies of the liberal masses in Europe are not as unconditionally in our favor as might be desired, and that unless the war end soon or ​something be done to give our cause a stronger foothold in the popular heart, they will, in the end, not be decided and powerful enough to control the actions of those governments whose good will or neutrality is to us of the greatest importance. When the struggle about the slavery question in the United States assumed the form of an armed conflict, it was generally supposed in Europe that the destruction of slavery was to be the avowed object of the policy of the government, and that the war would, in fact, be nothing less than a grand uprising of the popular conscience in favor of a great humanitarian principle. If this opinion had been confirmed by the evidence of facts, the attitude of Europe, as determined by popular sentiment, could not have been doubtful a single moment. But it was remarked, not without a feeling of surprise and disappointment, that the Federal Government, in its public declaration, cautiously avoided the mentioning of the slavery question as the cause and origin of the conflict; that its acts, at the beginning of the war, at least, were marked by a strikingly scrupulous respect for the sanctity of slave property; and that the ultimate extinction of an institution so hateful to European minds was most emphatically denied to be one of the objects of the war. I do not mean to question the wisdom of the government under circumstances so difficult and perplexing, but I am bearing witness to the effect its attitude produced upon public opinion in Europe. It is exceedingly difficult to make Europeans understand, not only why the free and prosperous North should fight for the privilege of being re-associated with the imperious and troublesome Slave States, but also, why the principle, by virtue of which a population, sufficiently strong for establishing and maintaining an independent national existence, possesses the right to have a government and institutions of its own choice, should be repudiated in America while it is almost universally recognized in monarchical Europe. I have had to discuss this point with men whose sympathies were most sincerely on our side, and all my constitutional arguments failed to convince them that such a right can be consistently denied, unless our cause were based upon principles of a higher nature. I know that journalists who, in their papers, work for us to the best of their ability, are secretly troubled with serious scruples on that point. The agents of the South, whose footprints are frequently visible in the public press, are availing themselves of this state of things with great adroitness. While they carefully abstain from alluding to the rights of slavery, they speak of free trade and cotton to the merchant and the manufacturer, and of the right of self-government to the liberal. They keep it well before the people that the same means of repression which are of so baneful a memory to most European nations—the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, arbitrary ​imprisonment, the confiscation of newspapers, the use of armed force—are found necessary to prop the Federal Government; and that the latter, in its effort to crush the independent spirit of eight millions of people, is with rapid strides approaching the line which separates democratic government from the attributes of an arbitrary despotism. The incidents of the war, so unfavorable to our arms, could not fail to give weight and color to these representations. … And if opinions like these could gain ground among our natural friends, what have we to expect of those who secretly desire a permanent disruption of the Union? … And what will the Federal Government have to oppose to this plausible reasoning? A rupture of relations, which would undoubtedly be more disagreeable to us than to them? Fleets and armies, which so far have been hardly able to close some Southern ports and to protect the President from capture in his capital? The resentment of the American people, which has ceased to be formidable? There are, in my opinion, but two ways in which the overwhelming perplexities can be averted which a rupture with foreign powers, added to our troubles at home, would inevitably bring upon us. The one consists in great and decisive military success speedily accomplished, and the other in such measures and manifestations on the part of the government as will place the war against the rebellious Slave States upon a higher moral basis, and therefore give us the control of public opinion in Europe. … It is my profound conviction that as soon as the war becomes distinctly one for and against slavery, public opinion will be so strongly, so overwhelmingly in our favor, that, in spite of commercial interests or secret spites, no European government will dare to place itself, by declaration or act, upon the side of a universally condemned institution. Our enemies know that well, and we may learn from them. While their agents carefully conceal from the eyes of Europeans their only weak point, their attachment to slavery, ought we to aid them in hiding with equal care our only strong point, our opposition to slavery? While they, well knowing how repugnant slavery is to the European way of feeling, do all to make Europeans forget that they fight for it, ought we, who are equally well acquainted with European sentiment, to abstain from making Europeans remember that we fight against it? In not availing ourselves of our advantages, we relieve the enemy of the odium attached to his cause. It is, therefore, my opinion that every step taken by the government towards the abolition of slavery is, as to our standing in Europe, equal to a victory in the field.
The fundamental idea of this despatch was, not that an anti-slavery demonstration in the conduct of our government ​would convert our enemies in Europe, but that it would start a current of public opinion in our favor strong enough to balk their schemes, especially in England. And if it did this in England, the matter was decided, for the French Emperor would not venture upon the risky task of actively interfering with our home concerns without Great Britain's consent and support. Subsequent events have proved this expectation to have been well founded. Of this I shall have more to say hereafter.
I awaited Mr. Seward's reply to my despatch with intense anxiety. Meanwhile there were other things to keep me busy. Much of my correspondence with my government, as well as with the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, referred to the treatment of ships in Cuban ports, which treatment had, owing to the newness of the situation created by our civil war, fallen into some confusion. The ensuing troubles were always easily adjusted. But I may mention a little incident which, at the time, puzzled and annoyed me very much. One day, early in October, I had a conversation with Don Calderon Collantes in which I called his attention to a report going through the American and European press that Spain was about to recognize the independence of the Southern Confederacy and to break up the blockade of the Southern ports. I added that, of course, I could not believe, etc., etc. The Minister replied with the strongest protestations of good faith and friendship towards the United States. Nothing could be further from the intentions of Her Majesty's government, etc., etc. “But,” he added, “there are things”—and, interrupting himself, he asked me, whether I had not, within the last two days, received despatches from my government? I answered that I had not; whereupon he went to his desk and took out a paper which he presented to me as a copy of a despatch addressed to me by ​Mr. Seward. This despatch had been communicated by Mr. Seward to Mr. Tassara, the Spanish Minister in Washington, and transmitted by Mr. Tassara to Don Calderon. Being a young diplomat, and without much experience in the accidents of diplomatic life, I was very disagreeably surprised, and asked myself whether it could be that I had been deliberately trifled with by the Secretary of State at home. But from some of my colleagues in Madrid, whom I plied with hypothetical questions so as not to divulge what I regarded as my own ridiculous situation, I learned that such things might happen in the best regulated chancelleries, owing to some mistake or neglect of some clerk or copyist. In fact, a fortnight later, my despatch arrived at last, having meanwhile had a quiet rest on some desk in the State Department at Washington. Happily the delay did not this time cause any mischief.
The really important affair which demanded our attention at that period was the joint expedition of naval and military forces by Spain, England, and France against the Republic of Mexico. For many years that republic had been the prey of revolutionary disturbances, led by the chiefs either of the Liberal or of the Clerical faction. Commerce and industry languished within her borders, there being little, if any, security for life or property. Guerrilla bands infested the highways. Murder and robbery were of daily occurrence, there being no vigorous authority for the enforcement of order and justice. The public finances were in a state of utter confusion. The government suspended all payment of the public debt for two years, and that debt was held in greatest part abroad. Foreigners doing business in Mexico were subjected to ruthless extortion and pillage. The official representatives of foreign powers had to suffer insulting demonstrations. Foreign claims had accumulated to enormous magnitude. Those of ​Spain, England, France, and the United States amounted to more than eighty millions. President Buchanan had thought of resorting to drastic means to obtain satisfaction, but the Civil War had intervened. The other aggrieved powers now thought their time had come for taking vigorous action.
While the Spanish Court and the diplomatic corps were at San Ildefonso, in September, 1861, the Madrid newspapers suddenly informed the public that France and England were about to send a naval expedition to Mexico, and indicated that an understanding concerning this matter had been arrived at between those two governments and Spain. Without delay I called upon Don Calderon Collantes to tell him that the United States, being the next-door neighbor to the Republic of Mexico, had great concern in her welfare, and that I had no doubt “Her Majesty's government, would, with its usual frankness, communicate its intentions to a power as interested and at the same time as friendly as the United States.” Don Calderon professed not to know what England and France intended to do. But Mexico had certainly behaved outrageously, and given Her Catholic Majesty's government and many Spanish subjects great cause for complaint. Spain was, therefore, amply justified in resorting to warlike measures to enforce proper redress of her grievances. Would Spain, in doing so, interfere with the internal affairs of Mexico? Oh, no; it had always been a ruling principle of Her Majesty's government not to interfere with the internal affairs of any State or nation. It was, however, a most desirable thing that the institutions of Mexico should be placed upon a solid and permanent basis, and that a government be established which might be relied upon to fulfill its treaty obligations and to do justice to foreign powers. As to France and England, he was inclined to think that they would act promptly and vigorously; and in that case Spain, ​of course, would not remain idle. From all of which I concluded that between Spain, England, and France, active negotiations with a view to joint action were in progress, and that Spain would watch her chance to use her power to the end of erecting a monarchy in Mexico with a Spanish prince on the throne, or at least to lift the clerical party into the saddle.
This conclusion I did not, of course, communicate to Don Calderon, but I confined myself to the suggestion that such enterprises, if undertaken without an understanding among all parties interested, were apt to lead to serious misapprehensions and difficulties; whereupon he replied that, if Spain, in conjunction with France and England, should, at any time, conceive the project of interfering with the internal affairs and governmental institutions of the Mexican Republic, she would endeavor to come to an understanding with the United States, and we might rely on her frankness and loyalty. But at present she entertained no such project.
The newspapers of the capital were enthusiastic in their advocacy of the enterprise. There was “glory” in it. The tone of the ministerial press left no doubt that the Spanish government entertained designs reaching beyond the mere collection of debts and redress of grievances; and when, after a little while, it became bruited about that England firmly insisted upon limiting the object of the joint action of the three powers to the simple enforcement of satisfaction for actual injuries, the Spanish papers furiously denounced perfidious Albion. It looked for a moment as if the alliance would fail. Then Spain would proceed alone. But England prevailed in securing the insertion in the tripartite agreement of a clause to the effect that “the high contracting parties engage not to seek for themselves, in the employment of the coercive measures contemplated by the present convention, any acquisition ​of territory, or any special advantage, and not to exercise in the internal affairs of Mexico any influences of a nature to prejudice the right of the Mexican nation to choose and to constitute freely the form of its government.” Louis Napoleon and Her Catholic Majesty no doubt accepted this clause with a mental reservation of far more than ordinary comprehensiveness.
The attitude taken by the Government of the United States was eminently prudent. Mr. Seward instructed me to say to Don Calderon Collantes that “the United States, by reason of their position as a neighbor of Mexico, and the republican form of their constitution, similar to that of Mexico, deemed it important to their own safety and welfare that no European or other foreign power should subjugate that country and hold it as a conquest, establishing there a government of whatever form, independent of the voluntary choice of its people. The United States, however, did not question the right of Spain, or of France, or of Great Britain, to levy war against Mexico for the redress of injuries sustained by the invading state, and of the justice of the war such state might rightfully judge for itself.” And finally, “the United States did not question the right of the invading states to combine as allies.” I was also instructed to say that, “having had some reason to suppose that the ground of the hostilities which Great Britain and France were preparing to institute against Mexico was the sequestration of the revenues of that country, which had been pledged to the payment of the interest due upon bonds of the Mexican Government held by subjects of Great Britain and France, the United States had made overtures to those two powers and to Mexico, to relieve the controversy by assuring the payment of the interest of those bonds for a term of years, but had, so far, received no answer from either party ​to that proposition.” As to Spain, her government might be assured of our “desire, with the consent of the parties concerned, to intervene with the tender of our good offices, and of our willingness to assume some responsibility and incur some sacrifice to avert the necessity of a war between two nations (Spain and Mexico) both of which, we trusted, in common with the United States, would desire to remain at peace if they could do so consistently with their own convictions of honor and justice.”
Don Calderon expressed himself as much gratified by the friendly tone of the despatch. But the convention between the three powers having in the meantime been signed, Spain was no longer at liberty to entertain any offer of mediation between herself and Mexico. (He had already before informed me that England had made a proposition to invite the United States to take part in the enterprise, and that Spain had seconded that proposition, while France did not favor it.) The financial question pending between Spain and Mexico might, indeed, have been arranged by mediation, but the question of honor, and especially that of the guarantees to be given by Mexico for the rights and security of Spanish subjects residing in that republic, could not be settled so easily. It was now the duty of Spain to see to it that a state of things be established in Mexico which would afford sufficient protection and security to Spanish subjects. I plied him with questions as to how this might be accomplished, but all I could elicit was, that the powers did not intend to have a constituent convention called in Mexico to determine the form of the government, but that the appearance of the combined expedition in Mexican waters and the occupation of Vera Cruz and Tampico would probably produce moral effects sufficiently great to induce the Mexican people to rally around some men of power ​and authority capable of placing the institutions of the country upon a solid basis. It might, for instance, give new strength and a new impulse to the conservative party in Mexico, and enable it to establish a strong government.
At the same period General Miramon, the leader of the Clerical (or conservative) party in Mexico, having been exiled from his country, was in Madrid. He had interviews with the Prime Minister, General O'Donnell, with Calderon Collantes, with General Narvaez, and other prominent statesmen, and was treated with great distinction. He expressed himself frankly about the impossibility of maintaining a republic in Mexico, and advocated the convention of a constituent Congress in Mexico for the purpose of establishing a constitutional monarchy, and electing a king.
Meanwhile the Madrid newspapers declaimed eloquently about the new “mission of Spain” in the New World, and assiduously stirred the popular imagination with glowing predictions of the restoration of ancient glories. The man to do it was also found in the person of General Don Juan Prim, Count of Reus and Marquis de los Castillejos. He was one of the most picturesque characters of his time. At the outbreak of the Carlist War, in 1833, he entered the army of Queen Christina, and so distinguished himself by his skill and bravery that in a few years he rose to the rank of general. In 1843, his vigorous action contributed greatly to the suppression of an insurrection in Catalonia, and he was rewarded with the title of Count of Reus. In politics he had been a Progresista, but his enmity to Espartero led him into the ranks of the Moderados. When these, in the possession of power, adopted vindictive measures against the Progresistas, he became a Progresista again, and in 1844 he was accused of having participated in a plot to assassinate General Narvaez, ​General Concha, and other chiefs of the Moderado party, and was sentenced to six years' imprisonment in a colonial fortress. But early in 1845 the Queen pardoned him and made him Governor General of Porto Rico. In 1849 he returned to Spain, and finding no active employment in the army, he secured a seat in the Cortes, where he joined the opposition to the Moderado ministry. His opposition becoming troublesome, he was, in 1853, sent on a diplomatic mission to Paris. This displeased him, and he went instead to Constantinople, joined the staff of Omar Pasha, and was present at several engagements with the Russians. But political conditions in Spain having changed, he was called back in the autumn of 1854, and, a year later, appointed Captain General of Granada. Again he became involved in political plots, and was once more sentenced to five years' confinement in a fortress. Again the Queen pardoned him, and made him, in 1860, Inspector General of the engineer department of the army. In the war against Morocco, he greatly distinguished himself by his skill and bravery, and was rewarded with the title of Marquis de los Castillejos and the dignity of a grandee of Spain.
Such a career, with its heroism and political plots, its good services and insubordinations, its honors and disgraces, its sudden changes from palace to prison and prison to palace, would not have been possible in any European country but Spain, where the monarchy was degraded successively by two dissolute women on the throne; where, since the breaking out of the Carlist War in 1833, the people were in a constant state of ferment; where army commands were changed with the change of party in power; where military officers were active partisans, inured to political intrigue and demagogy; where revolution had become a popular habit, and where hardly a year elapsed without some more or less formidable ​insurrectionary movement. It was by no means Prim alone whose course of life presented so checkered a spectacle. Many of his contemporaries who had achieved prominence in the state, Espartero, Narvaez, Serrano, Ros de Olano, O'Donnell, Manuel and José Concha, Olozaga, and others, had passed through similar vicissitudes. There was hardly a public man of note who had not at some time been a conspirator or a revolutionist.
When I met Prim he was about forty-seven years old, an elegant figure of middle height; a rather handsome, black-bearded, soldierly face, with flashing eyes; quick and elastic in his movements; frank and jovial in his address and manners. I saw him at a military review, mounted on a superb Andalusian charger, at the head of his staff, the very picture of a splendid chieftain to be admired by the multitude and idolized by his men. The liberal political ideas he professed, identified him with the Progresista party, and gave him a wide popularity with the masses. Some persons suspected that his elevation to the dignity of a grandee of Spain had somewhat gone to his head; but this was a mere surmise. It certainly did not change his utterances on political subjects. But he lived in princely style. His expenditures were magnificent, and the management of his private affairs careless in the extreme. He married a Mexican heiress of great wealth, dissipated her available means in an amazingly short time, and then ran recklessly into debt. He was known to be overburdened with financial liabilities, and sorely in want of money for current requirements. The financial element was considered an important one in the situation of a Spanish statesman who at the same time was a popular general.
When the plan of an expedition against Mexico first appeared before the public, it was reported that General Serrano, ​then Captain General of Cuba, would be its military and political head. The announcement of General Prim's name for that important position excited general comment. There was much curiosity about the real reasons for the change. I sought enlightenment from Olozaga. He thought that England had probably asked for Prim's appointment on the ground that Prim had, two years before, made a strong speech in the Spanish Senate against the schemes and doings of the Clericals in Mexico, and that he would now be likely to oppose the intrigues of the party he had then so emphatically denounced. But this theory was denied by Sir John Crampton, the British Minister, who told me that he was entirely ignorant of any such arrangement, and that he thought Lord John Russell knew very little of General Prim and his political opinions. If foreign influence had anything to do with the appointment, it was more probably that of Louis Napoleon, with whom Prim was a great favorite, besides being on very intimate terms with the French ambassador in Madrid.
I then discussed the matter with one of the chiefs of the Moderado party, who suggested an explanation thoroughly characteristic of Spanish political conditions. Prim, he said, was so incessantly worried by his financial embarrassments that something had to be done for him, or he might be tempted to do something for himself. He might, some day, appear at the head of regiments devoted to him, issue a pronunciamento calling the people to arms for some reason or other, and upset the Cabinet, and, perhaps, even the dynasty, to make room for himself. Prim, he said, was not only capable of venturing upon such things, but his great popularity with the army and the people would also make such an attempt on his part very formidable. It was not at all unlikely that the government, in order to get rid of so dangerous a man, had given ​him the command of an expedition which would remove him from the country, and might at the same time give him an opportunity for filling his empty pockets, whereupon he would cease to be dangerous for a time.
This somewhat cynical and uncharitable explanation may have been colored by party feeling, but it agreed strikingly with the fact frankly admitted to me by politicians of all parties, that popular generals, when out of funds and becoming restless, had, in many instances, been appointed to colonial governments for the purpose of giving them an opportunity to get rich again, and thus to keep them quiet. This was commonly spoken of as one of the accepted canons of political management, which accounted for much of the notorious malfeasance of the Spanish colonial government.
At last I had a conversation with General Prim himself. He received me with the cordiality of a good comrade, and evidently wished me to feel that the American Minister was just the man to whom he wanted to unbosom himself. He assured me effusively that he would use all his power to secure to the Mexican people full freedom in arranging their internal affairs. He considered it absurd to think of establishing a monarchy in Mexico; all the traditions of the people were republican, and he was sure there were but few Mexicans who seriously thought of introducing monarchical institutions. He knew well that the misfortunes and the demoralization of the Mexican people were largely owing to the clergy, and that conviction, he hinted, would not be without influence upon his action. He would endeavor to secure to the Mexican people a fair opportunity to express their will at the ballot-box, and would with his whole power, sustain the government of their choice, whatever party might carry the day. As between Miramon, the leader of the Clericals, and Juarez, the ​President of the Republic and chief of the Liberals, he was for Juarez, and he had no doubt that at a fair election Juarez would have a majority of the people on his side.
My remark that, according to what Calderon Collantes had told me, the three powers were not in favor of calling a constituent Congress or taking a vote of the people, seemed to surprise and even to amuse him. He gave me to understand that he did not care very much what his government might think of it, and that, as he was the political as well as the military head of the expedition, he would act as he thought best. He had been a Liberal all his life, and he would be as true to his principles in Mexico as he had been in Spain. He would not have accepted the command of the expedition if he were not permitted to play a generous and disinterested part in the business. I informed the General of the offer of mediation made by the United States through me to the Spanish Government, which might prevent great difficulties and complications, but had not been accepted by Calderon Collantes because Spain was bound by the tripartite agreement. Prim received the idea with effusive warmth. Nothing could please him more than to operate in good understanding with the United States. The great American Republic had his hearty sympathy. He loved her institutions and her people; and if her government could and would do anything to bring about a satisfactory solution of the Mexican troubles, he would meet it in a corresponding spirit. It was his object to do what might be best for the liberty and independence of the Mexican people, and he would be obliged to me for informing my government of what he had said. This I did with appropriate comments, and the suggestion that, if the Government of the United States despatched a naval vessel to the Mexican waters for the purpose of protecting American interests, a diplomatic agent ​might be sent with it—a person of ability, good social qualities, and conversational powers, speaking Spanish or French—who might attach himself to General Prim and possibly exercise a wholesome influence upon the course of events. I had the satisfaction of being told by Mr. Seward that the prudence and diligence which I had exercised in keeping him well informed in regard to the policy of Spain towards Mexico were highly appreciated. My despatch about General Prim and the various ambitions of the Court seemed to have especially pleased Mr. Lincoln, for Mr. Seward wrote me: “I am charged by the President to express his decided approbation of the paper.” I was greatly rejoiced to know that both Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward were so well satisfied with my services, remembering, as I did, that Mr. Lincoln had appointed me against Mr. Seward's judgment.
A few days after my first conversation with General Prim I met him again, this time at a dinner given by the Nuncio of the Pope. We were neighbors at the table, and the General seemed to be in the highest spirits. The conversation naturally turned again upon his mission to Mexico, and I mentioned the current report that the Court wished the Infante Don Sebastiano to be put on the Mexican throne, or, if that could not be, some other prince who would marry a Spanish princess, the Queen having one on hand, her daughter, the Infanta Isabella, whom she wished to sit upon some throne or other. Prim burst out laughing. “Ah, bah!” said he. “The Court wants this, the Court wants that. Who cares what the Court wants? Why, if there were to be a throne established in Mexico under Spanish auspices, why should not the commanding General sit on it?” He seemed heartily to enjoy his own sly jest, which might have been taken seriously, had he not at once gone on repeating in a serious tone what he had said to me before about the absurdity ​of turning Mexico into a monarchy, and about his own determination to secure to the Mexican people perfect freedom in shaping their institutions. We continued in exceedingly animated and jovial conversation as long as the dinner lasted. He seemed to take particular delight in talking to me in a chummy way about the follies and meannesses and contemptible schemes of the Court, very much as one republican would confidentially talk to another. I was never to see him again.
General Prim started on his Mexican expedition, I have no doubt, with the honest intention of doing what he had told me he would do, and with the expectation of being able to do it. But he was destined to return as a grievously disappointed man. Spain, indeed, appeared first on the field of action with a strong force of ships and soldiers, and Prim succeeded in making an agreement of his own with the Mexican Government which was rather favorable to Mexico. But France objected, Louis Napoleon's own scheme to erect a throne for the Archduke Maximilian came to the fore, and Spain and England withdrew from the enterprise. Prim sailed home, not richer in honors, and, I apprehend, not richer in cash. His further career and end were characteristic. Returned to Spain, he headed the anti-dynastic opposition, failed in an insurrectionary attempt in 1866, fled to Portugal, and thence to London and Brussels, was active in helping to organize a new uprising, which took place in 1868, and resulted in the downfall and exile of Queen Isabella. Under the ensuing regency of Serrano, Prim became Minister of War, and then President of the Council, and Marshal. He favored the election of the Italian, Prince Amadeo, as King of Spain, hoping to be the power behind the throne. But two days after Amadeo's election Prim was assassinated by unknown persons. The Cortes adopted his children as wards of the nation.
​The manner in which Mr. Seward guided the conduct of our government with regard to the Mexican business was in the highest degree creditable to him as a diplomat. When the three allied powers asked the United States to join them in their enterprise, Mr. Seward politely refused—not as if the United States were not greatly interested in the fate of Mexico, but because it was the traditional policy of the United States to avoid entangling alliances. When the allied powers declined the offer of mediation made by the United States, he courteously recognized their right to decline. When Louis Napoleon advanced his scheme to erect a throne in Mexico and to put Archduke Maximilian upon it, Mr. Seward, mindful of our Civil War, which at that time engaged all our strength at home, put the protest of the United States in such a form that its nature as a protest could not be misunderstood, while it did not provoke resentment by offensive expression. When our Civil War was over, he made the French Emperor understand that his army had to leave Mexico, but he avoided saying anything that might have sounded like a threat, and would thus have made the withdrawal of the French forces more difficult by making it more humiliating. At the same time he managed to satisfy public opinion in the United States by his assurance that the French would certainly leave the American continent soon, and he thus neutralized the military influences which urged the formation of a new army of Union and Confederate veterans with which to invade Mexico for the purpose of driving out the French intruders by force. If I remember rightly, he never spoke of the Monroe doctrine by name, but the policy he followed was a true construction and vindication of it. He prudently abstained from blustering about it, and from repelling the infringement of it with an armed hand, so long as the United States could not do so without imperiling ​their own safety. But when our freedom of action was restored by the close of our own Civil War, he contrived to enforce it without firing a gun, and none the less effectively because it was done peaceably. Mr. Seward's management of this Mexican business has always impressed me as his finest achievement in diplomacy—indeed, as a masterpiece and model of consistent and pacific statesmanship.
While engaged in discussing the Mexican business with the authorities concerned, I received the anxiously awaited answer of Mr. Seward to my despatch in which I had expressed the opinion that a manifestation of the anti-slavery tendency of our Civil War would be most apt to remove the danger of foreign recognition of the Southern Confederacy and of foreign interference in its favor. That answer was so characteristic an exhibition of Seward's command of vague and sonorous language when he wished to talk around the subject instead of directly at and upon it, that I cannot refrain from quoting the best part of it verbatim. He wrote:
    No. 35.
* Department of State, Washington, October, 10, 1861.
Carl Schurz, Esq., … Madrid.
Sir:—Your dispatch of September 18th, No. 18, has been received. I have read carefully the views concerning our domestic policy which you have submitted. Of the propriety of your submitting them, there can be no question, especially when they are presented with reference to the public sentiment in Europe and the possible actions of the governments of that continent.
It would, however, be altogether inconvenient, and it might be in some degree hazardous for me to engage in explanations of domestic policy in a correspondence which, for all practical purposes, is to be regarded as involving only the foreign relations of the country. Moreover, the policy with which an administration charged with the duty of maintaining itself and preserving the Union shall conduct a civil war, must be confined always to ​the existing condition of political forces, and to the public sentiment of the whole country.
I am not surprised when you inform me that sympathies with the United States, regarded as a nation struggling to maintain its integrity against the assaults of faction, are less active in Europe than they might or ought to be in view of the benefits which the Republic has already conferred, and the still greater benefits which it promises to confer, on mankind.
Nations, like individuals, are too much wrapped up in their own interests and ambitions to be deeply concerned by accidents or reverses which befall other nations.
I can well enough conceive also that the United States in the first emergency might excite more fervent sympathies abroad by avowing a purpose not merely or even chiefly to maintain and preserve their existing constitutional organization, but to modify and change it so as to extirpate at once an institution which is obnoxious to the enlightened censure of mankind.
But, on the other hand, it is never to be forgotten that although sympathy of other nations is eminently desirable, yet foreign sympathy, or even foreign favor, never did and never can create or maintain any state, while in every state that has the capacity to live, the love of national life is and always must be the most energetic principle which can be worked to preserve it from suicidal indulgence of fear of faction as well as from destruction by foreign violence.
For my own part, it seems to me very clear that there is no nation on earth whose fortunes, immediate and remote, would not be worse for the dissolution of the American Union. If that consideration shall not be sufficient to save us from unjust intervention by any foreign state or states in our domestic troubles, then that intervention must come as a natural incident in our domestic strife, and I entertain no fears that we shall not be able to maintain ourselves against all who shall combine against us.
In a closing paragraph he referred to the failures of the Union armies, which he “had no time” for discussing, but added:
While you, who have gone abroad, are hearing of the failures of the government on all sides, there is not one citizen who has remained at home who is not more confident in the stability of the Union now than he was on the day of your departure upon your mission. This confidence is not built on enthusiasm, but on knowledge of the true state of the conflict, and the exercise of calm and dispassionate reflection.
​This language, which was to serve as an answer to my suggestion that the surest way to avert the threatened intervention of foreign powers in our domestic conflict was to give its true weight to the part that slavery played in our struggle, seriously alarmed me. The assertion that now, after the Bull Run disaster, there was “not one man” in the United States who did not count upon our success more confidently than ever before, stood in strange contrast to the greatly increased anxiety expressed by the private letters I received from men of ardent patriotism and mature judgment in America. The sentiment that if foreign intervention could be prevented only by a recognition of the anti-slavery character of our Civil War, then intervention must come—for this was the obvious meaning of Mr. Seward's phraseology—seemed to me reckless in the extreme, if not positively flippant, considering that, if England and France, with their large naval and military resources, actively aided the Confederacy, our chance of conquering the South would be very dangerously lessened. I thought I detected in Mr. Seward's letter a symptom of that sort of petulance which is apt to warp a man's judgment. I apprehended that if Mr. Seward had shown that letter to Mr. Lincoln before sending it off, Mr. Lincoln would not have permitted the expressions mentioned to pass in the form in which they stood. It occurred to me that Mr. Seward might even have failed to submit to Mr. Lincoln my despatch of September 14th, which went so straight against his policy. I consulted Mr. Perry upon that point, and he was troubled by the same question. Harassed by this doubt, I concluded that it was my duty to lay the contents of that despatch, with such enlargements as the progress of events might suggest, before Mr. Lincoln personally. My first impulse was to resign my position to that end; but Mr. Perry persuaded me that a change ​in the headship of the Legation at that time might prejudice our standing with the Spanish Government, and that I might attain my object by asking for permission to return home on temporary leave of absence from my post. To guard against a refusal of that leave of absence, or against delay in granting it, I thought it best to offer my resignation as an alternative, for I was determined to see Mr. Lincoln as soon as possible. I therefore addressed to him a letter in which I said, that the main object for which I had been sent to Madrid, namely, to secure the friendliest possible relations between Spain and the United States, had been accomplished; that, so far as I could see, no question was likely to arise that might make the uninterrupted presence of a plenipotentiary of the first rank indispensable; that my future activity at Madrid, for a time, at least would be limited to quiet observation with the “enjoyment and distinguished position and elegant leisure,” which in view of the condition of our country was to me more oppressive than agreeable; that I was troubled by grave doubts as to the general drift of our affairs; that, to have these doubts solved, I urgently wished to return to the United States, and that to this end I asked him for a leave of absence from my post, or if this could for any reason not be granted, for the acceptance of my resignation.
As a matter of loyalty to my immediate chief I sent this letter to Mr. Seward with the request that he present it to the President.
While I was waiting for an answer from President Lincoln, we were suddenly startled by the news that a United States man-of-war, the “San Jacinto,” Captain Wilkes, had stopped the British mail-steamer “Trent” in the Bahama channel, and had forcibly taken from her two Confederate envoys, Mason and Slidell; that the people of the United ​States were in ecstasy over this daring act; that the government and people of England were boiling with rage at this breach of international law, and that they demanded instant satisfaction. The next days brought the further report that the British Government was actually despatching troops to Canada and making other preparations for an armed conflict with the United States. Evidently the “Trent” case had brought forth a state of public feeling in England which immensely strengthened the hands of those who urged the recognition of the Southern Confederacy, and even active intervention by Great Britain and France in its favor.
I could not repress a shout of joy when at last an answer came from the President and the State Department granting me my leave of absence. My preparations for departure were soon made. My family being at Hamburg, I wished to join them there and to take them with me on a Hamburg steamer to America. To this end I had to cross Prussian territory. I called upon Count Galen, the Prussian Minister, to acquaint him with my desire to join my family at Hamburg, and to ask him whether he thought I could pass through Prussian territory without being noticed. He had no doubt of it, but to satisfy me, he would inquire of his government. The answer came promptly that instructions would at once be given to the officers concerned to extend to me every accommodation I might desire on my way. I so arranged my journey as to cross the Prussian frontier after dark, to pass over the Rhine at Cologne during the night, and to reach Hamburg the next forenoon. When I touched the Prussian frontier, a customs officer above the lower grade presented himself to me, ordered my luggage to pass unexamined, and asked for my wishes. My fellow-travelers seemed surprised at the official attention I received, and were evidently anxious to know what ​distinguished person it was they had the honor to travel with. I did not gratify their curiosity. Thus my reappearance in the Fatherland was exceedingly modest and untriumphant. But I was wide awake when my railroad train stopped in the station at Cologne, and I listened to the sound, so familiar from my boyhood days, of the church-clocks striking the hour, and when crossing the dear old Rhine I heard the rushing of its waters in the darkness.
Early in January I embarked with my family on the Hamburg steamship “Bavaria,” a vessel of some 2500 or 3000 tons, which would be considered nowadays quite small for an ocean liner, but which was then of the usual size. We had a terrible voyage. From the start, fierce head-winds were blowing and heavy seas rolling against us, under lowering skies. Some distance east of the Newfoundland banks, a hurricane struck us which lasted six days and nights, blowing now from one quarter and then from another, and sometimes seemingly from all points of the compass at the same time. The waves thundered against the sides of the ship with frightful force. They swept away all the bulwarks, all the boats, all the deck-houses, and having torn off the skylights, flooded the cabin with water. They knocked down the heavy lower spars from the masts, together with part of the rigging, so that the deck was covered with tangled wreckage. One night so large a quantity of water came down the smoke-stacks that there was danger of the fires being extinguished, and, we were afterwards told, as the room was filled with steam, the chief engineer had to keep the firemen at their task with an axe in one hand and a revolver in the other. The first night of the hurricane I had an experience which I cannot refrain from describing. Everyone who has gone through heavy gales at sea will remember that sometimes the storm-tossed ship will seem to rest for an instant on ​the crest of one of the giant waves before taking the fearful plunge into the yawning trough before it. There is then a moment—but just a moment—of quivering, sinister stillness, strangely contrasting with the tremendous uproar which immediately preceded, and which is sure to follow it. On that first fearful night—we had just heard that a sea had washed four sailors overboard—there was such a moment of stillness unusually long—perhaps two or three seconds—during which I distinctly heard someone, probably one of the cabin boys, quietly brushing boots just outside of the cabin door—someone quietly doing a regular, simple little duty, amid the terrific turmoil of the elements threatening to engulf all of us the next moment. It was like a charm. I then felt that nothing would happen to us. I should have been profoundly ashamed of any fear.
But there were impressions of a different kind which only heightened the effect of the one just told. Among the few cabin passengers was a dentist from Brooklyn. During the same first night he appeared in the cabin with rubber shoes on his feet, a waterproof coat on his body, his hat on his head, and an umbrella in his hand, shouting that he wanted to be put ashore. So he raved for a considerable while, being thrown from one side of the cabin to the other by the rolls and jumps of the ship. At last his shrieks became so frantic and his umbrella-thrusts at the other passengers so violent that the chief-steward thought it necessary to have him locked in a state-room. He had evidently gone crazy from fright. We did not see him again for the rest of the voyage.
When the storm had subsided the weather grew very cold, and the whole ship was thickly coated with ice. It presented an almost spectral appearance as it sailed into New York Harbor. We had been, if I remember rightly, twenty-three days from ​Southampton. During the hurricane our progress had been extremely slow, one day, I think, not more than twenty miles. In later years, I have now and then met on steamships of the Hamburg line officers who had been on the “Bavaria” at the time of that terrible voyage, and they always agreed that it was about the worst experience a seaman could have and live to tell the tale.
From New York I hurried at once to Washington, where I first reported to Mr. Seward at the State Department. Owing to the presence of some foreign diplomats waiting upon the Secretary, we cut our conversation short with the understanding that we would discuss matters more fully at some more convenient time. I then went to call upon Mr. Lincoln at the White House. He received me with the old cordiality.
After the first words of welcome the conversation turned upon the real reasons for my return to the United States. I repeated to Mr. Lincoln substantially the contents of my despatch of September 18th. I did not deem it proper to ask him whether he had ever seen that despatch, and he did not tell me that he had. But he listened to me very attentively, even eagerly, as I thought, without interrupting me. I was still speaking when the door of the room was opened and the head of Mr. Seward appeared. “Excuse me, Seward,” said Mr. Lincoln, “excuse me for a moment. I have something to talk over with this gentleman.” Seward withdrew without saying a word. I remember the scene distinctly. After the short interruption I continued my talk for a while, and when I stopped Mr. Lincoln sat for a minute silently musing. At last he said “You may be right. Probably you are. I have been thinking so myself. I cannot imagine that any European power would dare to recognize and aid the Southern Confederacy if it becomes clear that the Confederacy stands for slavery and the ​Union for freedom.” Then he explained to me that, while a distinct anti-slavery policy would remove the foreign danger, and would thus work for the preservation of the Union—while, indeed, it might, in this respect, be necessary for the preservation of the Union, and while he thought that it would soon appear and be recognized to be in every respect necessary, he was in doubt as to whether public opinion at home was yet sufficiently prepared for it. He was anxious to unite, and keep united, all the forces of Northern society and of the Union element in the South, especially the Border States, in the war for the Union. Would not the cry of “abolition war,” such as might be occasioned by a distinct anti-slavery policy, tend to disunite those forces and thus weaken the Union cause? This was the doubt that troubled him, and it troubled him very much. He wished me to look around a little, and in a few days to come back to him and tell him of the impressions I might have gathered. Then he told me how he had enjoyed some of my despatches about Spanish conditions and public men, and how glad he had been to hear from Seward that I was getting on so nicely with “the Dons.” So we parted.
The general aspect of the state of the Union at the beginning of the year 1862 was by no means cheering. The storm brought forth by the “Trent” affair had, indeed, been successfully weathered. The administration had recognized the necessity of surrendering the Southern emissaries taken from the “Trent” in time to avert the threatened conflict with England. As to the grounds upon which this was done, I have always thought that Mr. Seward's reasoning in his famous despatch upon this subject, basing the surrender of the captured emissaries upon a mere technical point, was far less strong, less dignified, and less honorable to this Republic than the simple and broad ground taken by Mr. Sumner in his speech in the Senate, ​that the surrender of the captives was only a vindication of the principles of international law concerning the treatment of neutral vessels by belligerents, which this Republic had always maintained, especially against British pretensions. But although an actual conflict had been avoided, a feeling was left behind between the two nations which may well be characterized as “ugly”—a feeling of sore disappointment among many people in England that the “impudence” of an American ship in overhauling a British mail-steamer went “unpunished,” and a feeling of bitter resentment among many people in this country because England had brutally “bullied” us in the hour of our distress and we were obliged to submit to her “insolence.”
CHARLES SUMNER
From a photograph made about 1860 and reproduced here through the courtesy of the owner, Mr. F. J. Garrison
​ I had frequent conversations with Senator Sumner at that period. His personality attracted me greatly. He was strikingly unlike all the public men surrounding him—just as Lincoln was, but in the opposite sense. Lincoln, risen from the lowest social layer, the class of the Southern poor whites, and lifted from the roughest plebeian surroundings by high moral instinct and intellectual ability to a marvelous level of nobility and statesmanlike leadership, the ideal growth of the American soil, to whom the democratic principle was a simple law of nature, and Sumner, a born Puritan character, an aristocrat by instinct and culture, a democrat by study and reflection, a revolutionary power by the dogmatic intensity of his determination to impose his principles upon the world at any cost. There were many who thought that these two men, being so essentially different, could not possibly work together. But on the whole they did, and they were able to do so, because, however great the divergence of their views on some points, they believed in one another's sincerity. Sumner was a doctrinaire by character—an enlightened doctrinaire, yet an unbending and ​uncompromising one. His notions of right and wrong were absolute. When someone asked him whether he had ever looked at the other side of the slavery question, he answered: “There is no other side.” No answer could have been more characteristic. Not that he was merely unwilling to see the other side of a question of that nature—he was unable to see it. The peremptoriness of his convictions was so strong, so absolute, I might say, that it was difficult for him to understand how anyone could seriously consider “the other side” without being led astray by some moral obliquity. Of a very old and tried friend who favored a temporizing course toward the South after the election of Mr. Lincoln, he said, after a severe denunciation of that course, “However, I believe he is honest”—but said it in a way indicating that it had cost him a very great effort to reach such a conclusion. I know an instance in which his bluntly ingenuous manner of saying such things gave great offense to a family consisting of high-minded persons with whom he had been on terms of intimate friendship for many years.
Mr. Lincoln was a constant puzzle to him. He frequently told me of profound and wise things Mr. Lincoln had said, and then again of other sayings which were unintelligible to him and seemed to him inconsistent with a serious appreciation of the tasks before us. Being entirely devoid of the sense of humor himself, Mr. Sumner frequently—I might say almost always—failed to see the point of the quaint anecdotes or illustrations with which Lincoln was fond of elucidating his argument, as with a flashlight. Mr. Sumner not seldom quoted such Lincolnisms to me, and asked me with an air of innocent bewilderment, whether I could guess what the President could possibly have meant. To Sumner's mind the paramount object of the war was the abolition of slavery. He had all his life been a peace man in the widest sense. His great oration, delivered ​on the Fourth of July, 1845, on “The True Grandeur of Nations,” which introduced him to public life, had been a panegyric on universal peace. In it he had proclaimed as his fundamental doctrine that “in our age, there can be no peace that is not honorable, there can be no war that is not dishonorable.” Thus in order to support the government in the Civil War he had to compromise with his own conscience, and he did this on the ground that it was a war for the abolition of that slavery, which, to him, was the sum of all iniquities. Only by extinguishing an evil worse than war itself could this war be justified by him. Thus he was impatient at everything that seemed to obscure that supreme object or to impede or delay its attainment. This impatience caused him to undervalue the reasons Mr. Lincoln gave him for what Sumner called the “dilatoriness” of the government in proclaiming an anti-slavery policy and in making a direct attack upon the hateful institution. He was grievously disappointed when Lincoln thought it necessary, in order to conciliate the feelings of the War Democrats and of the Border State Unionists, as well as to keep the military commanders within the bounds of discipline, to disavow the partial emancipation orders of Generals Frémont and Hunter, and he gave voice to that disappointment in unsparing criticism. But he did not lose confidence in the man who had said that “if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong”; and with unceasing persistency he plied the President with appeals in favor of decisive measures and of speedy action. Lincoln warded off his urgency by telling him: “Mr. Sumner, you are only six weeks ahead of me.” Sumner would argue that the emancipation of the slaves was a simple necessity to the end of putting down the rebellion. Lincoln would reply that he saw the necessity coming, but, in order to keep our forces united, he wanted those, whose aid he needed to see that necessity, too. ​Many a time I saw Sumner restlessly pacing up and down in his room and exclaiming with uplifted hands: “I pray that the President may be right in delaying. But I am afraid, I am almost sure, he is not. I trust his fidelity, but I cannot understand him.”
As to myself, I felt with Sumner, but at the same time I learned to understand Mr. Lincoln. He was perfectly sincere in saying that, as the head of the government, he regarded the saving of the Union, with or without the destruction of slavery, as the paramount object to be accomplished. He was equally sincere in believing that the destruction of slavery would turn out to be a necessary means for the salvation of the Union, aside from the desirability of that destruction on its own merits. Seeing the necessity of emancipation by the act of the government rapidly approaching, he wished, in the interest of the blacks as well as of the whites, that emancipation to be gradual, if it possibly could be made gradual under existing circumstances. Nor would he shrink from sudden emancipation if the circumstances so shaped themselves as to leave no choice. But he would delay the decisive step until he could be reasonably sure that it could be taken without danger of producing a fatal disintegration of the forces co-operating in the struggle for the Union. He reasoned that, if we failed in that struggle, a decree of emancipation would be like the Pope's bull against the comet. This reasoning was doubtless correct, but it caused hesitations and delays which were sorely trying to the composure of the more ardent among the anti-slavery men. I have to confess that I belonged to that class myself, and that I did not fully appreciate the wisdom of his cautious policy until it had borne its fruit. But being more conversant than Sumner was with the easy-going, unconventional way in which Western men, especially the self-educated among them, ​were wont to express their thoughts and sentiments, I was less disturbed by what Sumner sometimes interpreted as a lack of seriousness, an inclination to make light of grave things, in Lincoln's utterances. Thus Sumner's confidence in Lincoln's character and principles found itself often more heavily taxed than mine.
Lincoln had great respect for the superior knowledge and culture of other persons. But he did not stand in awe of them. In fact, he did not stand in awe of anybody or anything in the sense of a recognition of an apparent superiority that might have made him in the slightest degree surrender the independence of his own judgment or the freedom of his will. He would have approached the greatest man in the world—the greatest in point of mental capacity, or the greatest in point of station or power—with absolute unconcern, as if he had been dealing with such persons all his life. When he formed his Cabinet he chose the foremost leaders of his party, who at that period might well have been regarded as the foremost men of the country, without the slightest apprehension that their prestige or their ability might overshadow him. He always recognized the merit of others, but without any fear of detracting from his own.
There was no man in authority in the world whose opinion or advice he would have estimated by another standard than its intrinsic value as he judged it. There was not a problem to be solved capable of confusing his mind by its magnitude or dignity, or one that would have caused him to apply to it any other rules than those of ordinary logic and common sense. He therefore met great statesmen and titled persons with the absolutely natural, instinctive, unaffected self-respect of an equal; he regarded great affairs as simple business he had to deal with in the way of his public duty, and he loved to discuss them with ​his friends in simple and unceremonious language. They were not above even the play of his humor, although the principles and sympathies according to which he treated them were rooted deep and firm in his mind and heart.
It may well be said that while there was no man whose opinions were more truly his own, that is, even when suggested by others, formed by himself according to his generate points of view and methods of reasoning, there was none more accessible to candid advice and more tolerant of adverse criticism. I have known public men in powerful position who would resent every disapproval of their acts or utterances as a personal affront, and treat every opponent as an enemy. Nothing would have been farther from Lincoln's impulses or habits of thought than to take offense at ever so great a difference of judgment between himself and anyone he considered sincere and well meaning. Whenever he found himself misjudged or even attacked by such a person, he would, instead of frowning upon him or excluding him from his intercourse, rather invite him to a friendly exchange of views, and reason with him and be reasoned with, by him. And if then no concord of opinion could be reached, there was at least a kindly agreement to disagree without any bitterness of feeling. Lincoln's patience in listening to adverse, not seldom very unjust criticism, became well known, and was sometimes severely, even unreasonably taxed, without ruffling the goodness of his heart or unsettling the equipoise of his mind. I have to confess that in one or two instances I was myself one of the sinners, and I shall describe the characteristic manner in which he then treated me in the order of my narrative.
At the time of which I now speak, Charles Sumner was one of the most difficult to satisfy among Mr. Lincoln's frequent visitors, because of the very sincerity with which the two ​men looked at the task of the hour from different points of view. But Lincoln regarded and esteemed Sumner as the outspoken conscience of the advanced anti-slavery element, the confidence and hearty co-operation of which was to him of the highest moment in the common struggle. While it required all his fortitude to bear Sumner's intractable insistence, Lincoln did not at all deprecate Sumner's public agitation for an immediate emancipation policy, even though it did reflect upon the course of the administration. On the contrary, he rather welcomed everything that would prepare the public mind for the approaching development.
Moreover, Sumner had just then rendered the administration a great service which only he could render with the same effect. I have mentioned the jubilant excitement created among the American people by the so-called “patriotic and heroic deed” of Captain Wilkes in taking from the British mail-steamer “Trent,” the Confederate emissaries Mason and Slidell. The public temper was such that it seemed nobody could advise the surrender of the captives without being buried under an avalanche of popular contempt. Men as conservative as Edward Everett, and international lawyers such as Theophilas Parsons and Richard R. Dunn joined the chorus of applause for Captain Wilkes. But Sumner remained cool. As soon as he heard of what had happened, he instantly said: “We shall have to give up the captives.” He said this long before he had heard of the effect produced by the news of the affair in England. He spoke merely as an international lawyer holding fast to his principles as to the rights of neutrals. He hurried to Washington to urge his views upon the administration. He was present, by invitation, at the meeting of the Cabinet which determined upon the attitude of our government, and the letters he had received from his correspondents in England, ​who were foremost among the steadfast friends of the Union, gave peculiar weight to his advice. In surrendering the captured Confederate emissaries, the administration had to face a popular clamor of unusual fierceness. Nobody did, nobody could do as much as Sumner to calm the waves of popular excitement. He had the reputation of a radical, an extremist, a man whose conscience of right and honor would stand unbending against all the powers of the world. When such a man stepped forth to proclaim that, according to his sense of right and justice, the administration had done that which it was in duty bound to do, every patriot, every friend of liberty, even the extremest, might see reason to be satisfied. This Sumner did on the floor of the Senate, so convincingly, so proudly, that the last adverse voices were silenced, and the portentous “Trent” affair passed peaceably over, not only without producing a war with England, but also without affecting the relations between the administration and the people.
But the danger of foreign interference was by no means over, for Louis Napoleon, having embarked in his hazardous Mexican enterprise, left no means untried to inveigle England into a policy helpful to the rebellion. Nor was our home situation at all reassuring. We had indeed won considerable advantages on the Western field of military operations. The capture of Forts Henry and Donelson by General Grant had opened to our forces the waterways into the heart of Tennessee, and created much exultation among our people. The political huckstering and administrative incapacity of Simon Cameron in the War Department had been succeeded by the fiery energy of Stanton. But the Army of the Potomac lay inactive in front of Washington, like an inert mass, under command of General McClellan, the luster of whose early laurels won by his successes in West Virginia was sad warning in the ​estimation of the people. And Congress was painfully struggling with the problem of providing money for the current expenses of the war, which were rising to an appalling figure. It was under the pressure of this necessity that the ill-fated legal-tender law was enacted, destined to play so mischievous a part in the developments of later years. But these were not the only difficulties that troubled the minds of thoughtful men. The government was, under the stress of circumstances, doing things highly obnoxious to the fundamental principles of constitutional liberty. It incarcerated, without warrant or due process of law, men suspected of aiding the rebellion. It suspended the writ of habeas corpus. It interfered with the regular courts of justice. On the plea of urgent necessity, for the salvation of the Republic, it adopted methods of repression or prevention familiar to despotic rule, and having a strange sound in a democracy. To be sure, the number of cases in which such arbitrary stretches of power were adopted was not large. But it sufficed to make many loyal and earnest Union men shake their heads in alarm, and to intensify the wish that a condition of things furnishing occasion for such transgressions and making them appear excusable and even praiseworthy in the eyes of the common run of people should soon come to an end.
Among the members of Congress with whom I had an opportunity of conversing, I found the Republicans mostly in favor of the adoption by the government of a stronger and more openly pronounced anti-slavery policy. There were exceptions, however—men who thought their constituents were not quite ready yet to make the “war for the Union” an “abolition war.” In some cases these cautious politicians, as happens frequently, were more timid than the state of public sentiment among their people warranted. I went to New York for the purpose of examining the field outside of the reach of ​the official atmosphere. The impression I received was that party spirit had not remained as silent as it was during the days of the great uprising before my departure for Spain. Some of the Democratic leaders had resumed their old vocabulary in criticising the abolitionists in power. But many of the Democrats who had risen up for the defense of the Union in obedience to their patriotic impulses had gradually freed themselves from the ties of their old party allegiance, and heartily agreed that slavery, being the guilty cause of the whole mischief, must pay the due penalty and perish in the collision. This sentiment had become quite general outside of the circles of hide-bound Democratic partisanship, and among the friends whose advice I sought, it was agreed that the time had come for an open movement in outspoken advocacy of emancipation. To start this movement we organized an “Emancipation Society,” and arranged to hold a public meeting on the 6th of March, in the great hall of the Cooper Institute.
I returned to Washington, and at once called upon Mr. Lincoln to report to him what I had seen and heard and what our friends proposed to do. “Good!” said he. “And at that meeting you are going to make a speech?”
“Yes.”
“Well, now go home and sketch that speech. Do it as quickly as you can. Then come and show me your argument and we will talk it over.”
Without delay I went to work. To advocate emancipation on the ground that it would give us the support of the moral sentiment in all civilized countries, and thus deter governments, depending upon public opinion, from giving countenance and aid to those fighting for slavery, as I had done in my despatches to the government, would not have been fitting in a public appeal to the American people. I adopted a line ​of reasoning equally truthful, but starting from a different point of view. I deprecated the oversanguine anticipation of an early collapse of the military power of the Confederacy, and predicted an arduous and protracted struggle, which would indeed finally, but not quietly, lay the rebellion defeated and helpless, at our feet. But the defeat of the rebellion by means of force was not the only object. Beyond that we wanted to restore the Union of the States, the National Republic, based upon local self-government. This required not only the military reconquest of the States that had attempted to secede from the Union—not merely the holding together of those States by means of force such as is used by despotic governments, but it required a revival of that feeling of loyalty to the Union without which the Union could not endure under democratic institutions. There could be no doubt that the disunion sentiment in the South, and its offspring, the secession movement, were owing to the existence of slavery, an institution at war with our democratic principles, an institution which could not live unless it ruled, and would therefore always remain rebellious unless permitted to rule. If, therefore, we aimed at the restoration and maintenance of the Union under democratic government, the Southern people must be brought under the influence of conditions which made loyalty to the Union and to democratic principles their natural sentiment. In other words, the cause of the mischief, slavery, must cease to control their sympathies and aspirations. Slavery would exercise that control so long as it existed. It must, therefore, cease to exist. As initiatory measures to this end I proposed, first, the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and wherever the National Government had immediate authority. Secondly, the confiscation, and, ipso facto, the emancipation of slaves belonging to persons engaged in the rebellion. And thirdly, the offer of a ​fair compensation to loyal Slave States and loyal masters who would agree to some system of emancipation—this to be followed by such measures as might appear necessary to render the restoration of slavery impossible, and to take away from the Southern people all hope of such a restoration. I then reviewed the objections currently made to such a plan, and showed their futility, and closed with an appeal to the good sense, the patriotism, and the instinct of justice and honor of the American people.
This draft of my speech, which in the published edition has the title, “Reconciliation by Emancipation,” I took to Mr. Lincoln, and he asked me to read it to him. When I had finished he said: “Now, you go and deliver that speech at your meeting on the 6th of March. And maybe you will hear something from me on the same day.”
Our meeting at the Cooper Institute was an imposing demonstration. The great ball was crowded to overflowing with an audience representative of all social classes. Many of the most prominent citizens of New York sat on the platform. Every allusion to the abolition of slavery as a necessity for the preservation of the Union, and as a moral deliverance and a consummation devoutly to be wished and sure to come, called forth outbursts of genuine enthusiasm. There was something like religious fervor in the proceeding—something of that spirit which impelled the singing of “Old Hundred” before the meeting dissolved. While the meeting was going on, the arrival of a despatch from Washington was announced—if I remember rightly, by Horace Greeley with the remark that it “would greatly interest this audience.” The despatch informed us that President Lincoln had on that day, the 6th of March, sent a special message to Congress, asking for the adoption of a joint resolution substantially to this effect: “That the United States ​ought to co-operate with any State which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to each State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State, in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system.”
The announcement was received by the whole assemblage with transports of joy. Everybody felt that, although the resolution proposed was in a high degree cautious and conservative, yet it indicated the true relation between the Civil War and slavery. Here the abolishment of slavery with compensation was distinctly pointed out as a measure of peace and reunion. If the Slave States rejected it, they would have to bear the consequences. In the argument accompanying the draft of the resolution the President said: “In my judgment, gradual, not sudden emancipation, is better for all. Such a proposition on the part of the government sets up no claim of a right by Federal authority to interfere with slavery within State limits, referring, as it does, the absolute control of the subject in each case to the State and its people immediately interested. In the annual message last December, I thought fit to say: ‘The Union must be preserved; and hence, all indispensable means must be employed.’ I said this, not hastily, but deliberately. War has been made, and continues to be, an indispensable means to this end. A practical reacknowledgment of the national authority would render the war unnecessary, and it would at once cease. If, however, resistance continues, the war must also continue; and it is impossible to foresee all the incidents which may attend and all the ruin which may follow it. Such as may seem indispensable, or may obviously promise great efficiency towards ending the struggle, must and will come.”
The possibilities, or rather the probabilities, of the future ​were thus distinctly foreshadowed. Mr. Lincoln, naturally of a conservative cast of mind, was much in earnest when he spoke of gradual as preferable to sudden emancipation, and when, as he did on several occasions, he revived the old scheme of colonizing the emancipated negroes somewhere outside of the United States as a very desirable measure. Having been born in a slave-holding State, and grown up in a negro-bating community, he foresaw more distinctly than other anti-slavery men did the race-troubles that would follow emancipation, and he was anxious to prevent, or at least to mitigate them. But events overruled his cautious and conservative policy, and urged him on to more radical measures. Congress adopted the resolution proposed by the President in his message of the 6th of March, but not one of the slave-holding States responded. Thus their last opportunity for securing a gradual abolishment of slavery with compensation to the owners was lost. Before the end of April, Congress enacted a law prohibiting slavery in the District of Columbia. The practice of surrendering to their owners slaves who had come into the lines of our armies—a practice which had long been kept up by some military commanders—ceased altogether. And the time was rapidly approaching when Abraham Lincoln, recognizing the necessities of the war, obeying the generous impulses of his heart, and feeling himself supported by the enlightened opinion of his fellow-citizens, issued that decree of practically general emancipation which has become his principal title to immortality in the history of the world.
The prediction that the adoption of a policy stamping the war for the Union distinctly as a war against slavery, would remove all danger of foreign interference in favor of those fighting for slavery, was amply fulfilled. It did not, indeed, convert those who, for commercial or political reasons, desired ​the disruption of the American Union; but it stripped their schemes and efforts of their chance of success, in spite of the repeated and discouraging reverses still suffered by the arms of the Union—reverses which at times made the Union cause look almost hopeless. In vain did a large part of the aristocracy and of the rich middle class in England continue to vent their dislike and jealousy of the great American Republic in sneers and jibes; in vain did statesmen—even Mr. Gladstone—proclaim their belief that the Union would never overcome the rebellion, and that the war was only useless and wanton bloodshed; in vain did the London Times and a host of other newspapers in its wake deride the logic of President Lincoln's emancipation decree, and denounce it as a devilish provocation of servile war. The great masses of the English people, moved by their instinctive love of liberty, woke up to the true nature of our struggle, and they had spokesmen of profound moral enthusiasm. “Exeter Hall” thundered forth mighty appeals for the American North fighting against slavery. Scores and hundreds of public meetings were held all over Great Britain, giving emphasis to the great upheaval of conscience for human freedom. As if to shame Mr. Seward's prophecy that emancipation would bring on European intervention against us on account of the prolongation of the cotton famine, thousands of the suffering workingmen of Lancashire met and adopted an address to President Lincoln, expressing profound sympathy with the Union cause, and thanking the President for what he had done and was doing for the cause of human freedom. From that time on, the anti-slavery spirit of the British people was never silent, and it expressed itself on every occasion with such moral power as not only to exasperate, but to overawe the most zealous friends of the Southern Confederacy. Indeed, it became a force which no British Government, whatever its ​sympathies might have been, would have lightly undertaken to defy.
I will not say that, had not the Republican administration given a distinct anti-slavery aspect to the war, England and France would certainly have interfered in favor of the Southern Confederacy, although during the dark periods of the war this would have been by no means improbable. But it may well be said that when, in the eyes of all the world, the war for the Union had become a war against slavery, foreign intervention against the Union became well-nigh impossible.