CH. XXII.] THE QUESTION OF SELLING ARMS 391 Several citations will give a fair presentation of them. In a letter to Russell of July 11, Adams complained of the despatch from the United Kingdom of "numbers of steam vessels laden with arms and munitions of war of every description together with other supplies, well adapted to procrastinate the struggle with a purpose of breaking a blockade legitimately established and fully recognized by her Majesty." [Reference is made to merchant vessels intending to run the blockade or to transfer their cargoes to blockade runners at Nassau.] Dip. Corr., 1863, part i. p. 314. Russell wrote Adams, Sept. 11: "With regard to the general duties of a neutral, according to international law, the true doctrine has been laid down repeatedly by Presidents and judges of eminence of the United States, and that doctrine is that a neutral may sell to either or both of two belligerent parties any implements or munitions of war which such belligerent may wish to purchase from the subjects of the neutral. . . . Admitting also, that which is believed to be the fact, that the Confederates have derived a limited supply of arms and ammunition from the United Kingdom, notwithstanding the federal blockade of their ports; yet, on the other hand, it is perfectly notorious that the federal government have purchased in and obtained from the United Kingdom a far greater quantity of arms and war-like stores." — Ibid., p. 373. Russell made his meaning clear in his speech of Sept. 26: "The principle [of the Foreign Enlistment Act] is clear enough. If you are asked to sell muskets, you may sell muskets to one party or to the other, and so with gunpowder, shells, or cannon; and you may sell a ship in the same manner. But if you will on the one hand train and drill a regiment with arms in their hands, or allow a regiment to go out with arms in their hands to take part with one of two belligerents, you violate your neutrality and commit an offence against the other belligerent. So in the same way in regard to ships, if you allow a ship to be armed and go at once to make an attack on a foreign belligerent, you are yourself, according to your law, taking part in the war, and it is an offence which is punished by the law."-Times, Sept. 28. Bright wrote Sumner, May 2: "The people too are not informed on the legal difference between selling arms and equipping war-ships, and as they know that great quantities of arms have been sold to the North, they argue that it must be equally lawful to sell arms or ships to the South. And Mr. Seward and Mr. Adams have lent some support to this view in complaining of the sale of arms to the Confederacy as if it were an offence in magnitude equal to that of furnishing ships of war. Since the South were admitted as belligerents, in respect of the sale of arms, you have been treated as two nations equal in the sight of our government and one as much in their favor as the other. You have imagined that our sympathy with the United States government should have given it an advantage in this matter over the concern at Richmond; but it has not been so. The love of gain and the sympathy for the South openly expressed by our papers, and almost universally felt by our richer classes, have entirely prevented this. But with regard to ships, we have an express enactment, and that has clearly been broken; but our people confound the two things."-Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. Seward wrote Adams, Oct. 5: "The proclamation of neutrality was a concession of belligerent rights to the insurgents, and was deemed by this government as unnecessary, and in effect as unfriendly, as it has since proved injurious to this country. . . . The United States stand upon what they think impregnable ground, when they refuse to be derogated, by any act of the British government, from their position as a sovereign nation in amity with Great Britain, and placed upon a footing of equality with domestic insurgents who have risen up in resistance against their authority."-Dip. Corr., 1863, part i. p. 393. See my vol. iii. p. 420, note 1. The persistent complaints of Seward and Adams and the progress of our arms had their effect. Bulloch writes: After "the seizure of the rams, Earl Russell applied the Foreign Enlistment Act so stringently with reference to the Confederate States, that it was very difficult to forward the most essential supplies, and while the drain of battle and the lack of necessary comforts were thinning the ranks and wasting the strength of the armies in the field, and the difficulty of placing funds in Europe was daily increasing, the cheapest and most favorable market, that of England, was well-nigh closed to the Confederacy, while the United States were permitted to buy and ship what they liked without hindrance, and at the ordinary current prices." Secret Service of the Confed. States, vol. i. p. 443. As I shall not recur to this subject again, I will add some citations showing the course of opinion and events after the time to which I have brought down the story in the text. Adams wrote in his diary, Oct. 24: "There certainly is more inclination to let matters go without meddling." "Nov. 21: The present threatening aspect of things in Europe is soothing the temper towards us surprisingly. I have never felt so serene before." Gladstone wrote Sumner, Nov. 5: "In CH. XXII.] FRIENDLY NEUTRALITY OF ENGLAND 393 England I think nearly all consider war against slavery unjustifiable; but all without exception will rejoice if it should please God that by the war slavery shall be extinguished. I could go further and say it will please me much if by the war the Union shall be re-established. But it would be a shabby way of currying favor with you to state a proposition which though in its terms strictly true contemplates a contingency which as it seems to me is wholly unattainable, and in the endeavor to attain which you are as a people displaying infinite courage, and inflicting the most frightful suffering. Does the history of the world offer an instance in which, within so short a period and among only thirty millions of men, there has been so vast a deluge of blood and treasure? But the almost immeasurable distance of the American view from ours - let us rather say from mine, as I have no right to speak for others as to facts and as to possibilities, not as to wishes, calls, I admit, for the exercise of a boundless Christian charity on your part to endure it, and on mine leaves only space for the hope that it may please Him, who governs the hearts of men as the rivers of water, to lead them in the way of peace. Years and years hence, with what wonder shall we, or our children, look back upon these things." Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. John Bright wrote, Nov. 20: "Neutrality is agreed upon by all, and I hope a more fair and friendly neutrality than we have seen during the past two years. There are still heard some voices against you for there is a wonderful ignorance here in all classes on everything American; but I can see and feel all around me that another tone prevails, and that the confident predictions as to your failure are uttered much less frequently even by the most rash of your opponents. . . . The Slaveholders' loan falls still it is now at 32 dis't, 90 stock having fallen to 58."— Ibid. Bright wrote, Jan. 22, 1864: "On your great question opinion seems to settle in or towards the belief that you can and will restore the Union; but great difficulties are anticipated, and some are still unconvinced."— Ibid. Adams made this entry, Jan. 30, 1864: "In the evening I went by invitation . . . to Lady Palmerston's. . . . I went to make my bow to Lord Palmerston. 'How d'ye do, Adams.'" Bright wrote Sumner, Feb. 18, 1864: "You will have noticed the tone taken by our Attorney-General and Lord Palmerston a few days ago in speaking of your prize Courts and your dealing with international law-nothing could be more friendly it was all I could wish for." Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. Earl Russell sent through Lord Lyons, April 1, 1864, "to Mr. Davis at ... Richmond... the formal protest and remonstrance of Her Majesty's Government against the efforts of the authorities of the so-called Confederate States to build war vessels within her Majesty's dominions to be employed against the Government of the United States." Appleton's Ann. Cyc., 1864, p. 556. Bright wrote Sumner, Sept. 2, 1864: "With us I think nearly all the friends of the North are most anxious that Mr. Lincoln should be elected again - they think any change must be for the worse, and that it would infuse new faith into the minds of the secessionists, both North and South. I am strongly of this opinion. . . . To elect Mr. Lincoln will be to tell Europe that the country is to be restored and slavery is to be destroyed. . . . Here there is always great interest in your contest-the newspapers are less violent in their opposition to you, always excepting the avowed partisans of the slave cause, and men speak with less confidence in favor of the South. At the same time there is a great uncertainty of opinion-it fluctuates with the varying news from week to week, and men become puzzled with the long-continued strife." Jan. 26, 1865: “I think you need not trouble yourself about England. At this moment opinion seems to have undergone a complete change, and our people and indeed our Government is more moderately disposed than I have ever before known it to be. I hear from a member of the Government that it is believed that the feeling between our Cabinet and the Washington Government has been steadily improving. . . . Mr. Adams has done well here everybody here says so." Feb. 17, 1865: "There seems still to be an idea in America that somebody in Europe intends to meddle in your contest. I suppose the rebels invent the story, and credulous people believe it. With us such a notion is unknown. All parties and classes here are resolved on a strict neutrality, and I believe there is an honest intention that no further cause of irritation or quarrel shall come from this side. . . . The tone of Parliament is wholly changed, and men begin to be ashamed of what has been said and done during the last four years." Pierce-Sumner Papers, MS. ... CHAPTER XXIII TEN days after the battle of Gettysburg, as the story has been told, Lee with his army crossed the Potomac into Virginia.1 Meade followed leisurely. A campaign of manœuvres ensued, with skirmishes and combats but no general battle, lasting until December, when both armies went into winter quarters on the soil of Virginia. Nothing from a military point of view had been gained by either side, but Meade had held Lee in check and had shown in this sort of warfare 2 apparently equal alertness and skill. After the battle of Stone's River, Rosecrans remained inactive for nearly six months, recuperating and resupplying his army and fortifying Murfreesborough. The government urged him forward, and persisted that he should drive the Confederates out of Tennessee and take Chattanooga. It was the McClellan drama played over again. The general complained of the lack of supplies, of forage, of revolving rifles for his mounted troops, of his great deficiency in cavalry as compared with his adversary, and in his correspondence with Stanton and Halleck displayed the art of a dexterous controversialist. At last, on June 24, he began to move, and inaugurated a campaign of brilliant strategy which made a momentous gain for Northern arms. Helped by the moral effect of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, he manoeuvred the Confederates under Bragg out of middle Tennessee, continued 1 The night of July 13, ante, p. 296. 2 Meade's report, reports of Lee, O. R., vol. xxix. part i.; Nicolay and Hay, vol. viii. chap. ix.; Life of Lee, Long, do. by Fitzhugh Lee; Walker, Hist. 2d Army Corps; Humphreys, Gettysburg to the Rapidan. * Ante, p. 219. |