States. All these are consequences which the court of the Emperor will not fail to see are adverse to the interests of Russia as well as to those of this country.

Your particular knowledge of our political institutions will enable you to explain satisfactorily the causes of our present domestic troubles, and the grounds of the hope still entertained that entire harmony will soon be restored.

I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant,

JOHN APPLETON, Esq., &c., &c., &c.

J. S. BLACK.

The same, mutatis mutandis, to W. PRESTON, Esq.. Madrid; E. G. FAIR, Esq., Brussels; THEO. S. FAY, Esq., Berne; Jos. A. WRIGHT, Esq., Berlin; J. Ĝ. JONES, Esq., Vienna; J. WILLIAMS, Esq., Constantinople; GEO. M. DALLAS, Esq., London; CHAS. J. FAULKNER, Esq., Paris; HENRY C. MURPHY, Esq., Hague.

Mr. Seward (Secretary of State) to all the ministers of the United States.

CIRCULAR.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

Washington, March 9, 1861.

SIR: My predecessor, in his despatch, number 10, addressed to you on the 28th of February last, instructed you to use all proper and necessary measures to prevent the success of efforts which may be made by persons claiming to represent those States of this Union in whose name a provisional government has been announced to procure a recognition of their independence by the government of Spain.

I am now instructed by the President of the United States to inform you that, having assumed the administration of the government in pursuance of an unquestioned election and of the directions of the Constitution, he renews the injunction which I have mentioned, and relies upon the exercise of the greatest possible diligence and fidelity on your part to counteract and prevent the designs of those who would invoke foreign intervention to embarrass or overthrow the republic.

When you reflect on the novelty of such designs, their unpatriotic and revolutionary character, and the long train of evils which must follow directly or consequentially from even their partial or temporary success, the President feels assured that you will justly appreciate and cordially approve the caution which prompts this communication.

I transmit herewith a copy of the address pronounced by the President on taking the constitutional oath of office. It sets forth clearly the errors of the misguided partisans who are seeking to dismember the Union, the grounds on which the conduct of those partisans is disallowed, and also the general policy which the government will pursue with a view to the preservation of domestic peace and order, and the maintenance and preservation of the federal Union.

You will lose no time in submitting this address to the Spanish minister for foreign affairs, and in assuring him that the President of the United States entertains a full confidence in the speedy restoration of the harmony and unity of the government by a firm, yet just and liberal bearing, cooperating with the deliberate and loyal action of the American people.

You will truthfully urge upon the Spanish government the consideration

that the present disturbances have had their origin only in popular passions, excited under novel circumstances of very transient character, and that while not one person of well-balanced mind has attempted to show that dismemberment of the Union would be permanently conducive to the safety and welfare of even his own State or section, much less of all the States and sections of our country, the people themselves still retain and cherish a profound confidence in our happy Constitution, together with a veneration and affection for it such as no other form of government ever received at the hands of those for whom it was established.

We feel free to assume that it is the general conviction of men, not only here but in all other countries, that this federal Union affords a better system than any other that could be contrived to assure the safety, the peace, the prosperity, the welfare, and the happiness of all the States of which it is composed. The position of these States, and their mining, agricultural, manufacturing, commercial, political, and social relations and influences, seem to make it permanently the interest of all other nations that our present political system shall be unchanged and undisturbed. Any advantage that any foreign nation might derive from a connexion that it might form with any dissatisfied or discontented portion, State, or section, even if not altogether illusory, would be ephemeral, and would be overbalanced by the evils it would suffer from a disseverance of the whole Union, whose manifest policy it must be hereafter, as it has always been heretofore, to maintain peace, liberal commerce, and cordial amity with all other nations, and to favor the establishment of well-ordered government over the whole American continent.

Nor do we think we exaggerate our national importance when we claim that any political disaster that should befall us, and introduce discord or anarchy among the States that have so long constituted one great pacific, prosperous nation, under a form of government which has approved itself to the respect and confidence of mankind, might tend by its influence to disturb and unsettle the existing systems of government in other parts of the world, and arrest that progress of improvement and civilization which marks the era in which we live.

The United States have had too many assurances and manifestations of the friendship and good will of her Catholic Majesty to entertain any doubt that these considerations, and such others as your own large experience of the working of our federal system will suggest, will have their just influence with her, and will prevent her Majesty's government from yielding to solici tations to intervene in any unfriendly way in the domestic concerns of our country. The President regrets that the events going on here may be productive of some possible inconvenience to the people and subjects of Spain; but he is determined that those inconveniences shall be made as light and as transient as possible, and, so far as it may rest with him, that all strangers who may suffer any injury from them shall be amply indemnified. The President expects that you will be prompt in transmitting to this department any information you may receive on the subject of the attempts which have suggested this communication.

I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant,

W. PRESTON, Esq., Madrid.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

The same, mutatis mutandis, to E. G. FAIR, Esq., Brussels; THEO. S. FAY, Esq., Berne; Jos. A. WRIGHT, ESQ., Berlin; J. G. JONES, Esq., Vienna; J. WIL LIAMS, Esq., Constantinople; GEO. M. DALLAS, Esq., London; CHAS. J. FAULKNER, Esq., Paris; JOHN APPLETON, Esq., St. Petersburg; HENRY C. MURPHY, Esq., Hague.

Ex. Doc. 1-3

Mr. Seward to ministers of the United States in Great Britain, France, Russia, Prussia, Austria, Belgium, Italy, and Denmark.

CIRCULAR.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

Washington, April 24, 1861.

SIR: The advocates of benevolence and the believers in human progress, encouraged by the slow though marked meliorations of the barbarities of war which have obtained in modern times, have been, as you are well aware, recently engaged with much assiduity in endeavoring to effect some modifications of the law of nations in regard to the rights of neutrals in maritime war. In the spirit of these movements the President of the United States, in the year 1854, submitted to the several maritime nations two propositions, to which he solicited their assent as permanent principles of international law, which were as follows:

1. Free ships make free goods; that is to say, that the effects or goods belonging to subjects or citizens of a power or State at war are free from capture or confiscation when found on board of neutral vessels, with the exception of articles contraband of war.

2. That the property of neutrals on board an enemy's vessel is not subject to confiscation unless the same be contraband of war.

Several of the governments to which these propositions were submitted expressed their willingness to accept them, while some others, which were in a state of war, intimated a desire to defer acting thereon until the return of peace should present what they thought would be a more auspicious season for such interesting negotiations.

On the 16th of April, 1856, a congress was in session at Paris. It consisted of several maritime powers, represented by their plenipotentiaries, namely, Great Britain, Austria, France, Russia, Prussia, Sardinia, and Tur key. That congress having taken up the general subject to which allusion has already been made in this letter, on the day before mentioned, came to an agreement, which they adopted in the form of a declaration, to the effect following, namely:

1. Privateering is and remains abolished.

2. The neutral flag covers enemy's goods, with the exception of contraband of war.

3. Neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, are not liable to capture under enemy's flag.

4. Blockades, in order to be binding, must be effective; that is to say, maintained by forces sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy. The agreement pledged the parties constituting the congress to bring the declaration thus made to the knowledge of the States which had not been represented in that body, and to invite them to accede to it. The congress, however, at the same time insisted, in the first place, that the declaration should be binding only on the powers who were or should become parties to it as one whole and indivisible compact; and, secondly, that the parties who had agreed, and those who should afterwards accede to it, should, after the adoption of the same, enter into no arrangement on the application of maritime law in time of war without stipulating for a strict observance of the four points resolved by the declaration.

The declaration which I have thus substantially recited of course prcvented all the powers which became parties to it from accepting the two propositions which had been before submitted to the maritime nations by the President of the United States.

The declaration was, in due time, submitted by the governments represented in the congress at Paris to the government of the United States.

The President, about the 14th of July, 1856, made known to the States concerned his unwillingness to accede to the declaration. In making that announcement on behalf of this government, my predecessor, Mr. Marcy, called the attention of those States to the following points, namely:

1st. That the second and third propositions contained in the Paris declaration are substantially the same with the two propositions which had before been submitted to the maritime States by the President.

2d. That the Paris declaration, with the conditions annexed, was inadmissible by the United States in three respects, namely: 1st. That the government of the United States could not give its assent to the first proposition contained in the declaration, namely, that "Privateering is and remains abolished," although it was willing to accept it with an amendment which should exempt the private property of individuals, though belonging to belligerent States, from seizure or confiscation by national vessels in maritime war. 2d. That for this reason the stipulation annexed to the declaration, viz: that the propositions must be taken altogether or rejected altogether, without modification, could not be allowed. 3d. That the fourth condition annexed to the declaration, which provided that the parties acceding to it should enter into no negotiation for any modifications of the law of maritime war with nations which should not contain the four points contained in the Paris declaration, seemed inconsistent with a proper regard to the national sovereignty of the United States.

On the 29th of July, 1856, Mr. Mason, then minister of the United States at Paris, was instructed by the President to propose to the government of France to enter into an arrangement for its adherence, with the United States, to the four principles of the declaration of the congress of Paris, provided the first of them should be amended as specified in Mr. Marcy's note to the Count de Sartiges on the 28th of July, 1856. Mr. Mason accordingly brought the subject to the notice of the imperial government of France, which was disposed to entertain the matter favorably, but which failed to communicate its decision on the subject to him. Similar instructions regarding the matter were addressed by this department to Mr. Dallas, our minister at London, on the 31st day of January, 1857; but the proposition above referred to had not been directly presented to the British government by him when the administration of this government by Franklin Pierce, during whose term these proceedings occurred, came to an end, on the 3d of March, 1857, and was succeeded by that of James Buchanan, who directed the negotiations to be arrested for the purpose of enabling him to examine the questions involved, and they have ever since remained in that state of suspension.

The President of the United States has now taken the subject into consideration, and he is prepared to communicate his views upon it, with a disposition to bring the negotiation to a speedy and satisfactory conclusion.

For that purpose you are hereby instructed to seek an early opportunity to call the attention of her Majesty's government to the subject, and to ascertain whether it is disposed to enter into negotiations for the accession of the government of the United States to the declaration of the Paris congress, with the conditions annexed by that body to the same; and if you shall find that government so disposed, you will then enter into a convention to that effect, substantially in the form of a project for that purpose herewith transmitted to you; the convention to take effect from the time when the due ratifications of the same shall have been exchanged. It is presumed that you will need no special explanation of the sentiments of the President on this subject for the purpose of conducting the necessary conferences with the government to which you are accredited. Its assent is expected on the ground that the proposition is accepted at its suggestion, and in the form it has

preferred. For your own information it will be sufficient to say that the President adheres to the opinion expressed by my predecessor, Mr. Marcy, that it would be eminently desirable for the good of all nations that the property and effects of private individuals, not contraband, should be exempt from seizure and confiscation by national vessels in maritime war. If the time and circumstances were propitious to a prosecution of the negotiation with that object in view, he would direct that it should be assiduously pursued. But the right season seems to have passed, at least for the present. Europe seems once more on the verge of quite general wars. On the other hand, a portion of the American people have raised the standard of insurrection, and proclaimed a provisional government, and, through their organs, have taken the bad resolution to invite privateers to prey upon the peaceful commerce of the United States.

Prudence and humanity combine in persuading the President, under the circumstances, that it is wise to secure the lesser geod offered by the Paris congress, without waiting indefinitely in hope to obtain the greater one offered to the maritime nations by the President of the United States. I am, sir, respectfully, your obedient servant.

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, Esq., &c., &c., &c.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

The same, mutatis mutandis, to the ministers of the United States in France, Russia, Prussia, Austria, Belgium, Italy, and Denmark.

Convention upon the subject of the rights of belligerents and neutrals in time of war, between the United States of America and her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.

The United States of America and her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, being equally animated by a desire to define with more precision the rights of belligerent and neutrals in time of war, have, for that purpose, conferred full powers, the President of the United States upon Charles F. Adams, accredited as their envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to her said Majesty, and her Majesty the Queen of Great Britian and Ireland, upon

And the said plenipotentiaries, after having exchanged their full powers, have concluded the following articles :

ARTICLE I.

1. Privateering is and remains abolished. 2. The neutral flag covers enemy's goods, with the exception of contraband of war. 3. Neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war, are not liable to capture under enemy's flag. 4. Blockades in order to be binding, must be effective; that is to say, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy.

ARTICLE II.

The present convention shall be ratified by the President of the United States of America, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and by her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and the ratifications shall be exchanged at Washington, within the space of six months from the signature, or sooner if possible. In faith whereof, the respective plenipotentiaries have signed the present convention in duplicate, and have thereto affixed their seals.

Done at London, the

day of

thousand eight hundred and sixty-one (1861.)

in the year of our Lord, one