political organization which might at some future time become a State. Soon afterward the people of South Carolina, through a State convention, declared their purpose to secede from the Union on the ground that the party about to come into power had announced that the South should be "excluded from the common territory." The State of Alabama, on the 11th of January 1861, through a convention in which the vote stood 61 yeas to 39 nays, followed the example of South Carolina, giving as the reason that the election of President Lincoln "by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions (i. e., slavery) of Alabama," was "a political wrong of an insulting and menacing character." The State of Georgia, after a much greater struggle, took the same course, the final vote being 208 yeas to 89 nays. Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas each framed an ordinance of secession from the Union before the 4th of February, in each case with more or less unanimity. On that day representatives from some of the States which had attempted to go through the form of secession, and representatives from the State of North Carolina, which had not at that time attempted it, met at Montgomery, in the State of Alabama, for the purpose of organizing a provisional government, and elected Jefferson Davis as the provisional president and Alexander H. Stephens as provisional vice-president of the proposed confederation. Jefferson Davis, in accepting this office, on the 18th of February made a speech in which the perpetuation of slavery was virtually admitted to be the cause of the secession movement; and Mr. Stephens explicitly declared that the "corner stone" of the new government rested upon "the great truth" that the negro was "not equal to the white man," and that slavery was "his natural and moral condition." No other State passed ordinances of sccession till after the fall of Fort Sumter. Before that time the people of Tennessee and Missouri voted by large majorities against secession; and in the States of North Carolina and Virginia conventions were called which were known to be opposed to the movement in South Carolina and the six States bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, and which were still in session when some of the events subsequently referred to took place. A large minority, if not a majority, of the people of the slave States known as Border States and of the mountainous parts of the six States known as the Gulf States did not desire separation. Their feelings were expressed in a speech 5627-36

made by Mr. Stephens in the Georgia convention, before that State passed the ordinance of secession and two months before he accepted office at Montgomery, in which he declared that the secession movement was without a "plea of justification," and challenged anyone to name "one governmental act of wrong, deliberately and purposely done by the government of Washington," of which the South had "a right to complain." On the 9th of March, after the inauguration of President Lincoln, Mr. Dallas, then minister of the United States at London, was instructed to communicate to Lord Russell, Her Majesty's principal secretary of state for foreign affairs, the inaugural address of the President, and assure him that the President entertained full confidence in the speedy restoration of the harmony and unity of the government. On the 9th of April Mr. Dallas, complying with these instructions, pressed upon Lord Russell the importance of England and France abstaining, "at least for a considerable time, from doing what, by encouraging groundless hopes, would widen a breach still thought capable of being closed." Lord Russell replied that the coming of Mr. Adams, Mr. Dallas's successor, "would doubtless be regarded as the appropriate and natural occasion for finally discussing and determining the question." The attack on Fort Sumter, made by order of the government at Montgomery, ended in the surrender of the garrison on the 13th of April. On the 15th the President issued a proclamation, calling out the militia and convening an extra session of Congress on the 4th of the approaching July. On the 17th of April Mr. Jefferson Davis gave notice that letters of marque would be granted by the government at Montgomery. On the 19th President Lincoln issued a proclamation declaring that a blockade of the ports within the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas would be established for the purpose of collecting the revenue in the disturbed part of the country, and for the protection of the public peace, and of the lives and properties of quiet and orderly citizens, until Congress should assemble.

As the issuance of President Lincoln's procRecognition of Bel- lamation of blockade on the 19th of April had ligerency. repeatedly been asserted às the reason why Her Majesty's government was induced to confer upon the insurgents in the South the status of belligerents, the Case of the United States proceeded to argue that this assertion was erroneous. Before any armed collision had taken place

there existed, said the Case, an understanding between the British and French governments, with a view to secure a simultaneous and identical course of action on American questions. When the news of the bloodless attack upon Fort Sumter became known in Europe, Her Majesty's government apparently assumed that the time had come for the joint action which had previously been agreed upon; and without waiting to learn the purposes of the United States, it announced its intention to take the first step by recognizing the insurgents as belligerents. No complete official copy, declared the American Case, of the President's proclamation of blockade was received by the British Government before the afternoon of the 11th of May 1861, ten days after Lord Russell had decided to award the rights of belligerency on the ocean to the insurgents, eight days after the subject had been referred to the law officers of the Crown for their opinion, and five days after the decision of Her Majesty's government upon that opinion had been announced in the House of Commons. Mr. Adams arrived in London on the evening of the 13th of May, and in spite of Lord Russell's voluntary promise to Mr. Dallas, the Queen's proclamation of neutrality was issued on the morning of that day. It was, said the Case of the United States, a measure taken at a time when Her Majesty's government was by no means certain, as was shown by speeches in Parliament and diplomatic correspondence, that there was a war in the United States; and it was taken in full view, as shown by official documents, of the effect that it would have in promoting the secessionist movement. The United States, said the Case, had made this review with no purpose of questioning the sovereign right of Great Britain to determine for herself whether the facts at that time justified the recognition of the insurgents as belligerents, but because they had been forced to conclude, from all the circumstances, that Her Majesty's government, in acting upon such imperfect information as it possessed, and in counseling France to take the same course, "was actuated at that time by a conscious unfriendly purpose toward the United States."

Paris.

Nor did this precipitate and unfriendly act, The Declaration of said the Case of the United States, go forth alone. On the 6th of May 1861, five days before the receipt of the authentic copy of the President's proclamation, Lord John Russell instructed Lord Cowley, the British ambassador at Paris, to ascertain whether the imperial

government was disposed to make a joint endeavor with Her Majesty's government to obtain from each of the "belligerents" a formal recognition of the second and third articles of the Declaration of Paris. This proposition, which was concurred in by the imperial government, to open direct negotiations with the insurgents, was the second step in the joint action which had been agreed upon. Care was taken to prevent the knowledge of it from reaching the Government of the United States. On the 18th of May Lord Lyons, the British minister at Washington, was instructed to encourage the Government of the United States in any disposition which it might evince to recognize the Declaration of Paris in regard to privateering; but he was told that Her Majesty's government could not accept the renunciation of privateering on the part of the Government of the United States if it was coupled with the condition that Her Majesty's government should enforce its renunciation on the Confederate States, either by denying their right to issue letters of marque, or by interfering with the belligerent operations of vessels holding from them such letters of marque; and the instructions closed by directing Lord Lyons to take such means as he might judge most expedient to transmit to the British consul at Charleston or New Orleans a copy of a previous dispatch of the same day, in order that it might be communicated to Mr. Jefferson Davis at Montgomery. These instructions were not to be shown to Mr. Seward, but a copy was to be shown to Mr. Jefferson Davis. Such a use of the British legation at Washington for such a purpose was, said the Case, perhaps an act which the United States would have been justified in regarding as a cause of war. It was, to say

the least, an abuse of diplomatic duties and a violation of the duties of a neutral.

On the 5th of July Lord Lyons sent a copy of his instructions to Mr. Bunch, the British consul at Charleston, and advised him not to go to Richmond, but to communicate through

The four rules of the Declaration of Paris, of 1856, are as follows: "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 the 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."

the governor of the State of South Carolina. Mr. Bunch at once put himself and his French colleague in communication with a gentleman who was well qualified to serve that purpose, but who was not the governor of South Carolina. This gentleman proceeded to Richmond, with Lord Lyons's letters and Lord Russell's dispatch, and while there secured the passage in the insurgent congress of resolutions, partly drafted by Mr. Jefferson Davis, which declared a purpose to observe the second and third rules of the Declaration of Paris, but to maintain the right of privateering, which had been abolished by the first rule. In communicating this result to Lord Lyons Mr. Bunch said that the wishes of Her Majesty's government "would seem to have been fully met," as no proposal was made that the Confederate government should abolish privateering. It could not fail to be observed, said the Case of the United States, that the practical effect of this diplomatic effort to secure the assent of the United States to all the rules of the Declaration of Paris, which the parties to that declaration had agreed to maintain as a whole and indivisible, while the insurgent privateers were to be protected and their devastation legalized would, if it had been successful, have been the destruction of the commerce of the United States or its transfer to the British flag, and the disarming of a principal weapon of the United States on the ocean, should a continuation of this course unhappily force the United States into a war with Great Britain.

Trent Case.

The partial purpose disclosed in the first official act of the British Government after the issuance of the proclamation of neutrality was, continued the Case of the United States, also shown in the conduct of that government a few months later in its peremptory demands and its ostentatious warlike preparations in the case of Mason and Slidell, even after Her Majesty's government had received the assurance, promptly given by the United States, that the act of its naval officer was unauthorized. Such conduct formed a signal contrast with the course of Earl Russell in respect to Confederate cruisers, contracted for and fitted out in British ports, even after overwhelming proof of their complicity was laid before him.

Expressions of Public
Men.

The feeling of personal unfriendliness toward the United States in the leading members of the British Government was shown, said the American Case, by their public utterances during a large part,