The President called on me this morning with the basis of a
dispatch which Lord Lyons proposed to send home. He had submitted it to Mr.
Seward, who handed it to the President, and he brought it to me. The President
read it to me, and when he concluded, I remarked the whole question of the
mails belonged properly to the courts and I thought unless we proposed some new
treaty arrangement it would be best the subject should continue with the courts
as law and usage directed. “But,” he inquired, “have the courts ever opened the
mails of a neutral government?” I replied, “Always, when the captured vessels
on which mails were found were considered good prize.” “Why, then,” said he, “do
you not furnish me with the fact? It is what I want, but you furnish me with no
report that any neutral has ever been searched.” I said I was not aware that
the right had ever been questioned. The courts made no reports to me whether
they opened or did not open mail. The courts are independent of the
Departments, to which they are not amenable. In the mails was often the best
and only evidence that could insure condemnation. [I said] that I should as
soon have expected an inquiry whether evidence was taken, witnesses sworn, and
the cargoes examined as whether mails were examined. “But if mails ever are
examined,” said he, “the fact must be known and recorded. What vessels,” he
asked, “have we captured, where we have examined the mails?” “All, doubtless,
that have had mails on board,” I replied. Probably most of them were not
intrusted with mails. “What,'” asked he, '”was the first vessel taken?” “I do
not recollect the name, a small blockade-runner, I think; I presume she had no
mail. If she had, I have no doubt the court searched it and examined all
letters and papers.” He was extremely anxious to ascertain if I recollected, or
knew that any captured mail had been searched. I told him I remembered no
specific mention, doubted if the courts ever reported to the Navy Department.
Foreign governments, knowing of the blockade, would not be likely to make up
mails for the ports blockaded. The Peterhoff had a mail ostensibly for
Matamoras, which was her destination, but with a cargo and mails which we knew
were intended for the Rebels, though the proof might be difficult since the
mail had been given up. I sent for Watkins, who has charge of prize matters, to
know if there was any record or mention of mails in any of the papers sent the
Navy Department, but he could not call to mind anything conclusive. Some
mention was made of mails or dispatches in the mail on board the Bermuda, which
we captured, but it was incidental. Perhaps the facts might be got from the
district attorneys, though he thought, as I did, that but few regular mails
were given to blockade-runners. The President said he would frame a letter to
the district attorneys, and in the afternoon he brought in a form to be sent to
the attorneys in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.
Read Chase the principal points in the Peterhoff case. He
approved of my views, concurred in them fully, and said there was no getting
around them.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30,
1864, p. 302-4
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