I am
warned and admonished in various quarters that Laird's vessel is about to make
a trial trip, and that it will extend across the Atlantic. My omission to make
preparations is stigmatized as negligence, indifference, and worse.
Am sorry Seward treats the subject so gingerly. When
Palmerston or Earl Russell prates about their foreign enlistment act, and that
it is uncertain whether the law has really been violated by Laird, Americans
must be provoked. If their municipal legislation is weak and inefficient, why
is it not corrected? There are international obligations which cannot be
disregarded. Let us have good faith, peace or war!
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30,
1864, p. 448
