Diary of Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle: Sunday, April 5, 1863

Mr Zorn, or Don Pablo as he is called here, Her Majesty's acting Vice-Consul, is a quaint and most good-natured little man — a Prussian by birth. He is overwhelmed by the sudden importance he has acquired from his office, and by the amount of work (for which he gets no pay) entailed by it,— the office of British Consul having been a comparative sinecure before the war.

Mr Behnsen is head of the firm. The principal place of business is at San Luis Potosi, a considerable city in the interior of Mexico. All these foreign merchants complain bitterly of the persecutions and extortion they have to endure from the Government, which are, doubtless, most annoying; but nevertheless they appear to fatten on the Mexican soil.

I crossed to Brownsville to see General Bee, but he had not returned from Boca del Bio.

I dined with Mr Oetling. We were about fourteen at dinner, principally Germans, a very merry party. Mr Oetling is supposed to have made a million of dollars for his firm, by bold cotton speculations, since the war.

We all went to the theatre afterwards. The piece was an attack upon the French and upon Southern institutions.

SOURCE: Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, Three months in the southern states: April-June, 1863, p. 10-11

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: January 25, 1862

The French players have been permitted by the Secretary to leave the country. But British subjects are now refused passports.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 107

Francis Lieber to Major-General Henry W. Halleck, October 15, 1864

New YorK, October 15, 1864.

. . . I dare say you have already attended to the subject I am going to write about; still I feel prompted to say what follows. From the “New York Times” of this day I observe that much noise is made about the Rebels using our men, captured by them, for working in the fortifications, and that General Butler seems to fall into the error of considering it a grievous offence on the part of the enemy. We ought always to take care not to make ourselves ridiculous. Not to speak of 76 of General Orders No. 100, the employment of prisoners of war is universal: employment for domestic ends (such as when Russia distributed Frenchmen to the farmers, or Napoleon set Prussians to dig one of the chief canals of France) ; or for military purposes, such as working in army factories; or, lastly, for actual army purposes, such as working at fortifications, building roads, bridges near armies, &e. General Meigs asked my opinion on this very subject some months ago, and I wrote him a somewhat elaborate letter, which, were it necessary, might be referred to. That we have abstained from doing so until now, and have fed all along some fifty thousand idle prisoners, is another question. I believe it was done because we have a barbarous and reckless enemy, who threatened to use our men in pestiferous swamps if we should utilize the prisoners in our hands. That we tell them, “If you use our men, we shall use yours,” is all right; but let us not talk of unheard cruelty if they simply set the prisoners to work. We expose ourselves, especially when we do this in the face of our own general order and our own acknowledgment of the law of war. I, for one, am in favor of setting Rebel prisoners to work, — especially now, when the Rebels have used United States prisoners for fortifying Richmond, &c, although I think we must be prepared for insolent resistance and proportionate coercion on our part. . . .

SOURCE: Thomas Sergeant Perry, Editor, The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber, p. 351-2

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: November 18, 1861

To-day the Secretary told me, in reply to my question, that he had authentic information of the seizure of Messrs. Slidell and Mason, our commissioners to Europe, by Capt. Wilkes, of the U. S. Navy, and while on board the steamer Trent, a British vessel, at sea. I said I was glad of it. He asked why, in surprise. I remarked that it would bring the Eagle cowering to the feet of the Lion. He smiled, and said it was, perhaps, the best thing that could have happened. And he cautions me against giving passports to French subjects even to visit Norfolk or any of our fortified cities, for it was understood that foreigners at Norfolk were contriving somehow to get on board the ships of their respective nations.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 93-4

Diary of John Beauchamp Jones: November 19, 1861

To-day Monsieur Paul, French Consul, applied in person for passports on behalf, I believe, of some French players (Zouaves) to Norfolk. Of course I declined granting them. He grew enthusiastic, and alleged that British subjects had enjoyed the privilege. He said he cared nothing for the parties applying in this instance; but he argued vehemently against British subjects being favored over French subjects. I sent a note concerning our interview to the Secretary; and while Monsieur Paul still sat in the office, the following reply came in from the Secretary: “All you need do is to say to the French Consul, when he calls, that you obey your instructions, and have no authority to discuss with him the rights of French subjects. J. P. B.” Monsieur Paul departed with “a flea in his ear.” But he received an invitation to dine with the Secretary to-day.

SOURCE: John Beauchamp Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume 1, p. 94

Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut: January 4, 1864

Mrs. Ives wants us to translate a French play. A genuine French captain came in from his ship on the James River and gave us good advice as to how to make the selection. General Hampton sent another basket of partridges, and all goes merry as a marriage bell.

My husband came in and nearly killed us. He brought this piece of news: “North Carolina wants to offer terms of peace!” We needed only a break of that kind to finish us. I really shivered nervously, as one does when the first handful of earth comes rattling down on the coffin in the grave of one we cared for more than all who are left.

SOURCE: Mary Boykin Chesnut, Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary, A Diary From Dixie, p. 270-1

John Stuart Mill to John Lothrop Motley, October 31, 1862

ST. VERAN, 31st October 1862.

MY DEAR SIR, — Allow me to thank you most warmly for your long and interesting letter, which if it had been twice as long as it was would only have pleased me more. There are few persons that I have seen only once with whom I so much desire to keep up a communication as with you; and the importance of what I learn from you respecting matters so full of momentous consequences to the world would make such communication most valuable to me even if I did not wish for it on personal grounds. The state of affairs in America has naturally improved since you wrote, by the defeat of the enemy in Maryland and their expulsion from it, and still more by Mr. Lincoln's Anti-Slavery Proclamation, which no American, I think, can have received with more exultation than I did. It is of the highest importance, and more so because the manifest reluctance with which the President made up his mind to that decided step indicates that the progress of opinion in the country had reached the point of seeing its necessity for the effectual prosecution of the war. The adhesion of so many Governors of States, some of them originally Democrats, is a very favourable sign, and thus far the measure does not seem to have materially weakened your hold upon the border Slave States. The natural tendency will be, if the war goes on successfully, to reconcile those States to emancipating their own slaves, availing themselves of the pecuniary offers made by the Federal Government. I still feel some anxiety about the reception which will be given to the measure by Congress when it meets, and I should much like to know what are your expectations on the point. In England the proclamation has only increased the venom of those who, after taunting you so long with caring nothing for abolition, now reproach you for your abolitionism as the worst of your crimes. But you will find that, whenever any name is attached to these wretched effusions, it is always that of some deeply-dyed Tory — generally the kind of Tory to whom slavery is rather agreeable than not, or who so hate your democratic institutions that they would be sure to inveigh against you whatever you did, and are enraged at being no longer able to taunt you with being false to your own principles. It is from there also that we are now beginning to hear, what disgusts me more than all the rest, the base doctrine that it is for the interest of England that the American Republic should be broken up. Think of us as ill as you may (and we have given you abundant cause), but do not, I entreat you, think that the general English public is so base as this. Our national faults are not now of that kind, and I firmly believe that the feeling of almost all English Liberals, even those whose language has been the most objectionable, is one of sincere respect for the disruption which they think inevitable. As long as there is a Tory party in England it will rejoice at everything which injures or discredits American institutions, but the Liberal party, who are now, and are likely to remain much the strongest, are naturally your friends and allies, and will return to that position when once they see that you are not engaged in a hopeless, and therefore, as they think, an irrational and unjustifiable contest. There are writers enough here to keep up the fight and meet the malevolent comments on all your proceedings by right ones. Besides Cairns, and Dicey, and H. Martineau, and Ludlow, and Hughes, besides the Daily News, and Macmillan, and the Star, there is now the Westminster and the London Review, to which several of the best writers of the Saturday have gone over; there is Ellison of Liverpool, the author of “Slavery and Secession,” and editor of a monthly economical journal, the Exchange; and there are other writers less known who, if events go on favourably, will rapidly multiply. Here in France the state of opinion on the subject is most gratifying. All Liberal Frenchmen seem to have been with you from the first. They did not know more about the subject than the English, but their instincts were truer. By the way, what did you think of the narrative of the campaign on the Potomac in the Revue des Deux Mondes of 15th October by the Comte de Paris? It looks veracious, and is certainly intelligent, and in the general effect likely, I should think, to be very useful to the cause.

I still think you take too severe a view of the conduct of our Government. I grant that the extra-official dicta of some of the Ministry have been very unfortunate, especially that celebrated one of Lord Russell, on which I have commented not sparingly in the Westminster Review. Gladstone, too, a man of a much nobler character than Lord Russell, has said things lately which I very much regret, though they were accompanied by other things showing that he had no bad feelings towards you, and regretted their existence in others. But as a Government I do not see that their conduct is objectionable. The port of Nassau may be all that you say it is, but the United States also have the power, and have used it largely, of supplying themselves with munitions of war from our ports. If the principle of neutrality is accepted, our markets must be open to both sides alike, and the general opinion in England is (I do not say whether rightly or wrongly) that, if the course adopted is favourable to either side, it is to the United States, since the Confederates, owing to the blockade of their ports, have so much less power to take advantage of the facilities extended equally to both. What you mention about a seizure of arms by our Government must, I feel confident, have taken place during the Trent difficulty, at which time alone (and neither before nor after) has the export of arms to America been interdicted.

It is very possible that too much may have been made of Butler's proclamation, and that he was more wrong in form and phraseology than in substance. But with regard to the watchword said to have been given out by Pakenham at New Orleans, I have always hitherto taken it for a mere legend, like the exactly parallel ones which grew up under our own eyes at Paris in 1848 respecting the Socialist insurrections of June. What authority there may be for it I do not know, but, if it is true, nothing can mark more strongly the change which has taken place in the European standard of belligerent rights since the wars of the beginning of the century, for if any English commander at the present time were to do the like he never could show his face again in English society, even if he escaped being broken by a court-martial ; and I think we are entitled to blame in others what none of us, of the present generation at least, would be capable of perpetrating. You are perhaps hardly aware how little the English of the present day feel of solidarité with past generations. We do not feel ourselves at all concerned to justify our predecessors. Foreigners reproach us with having been the great enemies of neutral rights so long as we were belligerents, and with turning round and stickling for them now when we are neutrals; but the real fact is we are convinced, and have no hesitation in saying (what our Liberal party said even at the time), that our policy in that matter in the great Continental war was totally wrong.

But while I am anxious that liberal and friendly Americans should not think worse of us than we really deserve, I am deeply conscious and profoundly grieved and mortified that we deserve so ill; and are making, in consequence, so pitiful a figure before the world, with which, if we are not daily and insultingly taxed by all Europe, it is only because our enemies are glad to see us doing exactly what they expected, justifying their opinion of us, and acting in a way which they think perfectly natural, because they think it perfectly selfish.

SOURCE: Hugh S. R. Elliot, Editor, The Letters of John Stuart Mill, Volume 1, p. 263-6

Henry L. Higginson to James J. Higginson, April 22, 1861

Dearest Jim, —

We are in for the fight at last and we will carry it thro' like men. One week ago to-day appeared the President's proclamation calling on the states for troops. To-day Washington is cared for, Fort Monroe garrisoned, and the route to Washington held open. Never in my whole life have I seen anything approaching in the slightest degree to the excitement and the enthusiasm of the past week. Everything excepting the war is forgotten, business is suspended, the streets are filled with people, drilling is seen on all sides and at all times. Our Massachusetts troops were poured into Boston within 12 to 24 hours after the command was issued from here, and were the first to go on and the first to shed blood. May the devil catch those Baltimorean rioters, the cowards! On the 19th April, the anniversary of the Lexington fight, our first men were shot in Baltimore.

But you should have seen the troops, Jimmy: real, clean-cut, intelligent Yankees, the same men who fought in '76, a thousand times better than any soldiers living. They left their wives and children in some cases without a farewell, and marched thro' to Washington. We've been told of our degeneracy for years and years: I tell you, Jim, no more heartfelt enthusiasm or devotion was to be found in '76 than now. Everyone is longing to go. One man walked 100 miles to join a volunteer company raised and gone between Wednesday and Sunday. Two thousand Irish volunteers have been raised in Boston, besides many companies of Americans and Germans and French. One hundred Germans put their names down as volunteers in a half-hour at a small meeting which was held Friday. Money is forthcoming, everyone is making clothes for the troops. Yesterday sailed from N.Y. 5000 troops (1200 from here, commanded by one of my classmates); they say 500,000 people were present to see them march down Broadway and sail. That famous N.Y. 7th regiment is holding the R.R. to Washington from Annapolis. A regiment of 800 N.Y. firemen has been raised in two or three days, and will go as skirmishers to-morrow or to-day. The Ohio troops are in Washington, and the Westerners are coming on perfectly wild. Every slave-state has refused troops; we do not want them. The Southern army is, they say, well-drilled: we may lose at first, but they will be wiped out from the face of the earth in the end. We want arms sadly; those villains have stolen everything that they could find in our armories and arsenals. And for us — George will, I hope and trust, finish his house at Lenox before moving . . . father is of course too old. I have been laid up all winter with a sprained foot, which is still weak, but I 'll go if I can march possibly. I've committed myself to a regiment of volunteers to be raised and drilled in our harbor before going. It is the best way, if they are not wanted immediately, for then a disciplined body of active troops will be opposed to the enemy, instead of raw recruits. Jim Savage will go in this regiment as an officer. This foot has been a great nuisance to me for months, and now may prevent my going, for a lame man will not be accepted. And now, Jim, you must decide for yourself whether you'll return just yet or not; you might wait a few months to advantage. There will be little business in any way for beginners until the war is over, I suppose: the first quota is gone and the second will be off also before you can reach here. Then will come much drilling and preparation for the future: the war will, I fancy, be very severe, but of short duration. You might get all possible information as to the muskets and rifles with sword-bayonets to be got in each country, Germany, France and England; we must import from Europe to meet our immediate wants. Send this letter to Johnny with my love: I 've not time to write him to-day and he'll want to know of these things. Father is very well indeed and drills hard, with a view to teaching others — as also Frank. Father gets dreadfully excited; indeed so does everyone. My best love to you, Jimmy.

Yrs.

H.

SOURCE: Life and letters of Henry Lee Higginson, p. 142-3