Acknowledged Kindness

None of the English journals that we have seen, and our files are pretty extensive, say anything of the kindness shown to the British troops, destined for Canada, by allowing them to land at Portland, and proceed through the State of Maine to British America.  This was a real kindness, saving foreign troops a great deal of delay and other hardships.  No doubt, the British Government will duly express proper gratitude ere long, but the British journals which have been so [eagerly] anxious to pick up and misrepresent the most careless words written and spoken here about British policy, might have expressed some approval of Mr. Seward’s kindness – which, under all the circumstances, was magnanimous to a fault.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 22, 1862, p. 2