Easter Sunday. — I dined with Lord Lyons and the
members of the Legation; the only stranger present being Senator Sumner.
Politics were of course eschewed, for Mr. Sumner is Chairman of the Committee
on Foreign Relations of the Senate, and Lord Lyons is a very discreet Minister;
but still there crept in a word of Pickens and Sumter, and that was all. Mr.
Fox, formerly of the United States Navy, and since that a master of a steamer
in the commercial marine, who is related to Mr. Blair, has been sent on some
mission to Fort Sumter, and has been allowed to visit Major Anderson by the
authorities at Charleston; but it is not known what was the object of his
mission. Everywhere there is Secession resignation, in a military sense of the
word. The Southern Commissioners declare they will soon retire to Montgomery,
and that any attempt to reinforce or supply the forts will be a casus belli.
There is the utmost anxiety to know what Virginia will do. General Scott
belongs to the State, and it is feared he may be shaken, if the State goes out.
Already the authorities of Richmond have intimated they will not allow the
foundry to furnish guns to the seaboard forts, such as Monroe and Norfolk in
Virginia. This concession of an autonomy is really a recognition of States'
Rights. For if a State can vote itself in or out of the Union, why can it not
make war or peace, and accept or refuse the Federal Government? In fact, the
Federal system is radically defective against internal convulsion, however
excellent it is or may be for purposes of external polity. I walked home with
Mr. Sumner to his rooms, and heard some of his views, which were not so
sanguine as those of Mr. Seward, and I thought I detected a desire to let the
Southern States go out with their slavery, if they so desired it. Mr. Chase, by
the way, expressed sentiments of the same kind more decidedly the other day.
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, p. 54-5
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