I had an interview with the Southern Commissioners to-day,
at their hotel. For more than an hour I heard, from men of position and of
different sections in the South, expressions which satisfied me the Union could
never be restored, if they truly represented the feelings and opinions of their
fellow-citizens. They have the idea they are ministers of a foreign power
treating with Yankeedom, and their indignation is moved by the refusal of
Government to negotiate with them, armed as they are with full authority to
arrange all questions arising out of an amicable separation — such as the
adjustment of Federal claims for property, forts, stores, public works, debts,
land purchases, and the like. One of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the
United States, Mr. Campbell, is their intermediary, and of course it is not
known what hopes Mr. Seward has held out to him; but there is some imputation
of Punic faith against the Government on account of recent acts, and there is
no doubt the Commissioners hear, as I do, that there are preparations at the
Navy Yard and at New York to relieve Sumter, at any rate, with provisions, and
that Pickens has actually been reinforced by sea. In the evening I dined at the
British Legation, and went over to the house of the Russian Minister, M. de
Stoeckl, in the evening. The diplomatic body in Washington constitute a small
and very agreeable society of their own, in which few Americans mingle except
at the receptions and large evening assemblies. As the people now in power are novi
homines, the wives and daughters of ministers and attaches are deprived of
their friends who belonged to the old society in Washington, and who have
either gone off to Secession, or sympathize so deeply with the Southern States
that it is scarcely becoming to hold very intimate relations with them in the
face of Government. From the house of M.de Stoeckl I went to a party at the
residence of M. Tassara, the Spanish Minister, where there was a crowd of
diplomats, young and old. Diplomatists seldom or never talk politics, and so
Pickens and Sumter were unheard of; but it is stated nevertheless that Virginia
is on the eve of secession, and will certainly go if the President attempts to
use force in relieving and strengthening the Federal forts.
SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and
South, p. 59-60
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