Seward brought me
to-day a long dispatch from Dudley, consul at Liverpool. Although his fears
were somewhat simulated, I saw he was really excited and alarmed. He is easily
frightened. I therefore talked on general subjects, but he turned away, said
there were terrible combinations in Europe to break the blockade, that there was
evidence of it in the documents he brought and wished me to read. They were
getting eight or ten steamers ready to break the blockade. I told him I had no
apprehensions from any general concerted attack, such as he dreaded, but that I
was annoyed by the sneaking method which the Englishmen practiced of stealing
into Charleston in the darkness of the night. On reading the principal
dispatch, I assured him there was no evidence in that document of any purpose
to break the blockade, that there was no mention of an armed vessel by Consul
Dudley, that there was activity among the merchant adventurers of Great
Britain, stimulated by the Bull Run tidings, which they had just previously
received. I did not doubt that British merchants were actively preparing to try
to run the blockade, but we would be active in trying to catch them.
He seemed relieved
yet not perfectly satisfied. We had some conversation in relation to letters of
marque, which he favors. Wishes me to purchase the Baltic and give Comstock the
command. Told him I trusted our naval cruisers, though some were not as fast as
I wished, would perform the service, and that were we to buy and arm the
Baltic, a naval officer must command her.
This scheme for
Comstock and the Baltic is a key to the affected alarm. It has been concocted
by Thurlow Weed, who has a job in view for himself or friends, perhaps both.
Though Seward was somewhat frightened, his fears may have been greater in
appearance than reality. He did not alarm me. It is shameful that an old
profligate party-debaucher like Weed should have such influence, and Seward is
mistaken in supposing I could be deceived by this connivance. His own fears of
breaking the blockade were in a degree simulated. Weed is the prompter in this
Comstock and Baltic intrigue. It is a job. Wrote Seward a letter of some length
on the subject of cruising to suppress the slave trade under the treaty which
he, without consulting the Cabinet, had recently negotiated with Great Britain.
The letter is in answer to one addressed to him by Mr. Stuart, the British
Chargé d’Affaires. The
treaty looks to me like a trap, and as if the Secretary of State had
unwittingly “put his foot in it.” He thinks it would be popular to make a
demonstration against slavery and the slave trade, — would conciliate the
Abolitionists, who distrust him, and be a feather in his administration of the
State Department. But he has been inconsiderate or duped, perhaps both. I
declined to furnish cruisers as requested, for it would weaken our position,
and I cannot consent to cripple our naval strength at this time, but prefer to
retain, and to act under, the belligerent right of search, to that of
restricted right conferred by the treaty.
SOURCE: Gideon
Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and
Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30, 1864, p. 154-6
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