For a fortnight I have been ill and really unfit for duty,
yet have been absent from the Department but a single day, the only day I have
lost in Washington since March 4,1861. But for the illness of Mr. Faxon, Chief
Clerk, I should have abstained a day or two from labor. Fatigued and exhausted,
I have not felt able to jot down current events from day to day.
With some effort, though with indifferent health, I have
drawn up a communication to Mr. Seward on the subject of letters of marque. But
after the council to-day he read a dispatch from Mr. Adams, communicating two
letters from Earl Russell, which are insolent, contemptuous, and mean
aggression if not war. It is pretty evident that a devastating and villainous
war is to be waged on our commerce by English capital and English men under the
Rebel flag with the connivance of the English Government, which will, and is
intended to, sweep our commerce from the ocean. Only by a decided, firm, and
resolute tone can the country be rescued, and I am by no means certain that will
be sufficient. We are in no condition for a foreign war. Torn by dissensions,
an exhausting civil war on our hands, we have a gloomy prospect, but a
righteous cause that will ultimately succeed. God alone knows through what
trials, darkness, and suffering we are to pass. There is a disinclination to
look these troubles which threaten us boldly in the face. I felt oppressed, as
did the others. A long vista of direful calamities opens before us. Mr. Seward
is earnest to get out privateers to catch the Alabama and the blockade-runners.
The President thinks they should try that policy. Chase has lately favored it.
I have no faith in it as against the Rebels, who have no commerce to be
injured, but if we are to have a conflict with England, letters of marque and
every means in our power must be put in requisition against that faithless
nation. I have, therefore, doubts about sending the letter which I have
prepared.
Earl Russell gives us to understand the English Government
do not intend to interpose to prevent the Rebels from building, buying, and
sending out from England cruisers, semi-pirates, to prey upon our commerce. In
plain language, English capital is to be employed in destroying our shipping
interests. If we are silent and submissive, they will succeed, and we shall
waken to our condition when our vessels and merchant seamen are gone.
The condition of affairs opens a vast field. Should a
commercial war commence, it will affect the whole world. The police of the seas
will be broken up, and the peaceful intercourse of nations destroyed. Those
governments and peoples that have encouraged and are fostering our dissensions
will themselves reap the bitter fruits of their malicious intrigues. In this
great conflict, thus wickedly begun, there will be likely to ensue an uprising
of the nations that will shatter existing governments and overthrow the
aristocracies and dynasties not only of England but of Europe.
I close my book and this month of March with sad and painful
forebodings. The conduct and attitude of Great Britain, if persisted in,
foreshadow years of desolation, of dissolution, of suffering and blood.
Should April open, as we hope, with success at Charleston
and Vicksburg, there will be a change in the deportment and conduct of England.
Her arrogance and subtle aggression will be checked by our successes, and by
that alone. She has no magnanimity, no sense of honor or of right. She is
cowardly, treacherous, and mean, and hates and fears our strength. In that
alone is our security.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles,
Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 1: 1861 – March 30,
1864, p. 249-51
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