‘
[
408]
damages,’ and added that ‘both
President Grant and
Secretary Fish signified their approval of
Mr. Sumner's speech as an expression of our grievances against
Great Britain for her unfriendly course towards us.’
Cushing wrote to
Sumner, June 26:—
Mr. Fish dictated to a correspondent of the Evening post the article which you doubtless read in that journal on the 19th, and which was copied or commented on by many other journals.
He also sent for Mr. Gobright,1 and stated to him in more general but in explicit terms the accordance of the Administration with yourself in opinion and purpose on the points of controversy with England.
You will have perceived that all newspaper discussion of this question has now ceased in consequence apparently of these representations on the part of the United States.
The reservation on the point of belligerency, or qualification rather, contained in the article in the “Evening post,” is, I conjecture, attributable to the desire of the President to feel uncommitted on this subject in the matter of Cuba,—as to which, however, I trust there will be no premature or indiscreet action calculated to be inconvenient to the United States or unjust to Spain.2
Sumner wrote to
Cushing, June 28, from
Boston:—
The statement to which you refer has perhaps tranquillized the press; but I question if it does not contain expressions which weaken our case at home and abroad.
I would never have said that the policy “was as firm and vigorous as our foreign relations would now justify.”
Our policy should always be firm and vigorous.
These qualities are sometimes silent, as we are disposed to be now. Nor do I understand that there should be any question as to amount.
If we would succeed with England, we must show confidence in our case.
Crede ut possis et potes.
Mr. Fish is thus the author of a statement, dictated for the ‘Evening Post,’ that
Sumner entirely approved the instructions to
Motley; and
Sumner impliedly sanctions that statement by not taking exception to it, although questioning certain other expressions of the newspaper despatch.
Contrary to representations made at a later date by
Mr. Fish, or on his behalf,
Motley left for
Europe with the unimpaired confidence of the
President and the secretary.
Nothing in the ‘Memoir,’ which was set up as an afterthought, had weakened him.
3 That confidence continued.
Davis's statement that on receiving, June 23,
Motley's report of his first interview with Lord Clarendon, ‘the
President's first impulse on reading the ’
