Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

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This first attempt of the conspirators adroitly to win for the so-called government of the Confederated States the solid advantage of a recognition of inherent sovereignty, was met by Mr. Seward with his accustomed suavity of manner and unanswerable logic. He told them, not in a letter, for he would hold no such communication with them, but in a Memorandum, in pleasant phrases and explanatory sentences, that he was not at liberty to know them in any other character than that of citizens of the Republic. The Commissioners had said: “Seven States of the late Federal Union having, in the exercise of the inherent right of every free people to change or reform their political institutions, and through conventions of their people, with-drawn from the United States, and resumed the attributes of sovereign power delegated to it, have formed a government of their own. The Confederate States constitute an independent nation de facto and de jure, and possess a government perfect in all its parts, and endowed with all the means of self-support.”

“The Secretary of State,” Mr. Seward replied in his Memorandum,

March 15, 1861.

“frankly confesses that he understands the events which have recently occurred, and the condition of public affairs which actually exists in the part of the Union to which his attention has thus been directed, very differently from the aspect in which they are presented by Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford. He sees in them, not a rightful and accomplished revolution, and an independent nation, with an established government, but rather a perversion of a temporary and partisan excitement to the inconsiderate purposes of an unjustifiable and unconstitutional aggression upon the rights and authority vested in the Federal Government, and hitherto benignly exercised, as from their very nature they always must be so exercised, for the maintenance of the Union, the preservation of Liberty, and the security, peace, welfare, happiness, and aggrandizement of the American people. The Secretary of State, therefore, avows to Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford that he looks patiently, but confidently, to the cure of evils which have resulted from proceedings so unnecessary, so unwise, so unusual, and so unnatural — not to irregular negotiations, having in view new and untried relations with agencies unknown to, and acting in derogation of, the Constitution and laws, but to regular and considerate action of the people of those States, in co-operation with their brethren in the other States, through the Congress of the United States; and such extraordinary conventions, if there shall be need thereof, as the Federal Constitution contemplates and authorizes to be assembled.” Mr. Seward then referred them to the President's Inaugural Message, saying that, “guided by the principles therein announced,” he could not admit that any States had withdrawn from the Union, or that they could do so, excepting with the consent of the people of the United States, given through a National Convention. Therefore, the so-called “Confederate States” were not a foreign power, “with whom diplomatic relations ought to be established,” and that he could not “recognize them as diplomatic agents, or hold correspondence or other communication with them.”

Thus, at the outset, both in the Inaugural Address, and in the Memorandum of the Secretary of State for the representatives of the conspirators, the Government took the broad national ground that secession was an impossibility;