The Niagara's Mails.
the British State papers on American affairs
letter from Capt. Semmes, of the Sumter.
&c., &c., &c., &c.,
The New York papers of Feb. 26, received at this office on Friday evening last, contain full details of news by the Niagara, which had already been briefly forwarded by telegraph.
We extract a portion of the papers relating to the war in America, published in the London Post, of February, 8th, omitting the earlier correspondence, which dates as far back as November, 1860, and is of no possible interest or importance at the present day. With a view to preserve, as history, the official record of the mission of Messrs. Yancey, Rost, and Mann, we commence with.
Lord Russell's interview with the Southern Commissioners.
Lord Russell, in a dispatch addressed to Lord Lyons on the 11th May, gives an account of an interview he had held with Mr. Yancey and his colleagues. My Lord:
On Saturday last I received at my house Mr. Yancey, Mr, Mann, and Judge Rost, the three gentlemen deputed by the Southern Confederacy to obtain their recognition as an independent State.
One of these gentlemen, speaking for the others, dilated on the causes which had induced the Southern States to secede from the Northern.
The principal of these causes, he said, was not slavery, but the very high price which, for the sake of protecting the Northern manufacturers, the South were obliged to pay for the manufactured goods which they required. --One of the first acts of the Southern Congress was to reduce these duties, and, to prove their sincerity, he gave as an instance that Louisiana had given up altogether that protection on her sugar which she enjoyed by the legislation of the United States.
As a proof of the riches of the South, he stated that of $350,000,000 of exports of produce to foreign countries, $270,000,000 were furnished by the Southern States.
I said that I could hold no official communication with the delegates of the Southern States.
That, however, when the question of recognition came to be formally discussed, there were two points upon which inquiry must be made: first, whether the body seeking recognition could maintain its position as an independent State; secondly, in what manner it was proposed to maintain relations with foreign States.
After speaking at some length on the first of these points, and alluding to the news of the secession of Virginia, and other intelligence favorable to their cause, these gentlemen called my attention to the article in their Constitution prohibiting the slave trade.
I said that it was alleged very currently that if the slave States found that they could not compete successfully with the cotton of other countries, they would revive the slave trade for the purpose of diminishing the cost of production.
They said this was a suspicion unsupported by any proof.
The fact was, that they had prohibited the slave trade, and did not mean to revive it. They pointed to the new tariff of the United States as a proof that British manufactures would be nearly excluded from the North, and freely admitted in the South.
Other observations were made, but not of very great importance.
The delegates concluded by stating that they should remain in London for the present, in the hope that the recognition of the Southern Confederacy would not be long delayed, I am, &c.,
J. Russell
J. Russell
The letter of Messrs. Yancey, Rost and Mann.
Following the above is a letter addressed by the Commissioners to Earl Russell dated London, August 14. It begins with an allusion to the purposes of the Southern people in throwing off their allegiance to the Federal Government, and argues the question of the right of secession with ability and dignity. It then reviews the previous efforts of the Commissioners to impress the British Government with a sense of the rights justly belonging to the Confederacy, and proceeds as follows: In the interview already alluded to as well as in one of a similar character held between your lordship and the undersigned at a later date, the undersigned were fully aware of the relation of amity existing between her Britannic Majesty's Government and that of Washington, and of the peculiar difficulties into which those relations might be thrown if her Majesty should choose to recognize the nationality of the Confederate States of America, before some decided exhibition of ability on the part of the Government of these States to maintain itself had been shown. Therefore they did not deem it advisable to urge her Majesty's Government to an immediate decision upon so grave a question, but contented themselves with a presentation of the cause of their Government, and have quietly waited upon events to justify all that they had said, with the hope that her Majesty's Government would soon come to the conclusion that the same sense of justice, the same view of duty under the law of nations, which caused it to recognize the de facto Government of Texas while yet a superior Mexican army was contending for supremacy upon its soil, the de facto Governments of the South American republics while Spain still persisted in claiming to be their sovereign, and the de facto Governments of Greece, of Belgium, and Italy, would induce it to recognize the Government of the Confederate States of American upon the happening of events exhibiting a deep seated and abiding confidence that success will attend their efforts. At all events, reconstruction of the Union is an impossibility. The brief history of the past confirms them in this belief. Since the organization of the Government of the Confederate States in February last, and since Mr. Lincoln assumed the reins of Government in the United States, and commenced preparing his aggressive policy against the Confederate States, the moral weight of their position and cause, aided by the constitutional action and policy of the new President and his Cabinet, have caused four other great States, viz., Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, containing about 4,500,000 inhabitants, and covering an extent of valuable territory equal to that of France and Spain, to secede from the late Union and join the Confederate States; while the inhabitants of three other powerful States, viz: Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, are now agitated by the throes of revolution, and a large part of them are rising in arms to resist the military despotism which, in the name of the Constitution, has been so ruthlessly, and in such utter perversion of the provisions of that instrument, imposed upon them. The undersigned have also sufficient reasons for the belief that even in the northwestern part of the State of Illinois a part of the people have proclaimed open opposition to Mr. Lincoln's unconstitutional and despotic Government, while several other public assemblies and their Legislatures have condemned the war as subversive of the Constitution. In addition to these striking evidences of the increased strength of the Confederate States, of great internal weakness and division in Mr. Lincoln's Government, the undersigned can proudly and confidently point to the unity which exists among the people of the eleven Confederate States, with the solitary and unimportant exception of the extreme northwest corner of Virginia, lying between Ohio and Pennsylvania, and settled almost exclusively by Northern emigrants. Whatever differences of opinion, may have been entertained among the people of the United States as to the policy of secession, there was little difference of opinion as to the unconstitutional causes which led to it, and often, by a fair decision at the polls, by the majority in favor of secession as the means of expressing their liberties, the great mass of the people at once glided all objections, and are now engaged with their wealth and their persons in the most patriotic exertions to uphold their Government in the course of independence which had been decided upon. Whatever tribute of admiration may be yield for the present to the people who submit to Mr. Lincoln's usurping Government, for energy displayed in raising and organizing an immense army for the purpose of imposing the yoke of that Government upon a people who are straggling for the inestimable right of governing themselves in order to a preservation of their liberties a just and impartial history with reward to the people of the Confederate State as unmixed admiration for an effort which, in the space or six months, his thrown off the authority of the usurper has organized a new government, based upon the principles of personal and public liberty, has put that government into operation, has raised organized and armed an army sufferance most land defeat in a fair field and drive indigestible one flight from that field, the myriad of invaders which the reputed first General of the age demand fit to crush what the termed a rebellion. The undersigned our Lords attention to the fact that Mr. Lincoln without though possessed at of a more numerous credit due to a recognized Government of long continuance, of the entire navy of the late Union, has not been able to retake a single fortification of which the Confederate States possessed themselves; but on the contrary, has been driven out from a mighty fortress upon the Atlantic, and from several forts on the Western frontier by the Confederate arms; that it has not been able to advance more than five miles into the territory of any of the Confederate States where there was any serious attempt to prevent it; and is in danger of losing three great States of the Union by insurrection. Even, at sea, upon which the Government of Mr. Lincoln possesses undisputed away, it has not been able to make an effectual blockade of a single port but those which find an outlet, through the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay; vessels of every class, public and private, armed vessels belonging to the Confederate States, and traders, having found their way in and out of every other port at which the attempt has been made. In everything that constitutes the material of war, thus far the Confederate States have supplied themselves from their own resources, unaided by that free intercourse with the world which has been open to the United States. Men, arms, munitions of war of every description, have been supplied in ample abundance to defeat all attempts to successfully invade our borders. Money has been obtained in the Confederate States in sufficient quantity. Every loan that has been put upon the market has been taken at and above par, and the undersigned but state the universal impression and belief of their Government and their fellow-citizens in the Confederate States, that, no matter what may be the demand for means to defend their country against invasion, sufficient resources of every character, and sufficient patriotism to furnish them, exist within the Confederate States for that purpose. The undersigned are aware that an impression has prevailed, even in what may be termed well- informed circles in Europe, that the slaveholding States are poor, and not able to sustain a prolonged conflict with the non-slaveholding States of the North. In the opinion of the undersigned this idea is grossly erroneous; and, considering the importance of a correct understanding of the relative resources of the two contending Powers, in resolving the question of the ability of the South to maintain its position, your lordship will pardon a reference to the statistical tables of $50, the last unauthentic exposition of the resources of the United States which has yet been published, and which is appended to this communication. The incontestable truths exhibited in that table prove that the Confederate States possess the elements of a great and powerful nation, capable of not only clothing, feeding, and defending themselves, but also of clothing all the nations of Europe, under the benign influence of peace and free trade. The undersigned are also aware that the anti-slavery sentiment so universally prevalent in England has shrunk from the idea of forming friendly public relations with a Government recognizing the slavery of a part of the human race. The question of the morality of slavery it is not for the undersigned to discuss with any foreign Power.--The authors of the American Declaration of Independence found the African race in the colonies to be slaves, both by colonial and English law, and by the law of nations.--Those great and good men left that fact and the responsibility for its existence where they found it; and thus finding that there were two distinct reaches in the colonies, one free and capable of maintaining their freedom, and the other slave and, in their opinion, unfitted to enter upon that contest and to govern themselves, they made their famous declaration of freedom for the white race alone. They eventually planned and put in operation, in the course of a few years, two plans of government, both resting upon that great and recognized distinction between the white and the black man, and perpetuating that distinction as the fundamental law of the Government they framed, which they declared to be framed for the benefit of themselves and their posterity. In their own language, ‘"to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and ond our posterity."’ The wisdom of that course is not a matter for discussion with foreign nations Suffice it to say that thus were the great American institutions framed, and thus have they remained unchanged to this day. It was from no fear that the slaves would be liberated that Secession took place. The very party in power has proposed to guarantee slavery forever in the States if the South would but remain in the Union. Mr. Lincoln's message proposes no freedom to the slave but announces subjection of his owner to the will of the Union--in other words, to the will of the North. Even after the battle of Bull Run both branches of the Congress at Washington passed resolutions that the war is only waged in order to uphold that (pro-slavery) Constitution, and to enforce the laws, (many of them pro-slavery;) and out of one hundred and seventy-two votes in the lower House they received all but two, and in the Senate all but one vote. As the army commenced its march, the Commanding General issued an order that no slaves should be received into, or allowed to follow, the camp. The great object of the war, therefore, as now officially announced, is not to free the slave, but to keep him in subjection to his owner, and to control his labor through the legislative channels which the Lincoln Government designs to force upon the master. The undersigned, therefore, submit with confidence that as far as the anti-slavery sentiment of England is concerned, it can have no sympathy with the North; nay, it will probably become disgusted with a causing hypocrisy which would enlist those sympathies on false pretences. The undersigned are, however, not insensible to the surmise that the Lincoln Government may, under stress of circumstances, change its policy — a policy based at present more upon a wily view of what is to be its effect in rearing up an element in the Confederate States favorable to the reconstruction of the Union than upon any honest desire to uphold a Constitution, the main provisions of which it has most shamelessly violated. But hey confidently submit to your lordship's consideration, that success in producing so abrupt and violent a destruction of a system of labor which has reared up so vast a commerce between- America and the great States of Europe, which, it is supposed, now gives bread to 10,000,000 of the population of those States, which it may be safely assumed is intimately blended with the basis of the great manufacturing and navigating prosperity that distinguishes the age, and probably not the least of the elements of this prosperity, would be visited with results disastrous to the world, as well as to the master and slave. Resort to servile war has, it is true, as we have heretofore stated, not been proclaimed, but officially abandoned. It has been, however, recommended by persons of influence in the United States and when all other means shall fail, as the undersigned assure your lordship they will, to bring the Confederate States into subjection to the power of Mr. Lincoln's Government, it is by no means improbable that it may be inaugurated. Whenever it shall be done, however, the motive, it is now rendered clear, will not be that high philanthropic consideration which undoubtedly beats in the hearts of many in England, but the base feeling of selfish aggrandizement, not unmixed with a cowardly spirit of revenge. The undersigned call your lordship's attention to what is now so publicly known as a fact — to the great battle of Bull Run, three miles in front of Manassas Junction, in which a well appointed army of 55,000. Federal soldiers gave battle to the Confederate States army of inferior force, After nine hours hard fighting the Federalists were defeated and driven from the field in open flight and were pursued by the Confederate States army to Centreville, the position of the Federal reserve. The enemy lost honor, and nearly all the arms and munitions of war which had been so industriously gathered together for month for an offensive campaign in Virginia, and they did not cease their flight until, under cover of a stormy night, they had regained the shelter of their entrenchments in front of Washington. The Confederate States forces have commenced offensive movements, and have driven the vaunting hosts of the United States behind entrenchments upon the borders of Virginia, and so far from threatening the integrity of the territory and the existence of the Government of the Confederate States the Government at Washington seems confident at present, and will be rejoined if it can maintain a successful defence of its capital, and preserve the remnant of its defeated and disorganized forces. The undersigned would also ask your lordship's attention to the fact that the cotton-picking season in the cotton-growing States of the Confederacy has commenced. The crop bids fair to be at least an average one, and will be prepared for market and delivered by our planters and merchants as usual, on the wharves of the ports of those States, when there shall be a prospect of the blockade being raised, and not before. As a defensive measure, an embargo has been laid by the Government of the Confederate States upon the passage of cotton by inland conveyance to the United States. To be obtained, it must be sought for in the Atlantic and Gulf ports of those States. They submit to your lordship the consideration of the fact that the blockade of all the points of the Confederate States was declared to have commenced by the blockading officer off Charleston, when, in truth, at that time, and for weeks after, there was no pretence of a blockade of the ports in the Gulf. They submit for consideration that since the established or the blockade there have been repeated instances of vessels breaking it at Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile and New Orleans. It will be for the neutral Powers, whose commerce, has been so seriously damaged, to determine how long such a blockade shall be permitted to interfere with their commerce. In closing this communication, the undersigned desire to urge upon her Britannic Majesty's Government the just claim which, in their opinion the Government of the Confederate States has at this time to a recognition as a Government de facto; whether its internal peace or its territory, its population, its great resources for both domestic and foreign commerce, and its power to maintain itself, are considered; or whether your lordship shall take into consideration the necessity of commercial relations being established with it, with a view to the preservation of vast interests of the commerce of England. If, however, in the opinion of her Britannic Majesty's Government, the Confederate States have not yet won a right to a place among the nations of the earth, the undersigned can only, assure your lordship that, while such an announcement will be received with surprise by the Government they represent, and while that Government is to be left to contend for interests which, it thinks, are as important to commercial Europe as to itself, without even a friendly countenance from other nations, its citizens will buckle themselves to the great task before them with a vigor and determination that will justify the undersigned in having pressed the question upon her Britannic Majesty's Government; and when peace shall have been made their Government will at least feel that it will not be justly responsible for the vast quantity of blood which shall have been shed, nor for the great and wide-spread suffering which so prolonged a conflict will have entailed upon millions of the human race, both in the Eastern as well as upon the North American continent. W. L. Yancey, P. A. Rost, A. Dudley Mann.Earl Russell's reply.
Foreign Office, Aug. 24, 1861.
The undersigned has had the honor to receive the letter of the 14th inst., addressed to him by Messrs. Yancey, Rost, and Mann, on behalf of the so-styled Confederate States of North American.
The British Government do not pretend in any way to pronounce a judgment upon the questions in debate between the United States and their adversaries in North America; the British Government can only regret that these differences have unfortunately been submitted to the arbitrament of arms.
Her Majesty has considered this contest as constituting a civil war, and her Majesty has, by her royal proclamation, declared her intention to preserve a strict neutrality between the contending parties in that war.
Her Majesty will strictly perform the duties which belong to a neutral.
Her Majesty cannot undertake to determine by anticipation what may be the issue of the contest, nor can she acknowledge the independence of the nine States which are now combined against the President and Congress of the United States until the fortune of arms or the more peaceful mode of negotiation shall have more clearly determined the respective positions of the two belligerents.
Her Majesty can, in the meantime, only express a hope that some adjustment satisfactory to both parties may be come to, without the calamities which must ensue in the event of an embittered and protracted confirm.
Russell
Following this is a long correspondence on the Trent affair, the Nashville and the Tuscarora, and other matters with which our readers are familiar.
In a brief commentary upon the whole, the London News, remarks: ‘
The bare description of these Blue Books enables the reader to form some idea of the constant danger of ignition which the American civil war has brought as near to ourselves as a neutral State as if no broad Atlantic lay between us and the burning house beyond. ’
Earl Derby on recognition.
We get the following from the New York Herald of the 26th February: ‘ In the House of Lords on the 7th instant the Earl of Derby said he was not much in the habit of occupying the time of their lordships with matters personal to himself, or with making observations in reference to the reports of his speeches or those of other noble lords in that house. The fact was he very seldom read the reports either of his own speeches or of other speeches which he heard in the house. But he happened to look to the report in the Times newspaper of what he addressed to their lordships yesterday, and there was one point in it to which he could not help adverting. He would not notice the other inaccuracies in the report, which he believed was not so accurate as reports in that journal generally were, and he only alluded to the one he had mentioned because it attributed to him exactly the opposite of what he uttered. In reference to the recognition of the Southern Confederacy, the Times reported him to say that the time had nearly arrived when her Majesty's Government ought to be called upon to recognize the successful revolt of those Confederate States. Now, what he did say was, that in his judgment the time had not arrived when her Majesty's Government was called upon the recognize the independence of the Southern States, and he added that although the practice of her Majesty's Government was to recognize any de facto Government that had succeeded in establishing itself, he did not think the resistance of the Southern States had been so complete and so successful as to justify them in recognizing the independence of a State which had not yet shown the power of securing and maintaining its own independence. ’Letter from commander Semmes to the Editor of the London News.
Sir:
An article in the Daily News, reviewing the rights and duties of belligerents and neutrals, has recently come under my observation, in which the following expressions occur:
‘"At the same time, it must be admitted that both the Sumter and the Nashville have grossly violated the laws of civilized warfare, by burning merchant ships to the water's edge, instead of carrying them before a prize court.
Their conduct is certainly much more like that of pirates--hosies humans generis, as the commander of the Sumter says.
Nor is it clear that a community which sanctions such barbarous proceedings deserves to be treated with the same consideration which is universally accorded to those who themselves observe the laws of civilized warfare,"’
Now, the above remarks are exceedingly unjust — not that I suppose you intended injustice, but you have not rightly appreciated the position in which we of the Confederate States have been placed by these ‘"civilized"’ nations whose rule of warfare you say has been violated.
Great Britain has acknowledged us as a belligerent.
This acknowledgement gives us all the rights of war equally with the other party.
One of the most essential of these rights on the high seas as the right of destroying the enemy's commerce, and thus disabling him from carrying on the war; a right which Great Britain, in all her wars, has exercised to its fullest extent, and with terrible effect upon her enemies.
And when she has not found it convenient to send her prizes into her own ports she has had that overweening influence with the nations of the earth which has enabled her to send them into neutral ports, and there, to have them condemned by her own prize courts.
The ports of the Confederate States were blockaded on or about the 1st of June, 1861. Subsequently to this period, and with full knowledge of the fact, Great Britain, France, and Spain, and the lesser maritime Powers of Europe, all issued proclamations, defining their positions in the war. In these proclamations they prohibited belligerent cruisers from bringing their prizes into their ports — except in case of necessity and in that event both the cruisers and their prizes were to do part within twenty-four hours. In this state of facts, how can it be insisted that we shall send our prizes into port for adjudication?--Into whose ports shall we send them?
We cannot send them into our own ports, for they are blockaded at least so far blockaded as to render it difficult for ordinary sail ships to enter them.
We cannot send them into any of the ports of those ‘ "civilized"’ nations who are so shocked at the barbarity of our burning them?
What then shall we do with them?
They are our lawful prizes, captured, says Europe, by the cruisers of a recognized de facto Government.
Shall we let them go?
This would deprive us of our right of capture, or render null that right, which is the same thing.
And can this be what impartial Europe intended when it penned its proclamations?
It is readily admitted that the usual and more proper course is, as you say, for a cruiser not to ‘"burn her prizes to the water's edge,"’ but to send them into a prize court for adjudication" and this is the course which I need not assure you we would be glad to pursue if the thing were possible for obvious reasons.
But if the nations of the earth put it out of our power to pursue this course, is it generous to find fault with us because we do not pursue it?
To show you the earnests desire which I had in the beginning of my cruiser to send my prizes in for adjudication rather than take the responsibility of sitting in judgment on them myself I send you enclosed a copy of a letter which I addressed to the Governor of the town of Cienfuegos, in the Island of Cuba, as early as the 6th of July last.
This letter will explain itself, and I have only to remark with reference to it, that I had not at its date seen the
Spanish proclamation.
I rely upon your sense of justice to give place in your columns both to this communication and the letter.
