CHAPTER IV. BRITISH SUSPICION OF SEWARD

[Footnote 200: Schleiden, a native of Schleswig, was educated at the University of Berlin, and entered the Danish customs service. In the German revolution of 1848 he was a delegate from Schleswig-Holstein to the Frankfort Parliament. After the failure of that revolution he withdrew to Bremen and in 1853 was sent by that Republic to the United States as Minister. By 1860 he had become one of the best known and socially popular of the Washington diplomatic corps, holding intimate relations with leading Americans both North and South. His reports on events preceding and during the Civil War were examined in the archives of Bremen in 1910 by Dr. Ralph H. Lutz when preparing his doctor's thesis, "Die Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und den Vereinigten Staaten waehrend des Sezessionskrieges" (Heidelberg, 1911). My facts with regard to Schleiden are drawn in part from this thesis, in part from an article by him, "Rudolph Schleiden and the Visit to Richmond, April 25, 1861," printed in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1915, pp. 207-216. Copies of some of Schleiden's despatches are on deposit in the Library of Congress among the papers of Carl Schurz. Through the courtesy of Mr. Frederic Bancroft, who organized the Schurz papers, I have been permitted to take copies of a few Schleiden dispatches relating to the visit to Richmond, an incident apparently unknown to history until Dr. Lutz called attention to it.]

[Footnote 201: This is Bancroft's expression. Seward, II, p. 118.]

[Footnote 202: Lincoln, Works, II, 29.]

[Footnote 203: Ibid., p. 30.]

[Footnote 204: For references to this whole matter of Schleiden's visit to Richmond see ante, p. 116, note 1.]

[Footnote 205: U.S. Messages and Documents, 1861-2, p. 82. This, and other despatches have been examined at length in the previous chapter in relation to the American protest on the Queen's Proclamation of Neutrality. In the present chapter they are merely noted again in their bearing on Seward's "foreign war policy."]

[Footnote 206: Quoted by Lutz, Am. Hist. Assn. Rep. 1915, p. 210.]

[Footnote 207: U.S. Messages and Documents, 1861-2, p. 80. This despatch was read by Seward on April 8 to W. H. Russell, correspondent of the Times, who commented that it contained some elements of danger to good relations, but it is difficult to see to what he could have had objection. - Russell, My Diary, I, p. 103. ]

[Footnote 208: Russell Papers.]

[Footnote 209: Bancroft, Seward, II, p. 169.]

[Footnote 210: Yet at this very time Seward was suggesting, May 14, to Prussia, Great Britain, France, Russia and Holland a joint naval demonstration with America against Japan because of anti-foreign demonstrations in that country. This has been interpreted as an attempt to tie European powers to the United States in such a way as to hamper any friendly inclination they may have entertained toward the Confederacy (Treat, Japan and the United States, 1853-1921, pp. 49-50. Also Dennet, "Seward's Far Eastern Policy," in Am. Hist. Rev., Vol. XXVIII, No. 1. Dennet, however, also regards Seward's overture as in harmony with his determined policy in the Far East.) Like Seward's overture, made a few days before, to Great Britain for a convention to guarantee the independence of San Domingo (F.O., Am., Vol. 763, No. 196, Lyons to Russell, May 12, 1861) the proposal on Japan seems to me to have been an erratic feeling-out of international attitude while in the process of developing a really serious policy - the plunging of America into a foreign war.]

[Footnote 211: U.S. Messages and Documents, 1861-2, p. 88. The exact facts of Lincoln's alteration of Despatch No. 10, though soon known in diplomatic circles, were not published until the appearance in 1890 of Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln, where the text of a portion of the original draft, with Lincoln's changes were printed (IV, p. 270). Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy in Lincoln's Cabinet, published a short book in 1874, Lincoln and Seward, in which the story was told, but without dates and so vaguely that no attention was directed to it. Apparently the matter was not brought before the Cabinet and the contents of the despatch were known only to Lincoln, Seward, and the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Sumner.]

[Footnote 212: C.F. Adams, "Seward and the Declaration of Paris," p. 21. Reprint from Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, XLVI, pp. 23-81.]

[Footnote 213: F.O., Am., Vol. 764, No. 206. Confidential.]

[Footnote 214: Russell Papers. This letter has been printed, in part, in Newton, Lyons, I, 41.]

[Footnote 215: Lyons Papers.]

[Footnote 216: Ibid., Lyons to Russell, May 23, 1861.]