1

stated the determination of our government with forbearance, and, moreover, with what was quite as desirable, the disposition to shield his government from blame. The force of a precedent depends not upon the strain of argument, but upon the decision. The case was a novel one in international law, though contraband precedents bearing on the issue had been earlier discussed. Seward contended wisely that the hostile ministers and their despatches were contraband of war, thus rendering their capture proper, had only the Trent been brought into port as prize to await judicial procedure and sentence. And thus, while yielding to Great Britain's just demands, he based his reasoning upon domestic public sentiment, and pleased his countrymen; he soothed the feelings of Wilkes himself, who, in performing a courageous act, had, from the first, admitted a possible informality; moreover, as it proved, his views coincided very closely with those expressed by the British crown lawyers. Some jurists contend to-day that hostile ministers to a neutral country cannot be rightfully deemed contraband at all, nor extracted from a neutral vessel on the high seas by any process; this opinion, which has Earl Russell's later support, finds no real precedent for its sanction. But the present case establishes clearly, for international law, that no naval officer can seize or select from among passengers on a neutral vessel at his arbitrary will; and our Secretary, while gently extricating his people from a false position, gained half the moral victory by holding Great Britain to renounce forever her earlier claims to impressment and the right to search. "If I decide this case in favor of my own government," wrote Seward, in announcing that the prisoners were liberated, "I must disavow its most cherished principles, and reverse and forever abandon its essential policy. The country cannot afford the sacrifice."

1 Navy report, cited 5 N. & H. 24.

25 N. & H. 39 n.

3 Dipl. Corr. 1861, 425, etc.; 3 Seward, c. 4; 5 N. & H. c. 2; 2 B. & L. 135-142. The Southern press was gloomy over this surrender, and the Richmond Examiner proposed "dying in the last ditch." 4 Moore, 2. Friends of the Confederacy had looked upon this compli

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The four prisoners of State at Fort Warren were given, therefore, to the custody of the British minister; the warclouds rolled away, and the incident closed amicably. To Seward belongs the chief praise of piloting through these perilous rapids. We give the laurel crown to him who wins a war, but he, too, deserves an equal meed who prevents one. The sober second thought of American people, that safeguard of public stability, sustained the administration in its course. Europe, so far from concluding such action as a weak surrender, accepted it as the strongest proof of a cool and calm direction. In Great Britain and France a sentiment reacted temporarily in our favor. The Southern envoys proceeded crestfallen to their unofficial posts, doomed to failure by the publicity of their credentials. Recognition of Confederate independence was postponed, and that issue never loomed so portentously close again. As for America, convincing proof was given that self-control, that most difficult lesson in the art of self-government, had been learned.

Great Britain, notwithstanding her other annoyances, had done well in withstanding the repeated efforts of the French Emperor to break this blockade of the Southern coast by joint endeavor. As the work of Union squadrons became more stringent and effective for closing these harbors, the agents of the Confederacy redoubled their energy in blockade-running enterprises for information and supplies. Havana, Nassau, and various towns on the Canadian frontier became favorite points for Southern gathering and consultation. Southern privateers ravaged the seas already, being mostly vessels of light draft, fit for running into inlets where ships of war could not pursue. Out of international friendship, most European powers consented to discountenance privateering in pursuance of their previous policy defined

cation as a special dispensation, and their faction in Congress under Vallandigham's lead, tried to force a war with Great Britain by resolves which eagerly upheld Wilkes in his seizure.

1 3 Seward, 32.

by the treaty of Paris. Great Britain alone was dogged in discourtesy, for France was polite and politic, whatever might be the machinations. Every naval and commercial power, except England, practically excluded Southern privateers from port, except in distress, or for a visit not over twenty-four hours,' but the Palmerston ministry connived presently at an evasion by which such vessels ceased strictly to be "privateers" by receiving commissions from Jefferson. Davis as regular war-vessels of the Confederacy. Such a discrimination might have accorded with England's grant of belligerency to the Davis government, which was a grievance in itself; but from the Union point of view there was no such rightful government at all, but an unlawful combination against the legitimate exercise of national authority. Hence our government, while pressing assiduously for the withdrawal of such belligerent rights, maintained consistently in official correspondence that these Southern armed vessels were but privateers or pirates still, - a bastard navy. They skulked the seas as so-called privateers had done, to rob and plunder Northern merchant vessels, not to meet the naval cruisers of the United States in open and honorable fight. The policy thus pursued drew Great Britain gradually into a sort of freebooting partnership with the South, quite unique, which, in the end, cost her government a heavy reckoning. We are soon, however, to see Great Britain and France dividing in hostile purposes towards the United States, each pursuing dangerous projects which the other disliked.

3

The State department, during Lincoln's administration, occupied that primitive brick building, half a century old,

11 Moore, 91, 337.

2 2 Seward c. 66.

24 Harper, 696. Even in this calmer moment (January, 1862), when Mason and Slidell were peacefully landed in England, a circular issued which forbade one belligerent vessel from following another from a British port for twenty-four hours, and the Confederate steamer Nashville, which had been watched at Southampton by a naval vessel of the Union, got to sea and eluded pursuit.

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at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Fifteenth Street, which soon after the war gave place to a granite extension of the Treasury. Books and archives cramped by this time the working space, the public records piling rapidly year by year. Two chief rooms, fronting northeast on the second floor, served the Secretary's personal use for study and reception, while across the hall were his confidential subordinates. The working force of this State department was small, consisting of thirty or forty clerks and messengers, many of whom had grown hoary in the service, and were experts in official information. The capable chief clerk, whose service had begun thirty years before the war, was authority in all matters of diplomatic ceremonial; while other assistants were posted in the routine methods of former Secretaries such as Webster, Van Buren, Everett, and Marcy. The tone of high breeding and confidential reserve traditional in this privileged of executive departments, Seward had no wish to disturb; it was needful, of course, to weed out disunion sympathizers and talebearers; but otherwise he kept most men in place as he found them. At a time when party pressure was strongest for office and each new Secretary was beset with influence, he made a rule for promotion by merit, from a temporary to a regular force of clerks, which worked so admirably that his five next successors followed it. During the whole eight arduous years of Seward's Cabinet service, as his son and assistant Secretary relates, no department duty was ever neglected, no paper ever lost, no State secret ever betrayed; and yet the average work transacted was far beyond that of previous years.1

Sixty years of age before he had been three months in office, our Secretary kept himself vigorous for the immense task by fixed and regular habits. If up at sunrise, he retired long before midnight, procuring regularly eight full hours of daily sleep, as should every brain worker who has passed his physical prime. Buoyant and cheerful, moreover, in disposition, he would strive to divert the channel

12 Seward, 634; ib. cs. 55, 67.

of his thoughts from the anxieties of public station when the day's work was over. The worst of military disasters rarely cost him a sleepless night. Sound mind aids a sound. constitution, and for all minor ailments nothing he thought was so good as "sleep and starvation" to bring the body to its normal tone.1 Of abstemious habits, he yet enjoyed his cigar and a social glass of wine; and he kept a trained cook and an excellent table, holding himself free to invite a guest to dinner, any day, as chance might direct; and thus, in genial intercourse, would he cement friendship with some visitor from a distance or smooth out a public transaction. He was a pleasant host, affable and unaffected; ready to give to distinguished guests their full share of conversation, but otherwise inclining to sententious monologue, lit up with story and incident. Having an easy fortune at command, he made it a rule to expend his public salary in entertainment. But his tastes were strongly domestic. To his wife, whose shrinking and sensitive disposition kept her much secluded, he revealed his inn r thoughts and wishes; her death in the summer of 1865, after a lose companionship of forty years, was a lasting tribulation; and when, still later, his only daught r followed her to the grave, he adopted that daughter's intimate friend, and won her filial devotion to him for the rest of his life. His son shared with his own family the substantial mansion at the capital.2 At the State department, across the avenue, Secretary Seward drafted his more important correspondence with his own hand, leaving other details, by a pencilled direction, to his assistants. He dealt systematically with his crowd of visitors; and of all who had mingled much in Washington society before the war broke out, few of North or South needed an introduction to one so long and widely known

12 Seward, c. 65.

2 An ample and square-set brick house, with entrance door in the centre, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the State department, and fronting Lafayette Square. This mansion, which Secretary Blaine occupied many years after, was torn down recently and replaced by an opera house.