Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/450

412 matched by foreign affairs equally perplexing. Mr. Seward, as secretary of state, in charge of foreign affairs, had on the 9th of March addressed a circular letter to all the ministers of the United States in foreign nations urging them to counteract the designs of those who would invoke foreign aid in their attempts to over throw the Republic, and describing the disturbance at home as a transient affair. Again on April 24th the Secretary forwarded a more formal and impressive letter to those ministers who were appointed to Great Britain, France, Russia, Prussia, Austria, Belgium, Italy and Denmark, specially relating to the question of neutrality in war. This diplomatic correspondence exhibits the early anxiety of the United States concerning the attitude of these great nations. &quot;It is understood, &quot; he wrote to Mr. Judd, who was appointed to the court of Prussia, &quot; that the so-called Confederate States of America have sent or are about to send agents to solicit recognition in Europe. * * * Your most efficient and unfailing efforts must be put forth directly and even indirectly to prevent the success of that ill-starred design.&quot; He continued and cautioned the minister at Belgium against the probable promise of the Confederates to make a tariff better suited to manufacturing interests than the existing United States tariff, and instructed him to say that the tariff is not permanent and will certainly be modified if it should prove to be onerous to foreign commerce.&quot; The general correspondence with Great Britain was not pleasing to Mr. Seward, and Lord John Russell s remark to Minister Adams about the first of April that the matter was not ripe for decision one way or the other, was by no means satisfactory.

France was disposed to take no hasty action, but intimated quite early in April, 1861, that the Confederate government might be able to claim belligerent rights as a nation de facto; finally saying that the commercial in terests at stake were so great that France was compelled