Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/471

 Building Confederate Vessels in France. 465

turn for the Conferlerate States, and the South began to show signs of exhaustion, which were painfully manliest to those of us who were conscious of the strain and the inadequacy of the means to resist it.

The apparent change in the probable result of the civil war, the manifest evidence that the Mexican enterprise was bitterly resented by the people of Mexico, and was also sorely vexatious to the ma- jority in France, and the loss of prestige which failure in that expe- dition would doubtless inflict upon the Imperial regime, must have been very disquieting to the Emperior and to those immediately at- tached to his person and his government. At the same time Great Britain persistently declined to join with him in any act which might tend to strengthen the South, or to bring pressure upon the United States in respect to the recognition of the Confederate government, and he did not therefore feel equal to the effort of maintaining his position at home and abroad with the United States for an additional and open enemy, and the South unable to assist.

I can think of no other causes why there should have been any change in the policy of the Imperial government towards the South, and as those causes are sufficient to account for a departure from a course which was adopted for " reasons of State," we may assume that "reasons of State" required the change. Nevertheless, it was our duty to act up to the very end of the struggle as if final success was assured, and to relax no effort that could in any way contribute to that end, or which might strengthen the position of the Confed- erate government in seeking the reparation which could have been justly claimed from that of France for the injury inflicted upon the South by the sudden and total change of policy.

There was no reason why the government at Richmond should have refrained from making those transactions public at the time, except that to have done so would have borne the appearance of malice, and the effect would have been to alienate the sympathies of the Imperial government, which Mr. Slidell was assured were still with the South; but it cannot be doubted that if the Confederate government had been able to maintain itself, and to achieve the inde- pendence of the Southern States, some explanation of those arbitrary and contradictory proceedings would have been required; at least, they would have been taken into account in settling the conditions of a treaty of amity and commerce between France and the new Ame- rican Republic.