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 of conflict. While these things were giving great encouragement to our friends the world over, our enemies were taking comfort in the belief that the Confederates, too, would not be remiss in calling all their resources into play, and that their superiority in generalship and fighting spirit, as demonstrated at Bull Run, would amply make up for their inferiority in men and means. The agitation for the recognition of the Southern Confederacy proceeded, therefore, rather more vigorously than before; and it was not unreasonable to predict that such a recognition would soon be followed by a concerted effort of foreign powers to break up our blockade of the Southern ports and by other acts of interference highly dangerous to the Union cause.

There was, indeed, no reason to fear that Spain would, of her own initiative, launch out in such a policy. She was restrained, not, perhaps, by any love for the United States, but by her weakness in point of military and naval resources, and by the exposed situation of her colonial possessions in the West Indies. She would, at that period, have had more to fear from the aggressiveness and land-greed of an independent slave-holding Confederacy than from a Union in which the slave-holding element was held in check by more potent influences. It was, therefore, the manifest interest of Spain to remain on good terms with the Union; and when the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs assured me of the friendly sentiments of his government, he was, no doubt, sincere. It would have required a very strong impulse from France and England to push Spain into a change of her attitude. The important question, therefore, was, what France and England would do. If France and England abstained from recognizing the Southern Confederacy and from unfriendly interference, Spain certainly would. Spain had, indeed, taken advantage of a