Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/357

 The manner in which Mr. Seward guided the conduct of our government with regard to the Mexican business was in the highest degree creditable to him as a diplomat. When the three allied powers asked the United States to join them in their enterprise, Mr. Seward politely refused—not as if the United States were not greatly interested in the fate of Mexico, but because it was the traditional policy of the United States to avoid entangling alliances. When the allied powers declined the offer of mediation made by the United States, he courteously recognized their right to decline. When Louis Napoleon advanced his scheme to erect a throne in Mexico and to put Archduke Maximilian upon it, Mr. Seward, mindful of our Civil War, which at that time engaged all our strength at home, put the protest of the United States in such a form that its nature as a protest could not be misunderstood, while it did not provoke resentment by offensive expression. When our Civil War was over, he made the French Emperor understand that his army had to leave Mexico, but he avoided saying anything that might have sounded like a threat, and would thus have made the withdrawal of the French forces more difficult by making it more humiliating. At the same time he managed to satisfy public opinion in the United States by his assurance that the French would certainly leave the American continent soon, and he thus neutralized the military influences which urged the formation of a new army of Union and Confederate veterans with which to invade Mexico for the purpose of driving out the French intruders by force. If I remember rightly, he never spoke of the Monroe doctrine by name, but the policy he followed was a true construction and vindication of it. He prudently abstained from blustering about it, and from repelling the infringement of it with an armed hand, so long as the United States could not do so without imperiling