Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: The European mails have not arrived, and they are not expected to arrive before the closing of my despatches for the next steamer.
No striking incident has occurred to change the military situation. Judging upon what is officially received, as well as the public information, the armies of the government are holding their advanced positions firmly, and they are beginning to be felt severely by the insurgents.
On the 11th instant Lord Lyons communicated to me information he had just received from his excellency the governor general of Canada, to the effect that there was reason to believe in the existence of a plot, gotten up in that province by emigrant insurgents from the United States, to invade the northern frontier; set at liberty the insurgent prisoners now in confinement at Johnson’s island [Page LXI] on Lake Erie, near Sandusky; burn Buffalo and other cities on the shores of the lakes. It was supposed that these crimes were to be effected by means of the purchase and arming of steamers in the Canadian ports. This information, which was very gratefully acknowledged, borrows a show of authenticity from revealings which have occasionally reached this government. The proper departments promptly adopted measures which it is believed are sufficient to defeat the criminal enterprise. After making due explanations to Lord Lyons, I have, by the President’s direction, requested Preston King, esq., of Ogdensburg, on the shore of Lake Erie, to proceed at once to Quebec, to inform the governor general of the preparations which have been made by this government, and to confer freely with him upon the subject, with a view to conform all our proceedings to the treaty regulations existing between the two countries, and to the comity which is due to Great Britain. It seems proper that you should make these proceedings known to Earl Russell, with expressions of the satisfaction with which the President regards what has been so promptly and liberally done by the governor general of Canada and by Lord Lyons.
It is thought here that the occasion is a fitting one for asking Earl Russell to consider the incidents I have related, in connexion with the occurrences which have taken place within the proper British realm, threatening invasion or aggression directly from the ports of Liverpool and Glasgow. Do not these incidents show the expediency, not to say the necessity, for some amendments of the laws of the two nations, so as to secure the practice of neutrality in the spirit of comity and friendship? Have we adequate security that hostile expeditions will not yet issue from British ports? If such expeditions should come from domestic British ports, the same condition of national relations will certainly encourage the fitting out of such expeditions in British colonial ports on our frontier, and elsewhere. Could we possibly avoid conflicts between the two countries, if British shores or provinces should, through any misunderstanding, be suffered to become bases for naval and military operations against the United States?
Moreover, the principles which shall regulate the maritime conduct of neutral states hereafter are quite likely to be settled by the precedents which arise during our present civil war. Great Britain, as we think, must ultimately be as deeply concerned as we are in preserving in the greatest vigor the cordial principle of non-intervention.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.