Mr. Pike to Mr. Seward.
Sir: I have had the honor to receive your two despatches of July 3 and 6, (Nos. 107 and 108;) the latter containing the highly gratifying intelligence of the success of our arms at Gettysburg.
This result, with the news of the capture of Vicksburg, which comes by telegraph, seems to foreshadow the dissolution of the confederacy, rather than their signal triumph so lately predicted.
Never since I have been in Europe has public expectation received so great a shock as has been produced by this intelligence—the partisan journals of the slaveholders, headed by the London Times, having filled both England and the continent with a confident expectation of the easy triumph of General Lee in Pensylvania, and a belief that Grant’s siege of Vicksburg had become hopeless.
However important the repulse and defeat of Lee, (of the precise extent of whose situation we have yet no definite tidings,) the capture of Vicksburg seems to carry with it a train of even yet more important consequences. How the present confederacy can claim to stand up after the permanent military conquest of the Mississippi river by the federal arms it is difficult to see. This result attained, time and patience would seem to be all that is requisite to insure the certain return of the country west of that river to the Union.
I have the honor to be, with great respect, your most obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, &c., &c., &c.