Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the First Session Thirty-eighth Congress, Part II

Mr. Dayton to Mr. Seward

No. 301.]

Paris, April 24, 1863.

Sir: In pursuance of the written request of Mr. Drouyn de l’Huys, I called at the foreign office yesterday, and immediately learned that the French government made grave and serious complaint against us by reason of the late certificate, or, as they choose to call it, the “laissez passer” which Mr. Adams gave, as they allege, to Messrs. Howell and General Zirman, the Mexican agents in London. They assume that the cargo was arms, and that Mr. Adams knew it. I suggested that there was nothing on the face of the papers to indicate anything of the kind, and told Mr. Drouyn de l’Huys that, in giving the paper or certificate in question, I did not believe Mr. Adams had had the slightest thought or reference to France and her relations with Mexico, as Matamoras was not, I thought, blockaded by France. That he, Mr. Adams, had a difficult part to play in England, and, do what he would, he was sure to be found fault with there. I told him I much regretted that anything had occurred there to wound the sensibility of the government of the Emperor, and I was sure it was not intended. It was not so much, as it seemed to me, the fact that Mr. Adams had given the certificate in question that he complained of, as the terms or phraseology in which he had clothed it; and, assuming that the cargo was arms for the Mexicans, with whom France is at war, and that Mr. Adams knew it, it was perhaps justly subject to a part at least of the criticism which he placed upon it. He went on to add, too, that Mr. Adams’s desire to facilitate “neutral commerce” (being arms, as he said, to kill the French) was much at variance with the action of our government at New York and New Orleans, which forbade the shipment of mules, or free laborers, and even of timber for the use of the French in Mexico. I told him that I knew nothing of this, and that the correspondence between yourself and Mr. Romero, the Mexican minister at Washington, indicated a policy directly the reverse of this. That while the Secretary of the Treasury had refused to interfere, on the application of Mr. Romero, to prevent the exportation of wagons, &c., for the French, he had at once stopped the exportation of 37,000 stand of muskets purchased in New York for the Mexicans, and that the Mexican minister had, in consequence, felt himself justified in making the unpleasant intimation that our government had discriminated unjustly and unfairly against Mexico and in favor of France. He wished me to send him an extract of this correspondence for the Emperor, and I have this morning sent him the correspondence itself, with the parts marked to which I desired particularly to call his attention. Before leaving this part of the subject, however, he said that he thought, in the first place, there had been some such liberty of export allowed; that even General Butler had permitted this; but that General Banks, who, it was thought, was to be less severe than his predecessor at New Orleans, had been more exacting or less liberal upon these matters than even General Butler. That most serious complaints had come to him from the army and navy department here of the great inconvenience to which they had been subject by his orders limiting the export of such articles. I told him that I knew of nothing further on this subject than appeared in the published correspondence, and that if any such orders were made, they must have grown, I thought, out of some existing want or emergency of our own; but in this he did not agree with me. He said if the war in Mexico were unpleasant to us, we must remember that our war, too, was unpleasant and injurious to them; and, adverting again to Mr. Adams’s certificate, he said that they had at no time, by word or act, said or done an unkind thing towards us; that their leaning had been rather in our favor than against us throughout, and yet here is a certificate given by a distinguished official of the United States government abroad, stating that “it gives him pleasure” to distinguish this adventure of sending a shipment of arms to their enemies as an honest and fair enterprise and for a creditable purpose, &c, (being, as he said, to kill them with!) and that he therefore “cheerfully” gave the certificate in question. That this language was calculated to excite the French people, and he should, as far as possible, keep its translation out of the French newspapers; and he hoped for something kind very shortly from the government of the United States to relieve the painful impression it had made.

In illustrating his views of the certificate, he said its manifest tendency was to encourage Mexico, and to induce the belief that if she held out the United States would, perhaps, in the end help her. He added: “Suppose Baron Gros (the present minister of France at London) had given to the owners of a ship full of arms going to the confederates, who are at war with us, such a paper, directed to the commander of the French squadron on our coast, what would our government have thought of it?” But he said that the paper was much opposed to the views you had yourself expressed very recently to Mr. Mercier, as to the purposes of our government in regard to the war of France in Mexico; and he read to me part of a despatch from Mr. Mercier, dated, I think, as late as the third of this month, on that subject. He wished me to say again to you that France had no purpose in Mexico beyond asserting her just claims against her, obtaining payment of the debt due, with the expenses of the invasion, and vindicating, by victory, the honor of her flag. He again said, expressly, that they did not mean to colonize in Mexico, or to obtain Sonora or any other section permanently, and that all such pretences, propagated through the newspapers, were untrue. In return, I assured him that all your correspondence with me, public and private, assured me that our government had no purpose to interfere in any way with the war between France and Mexico.

After this general conversation Mr. Drouyn de l’Huys said that he had, for greater certainty, put in writing the substance of his remarks as to the paper given by Mr. Adams to the Mexican agents, which he would leave with me, not as a formal communication, but as informal memoranda only of what he had said on that subject. I told him I should be happy to have the paper if I was permitted to translate and send it to my government. To this he assented. I received it without reading, and herewith send you a translation. I shall likewise send another copy to Mr. Adams. The sound judgment and great discretion which have so uniformly characterized his service in London will dictate to him whether it calls for any action on his part.

Before closing this despatch, I ought to add that I am informed that Mr. Drouyn de l’Huys has expressed himself to another person, on the subject herein before referred to, in terms more decided even than to me, closing, as he did, with the remark, that if the United States aided or encouraged their enemies in Mexico, France would aid and encourage our enemies in the United States.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

WM. L. DAYTON.

Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, &c.

P. S.—I will send a copy of the original of the memoranda handed to me by Mr. Drouyn de l’Huys by the next steamer.

Translation of informal memoranda of Mr. Drouyn de l’Huys’s remarks to Mr. Dayton on the 23d of April

The government of the Emperor has not been able to read without painful surprise the document emanating from the minister of the United States at London, to which the English press have just given a publicity perhaps unexpected. A deliberate feeling only of hostility towards France can have induced Mr. Adams to deliver to the Mexican agents, who had informed him as to their projects, the strange certificate destined to facilitate the execution of them. If a doubt were possible in this respect, the terms in which is conceived the “laissez passer,” addressed to the commandant of the federal fleet, would suffice to indicate with what disposition the representative of the United States in England was unfortunately inspired on this occasion.

The government of the Emperor admits perfectly that the American cruisers should abstain from molesting and seizing the vessels which have not violated, towards the United States themselves, the duties of neutrality.

But there is no necessity for setting forth the difference which exists between an abstention conformable to the attitude imposed upon every belligerent towards neutrals whose conduct does not furnish it with direct motives of complaint, and the formal assurance given to a third party engaged in operations infected with an illegal character towards another belligerent, that they will not in any way disturb their operations. There is guaranteed to these parties in this last case a security upon which they ought not to count; there is removed from them in advance certain perils which might compromise success; fears are dissipated which would perhaps have stopped them. If there is not there an effective participation in acts condemned by the right of nations, is it not, nevertheless, very evidently to accord to them an unusual guarantee, a quasi protection; and is it not, therefore, morally to associate one’s self with them? In giving to M. M. Howell and Zirman the attestation which they solicited of him, and the effect of which must be to assure to them, in spite of the character of their merchandise, a free passage through the American cruisers, Mr. Adams could not be mistaken as to the concurrence which he had lent to a transaction of contraband of war, which he knew to be undertaken against us. There would then have been occasion for asking one’s self by what inadvertence the minister of a friendly power had been induced thus to favor acts openly directed against France, if the tenor of the certificate signed by him did not state that it is intentionally, and because he approved of it, that Mr. Adams wished to cover them with an exceptional immunity. The expressions employed by M. the minister of the United States do not leave room for any ambiguity. It is with pleasure that he learns the end of the proposed operation. The sending of arms and ammunitions, which might have called for the most severe censure, the most rigorous repression, if they had been destined for the enemies of the federal government, assumes an entirely different character and becomes legitimate as soon as it is to the profit of the enemies of France.

The government of the Emperor refuses to believe that such sentiments have drawn their inspiration from Washington. It is well convinced that Mr. Adams has, in this matter, only expressed opinions altogether personal.

It is easy to understand, however, that the language of the minister of the United States at London borrows, necessarily, from its diplomatic character, a particular importance, and formed as they have been, his appreciations authorize us to suppose that views hostile to France are held also by his government. The cabinet of Washington will not be astonished, then, that the government of the Emperor should see in the procedure of Mr. Adams an act gratuitously malevolent towards France, and by which it has a right to feel itself wounded. One would seek in vain a motive for excuse of the conduct of the American representative.

Nothing made it obligatory upon him to furnish to the Mexican agents a paper which was equivalent to a veritable safe-conduct, which, even had it not been a question of the transportation of contraband of war, would have contrasted with the suspicious and excessive surveillance exercised over all shipments leaving, England for the same point, but which, in the form and with the conditions on which it was given, became a mark of sympathy and an altogether voluntary encouragement accorded to illegal manœuvres prejudicial to a friendly power. The government of the Emperor cannot, then, conceal the regretable impressions which it has experienced. It must think that the federal government will itself have anticipated it, and confiding in the security of the assurances of entirely another nature which it has often received from it, it believes itself authorized to expect of it an explicit disavowal of the attitude and of the language of its minister at London.