Mr. Seward to Mr. Adams.
Sir: Your confidential despatch No. 1355 has been received. You are right in supposing that Lord Stanley’s paper of the 9th of March had not been communicated to me when my confidential despatch No. 1952 was written Indeed, the latter communication would not have been made had the former been then before me.
Your suggestions, which were made upon a full knowledge of that despatch, have been submitted to the President, and have been carefully considered. He sees at present no prospect of coming to an agreement with her Majesty’s government upon the so-called Alabama claims, and thus the whole controversy between the two states must remain open indefinitely.
While thus far the balance of inconveniences and losses is suffered by the United States, I feel quite certain that the balance of faults has been on the side of Great Britain. First, the concession of belligerency ought not to have been made. Second, upon our earnest appeals it ought to have been earlier [Page 84] rescinded. Third, the principle of indemnities ought to have been conceded, or, fourth, the remedy of arbitration ought to have been at once proposed. Fifth, when the first decision was reconsidered and arbitration was proposed, it should have been an unconditional arbitration. As the case now stands, the injuries by which the United States are aggrieved are not chiefly the actual losses sustained in the several depredations, but the first unfriendly or wrongful proceeding of which they are but consequences. If the President were never so much disposed to drop that wrong out of sight in the prosecution of the claims, the recent proceedings of Congress in both houses show that an approval of such a waiver could not be obtained either from Congress or from the nation. It is, however, hardly necessary to say that in this case the President does not disagree from, but, on the contrary, entirely agrees with Congress and the nation.
I am not aware of anything further that you or I can do now to change the situation in which her Majesty’s government have placed the subject, and, as they say, after due deliberation.
It is not given us to foresee what new and untried misfortune may hereafter befall our country; I can say, however, with entire confidence, that I can conceive of no scourge which may be in reserve for the American people that will ever produce a conviction on their part that the proceedings of the British govrnment in recognizing the confederacy were, not merely unfriendly and ungenerous, but entirely unjust.
Since the British government seems content to leave this conviction in its full force, we must be content to abide their decision. Probably I shall not be directed by the President to recur again in this correspondence to the subject of the Alabama claims until after the whole subject shall have been reviewed by the national legislature.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
Charles Francis Adams, Esq., &c., &c., &c.