Mr. Seward to Mr. Van Valkenburgh.
Sir: Your dispatch of the 28th of April, which came by telegraph from San Francisco, has been received. You report that affairs are looking better in Japan, and that you are hoping an amicable adjustment, by which means further hostilities will be avoided. You inform me that the Stonewall arrived on the 24th of April, that you keep her under the United States flag, and that you have drawn on Baring Brothers & Go. for £4,416 13¼s. sterling to pay her expenses until the 1st of July. you ask me to instruct Baring Brothers & Co. to honor your draft, and to send you instructions upon the whole case by the steamer which will [Page 735] leave San Francisco about the 1st of July. We are thus apprised that you have adopted, in regard to the Stonewall, the measure which was indicated in your dispatch No. 12, of the 24th of February last. For the reasons stated in my No. 51, that proceeding is necessarily regarded as entirely irregular. The Stonewall having been sold and delivered to the Japanese government and put under its flag, there is no law of the United States which authorizes the exercise of power or authority on her deck by the executive department of this government. The Stonewall could be brought under our jurisdiction again only by a special treaty for that purpose, to be concluded between the United States and Japan. No appropriation law authorizes the payment of the expenses you have thus assumed to pay. Independently of these circumstances, the instruction which you ask is written under very perplexing uncertainty in regard to the present stage and future course of the civil war in Japan. It is unhesitatingly assumed that in proceeding without lawful authority to take possession of the Stonewall and put her temporarily under the American flag you have obeyed a manifest necessity, insomuch as, if delivered at once to either of the belligerents, she might have been employed for the destruction of the lives and property of the citizens of the United States in the ports and waters of Japan. It is assumed, also, that you have consulted the interest not only of the United States, but also of the other treaty powers, by preventing that powerful engine from becoming a scourge of commerce and a weapon of retaliation against the new policy of civilization opened in Japan through the exertions of the western powers.
It is further assumed that the proceeding has been taken upon consultation with the representatives of the other treaty powers in Japan, and upon their loyal and disinterested advice.
Under these special circumstances, the President has authorized me to approve of the proceeding, and to provide for the acceptance of your draft upon Baring Brothers & Co. It will be necessary, however, to terminate this new and anomalous situation of the Stonewall as soon as it can be done without exposing life and property of citizens of the United States and of the other treaty powers in Japan to imminent danger. Further, in taking possession of the Stonewall you are understood to have done so with the informal consent and approval of both of the belligerents in Japan, and with the view of facilitating the restoration of peace, law, and order throughout the empire. The United States will, therefore, expect a full reimbursement of those expenses by Japan, to be made on the restoration of the Stonewall to the Japanese government. You will make this expectation known to the proper political authorities of the empire so soon as diplomatic intercourse shall be formally re-established.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
R. B. Van Valkenburgh, Esq., &c., &c., &c.