vasions of
diplomacy, an act of strict right; and the harder the act the greater
was the honor. The behavior of the people was generous and intelligent,
and greatly strengthened the government in the eyes of foreigners. By
the fullness and readiness of this reparation England was put under a
moral obligation to treat the United States as honorably as the United
States treated her. She did not do so, it is true; but in more ways than
one she ultimately paid for not doing so. At any rate, for the time
being, after this action it would have been nothing less than indecent
for her to recognise the Confederacy at once; and a little later
prudence had the like restraining effect. Yet though recognition and war
were avoided they never entirely ceased to threaten, and Mr. Chittenden
is perfectly correct in saying that "every act of our government was
performed under the impending danger of a recognition of the
Confederacy, a disregard of the blockade, and the actual intervention of
Great Britain in our attempt to suppress an insurrection upon our own
territory."

FOOTNOTES:

[168] Lord John Russell was raised to the peerage, as Earl Russell, just
after this time, _i.e._, in July, 1861.

[169] An effort was made to carry out this theory in the case of the
crew of the privateer Savannah; but the jury failed to agree, and the
attempt was not afterward renewed, privateersmen being exchanged like
other prisoners of war.

[170] Mr. Welles declares that Seward at first opposed the surrender;
but Mr. Chittenden asserts that he knows that Mr. Seward's first opinion
coincided with his later action; see Mr. Welles's _Lincoln and Seward_,
and Chittenden's _Recollections_, 148.

End of Project Gutenberg's Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I., by John T. Morse

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