(March 11th) certain "Commissioners of the Southern
Confederacy" (John Forsyth, of Alabama, and Martin J. Crawford, of
Georgia), appeared at Washington and served a written request upon
the State Department to appoint an early day when they might present to
the President of the United States their credentials "from the
Government of the Confederate States of America" to the Government of
the United States, and open "the objects of the mission with which they
are charged."

Secretary Seward, with the President's sanction, declined official
intercourse with Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford, in a "Memorandum" (March
15th) reciting their request, etc., in which, after referring to
President Lincoln's Inaugural Address--forwarded to them with the
"Memorandum" he says: "A simple reference will be sufficient to satisfy
those gentlemen that the Secretary of State, guided by the principles
therein announced, is prevented altogether from admitting or assuming
that the States referred to by them have, in law or in fact, withdrawn
from the Federal Union, or that they could do so in the manner described
by Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford, or in any other manner than with the
consent and concert of the People of the United States, to be given
through a National Convention, to be assembled in conformity with the
provisions of the Constitution of the United States. Of course, the
Secretary of State cannot act upon the assumption, or in any way admit,
that the so-called Confederate States constitute a Foreign Power, with
whom diplomatic relations ought to be established."

On the 9th of April, Messrs. Forsyth, Crawford and Roman--as
"Commissioners of the Southern Confederacy"--addressed to Secretary
Seward a reply to the "Memorandum" aforesaid, in which the following
passage occurs:

"The undersigned, like the Secretary of State, have no purpose to
'invite or engage in discussion' of the subject on which their two
Governments are so irreconcilably at variance. It is this variance that
has broken up the old Union, the disintegration of which has only begun.

"It is proper, however, to advise you that it were well to dismiss the
hopes you seem to entertain that, by any of the modes indicated, the
people of the Confederate States will ever be brought to submit to the
authority of the Government of the United States. You are dealing with
delusions, too, when you seek to separate our people from our
Government, and to characterize the delibe