and by taking possession of well-selected points in Kentucky, effectually guarded the southern border of Illinois from threatened attack. He formed an ingenious plan for piercing the centre of the Southern Confederacy by means of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers; the subsequent successful accomplishment of which, though at a terrible expense of life which Fremont's earlier energy would have saved, afforded the country its first real encouragement, and gave the loyal arms their greatest success. And in addition to all this, at a time when no other Division General had left his intrenchments, he had organized an army of nearly forty thousand men, put himself at its head, and marched through an enemy's country over three hundred miles, in pursuit of a retreating foe, bridging a deep and broad river on his march, and pursuing his course in spite of obsta cles, which the Adjutant-General of the United States had declared to be insurmountable. If to all these successes he did not add that of a glorious victory upon the field, it is only because, on the eve of a decisive battle, the result of which no one can doubt, the Government yielded to the persuasions of his enemies, and removed him from command.

No! Gen. Fremont's removal was owing neither to financial nor military mismanagement on his part. Two causes conspired to produce itpolitical jealousies and pro-slavery partisanship. Gen. Fremont had been a popular presidential candidate. The West admired the man, the East his principles. A successful military career would make him a dangerous rival in the future. He was constantly rising in popular esteem. Men who loved office more than country, sought to be rid of him. They feared not that he would be defeated, but that he would be victorious. And they set in motion every possible political machination to secure his overthrow.

They were assisted in their effort by a powerful pro-slavery faction, whose good-will it was thought good statesmanship to conciliate. Gen. Fremont loved freedom for the human race, as well as for himself. No fugitive slave was ever refused admittance within his lines. None was ever returned to the tender mercies of rebel masters. With energy and vigor he entered upon the work of his campaign, as though that policy was the truest and the best, which should most speedily crush the rebellion. Those who thought that the utmost care must be taken, in making war upon slave-holding rebels, not to hurt slavery, were shocked that Gen. Fremont struck his country's enemy, in his most vulnerable part. BorderState men demanded a different policy, and Border States were to be satisfied at every hazard. Those, too, who imagined that the rebellion was a mere temporary excitement which would spend itself soon by its own want of enduring energy, thought Gen. Fremont formed plans on too large, a scale, and prepared for movements of unnecessary magnitude. Months have sinced passed away. Every plan which he formed has since been successfully carried out. The military campaign which he planned, and as he planned it, has been executed by his successor. The gun-boats which were built under his direction, if not indeed planned by his inventive genius, have given us our most glorious victories. While the Government which removed him, because his action was too energetic and his

principles too radical, adopts, ten months after, those principles as its own, and at the time of this writing, encourages a people yet to hope, under serious reverses, for ultimate success, by the promise to inaugurate, at last, that vigorous war policy, the adoption of which by Gen. Fremont in the Fall of 1861 resulted in his removal from command.

The supposed necessity of uniting all parties, led the Government, at the commencement of the rebellion, to place the command of the armies in the hands of men of known pro-slavery proclivities. It could hardly be expected that such men would vigorously press the war. They were committed to the idea that the war was needless, and that the North ought to have assented to the requirements of the slaveholders, and to have adopted those changes in the Constitution which slavery demanded. Many of our leading military officers manifested far more hostility to the spirit of emancipation, than to the spirit of slavery, and were less reluctant to sustain, than to abolish the institution. But we were fighting the great battle of freedom against slavery. No general can be expected to be victorious who has not faith in his cause. The great generals of the past, Cæsar, Napoleon, Cromwell, Washington, were profoundly earnest in the great principles for which they had drawn their swords. They had no sympathy with the antagonistic principles of their foes. The rebels were ferociously in earnest. But we sent against them many men, as leaders of our armies, who open y affirmed that the rebels were half right. Such men fought merely from a sense of military etiquette, and from no profound conviction of the justice of the national cause. Of several of them, it is reported that they long hesitated which side to choose. In so fierce a conflict between freedom and slavery, no man was fit to be in command of the armies of freedom, whose head and whose heart were in sympathy with slavery. These influences for months paralyzed our energies. Generals intensely pro-slavery, and with wives openly and avowedly Secessionists, were hardly in the right moral position, to meet Jackson, and Lee, and Beauregard. That we had such, none will deny. Hence our arms were, at times, sadly dishonored.

It is true that the North did not take up arms for the overthrow of slavery. Over slavery in the slaveholding States, it admitted that neither the General Government nor the free States had a right to exert any control. The South took up arms to overthrow the Constitution, to carry slavery into all the States and Territories, and to confer upon the slaveholders new guarantees of power, and the efficient support of the National Government. Those who urged the emancipation of the slaves, urged it, not as the end and object of the war, but as the cheapest, the most bloodless, and, in fact, the only efficient means of bringing the war to a close. Much as the North abhorred slavery-criminal as they deemed it in the sight of God, in this terrible conflict they were constrained to regard emancipation merely as a potent instrument of war, with which to save the blood of their sons, and to rescue the Union from destruction.

CHAPTER XII.

THE TRENT AFFAIR.

SECESSION PLANS FOR SECURING FOREIGN AID.-PRIVATEERS.-TREATY AT PARIS IN 1856.ISSUE OF LETTERS OF MARQUE.-SHORT SUCCESS OF PRIVATEERS.-THE SAVANNAH.-THE JEFF. DAVIS.-RETALIATION OF THE REBELS.-LETTER OF THE EMPEROR ALEXANDER.—ATTITUDE OF OTHER MONARCHS OF EUROPE.-JOHN M. MASON.-JOHN SLIDELL.-CAPT. WILKES.SEIZURE OF THE REBEL COMMISSIONERS.-CAPT. WILKES' REASONING AND ACTION IN CASE OF THE TRENT.-EXCITEMENT CAUSED BY THE TRENT AFFAIR IN THE UNITED STATES AND ENGLAND.-SECRETARY SEWARD'S OPINION.

THE same acts of violence at the South, which closed the door to any peaceful and lawful settlement of the questions at issue, between the slave States and the free States, threw wide open the broad road which invited foreign nations to embroil themselves in the conflict. It was doubtless one of the objects of the Secessionists, in refusing a constitutional solution, and raising arms against the Government, that war might create motives, and give opportunity, for aid from abroad, which could not otherwise be had. So long as the struggle was a political debate, the interests of slavery never could invite sympathy. But to break the peace of the world, was to compel the attention of other nations, and bring into play causes which might at last subserve those interests, and which could not make them more hopeless of prevailing than they were under peaceful discussion. Every thing favored this design. The manufactures and the commerce, alike, of England and France, would stand opposed to any efforts which the Government would make to regulate the exportation of the Southern staples. The blockade of rebellious seaports would stop the wheels which gave employment to millions of Europeans. Governments which draw their revenues from commerce, can not stand idle while commerce is suppressed, even in the name of liberty. Governments which dread the discontent of their own common people, can not suffer those people to spend a year of idleness, even though the future of a foreign continent depended on the event. Once fairly at war, the Confederacy, claiming the position of a belligerent, and offering a free trade to European commerce, could invite alliance from those nations whose intervention the North would most dread. The original cause of the struggle would be forgotten, in the new conditions to which war would give rise. The scene would be changed, in the eyes of Europeans, from a political debate, which every American loves, and few foreigners appreciate or much care for, into a war, which would bring both parties irresistibly before their notice. Immediate motives of interest would countervail sympathy throughout

the civilized world. The voice of commerce would silence the voice of humanity. Thus shrewdly was it argued throughout the South.*

The settled position of the United States upon questions of the relative rights of neutrals and belligerents, contributed, it so happened, to favor this policy. Peace and the rights of peaceful commerce, have been the constant care of our Government, in the periods of European war which have occurred during its national existence. It could not, when placed before other nations in the attitude of a belligerent, reverse its policy, and assert against such nations those belligerent claims, which, for three-quarters of a century, it had strenuously resisted.

These considerations, which entered largely into the motives for war, also moulded the policy of the Secessionists throughout, and made it apparent, from the outset, that while the chief trial of force would be upon land, foreign relations and maritime questions would require the utmost delicacy and skill, to avert conflicts at sea, and a foreign intervention,more to be deprecated than many reverses at home.

From these sources arose some of the most engrossing questions, and some of the most exciting incidents of the war.

In respect to a navy, the conspirators commenced their contest without fearing much from the Government, for, by the precautions of traitors, the national navy, as we have before shown, had been so scattered into distant parts of the globe, that there were but three vessels of war at the immediate service of the administration, when the necessity for their use became apparent.

The Confederates, during the progress of the conflict, had two vessels of war upon the ocean, which have excited much attention and solicitude; the Sumter and the Nashville. The former was a propeller, of about five hundred tons burden, which escaped the blockade at New Orleans, early in the summer of 1861. After about nine months of active service, in the course of which she ingeniously eluded our cruisers, and captured eighteen American merchant vessels, seven of which she burnt at sea, she was finally abandoned at Gibraltar. The Nashville, formerly a merchant steamer, running between New York and Southern ports, was converted into a vessel of war by the rebels, and in October, 1861, escaped from Charleston, and, after burning a merchant vessel at sea, and carrying the crew in irons to Liverpool, encountered an American vessel of war, but under the shelter of the English coast. Since then, the Nashville has been

* Soon after the breaking out of the rebellion, early in June, 1861, Mr. William H. Hurlbut, one of the editors of the New York Times, had an interview with several of the leading men in the rebellion, at Richmond. He reports of Mr. Toombs, Secretary of State for the Confederacy, “He professed the profoundest indifference to the sentiment of the civilized world on the subject of slavery and its extension-avowed his intimate conviction that the policy of England and France must depend absolutely on the interests of the cotton-trade, and would consequently be controlled by the Confederate States. France, in particular, he felt assured, must be drawn into such a practical alliance with the Confederacy, as would afford her the means of overtaking and outstripping England in the race of industry; and he had no doubt that France would rapidly recognize the importance of conceding to the new republic, an unlimited extension toward the tropics. With Europe thus comfortably secured, the Southern Secretary was quite at his ease in regard to the pending war with the North."

for much of the time imprisoned, either in foreign ports by the watch of a national vessel of war, detailed for the purpose, or in a Southern port by the general blockade.

The practice of privateering is founded upon a barbarous doctrine, which, though it has been abandoned in warfare upon land, is still the general rule of warfare upon the sea. The time was, when war was a license to any citizen or combination of citizens, to prey upon the private property of citizens of the enemy; but by the customary law of civilized nations, this is no longer justified with respect to private property upon land. But such property, if embarked upon the sea, is still deemed lawful prize. From this grew the practice of enlisting private vessels in coöperation with the navy, such vessels being authorized, by the government employing them, to capture the enemy's property upon the sea, for their own benefit. Privateering thus is distinguished from piracy, only by the circumstance that it is the authorized act of individuals in coöperation with their government, in the prosecution of a war. The interests of commerce, so much prejudiced by such a rule, have at last secured among European nations an important modification. The first Napoleon made strenuous efforts to confine war, upon the sea, as upon land, to belligerents; but England, then mistress of the seas, pertinaciously refused. In 1856 the nations of Great Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Sardinia and Turkey, at. the Congress of Paris, agreed that the enemy's goods, except contraband of war, should not be liable to capture when carried in neutral vessels, and that neutral goods, except contraband of war, should not be liable to capture, though carried by an enemy's vessel. By the same compact these nations agreed that privateering was abolished; and they invited to these modifications of existing international law the adherence of other nations.

The United States, who have steadily contemplated peace rather than war, and have provided for self-defense, but not for invasion, were unwilling to relinquish a resort to the coöperation of privateers, which would eke out, in time of war, that small navy which a settled policy of peace permits, except with the adoption of the manifestly righteous rule that private property should be wholly respected at sea as on land. So long as the devastation of private property is lawful, it matters little whether it is committed by a great navy, or by a small navy aided by privateers. Our Government, therefore, urged again, as it had done before, the adoption of the rule that all private property, not contraband of war, should be respected wheresoever found, and offered to accede to the abolition of privateering upon the adoption of this principle. Their views, however, were rejected. In April, 1861, immediately after the President called for a force of militia to defend and retake the Federal property, Mr. Davis issued a proclamation inviting private vessels to embark in privateering, under letters of marque and reprisal, which he announced that the Confederacy would issue. By the authority of the Confederate Congress, a bounty of twenty dollars was offered for each person on board any armed vessel of the United States, burned or sunk by a privateer, as well as a bounty for prisoners taken into port. Subsequently the rebel Congress