Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir

[584] point on which England as a whole might have been expected to agree with the Northerners would have been that the war was against slavery. So some of your statesmen considered it. But that was not the view stated by your Government for some time after the commencement of the war. It was a contest on the part of the North to preserve the Union, and a very legitimate purpose for them to contend for; but upon such a question Englishmen might be allowed, without offense to the United States, to entertain an opinion on one side or the other, as they might have done some years ago as to the separation of Holland and Belgium.

I come now to the action of the Government.

I will not enter into the question of what the opinions of individual members of the Government may have been, only observing that I do not think the statement in the article is correct. Without going into that question, the material point is, whether the action of the Government as a Government, was unfair or unfriendly to the North.

I say for myself, as a member of that Government, that I never from the first moment entertained a shadow of a doubt as to what it was our duty to do. We were bound to maintain the strictest neutrality, and to avoid anything which could involve us in the contest. Most indisputably that was the view adopted by the Government, as a Government—and I believe that we so acted.

1. As to acknowledging the belligerent rights of the South.

It is an undisputed principle of International law that a nation cannot blockade its own ports. Blockades can only be established against an Enemy. The question was considered and discussed in this country at great length from 1834 to 1846 or 1847 in reference to a blockade established by the French of the coast at Portendis, on the west coast of Africa. We denied the right of the French to blockade a port where they exercised sovereignty; their answer was that the coast blockaded was subject to the sovereign of Morocco. It was a small matter, and was referred to the king of Prussia; but the principle was admitted.

When the report of your blockade was received in this country, application was made by merchants to the Government to know whether they might proceed to the Southern ports, and whether they would be protected if they did so. What answer were we to