THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
the emancipation policy, of July 22d, 1862, which reads: “Seward argues, that foreign nations will intervene to prevent the abolition of slavery for the sake of cotton. We break up our relations with foreign nations and the production of cotton for sixty years.” This view appears so egregiously preposterous that one might think Stanton must have misunderstood Seward—as I thought, when I first saw Stanton's memorandum—had not a “private” despatch addressed by Seward to Motley, on July 24, come to light, in which he asked this question: “Are you sure that to-day, under the seductions and pressure which could be applied to some European populations, they would not rise up and resist our attempt to bestow freedom upon the laborers whose capacity to supply cotton and open a market for European fabrics depends, or is thought to depend, upon their continuance in bondage?” Whereupon Motley promptly answered, “A thousand times NO!”
In the summer of 1861 it was not known to how great an extent Mr. Seward's mind was warped by such strange conceptions—I might almost say hallucinations—but to those who, like myself, were occupying posts of observation in Europe, it became painfully evident that the manner in which the slavery question was, at that time, being treated in Washington, and especially the interpretation Mr. Seward so bluntly gave to that treatment, was gravely prejudicial to the Union cause in European opinion. Persons of importance who, on anti-slavery grounds, would have been our staunch friends, and would have made that friendship tell, were sorely puzzled as to what to say for us. They could not advance the strongest moral argument in our favor, if we did not advance that argument ourselves. Those who secretly wished to see the Union disrupted and thus to be relieved of a strong rival power, but would have hesitated to plead the cause of an “independent
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