All such intervention is inexcusable, illegal, and scandalous.

Its vindication is found only in the effrontery that might makes right.

Congress, therefore, was right in declaring to foreign powers that any renewed effort of mediation in our affairs will be regarded as an unfriendly act.

All intervention in the internal affairs of another nation is contrary to law and reason, and can be vindicated only by overruling necessity.

Smarting from intolerable grievances, and with a price set upon the head of their illustrious Stadtholder, the United Provinces of the Netherlands, in 1581, renounced the tyrannical sovereignty of Philip the Second, and declared themselves…

They were Protestants, battling for rights denied, and Queen Elizabeth of England, the head of Protestantism, acknowledged their independence, and shortly afterwards extended military aid.

Colonial independence was contagious, and the contest for it presented another illustration, more discussed, and constituting a precedent, if possible, more interesting still.

No case of international duty has been illustrated by a clearer eloquence, an ampler knowledge, or a purer wisdom.

As in other cases of intervention, the recognition may be armed or unarmed, with an intermediate case, where the recognition may seem unarmed, when in reality it is armed,--as when France simply announced recognition of the independence of…

It is a belligerent act, constituting war, and can be vindicated only as war.

Proceeding from the consciousness of brute power, such an attempt is an insult to mankind.

If armed recognition at any time can find apology, it is only where sincerely made for the protection of Human Rights.

So far as it assumes to determine rights instead of facts, or to anticipate the result of a contest, it is wrongful.

No nation can undertake to sit in judgment on the rights of another nation without its consent.

But just in proportion as a foreign nation anticipates the fact, or imagines the fact, or substitutes its own passions for the fact, it transcends the well-defined bounds of International Law.

Now nothing is clearer than, that, while the terrible litigation is still pending, and the trial by battle, to which appeal is made, remains undecided, the fact of independence cannot exist.

There is only a paper independence, which, though reddened with blood, is no better than a paper empire or a paper blockade; and any pretended recognition of it is a wrongful intervention, inconsistent with just neutrality, since the…

To justify recognition, it must appear beyond doubt that de facto the contest is finished, and that de facto the new government is established secure within fixed limits.

These are conditions precedent, not to be avoided without open offence to a friendly power, and open violation of that International Law which is the guardian of the world’s peace, even if there be not another condition precedent which…

Of all wars in history, none more accursed, none more sure to draw down upon its authors the judgment alike of God and man.

But the thought of recognition, under existing circumstances, while the contest is still pending, even without any breaking of the blockade or attempted coercion, is a Satanic absurdity, hardly less impious than the other.

Any recognition of such a pretension, existing only as pretension, scouted and denied by a whole people with invincible armies and navies embattled against it, would be a mockery of truth.

Naturally a power thus guilty would expect to support the lie by arms.

Vain is honor, vain is human confidence, if these nations, at a moment of high duty, can thus ignobly fail.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.