It would have prevented much angry controversy, much bitter feeling; it would have averted events and consequences which still shadow with distrust a national friendship that ought to be cordial and constant.

The principle of maritime law, which was so promptly and rigorously applied, was one for which the United States had contended in its weakness against the usages of the world and against the arms of Great Britain.

Not content with leaving us to settle this question with England, France and Prussia and Austria hastened to inform us in language professedly friendly, that England would be supported in her demand for reparation, cost what it might to us…

At this time there was but one among the great nations of the world which adhered to an active and avowed friendship for us.

We could not have refused to surrender Mason and Slidell without trampling upon our own principles and disregarding the many precedents we had sought to establish.

But it must not be forgotten that the sword of precedent cut both ways.

Whatever wrong was inflicted on the British Flag by the action of Captain Wilkes, had been time and again inflicted on the American flag by officers of the English Navy,--without cause, without redress, without apology.

Hundreds and thousands of American citizens had in time of peace been taken by British cruisers from the decks of American vessels and violently impressed into the naval service of that country.

His act cannot be justified by the canons of International Law as our own Government has interpreted and enforced them.

It would be ungracious to withhold an expression of the lasting appreciation entertained in this country of the course pursued by Her Majesty, the Queen of England, throughout this most painful ordeal.

She was wiser than her Ministers, and there can be little doubt but for her considerate interposition, softening the rigor of the British demand, the two nations would have been forced into war.

It was not long until the brave and deluded rebels of the South learned that there was no confidence to be placed in the cruel and selfish calculation which encouraged their desperate resistance with the show of sympathy, but would not…

The distinct defiance of the traditional policy of the United States by the invasion of the neighboring Republic of Mexico for the avowed purpose of establishing there a foreign and monarchical dynasty.

The effects of this thoroughly organized system of so-called neutrality that supplied ports, ships, arms, and men to a belligerent which had none, are not matters of conjecture or exaggeration; they have been proven and recorded.

The Georgia, like the Florida, the Alabama, and other scourges of peaceful commerce, was born of that unhappy decree which gave the rebels who did not own a ship-of-war or command a single port the right of an ocean belligerent.

Thus encouraged by foreign powers they began to build and fit out in neutral ports a class of vessels constructed mainly for speed, and whose acknowledged mission is not to fight, but to rob, to burn, and to fly.

Whatever flag may fly from their mast-head, or whatever power may claim to own them, their conduct stamps them as piratical.

If vessels of war even, they would by this conduct have justly forfeited all courtesies in ports of neutral nations.

Manned by foreign seamen, armed by foreign guns, entering no home port, and waiting no judicial condemnation of prizes, they have already devastated and destroyed our commerce to an extent, as compared with their number, beyond any thing…

In its primary and simple application, the law of belligerency referred to two or more belligerents, equally independent.

Its application to the case of insurgents against an established and recognized government is later, involves other and in some respects different considerations, and cannot even now be regarded as settled.

To recognize an insurgent as a belligerent is not to recognize him as fully the equal of the government from which he secedes.

But when foreign governments recognized in the insurgents the rights of ocean belligerency, they went beyond the fact.

They were actually giving to the Confederacy a character which it did not possess and which it never acquired.

Whenever an insurgent power claims such right, it must be in condition to assume and discharge the obligation which such rights impose.