by Nicolay and Hay, and is one of
their most valuable contributions to the history of those days. In that
paper Seward actually told the President that at the end of a month's
administration the government was still without a policy, either
domestic or foreign; that the slavery question should be eliminated from
the struggle about the Union; that the matter of the maintenance of the
forts and other possessions in the South should be decided with that
view; that explanations should be demanded categorically from the
governments of Spain and France, which were then preparing, one for the
annexation of San Domingo, and both for the invasion of Mexico; that
if no satisfactory explanations were received war should be declared
against Spain and France by the United States; that explanations should
also be sought from Russia and Great Britain, and a vigorous continental
spirit of independence against European intervention be aroused all over
the American continent; that this policy should be incessantly pursued
and directed by somebody; that either the President should devote
himself entirely to it, or devolve the direction on some member of his
cabinet, whereupon all debate on this policy must end.

This could be understood only as a formal demand that the President
should acknowledge his own incompetency to perform his duties, content
himself with the amusement of distributing post-offices, and resign his
power as to all important affairs into the hands of his Secretary of
State. It seems to-day incomprehensible how a statesman of Seward's
calibre could at that period conceive a plan of policy in which the
slavery question had no place; a policy which rested upon the utterly
delusive assumption that the secessionists, who had already formed their
Southern Confederacy and were with stern resolution preparing to fight
for its independence, could be hoodwinked back into the Union by some
sentimental demonstration against European interference; a policy which,
at that critical moment, would have involved the Union in a foreign war,
thus inviting foreign intervention in favor of the Southern Confederacy,
and increasing tenfold its chances in the struggle for independence. But
it is equally incomprehensible how Seward could fail to see that this
demand of an unconditional surrender was a mortal insult to the head
of the government, and that by putting his proposition on paper he
delivered himself into the hands of the very man he