, are exempt from confiscation, though found
under a neutral or disloyal flag. No depredations shall be
committed by our naval forces or by those of any of our
citizens, so far as we can prevent it, upon the vessels or
property of British subjects. Our blockade, being effective,
must be respected[264]."

Thus Bancroft regards Seward's proposals of April 24 as in part the
result of humanitarian motives and in part as having a concealed purpose
of Northern advantage. This last he calls a "trap." And it is to be
noted that in Seward's final pledge to Adams the phrase "those of any of
our citizens" reserves, for the North, since the negotiation had failed,
the right to issue privateers on her own account. But Russell also, says
Bancroft, was not "altogether artless and frank." He had in view a
British commercial advantage during the war, since if the United States
respected the second and third articles of the Declaration of Paris, and
"if Confederate privateers should roam the ocean and seize the ships and
goods of citizens of the North, all the better for other commercial
nations; for it would soon cause the commerce of the United States to be
carried on under foreign flags, especially the British and French[265]."
Ulterior motive is, therefore, ascribed to both parties in the
negotiation, and that of Seward is treated as conceived at the moment
when a policy of seeking European friendship was dominant at Washington,
but with the hope of securing at least negative European support.
Seward's persistence after European recognition of Southern belligerency
is regarded as a characteristic obstinacy without a clear view of
possible resulting dangerous complications.

This view discredits the acumen of the American Secretary of State and
it does not completely satisfy the third historian to examine the
incident in detail. Nor does he agree on the basis of British policy.
Charles Francis Adams, in his "Life" of his father, writing in 1899,
followed in the main the view of his brother, Henry Adams. But in 1912
he reviewed the negotiation at great length with different
conclusions[266]. His thesis is that the Declaration of Paris
negotiation was an essential part of Seward's "foreign war policy," in
that in case a treaty was signed with Great Britain and France and then
those Powers refused to aid in the suppression of Southern privateering,
or at least permitted them access to British and French ports, a