Note (return) — Chapter IV

The scheme of blockade was resorted to, and a falsehood was asserted on which to base it. Mr. Seward writes to Mr. Dallas: "You will say (to Lord John Russell) that, by our own laws and the laws of nature and the laws of nations, this Government has a clear right to suppress insurrection. An exclusion of commerce from national ports which have been seized by insurgents, in the equitable form of blockade, is a proper means to that end."174 This is the same doctrine of "combinations" fabricated by the authorities at Washington to serve as the basis of a bloody revolution. Under the laws of nations, separate governments when at war blockade each other's ports. This is decided to be justifiable. But the Government of the United States could not consent to justify its blockade of our ports on this ground, as it would be an admission that the Confederate States were a separate and distinct sovereignty, and that the war was prosecuted only for subjugation. It, therefore, assumed that the withdrawal of the Southern States from the Union was an insurrection.