You see our army and our fleet at Cairo; you see that another army and another fleet are behind Columbus, which alone is relied upon to close the Mississippi against us on the north. Though you may not see it, another army and another fleet are actually on the way, by sea, to New Orleans. I have submitted these matters to Mr. Mercier, with an intimation of our expectations soon to be in occupation of New Orleans. I have said to him that we will revert to the subject if our operations shall prove unsuccessful or be unreasonably dilatory. He has probably submitted these facts to Mr. Thouvenel. It will do, however, no harm for you to communicate them to him. Washington, March 8, 1862. SIR: Your despatch of February 12 (No. 112) has been received. Surely all Europe ought to unite with us in establishing a telegraphic oceanic conmunication. You very ably discuss the question of what is an effective blockade, while you suggest to me the desirableness of evidence to prove the efficiency of the one we have established. We cannot know how many and what vessels succeed in running the blockade, and without this information statistics of the vessels prevented from doing so would be almost valueless. But the true test of the efficiency of the blockade will be found in its results. Cotton commands a price in Manchester, and in Rouen, and Lowell, four times greater than in New Or leans; salt, a price ten times higher in Charleston than in Liverpool. Gold is worth fifty per cent. more in Richmond than in New York. Notwith standing the great outlay of the insurgents in Europe for arms, equipments, and clothing, in addition to their own boasted manufactures, the prisoners we take are wretchedly armed and clothed. Passengers from the insurgent States only escape into neutral States across overland barriers. Judged by this test of results, I am satisfied that there was never a more effective blockade. We are nevertheless very desirous to relieve the commerce of the world from our blockade, and to restore it to its natural and customary freedom. What do we wait for before doing this, but that the insurrection shall cease? What keeps the insurrection alive? Nothing, in my judgment, but the treatment of the insurgents as lawful belligerents by the maritime powers, utterly powerless as the former are to do any injury to foreign states. Their treatment as belligerents, while they are surrounded and hemmed within a small portion of the United States by the Union armies and navies, is believed to be without precedent as it is without necessity. Beside the commercial embarrassments which result from it, the United States are kept in continual and often unpleasant and anxious debate with maritime powers whose sympathies cannot but be with them, because their interests are identical with those of our own country. You will have noticed our successful advance down the Mississippi and along its banks. Next week we shall ascertain the strength of the obstructions at Memphis. After passing that port the river will be entirely open to us to New Orleans. I suppose I hazard nothing of publicity here by in forming you that General Butler, with an adequate land force, and Captair Porter, with a fleet, are already in motion to seize and hold New Orleans. The armies on the Potomac are also expected to try conclusions soon. You will, I am sure, need no instructions to use this information in the ' way best calculated to free our unhappy domestic strife from its European elements of mischief. When that shall be done, all will be well. While drawing this despatch to its close I learn that the insurgents have withdrawn from their front on the Potomac, above and below this city, and are breaking up their camps and retreating before our army towards Richmond. Thus ends the siege of Washington, and thus advances the cause of the Union. SIR: The receipt of your despatches No. 111 to 117, both inclusive, is hereby acknowledged. No. 112 enclosed the copy of a despatch (No. 186) addressed to Mr. Adams, and the copy of a telegram, then just received, as to the capture of Fort Donelson. No. 113 enclosed a copy of a communication to your department from the consul-general of the United States at Havana, relative to the vessels which have run the blockade to or from the ports of Cuba. No. 117 enclosed the commissions of Joseph Vandor and Josiah Thomas, appointed consuls, respectively, at Tahiti and Algiers. Application was at once made for their several exequaturs. I received at the same time (March 13) a package from the French legation at Washington, enclosed for Mr. Thouvenel, which was immediately delivered. Your despatch No 114 is in answer to mine of January 27 (No. 109) and I am happy to find that the general views presented by me to Mr. Thouvenel, in the conference reported in that despatch, conformed so nearly to the views and purposes of the government stated by you. I I had, yesterday, another conversation with Mr. Thouvenel on the same general subject. I stated to him the contents of your despatch No. 114, and left with him a copy, which he said he would read and consider with care. left with him, likewise, a copy of the communication addressed by you to Lord Lyons. He asked again most anxiously when they should have cotton. I referred him to your despatch, and assured him (as I have heretofore informed you that I had assured the Emperor) of our earnest desire to afford the earliest facilities to foreign governments for the procurement of it. He said that petitions and memorials were being daily addressed to the Emperor on this subject; that the suffering and destitution in certain portions of France for want of it were constantly on the increase. Do not delay action, I beg of you, a day beyond the time that you can act on this subject with propriety. He spoke, likewise, of the importance of allowing certain facilities for the transportation of letters to the south, to which subject I have heretofore referred. He thought that open letters might be permitted to be sent through the several consuls of foreign powers, charged by their governments with seeing that nothing but mere mercantile letters should be sent. This privilege could certainly be granted without much detriment, although it might possibly be some. I sincerely hope that something wil be done upon this subject. The objection to sending snch letters through sources of our own would seem to be that it would involve a new system, give rise to complications, and charge the government with a great deal of trouble. I told him that I had recently seen it stated in an American newspaper that you were maturing a plan for this purpose, and I thought it would soon be carried into effect. I assured him that unless all our hopes failed, this insurrection was drawing to its close. He said Mr. Mercier likewise had so written to them. I may add here that within the last few days a very considerable number of arrests (at least seventy) have been made in Paris, of persons charged with revolutionary designs and purposes. They are generally young men who have been agitating for revolution, in secret societies and otherwise. Large numbers of the population of Paris, especially in the Faubourg St. Antoine, are out of employment, and of course up for mischief. Though little is publicly said, I can readily understand that the government is kept on the "qui vive." But this agitation will amount to nothing: the Emperor is firmly seated, and unless some very unexpected event shall arise, his power, so long as he lives, is as secure as that of any monarch in Europe. I am, sir, your obedient servant, His Excellency WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State, &c, &c., &c. WILLIAM L. DAYTON. Mr. Dayton to Mr. Seward. No. 128.] PARIS, March 19, 1862. SIR: I omitted in my despatch of yesterday to say, that in my conference with Mr. Thouvenel, therein referred to, I again briefly called his attention to the suggestion in your note to Mr. Mercier in relation to certain ameliorations in the international code of maritime law. He said he did not think that much could be accomplished at present in that way by direct negotiation with foreign powers, (meaning, I suppose, Great Britain,) but that the public mind must first be properly impressed. He called my attention to the fact of the issue of the pamphlet by Monsieur de Hautefeuille on the subject, which I enclosed to you; likewise to the recent debate in the British Parliament. This debate, by the way, is calculated in the end to impress itself strongly upon the mind, more especially, of the shipping interests of Great Britain. It has brought out prominently the effect of the Paris convention of 1856 upon British interests. The adoption by that government of the principle that the neutral flag protects the goods of a belligerent, goes far towards a recognition, practically, of the principle that private property afloat (not contraband) is safe; for it follows almost as a consequence of the adoption of the principle that private property, in time of war, will only be put afloat in neutral bottoms. In other words, the commerce of England and France, in case of a war between those powers, would be carried on in safety through the agency of the ships of the United States and of other neutrals, while their own ships would be left to rot at their wharves It is true, the same result, under like circumstances, would come to us; but our separation from the European powers, and, as a consequence, the fewer chances of war with maritime nations to which we are subject, makes the contingency more remote. It would certainly be to advance only one step further in this ame-liorating process to make private property safe in any ship; and the interests of England would seem to justify this advance, if it does not require it. Her immense commercial marine would then be kept afloat in time of war. If the principle would deprive her of the power of crippling an adversary to so great an extent as heretofore, an advantage more than equivalent would arise in the increased protection it would give to her shipping and to her commerce. It would be but to sacrifice a war power to a greater and better-a peace power. To this she will, I believe, come at last; or, if not, in time of war, she will violate the principle she has adopted-that the flag covers the cargo. She cannot, as it seems to me, stand for many years in the anomalous position she now occupies. I am, sir, your obedient servant, His Excellency WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of Stale, S., &c., &c. WM. L. DAYTON. Mr. Dayton to Mr. Seward, No. 129.]* PARIS, March 25, 1862. SIR: Your despatches Nos. 118, 119, and 120 were received by me on the 21st instant, and yet the contents of 118 and 120 have not, up to this date, been communicated to Mr. Thouvenel. This is owing to the fact that I received notice, on Sunday last, that he would not receive me until Friday next, and I did not feel that the despatches were of a nature to justify a call for a special interview. In the meantime the Emperor, without application on my part, by a note from his chamberlain, signified to me that he would receive me to-day at 2 p. m. Of course I availed myself of the opportunity, and have just returned from this personal interview. I was most kindly received, and he said at once that he had wished to have a talk with me about cotton, and the prospect of opening our ports. He spoke again of the great inconvenience connected with the existing condition of things, and feared it would not speedily come to an end; that the war might yet be a long one. He referred, too, to the probability of the south's destroying its cotton, &c. These, of course, are old matters, and I refer to them only as coming now directly from his Majesty. In reply, I thanked him for the opportunity of a direct personal conference, and assured him again of the confidence of our government in the early suppression of the insurrection. As to the burning of the cotton I told him that it might be, and doubtless would be, done, to a limited extent, but that little confidence was to be placed, in my judgment, upon the blustering resolutions and loud talk of southern people upon this subject; that I did not doubt, if we got possession of the country, enough of cotton would remain to supply the present European want. I then read to him your despatches 118 and 120. He was aware that an army and fleet were on their way by sea to New Orleans, and asked, if we took that city, whether I thought they would then get a supply of cotton. I told him I had little doubt of it; that you had always represented that when we took possession of the country in which the ports were located the blockade would be removed, I thought that cotton, to a considerable extent, would come forward. I then called his attention particularly to the suggestion in the latter part of your confidential despatch No. 120. I told him we honestly believed that if a proclamation by France and England withdrawing belligerent rights from the insurrectionists should be made, the insurrection would collapse at once; that it was the moral support only which that concession had given them that had sustained them so far; that they had always looked to it as a first step towards their final recognition as an independent power. If the concession were withdrawn, I believed, as an equivalent, the blockade would be raised at an early day. He said the concession of belligerent rights was made upon an understanding with England; that some legal questions were involved in it originally, and that he would have to speak to Mr. Thouvenel about them. I called his attention to the fact that the confederate flag had been scarcely, if at all, seen in a port of France; that they had almost no commerce upon the ocean and scarcely the pretence of a navy; that the two vessels, (Nashville and Sumter,) which had alone been in European waters, had demeaned themselves as pirates rather than as ships-of-war; that a withdrawal of belligerent rights would, under these circumstances, take from the south no material advantage; it would only deprive them of the countenance and moral support of other nations. The Emperor replied that he must frankly say, when the insurrection broke out and this concession of belligerent rights was made, he did not suppose the north would succeed; that it was the general belief of statesmen in Europe that the two sections would never come together again. This belief, he intimated, was a principal reason why this concession of belligerent rights was then granted. He said now it was a large country, and for that reason difficult to subdue. I told him (as I had before told Mr. Thouvenel, in answer to the same objection) that we did not need to seize hold of a man's entire body to control him; that if we grasped firmly any sensitive extremities it was enough; that he had controlled Russia for the time being by taking possession of Sebastopol. I then called his attention to the few ports in the south, and the effect of seizing and holding them-excluding from the outer world the people of the interior, whose entire surplus industry was devoted to raising articles for export. This advantage, in connexion with the fact of the unquestionable existence of a large Union element in parts of the south, would, I thought, bring them into the Union again. Without expressing any opinion upon these matters, he said he would think of them, but hoped in the meantime that something would be done by us to relieve the difficulties here growing out of the want of cotton. I have heretofore expressed my earnest and per haps somewhat urgent wish that this hope may be realized. I am, sir, your obedient servant, His Excellency WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State, &c., &c., &c. WM. L. DAYTON, No. 130.] Mr, Dayton to Mr. Seward. [Extract.] PARIS, March 26, 1862. SIR: I cannot forbear to congratulate the President and the administration upon its wise and opportune action in reference to the aid to be given to States in the emancipation of their slaves. The recommendation (supported as it was by the prompt action of the House of Representatives) has made a most favorable impression in Europe. It is almost universally looked npon as the "beginning of the end," and that is much, although the end may be distant. The Emperor, yesterday, in the private conference to which my last despatch refers, spoke of the matter, and I thought had been favorably im |