Letter (No. 66) of Dudley Mann to J. P. Benjamin
Source: United States, Naval War Records Office
Title: Official records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. / Series II - Volume 3: Proclamations, Appointments, etc. of President Davis; State Department Correspondence with Diplomatic Agents, etc.
Publisher: Government Printing Office
Publication date: 1922
Place of Publication: Washington
Pages: 949 - 950
Copied from: Cornell University's MoA Multivolume Monographs, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion (1894 - 1922)
[No. 66]
SIR:: As I expected at the date of my No. 65, I reached here on the 9th instant, late in the afternoon.
On the 11th, at half past 1 p. m., I sought and promptly obtained an interview with his Eminence, the Cardinal Secretary of State, Antonelli. I at once explained to him the object of my mission to Rome and he instantly assured me that he would obtain for me an audience of the sovereign Pontiff.
His Eminence then remarked that he could not withhold from me an expression of his unbounded admiration of the wonderful powers which we had exhibited in the field in resistance to a war which had been prosecuted with an energy, aided by the employment of all the recent improvements in the instruments for the destruction of life and property, unparalleled, perhaps, in the world’s history. He asked me several questions with respect to President Davis, at the end of which he observed that he certainly had created for himself a name that would rank with those of the most illustrious statesmen of modern times. He manifested an earnest desire for the definitive termination of hostilities, and observed that there was nothing the government of the Holy See could do with propriety to occasion such a result that it was not prepared to do. I seized the utterance of this assurance to inform him that but for the European recruits received by the North, numbering annually something like 100,000, the Lincoln Administration, in all likelihood, would have been compelled some time before this to have retired from the contest, that nearly all those recruits were from Ireland, and that Christianity had cause to weep at such a fiendish destruction of life as occurred from the beguiling of those people from their homes to take up arms against citizens who had never harmed or wronged them in the slightest degree. He appeared to be touched by my statement, and intimated that an evil so disgraceful to humanity was not beyond the reach of a salutary remedy.
His Eminence, after a short pause, took a rapid survey of the affairs of the nations of the earth, and drew a rather somber picture of the future, particularly of Europe. He did not attempt to conceal his dislike of England, his want of sympathy with Russia, his distrust of any benefits which might be expected from the congress proposed by France. "If old guaranties," said he, emphatically, "are of no value, new ones will be too feeble to resist expediency when sustained by might."
This is but a short and otherwise imperfect outline of one of the most interesting official interviews I ever enjoyed, an interview which was of lengthened duration and marked from beginning to end with extreme cordiality and courtesy by the distinguished functionary by whom it was accorded. I will add, lest I may not have been sufficiently explicit on that point, that it took place in his office in the Vatican, where he receives all the foreign ministers.
I have the honor to be, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
Hon. J. P. BENJAMIN,
Secretary of State, C. S. A., Richmond, Va.
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