Letter (No. 11) of J. P. Benjamin to Dudley Mann
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
Pages: 1014
- 1015
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. 11]
SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt in due course of your dispatches from Nos. 59 to 70, inclusive, the No. 59 received on the 31st October and No. 70 on the 16th ultimo.
As I was aware that you must have received my No. 9 about the end of October, and would therefore be absent from your post, I delayed acknowledgment, the more especially as your dispatches, while keeping the Department advised of the current of political events in Europe, contained no matter of business requiring special answer.
The President has been much gratified at learning the cordial reception which you received from the Pope, and the publication of the correspondence here (of which I send you a newspaper slip) has had a good effect. Its best influences, as we hope, will be felt elsewhere in producing a check on the foreign enlistments made by the United States. As a recognition of the Confederate States we can not attach to it the same value that you do, a mere inferential recognition, unconnected with political action or the regular establishment of diplomatic relations, possessing none of the moral weight required for awakening the people of the United States from their delusion that these States still remain members of the old Union. Nothing will end this war but the utter exhaustion of the belligerents, unless, by the action of some of the leading powers of Europe in entering into formal relations with us, the United States are made to perceive that we are in the eyes of the world a separate nation and that the war now waged by them is a foreign, not an intestine or civil war, as it is termed by the Pope. This phrase of his letter shows that his address to the President as "President of the Confederate States" is a formula of politeness to his correspondent, not a political recognition of a fact. None of our public journals treat the letter as a recognition in the sense you attach to it, and Mr. Slidell writes that the Nuncio at Paris on whom he called had received no instructions to put his official visa on our passports, as he had been led to hope from his correspondence with you. This, however, may have been merely a delay in the sending of the instructions.
Without having anything special to communicate, as you receive the news through the papers so much more promptly than I can send it, I deem it proper to inform you that no reliance whatever is to be placed in the accounts with which the Northern papers are filled as to the condition of the Confederacy. Although for some time after the defeat of our army at Missionary Ridge, there was great despondency and gloom, the natural reaction after the exaggerated expectations of the results of the victory at Chickamauga, those feelings have passed away, and our army, both in the West and in northern Virginia, is now enthusiastically reenlisting for the war by brigades which give unanimous votes. We shall take the field in the spring with largely recruited forces.
There has been less promptness and energy in the legislation by Congress than we had hoped for, and less than the magnitude of the interests at stake warranted us in expecting. But the subjects for discussion were important and difficult, and it was no easy matter to reconcile conflicting opinions. There remain but about two weeks of the session and as the debates have exhausted the subjects for legislation we may now rely on the early passage of the measures needed for infusing renewed energy into our operations.
It does not seem to me, but I may be oversanguine, that the finances of the North can stand the tension of their enormous expenditure beyond the present campaign. As our own embarrassments proceed solely from an excessive issue of currency, held entirely at home, they are easily remedied by proper legislation. Those of the North involve their relations with the whole world, their external commerce, and the whole framework of their Government. If they can not borrow money, they can not keep an army in the field, while we can. So far as finances are concerned, our ability to resist is without limit, and it now seems to me, that in the exhaustion of their means of raising money will be found the agency that is to put an end to the struggle.
I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
Hon. A. DUDLEY MANN,
Brussels.
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