made at all, of which few of us felt more than a hope, we thought that
it would have been made obviously as a concession to prudence, not to
principle. We thought that there would have been truckling to the
newspaper editors and supposed fire-eaters who were crying out for
retaining the prisoners at all hazards. We expected that the
atonement, if atonement there were, would have been made with
reservations, perhaps under protest. We expected that the
correspondence would have been spun out, and a trial made to induce
England to be satisfied with less; or that there would have been a
proposal of arbitration; or that England would have been asked to make
concessions in return for justice; or that if submission was made, it
would have been made, ostensibly, to the opinions and wishes of
Continental Europe. We expected anything, in short, which would have
been weak and timid and paltry. The only thing which no one seemed to
expect, is what has actually happened. Mr. Lincoln's Government have
done none of these things. Like honest men, they have said in direct
terms, that our demand was right; that they yielded to it because it
was just; that if they themselves had received the same treatment,
they would have demanded the same reparation; and that if what seemed
to be the American side of a question was not the just side, they
would be on the side of justice; happy as they were to find after
their resolution had been taken, that it was also the side which
America had formerly defended. Is there any one, capable of a moral
judgment or feeling, who will say that his opinion of America and
American statesmen, is not raised by such an act, done on such
grounds? The act itself may have been imposed by the necessity of the
circumstances; but the reasons given, the principles of action
professed, were their own choice. Putting the worst hypothesis
possible, which it would be the height of injustice to entertain
seriously, that the concession was really made solely to convenience,