“We regard Great Britain as a friend.  Her Majesty’s flag, according to our traditional principles, covers enemy’s goods not contraband of war.  Goods of Her Majesty’s subjects, not contraband of war, are exempt from confiscation, though found under a neutral or disloyal flag.  No depredations shall be committed by our naval forces or by those of any of our citizens, so far as we can prevent it, upon the vessels or property of British subjects.  Our blockade, being effective, must be respected[264].”

Thus Bancroft regards Seward’s proposals of April 24 as in part the result of humanitarian motives and in part as having a concealed purpose of Northern advantage.  This last he calls a “trap.”  And it is to be noted that in Seward’s final pledge to Adams the phrase “those of any of our citizens” reserves, for the North, since the negotiation had failed, the right to issue privateers on her own account.  But Russell also, says Bancroft, was not “altogether artless and frank.”  He had in view a British commercial advantage during the war, since if the United States respected the second and third articles of the Declaration of Paris, and “if Confederate privateers should roam the ocean and seize the ships and goods of citizens of the North, all the better for other commercial nations; for it would soon cause the commerce of the United States to be carried on under foreign flags, especially the British and French[265].”  Ulterior motive is, therefore, ascribed to both parties in the negotiation, and that of Seward is treated as conceived at the moment when a policy of seeking European friendship was dominant at Washington, but with the hope of securing at least negative European support.  Seward’s persistence after European recognition of Southern belligerency is regarded as a characteristic obstinacy without a clear view of possible resulting dangerous complications.

This view discredits the acumen of the American Secretary of State and it does not completely satisfy the third historian to examine the incident in detail.  Nor does he agree on the basis of British policy.  Charles Francis Adams, in his “Life” of his father, writing in 1899, followed in the main the view of his brother, Henry Adams.  But in 1912 he reviewed the negotiation at great length with different conclusions[266].  His thesis is that the Declaration of Paris negotiation was an essential part of Seward’s “foreign war policy,” in that in case a treaty was signed with Great Britain and France and then those Powers refused to aid in the suppression of Southern privateering, or at least permitted them access to British and French ports, a good ground of complaint leading to war would be established. This was the ultimate ulterior purpose in Seward’s mind; the negotiation was but a method of fixing a quarrel on some foreign Power in case the United States should seek, as Seward desired, a cementing of the rift at home by a foreign war.