[Footnote 210:  Yet at this very time Seward was suggesting, May 14, to Prussia, Great Britain, France, Russia and Holland a joint naval demonstration with America against Japan because of anti-foreign demonstrations in that country.  This has been interpreted as an attempt to tie European powers to the United States in such a way as to hamper any friendly inclination they may have entertained toward the Confederacy (Treat, Japan and the United States, 1853-1921, pp. 49-50.  Also Dennet, “Seward’s Far Eastern Policy,” in Am.  Hist.  Rev., Vol.  XXVIII, No. 1.  Dennet, however, also regards Seward’s overture as in harmony with his determined policy in the Far East.) Like Seward’s overture, made a few days before, to Great Britain for a convention to guarantee the independence of San Domingo (F.O., Am., Vol. 763, No. 196, Lyons to Russell, May 12, 1861) the proposal on Japan seems to me to have been an erratic feeling-out of international attitude while in the process of developing a really serious policy—­the plunging of America into a foreign war.]

[Footnote 211:  U.S.  Messages and Documents, 1861-2, p. 88.  The exact facts of Lincoln’s alteration of Despatch No. 10, though soon known in diplomatic circles, were not published until the appearance in 1890 of Nicolay and Hay’s Lincoln, where the text of a portion of the original draft, with Lincoln’s changes were printed (IV, p. 270).  Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy in Lincoln’s Cabinet, published a short book in 1874, Lincoln and Seward, in which the story was told, but without dates and so vaguely that no attention was directed to it.  Apparently the matter was not brought before the Cabinet and the contents of the despatch were known only to Lincoln, Seward, and the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Sumner.]

[Footnote 212:  C.F.  Adams, “Seward and the Declaration of Paris,” p. 21.  Reprint from Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Proceedings, XLVI, pp. 23-81.]

[Footnote 213:  F.O., Am., Vol. 764, No. 206.  Confidential.]

[Footnote 214:  Russell Papers.  This letter has been printed, in part, in Newton, Lyons, I, 41.]

[Footnote 215:  Lyons Papers.]

[Footnote 216:  Ibid., Lyons to Russell, May 23, 1861.]

[Footnote 217:  F.O., Am., Vol. 764, No. 209, Confidential, Lyons to Russell, May 23, 1861.  A brief “extract” from this despatch was printed in the British Parliamentary Papers, 1862, Lords, Vol.  XXV.  “Correspondence on Civil War in the United States,” No. 48.  The “extract” in question consists of two short paragraphs only, printed, without any indication of important elisions, in each of the paragraphs. ]

[Footnote 218:  Bancroft, Seward, II, p. 174. ]

[Footnote 219:  Lutz, “Notes.”  The source of Schleiden’s information is not given in his despatch.  He was intimate with many persons closely in touch with events, especially with Sumner, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and with Blair, a member of the Cabinet.]