September 29, Monday. Seward brought me to-day a long dispatch from Dudley, consul at Liverpool. Although his fears were somewhat simulated, I saw he was really excited and alarmed. He is easily frightened. I therefore talked on general subjects, but he turned away, said there were terrible combinations in Europe to break the blockade, that there was evidence of it in the documents he brought and wished me to read. They were getting eight or ten steamers ready to break the blockade. I told him I had no apprehensions from any general concerted attack, such as he dreaded, but that I was annoyed by the sneaking method which the Englishmen practiced of stealing into Charleston in the darkness of the night. On reading the principal dispatch, I assured him there was no evidence in that document of any purpose to break the blockade, that there was no mention of an armed vessel by Consul Dudley, that there was activity among the merchant adventurers of Great Britain, stimulated by the Bull Run tidings, which they had just previously received. I did not doubt that British merchants were actively preparing to try to run the blockade, but we would be active in trying to catch them.
He seemed relieved yet not perfectly satisfied. We had some conversation in relation to letters of marque, which he favors. Wishes me to purchase the Baltic and give Comstock the command. Told him I trusted our naval cruisers, though some were not as fast as I wished, would perform the service, and that were we to buy and arm the Baltic, a naval officer must command her.
This scheme for Comstock and the Baltic is a key to the affected alarm. It has been concocted by Thurlow Weed, who has a job in view for himself or friends, perhaps both. Though Seward was somewhat frightened, his fears may have been greater in appearance than reality. He did not alarm me. It is shameful that an old profligate party-debaucher like Weed should have such influence, and Seward is mistaken in supposing I could be deceived by this connivance. His own fears of breaking the blockade were in a degree simulated. Weed is the prompter in this Comstock and Baltic intrigue. It is a job. Wrote Seward a letter of some length on the subject of cruising to suppress the slave trade under the treaty which he, without consulting the Cabinet, had recently negotiated with Great Britain. The letter is in answer to one addressed to him by Mr. Stuart, the British Charge d’Affaires. The treaty looks to me like a trap, and as if the Secretary of State had unwittingly “put his foot in it.” He thinks it would be popular to make a demonstration against slavery and the slave trade,—would conciliate the Abolitionists, who distrust him, and be a feather in his administration of the State Department. But he has been inconsiderate or duped, perhaps both. I declined to furnish cruisers as requested, for it would weaken our position, and I cannot consent to cripple our naval strength at this time, but prefer to retain, and to act under, the belligerent right of search, to that of restricted right conferred by the treaty.
