Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 4

[121] that the privateers in the exercise of their powers, particularly that of search, were likely to embroil us with foreign nations, and give them an excuse or pretence for interfering in our conflict. His efforts to defeat the bill as well as to limit its scope by amendment were without avail, and on the final vote only eight senators joined him. The bill passed the House without debate or division, and remained a law till it expired by its own limitation three years later.¹

As soon as the bill had been approved Seward sought to put it into effect, and prepared forms and regulations for the purpose. Sumner thought it so fraught with mischief that he continued his resistance by a direct appeal to the President and members of his Cabinet, by an open letter to the Board of Trade of the city of New York,² and by prompting leaders in the ‘Tribune’ and Evening Post of that city, as also in the ‘National Intelligencer.’ He remained in Washington for some weeks after the session closed, largely for the purpose of arresting proceedings under the act. In his appeals to the President, repeated at short intervals, he was fortified by letters from John Bright and the American banker in London, Joshua Bates.³ Mr. Lincoln was impressed with his representations, and invited him to state his views at a meeting of the Cabinet, but on Sumner's doubting the expediency of this step, requested him to see the members individually. The senator found Welles, Blair, and Bates receptive to his views; but Chase remained firmly against him. He had an unpleasant interview with Seward, who did not conceal his satisfaction that he had achieved a personal triumph over the senator.⁴ The secretary had chafed under Sumner's superior influence with the President, and had once remarked, when the senator's opinion had been quoted by the President against him, that ‘there were too many secretaries of state in Washington.’ Mr. Welles, to whom the subject