No Northerner would understand that a rebel could have
any mutual right.
The South had no claim in his eyes as a
belligerent, though the North claimed all those rights which he
could only enjoy by the fact of there being a recognized war
between him and his enemy the South. The North was learning to
hate England, and day by day the feeling grew upon me that, much as
I wished to espouse the cause of the North, I should have to
espouse the cause of my own country. Then Slidell and Mason were
arrested, and I began to calculate how long I might remain in the
country. "There is no danger. We are quite right," the lawyers
said. "There are Vattel, and Puffendorff, and Stowell, and
Phillimore, and Wheaton," said the ladies. "Ambassadors are
contraband all the world over - more so than gunpowder; and if taken
in a neutral bottom," etc. I wonder why ships are always called
bottoms when spoken of with legal technicality? But neither the
lawyers nor the ladies convinced me. I know that there are matters
which will be read not in accordance with any written law, but in
accordance with the bias of the reader's mind. Such laws are made
to be strained any way. I knew how it would be. All the legal
acumen of New England declared the seizure of Slidell and Mason to
be right. The legal acumen of Old England has declared it to be
wrong; and I have no doubt that the ladies of Old England can prove
it to be wrong out of Yattel, Puffendorff, Stowell, Phillimore, and
Wheaton.
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