Wednesday, February 27, 2013

A Prophet In The Wrong

The special correspondent of the London Times has been writing for nearly a year the demonstration of his incapacity to understand the American question, the American people, the American future.  No prophet was ever so uniformly wrong. – The following is one of his latest vaticinations, dated at Washington, December 23 at a moment when the reasons of Mr. Seward, delivered three days after, was in all probability written.

“At 10 o’clock this morning Lord Lyons went to the State Department and communicated to Mr. Seward officially the note of the English Government.  Mr. Seward expressed no opinion at this formal interview and the note will be laid before a Cabinet Council, and will form the subject of its deliberations to-day or to-morrow, but as the mail leaves Washington  this afternoon, I shall not be able to communicate anything in addition to this bare statement of facts.  My impression is that Mr. Seward will endeavor to open a correspondence, and that failing, as he necessarily must in that, he will refuse on the part of the Government to surrender Messrs. Mason and Slidell and their Secretaries.  In that case Lord Lyons leaves the United States with the Members of his legation.”

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 8, 1862, p. 2

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