Annotation
[1] LS, DNA WR NB RG 45, Executive Letters, No. 83. On August 12, Welles' Diary records the receipt of this letter as follows:
``August 12, Wednesday. The President addressed me a letter, directing additional instructions and of a more explicit character to our naval officers in relation to their conduct at neutral ports. In doing this, the President takes occasion to compliment the administration of the Navy in terms most commendatory and gratifying.
``The proposed instructions are in language almost identical with certain letters which have passed between Mr. Seward and Lord Lyons, which the former submitted to me and requested me to adopt. My answer was not what the Secretary and Minister had agreed between themselves should be my policy and action. The President has therefore been privately interviewed and persuaded to write me,---an unusual course with him and which he was evidently reluctant to do. He earnestly desires to keep on terms of peace with England and, as he says to me in his letter, to sustain the present Ministry, which the Secretary of State assures him is a difficult matter, requiring all his dexterity and ability,---hence constant derogatory concessions.
``In all of this Mr. Seward's subservient policy, or want of a policy, is perceptible. He has no convictions, no fixed principles, no rule of action, but is governed and moved by impulse, fancied expediency, and temporary circumstances. We injure neither ourselves nor Great Britain by an honest and firm maintenance of our rights, but Mr. Seward is in constant trepidation lest the