The bald facts of the negotiation appear with exactness in Moore's _Digest of International Law_[236], but without comment as to motives, and, more briefly, in Bernard's _Neutrality of Great Britain during the American Civil War_[237], at the conclusion of which the author writes, with sarcasm, "I refrain from any comment on this negotiation[238]." Nicolay and Hay's _Lincoln_, and Rhodes' _United States_, give the matter but passing and inadequate treatment.

It was reviewed in some detail in the American argument before the Geneva court of arbitration in the case of the _Alabama_, but was there presented merely as a part of the general American complaint of British neutrality.

In fact, but three historical students, so far as the present writer has been able to discover, have examined this negotiation in detail and presented their conclusions as to purposes and motives--so important to an understanding of British intentions at the moment when the flames of civil war were rapidly spreading in America.
These three, each with an established historical reputation, exhibit decided differences in interpretation of diplomatic incidents and documents.

The first careful analysis was presented by Henry Adams, son of the American Minister in London during the Civil War, and then acting as his private secretary, in his _Historical Essays_, published in 1891; the second study is by Bancroft, in his _Life of Seward_, 1900; while the third is by Charles Francis Adams (also son of the American Minister), who, in his _Life_ of his father, published 1900, gave a chapter to the subject and treated it on lines similar to those laid down by his brother Henry, but who, in 1912, came to the conclusion, through further study, that he had earlier been in error and developed a very different view in a monograph entitled, "Seward and the Declaration of Paris." [Illustration: C.F.ADAMS (_From a photograph in the United States Embassy, London, by kind permission_)] If these historiographic details seem unduly minute, partaking as they do of the nature of a foot-note, in a work otherwise general in treatment, the author's answer is that the personality of two of the writers mentioned and their intimate knowledge of the effect of the negotiation upon the mind of the American Minister in London are themselves important historical data; a further answer is the fact that the materials now available from the British Foreign Office archives throw much new light both on the course of the negotiation and on British purposes.

It is here planned, therefore, first to review the main facts as previously known; second, to summarize the arguments and conclusions of the three historians; third, to re-examine the negotiation in the light of the new material; and, finally, to express an opinion on its conduct and conclusions as an evidence of British policy.
In 1854, during the Crimean War, Great Britain and France, the chief maritime belligerents engaged against Russia, voluntarily agreed to respect neutral commerce under either the neutral's or the enemy's flag.
This was a distinct step forward in the practice of maritime warfare, the accepted international rules of which had not been formally altered since the Napoleonic period.