A Southern editorial that found the British hands-off policy regarding Union recruiting efforts in Ireland not exactly neutral:
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 23, 1863:
Yankee recruiting in Ireland.
From the intercepted letter of Mr. De Leon, which the Yankees published, we learn that [ that ] interesting nation have been recruiting in Ireland at a great rate. During the current year they have been able to procure twenty thousand recruits only, leaving it to be inferred that in former years their success had been much greater. These proceedings are perfectly well known to the Palmerston Ministry–Mr. De Leon had a conversation regarding them with the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland — many attempts have been made, we are told, to stop them, but without effect. Russell finds that the foreign enlistment law is not sufficiently comprehensive to embrace them. Were the party engaged in them the Confederate Government, no doubt it could be stretched so as to catch the delinquents; or, If that failed, Russell would “go down to Parliament,” as the phrase is, with a law sufficiently broad and long to secure the culprits, as in a net. But they happen to be Yankees, and to interfere with them in the prosecution of their upright designs would be to wound the susceptibilities of Secretary Seward. Anything rather than that. Submission, humiliation, a total surrender of British policy into the hands of Adams, rather than encounter that terrible misfortune. Neutrality, Vattel tells us, consists in rendering no assistance of any kind to either belligerent party. The British Government is neutral after a fashion. It certainly renders no direct assistance to the Yankees by sending them recruits. It contents itself with merely permitting them to recruit on their own account. It does nothing more than throw the door open; they walk in and help themselves. …
Here’s a bit of the letter Edwin de Leon wrote to Judah Benjamin.
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch November 21, 1863:
Intercepted Correspondence — effect of the withdrawal of Mr. Mason from London — the emigration from Ireland to. The United States.–the feeling in France towards the Confederacy.
The Northern papers publish the following letter from Mr. Ed. de Leon to Secretary Benjamin. It was captured on the Ella and Annie, a blockade running steamer; which was intercepted on her way from Nassau to Wilmington. They say that there are a great many more letters, which have been sent to Washington, and which will be published as soon as Lincoln is through with them:
Paris, September10, 1863.
Hon. J. P. Benjamin, Secretary of State, Richmond, Confederate States America:
[No. 10.]
Sir
“Your dispatch No. 3, 15th August last, was delivered to me by Dr. Charles Girard, on the 16th instant, and in conformity with the instructions therein contained I write you, via Bermuda, by the first post, and shall continue my communications by each successive steamer for that port. …
After the disposal of the Roebuck motion, the rapid increase of Federal recruitment in Ireland attracted much attention, and I deemed it advisably to visit that country to see if anything could be done to check it. During three weeks residence, chiefly in Dublin, with a visit to Belfast, in the north of Ireland, I succeeded in unmasking and exposing the enemy’s battery, and enlisted the aid of some powerful auxiliaries in the press and pulpit to stop this cruel and cowardly crumping of recruits under pretext of employment on Northern railways. Many knew the real nature of the services required of them, but many more were entrapped by promise of high wages, their contract containing a clause that they would take the preliminary “oath of renunciation” on their arrival in America. This at once would make them subject to the draft.
Another drag put upon them was the exhortation to the women to accompany their husbands, as the promised wages were so high, so that the Yankees now get a good deal of dross with their good metal. The number of actual recruits thus obtained from Ireland, for the past year, up to August, cannot have exceeded twenty thousand able-bodied men, but has probably reached that figure. When the harvest time is over the Yankees hope to make a grand haul, but we hope their nets will not hold. The men of intelligence who see the drain thus made of the very bone and sinew of the country, resist it from policy and patriotism. The priests, who are generally conscientious and earnest men, and who live on voluntary contributions of their parishioners, are bent on arresting the exodus.
The only party favorable to the Yankees is the silly and mischievous clique of demagogues who style themselves “Young Irelanders,” of whom General Meagher used to be one of the shining lights, and these men make themselves busy in selling their countrymen for the Yankee shambles. No step has been or will be taken by the British Government to stop this wholesale deportation, for two reasons. First, from the difficulty of proof of actual enlistment; and second, because of the unwillingness of Lord Russell to wound the susceptibilities of Mr. Seward, of whose conduct he has “no complaint to make.”
The priests, the press, and the public opinion, may supply the shortcomings of the Government in this respect. At least the attempt is making and shall continue to be made. …
Here, in France, I see no change either in the attitude of the Government or in the popular sentiment. In fact, until the arrival of the Florida at Brest, allusions to the Confederacy (except those supplied by our friends in the press) were becoming very rare. …
I remain, very respectfully,
Edwin de Leon.
The New-York Times opined about the intercepted letters here Apparently in another letter Mr. de Leon likened Jefferson Davis to Joshua leading his people into the promised land.
