The undersigned, like the Secretary of State, have no purpose to "invite or engage in discussion" of the subject on which their two Governments are so irreconcilably at variance. It is this variance that has broken up the old Union, the disintegration of which has only begun. It is proper, however, to advise you that it were well to dismiss the hopes you seem to entertain that, by any of the modes indicated, the people of the Confederate States will ever be brought to submit to the authority of the Government of the United States. You are dealing with delusions, too, when you seek to separate our people from our Government, and to characterize the deliberate sovereign act of that people as a "perversion of a temporary and partisan excitement" If you cherish these dreams, you will be awakened from them and find them as unreal and unsubstantial as others in which you have recently indulged. The undersigned would omit the performance of an obvious duty, were they to fail to make known to the Government of the United States that the people of the Confederate States have declared their independence with a full knowledge of all the responsibilities of that act, and with as firm a determination to maintain it by all the means with which nature has endowed them as that which sustained their fathers when they threw off the authority of the British Crown.

The undersigned clearly understand that you have declined to appoint a day to enable them to lay the objects of the mission with which they are charged before the President of the United States, because so to do would be to recognize the independence and separate nationality of the Confederate States. This is the vein of thought that pervades the memorandum before us. The truth of history requires that it should distinctly appear upon the record that the undersigned did not ask the Government of the United States to recognize the independence of the Confederate States. They only asked audience to adjust, in a spirit of amity and peace, the new relations springing from a manifest and accomplished revolution in the Government of the late Federal Union. Your refusal to entertain these overtures for a peaceful solution, the active naval and military preparations of this Government, and a formal notice to the commanding General of the Confederate forces in the harbor of Charleston that the President intends to provision Fort Sumter by forcible means, if necessary, are viewed by the undersigned, and can only be received by the world, as a declaration of war against the Confederate States; for the President of the United States knows that Fort Sumter can not be provisioned without the effusion of blood. The undersigned, in behalf of their Government and people, accept the gage of battle thus thrown down to them; and, appealing to God and the judgment of mankind for the righteousness of their cause, the people of the Confederate States will defend their liberties to the last, against this flagrant and open attempt at their subjugation to sectional power.

This communication can not be properly closed without adverting to the date of your memorandum. The official note of the undersigned, of the 12th of March, was delivered to the Assistant Secretary of State on the 13th of that month, the gentleman who delivered it informing him that the secretary of this commission would call at twelve o'clock, noon, on the next day, for an answer. At the appointed hour Mr. Pickett did call, and was informed by the Assistant Secretary of State that the engagements of the Secretary of State had prevented him from giving the note his attention. The Assistant Secretary of State then asked for the address of Messrs. Crawford and Forsyth, the members of the commission then present in this city, took note of the address on a card, and engaged to send whatever reply might be made to their lodgings. Why this was not done, it is proper should be here explained. The memorandum is dated March 15th, and was not delivered until April 8th. Why was it withheld during the intervening twenty-three days? In the postscript to your memorandum you say it "was delayed, as was understood, with their (Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford's) consent." This is true; but it is also true that, on the 15th of March, Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford were assured by a person occupying a high official position in the Government, and who, as they believed, was speaking by authority, that Fort Sumter would be evacuated in a very few days, and that no measure changing the existing _status_ prejudicially to the Confederate States, as respects Fort Pickens, was then contemplated, and these assurances were subsequently repeated, with the addition that any contemplated change as respects Pickens would be notified to us. On the 1st of April we were again informed that there might be an attempt to supply Fort Sumter with provisions, but that Governor Pickens should have previous notice of this attempt. There was no suggestion of any reinforcement. The undersigned did not hesitate to believe that these assurances expressed the intentions of the Administration at the time, or at all events of prominent members of that Administration. This delay was assented to for the express purpose of attaining the great end of the mission of the undersigned, to wit, a pacific solution of existing complications. The inference deducible from the date of your memorandum, that the undersigned had, of their own volition and without cause, consented to this long _hiatus_ in the grave duties with which they were charged, is therefore not consistent with a just exposition of the facts of the case. The intervening twenty-three days were employed in active unofficial efforts, the object of which was to smooth the path to a pacific solution, the distinguished personage alluded to coöperating with the undersigned; and every step of that effort is recorded in writing and now in the possession of the undersigned and of their Government. It was only when all those anxious efforts for peace had been exhausted, and it became clear that Mr. Lincoln had determined to appeal to the sword to reduce the people of the Confederate States to the will of the section or party whose President he is, that the undersigned resumed the official negotiation temporarily suspended, and sent their secretary for a reply to their official note of March 12th.

It is proper to add that, during these twenty-three days, two gentlemen, of official distinction as high as that of the personage hitherto alluded to, aided the undersigned as intermediaries in these unofficial negotiations for peace.

The undersigned, commissioners of the Confederate States of America, having thus made answer to all they deem material in the memorandum filed in the department on the 15th of March last, have the honor to be

JOHN FORSYTH, MARTIN J. CRAWFORD, A. B. ROMAN.

_Mr. Seward in reply to the Commissioners._

Department Of State, Washington, _April 10, 1861._

Messrs. Forsyth, Crawford, and Roman, having been apprised by a memorandum, which has been delivered to them, that the Secretary of State is not at liberty to hold official intercourse with them, will, it is presumed, expect no notice from him of the new communication which they have addressed to him under date of the 9th inst., beyond the simple acknowledgment of the receipt thereof, which he hereby very cheerfully gives.

_Judge Campbell to Mr. Seward._

Washington City, _Saturday, April 18, 1861._

Sir: On the 15th of March, ultimo, I left with Judge Crawford, one of the commissioners of the Confederate States, a note in writing, to the effect following:

"I feel entire confidence that Fort Sumter will be evacuated in the next ten days. And this measure is felt as imposing great responsibility on the Administration.

"I feel entire confidence that no measure changing the existing _status_ prejudicially to the Southern Confederate States is at present contemplated.

"I feel an entire confidence that an immediate demand for an answer to the communication of the commissioners will be productive of evil and not of good. I do not believe that it ought, at this time, to be pressed."

The substance of this statement I communicated to you the same evening by letter. Five days elapsed, and I called with a telegram from General Beauregard, to the effect that Sumter was not evacuated, but that Major Anderson was at work making repairs.

The next day, after conversing with you, I communicated to Judge Crawford in writing that the failure to evacuate Sumter was not the result of bad faith, but was attributable to causes consistent with the intention to fulfill the engagement, and that, as regarded Pickens, I should have notice of any design to alter the existing _status_ there. Mr. Justice Nelson was present at these conversations, three in number, and I submitted to him each of my written communications to Judge Crawford, and informed Judge Crawford that they had his (Judge Nelson's) sanction. I gave you, on the 22d of March, a substantial copy of the statement I had made on the 15th.

The 30th of March arrived, and at that time a telegram came from Governor Pickens, inquiring concerning Colonel Lamon, whose visit to Charleston he supposed had a connection with the proposed evacuation of Fort Sumter. I left that with you, and was to have an answer the following Monday (1st of April). On the 1st of April I received from you the statement in writing, "I am satisfied the Government will not undertake to supply Fort Sumter without giving notice to Governor P." The words "I am satisfied" were for me to use as expressive of confidence in the remainder of the declaration.

The proposition, as originally prepared, was, "The President _may desire_ to supply Sumter, but will not do so," etc., and your verbal explanation was, that you did not believe any such attempt would be made, and that there was no design to reënforce Sumter.

There was a departure here from the pledges of the previous month, but, with the verbal explanation, I did not consider it a matter then to complain of. I simply stated to you that I had that assurance previously.

On the 7th of April I addressed you a letter on the subject of the alarm that the preparations by the Government had created, and asked you if the assurances I had given were well or ill-founded. In respect to Sumter, your reply was, "Faith as to Sumter fully kept--wait and see." In the morning's paper I read, "An authorized messenger from President Lincoln informed Governor Pickens and General Beauregard that provisions will be sent to Fort Sumter--peaceably, or _otherwise by force_." This was the 8th of April, at Charleston, the day following your last assurance, and is the last evidence of the full faith I was invited to _wait for_ and _see_. In the same paper I read that intercepted dispatches disclosed the fact that Mr. Fox, who had been allowed to visit Major Anderson, on the pledge that his purpose was pacific, employed his opportunity to devise a plan for supplying the fort by force, and that this plan had been adopted by the Washington Government, and was in process of execution. My recollection of the date of Mr. Fox's visit carries it to a day in March. I learn he is a near connection of a member of the Cabinet. My connection with the commissioners and yourself was superinduced by a conversation with Justice Nelson. He informed me of your strong disposition in favor of peace, and that you were oppressed with a demand of the commissioners of the Confederate States for a reply to their first letter, and that you desired to avoid it, if possible, at that time.

I told him I might perhaps be of some service in arranging the difficulty. I came to your office entirely at his request, and without the knowledge of either of the commissioners. Your depression was obvious to both Judge Nelson and myself. I was gratified at the character of the counsels you were desirous of pursuing, and much impressed with your observation that a civil war might be prevented by the success of my mediation. You read a letter of Mr. Weed, to show how irksome and responsible the withdrawal of troops from Sumter was. A portion of my communication to Judge Crawford, on the 16th of March, was founded upon these remarks, and