Two of these commissioners, Messrs. Crawford and Forsyth, arrived in Washington on the 5th of March, the day succeeding Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. Wishing to allow the President abundant opportunity for the discharge of the urgent official duties necessarily crowding upon him at such a season, the Confederate commissioners did not immediately press their mission upon his attention. At first giving merely an informal announcement of their arrival, they waited until the 12th of March before making an official presentation of their mission. On that day they addressed a formal communication to the Secretary of State, Mr. Seward, announcing their authority to settle with the Federal Government all claims of public property arising from the separation of the States from the Union, and to negotiate for the withdrawal of the Federal forces from Forts Sumter and Pickens.
Here begins a record of perfidy, the parallel of which is not to be found in the history of the world. Mr. Seward, while declining to recognize the Confederate commissioners officially, yet frequently held confidential communication with them, by which the faith of the two Governments was fully pledged to a line of policy, by what should certainly be the strongest form of assurance--the personal honor of their representatives. In verbal interviews, the commissioners were frequently assured of a pacific policy by the Federal Government, that Fort Sumter would be evacuated, that the _status_ at Fort Pickens should not be changed, and that no departure from these pacific intentions would be made without due notice to the Confederate Government.
The commissioners, conformably to the spirit of their Government, to avoid, if possible, collision with the United States, made an important concession in these interviews in consenting to waive all questions of form. It was alleged that formal negotiations with them, in an official capacity, would seriously jeopardize the success of Mr. Lincoln's manipulation of public sentiment at the North, which, it was further confidentially alleged, he was sedulously educating to concurrence with his own friendly purposes toward the Confederates. By this cunning device and the unscrupulous employment of deception and falsehood in his interviews with the commissioners, Mr. Seward accomplished the double purpose of successful imposition upon the credulity of the commissioners and evasion of official recognition of the Confederate embassy.