The secretary, acquiescing without resistance in a suggestion of the President, saw fit to address a formal note to several of the gentlemen mentioned in the M’Crackin letter, repeating some of its offensive expressions, and requesting those officials to deny or confirm the report that they had uttered them.

A gentleman who is asked whether he has spoken in a “malignant” or “offensive” manner, whether he has “railed violently and shamefully” against the President of the United States, or against anybody else, might well wonder who would address such a question to the humblest citizen not supposed to be wanting in a common measure of self-respect.  A gentleman holding an important official station in a foreign country, receiving a letter containing such questions, signed by the prime minister of his government, if he did not think himself imposed upon by a forgery, might well consider himself outraged.  It was a letter of this kind which was sent by the Secretary of State to the Minister Plenipotentiary to the Empire of Austria.  Not quite all the vulgar insolence of the M’Crackin letter was repeated.  Mr. Seward did not ask Mr. Motley to deny or confirm the assertion of the letter that he was a “thorough flunky” and “un-American functionary.”  But he did insult him with various questions suggested by the anonymous letter,—­questions that must have been felt as an indignity by the most thick-skinned of battered politicians.

Mr. Motley was very sensitive, very high-spirited, very impulsive, very patriotic, and singularly truthful.  The letter of Mr. Seward to such a man was like a buffet on the cheek of an unarmed officer.  It stung like the thrust of a stiletto.  It roused a resentment that could not find any words to give it expression.  He could not wait to turn the insult over in his mind, to weigh the exact amount of affront in each question, to take counsel, to sleep over it, and reply to it with diplomatic measure and suavity.  One hour had scarcely elapsed before his answer was written.  As to his feelings as an American, he appeals to his record.  This might have shown that if he erred it was on the side of enthusiasm and extravagant expressions of reverence for the American people during the heroic years just passed.  He denounces the accusations as pitiful fabrications and vile calumny.  He blushes that such charges could have been uttered; he is deeply wounded that Mr. Seward could have listened to such falsehood.  He does not hesitate to say what his opinions are with reference to home questions, and especially to that of reconstruction.

“These opinions,” he says, “in the privacy of my own household, and to occasional American visitors, I have not concealed.  The great question now presenting itself for solution demands the conscientious scrutiny of every American who loves his country and believes in the human progress of which that country is one of the foremost representatives.  I have