Henry Adams ends his essay: "After the manner in which Russell received the advances of President Lincoln, no American Minister in London could safely act on any other assumption than that the British Government meant, at the first convenient opportunity, to revive the belligerent pretensions dormant since the War of 1812[257]." This analysis was published in 1891.

Still more briefly summarized it depicts an unfriendly, almost hostile attitude on the part of Russell and Lyons, deceit and evasion by the former, selfish British policy, and throughout a blind following on by France, yielding to Russell's leadership.

The American proposal is regarded merely as a simple and sincere offer to join in supporting an improved international practice in war-times.

But when Frederic Bancroft, the biographer of Seward, examined the negotiation he was compelled to ask himself whether this was all, indeed, that the American Secretary of State had in view.
Bancroft's analysis may be stated more briefly[258].
Seward's general instruction, Bancroft notes, bore date of April 24, nearly a month before any foreign Power had recognized Southern belligerent rights; it indicates "a plan by which he hoped to remove all excuse for such action." In despatches to Dayton, Seward asserted a twofold motive: "a sincere desire to co-operate with other progressive nations in the melioration of the rigours of maritime war," and "to remove every cause that any foreign Power could have for the recognition of the insurgents as a belligerent Power[259]." This last result was not so clear to Dayton at Paris, nor was the mechanism of operation ever openly stated by Seward.

But he did write, later, that the proposal of accession to the Declaration of Paris was tendered "as the act of this Federal Government, to be obligatory equally upon disloyal as upon loyal citizens." "It did not," writes Bancroft, "require the gift of prophecy to tell what would result in case the offer of accession on the part of the United States should be accepted[260]." Seward's object was to place the European nations in a position where they, as well as the United States, would be forced to regard Southern privateers as pirates, and treat them as such.