Is it conceivable that Seward desired a war with the whole maritime world?
The date, April 24, antedates any deliberate proposal of a foreign war, whatever he may have been brooding, and in fact stamps the offer as part of that friendly policy toward Europe which Lincoln had insisted upon.

Seward's frenzy for a foreign war did not come to a head until the news had been received of England's determination to recognize Southern belligerency.

This was in the second week of May and on the twenty-first Despatch No.

10 marked the decline, not the beginning, of a belligerent policy, and by the President's orders.

By May 24 probably, by the twenty-seventh certainly, Seward had yielded and was rapidly beginning to turn to expressions of friendship[272].