Haiti, wait a minute...

Burnished Rows of Steel, Chapter 5 Part 1:

The Executive Mansion
Washington City, District of Columbia
May, 1862
...
“The Spanish, apparently not content merely to take over Santo Domingo, are threatening war with Hayti; we of course, have encouraged the Haytians to resist to the utmost,” Seward said, with a grin of his own.

How did the Union encourage a government with which they had no diplomatic relations?

The United States recognized Hayti (Haiti) on July 12, 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln commissioned Benjamin F. Whidden was to act as a U.S. diplomatic representative to Hayti under the title “commissioner and consul-general.” ... Diplomatic relations and the American Legation in Port-au-Prince were established on October 1, 1862, when Commissioner and Consul General Benjamin F. Whidden presented his credentials to the Government of the Republic of Haiti.

Of course, it probably never occurred to TFSmith that the wonderful, egalitarian, totally 100% not racist United States would refuse to recognise a country because its leaders were black. He probably doesn't even know that the US similarly refused to recognise Liberia until September 1862.

(Needless to say, horrendously racist discriminatory aristocratic white supremacist Britain recognised Haiti in 1825, and Liberia on its independence in 1847.)