No two nations have ever had more intimate relationships than the United
States and Great Britain. Speaking the same language and owning a common
racial origin in large part, they have traded with each other and in
the same regions, and geographically their territories touch for three
thousand miles. During the nineteenth century the coastwise shipping of
the United States was often forced to seek the shelter of the British
West Indies. The fisherfolk of England and America mingled on the Grand
Bank of Newfoundland and on the barren shores of that island and of
Labrador, where they dried their fish. Indians, criminals, and game
crossed the Canadian boundary at will, streams flowed across it, and
the coast cities vied for the trade of the interior, indifferent to the
claims of national allegiance. One cannot but believe that this intimacy
has in the long run made for friendship and peace; but it has also
meant constant controversy, often pressed to the verge of war by the
pertinacious insistence of both nations on their full rights as they saw
them.
The fifteen years following Adams's encounter with Canning saw the
gradual accumulation of a number of such disputes, which made the
situation in 1840 exceptionally critical. Great Britain was angered at
the failure of the United States to grant her the right to police the
seas for the suppression of the slave trade, while the United States,
with memories of the vicious English practice of impressment before the
War of 1812, distrusted the motives of Great Britain in asking for this
right. Nearly every mile of the joint boundary in North America was in
dispute, owing to the vagueness of treaty descriptions or to the errors
of surveyors. Twelve thousand square miles and a costly American fort
were involved; arbitration had failed; rival camps of lumberjacks
daily imperiled peace; and both the Maine Legislature and the National
Congress had voted money for defense. In a New York jail Alexander
McLeod was awaiting trial in a state court for the murder of an American
on the steamer Caroline, which a party of Canadian militia had cut out
from the American shore near Buffalo and had sent to destruction over
Niagara Falls. The British Government, holding that the Caroline was at
the time illegally employed to assist Canadian insurgents, and that
the Canadian militia were under government orders justifiable by
international law, assumed the responsibility for McLeod's act and his
safety. Ten thousand Americans along the border, members of "Hunters'
Lodges," were anxious for a war which would unleash them for the
conquest of Canada. Delay was causing all these disputes to fester, and
the public mind of the two countries was infected with hostility.
Fortunately in 1841 new administrations came into power in both England
and the United States. Neither the English Tories nor the American Whigs
felt bound to maintain all the contentions of their predecessors, and
both desired to come to an agreement. The responsibility on the American
side fell upon Daniel Webster, the new Secretary of State. With less
foreign experience than John Quincy Adams, he was more a man of the
world and a man among men. His conversation was decidedly less ponderous
than his oratory, and there was no more desirable dinner guest in
America. Even in Webster's lightest moments, his majestic head gave the
impression of colossal mentality, and his eyes, when he was in earnest,
almost hypnotized those upon whom he bent his gaze. A leading figure
in public life for twenty-five years, he now attained administrative
position for the first time, and his constant practice at the bar had
given something of a lawyerlike trend to his mind.
The desire of the British Government for an agreement with the United
States was shown by the selection of Washington instead of London as the
place of negotiation and of Lord Ashburton as negotiator. The head of
the great banking house of Baring Brothers, he had won his title by
service and was, moreover, known to be a friend of the United States.
While in Philadelphia in his youth, he had married Miss Bingham of that
city, and she still had American interests. In the controversies before
the War of 1812 Lord Ashburton had supported many of the American
contentions. He knew Webster personally, and they both looked forward
to the social pleasure of meeting again during the negotiations. The
two representatives came together in this pleasant frame of mind and did
most of their business at the dinner table, where it is reported that
more than diplomatic conversation flowed. They avoided an exchange of
notes, which would bind each to a position once taken, but first came to
an agreement and then prepared the documents.
It must not be supposed, however, that either Ashburton or Webster
sacrificed the claims of his own Government. Webster certainly was a
good attorney for the United States in settling the boundary disputes,
as is shown by the battle of the maps. The territorial contentions of
both countries hung largely upon the interpretation of certain clauses
of the first American treaty of peace. Webster therefore ordered a
search for material to be made in the archives of Paris and London. In
Paris there was brought to light a map with the boundary drawn in red,
possibly by Franklin, and supporting the British contention. Webster
refrained from showing this to Ashburton and ordered search in London
discontinued. Ironically enough, however, a little later there was
unearthed in the British Museum the actual map used by one of the
British commissioners in 1782, which showed the boundary as the United
States claimed it to be. Though they had been found too late to affect
the negotiations, these maps disturbed the Senate discussion of the
matter. Yet, as they offset each other, they perhaps facilitated the
acceptance of the treaty.
Rapidly Webster and Ashburton cleared the field. Webster obtained the
release of McLeod and effected the passage of a law to prevent a similar
crisis in the future by permitting such cases to be transferred to a
federal court. The Caroline affair was settled by an amicable exchange
of notes in which each side conceded much to the other. They did not
indeed dispose of the slave trade, but they reached an agreement by
which a joint squadron was to undertake to police efficiently the
African seas in order to prevent American vessels from engaging in that
trade.
Upon the more important matter of boundary, both Webster and Ashburton
decided to give up the futile task of convincing each other as to the
meaning of phrases which rested upon half-known facts reaching back
into the misty period of first discovery and settlement. They abandoned
interpretation and made compromise and division the basis of their
settlement. This method was more difficult for Webster than for
Ashburton, as both Maine and Massachusetts were concerned, and each must
under the Constitution be separately convinced. Here Webster used the
"Red Line" map, and succeeded in securing the consent of these States.
They finally settled upon a boundary which was certainly not that
intended in 1782 but was a compromise between the two conceptions
of that boundary and divided the territory with a regard for actual
conditions and geography. From Passamaquoddy Bay to the Lake of the
Woods, accepted lines were substituted for controversy, and the basis of
peace was thus made more secure. The treaty also contained provision
for the mutual extradition of criminals guilty of specified crimes, but
these did not include embezzlement, and "gone to Canada" was for years
the epitaph of many a dishonest American who had been found out.
The friendly spirit in which Webster and Ashburton had carried on their
negotiations inaugurated a period of reasonable amity between their two
nations. The United States annexed Texas without serious protest; in
spite of the clamor for "fifty-four forty or fight," Oregon was divided
peacefully; and England did not take advantage of the war with Mexico.
Each of these events, however, added to American territory, and these
additions gave prominence to a new and vexing problem. The United
States was now planted solidly upon the Pacific, and its borders were
practically those to which Adams had looked forward. Natural and unified
as this area looks upon the map and actually is today, in 1850
the extent of territorial expansion had overreached the means of
transportation. The Great Plains, then regarded as the Great American
Desert, and the Rockies presented impossible barriers to all but
adventurous individuals. These men, uniting in bands for self-protection
and taking their lives in their hands, were able with good luck to take
themselves but little else across this central region and the western
barrier. All ordinary communication, all mail and all freight, must go
by sea. The United States was actually divided into two very unequal
parts, and California and Oregon were geographically far distant
colonies.
The ocean highroad belonged to the United States in common with all
nations, but it took American ships to the opposite ends of the earth.
No regular shuttle of traffic sufficient to weave the nation together
could be expected to pass Cape Horn at every throw. The natural route
lay obviously through the Caribbean, across some one of the isthmuses,
and up the Pacific coast. Here however, the United States would have
to use territory belonging to other nations, and to obtain the right of
transit and security agreement was necessary. All these isthmus routes,
moreover, needed improvement. Capital must be induced to do the work,
and one necessary inducement was a guarantee of stable conditions of
investment.
This isthmus route became for a time the prime object of American
diplomacy. The United States made in 1846 satisfactory arrangements with
the Republic of New Granada (later Colombia), across which lay the
most southern route, and in 1853 with Mexico, of whose northern or
Tehuantepec route many had great expectations; but a further difficulty
was now discovered. The best lanes were those of Panama and of
Nicaragua. When the discovery of gold in California in 1848 made haste
a more important element in the problem, "Commodore" Vanderbilt, at that
time the shipping king of the United States, devoted his attention to
the Nicaragua route and made it the more popular. Here however, the
United States encountered not only the local independent authorities
but also Great Britain. Just to the north of the proposed route Great
Britain possessed Belize, now British Honduras, a meager colony but with
elastic boundaries. For many generations, too, she had concerned herself
with securing the rights of the Mosquito Indians, who held a territory,
also with elastic boundaries, inconveniently near the San Juan River,
the Caribbean entrance to the Nicaraguan thoroughfare. From Great
Britain, moreover, must come a large portion of the capital to be
employed in constructing the canal which was expected soon to cut the
isthmus.
The local situation soon became acute. Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and
the Mosquitoes all claimed the mouth of the San Juan; Honduras and
Nicaragua, the control of the Pacific outlet. British diplomatic and
naval officers clashed with those of the United States until, in their
search for complete control, both exceeded the instructions which they
had received from home. The British occupied Greytown on the San Juan
and supported the Mosquitoes and Costa Rica. The Americans won favor
in Nicaragua and Honduras, framed treaties allowing transit and canal
construction, and proposed the annexation of Tigre Island, which,
commanded the proposed Pacific outlet.
To untie these knots, Sir Henry Bulwer was sent to Washington to
negotiate with John M. Clayton, President Taylor's Secretary of
State. Neither of these negotiators was of the caliber of Webster and
Ashburton, and the treaty which they drew up proved rather a Pandora's
box of future difficulties than a satisfactory settlement. In the first
place it was agreed that any canal to be constructed over any of the
isthmuses was to be absolutely neutral, in time of war as well as of
peace. Both nations were to guarantee this neutrality, and other nations
were invited to join with them. No other nations did join, however, and
the project became a dual affair which, owing to the superiority of the
British Navy, gave Britain the advantage, or would eventually have
done so if a canal had been constructed. Subsequently the majority of
Americans decided that such a canal must be under the sole control of
the United States, and the treaty then stood as a stumbling block in the
way of the realization of this idea.
More immediately important, however, and a great wrench to American
policies, was the provision that neither power "will ever erect or
maintain any fortifications commanding" the canal "or occupy, or
fortify, or colonize, or assume or exercise any dominion over... any part
of Central America." This condition violated Adams's principle that the
United States was not on the same footing with any European power in
American affairs and should not be bound by any self-denying ordinance,
and actually it reversed the principle against the United States. An
explanatory note accompanying the treaty recognized that this provision
did not apply to Belize and her dependencies, and Great Britain promptly
denied that it applied to any rights she already possessed in Central
America, including the Mosquito protectorate and certain Bay Islands
which were claimed by Great Britain as dependencies of Belize and by
Honduras as a part of her territory.
In vain did Webster, who succeeded Clayton, seek an agreement. His
term of office passed, and the controversy fell into the hands of Lord
Palmerston, the jingoistic spirit who began at this time to dominate
British foreign policy, and of James Buchanan, who, known to us as a
spineless seeker after peace where there was no peace, was at this time
riding into national leadership on a wave of expansionist enthusiasm.
Buchanan and Palmerston mutually shook the stage thunder of verbal
extravagance, but probably neither intended war. Poker was at this time
the national American game, and bluff was a highly developed art. The
American player won a partial victory. In 1856 Great Britain agreed
to withdraw her protectorate over the Mosquitoes, to acknowledge the
supremacy of Honduras over the Bay Islands, and to accept a reasonable
interpretation of the Belize boundary. Though this convention was never
ratified, Great Britain carried out its terms, and in 1860 Buchanan
announced himself satisfied.
The dreams of 1850, however, were not satisfied. A railroad was
completed across Panama in 1855, but no canal was constructed until
years after the great transcontinental railroads had bound California
to the East by bonds which required no foreign sanction. Yet the
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty remained an entangling alliance, destined to give
lovers of peace and amity many more uncomfortable hours.
During the Civil War other causes of irritation arose between the United
States and Great Britain. The proclamation of neutrality, by which the
British Government recognized the Confederacy as a belligerent, seemed
to the North an unfriendly act. Early in the war occurred the Trent
affair, which added to the growing resentment. * It was held to be a
violation of professed neutrality that Confederate commerce destroyers
were permitted to be built and fitted out in British yards. The
subsequent transfer of hundreds of thousands of tons of American
shipping to British registry, owing to the depredations of these
raiders, still further incensed the American people. It was in the midst
of these strained relations that the Fenian Brotherhood in the United
States attempted the invasion of Canada.
* See Stephenson, "Abraham Lincoln and the Union," in "The
Chronicles of America."
America laid claims against Great Britain, based not merely on the
actual destruction of merchantmen by the Alabama, the Florida, and other
Confederate vessels built in British yards, but also on such indirect
losses as insurance, cost of pursuit, and commercial profits. The
American Minister, Charles Francis Adams, had proposed the arbitration
of these claims, but the British Ministry, declined to arbitrate matters
involving the honor of the country. Adams's successor, Reverdy Johnson,
succeeded in arranging a convention in 1868 excluding from consideration
all claims for indirect damages, but this arrangement was unfavorably
reported from the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the Senate. It was
then that Charles Sumner, Chairman of the Committee, gave utterance
to his astounding demands upon Great Britain. The direct claims of
the United States, he contended, were no adequate compensation for its
losses; the indirect claims must also be made good, particularly those
based on the loss of the American merchant marine by transfer to the
British flag. The direct or "individual" American losses amounted to
$15,000,000. "But this leaves without recognition the vaster damage
to commerce driven from the ocean, and that other damage, immense and
infinite, caused by the prolongation of the war, all of which may be
called NATIONAL in contradistinction to INDIVIDUAL." Losses to commerce
he reckoned at $110,000,000, adding that this amount must be considered
only an item in the bill, for the prolongation of the war was directly
traceable to England. "The rebellion was suppressed at a cost of more
than four thousand million dollars...through British intervention the
war was doubled in duration;... England is justly responsible for the
additional expenditure." Sumner's total bill against Great Britain,
then, amounted to over $2,000,000,000; "everyone," said he, "can make
the calculation."
Had an irresponsible member of Congress made these demands, they might
have been dismissed as another effort to twist the British lion's tail;
but Charles Sumner took himself seriously, expected others to take him
seriously, and unhappily was taken seriously by a great number of his
fellow countrymen. The explanation of his preposterous demand appeared
subsequently in a memorandum which he prepared. To avoid all possible
future clashes with Great Britain, he would have her withdraw from the
American continents and the Western Hemisphere. Great Britain might
discharge her financial obligations by transferring to the United States
the whole of British America! And Sumner seems actually to have believed
that he was promoting the cause of international good will by this
tactless proposal.
For a time it was believed that Sumner spoke for the Administration, and
public opinion in the United States was disposed to look upon his
speech as a fair statement of American grievances and a just demand for
compensation. The British Government, too, in view of the action of the
Senate and the indiscreet utterances of the new American Minister in
London, John Lothrop Motley, believed that President Grant favored an
aggressive policy. Further negotiations were dropped. Both Governments,
nevertheless, were desirous of coming to an understanding, though
neither wished to take the first step.
Fortunately it happened that Caleb Cushing for the United States and
John Rose for Canada were then engaged at Washington in the discussion
of some matters affecting the two countries. In the course of informal
conversations these accomplished diplomats planned for a rapprochement.
Rose presented a memorandum suggesting that all questions in dispute
be made the subject of a general negotiation and treaty. It was at
this moment that Sumner came forward with his plan of compensation
and obviously he stood in the way of any settlement. President Grant,
however, already incensed by Motley's conduct and by Sumner's opposition
to his own favorite project, the annexation of Santo Domingo, now broke
definitely with both by removing Motley and securing Sumner's deposition
from the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. The way was
now prepared for an agreement with Great Britain.
On February 27, 1871, a Joint High Commission, composed of five
distinguished representatives from each Government, began its memorable
session at Washington. The outcome was the Treaty of Washington, signed
on May 8, 1871. The most important question--the "Alabama Claims"--was
by this agreement to be submitted to a tribunal of five arbitrators,
one to be selected by the President of the United States, another by the
Queen of Great Britain, a third by the King of Italy, a fourth by the
President of the Swiss Republic, and a fifth by the Emperor of Brazil.
This tribunal was to meet at Geneva and was to base its award on three
rules for the conduct of neutral nations: "First, to use due diligence
to prevent the fitting out,... within its jurisdiction, of any
vessel which it has reasonable ground to believe is intended to
cruise... against a Power with which it is at peace...; secondly, not to
permit... either belligerent to make use of its ports or waters as a base
of naval operations...; thirdly, to exercise due diligence in its own
ports and waters... to prevent any violation of the foregoing obligations
and duties."
Another but less elaborate tribunal was to decide all other claims which
had arisen out of the Civil War. Still another arbitration commission
was to assess the amount which the United States was to pay by way of
compensation for certain privileges connected with the fisheries. The
vexed question of the possession of the San Juan Islands was to be left
to the decision of the Emperor of Germany. A series of articles provided
for the amicable settlement of border questions between the United
States and Canada. Never before in history had such important
controversies been submitted voluntarily to arbitration and judicial
settlement.
The tribunal which met at Geneva in December was a body of distinguished
men who proved fully equal to the gravity of their task. Charles Francis
Adams was appointed to represent the United States; Sir Alexander
Cockburn, to represent Great Britain; the commissioners from neutral
States were also men of distinction. J. C. Bancroft Davis was agent for
the United States, and William M. Evarts, Caleb Cushing, and Morrison R.
Waite acted as counsel. The case for the United States was not presented
in a manner worthy of the occasion. According to Adams the American
contentions "were advanced with an aggressiveness of tone and
attorney-like smartness, more appropriate to the wranglings of a
quarter-sessions court than to pleadings before a grave international
tribunal." The American counsel were instructed to insist not, indeed,
on indemnity for the cost of two years of war, but on compensation
because of the transfer of our commerce to the British merchant marine,
by virtue of the clause of the treaty which read "acts committed by the
several vessels which have given rise to the claims generally known as
the 'Alabama Claims.'" British public opinion considered this contention
an act of bad faith. Excitement in England rose to a high pitch and the
Gladstone Ministry proposed to withdraw from the arbitration.
That the tribunal of arbitration did not end in utter failure was due to
the wisdom and courage of Adams. At his suggestion the five arbitrators
announced on June 19, 1872, that they would not consider claims for
indirect damages, because such claims did "not constitute, upon
the principles of international law applicable to such cases, good
foundation for an award of compensation, or computations of damages
between nations." These claims dismissed, the arbitrators entered into
an examination of the direct American claims and on September 14, 1872,
decided upon an award of fifteen and a half million dollars to the
United States. The Treaty of Washington and the Geneva Tribunal
constituted the longest step thus far taken by any two nations toward
the settlement of their disputes by judicial process.