Chapter XVII…

Chapter XVII

General Grant was inaugurated on Thursday, the 4th of March, 1869, amid a great display of popular enthusiasm. All parties joined in it. The Republicans, who had been embarrassed by President Johnson's conduct for the preceding four years, felt that they had overcome a political enemy rather than a man whom they had themselves placed in power; and the Democrats, who had supported Johnson so far as was necessary to embarrass and distract the Republicans, were glad to be released from an entangling alliance which had brought them neither profit or honor. Contrary to the etiquette of the occasion, the incoming President was not escorted to the Capitol by his predecessor. The exceptions to this usage have been few. John Adams was so chagrined by the circumstances attending his defeat that he would not remain in Washington to see Mr. Jefferson installed in power; and the long-established hatred which General Jackson and John Quincy Adams so heartily sustained for each other forbade any personal intercourse between them. General Grant had conceived so intense a dislike of Johnson, by reason of the effort to place him in a false position in connection with the removal of Stanton, that he would not officially recognize his predecessor, even so far as to drive from the White House to the Capitol in the same carriage.

The Inaugural Address of the President was brief and characteristic. "I have," said he, "taken the oath of office without mental reservation, and with the determination to do to the best of my ability all that it requires of me. The responsibilities of the position I feel, but accept them without fear. The office has come to me unsought. I commence its duties untrammeled. I bring to it a conscientious desire and determination to fill it to the best of my ability, and to the satisfaction of the people." He declared that on all subjects he should have "a policy to recommend, but none to enforce against the will of the people. Laws are to govern all alike, --those opposed as well as those who favor them. I know of no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution." He was very emphatic upon the duty and necessity of upholding the public credit and paying the public debt. "Let it be understood," said he, "that no repudiator of one farthing of our public debt will be trusted in public place, and it will go far to strengthen our public credit, which ought to be the best in the world." "The question of suffrage," he said, "is one which is likely to agitate the public so long as a portion of the citizens of the Nation are excluded from its privileges in any State. It seems to me very desirable that this question should be settled now; and I entertain the hope and express the desire that it may be by the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution."

General Grant had never been in any way connected with the civil administration of Nation or State. The charge of being a mere military chieftain had been in vain preferred against some of his most illustrious predecessors; but with the possible exception of General Taylor, no President ever came to the office with so little previous experience in civil affairs. Washington's fame, prior to his accession to the Presidency, rested mainly on his victorious leadership of the Revolutionary army; but he had, as a young man, served in the Provincial Assembly of Virginia, had been a member of the Continental Congress, and had, after the close of his miliary career, presided over the convention that framed the Constitution. Jackson was chosen President on account of his campaign in the South-West, ending in his brilliant triumph at New Orleans; but his experience in civil life had already been long and varied. He entered Congress as a representative from Tennessee when Washington was President, took his seat in the Senate of the United States the day John Adams was inaugurated, and afterwards served as a judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee. All these civil duties had been performed before he received a military commission. After his stormy career in the army had ended, he was again sent to the Senate during the second term of President Monroe. President Taylor, like General Grant, had been simply a soldier; but the people remembered that his service in the Executive Chair was faithful, resolute, and intelligent; and they remembered also that some of the greatest military heroes of the world had been equally distinguished as civil rulers. Cromwell, William III., Frederick the Great, the First Napoleon, left behind them records of civil administration which for executive force and personal energy established a fame as great as they had acquired on the field of battle. The inexperience of General Grant had not therefore hindered his election, and left no ground for apprehension as to the successful conduct of his administration.

The President had so well kept his own counsels in regard to the members of his Cabinet that not a single name was anticipated with certainty. Five of the appointments were genuine surprises.

--Elihu B. Washburne, long the faithful friend of General Grant, was nominated for Secretary of State. He had just entered upon his ninth term as representative in Congress from Illinois, and resigned immediately after swearing in Mr. Blaine as Speaker,--a duty assigned to him as the oldest member of the House in consecutive service. He was elected to Congress in 1852, from the Galena district, and his first term began on the day Franklin Pierce was inaugurated President. His period of service was crowded with events of great magnitude, commencing with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and ending with the elevation to the Presidency of the chief hero in the great civil war, to which that repeal proximately led. During all these years Mr. Washburne was an aggressive, courageous, faithful representative, intelligent in all his actions, loyal to the Nation, devoted to the interests of his State.

--Jacob D. Cox, of Ohio, who had acquired credit in the war, and added to it by his service as Governor of his State, was nominated for Secretary of the Interior, and was universally considered to be an admirable selection. His thorough training and his intellectual strength fitted him for any station.

--E. Rockwood Hoar of Massachusetts was named for Attorney-General. His learning as a lawyer had been previously recognized by his appointment to the Supreme Bench of his State,--a bench always eminent for the legal ability and personal character of its members, and for the value of its decisions. Outside of his mere professional sphere, Judge Hoar was known as a man of generous culture, varied knowledge, and the keenest wit. In party relations he had originally been an anti-slavery Whig, and was prominent and influential in organizing the Republican party.

--John A. J. Creswell of Maryland was nominated for Postmaster-General. He was the best living representative of those loyal men of the Border States who had proved a tower of strength to the Union cause. He was the confidential friend, the eloquent eulogist, of Henry Winter Davis, and had by service in both House and Senate won general recognition as a man of ability and great moral courage.

These four appointments met with general approbation. If their names had not all been anticipated, they were nevertheless welcome to the great mass of the Republican party. Two other nominations created general astonishment. Alexander T. Stewart, the well-known merchant of New York, was named for Secretary of the Treasury; and Adolph E. Borie of Philadelphia, long known in that city as a man of probity and wealth, was named for Secretary of the Navy. No new nomination was made for Secretary of War, and the hope with many was that General Schofield might be continued in a place whose duties he had so faithfully and so successfully discharged.

The President was very anxious to have Mr. Stewart in his Cabinet, and was therefore surprised and chagrined to find, after he had been nominated, that under the law he was not eligible to the office of Secretary of the Treasury. In the Act establishing the Treasury department, passed at the first session of the First Congress under the Federal Government, it was provided that no person could be appointed secretary, assistant secretary, comptroller, auditor, treasurer, or registrar, who was "directly or indirectly concerned or interested in carrying on the business of trade or commerce." It was further provided that any person violating this Act should be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and upon conviction, fined three thousand dollars, removed from office, and forever thereafter rendered incapable of holding any position under the Government of the United States. General Grant frankly informed the Senate that he had ascertained Mr. Stewart's disability after the nomination, and suggested that "in view of these provisions of law and the fact that Mr. Stewart has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate, he be exempted, by joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress, from the operation of this law."

As soon as the President's message was read, Mr. Sherman of Ohio asked "unanimous consent to introduce a bill repealing as much of the Act of September 2, 1789, as prohibits the Secretary of the Treasury from being concerned in carrying on the business of trade or commerce; and providing instead that in no case shall he act on any matter, claim, or account in which he is personally interested." Mr. Sumner objected to the introduction of the bill, suggesting that it ought to be "most profoundly considered before it is acted upon by the Senate." These proceedings were on Saturday, March 6th. On Monday Mr. Sherman did not call up the bill, it having been ascertained in private conferences that the Senate was unwilling to pass it. On Tuesday General Grant withdrew the request, Mr. Stewart resigned, and Hon. George S. Boutwell was nominated and confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury.

Mr. Boutwell was at that time fifty-one years of age. He had enjoyed a large experience in public affairs. He had served seven years in the Massachusetts Legislature, had been Bank Commissioner, Secretary of the Board of Education, a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1853, and Governor of the Commonwealth. Under the National Government he had been Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and six years a representative in Congress. He was an industrious student, a strong debater, possessed of great capacity for work, and had always maintained a spotless reputation.

The surprises in connection with General Grant's cabinet were not yet ended. A week after the inauguration Secretary Washburne resigned, and a few days later was appointed Minister to France. He was succeeded in the State Department by Mr. Hamilton Fish of New York. Mr. Fish was a member of one of the old Knickerbocker families. He had inherited wealth, was of the highest social rank, and enjoyed in a marked degree the confidence and respect of his fellow-citizens. He was bred to the law, and as a young man took deep interest in political affairs, earnestly attaching himself to the fortunes of Mr. Clay in his contest against General Jackson, and having the great advantage of Mr. Webster's personal friendship. He had served in both branches of the New-York Legislature, was a representative from New-York City in the Twenty-eighth Congress, was chosen Governor of his State in 1848, and in 1851 succeeded Daniel S. Dickinson in the United-States Senate, where he served for a full term as the colleague of Mr. Seward. At the close of his senatorial service he was but forty-eight years of age, and by his own wish retired from all participation in political affairs, thought he heartily united with his fellow Republicans of New York in the effort to nominate Mr. Seward for the Presidency in 1860. It was therefore an almost equal surprise to the country that General Grant should call Mr. Fish from his retirement, and that Mr. Fish, at sixty years of age, should again be willing to enter the political field. His career as Secretary of State was fruitful in good works. He was throughout the eight years of his service devoted to his official duties, and it was his good fortune to be connected with public events of exceptional importance. He brought great strength to the Cabinet of General Grant, and added in many ways to the prestige and power of the administration.

The changes in the Cabinet continued. Immediately after Mr. Washburne's resignation as Secretary of State, General Schofield retired from the War Department, and was succeeded by General John A. Rawlins, who had been chief of staff to General Grant during some of his most important campaigns. General Rawlins was born in Galena, and was a personal friend of General Grant before the outbreak of the war. He was a lawyer, but had held no civil position, and entered the Cabinet with only a military experience. He was in ill health, and died in the following September, when General Sherman succeeded him as Secretary ad interim, and administered the affairs of the War Department until the appointment of General Belknap at the close of October.

Mr. Borie, though gratified with the compliment of being called to the Cabinet, had no aptitude or desire for public affairs. He urgently requested General Grant to accept his resignation, and in June, three months after his appointment, he was succeeded by Mr. George M. Robeson. Mr. Robeson was connected with some of the old families of New Jersey that became especially distinguished in the Revolutionary war. He received a thorough intellectual training in his youth, and graduated at Princeton College in 1847. He studied law in the office of the Chief Justice of his State, and came to the bar under the most favorable auspices. He began practice as soon as he had attained his majority, and rapidly advanced in his profession. At thirty-six years of age he was appointed Attorney-General of his State, and discharged the duties of that important office with an ability which justly added to his legal reputation. He has displayed great power in arguing questions of Constitutional Law. While engaged in the Attorney-Generalship he was appointed Secretary of the Navy by President Grant. He was then thirty-nine years of age, and beyond his legal learning was a man of literary taste and general knowledge of affairs. Mr. Fish and Mr. Robeson were the only members of General Grant's Cabinet appointed the first year of his administration who served throughout his Presidency.

General Grant would not resign his military commission in season for President Johnson to control the Army changes which would follow. There was no dispute about his immediate successor. Not only the rank, but the illustrious services, the high personal character, and the popular estimate of Lieutenant-General Sherman established his right to the promotion. But discussion arose in army circles and among the people as to the Lieutenant-Generalship. Those holding the rank of Major-General were five in number,--Henry W. Halleck, whose commission bore date August 19, 1861; George G. Meade, August 18, 1864; Philip H. Sheridan, November 8, 1864; George H. Thomas, December 15, 1864; and Winfield S. Hancock, July 26, 1866. The President had the right under the law to fill the office of Lieutenant-General by selection, and he was not bound even by usage to regard any claim based only upon seniority of commission.

General Halleck's distinction had not been won by service in the field. He was a graduate of West Point with a good record in the Mexican war. He was appointed Major-General at the outbreak of the Rebellion on account of his well-known ability and the presumption of his fitness for high command--a presumption which proved to be not well founded. Meade had gained his commission by the splendid victory of Gettysburg. Sheridan, besides earning his commission by his brilliant success in the valley of Virginia, had been personally and most impressively commended by President Lincoln: his success was in fact political as well as military, for it totally destroyed General McClellan as a candidate for the Presidency. Thomas had received his promotion on account of the great victory at Nashville, without which Sherman might have been seriously embarrassed in his march to the sea. General Hancock was commissioned after the war for general efficiency as a soldier and for heroism on many battle-fields. No task could be more invidious than to decide between officers of merit so marked. If Mr. Johnson could have had the opportunity, it was well known that he would appoint Thomas to succeed General Sherman; not so much from love as Thomas as from hatred of Sheridan,--a hatred which did honor to Sheridan. It was the fixed purpose of General Grant to defeat this; not from unfriendliness towards Thomas, but from a profound admiration of the military genius of Sheridan, quickened by a very strong personal attachment to him.

There was little discussion as to the relative claims of Sheridan and Thomas. Sheridan undoubtedly ranked Thomas in command, while Meade outranked both. General Meade however was not put in rivalry with these two distinguished officers. Not rated so high in military skill as at least four other commanders of the Army, it had happened to General Meade to meet the chief commander of the rebel army on the most critical battle-field of the war, and to win a victory which may well be termed the turning-point in the civil struggle. The only battle fought on the soil of a Northern State, it was quite natural that an extraneous interest should attach to Gettysburg, and it is almost the only field of the war which steadily attracts the visits of tourists and patriots alike.

In the end there was no doubt complete satisfaction in the Army and among the people at large with the promotion of Sheridan, which was ordered by President Grant the very day of his inauguration, directly after Sherman had been gazetted as General. There was at the same time a strong popular desire that the heroic achievements of Meade and Thomas should be marked by some form of National recognition; not, however, in any way to interfere with the just reward of Sheridan. The proposition to make three Lieutenant-Generals was canvassed in military and Congressional circles; but the general aversion to a large military establishment in time of peace prevented its favorable consideration, and these eminent soldiers received no attention or favor from Congress after their work had been crowned with success by the suppression of the Rebellion and the complete restoration of the Union. Thomas left Washington soon after President Grant's inauguration to take command of the Department of the Pacific. He was disappointed in his expectations and depressed in feeling. He died suddenly a year later (March 28, 1870) at the age of fifty-four. His death was noticed in a peculiarly impressive manner by a meeting of the two branches of Congress in the Hall of Representatives, to hear addresses commemorative of his character. General Meade, born a year earlier, survived him for a brief period,--dying November 6, 1872. He had evinced no dissatisfaction with the measure of his reward, and had been especially gratified by the privilege of maintaining his headquarters in Philadelphia (from which city he was originally appointed to the Army) and of passing his closing years on the soil of the noble State with which his fame is inseparably associated.

Peculiar circumstances surrounded the career of Thomas, imparting great interest and enlisting on his behalf a strong affection among the loyal people of the Nation. The popular regret that he had not been appropriately recognized by the National Government for his great services, was deepened by his untimely death. The regard usually felt by soldiers for their successful leader was exceptionally strong in his case, and manifested itself in many acts of personal devotion. He was commended to popular favor by his steadfast loyalty to the Union, when he was subjected to all the temptations and all the inducements which had led Lee and Johnston into the rebellion. He, like them, was born in Virginia, was reared in Virginia, was appointed to the army from Virginia; but in the hour of peril to the Government he remembered that he was a citizen and soldier of the United States, and had sworn to uphold the Constitution. How well he maintained his faith to his country is written in the history of great battles and great victories!

The grade of General of the Army, originally provided for Washington in 1799, was revived for the avowed purpose of honoring General Grant. As originally reported, the Act was to be exhausted with one appointment; but his provision was struck out and the grade was left open for General Sherman. It was then abolished, leaving to Sheridan the command of the Army as Lieutenant-General (after the retirement of General Sherman), and to his successor with the rank of Major-General, --thus ultimately establishing the command as it had existed before the war. The Act under which General Grant received his highest rank authorized the President "whenever he shall deem it expedient, to appoint a General of the Army of the United States." This Act passed July 25, 1866, and General Grant was immediately promoted. A year and a half later, when General Grant had broken all personal relations with President Johnson, there is little doubt that the latter would have interposed his discretion and failed to "deem it expedient to appoint a General of the Army of the United States." Fortunately his disposition at the time was friendly to General Grant, and led him to do with gladness what the loyal people so unanimously desired for the first soldier of the Nation.

The Forty-first Congress was the second to organize under the new law --March 4th 1869.(1) In the House James G. Blaine of Maine was elected Speaker, receiving 135 votes to 57 cast for Michael C. Kerr of Indiana. Of the two hundred and forty-three representatives on the roll, only ninety-eight had served in the preceding Congress. Among the one hundred and forty-five new members were some men who afterwards became widely and favorably known to the country.

--William A. Wheeler, who had been a member of the Thirty-seventh Congress, now returned from his native district, the most northerly of New York. He possessed admirable traits for a legislator; being a conscientious worker, intelligent in the business of the House, and implicitly trusted by his fellow-members. He was a lawyer and a man of affairs,--engaged at one time in banking, and for many years president of an important railroad company. He was well trained for legislative duty,--having served with distinction in both branches of the New-York Legislature and having been a member of the State Constitutional Convention of 1867. Not prominent as a debater, he yet spoke with directness and fluency, and was always listened to by the House. In all respects he was an admirable representative, watchfully caring for the public interests.

--His Democratic colleague, Clarkson Nott Potter, from the Westchester district, entered the House at forty-four years of age. The son of bishop Alonzo Potter and grandson of Peter Nott of Union College, he had the right by inheritance to the talents with which he was endowed. After leaving college he devoted himself to civil engineering, intending to adopt it as his profession, but his tastes soon inclined him to the law. He was admitted to the bar of New York in 1847 and in a few years acquired a practice from which he derived a handsome fortune. He was well adapted to Parliamentary life and promptly acquired high rank in the House. So unfailing were his courtesy and kindliness that his personal influence was as great with the Republicans as with the Democrats, among whom almost from the day of his entrance he was accorded a leading position.

--Noah Davis took his seat as representative from the strong Republican district of Monroe and Orleans in Western New York. He early attained distinction at the bar and had just left the Supreme Bench of his State, where he had served for eleven years with eminent credit. That high dignity had been conferred upon him before he was forty years of age. He did not find service in the House congenial and promptly abandoned all thought of a legislative career. This was sincerely regretted by his personal friends, who had knowledge of his ability and foresaw brilliant success for him should his ambition lead him to remain in Congress. His subsequent service on the Supreme Bench of New York has added to an already exalted reputation.

--Henry W. Slocum, who now came as a Democratic representative from the city of Brooklyn, was a graduate of West Point in the class of 1852, but remained in the Regular Army only about four years. After his resignation he studied law and was admitted to the bar in Syracuse. When the civil war broke out he joined the Volunteers and rose to high rank. He was appointed a Major-General and placed in command of a corps. His record as an officer was without blemish. Though allied with the Democrats, he was not a bitter partisan, and his course in the House was that of an enlightened and liberal man.

--Eugene Hale entered the House from Maine in his thirty-third year. He began the practice of law as soon as he attained his majority, and was almost immediately appointed county attorney,--a position which he held for nine years. His success at the bar was very marked. Preceding his election to Congress he served in the State Legislature and took a leading position in a body of able men. In the House of Representatives he rose rapidly in the estimation of his associates and was recognized as a sound and careful legislator, of great industry in the committee-room, and of decided ability as a debater. He exhibited an exceptional clearness of statement and power of analysis. He possesses the peculiar tact and aptitude which insure a successful career in a Parliamentary body. He has always been fond of books, and has constantly grown in knowledge and in mental discipline.

The Pennsylvania delegation received some valuable accessions. Washington Townsend of the Chester district brought to his public duties a large experience in affairs, a good standing at the bar, with the common sense, integrity, and trustworthiness found so generally in the Society of Friends.--John B. Packer, a man of steady character and strong parts, came from the Dauphin district.--John Cessna of the Bedford district had served many years in the Legislature of Pennsylvania, had been twice Speaker of the House of Representatives in that State, and had given much attention to Parliamentary law.--William H. Armstrong from the Lycoming district, was a graduate of Princeton, a lawyer, and extensively engaged in business.--James S. Negley, from one of the Pittsburg districts, had served in the Mexican war when only twenty years of age, and at the outbreak of the Rebellion was appointed a Brigadier-General in the Volunteer service. He joined General Sherman in the South-West in the autumn of 1861 and fought through the war, attaining an excellent reputation, and being rewarded with the rank of Major-General.--Daniel J. Morrell of the Johnstown district, who entered the preceding Congress, had grown rapidly in his standing in the House, and, next to Judge Kelley, was quoted as an authority upon all industrial questions.

George W. McCrary and F. W. Palmer of Iowa, Jacob A. Ambler and William H. Upson of Ohio, Horatio C. Burchard and John B. Hawley of Illinois, and Stephen W. Kellogg of Connecticut, were among the members who rose to rank and usefulness in the House.--Gustavus A. Finkelnburg, a young German who spoke English without the slightest accent, came from one of the St. Louis districts and rapidly gained the respect and confidence of all who were associated with him.--S. S. Burdette, a man of force and readiness as a debater, was one of his colleagues, as was also Erastus Wells, a Democrat of character and personality.

--Omar D. Conger of Michigan was a well-trained debater before he entered the House, and at once took a prominent position in its deliberations. He illustrated the virtue of persistence in its highest degree, and had the art of annoying his opponent in discussion to the point of torture.--John Beatty of Ohio, who had served a brief period in the preceding Congress, now appeared for a full term. He had an excellent record as a soldier, was a successful man of affairs, and was endowed with a firmness of purpose which could not be overcome or changed.--James N. Tyner of Indiana, before entering the House, had been an official of the Post-Office Department, and possessed a thorough acquaintance with the details of the postal system of the United States. His knowledge game him prominence at once in an important field of legislation, and aided him in promptly securing the attention and respect of the House.

--Thomas Fitch of Nevada was one of the noticeable figures on the Republican side of the House. Born and educated in New York, he was an editor in Wisconsin, a merchant in Missouri, a miner on the Pacific slope, an editor in San Francisco, a member of the California Legislature, a delegate in the Constitutional Convention of Nevada, reporter of the Supreme Court of that State, elected to Congress--all before he was thirty years of age. The singular variety of his career could hardly be paralleled outside of the United States. If his industry had been equal to his natural gifts he would have been one of the first orators in the country.

--Samuel S. Cox had served eight years in the House from Ohio (1857 to 1865) as the representative of the Columbus district. At the close of his last term he went to New York and engaged in the practice of law in company with Mr. Charlton Lewis, a man of brilliant attainments and one of the most accomplished graduates of Yale. But it was not possible for Mr. Cox to keep out of the political field. His talent for the stump, his ready wit, and, above all, his good nature and good sense, commended him to the New York Democrats, and he appeared in the Forty-first Congress from one of the city districts. He had been a model of industry. In all the pressure of Congressional life, to the duties of which he has given assiduous attention, he has devoted much time to literature and has published several original and entertaining books.

The Republican representatives from the South were in part natives of the States which sent them to Congress. Of this class Oliver H. Dockery of North Carolina was the leading man. Of those who had gone to the South after the war the most conspicuous were Lionel A. Sheldon of Louisiana, George C. McKee of Mississippi, Alfred E. Buck and Charles W. Buckley of Alabama. Horace Maynard fairly represented both classes, for although a native of Massachusetts he had lived in Tennessee for nearly a quarter of a century before the war, and was in all respects identified with the interests of the South, and to a large extent shared its prejudices. But he would not join in secession and turned from a supporter of slavery to be a radical Republican. He was a man of considerable ability and great moral worth. He was a valuable representative of his State after the war.

--The Worcester District of Massachusetts sent George Frisbie Hoar as its representative. He is the son of Samuel Hoar, who was honorably conspicuous in the early days of the anti-slavery struggle. His mother was a daughter of the illustrious Roger Sherman, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Hoar is a graduate of Harvard College and of the Dane Law School. For twenty years after admission to the bar he gave his time and his energy to professional pursuits, uninterrupted by any political engagements, except a single term in each branch of the Massachusetts Legislature. He began service in the House of Representatives in the full vigor of manhood in the forty-third year of his age, keenly alive to the great interests at stake in the Nation, admirably equipped and disciplined for his duties.

Eminent in his profession, successful in his political career, Mr. Hoar superadds accomplishments which neither the practice of law nor participation in public affairs can give. He has been a student of history, has cultivated a taste for literature, and has acquired a mass of information which proves that his superb private library has not been gathered in vain. In certain fields of learning Mr. Hoar has few peers. It may, indeed, be questioned whether his knowledge of our Colonial and Revolutionary history does not surpass that of any contemporary. Nor has he been content with the mere mastery of details, with the collection of facts and incidents. He has studied their relations and their interdependence, has analyzed their causes and comprehended their effects. Of New England in its Provincial period he could narrate "the rise of religious sects, the manners of successive generations, the revolutions in dress, in furniture, in repasts, in public amusements," even more accurately than Macaulay presented the same features of the same time in Old England. Mr. Hoar has studied the era with a devout enthusiasm for the character of the people,--a people from whom he is proud to claim his own descent, and whose positive virtues (even with the spice of acridness which distinguished them) are faithfully reproduced in his own person.

In truth Mr. Hoar is a Puritan, modified by the religious progress of two centuries, but still a Puritan--in manners, in morals, in deep earnestness, in untiring energy. He is independent without self-assertion, courageous without bravado, conscientious without Pharisaism. In intellectual power, amply developed and thoroughly trained, in force as a debater, both forensic and Parliamentary, Mr. Hoar is entitled to high rank. And his rank will steadily increase, for his mind is of that type which broadens and strengthens by conflict in the arena of discussion.

There was a feeling common to both sides of the House that a new political era had begun with the inauguration of President Grant. Perhaps no one could have accurately defined what was expected, but every one knew that the peculiar conflicts and troubles which had distinguished the years of Mr. Johnson's administration would not be repeated. General Grant's tendencies were liberal and non-partisan, though he recognized an honorable allegiance to the Republican party, which had placed him in power. Many of his personal friends were among the Democrats, and the first few months of his administration promised peace and harmony throughout the country. General Grant had never engaged in a partisan contention, had cast no vote since the outbreak of the war, and was therefore free from the exasperating influence of political controversy. The Democratic members of the House shared fully in the kindly feeling towards the new President. They were in a minority, but among them was a large proportion of able men--men of experience and great skill in debate. It is seldom that the opposition party has such a list of champions as appeared on the Democratic side of the House in the Forty-first Congress. Beck of Kentucky, Randall and Woodward of Pennsylvania, Marshall of Illinois, Brooks, Wood, Potter, Slocum, and Cox, of New York, Kerr, Niblack, Voorhees, and Holman of Indiana, Eldridge of Wisconsin, Van Trump and Morgan of Ohio, unitedly presented a strong array of Parliamentary ability. In different degrees they were all partisans, but of a manly type. Earnest discussion and political antagonism were not allowed by them to destroy friendly relations.

[(1) For complete membership of Forty-first Congress, see Appendix D.]

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Chapter XVIII

The changes in the Senate on the 4th of March, 1869, were notable in the character both of the retiring and incoming members.

--Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, entered the Senate for the fourth time. His first election in 1848, to fill out the term of ex-Governor Fairfield, was for three years. He resigned at the close of his second term to accept the governorship of his State, and midway in his third term he was promoted to the Vice-Presidency. From his earliest participation in public life Mr. Hamlin enjoyed an extraordinary popularity. Indeed, with a single exception, he was never defeated for any office in Maine for which he was a candidate. In the great Whig uprising of 1840 he was the Democratic candidate for Congress in the Penobscot district, and was beaten by Elisha H. Allen, afterwards widely known as Chief Justice of Hawaii and Minister from that kingdom to the United States. The candidates were warm personal friends before and after the contest.

--Matthew H. Carpenter succeeded Mr. Doolittle as senator from Wisconsin. He was forty-five years of age and had gained high reputation as a lawyer. He had become well known at the National Capital by his appearance in the Supreme Court, and from his employment by Secretary Stanton, during the war, in some government cases of importance. He was a native of Vermont, but his active career was in the North-West. His ambition as a lad was for the army; and he spent some time at West Point, but left without graduating, and devoted himself to the law. He completed his studies in the office of Mr. Choate in Boston, and began the practice of his profession in Wisconsin. Not long after his settlement in his new home, he lost his sight from over-use of his eyes in study, and for a period of three years was entirely blind. Judge Black, his intimate friend and eulogist, believed that this appalling calamity wrought Mr. Carpenter great good in the end: "It elevated, refined, strengthened all his faculties. Before that time much reading had made him a very full man: when reading became impossible, reflection digested his knowledge into practical wisdom. He perfectly arranged his storehouse of facts and cases, and pondered intently upon the first principles of jurisprudence."

His service in the Senate may rather be termed brilliant than useful. The truth is that Mr. Carpenter attempted to do what no man can accomplish: he tried to maintain his full practice at the bar, and discharge his full duties as senator at the same time. His strength was not equal to the double load. He was endowed with a high order of ability. If he had given all his time to the Senate, or all to the Bar, he would have found few peers in either field of intellectual combat. Aside from the weight of his argument, his manner of speech was attractive. He had an agreeable voice, precisely adapted in volume and tone to the Senate Chamber. He was affluent in language, graceful in manner, and, beyond all, was gifted with that quality--rare, indefinable, but recognized by every one--which constitutes the orator.

--Carl Schurz now took his seat as a senator from Missouri. He was born a Prussian subject, and had just completed his fortieth year. He had been well educated in the gymnasium at Cologne, and in a partial course at the university of Bonn. Though retaining a marked German accent, he quickly learned to speak English with fluency and eloquence, and yet with occasional idiomatic errors discernible when he words are printed. He took active part before German audiences, for Frémont, in the Presidential canvass of 1856, and began to make public addresses in English in 1858, when he espoused the cause of Mr. Lincoln in the famous contest with Douglas. He was widely sought as a speaker in both of Mr. Lincoln's contests for the Presidency, 1860 and 1864. In the latter year he was especially forcible, attractive, and effective. Subsequently he fell off, apparently in strength, certainly in popularity. As a lecturer he lost his hold upon the lyceum, and as a political orator he began to repeat himself, not merely in sense but in phrase. As a senator he did not meet the expectation of his friends. His failure was in large part due to the fact that he has not the power of speaking extempore. He requires careful and studious preparation, and has never attained the art of off-hand parliamentary discussion, which Colonel Benton likened to "shooting on the wing." So deficient is Mr. Schurz in this talent, that he has been known to use a manuscript in an after-dinner response, a style of speech whose chief merit consists in its spontaneity, with apt reference to incidents which could not possibly be foreseen.

The loss of Mr. Schurz's popularity--a popularity that was very marked in the earlier period of his career--is due in part to certain unsteady and erratic tendencies, some of which are in strong contrast with characteristics that are recognized as belonging in an especial degree to his race. Through all the centuries since Tacitus drew his vivid picture of the habits and manners of the Germans, their attachment, it might almost be called their passion, for home, has been a marked and meritorious feature of their character. To Fatherland first, and then to whatever country fate or fortune may draw them, their devotion is proverbial. This admirable trait seems altogether wanting in Mr. Schurz. When he left Germany he lived for three years in other countries of Europe,--first in Switzerland, then in France, then in England. In 1852 he came to America, and resided first in Pennsylvania, then in Wisconsin, then in Michigan, then in Missouri, and then in New York. He has not become rooted and grounded anywhere, has never established a home, is not of any locality or of any class, has no fixed relation to Church or State, to professional, political, or social life, has acquired none of that companionship and confidence which unites old neighbors in the closest ties, and give to friendship its fullest development, its most gracious attributes.

The same unsteadiness has entered as a striking feature in the public career of Mr. Schurz. The party he upheld yesterday met with his bitterest denunciations the day before, and to-morrow he will support the political organization of whose measures he is the most merciless censor to-day. He boasts himself incapable of attachment to party, and in that respect radically differs from the great body of his American fellow-citizens. He cannot even comprehend that exalted sentiment of honorable association in public life which holds together successive generations of men,--a sentiment which in the United States causes the Democrat to reverence the memory of Jefferson and Jackson and Douglas, which causes his opponent to glory in the achievements of Hamilton and Clay and Lincoln; a sentiment which in England has bound the Whigs in a common faith and common glory, from Walpole to Gladstone, and their more conservative rivals in a creed of loyalty whose disciples, from Bolingbroke to Beaconsfield, include many of the noblest of British patriots.

For these party associations, to whose influence, under the restraint of intelligent patriotism, the wisest legislation is due, Mr. Schurz has neither approbation nor appreciation. He aspires to the title of "Independent," and has described his own position as that of a man sitting on a fence, with clean boots, watching carefully which way he may leap to keep out of the mud. A critic might, without carping, suggest that it is the duty of an earnest man to disregard the bespattering which fidelity to principle often incurs, and that a beaten path to safe place for one's self is not an inspiring or worthy object of statesmanship.

Nor is Mr. Schurz's independence of party more pronounced or more complete than his independence of true American feeling. He has taken no pride in appearing under the simple but lofty title of a citizen of the United States. He stands rather as a representative German-American. He has made his native nationality a political resource, and has thereby fallen short of the full honor due to his adopted nationality. The large body of American citizens of German birth are intensely attached to their new home, and seek the most complete identification of themselves and their descendants with the development and destiny of the Great Republic. This is wise, and is in accordance with the best traditions and best aspirations of the Teutonic race. But to Mr. Schurz the Republic is not great! "This country," said he, in his Centennial lecture, "is materially great, but morally small."

--Allen G. Thurman came suddenly into prominence in 1867. He was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Ohio against Rutherford B. Hayes. For the three years immediately preceding his candidacy the Republican majorities in the State had averaged nearly 45,000, while in 1863 Vallandingham had been beaten by 101,699. Without premonition or visible cause, in an election for State officers only, and not for representatives in Congress, the total vote of 1867 proved to be larger than had ever been cast in the State, while the majority of General Hayes was less than three thousand. The Legislature was carried at the same time by the Democrats, and it proved that Mr. Thurman had lost the Governorship only to be promoted at once to the United-States Senate. The political revolution was as remarkable in character as it was sudden in time. Ohio had shown profound loyalty to the Union and an enthusiastic support of all measures for its preservation. Mr. Thurman had run counter to the principles and prejudices of a large number of the people of Ohio by his bitter hostility to the war, and yet he now received a larger popular vote than had ever before been given even to a Republican candidate, except in the year 1863 when so many Democrats repudiated Vallandingham.

It was at the full maturity of his powers, in the fifty-sixth year of his age, that Mr. Thurman took his seat in the Senate, March 4, 1869. He had been chosen a representative in Congress for a single term twenty-five years before, and had afterwards served a full term on the Supreme Bench of Ohio, the last two years as Chief Justice of the court. He was not therefore an untried man, but had an established reputation for learning in the law, for experience in affairs, for intellectual qualities of a high order. During the long interval between his service in the House and his installment in the Senate the relation of political parties had essentially changed. Mr. Thurman had changed with the times and with his associates. When he took his seat in the Twenty-ninth Congress the issue in regard to the extension of slavery in the Territories was beginning to enlist public interest. The first impulse of all the representatives from that extensive and opulent domain, which had been saved from the blight of slavery by the Ordinance of 1787, was to aid in extending a similar blessing to all other Territories of the United States. With the exception of Stephen A. Douglas and John A. McClernand of Illinois, and John Pettit of Indiana, all the Democratic representatives from the four North-western States (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan) voted for the anti-slavery proviso offered by Mr. Wilmot. Mr. Douglas, discerning the future more clearly than his party associates, realized that the chief strength of the Democracy must continue to lie in the South, and that an anti-slavery attitude on the part of the North-western Democrats would destroy the National prestige of the party and lead to its defeat. The Democratic supporters of the Wilmot Proviso had therefore choice of two paths: they must abandon their anti-slavery attitude or they must leave the party. Mr. Thurman adhered to his party. With this exception, his political course has been one of unswerving constancy and fidelity to all the extreme demands and severe creeds imposed upon the Democracy by the South. His Virginia birth, his rearing within the lines of the old Virginia Military reservation in Southern Ohio, his early associations with kindred and his friends, all contributed to his education as a Democrat. He naturally grew to strong influence with his associates, and when he came to the Senate was entitled to be considered the foremost man of his party in the Nation.

His rank in the Senate was established from the day he took his seat, and was never lowered during the period of his service. He was an admirable disciplined debater, was fair in his method of statement, logical in his argument, honest in his conclusions. He had no tricks in discussion, no catch-phrases to secure attention, but was always direct and manly. His mind was not pre-occupied and engrossed with political contests or with affairs of state. He had natural and cultivated tastes outside of those fields. He was a discriminating reader, and enjoyed not only serious books, but inclined also to the lighter indulgence of romance and poetry. He was especially fond of the best French writers. He loved Molière and Racine, and could quote with rare enjoyment the humorous scenes depicted by Balzac. He took pleasure in the drama, and was devoted to music. In Washington he could usually be found in the best seat of the theatre when a good play was to be presented or an opera was to be given. These tastes illustrate the genial side of his nature, and were a fitting complement to the stronger and sterner elements of the man. His retirement from the Senate was a serious loss to his party--a loss indeed to the body. He left behind him pleasant memories, and carried with him the respect of all with whom he had been associated during his twelve years of honorable service.

--William G. Brownlow, a quaint and eccentric man, took his seat as senator from Tennessee. He was in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and in impaired health. He was born in South-western Virginia in the wild and mountainous region adjacent to the borders of three other States. In early life he was a Methodist preacher of peculiar earnestness and force, with special adaptations to the people among whom his ministry lay. To his Church he always retained an intense attachment and devotion. In his later years he published a work on Methodism, under the strange title of "The Iron Wheel examined, and its False Spokes extracted." He came into public and general notice as the editor of the Knoxville Whig, which, though printed in the mountains of Tennessee when facilities of communication were restricted, attained wide circulation and influence. Its editor was known as "Parson" Brownlow, a sobriquet which attached to him through life. His paper was strongly anti-Jackson, warmly espoused the cause of Mr. Clay, and was distinguished in its editorials by a treatment of public questions so original that for nearly a quarter of a century it was known and quoted by the journals of the whole country.

But the odd and humorous editor, hitherto notorious for his partisan intensity and for the extravagance of his diction, was suddenly transformed into a moral hero. When the wild movement for secession swept over Tennessee, and carried with it even such men as John Bell, Brownlow took his stand for the Union. Threats could not move him, persecution could not break him, the prison had no terrors for him. His devotion to the National cause did not mean simply the waving of the flag and the delivery of patriotic orations; it meant cold and hunger, separation from his family, loss of property, possibly loss of life. He endured all, and faced his bloodthirsty enemies with a courage superior to their own. He won their respect by his brave resistance, and was finally released from jail and banished from the Confederacy. He came North, and remained until the progress of the National arms enabled him to return to his home. His patriotic devotion was rewarded by the boundless confidence of the loyal people of Tennessee. At the close of the war he was chosen Governor, and was now promoted to the Senate of the United States--too late for the exertion of his once strong mental qualities, but early enough to testify by his presence the triumph of loyalty and manhood in the bloody strife through which he had passed.

--Thomas F. Bayard, who entered the Senate at the opening of the Forty-first congress, was little known to the public, except as a member of a family which had been for a considerable period prominent in the political affairs of Delaware. His service in the Senate has been remarkable for one leading characteristic,--the power, or the accidental fortune, to create a public impression as to his career precisely the reverse of its actual history. The illustrations are many:--

In financial circles Mr. Bayard has been held as a fair and conservative exponent of sound views, a jealous guardian of the public credit. As matter of fact, he joined in a political crusade to enforce the payment of the National debt in depreciated paper money, and almost the first vote he ever gave in the Senate was against the bill declaring the National debt to be payable in coin. He voted to except specifically the fifteen hundred millions of 5-20 bonds from coin payment, argued earnestly in favor of taxing the bonds of the Government, refused to support the bill for the resumption of specie payments, and united with others in a National movement to repeal the Act after it had been for a considerable period in operation.

On the Southern question, in all its phases, Mr. Bayard has been proclaimed by his supporters as calm, considerate, and just. In truth he has gone as far as the most rancorous rebel leader of the South, touching the Reconstruction laws and the suffrage of the negro. In the Forty-second Congress, in an official report on the condition of the South, Mr. Bayard joined with the minority of the committee in the distinct avowal that negro suffrage would practically cease when the Republican party should be defeated. These are the exact words in which Mr. Bayard concurred: "But whenever that party (the Republican) shall go down, as go down it will at some time not long in the future, that will be the end of the political power of the negro among white men on this continent." When Mr. Bayard united with other Democrats in this declaration the right of the negro to vote had already been protected by an Amendment to the Constitution. His language was, therefore, a distinct threat to override the Constitution in order to strip the negro of the political power which the Constitution had conferred upon him. This threat was so serious and so lawless that it should have received more attention than was bestowed upon it when first put forth. It was not uncommon to hear brazen defiance of Constitutional obligations from Southern speakers addressing Southern audiences for mere sensational effect. But his was an announcement made in the Senate of the United States, not hastily and angrily in the excitement of debate, but with reflection and deliberation, in an official report which had been studied for months and subscribed to in writing by Mr. Bayard.

The common apprehension assigns to Mr. Bayard a high standing at the bar and positive rank as a man of culture. As a lawyer Mr. Bayard has doubtless cherished no ambition as he has attained no prominence, while in point of education he never enjoyed facilities beyond those of the common school or the private academy. Originally destined for mercantile life, he did not receive in his early years the benefit of liberal training; nor did his tastes lead him into any special personal pursuit of literature or science, or even into a close, careful study of the history of his own country,--a study which would have exempted his public career from some of his more notable mistakes.

For obvious reasons Mr. Bayard has acquired exceptional popularity in the South, and especially with Southern men in Congress. When those who participated in the Rebellion were freed from their disabilities and regained their old seats in the Senate and House, they found Mr. Bayard in position, and they naturally accepted him as a leader. It was fresh in the memory of these men that Mr. Bayard's friendship for them had been constant and unremitting; that even in the fatal folly and wrong of secession in 1861 they had his sympathy, to such an extent that he advocated in a public speech the policy of permitting them to separate peacefully from the Union. He spoke earnestly against the use of the National power to hold these States to their duty as members of a common government, and expressed the belief that it would be better to have two republics, than to have one strong enough to command respect for its laws and to enforce obedience at the cannon's mouth. The avowal of these opinions north of the National Capital was greater aid to the Southern conspirators than if Mr. Bayard had openly joined their councils or expended his valor in the ranks of their army.

It was evidently not deemed prudent by Mr. Bayard to repeat his disunion views. After Fort Lafayette, at Mr. Seward's command, had opened its doors to men who publicly expressed disloyal sentiments in the North, Mr. Bayard gave to the rebellion the benefit of his silence. The great struggle went on; myriads of patriots stepped to the ranks of the Union Army; the people were fired with love of country; from every loyal platform and every loyal pulpit rang out words of faith and hope for the cause and for its brave defenders. But Mr. Bayard's silence was unbroken even by the thunders of Gettysburg almost within sound of his home, or by the closing and complete triumph of the National arms. He had spoken words of sympathy and encouragement to the enemies of the Union. He never uttered a word of cheer for its friends.(1)

The organization of Governor Fenton's friends in New York, which had failed to secure him the nomination for Vice-President at the Chicago Convention, was strong enough to elect him to the Senate, even against so worthy a competitor as Governor Morgan, who had the advantage of being in the seat. It was a strong attestation of Mr. Fenton's strength in his own State.--William A. Buckingham, whose distinction as War Governor of Connecticut reached far beyond the limits of his State, was now promoted to a seat in the Senate.--Daniel D. Pratt, afterwards Commissioner of Internal Revenue, appeared from Indiana as the successor of Thomas A. Hendricks.--John Scott, whose father had been a representative in Congress, succeeded Mr. Buckalew as senator from Pennsylvania. Mr. Scott had taken little part in politics, and had been altogether devoted to his profession as a lawyer; but his service in the Senate was distinguished by intelligence and fidelity. No man wrought so effectively in exposing the condemnation of public opinion the evil work of the Ku-Klux organizations in the South. At the close of his term he returned to the practice of law, and was honored by the appointment of chief solicitor to one of the largest corporations in the world--the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.--Thomas C. McCreery took his seat as senator from Kentucky. Originally a lawyer, he had for many years devoted his attention to farming. He had acquired prominence in his party by carefully preparing and accurately committing to memory a political oration each year, which he delivered at the Democratic State Convention. He was an upright, good-natured man, with extreme Democratic views always amiably expressed.--John P. Stockton, who was deprived of his seat three years before under circumstances which seemed to impose a hardship upon him, now entered with undisputed credentials from New Jersey.

The senators first admitted from the reconstructed States were about equally divided between native Southerners and those who had gone from the North at the close of the war; but all were Republicans except one in Virginia and one in Georgia. John F. Lewis and John W. Johnston were natives of the state, belonging to old and influential families. The former was a Republican; the latter a Democrat.--In North Carolina, John Pool was an old Whig, prominent in the politics of his State before the war. Joseph C. Abbot was from New Hampshire, a Brigadier-General in the Union Army.--Thomas J. Robertson of South Carolina was a native of the State, and Frederick A. Sawyer was from Massachusetts, but had lived in the State since 1859.--Joshua Hill and Thomas M. Norwood of Georgia were both Southern men by birth. Mr. Hill was a representative in the Thirty-fifth and Thirty-sixth Congresses, and when the State seceded refused to resign. He joined the Republican party after the war. Mr. Norwood entered the Senate as a Democrat.--Thomas W. Osborn and Abijah Gilbert, senators from Florida, were both from the North, the former a native of New Jersey, the latter of New York.--The senators from Alabama, Willard Warner and George E. Spencer, the former born in Ohio, the latter in New York, were both officers of the Union Army.--Hiram R. Revels and Adalbert Ames were the senators from Mississippi. The former was born in the South. The latter was born in Maine, was a graduate of West Point and became highly distinguished as an officer in the war.--John S. Harris and William Pitt Kellogg were senators from Louisiana. The former was a native of New York. The latter was born in Vermont, but had long resided in Illinois. He served in the Union Army with the rank of Colonel in the Donelson and Shiloh campaigns under General Grant.--The senators from Texas, Morgan C. Hamilton and J. W. Flanagan, were both natives of the State and long domiciled in Texas.--Of the Tennessee senators one was born in the South and one in the North.

The representation of the Southern States being complete in both Houses before the close of the first session of the Forty-first Congress, an impartial estimate could be made of the strength and capacity of the men who were opprobriously designated in the South either as Carpet-baggers or Scalawags. It was soon ascertained that the unstinted abuse heaped upon them as a class was unjust and often malicious. The large proportion, and notably those who remained in Congress beyond two years, were men of character and respectability, in many cases indeed of decided cleverness. But their misfortune was that they had assumed a responsibility which could be successfully discharged only by men of extraordinary endowments. If any considerable number of them had been gifted in a high degree as orators, they would have had great advantages among a people who rate mere eloquence above its true value. If any of them had been men of large fortune (invested in Southern property), and able to make lavish expenditure, they could have produced a deep impression upon a people more given to admiration of mere wealth than the people of the North. But of the entire list of Republican senators and representatives from the reconstructed States, there was not one who was regarded as exceptionally eloquent or exceptionally rich; and hence they were compelled to enter the contest without personal prestige, without adventitious aid of any kind. They were doomed to a hopeless struggle against the influence, the traditions, the hatred of a large majority of the white men of the South.

The Fifteenth Article of Amendment to the Constitution, now pending and about to be adopted, would confirm the colored man's elective franchise and add the right of holding office. One of the senators just admitted from Mississippi in advance of the ratification of the amendment (Hiram R. Revels) was a colored man of respectable character and intelligence. He sat in the seat which Jefferson Davis had wrathfully deserted to take up arms against the Republic and become the ruler of a hostile government. Poetic justice, historic revenge, personal retribution were all complete when Mr. Revels' name was called on the roll of the Senate. But his presence, while demonstrating the extent to which the assertion of equal rights had been carried, served to increase and stimulate the Southern resistance to the whole system of Republican reconstruction. Those who anxiously and intelligently studied the political situation in the South could see how unequal the contest would be and how soon the men who organized the rebellion would again wield the political power of their States--wield it lawfully if they could, but unlawfully if they must; peaceably if that would suffice, but violently if violence in their judgment became necessary.

President Grant had scarcely taken a step in the duty of administration before he realized that as soon as the current session of Congress should terminate his hands would be completely tied, respecting the removal and appointment of Federal officers, by the Tenure-of-office Act. With his prompt and determined mode of procedure he caused it to be known to Republican senators and representatives that so long as the statute was in force he would simply stand still in the matter of appointments and permit the incumbents to remain in position, except where flagrant misconduct should call for suspension under the law. This position was startling to all those who were desirous of securing the appointment of political favorites, who in a party sense had earned their reward and were waiting to receive it. There was a general desire to remove the men whom President Johnson had forced into office before the restraining Act was passed. But General Grant was resolved that neither he nor the members of his Cabinet would go through the disagreeable and undignified process of filing reasons for suspending an officer, when in fact no reason existed aside from obnoxious political opinion. The Republican members of both branches quickly perceived that tying the hands of a hostile President like Andrew Johnson afforded more satisfaction than the same process applied to a friendly President like General Grant.

It was therefore determined by the Republicans to escape from their embarrassment, even at the expense of an inconsistency which could but prove humiliating to them. On the 9th of March, just five days after Andrew Johnson had left the Presidency, General Butler introduced in the morning hour of the House, a bill of two lines, absolutely repealing the Tenure-of-office Act, for a constructive violation of which he had ten months before urged the impeachment of President Johnson and his expulsion from office. The standing committees had not yet been announced; and therefore without reference or a moment's debate or consideration of the measure, General Butler demanded the previous question, which was sustained, and under a call of the ayes and noes, the bill was passed by 138 to 16. The small minority was composed of Republicans. The Democrats, who had solidly voted against the Tenure-of-office bill two years before, voted now with entire consistency for its repeal, and with them also, in solid ranks, voted the men who, in the preceding Congress, had clamored most loudly for Johnson's decapitation.

When the bill reached the Senate, there was a disposition on the part of some leading members of that body to pass it as promptly as it had been passed by the House. Mr. Morton urged that it be put on its passage without referring it; but the Senate was not prepared for such haste, and on motion of Mr. Trumbull, the Bill was sent to the Judiciary Committee. That Committee reported it without delay to the Senate, with an amendment in the form of a substitute. The House bill was a simple repeal in the fewest possible words. The Judiciary Committee now proposed that instead of an absolute repeal, the Tenure-of-office Act "be, and the same is, hereby suspended until the next session of Congress."

This was a lame and impotent conclusion, and did not commend the support or even the respect of the Senate. Mr. Thurman, a member of the committee that reported it, made haste to announce that he had not approved it. He treated the proposition for suspension as a practical confession that the Tenure-of-office Act "is to be enforced when it will have no practical effect, and is not to be enforced when it would have practical effect." The chief defenders of the proposition to suspend the Act were Mr. Trumbull, Mr. Edmunds, and Mr. Schurz. Mr. Edmunds, pressed by Mr. Grimes to furnish a good reason for suspending the Act, replied that "owing to the peculiar circumstances that have attended the last administration, it is desirable that there should be an immediate and general removal of the office-holders of the country as a rule; and as an agency of that removal, subject to our approval when we meet again in confirmation of their successors, these bad men being put out, we are willing to trust this Executive with that discretion."

Coming from a senator of the United States, this declaration was regarded as extraordinary. The "bad men" to whom Mr. Edmunds referred were the appointees of President Johnson, and every one of them had been confirmed by the Senate of the United States when the Republicans had more than two-thirds of the body. If these appointees were "bad men," why, it was pertinently and forcibly asked by the aggrieved, did not Mr. Edmunds submit proof of that fact to his Republican associates and procure their rejection? He knew, the accused men declared, as much about their character when their names were before the Senate, as he knew now when he sought, behind the protection of his privilege, to brand them with infamy. To permit them to be confirmed in the silence and confidence of an executive session, and then in open Senate, when their places were wanted for others, to describe them as "bad men," seemed to them a procedure not to be explained on the broad principles of statesmanship, or even on the common law of fair dealing.

Mr. Schurz was as anxious as Mr. Edmunds to give the President full power to remove the office-holders. He declared that he "would be the last man to hamper the President in the good work of cleaning out the Augean stable, which he is now about to undertake." He was sure that "the rings must be broken up," that "the thieves must be driven out of the public service." He eulogized President Grant as especially fit for the work. "We have," said he, "a President who is willing to do what we and the country desire him to do." Mr. Schurz expressed at the same time his "heartfelt concern" regarding a rumor that the President was very sensitive touching the proposition reported by the Judiciary Committee, and that "he will make no removals unless the civil-tenure bill be repealed instead of being suspended." Mr. Schurz was sure that "on all the great questions of policy the President and Congress heartily agree," and he condemned "the attempts made to sow the seeds of distrust and discord." It is somewhat amusing as well as instructive to recall that in a little more than two years from that time, when nearly all the appointees of President Johnson had been turned out of office, Mr. Schurz began work again at "the Augean stable," now locating it in the Grant administration, and demanding that it should be cleansed, that "the rings" should be broken up, that "the thieves must be driven out of the public service." He imputed to President Grant's administration even greater corruption than he had charged upon the administration of his predecessor, and from his ever-teeming storehouse lavished abuse with even a more generous hand upon the one that he had upon the other.

The amendment of the Judiciary Committee providing for a suspension of the law until Congress should meet again--a period of about eight months--was so objectionable that it won no substantial support from senators. There was something so baldly and shamelessly partisan in the proposition to suspend the Act just long enough to permit President Grant, without obstruction or encumbrance, to remove the Democrats whom President Johnson had appointed to office, that the common instinct of justice, and even of public decency, revolted. The Tenure- of-office Act was either right or wrong, expedient or inexpedient, Constitutional or unconstitutional, and it was easy to see that men could honestly differ as to its character in these respects. But it was impossible to comprehend how a candid legislator could maintain the Constitutionality and expediency of the Act, and then propose to suspend it for that specific period of General Grant's administration, when, if needed at all, it would be most needed. Within eight months next ensuing the President would probably make more removals and appointments than for the remainder of his term, and it was just for this period that Mr. Trumbull, Mr. Edmunds, and Mr. Schurz urged that the law be made inoperative,--inoperative in order that removals of Democratic office-holders for good cause, and for no cause except that they were Democrats, might in every way be expedited.

It was soon perceived that if the question before the Senate should be reduced to a choice between suspension of the Act or to total repeal, there was a danger that the majority would vote for repeal. To avert that result, Mr. Edmunds asked to withdraw the proposition, and it was accordingly recommitted to the Judiciary Committee on the 23d of March. On the next day Mr. Trumbull reported a substitute for the existing law, and the Senate, after brief discussion, agreed to it by ayes 37, noes 15. The amendment seemed to be ingeniously framed to destroy the original Act and yet appear to maintain it in another form. The senators apparently wished to gratify General Grant and promote their own purposes by rendering the removal of President Johnson's appointees easy, and at the same time avoid the inconsistency involved in the repeal of a law for whose enactment they had so strenuously contended only two years before.

The first modification of the original Act, as embodied in the Senate amendment, was to relieve the President altogether from the necessity of filing charges against an officer whom he desired to suspend. In the second place, all provisions of the original law authorizing the Senate to pass specific judgment on the propriety of the suspension and declaring that if the Senate did not approve the President's act the person suspended should "forthwith" resume his office, were now abandoned. The President was left at liberty to suspend any officer without assigning a cause, and to nominate his successor. If the nomination should be rejected, another might be made, and another, and another, until the Senate should confirm. If the Senate should stubbornly reject all the nominations and the session of Congress end without a confirmation, then, in that remote and highly improbably event, the suspended officer, according to the proposed law, should be restored to his place. The substance of the original Act was gone, but the Senate sought shelter from its record of inconsistency under the small shadow of this distant and hypothetical restoration of the suspended officer.

But the House would not consent that even the small shadow should remain. Representatives well knew that it was not agreeable to President Grant that any authority should be retained by the Senate whereby an obnoxious officer could in any event be kept in place against his wishes, and they were in hearty accord with him. The House had always been jealous of the power of the Senate over appointments to office, and but for the desire to punish President Johnson the representatives would never have consented to the Tenure-of-office Act. They were now determined, if possible, to strip the Senate of its great aggrandizement of power. The feeling of many members of the House was to sustain an amendment offered by General Logan directing that "all civil offices, except those of judges of the United-States courts, filled by appointment before the 4th of March, 1869, shall become vacant on the 30th of June, 1869." This would have been a wholesale removal beyond any scheme attempted since the organization of the Government; but it was not deemed wise even to bring it to a test, and the House contented itself with the rejection of the Senate amendments by a decisive vote.

The subject was then referred to a Conference Committee, consisting of Messrs. Trumbull, Edmunds, and Grimes of the Senate, and Messrs. Benjamin F. Butler, C. C. Washburn, and John A. Bingham of the House. The Bill reported by this committee to both Houses is the present law on the subject.(2) Mr. Trumbull, in making the report, gave this assurance to the Senate: "As the Committee of Conference report the bill, the suspended officer would go back at the end of the session unless somebody else was confirmed in the place." On the same day in the House, in answer to a pressing question from Mr. Hoar of Massachusetts, Mr. Bingham expressed the opinion that "no authority without the consent of the President can get a suspended officer back into the same office again." General Butler, another of the House conferees, said: "I am free to say that I think this amendment upon the question of removal and re-instatement of officers leaves the Tenure-of-office Act as though it had never been passed, so far as the power of the President over the Executive officers is concerned." It was certainly an extraordinary spectacle, without precedent or parallel, that the report of the conference should have one meaning assigned to it in the Senate, and a diametrically opposite meaning assigned to it in the House, and that these antagonistic meanings should be made on the same day, and put forth by the conferees whose names were attached to the report. Such a legislative proceeding cannot be too strongly characterized.

But the popular understanding among Democrats and Republicans alike was that the Tenure-of-office Act had been destroyed, and that Mr. Trumbull's technical construction of the amendment was made merely to cover the retreat of the Senate. By the new enactment, the provisions which had led to the dispute between President Johnson and Congress were practically extirpated; and thus a voluntary confession was recorded by both Senate and House that they had forced an issue with one Executive on an assumed question of right, which they would not attempt with his successor. The members of the present House who in the preceding Congress had voted to impeach the President, and the great mass of the senators who voted to convict him, now voted to blot out the identical clause of the Act under which they held the President to be deserving of removal for even venturing to act upon his own fair construction of its meaning. With all the plausible defenses that can be made for this contradictory course, the fact remains that the authors of the law precipitately fled from its enforcement the moment a President with whom they were in sympathy was installed in office. They thereby admitted the partisan intent that had governed the enactment, just as they admitted the partisan intent that now led to the practical repeal. Casting off all political disguises and personal pretenses, the simple truth remains that the Tenure-of-office Law was enacted lest President Johnson should remove Republican office-holders too rapidly; and it was practically repealed lest President Grant should not remove Democratic office-holders rapidly enough.

While President Grant did not find himself in the least degree embarrassed by the Tenure-of-office Act as amended, he did not surrender his hostility to its existence in any form whatever. In his first annual message (nine months after the legislation just narrated) he earnestly recommended its total repeal. "It could not," said the President, "have been the intention of the framers of the Constitution, when providing that appointments made by the President should receive the consent of the Senate, that the latter should have the power to retain in office persons placed there by Federal appointment against the will of the President. The law is inconsistent with a faithful and efficient administration of the Government. What faith can an Executive put in officials forced upon him, and those, too, whom he has suspended for reason? How will such officials be likely to serve an Administration which they know does not trust them?"

The President was evidently of the opinion that the doubtful and contradictory construction of the Act as amended left the whole matter (as described by Mr. Niblack of Indiana when the Committee report was under consideration) "in a muddle;" with the inevitable result that certain parties would be deceived and misled by the peculiarly tortuous language which the Senate insisted upon introducing in the amendment. The House had acted throughout in a straightforward manner, but the most lenient critic would be compelled to say that the course of the Senate was indirect and evasive. That body had evidently sought to gratify the wishes of President Grant, on the one hand, and to preserve some semblance of its power over appointments, on the other. It was freely predicted at the time that so long as the Senate and the President were in political harmony nothing would be heard of the Tenure-of-office Act, but that when the political interests of the Executive should come in conflict with those of the Senate there would be a renewal of the trouble which had characterized the relations of President Johnson and the Senate, and which led to the original Tenure-of-office Act with its positive assertion of senatorial power over the whole question of appointment and removal.

William Pitt Fessenden took part in the first session of Congress under the Presidency of General Grant. It was his last public service. On the eighth day of the following September (1869) he died at his residence in Portland, Maine, in the sixty-third year of his age. He was one of the many victims of that strange malady which, breaking out with virulence at the National Hotel in Washington on the eve of Mr. Buchanan's inauguration (1856-57), destroyed many lives. Its deadly poison undermined the constitutions of some who apparently recovered health. Of these Mr. Fessenden was one. He regained the vigor that carried him through those critical years of senatorial work on which his fame chiefly rests; yet he always felt that he had been irreparably injured by the insidious attack. The irritability and impatience which he occasionally displayed in public and in private came undoubtedly from suffering which he bore with heroic endurance through the years when his public burdens were heaviest.

--His death was announced by his successor, Lot M. Morrill, who delivered an appreciate eulogy upon his character and public service. Mr. Sumner bore testimony to the greatness of his career in the Senate. "All that our best generals were in arms, Mr. Fessenden was in the financial field," said the Massachusetts senator. Describing Mr. Fessenden's "extraordinary powers in debate--powers which he commanded so readily," Mr. Sumner said, "His words warmed as the Olympic wheel caught fire in the swiftness of the race. If on these occasions there were sparkles which fell where they should not have fallen, they cannot be remembered now." This reference was well understood. Mr. Fessenden and Mr. Sumner were never cordial. Members of the same party, supporters of the same general measures, with perfect appreciation and with profound respect each for the other, it seemed as impossible to unite them cordially, as in earlier days it was to unite Adams and Hamilton in the ranks of the Federalists.

--Mr. Fessenden had maintained a brilliant reputation for a long period. When Mr. Webster, at the height of his senatorial fame, made his celebrated tour through the Middle and Western States in 1837, he selected Mr. Fessenden, a young man of thirty, as his traveling companion,--selected him for his brilliancy, when he had choice of the brilliancy of all New England. Mr. Garrett Davis, a senator from Kentucky, in his eulogy of Mr. Fessenden, referred to Mr. Webster's visit to that State, and described the warm greeting which Mr. Fessenden received, the deep impression made upon him by Mr. Clay's hospitality at Ashland, and the impression which the young man made upon Mr. Clay, with whom he thenceforward became a marked favorite. Mr. Davis and Mr. Fessenden met not long after as members of the House in the Twenty-seventh Congress (under Harrison and Tyler). "Mr. Fessenden at that time," said Mr. Davis, "was not only a young man of eminent ability and attainments, but he was warm-hearted, frank, honorable, eminently conscientious. His health was then good, and he was always bright and genial: sometimes he showed the lambent play of passion and of fire."

--His eulogies in both branches of Congress were many. Mr. Hamlin, long his colleague, had been a student in his law office, and placed him in the front rank of American senators. Mr. Trumbull presented him as he was in 1855, when they first met in a Senate of sixty-two members, of whom only fifteen were Republicans. Mr. Williams of Oregon described him as "towering in mind among those around him, like Saul in form among his countrymen." In the House, Mr. Lynch, from his own city, gave the home estimate of Mr. Fessenden's character. Mr. Peters eulogized him for his eminent professional rank; and Mr. Hale described him as a man "who never kept himself before the people by eccentric forces, and went in quest of no popularity that had to be bought by time-serving." Words of tenderness and affection were spoken of him by men whose temperament was as reserved and undemonstrative as his own. --"A truer, kinder heart," said Henry B. Anthony, "beats in no living breast than that which now lies cold and pulseless in the dead frame of William Pitt Fessenden."

[(1) A few extracts from Mr. Bayard's speech of July 9, 1863, at Dover, Del., will exhibit his spirit of disloyalty to the Union of the States. Mr. Bayard said,--

"And is such a war necessary for the peace and happiness of the United States? For half a century we have lived at peace with Great Britain, with her Canadian possession upon our Northern border. Upon the South, Mexico holds her government with no threats of trouble to us or our citizens. Why, then, may not two American confederacies exist side by side without conflict, each emulating the other in the progress of civilization? The coterminous kingdoms of Europe offer many examples of similar peace and prosperity. With such a sickening alternative as civil war, why should not the experiment at least be made? It is this question we are to pass upon to-day." . . .

"If peace will restore and secure these blessings to the people of the United States, even though a number of their former associates have gone off under a new and independent organization, in the name of Heaven let us raise our voice for it! Shall this earnest cry for peace be stifled at the bidding of a host of fanatical and cowardly editors, aided by an army of greedy contractors and public leeches, stimulating an ignorant mob to denounce and attack us as traitors and secessionists?" . . .

"You and I are citizens of Delaware. To her laws and government we owe allegiance. Through our state we owe allegiance to the Federal Government, of which she is a member. But as State officials can command us to no duty unknown to State laws, neither can a Federal officer claim any authority over us in matters not within his constitutional and legal control. A palpable infraction of our written charter of government by our rulers, justifies disobedience upon the part of a citizen as much as lawful orders are entitled to loyal compliance."

{But who, as Mr. Webster had asked Mr. Hayne thirty years before, was to judge of "the palpable infraction of our written charter of government?" Was it the Judicial department of that government? Or was it Mr. Bayard and his disloyal associates in Delaware to whom he was addressing words of hostility to the National Administration and of infidelity to the Union of the States? It is significant that Mr. Bayard acknowledged allegiance to the National Government only as he owed it through the State. This was the rank heresy upon which the leaders of the Southern rebellion sought their justification.}]

[(2) The full text of the Amendment to the Tenure-of-office Act will be found in Appendix B.]

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Chapter XIX

The chief interest in the events of General Grant's first term was divided between questions of a diplomatic character and those arising from the condition of the South after Reconstruction had been completed. The first issue that enlisted popular attention was in regard to the annexation of the Dominican Republic. It was the earliest decisive step of General Grant's policy that attracted the observation of the people. The negotiation was opened on the request of the authorities of San Domingo, and it began about three months after the President's inauguration. In July General O. E. Babcock, one of the President's private secretaries, was dispatched to San Domingo upon an errand of which the public knew nothing. He bore a letter of introduction from Secretary Fish, apparently limiting the mission to an inquiry into the conditions, prospects, and resources of the Island. From its tenor the negotiation of a treaty was not at that time anticipated by the State Department. General Babcock's mission finally resulted however in a treaty for the annexation of the Republic of Dominica, and a convention for the lease of the bay and peninsula of Samana,--separately negotiated and both concluded on the 29th of November, 1869. The territory included in the Dominican Republic is the eastern portion of the Island of San Domingo, originally known as Hispaniola. It embraces perhaps two-thirds of the whole. The western part forms the Republic of Haiti. With the exception of Cuba, the island is the largest of the West India group. The total area is about 28,000 square miles,--equivalent to Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island combined.

President Grant placed extravagant estimates upon the value of the Territory which he supposed was now acquired under the Babcock treaties. In his message to Congress he expressed the belief that the island would yield to the United States all the sugar, coffee, tobacco, and other tropical products which the country would consume. "The production of our supply of these articles," said the President, "will cut off more than $100,000,000 of our annual imports, besides largely increasing our exports." "With such a picture," he added, "it is easy to see how our large debt abroad is ultimately to be extinguished. With a balance of trade against us (including interest on bonds held by foreigners and money spent by our citizen traveling in foreign lands) equal to the entire yield of precious metals in this country, it is not easy to see how this result is to be otherwise accomplished." He maintained that "the acquisition of San Domingo will furnish our citizens with the necessities of every-day life at cheaper rates than ever before; and it is in fine a rapid stride towards that greatness which the intelligence, industry, and enterprise of our citizens entitle this country to assume among nations."

Earnest as General Grant was in his argument, deeply as his personal feelings were enlisted in the issue, thoroughly as his Administration was committed to the treaty, the Senate on the 30th of June (1870), to his utter surprise, rejected it. The vote was a tie, 28 to 28, as was afterwards disclosed in debate in open Senate. Though the votes of two-thirds of the senators were required to confirm the treaty President Grant was not discouraged. He returned to the subject six months later, in his annual message of December, and discussed the question afresh with apparently renewed confidence in the expediency of the acquisition. "I now firmly believe," he said, "that the moment it is known that the United States have entirely abandoned the project of accepting as part of its own territory the Island of San Domingo, a free port will be negotiated for by European nations in the Bay of Samana, and a large commercial city will spring up, to which we will be tributary without receiving responding benefits. Then will be seen the folly of our rejecting so great a prize. . . . So convinced am I of the advantages to flow from the acquisition of San Domingo, and of the great disadvantages, I might also say calamities, to flow from its non-acquisition, that I believe the subject has only to be investigated to be approved." He recommended that "by joint resolution of the two Houses of Congress, the Executive be authorized to appoint a commission to negotiate a treaty with the authorities of San Domingo for the acquisition of that island, and that an appropriation be made to defray the expenses of such commission."

The subject at once led to discussion in both branches of Congress, in which the hostility to the scheme on the part of some leading men assumed the tone of personal exasperation towards General Grant. So intense was the opposition that the President's friends in the Senate did not deem it prudent even to discuss the measure which he recommended. As the best that could be done, Mr. Morton of Indiana introduced a resolution empowering the President to appoint three Commissioners to proceed to San Domingo and make certain inquiries into the political condition of the island, and also into its agricultural and commercial value. The Commissioners were to have no compensation. Their expenses were to be paid, and a secretary was to be provided. Even in this mild shape the resolution was hotly opposed. It was finally adopted by the Senate, but when it reached the House that body refused to concur except with a proviso that "nothing in this resolution shall be held, understood, or construed as committing Congress to the policy of annexing San Domingo." The Senate concurred in the condition thus attached and the President approved it. It was plain that the President could not carry the annexation scheme; but he courted a searching investigation in order that the course he had pursued might be vindicated by the well-considered judgment of impartial men.

The President's selections for the Commission were wisely made. Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, Andrew D. White of New York, and Samuel G. Howe of Massachusetts, were men entitled to the highest respect, and their conclusions, based upon intelligent investigation, would exert large influence upon public opinion. The Commission at once visited the island (carried thither on a United-States vessel of war), made a thorough examination of all its resources, held conferences with its leading citizens, and concluded that the policy recommended by General Grant should be sustained. The Commissioners corroborated General Grant's assertion that the island could supply the United States with the sugar, coffee, and other tropical products needed for our consumption; and they upheld the President in his belief that the possession of the island by the United States would by the laws of trade make slave labor in the neighboring islands unprofitable, and render the whole slave and caste systems odious.

In communicating the report, the President made some remarks which had a personal bearing. "The mere rejection by the Senate of a treaty negotiated by the President," said he, "only indicates a difference of opinion among different departments of the Government, without touching the character or wounding the pride of either. But when such rejection takes place simultaneously with charges, openly made, of corruption on the part of the President, or of those employed by him, the case is different. Indeed, in such case the honor of the nation demands investigation. This has been accomplished by the report of the Commissioners, herewith transmitted, and which fully vindicates the purity of motive and action of those who represented the United States in the negotiation. And now my task is finished, and with it ends all personal solicitude upon the subject. My duty being done, yours begins, and I gladly hand over the whole matter to the judgment of the American people and of their representatives in Congress assembled."

The pointed remarks of the President were understood as referring to the speech made by Mr. Sumner when the resolution for the appointment of the Commission was pending before the Senate. Mr. Sumner had previously conceived a strong dislike to General Grant on account of some personal grievance, either fancied or real; and he debated the resolution in a spirit not at all justified by the subject itself. He spoke of it as "a measure of violence" and a "dance of blood." "In other days," said he, "to carry a project, a President has tried to change a committee: it was James Buchanan. Now we have been called this session to witness a similar endeavor by our President. He was not satisfied with the Committee on Foreign Relations, and wished it changed. He asked first for the removal of the chairman [Mr. Sumner himself]. Somebody told him that this would not be convenient. He then asked for the removal of the senator from Missouri [Mr. Schurz], and he was told that this could not be done without affecting the German vote."

Mr. Sumner continued: "The negotiation for annexation began with a political jockey named Buenaventura Baez; and he had about his two other political jockeys, Casneau and Fabens. These three together, a precious copartnership, seduced into their firm a young officer of ours, who entitles himself aide-de-camp to the President of the United States. Together they got up what was entitled a protocol, in which the young officer, entitling himself aide-de-camp to the President, proceeded to make certain promises for the President. I desire to say that there is not one word showing that at the time this aide-de-camp, as he called himself, had any title of instructions to take this step. If he had, that title and that instruction have been withheld. No inquiry has been able to penetrate it. . . . I ask you," said he, addressing the Vice-President, "do you know any such officer in our government as 'aide-de-camp to his Excellency the President of the United States'? Does his name appear in the Constitution, in any statute, in the history of this country anywhere? If it does, then your information is much beyond mine. . . . However, he assumed a title; and it doubtless produced a great effect with Baez, Casneau, and Fabens, the three confederates. They were doubtless pleased with the distinction. It helped on the plan they were engineering. The young aide-de-camp pledged the President as follows: 'His Excellency, General Grant, President of the United States, promises privately to use all his influence, in order that the idea of annexing the Dominican Republic to the United States may acquire such a degree of popularity among members of Congress as will be necessary for its accomplishment.' Shall I read the rest of the document? It is somewhat of the same tenor. There are questions of money in it, cash down, all of which must have been particularly agreeable to the three confederates." At one stage of his bitter arraignment of the Administration Mr. Sumner besought the Vice-President (Mr. Colfax) "as a friend of General Grant to counsel him not to follow the examples of Franklin Pierce, of James Buchanan, and of Andrew Johnson."

After the delivery of this speech General Grant and Senator Sumner held no personal intercourse. Public opinion did not justify the course of Mr. Sumner. It was regarded as an exhibition of temper unworthy of his high position, and his speech was distinguished by a tone not proper to be employed towards the President of the United States. But he had not imputed, as General Grant assumed, any personal corruption to him. On the contrary he considered the questionable course of General Babcock to be without instruction. General Grant's reference in his message to Mr. Sumner's angry arraignment, a part of which is already quoted, closed with a mention of "acrimonious debates in Congress" and "unjust aspersions elsewhere." "No man," said he, "can hope to perform duties so delicate and responsible as appertain to the Presidential office without sometimes incurring the hostility of those who deem their opinions and wishes treated with insufficient consideration." This was a direct personal reference to Mr. Sumner, perfectly understood at that time. General Grant continued: "He who undertakes to conduct the affairs of a great government as a faithful public servant, if sustained by the approval of his own conscience, may rely with confidence upon the candor and intelligence of a free people, whose best interests he has striven to subserve, and can hear with patience the censure of disappointed men."

No further attempt was made by the President to urge the acquisition of San Domingo upon Congress. It was evident that neither the Senate nor House could be induced to approve the scheme, and the Administration was necessarily compelled to abandon it. But defeat did not change General Grant's view of the question. He held to his belief in its expediency and value with characteristic tenacity. In his last annual message to Congress (December, 1876), nearly six years after the controversy had closed, he recurred to the subject, to record once more his approval of it. "If my views," said he, "had been concurred in, the country would be in a more prosperous condition to-day, both politically and financially." He then proceeded to re-state the question, and to sustain it with the argument which he had presented to Congress in 1870 and 1871. His last words were: "I do not present these views now as a recommendation for a renewal of the subject of annexation, but I do refer to it to vindicate my previous action in regard to it."

Though the Reconstruction measures were all perfected before General Grant's election to the Presidency, the necessary Acts prescribed by them had not been completed by all the States. The three which had not been admitted to representation, and had not taken part in the National election,--Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas,--had by the spring of 1870 fully complied with all the requirements, and were therefore admitted to all the privileges which had been accorded to the other States of the South. Virginia was admitted to representation in Congress by the Act of Jan. 26, Mississippi by the Act of Feb. 26, and Texas by the Act of March 30 (1870). It was their own fault, and not the design of the Government, that prevented these States from being included in the same bill with their associates in rebellion.

The reconstruction of Georgia, supposed to have been completed the preceding year by the admission of her representatives to the House, was taken up for review at the opening of the Forty-first Congress. Neither her senators nor representatives were permitted to be sworn, but their credentials were referred in each House to the Committee on Elections. In the judgment of the majority the conduct of Georgia justified this severe course. Her Legislature, after complying with every condition of reconstruction, took an extraordinary and unaccountable step. That body decided that colored men were not entitled to serve as legislators or to hold any office in Georgia. They were therefore expelled from their seats, while white men, not eligible to hold office under the Fourteenth Amendment, were retained. The Fifteenth Amendment was then rejected by the Legislature, composed exclusively of white men. These facts were ascertained before the senators from Georgia were admitted to their seats, and before the Fifteenth Amendment had yet been ratified by the requisite number of States.

Congress took prompt cognizance of this condition of affairs, and passed another bill on the 16th of December (1869), declaring "that the exclusion of persons from the Legislature upon the ground of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, would be illegal and revolutionary, and is hereby prohibited." In order to make the prohibition effective, Georgia was required, before her senators and representatives could be seated, to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Legislature of Georgia was accordingly re-assembled, the colored members resumed their seats, and the Fifteenth Amendment was duly ratified on the 2d of February (1870). The conditions were considered by some prominent Republicans to be an assumption of power on the part of Congress, and were therefore opposed actively by Mr. Carpenter in the Senate and Mr. Bingham in the House; but the great body of the party insisted upon them, and the movement had the full sympathy of the President. The course pursued by Georgia made her the last State to be reconstructed. The final Act for her re-admission to the right of representation in Congress was passed on the 15th of July, 1870.

The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment had become in the minds of thinking men an essential link in the chain of reconstruction. The action of Georgia in expelling colored men from the Legislature after her reconstruction was supposed to be complete, roused the country to the knowledge of what was intended by the leading men of the South; and the positive action of Congress roused the leading men of the South to a knowledge of what was intended by Congress. On the 30th of March Secretary Fish issued a proclamation making known to the people of the United States that the Fifteenth Amendment had been ratified by the Legislatures of thirty States and was therefore a part of the Constitution of the United States. New York, which had given her ratification when the Legislature was Republican, attempted at the succeeding session, with the Democratic party in power, to withdraw its recorded assent; but as in the case of the Fourteenth Amendment, action on the subject was held to be completed when the State officially announced it, and New York was numbered among the States which had ratified the Amendment. The only States opposing it were New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, California, and Oregon. At the time the Amendment was submitted, the Legislatures of these States were under the absolute control of the Democratic party. The hostility of that party to the Fifteenth Amendment was as rancorous as it had been to the Fourteenth. Not a single Democrat voted to ratify it in either branch of Congress, and the Democratic opposition in the State Legislatures throughout the Union was almost equally pronounced.(1)

This radical change in the Organic Law of the Republic was regarded by President Grant as so important, that he notified Congress of its official promulgation, by special message. He dwelt upon the character of the Amendment, and addressed words of counsel to both races. "I call the attention of the newly enfranchised race," said he, "to the importance of striving in every honorable manner to make themselves worthy of their new privilege. To the race more favored heretofore by our laws, I would say, Withhold no legal privilege of advancement to the new citizens." He called upon Congress to promote popular education throughout the country by all the means within their Constitutional power, in order that universal suffrage might be based on universal intelligence.

In the same spirit that led to the message of the President, Congress proceeded to enact laws protecting the rights that were guaranteed under the new Constitutional Amendment. On the 31st of May (1870), two months after the Amendment was promulgated, an Act was passed "to enforce the right of citizens of the United States to vote in the several States in this Union." Eight months later, on the 28th of February, 1871, an additional Act on the same subject was passed. These statutes were designed to protect, as far as human law can protect, the right of every man in the United States to vote, and they were enacted with special care to arrest the dangers already developing in the South against free suffrage, and to prevent the dangers more ominously though more remotely menacing it. The Republican party was unanimous in support of these measures, while the Democratic party had nearly consolidated their votes against them. It was not often that the line of party was so strictly drawn as at this period and on issues of this character.

As the Reconstruction of each State was completed, the Military Government that was instituted in 1867 was withdrawn. The Southern people--at first proclaiming a sense of outrage at the presence of soldiers in time of peace--soon became content with the orderly, just, and fair administration which the commanding generals enforced. Many of the wisest men of the South would have been glad to continue the same form of government, until the passions engendered by the war had somewhat cooled and the new relations of the two races had become so amicably adjusted as to remove all danger of conflict between them. But the course of events did not suggest, and perhaps would not have permitted, an arrangement of this character; and hence the States were left, under the Constitution and laws of the Union, to shape their own destiny.

The presumption was that these States would be obedient to the Constitution and laws. But for this presumption, legislation would be but idle play, and a government of laws would degenerate at once into a government of force. In enacting the Reconstruction Laws Congress proceeded upon the basis of faith in Republican government, as defined so tersely by Mr. Lincoln--of the people, by the people, for the people. It had the additional assurance of the acceptance of the terms of Reconstruction by the lawful organizations of the Southern States. And if the presumption of obedience with respect to statute law be general, much stronger should it be with respect to organic law, upon which the entire structure of free government is founded. It was therefore logical for the National administration to assume, as Reconstruction was completed, that the harmonious working of the Federal government through all its members was formally re-established. It was a cause of great rejoicing that, after four years of bloody war and four years of laborious and careful Reconstruction, every State in the Union had regained its autonomy in the first year of General Grant's Presidency; and that the Government and the people of the Union were entitled to look forward to peaceful administration, to friendly intercourse, to the cultivation of kindly feeling, to the promotion of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce. The lenity with which the triumphant Union had treated the crime of rebellion--sacrificing no man's life, stripping no man of his property, depriving no man of his personal liberty--gave the Government the right to expect order and the reign of law in the South.

But it was soon disclosed that on the part of the large mass of those who had participated in the rebellion, properly speaking, indeed, on the part of the vast majority of the white men of the South, there was really no intention to acquiesce in the legislation of Congress, no purpose to abide by the Constitutional Amendment in good faith. A majority of the white people of the South adopted rather the creed of General Blair, whom they had supported for Vice-President, and regarded themselves justified in opposing, repudiating, and if possible destroying, the governments that had grown up under the protection of the Reconstruction Laws. The re-admission of their States to representation was taken by them only as the beginning of the war in which they would more freely wage conflict against that which was distasteful and, as they claimed, oppressive. It is not to be denied that they had the inherent right, inside of Constitutional limitations, to repeal the laws of their States, and even to change the Constitution itself, if they should do it by prescribed methods and by honest majorities, and should not, in the process, disturb the fundamental conditions upon which the General Government had assented to their re-admission to the right of representation in Congress. It was not, however, the purpose of the Southern Democrats to be fettered and embarrassed by any such exemplary restraints. By means lawful or unlawful they determined to uproot and overthrow the State governments that had been established in a spirit of loyalty to the Union. They were resolved that the negro should not be a political power in their local governments; that he should not, so far as their interposition could prevent it, exert any influence over elections, either State or national; and that his suffrage, if permitted to exist at all, should be only in the innocent form of a minority.

Seeing this determination, the National Government interposed its strong arm, and a detail of soldiers at the principal points throughout the South gave a certain protection to those whose rights were otherwise in danger of being utterly trodden down. It certainly has never been proved in a single instance that a legal voter in any Southern State was deprived of his right of suffrage by the presence of United-States troops in those states; but the issue was at once made by the Democratic party against the administration of President Grant, that free elections were impossible in the Southern states unless soldiers of the Regular Army were excluded; that their simple presence was a form of coercion absolutely inconsistent with Republican government. Many of them, as they now declared, had been willing to accept a Military government--as it had existed under Reconstruction; but they objected to the presence of troops in States where self-government had been conceded by Congress.

There was undoubtedly an instinctive reluctance among the people of all sections to permit the location of troops in the neighborhood of polling-places. It had happened that in the long-continued strife in Kansas, Republicans complained that the anti-slavery voters felt intimidated by the presence of troops of the Regular Army. The application was, therefore, readily made to the existing case; and it was not unnaturally or inaptly asked whether the presence of the military at the elections of a State of the Union was not even more offensive than their presence at the elections in a Territory of the Union, which was directly under the control of the National Government. On the abstract issue thus presented the Republicans were placed somewhat at a disadvantage; and yet every white man making the complaint knew that the influence of the troops was not to deprive him of a single right, but was to prevent him from depriving the colored man of all his rights.

Between the effort, therefore, of President Grant's administration to protect free suffrage in the South, and the protest of the Democratic party against protecting it by the military arm of the Government, a physical contest ensued in the Southern States and a political contest throughout the Union. It was perfectly understood, and openly proclaimed, in the South, that the withdrawal of the protection of the National Government from the States lately in rebellion meant the end of suffrage to the colored man, or at least such impairment of its force and influence as practically implied its total destruction. So bitter was the hostility to impartial suffrage, so determined were the men who had lately been in rebellion to concentrate all the political power of the Southern States in their own hands, that vicious organizations, of which the most notable were the Ku-Klux-Klans, were formed throughout the South for the express purpose of depriving the negro of the political rights conferred upon him by law. To effect this purpose they resorted to a series of outrages calculated to inspire the negroes with terror if they attempted to resist the will of white men.

In prosecuting their purposes these clans and organizations hesitated at no cruelty, were deterred by no considerations of law or of humanity. They rode by night, were disguised with masks, were armed as freebooters. They whipped, maimed, or murdered the victims of their wrath. White men who were co-operating with the colored population politically were visited with punishments of excessive cruelty. It was difficult to arrest the authors of these flagrant wrongs. Aside from their disguises, they were protected against inculpating testimony by the fear inspired in the minds of those who might be witnesses; and they were protected even by that portion of the white race who were not willing to join in their excesses. It was well said of the leading members of the clans, that "murder with them was an occupation, and perjury was a pastime." The white man who should give testimony against them did so at the risk of seeing his house burned, of being himself beaten with many stripes; and if the offender had been at all efficient in his hostility, he was, after torture, in many instances, doomed to death.

Congress did its utmost to strengthen the hands of the President in a contest with these desperate elements. By the Act of April 20, 1871, "to enforce the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States" (commonly known as the Ku-Klux Act, or the Enforcement Act), the President was empowered to go to the extreme of suspending the writ of habeas corpus where peace and order could not otherwise be restored. Before acting under the provisions of that vigorous statute, General Grant gave warning to the Southern people by proclamation of May 3, 1871, that they might themselves, by good behavior, prevent the necessity of its enforcement. "Sensible," said the President, "of the responsibility imposed upon the Executive by the Act of Congress to which public attention is now called, and reluctant to call into exercise any of the extraordinary powers thereby conferred upon me, except in case of imperative necessity, I do, nevertheless, deem it my duty to make known that I will not hesitate to exhaust the powers thus vested in the Executive, whenever and wherever it shall become necessary to do so, for the purpose of securing to all citizens of the United States the peaceful enjoyment of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution and laws." The extreme power of suspending the writ of habeas corpus now placed in the President's hands was limited in time, and would necessarily end, if not renewed, at the close of the next regular session of Congress.

But the task of enforcing obedience to laws, when obedience is not in the hearts of the people, is the most difficult undertaking ever imposed upon the governing power. If the South had been standing alone, if it had not been receiving daily words of encouragement, of aid, and of comfort, from the North, if it had not seen that the Democratic party in Congress was fighting its battle, it might have yielded to the prestige and power of the National Government. But the situation invited, urged, induced men, to persist. They clearly saw, as their co-operating friends in the North had seen long before, that a compact vote of all the Southern States could be used as the sure foundation of a formidable, and, as they hoped, irresistible political power. It was this hope which nerved their arms for every encounter: it was this prospect of domination that steadily encouraged them to continue a battle which must at times have seemed desperate indeed. As the Southern leaders of an earlier day had strenuously endeavored to maintain equality of membership in the Senate, so now their successors promised to themselves such solidification of their electoral vote, as would by its very force attract sufficient strength in the North to restore the South to a position of command in the National Government.

The instinctive hostility of the American people against the use of troops at elections was not the only weapon of offense which the Democratic party was able to use in this prolonged contest. As soon as the war had closed there was a considerable influx of Northern men in the States of the late Confederacy. The original motive which induced the migration was financial and speculative. A belief was prevalent in the North that great profit might be derived from the cotton-culture, and that with the assured sympathy of the colored men they would be able to command the requisite labor more readily than the old slave masters. As a mere business enterprise cotton-growing at that period, except in a very few instances, proved to be unprofitable. The complete disorganization of labor throughout the South, consequent upon emancipation, had embarrassed production and added largely to its cost. It would inevitably require time to build up a labor-system based on the new relation of the negro to the white race, and it was the misfortune of the Northern men to embark on their venture at the time of all others when it was least likely to prove remunerative. But these men, though pecuniarily unsuccessful, quickly formed relations of kindness and friendship with the negro race. They addressed them in different tone, treated them in a different manner, from that which they had been accustomed in the past to receive from the white race, and it was natural that a feeling of friendship should grow up between the liberated and those whom they regarded as liberators.

It was soon apparent that, under the protection of the National power and with the numerical superiority of the negroes in several States (certain Southern leaders being under political disabilities), it would be easy for the loyal white men to obtain control of the local governments. Out of these circumstances there came into political power the class of men known as "Carpet-baggers"--so described from the insulting presumption that the entire worldly estate of each one of the class was carried in a carpet-bag, enabling him to fly at any moment of danger from the State whose domestic policy he sought to control. The prospect of the success of the new movement induced a number of former rebels to join in it, and to them the epithet of "Scalawag" was applied. This combination was not without disadvantages to the negro. By as much as it gave strength to his political organization, it increased the hatred and desperation of the ruling element among the whites, and demonstrated that the negro could secure the rights conferred upon him by the Constitution and laws, only through violence and bloodshed.

Many of those denounced under the epithet of Carpet-bagger and Scalawag were honorable and true men; but a majority of these were unobtrusive and not brought strongly into popular view, while many of those who became entrusted with the power of State governments and found themselves unexpectedly in possession of great authority were not morally equal to its responsibility. The consequence was that some of the States had wretched governments, officered by bad men, who misled the negro and engaged in riotous corruption. Their transgressions were made so conspicuous that the Republican leaders of other Southern States, who were really trying to act their part worthily and honorably, were obscured from view, and did not obtain a fair hearing at the bar of public opinion. The government of South Carolina, under its series of Republican administrations, was of such character as brought shame upon the Republican party, exposed the negro voters to unmerited obloquy, and thus wrought for the cause of free government and equal suffrage in the South incalculable harm. These Southern State governments proved a source of angry contention inside the Republican party in the North, and thus brought one more calamity to the negro, and gave one more advantage to the rebel element of the South that so persistently sought for his disfranchisement.

The hostility of Southern men to Carpet-bag rule was instinctive and irrepressible. The failure of the rebellion left its participants stripped of property, depressed in spirit, angry and unreconciled. Northern men appearing among them recalled in an offensive manner the power that had overcome and as they thought humiliated them,--recalled it before time had made them familiar with the new order of things, before they could subject themselves to the discipline of adversity, and gracefully accept the inevitable. Even the most decorous and considerate behavior on the part of these men would perhaps have failed to conciliate the Southern population. But while unable to do this, they could no doubt in due season have secured public confidence if they had administered the trusts confided to them with an eye single to the prosperity and happiness of the people over whom by a strange concurrence of circumstances they were empowered to rule. If these men had in all cases established as good and trustworthy governments in the South as they had been reared under in the North, they would have conferred upon all the reconstructed States a blessing which as prejudice wore away would have caused their names to be respected and honored. Their governments were however demoralized by the violent and murderous course of the clans organized to resist them. In the play between the two forces,--a government too weak to command respect; a native population too resentful to yield obedience,--a state of social disorder and political chaos resulted, which would in advance have seemed impossible among any people clothed with the right of self-government, and living under a Republic of vast power and prestige.

The Republicans lost in many of the Southern States a valuable support upon which they had counted with confidence. Union men whom no persecution could break and no blandishments could seduce, were to be found in the South at the outbreak of the rebellion. They were men who in a less conspicuous way held the same faith that inspired Andrew Johnson and William G. Brownlow during the war. It was the influence and example of this class of men which had contributed to the Union Army so large a number of white soldiers from the rebellious States,--numbering in the aggregate more than one hundred thousand men. Tennessee alone furnished at least thirty-five thousand white troops as brave as ever followed the flag. The Carolinas, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, all furnished loyal men from their mountain districts; and beyond the Mississippi a valuable contingent came from Arkansas and Texas.

The men who had the courage to stand for the Union in time of war should not have separated from its friends in time of peace. If Reconstruction had been completed according to the first design, on the basis of the Fourteenth Amendment, these men would have remained solidly hostile to the Southern Democracy. But as the contest waxed warm, as negro suffrage became a prominent issue, many of them broke away from their associations and became the bitterest foes of the Republican party. They followed Andrew Johnson and partook of his spirit. But against all adverse influences, some of the truest and best of this class of Union men remained with the Republican party. If the whole number had proved steadfast, they would have formed the centre of a strong and growing influence in the South which in many localities would have been able--as in East Tennessee--to resist the combined rebel power of their respective communities. Under such protection the colored vote, intelligently directed and defended, could have resisted the violence which has practically deprived it of all influence. Every day affords fresh proof of the disasters which have resulted to the Republican party of the South from the loss of so large a proportion of the original Union men.

Perhaps the most serious charge brought against the Republican policy by Southern men, was that the negro was advanced to the right of suffrage, while a portion of the white population were placed under such political disabilities as prevented their voting. This allegation is often made, however, in a way that leads to erroneous impressions, because as matter of fact it was not the policy of Congress to deprive any man of the right of suffrage. Congress even left the voting franchise in full force with those who were under such political disabilities as forbade their holding office. It is true that in a certain election under the Reconstruction laws the voter was subjected to a test-oath, but this condition was imposed under what seemed to be a fair plea of necessity; for it was applied in the South only after the entire white population had refused to reconstruct their States on the basis first freely offered them, with no restriction on white suffrage, and even before the negro was empowered to vote. Fearing from this experience that any organization of a State under the auspices of Republican power might be voted down, Congress resorted to the expedient of confining the suffrage in the preliminary stage to shoe who had not rebelled, and who could therefore be firmly trusted to establish a loyal government.

While the National Government refrained from withholding the elective franchise from men who had fought to destroy the Union, there is no doubt that disabilities and exclusions were imposed upon large classes in certain States of the South. But perhaps even here there have been exaggeration and misunderstanding, for in some of the reconstructed States,--notably Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas,--there were no test-oaths and no exclusion from the right of suffrage by reason of participation in the rebellion; and yet hostility to the Reconstruction Acts, and personal wrongs and injuries to the colored men, were quite as marked in those States as in those where certain classes of citizens labored under the stigma of exclusion from the ballot. Possibly it might be said that exclusion, even in one State, was an odious discrimination which all who had taken part in the rebellion would, from a feeling of fellowship, resent and resist. But the truth remains, nevertheless, that in the Southern States in which no test-oaths were applied disturbance, disorder, and resistance to law were as frequent and flagrant as in those where suffrage had in some degree been qualified and restricted.

The original difficulty was the rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment by the South--a difficulty that recurred not only at every subsequent step of reconstruction, but was even more plainly demonstrated after reconstruction was nominally complete. If that Amendment had been accepted by the Southern States as the basis of reconstruction, the suffrage of the colored man would have followed as a necessity and a boon to the South. It would have originated in popular demand, and the State authorities, instead of expending their power in resisting the decree of the Nation, would have upheld the same franchise with all the earnestness which the combined power of necessity and self-interest could inspire. It is difficult to compute the loss and the suffering endured by the South from the folly of rejecting a Constitutional Amendment, which they could have had with all its benefits, and which they were compelled afterwards to accept with all its burdens. This unhappy result to the South was the fruit of their unwise adherence to Andrew Johnson in a political battle which he was predestined to lose.

It was not unnatural that the unwise action on the part of the South should lead to unwise action of the part of the North; but it must be remembered that if mistakes were made in the system of reconstruction they were for a day only, while the objects sought were for all time. The misfortune was, that the mistakes blinded the eyes of many candid and patriotic men to the real merit of the struggle. It is not the first time in history where a great and noble purpose has been weakened and thwarted by prejudices aroused against the means used to effect it. The design was broad, patriotic, generous, and statesmanlike: the means to attain it aroused prejudices which created obstacles at every step and led to almost fatal embarrassment. The elevation of a race, the stamping out of the last vestige of caste, the obliteration of cruel wrongs, were the objects aimed at by the Republicans. If they remain unaccomplished, or only partially accomplished, no discredit can attach to the great political organization which entertained lofty conceptions of human rights, and projected complete measures for their realization. That prejudice should stand in the way of principle, that subsidiary issues should embarrass the attainment of great ends, that personal and partisan interests should for a time override the nobler instincts of philanthropy, must be regarded with regret, but not with discouragement.

[(1) The New Jersey Legislature of 1871 reversed the action of the previous year, and ratified the Amendment after it had been proclaimed by the Secretary of State as adopted. Ohio at first rejected the Amendment, but reversed her action in time to have her vote recorded among the States ratifying the Amendment. New York ratified the Amendment in 1869; the next year, under a Democratic majority, the Legislature attempted to withdraw the ratification; and in the year succeeding the Republicans re-affirmed it.]

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Chapter XX

The civil war closed with ill-feeling amounting to resentment towards England on the part of the loyal citizens of the United States. They believed that the Government of Great Britain, and especially the aristocratic and wealthy classes (whose influence in the kingdom is predominant), had desired the destruction of the Union and had connived at it so far as connivance was safe; they believed that great harm had been inflicted on the American marine by rebel cruisers built in English ship-yards and manned with English sailors; they believed that the war had been cruelly prolonged by the Confederate hope of British intervention,--a hope stimulated by the utterances of high officials of the British Government; they believed that her Majesty's Ministers would have been willing at any time to recognize the Southern Confederacy, if it could have been done without danger of a European conflict, the effect of which upon the interests of England could not be readily measured.

Their belief did not wait for legal proofs or written arguments, nor was it in any degree restrained by technicalities. The American people had followed the varying fortunes of the war with intense solicitude, and had made up their minds that the British Government throughout the contest had been unfriendly and offensive, manifestly violating at every step the fair and honorable duty of a neutral. They did not ground their conclusions upon any specially enunciated principles of international law; they did not seek to demonstrate, by quotations from accepted authorities, that England had failed in this or in that respect to perform her duty towards the American Government. They simply recognized that England's hand had been against us, concealed somewhat, and used indirectly, but still heavily against us. They left to the officers of their own Government the responsible task of stating the law and submitting the evidence when the proper time should come.

Perhaps the mass of the people in no other country keep so close a watch upon the progress of public events as is kept by the people of the United States. If the scholarship of the few is not so thorough as in certain European countries, the intelligence of the many is far beyond that of any other nation. The popular conclusions, therefore, touching the conduct of England, did not spring from imagination or from prejudice; nor were they the results of illogical inference. To the outside world the British Government is the British Parliament; and citizens of the United States knew that their country had been subjected in the House of Lords and in the House of Commons to every form of misrepresentation, to every insult which malice could invent, to every humiliation which insolence and arrogance could inflict. The most distant generation of Americans will never be able to read the Parliamentary reports from 1861 to 1865 without indignation. Discussions touching the condition of the United States occupied no small share of the time in both Houses, and in the House of Lords cordiality was never expressed for the Union. In the House of Commons the Government of the United States had sympathizing friends, eloquent defenders, though few in number. Bright, Forster, Cobden, and men of that class, spoke brave words in defense of the cause for which brave deeds were done by their kindred on this side of the Atlantic--a kindred always more eager to cherish gratitude than to nurture revenge.

But from the Government of England, terming itself Liberal, with Lord Palmerston at its head, Earl Russell as Foreign Secretary, Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Duke of Argyll as Lord Privy Seal, and Earl Granville as Lord President of the Council, not one friendly word was sent across the Atlantic. A formal neutrality was declared by Government officials, while its spirit was daily violated. If the Republic had been a dependency of Great Britain, like Canada or Australia, engaged in civil strife, it could not have been more steadily subjected to review, to criticism, and to the menace of discipline. The proclamations of President Lincoln, the decisions of Federal courts, the orders issued commanders of the Union armies, were frequently brought to the attention of Parliament, as if America were in some way accountable to the judgment of England. Harsh comment came from leading British statesmen, while the most ribald defamers of the United States met with cheers from a majority of the House of Commons, and indulged in the bitterest denunciation of a friendly Government without rebuke from the Ministerial benches.(1)

The notorious Mr. Roebuck, in a debate, March 14, 1864, upon the progress of the civil war, said: "The whole proceedings in this American war are a blot upon human nature; and when I am told that I should have sympathy for the Northern States of America, I turn in absolute disgust from their hypocrisy. If there is a sink of political iniquity, it is at Washington. They are corrupt; they are base; they are cowardly; they are cruel." This highly indecorous speech was made in the presence of members of the British Ministry. The Premier, Lord Palmerston, followed Mr. Roebuck on the floor, calling him his "honorable and learned friend," and offering neither rebuke nor objection to the words he had used. On the contrary, with jaunty recklessness he accused the American Government of secretly and cunningly recruiting its armies in Ireland, by inducing Irishmen to emigrate as laborers and "then to enlist in some Ohio regiment or other, and become soldiers with the chance of plunder, and God knows what besides."

Lord Robert Cecil, since known as the Marquis of Salisbury, and at present (1885) Premier of England, only a few months before Mr. Roebuck's disreputable speech, attacked the Judiciary of the United States, and told a story so remarkable that it needs no characterization. "American courts," said his lordship, "are not free from circumstances of suspicion attaching to them peculiarly. It might be that in old times judges sat on the American Bench who enjoyed world-wide reputation, but within the last two or three years the American tribunals have delivered their decisions under the pressure of fixed bayonets. The Supreme Court of America two years ago was applied to for the purpose of enforcing the provisions of the American Constitution; but the Judges were unable to pronounce the judgment which their consciences would have prompted them to deliver, because the soldiers of President Lincoln, appearing at their doors in arms, so terrified them that they perverted the law to suit the design of the Executive." If his Lordship believed this groundless calumny, his ignorance concerning the United States would be subject of pity. If his Lordship did not believe it, the just accusation against him is too serious to be stated in these pages.

During the first year of the war Lord Robert Cecil had so frankly expressed his view of the situation and his belief in the gain to England which would result from the destruction of the American Union, that his extraordinary madness may at least be said to have had a method. He was already a prominent member of the party of which he is now the head, and really reflected their sentiment as to the advantage which would come to England if the rebellion should be successful and the Southern Confederacy established. They had witnessed the marvelous growth of the United States and had concluded that, already a powerful rival, the Republic would certainly be dangerous as an enemy. This view is discernible in the Tory speeches in Parliament and in the Tory press of England, and was the motive which inspired so many Englishmen to connive at the destruction of the American Union. They went to great length, even establishing an association to promote the cause of the rebellion, and to supply the Confederate Treasury with money. Lord Robert Cecil was one of the Vice-Presidents of the "Southern Independence Association" and a subscriber to the Confederate loan, as were also Mr. Roebuck, Mr. Gregory, and many other members of the British Parliament.(2)

The conduct of the Tories was not, however, a surprise to the American people. From the earliest period of our National existence we had received from that party constant demonstrations of unfriendliness; and where safe opportunity offered, insult was added. But of the Liberal party Americans had hoped, nay, had confidently expected, if not open demonstrations of sympathy, at least a neutrality which would deprive the Rebel leaders of any form of encouragement. When the first shadow of real danger to the Union appeared in 1860-61, there was instinctive gladness among loyal Americans that a Liberal ministry was in power in England, composed of men who would in no event permit their Government to be used in aid of a rebellion, whose first object was the destruction of a kindred nation, and whose subsequent policy looked to the perpetuation of human slavery. But the hope proved to be only the delusion of a day. Americans found the Palmerston Ministry in a hostile mood and ready to embarrass the Government of the Union by every course that might be taken with safety to the interests of England; and they at once recognized a vast increase of the force against which they must contend.

But there was one apprehension which constantly enforced a limitation upon the action of the British Government, and that was the danger that an open espousal of the cause of the Confederacy would be the signal for a European conflict. Russia was more than friendly to us: Germany had no interest in our destruction. Russia was hostile to England: Germany was hostile to France. Active intervention by England and France, so much talked of, might have caused an earlier dethronement of Napoleon III, and a struggle in the East which would have left England no military power to expend on this side of the Atlantic. The American citizen cannot so wholly or ignorantly deceive himself as to believe that the Palmerston Government, from any consideration of the duties of neutrality, from any sympathy with the anti-slavery aspect of the contest, or from any ennobling impulse whatever, refrained from formal recognition of the Southern Confederacy and the open espousal of its cause.

When the question of recognizing the Confederacy came before Parliament, it was withdrawn after discussion by request of Mr. Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer. He assured the House that "the main result of the American contest is not, humanly speaking, in any degree doubtful." He thought "there never was a war of more destructive, more deplorable, more hopeless character." The contest in his judgment was "a miserable one." "We do not," said he, "believe that the restoration of the American Union by force is attainable. I believe that the public opinion of this country is unanimous upon that subject. It is not, therefore, from indifference, it is not from any belief that this war is waged for any adequate or worthy object on the part of the North, that I would venture to deprecate in the strongest terms the adoption of the motion of the honorable and learned gentleman." The "honorable and learned gentleman" was Mr. Roebuck, already quoted; and his motion was for the recognition of the Southern Confederacy as an independent Nation. The argument which Mr. Gladstone brought against it was in effect that the Confederacy was sure to succeed without foreign intervention. The fruit when ripe would fall of itself, and hence there was no need of prematurely beating the tree. The platform speeches of Mr. Gladstone were still more offensive and unjust, but he need be held answerable only for official declarations.

The only friends of the United States in England at that trying period were to be found among the "middle classes," as they are termed, and among the laboring men. The "nobility and gentry," the bankers, the great merchants, the ship-builders, were in the main hostile to the Union,--wishing and waiting for the success of the Confederacy. The honorable exceptions to this general statement were so few in number that they could exert little influence on public opinion and still less upon the course of the Ministry. The philanthropy, the foresight, the insight of the realm were found among the humbler classes. In all parts of the kingdom the laboring men were on the side of the Union. Though they suffered from a cotton-famine, they knew by intuition that the founding of a slave empire in America would degrade labor everywhere; they knew that the triumph of the Union signified the equality of human rights and would add to the dignity and reward of labor. It would have been well for England's fame and for her prosperity if the statesmen at Westminster had shared the wisdom and the nobler instincts of the operatives of Lancashire.

When the National Government had finally triumphed over the rebellion despite the evil wishes and machinations of England, Parliament suddenly ceased to consider the condition of the United States as one of the regular orders of the day; and Lord Palmerston when inquiry was addressed to him whether any representations would be made in regard to the arrest of Jefferson Davis, curtly replied that it was not the intention of the Government in any respect to interfere with the internal affairs of the United States. The only expression now made in Parliament touching our policies, was one of solicitude lest our government should deal with the citizens of the Southern States in terms of severity. In June, 1865, two months after the war closed, two noble earls, Russell and Derby, took it upon themselves to advise the American Government against the indulgence of passion and revenge towards those who had engaged in the rebellion. Earl Derby thought that "the triumphant Government should seek not to exasperate the feelings of their former antagonists, which have already been too much embittered, but should endeavor by deeds of conciliation and of mercy to re-cement if possible a Union so nearly dissolved." Earl Russell expressed opinion that it was "most desirable that there should be no appearance of passion of the part of those who have the guidance of affairs in the American Union."

Kindly advice is never to be rudely repelled; but this was counsel which the American Government did not need. The war had closed without the execution of a single man who had borne arms against the Government, without imprisonment, without confiscation of property, without even depriving one rebel of his franchise as an elector. The advice of the noble earls, on the side of mercy, would have had more weight and influence, had weight and influence been needed, if their own Government, after every rebellion, however small or under however great provocation, had not uniformly followed its victory by the gibbet, by imprisonment, by transportation of the men who had taken up arms against intolerable oppression. If noble earls of England had scrutinized English policy, and advised their own Government as they now advised the Government of the United States, some heroic lives would have been spared to Ireland, and subjects in India would not have been doomed to a personal degradation which heightened the horror of impending death.

But while offensive surveillance of American affairs ceased in Parliament, offensive criticisms in the British Press continued throughout the period of Reconstruction, and our Government was held answerable for alleged wrongs and outrages against a conquered foe. Especial hostility was exhibited towards the Republican party, which had conducted the Government through the war and led it to its complete triumph. This party controlled Congress when it levied heavy protective duties and stimulated manufacturing in American as the basis of that financial strength which proved during the civil war a marvel to the world. Offended by the Protective policy of the United States, the British Press now denounced the measures proposed for the Reconstruction of the South. No censure was too harsh, no epithet too severe to apply to the policy and to the Republican party that stood sponsor for it. It might have surprised those English critics to learn that the opponents of the Reconstruction policy at home could find nothing to say of it so denunciatory or so concentrated in bitterness as that the National Government was trying to reduce the Southern States to the condition of Ireland. And thus while we were receiving from British oracles multiplied instructions as to the manner of dealing with the States that had attempted to break from their allegiance, those States knew that almost within sight of England's shores there could be found the worst governed, the most cruelly treated people within the circle of Christendom. The American mote could be plainly descried beyond the broad ocean, but the Irish beam was not visible across the narrow channel.

The comparison of the Southern States under the measures of Reconstruction, with Ireland under the measures of the British Government, naturally suggested by hostile criticism in the English press, is not without its useful lessons. The complaint of discontented people in the Southern States was that there had been too great an expansion of popular rights, too large an extension of the elective franchise. But in Ireland, according to eminent British statesmen and historian, the suffering was from directly opposite causes.(3) Self-government of all the people was the rule established in the Southern States: subjection of all the people and government with the sword was the rule established in Ireland. Even if the American Government had made a mistake in its treatment of the Southern States, the history and traditions of the Republic gave ample guarantees that wrong steps would be speedily retraced, that all grievances would be thoroughly redressed; whereas the complaints of Ireland have remained unredressed for centuries.

There is no parallel among civilized nations to the prolonged discontent among the Irish people. A race gifted with many of the noblest qualities of humanity, strong in intellect and quick in apprehension, could not for centuries complain of grievances if they did not exist, and the grievances could not exist for centuries without serious reproach to the British Government. To the lasting honor of American statesmanship, Southern grievances were not allowed by neglect or arrogance to grow and become chronic after the civil war had closed. The one safeguard against an evil so great was the restoration of self-government to the people who had rebelled, the broadening of the elective franchise, the abolition of caste and privilege. If Englishmen had studied the Reconstruction policy instead of deriding it, they might have learned that the American Government accomplished for the South in four years what their own Government has failed to accomplish for Ireland through ten generations.

The Government of the United States had steadily protested during the continuance of the civil war against the unfriendly and unlawful course of England, and it was determined that compensation should be demanded upon the return of Peace. Mr. Adams, under instructions from Secretary Seward, had presented and ably argued the American case. He proposed a friendly arbitration of the Alabama claims, but was met by a flat refusal from Earl Russell, who declined on the part of the British Government either to make reparation or compensation, or permit a reference to any foreign State friendly to both parties.

In the autumn succeeding the close of the war, Mr. Seward notified the British Government that no further effort would be made for arbitration, and in the following August (1866) he transmitted a list of individual claims based upon the destruction caused by the Alabama. Lord Stanley (the present Earl of Derby) had succeeded Earl Russell in the Foreign Office, and declined to recognize the claims of this Government in as decisive a tone as that employed by Earl Russell. Of opposite parties, Earl Russell and Lord Stanley were supposed to represent the aggregate, if not indeed the unanimous, public opinion of England; so that the refusal to accede to the demands of the United States was popularly accepted as conclusive. Mr. Adams retired from his mission, in which his services to the country had been zealous and useful, without effecting the negotiations which he had urged upon the attention of the British Government. He took his formal leave in May, 1868, and was succeeded the following month by Mr. Reverdy Johnson.

The new Minister carried with him the respect and confidence of his fellow-citizens. Appointed directly after the Impeachment trial of President Johnson, he was among the few statesmen of the Democratic party who could have secured the ready confirmation of the Senate for a mission which demanded in its incumbent a talent for diplomacy and a thorough knowledge of International law. The only objection seriously maintained at the time against Mr. Johnson's appointment, was the fact that he was in his seventy-third year, and might not therefore be equal to the exacting duties which his mission involved.

Before Mr. Johnson could open his negotiation, the British Ministry was changed,--Mr. Disraeli giving way to Mr. Gladstone as Premier, and Lord Stanley being succeeded by Lord Clarendon as Minister of Foreign Affairs. With the latter Mr. Johnson very promptly agreed upon a treaty, which reached the United States in the month of February, 1869. It purported to be a settlement of the questions in dispute between the two countries. There was great curiosity to learn its provisions. Much was hoped from it, because it was known to have been approved by Mr. Seward at the various stages of the negotiation,--a constant and confidential correspondence having been maintained by cable, between the State Department and the American Legation in London, on every phase of the treaty.

Mr. Seward had earned approbation so hearty and general by his diplomatic correspondence with Great Britain during the war and in the years immediately succeeding, that no one was prepared for the disappointment and chagrin experienced in the United States when the Johnson-Clarendon treaty was made public. It gave almost personal offense to the mass of people in the loyal States. It overlooked, and yet by cunning phrase condoned, every unfriendly act of England during our civil war. It affected to class the injuries inflicted upon the Nation as mere private claims, to be offset by private claims of British subjects,--the whole to be referred to a joint commission, after the ordinary and constantly recurring method of adjusting claims of private individuals that may have become matters of diplomatic importance.

The preamble to the treaty established its character and proved its utter inadequacy to meet the demands of the United States. It was in these words: "Whereas claims have at various times since the exchange of the ratifications of the convention between Great Britain and the United States of America, signed at London on the 8th of February, 1853, been made upon the Government of her Britannic Majesty on the part of citizens of the United States, and upon the Government of the United States on the part of subjects of her Britannic Majesty; and whereas some of such claims are still pending and remain unsettled, her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the President of the United States of America, being of opinion that a speedy and equitable settlement of all such claims will contribute much to the maintenance of the friendly feelings which subsist between the two countries, have resolved to make arrangements for that purpose by means of a convention."

Among the first provisions of the treaty was a declaration that the result of the proceedings of the commission thus to be provided for, should be considered as "a full and final settlement of every claim upon either government arising out of any transaction of a date prior to the exchange of ratifications;" and all claims thereafter were to be "considered and treated as finally settled and barred, and thenceforth inadmissible." For eight years the Government of the United States had been protesting against the unfriendly course of Great Britain, against her premature recognition of the Confederate States as belligerents, against her special concession of ocean belligerency, against her making the dockyards and arsenals on her own soil the dockyards and arsenals of the Confederacy, against her wilful depredation upon the commerce of the United States, against the destruction of property belonging to American citizens by her agency and her fault. And now Mr. Johnson and Lord Clarendon had concluded a treaty which practically admitted that the complaints of the United States, as a government, against the conduct of Great Britain, as a government, had been mere rant and bravado on the part of the United States, and were not to be insisted on before any International tribunal, but to be merged in an ordinary claims convention, by whose award a certain amount in dollars and cents might be paid to the American claimants and a certain amount in pounds, shillings, and pence might be paid to British claimants. The text of the treaty did not indicate in any manner whatever that either nation was more at fault than the other touching the matters to be arbitrated.

The treaty had short life in the Senate. The Committee of Foreign Relations, after examination of its provisions, reported that it should "be rejected." Mr. Sumner, who made the report, said it was the first time since he had entered the Senate that such a report had been made concerning any treaty. Amendments, he said, were sometimes suggested, and sometimes a treaty had been reported without any recommendations; but the hostility to the entire spirit and to every detail of the Johnson-Clarendon treaty was so intense that the Committee had made the positive recommendation that it be rejected. This action was taken in the month of April, 1869, a few weeks after President Grant had entered upon his office. It was accompanied by a speech from Mr. Sumner, made in Executive session, but by direction of the Senate given to the public, in which the reasons for the action of the Senate were stated with great directness, precision and force.

After enumerating the extent of our losses, National and individual, direct and indirect, Mr. Sumner said: "If the case against England is strong, and if our claims are unprecedented in magnitude, it is only because the conduct of that power at a trying period was most unfriendly, and the injurious consequences of this conduct were on a scale corresponding to the theatre of action. Life and property were both swallowed up, leaving behind a deep-seated sense of enormous wrong, as yet unatoned and even unacknowledged, which is one of the chief factors in the problem now presented to the statesmen of both countries. . . . The truth must be told, not in anger, but in sadness. England has done to the United States an injury most difficult to measure. Considering when it was done and in what complicity, it is most unaccountable. At a great epoch of history, not less momentous than that of the French Revolution or that of the Reformation, when civilization was fighting a last battle with slavery, England gave her influence, her material resources, to the wicked cause, and flung a sword into the scale with slavery."

President Grant was in full sympathy with the Senate in its prompt rejection of the Johnson-Clarendon treaty, and in his annual message to Congress in the ensuing December (1869) he expressed his entire dissent from its provisions.(4) He thought the rejection of the treaty was "followed by a state of public opinion on both sides not favorable to an immediate attempt at renewed negotiation," and expressed "the hope that the time will soon arrive when the two Governments can approach the solution of this momentous question, with an appreciation of what is due to the rights, dignity, and honor of each."

The rejection of the Johnson-Clarendon treaty was formally announced to the British Government through Mr. Motley, who succeeded Mr. Johnson as Minister in London. Mr. Fish, in his letter of instructions, suggested to Mr. Motley the propriety of suspending negotiations for the present on the whole question. At the same time he committed the Government of the United States anew to the maintenance of the claim for National damages, as well as for the losses of individual citizens. And thus the matter was allowed to rest. The United States, though deeply aggrieved, did not desire to urge the negotiation in a spirit of hostility that implied readiness to go to war upon the issue, and simply trusted that a returning sense of justice in the British Government would lead to a renewal of negotiations and a friendly adjustment of all differences between the two Governments.

A year went by and nothing was done. The English Government was not disposed to go a step beyond the provisions of the Johnson-Clarendon treaty, and had indeed been somewhat offended by the promptness with which the Senate had rejected that agreement, especially by the emphasis which the speech of Mr. Sumner had given to the Senate's action. President Grant remained altogether patient and composed--feeling that postponement could not be a loss to the American Government, and would certainly prove no gain to the British Government. In his annual message to Congress of December, 1870, he assumed a position which proved embarrassing to England. He recognized the fact that "the Cabinet at London does not appear willing to concede that her Majesty's Government was guilty of any negligence, or did or permitted any act of which the United States has just cause of complaint;" and he re-asserted with great deliberation and emphasis that "our firm and unalterable convictions are directly the reverse." The President therefore recommended that Congress should "authorize the appointment of a commission to take proof of the amounts and the ownership of these several claims, on notice to the representative of her Majesty at Washington, and that authority be given for the settlement of these claims by the United States, so that the Government shall have the ownership of the private claims, as well as the responsible control of all the demands against Great Britain."

President Grant was evidently resolved that the Government of the United States should not allow the pressing need of private claimants to operate in any degree upon public opinion in the United States, so as to create a demand for settlement with England on any basis below that which National dignity required. He felt assured that Congress would respond favorably to his recommendation, and that with the individual claimants satisfied our Government could afford to wait the course of events. This position convinced the British Government that the President intended to raise the question in all its phases above the grade of private claims, and to make it purely an international affair. No more effective step could have been taken; and the President and his adviser, Secretary Fish, are entitled to the highest credit for thus elevating the character of the issue--an issue made all the more impressive from the quiet manner in which it was presented, and from the characteristic coolness and determination of the Chief Magistrate who stood behind it.

Meanwhile the sanguinary war between Germany and France has broken out, and was still flagrant when President Grant's recommendation for paying the Alabama claims from the National Treasury was sent to Congress. Though the foreign conflict terminated without involving other nations, it forcibly reminded England of the situation in which she might be placed if she should be drawn into a European war, the United States being a neutral power. It would certainly be an unjust imputation upon the magnanimity and upon the courage of the people of the United States to represent them as waiting for an opportunity to inflict harm upon England for her conduct towards this Government in the hour of its calamity and its distress. It was not by indirection, or by stealthy blows, or by secret connivance with enemies, or by violations of international justice, that the United States would ever have sought to avenge herself on England for the wrongs she had received. If there had been a disposition among the American people impelling them to that course, it would assuredly have impelled them much farther.

But England was evidently apprehensive that if she should become involved in war, the United States would, as a neutral power, follow the precedent which the English Government had set in the war of the rebellion, and in this way inflict almost irreparable damage upon British shipping and British commerce. Piratical Alabamas might escape from the harbors and rivers of the United States as easily as they had escaped from the harbors and rivers of England; and she might well fear that if a period of calamity should come to her, the people of the United States, with the neglect or connivance of their Government, would be as quick to add to her distress and embarrassment as the people of England, with the neglect or connivance of their Government, had added to the distress and embarrassment of the United States. Conscience does make cowards of us all; and Great Britain, foreseeing the possibility of being herself engaged in a European war, was in a position to dread lest her ill intentions and her misdeed in the time of our civil struggle should return to plague her.

These facts and apprehensions seem to have wrought a great change in the disposition of the British Government, and led them to seek a re-opening of the negotiation. In an apparently unofficial way Sir John Rose, a London banker (associated in business with Honorable L. P. Morton, a well-known banker and distinguished citizen of New York), came to this country on a secret mission early in January, 1871. President Grant's message had made a profound impression in London, the Franco-Prussian war had not yet ended, and Her Majesty's Ministers had reason to fear trouble with the Russian Government. Sir John's duty was to ascertain in an informal way the feeling of the American Government in regard to pending controversies between the two countries. He showed himself as clever in diplomacy as he was in finance, and important results followed in an incredibly short space of time. An understanding was reached, which on the surface expressed itself in a seemingly casual letter from Sir Edward Thornton to Secretary Fish of the 26th of January, 1871, communicating certain instructions from Lord Granville in regard to a better adjustment of the fishery question and all other matters affecting the relations of the United States to the British North-American possessions. To settle this question Sir Edward was authorized by his Government to propose the creation of a Joint High Commission, the members to be named by each Government, which should meet in Washington and discuss the question of the fisheries and the relations of the United States to her Majesty's possessions in North America.

Mr. Fish replied in a tone which indicated that Sir Edward was really serious in his proposition to organize so imposing a tribunal to discuss the fishery question. He informed Sir Edward that "in the opinion of the President the removal of differences which arose during the rebellion in the United States, and which have existed since then, growing out of the acts committed by several vessels, which have given rise to the claims generally known as the Alabama Claims, will also be essential to the restoration of cordial and amicable relations between the two Governments." Sir Edward waited just long enough to hear from Lord Granville by cable, and on the day after the receipt of Mr. Fish's note assented in writing to his suggestions, adding a request that "all other claims of the citizens of either country, arising out of the acts committed during the recent civil war in the United States, might be taken into consideration by the Commission." To this Mr. Fish readily assented in turn.

The question which for six years had been treated with easy indifference if not with contempt by the British Foreign Office had in a day become exigent and urgent, and the diplomatic details which ordinarily would have required months to adjust were now settled by cable in an hour. The first proposal for a Joint High Commission was made by Sir Edward Thornton on the 26th of January, 1871; and the course of events was so rapid that in twenty-seven days thereafter the British Commissioners landed in New York en route to Washington. They sailed without their commissions, which were signed by the Queen at the castle of Windsor on the sixteenth day of February and forwarded to them by special messenger. This was extraordinary and almost undignified haste, altogether unusual with Plenipotentiaries of Great Britain. It was laughingly said at the time that the Commissioners were dispatched from London "so hurriedly that they came with portmanteaus, leaving their servants behind to back their trunks and follow." For this change of view in the British Cabinet and this courier-like speed among British diplomatists, there was a double cause,--the warning of the Franco-Prussian war, and President Grant's proposition to pay the Alabama Claims from the Treasury of the United States--and wait. Assuredly the President did not wait long!

The gentlemen constituting the Joint High Commission were well known in their respective countries, and enjoyed the fullest measure of public confidence, thus insuring in advance the acceptance of whatever settlement they might agree upon.(5) The result of their deliberations was the Treaty of Washington, concluded on the eighth day of May, 1871. It took cognizance of the four questions at issue between the two countries, and provided for the settlement of each. The Alabama claims were to be adjusted by a commission to meet at Geneva, in Switzerland; all other claims for loss or damage of any kind, between 1861 and 1865, by subjects of Great Britain or citizens of the United States, were to be adjusted by a commission to meet in Washington; the San Juan question was to be referred for settlement to the Emperor of Germany, as Umpire; and the dispute in regard to the fisheries was to be settled by a commission to meet at Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The basis for adjusting the Alabama claims was promptly agreed upon. This question stood in the forefront of the treaty, taking its proper rank as the principal dispute between the two countries. Her Britannic Majesty had authorized her High Commissioners and plenipotentiaries "to express in a friendly spirit the regret felt by Her Majesty's Government for the escape, under whatever circumstances, of the Alabama and other vessels from British ports, and for the depredations committed by those vessels." And with the expression of this regret, Her Britannic Majesty agreed, through her Commissioners, that all the claims growing out of acts committed by the aforesaid vessels, and generally known as the Alabama claims, "shall be referred to a tribunal of arbitration, to be composed of five arbitrators,--one to be named by the President of the United States, one by the Queen of England, one by the King of Italy, one by the President of the Swiss Confederation, and one by the Emperor of Brazil." This was a great step beyond the Johnson-Clarendon treaty, which did not in any way concede the responsibility of England to the Government of the United States. It was a still greater step beyond the flat refusal, first of Earl Russell and then of Lord Stanley, to refer the claims to the ruler of a friendly state.

But England was willing to go still farther. She agreed that "in deciding the matters submitted to the arbitrators, they shall be governed by three rules, which are agreed upon by the high contracting parties as rules to be taken as applicable to the case; and by such principles of International Law, not inconsistent therewith, as the Arbitrators shall determine to have been applicable to the case.(6)" Her Brittanic Majesty had commanded her High Commissioners to declare that "Her Majesty's Government cannot assent to these rules as a statement of the principles of International Law which were in force at the time when the claims arose; but that Her Majesty's Government, in order to evince its desire of strengthening the friendly relations between the two countries, and of making satisfactory provision for the future, agrees that in deciding the questions between the two countries arising out of those claims, the Arbitrators shall assume that Her Majesty's Government had undertaken to act upon the principles set forth in these rules."

There is some question as to whether the British Government has discharged one of the obligations which it assumed under the treaty. After the three rules had been agreed upon, a clause of the treaty declared that "the high contracting parties agree to observe these rules as between themselves in the future, and to bring them to the knowledge of the other maritime powers and invite them to accede to them." Declaring that the three rules had not been recognized theretofore as International Law by her Majesty's Government, it was a fair agreement that they should be recognized thereafter, and that the combined influence of the British and American Governments should be used to incorporate them in the recognized code of the world.

But the Government of England has been unwilling to perform the duty which had thus been agreed upon, and this refusal gives rise to the impression that England does not desire to bind itself with other nations as she has bound herself with the United States. As the matter stands, if England should be involved in war with a European power, the United States is strictly bound by the letter and spirit of these three rules; but if two Continental powers become engaged in war, England is not bound by those rules in her conduct towards them. She certainly has gained much in securing the absolute neutrality of the United States when she is engaged in war, but it cannot be considered an honorable compliance with the obligations of the treaty if she fails to use her influence to extend the operation of the rules.

Following the provision for arbitration of the Alabama claims, the Treaty of Washington provided for a Commission to adjust "all claims on the part of corporations, companies or private individuals, citizens of the United States, upon the Government of her Britannic Majesty; and on the part of corporations, companies or private individuals, subject of her Britannic Majesty, upon the Government of the United States." These were claims arising out of acts committed against the persons or property of citizens of either country by the other, during the period between the 13th of April, 1861, and the 9th of April, 1865, inclusive, --being simply the damages inflicted during the war. The tribunal to which all such claims were referred was constituted of three Commissioners; one to be named by the President of the United States, one by her Britannic Majesty, and the third by the two conjointly.

The Commission was organized at Washington on the 26th of September, 1871, and made its final award at Newport, Rhode Island, on the 25th of September, 1873. The claims presented by American citizens before the Commission were only nineteen in number, amounting in the aggregate to a little less than a million of dollars. These claims were all rejected by the Commission--no responsibility of the British Government having been established. The subjects of her Majesty presented 478 claims which, with interest reckoned by the rule allowed by the Commission, amounted to $96,000,000. Of this number 181 awards were made in favor of the claimants, amounting in the aggregate to $1,929,819, or only two per cent of the amount claimed. The amount awarded was appropriated by Congress and paid by the United States to the British Government. All claims accruing between 1861 and 1865 for injuries resulting in any way from the war were thereafter barred.(7)

The subject of the north-western boundary line, commonly known as the San Juan question, was one of very considerable importance, over which there had been long contention between the two Governments. The treaty of Independence in 1783 was followed by a series of disputes relating to the boundary between the United States and British America. It was inevitable that a tortuous line, drawn from the north-western angle of Nova Scotia to the Lake of the Woods and thence (as the treaty erroneously described it) due west to the Mississippi River, would give occasion for honest difference of opinion and very frequent opportunity for technical disputes. The face of the country was imperfectly known in 1783, and the highlands and water-courses by which the line was to be determined could not at that time be laid down with accuracy.

Beyond the Mississippi (then an unknown country) territorial disputes grew up between Spain and Great Britain. By the purchase of Louisiana in 1803, and by the subsequently acquired claim to the Oregon country, the sovereignty of the Republic was extended to the Pacific; Great Britain claiming to be co-terminous for the entire distance. By the treaty of 1818 the forty-ninth parallel was agreed upon as the boundary from the line of the Lake of the Woods to the "Stony Mountains." The boundary from the Stony Mountains to the Pacific was left for subsequent settlement, and was finally adjusted (as already narrated in these pages) by the treaty of 1846. By that treaty the two governments agreed to continue the forty-ninth parallel as the boundary from the Stony Mountains "westward to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island, and thence southerly through the middle of said channel and of Fuca Straits to the Pacific Ocean."

The Commissioners appointed by the two Governments to run the line could not come to an agreement upon it,--the British Government claiming that it should be run through the Rosario Straits, and the Government of the United States that it should be run through the Canal de Haro. If the line should be run by the Rosario Straits the Island of San Juan belonged to Great Britain; if by the Canal de Haro the island belonged to the United States and formed part of Washington Territory. It was now agreed in the Treaty of Washington that the question should be left to the Emperor of Germany, who was "authorized to decide finally and without appeal which of these claims is most in accordance with the true interpretation of the treaty of June 15, 1846." The question thus submitted to his Imperial Majesty was purely a geographical one. Its decision either way could scarcely wound the susceptibilities of either party, however it might affect National interests. It also relieved the august arbitrator from the consideration of all the political prejudices and pretensions which had marked the long line of boundary discussions between the two countries, and the jealousies and misunderstandings between the two countries, and the jealousies and misunderstandings which had proved so troublesome during the period of joint occupation of the Oregon territory. The Emperor referred the detailed examination of the subject to a Commission of eminent experts both in law and science, and in accordance with their report decided in favor of the claim of the United States that the line should be run through the Canal de Haro.

The Government of the United States was fortunate in having its rights and interests represented before the Umpire by its Minister at Berlin, the Honorable George Bancroft. He was a member of President Polk's Cabinet during the period of the discussion and completion of the treaty of 1846, and was Minister at London when the San Juan dispute began. With his prolonged experience in historical investigation, Mr. Bancroft had readily mastered every detail of the question, and was thus enabled to present it in the strongest and most favorable light. His success fitly crowned an official career of great usefulness and honor. His memorial to the Emperor of Germany, when he presented the case, was conceived in his happiest style. The opening words were felicitous and touching: "The treaty of which the interpretation is referred to Your Majesty's arbitrament was ratified more than a quarter of a century ago. Of the sixteen members of the British Cabinet which framed and presented it for the acceptance of the United States, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Aberdeen, and all the rest but one, are no more. The British Minister at Washington who signed it is dead. Of American statesmen concerned in it, the Minister at London, the President and Vice-President, the Secretary of State, and every one of the President's constitutional advisers, except one, have passed away. I alone remain, and after finishing the threescore years and ten that are the days of our years, am selected by my country to uphold its rights."

The decision of the Emperor was given on the 21st of October (1872). The British Government accepted it cordially and Lord Granville immediately instructed Sir Edward Thornton to propose that the two Governments should resume the work of the boundary commission, which was interrupted in 1859. In accordance with this proposition a chart was immediately prepared and approved by both parties to the treaty. It is unnecessary to point out the advantage to the United States of the decision. A glance at the map will show it in full detail. The conclusion of the negotiation enabled President Grant to say in his message to Congress, December, 1872,--ninety years after the close of the Revolutionary War,--"It leaves us for the first time in the history of the United States as a nation, without a question of disputed boundary between our territory and the possessions of Great Britain on the American continent."

His Majesty's Government had needlessly lost six years in coming to a settlement which was entirely satisfactory to the Government and people of the United States. Indeed a settlement at the close of the war could have been made with even less concession on the part of Great Britain, and perhaps if it had been longer postponed the demands of the Government of the United States might have increased. Wars have grown out of less aggravation and dispute between nations; but the Government of the United States had never anticipated such a result as possible, and felt assured that in the end Great Britain would not refuse to make the reparation honorably due.

The Arbitrators met in the ensuing December at Geneva, Switzerland, and after a hearing of nine months agreed upon an award, made public on the 14th of September, 1872. The judgment was that "the sum of $15,500,000 in gold be paid by Great Britain to the United States for the satisfaction of all the claims referred to the consideration of the tribunal." Sir Alexander Cockburn, the British Commissioner, dissented in a somewhat ungracious manner from the judgment of his associates; but as the majority had been specially empowered to make an award, the refusal of England's representative to join in it did not in the least degree affect its validity.(8)

[NOTE.--The question of the fisheries--the last for whose adjudication the Treaty of Washington provided--is referred to in a subsequent chapter.]

[(1) The following extracts are from Hansard's Parliamentary Debates:--

May 16th, 1861. Earl Derby, in discussing our blockade of the Southern coast, said: "A blockade extending over a space to which it is physically impossible that an effectual blockade can be applied will not be recognized as valid by the British Government." And he intimated that "it is essentially necessary that the Northern States should not be induced to rely upon our forbearance."

--Feb. 10, 1862. Earl Derby discussed the right of Mr. Lincoln to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and even when Congress had passed a resolution affirming the course taken by the President, the noble Earl declared that "No law can be shown to support the President's exercise of the power."

--May 28, 1861. Mr. Bernal Osborne, in discussing the civil war in the United States, said: "If this were the proper time, I could point to outrages committed by the militia of New York in one of the Southern States occupied by them, where the General commanding, on the pretext that one of his men had been poisoned by strychnine, issued an order of the day, threatening to put a slave into every man's house to incite the slaves to murder their masters. Such was the general order issued by General Butler."

--Feb. 17, 1862. Lord Palmerston discussed the Constitutional powers of the Government, and said he knew that Mr. Seward and Mr. Lincoln could not make war upon their own authority. "We know that very well. It requires the sanction of the Senate."

--March 7, 1862. Mr. Gregory, in discussing the blockade of the Southern ports, said: "Now I can assure my honorable friend that, so far as I was concerned, I should have made use of no irritating expression. I should have affirmed then, as, undeterred by what has occurred since then, I affirm now, that secession was a right, that separation is a fact, and that reconstruction is an impossibility." Mr. Gregory denounced Mr. Seward as "lax, unscrupulous, and lawless of the rights of others."

--March 7, 1862. General Butler's orders were discussed by the Earl of Carnarvon, in the Lords, and by Sir John Walsh and Mr. Gregory in the Commons. Lord Palmerston was pleased to tell them that "with regard to the course which Her Majesty's Government may, upon consideration, take on the subject, the House I trust will allow me to say that that will be matter of reflection."

--March 7, 1862. Mr. G. W. P. Bentinck made a very bitter and abusive speech of the United States, and invited Her Majesty's Government to offer some explanation why, according to the policy which they had pursued with respect to Italian affairs, they had abstained from recognizing the independence of the Confederacy. He sneeringly referred to the "endless corruption in every public department in the Northern States."

--April 23, 1863. Mr. G. W. P. Bentinck transcended every limit of courtesy when in referring to Mr. Adams he said: "The idea of the American Minister of honesty and neutrality is remarkable. Every thing is honest to suit his own purposes."

--March 7, 1862. Lord Robert Cecil, in discussing the blockade of the Southern coast, said: "The plain matter of fact is, as every one who watches the current of history must know, that the Northern States of America never can be our sure friends, for this simple reason--not merely because the newspapers write at each other, or that there are prejudices on both sides, but because we are rivals, rivals politically, rivals commercially. We aspire to the same position. We both aspire to the government of the seas. We are both manufacturing people, and in every port, as well as at every court, we are rivals to each other. . . . With respect to the Southern States, the case is entirely reversed. The population are an agricultural people. They furnish the raw material of our industry, and they consume the produce which we manufacture from it. With them, therefore, every interest must lead us to cultivate friendly relations, and we have seen that when the war began they at once recurred to England as their natural ally."

--July 18, 1862. Mr. Lindsay, in discussing the questions of the civil war, said: "The re-establishment of the Union is indeed hopeless. That being so,--if we come to that conclusion,--it behooves England, in concert, I hope, with the great Powers of Europe, to offer her meditation, and to ask these States to consider the great distress among the people of this country caused entirely by this unhappy civil war which is now raging."

--Aug. 4, 1862. Lord Campbell (discussing the civil war) said: "But if the present moment is abandoned what are we to wait for? Not for Northern victories. Such victories would clearly limit our capacity to acknowledge Southern independence, as it was limited from the defeat and death of Zollicoffer in the winter down to the events which have lately driven General McClellan to the river. We are to wait, therefore, for new misfortunes to the Government of Washington before we grant to this unhappy strife the possibility of closing."

--March 23, 1863. Lord Campbell said: "Swelling with omnipotence, Mr. Lincoln and his colleagues dictate insurrection to the slaves of Alabama." And he spoke of the administration as "ready to let loose four million negroes on their compulsory owners and to renew from sea to sea the horrors and crimes of San Domingo."--He argued earnestly in favor of the British Government joining the government of France in acknowledging Southern independence. He boasted that within the last few days a Southern loan of £3,000,000 sterling had been offered in London, and that £9,000,000 were subscribed. He said: "Southern recognition will take away from the Northern mind the hope which lingers yet of Southern subjugation. From the Government of Washington it will take away the power of describing eleven communities contending for their liberty as rebels. . . . Victorious already, animated then, the Southern armies would be doubly irresistible. They would not have, if they retain it now, the power to be vanquished."

--Feb. 5, 1863. Earl Malmesbury spoke disdainfully of treating with so extraordinary a body as the Government of the United States, and referred to the horrors of the war,--"horrors unparalleled even in the wars of barbarous nations."

--March 27, 1863. Mr. Laird of Birkenhead (the builder of the Alabama and the rebel rams) was loudly cheered when he declared that "the institutions of the United States are of no value whatever, and have reduced the very name of liberty to an utter absurdity."

--April 23, 1863. Mr. Roebuck declared "that the whole conduct of the people of the North is such as proves them not only unfit for the government of themselves, but unfit for the courtesies and the community of the civilized world." Referring to some case of an English ship that had been seized by an American man-of-war, he declared: "It may lead to war; and I, speaking here for the English people, am prepared for war. I know that language will strike the heart of the peace party in this country, but it will also strike the heart of the insolent people who govern America."

--Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister, simply replied, without other comment, that the question to which Mr. Roebuck referred "is of the greatest possible importance."

--June 30, 1863. Mr. Roebuck asserted that "the South will never come into the Union, and what is more, I hope it never may. I will tell you why I say so. America while she was united ran a race of prosperity unparalleled in the world. Eighty years made the Republic such a power, that if she had continued as she was a few years longer she would have been the great bully of the world. . . . As far as my influence goes, I am determined to do all I can to prevent the reconstruction of the Union. . . . I say then that the Southern States have indicated their right to recognition; they hold out to us advantages such as the world has never seen before. I hold that it will be of the greatest importance that the reconstruction of the Union should not take place."

--April 24, 1863. Mr. Horsman of Stroud said: "We have seen the leviathan power of the North broken and driven back, with nothing to show for two years of unparalleled preparation and vast human sacrifice but failure and humiliation; the conquest of the South more hopeless and unachievable than ever, and Washington at this moment in greater jeopardy than Richmond. . . . I am not surprised that we should hear the questions asked now, 'How long are these afflictions to be endured? How long are the cotton ports of the South to remain sealed to Europe? How long are France and England to be debarred from intercourse with friendly States that owe no more allegiance to the North than they owe to the Pope? And how long are our patient but suffering operatives to remain the victims of an extinct authority and an aggressive and a malevolent Legislature?'"

--June 15, 1863. The Marquis of Clanricarde objected to our blockade, and said it was kept up "although every man of common sense in the United States is now convinced that it is impossible to compel the Southern States to re-enter the Union. . . . It is the duty of the British Government not to allow these infractions of maritime law to continue, which are in effect setting aside all law and practice as hitherto maintained."

--June 26, 1863. The Marquis of Clanricarde thought that "proceedings of American prize courts should be closely watched, for if doctrines are admitted there contrary to those maintained in the highest courts of this country, great confusion will be the result hereafter."

--June 29, 1863. Mr. Peacocke, complaining of some decisions made in the prize courts of the United States, said: "It is therefore the duty of the House to see how the law is administered in those courts." He confessed that he greatly distrusted these prize courts as they were at the time constituted.

--June 30, 1863. Mr. Clifford spoke of the "wanton barbarity with which the Federal Government has allowed its officers to wage the war, as though they sought to emulate the ravages of Attila and Genghis-Khan. . . And these things were done not for military objects which would afford some excuse for them, but out of such sheer wanton malice that even the negroes looked on disgusted and aghast."

--Feb. 9, 1864. Mr. Haliburton said: "The Canadians feel that the Americans are a lawless people, who are bound by no ties, who disregard International Law, who resort to violence and force."

--March 4, 1864. Lord Robert Montagu tauntingly remarked that it seemed to him "that it is the Federals who are bound to stop the depredations of the Alabama. Why have they not a ship quick enough to catch her and strong enough to destroy her?"

--March 14, 1864. Sir James Fergusson declared that "wholesale peculations and robbery have been perpetrated under the form of war by the Generals of the Federal States, and worse horrors than, I believe, have ever in the present century disgraced European armies, have been perpetrated under the eyes of the Federal Government and yet remain unpunished. These things are notorious as the proceedings of a Government which seems anxious to rival one despotic and irresponsible power of Europe in its contempt for the public opinion of mankind."

--March 18, 1864. The Earl of Donoughmore, referring to a statement in regard to the enlistments made by Captain Winslow of the United States ship Kearsarge, said that "either he stated what was a transparent falsehood or else he was not fit for his post." He then added: "The fact, however, is that any transparent falsehood seems to be a sufficient excuse for a particular line of conduct when it comes from the Federal Government."

--May 19, 1864. Mr. Alderman Rose declared "the whole system of Government in the Northern States is false, rotten, and corrupt; while the South is making for herself a great name and a glorious history."

--June 9, 1864. Lord Brougham said that he believed there was "but one universal feeling not only in this country, but all over Europe, of reprobation of the continuance of this war, of deep lamentation for its existence, and of an anxious desire that it should at length be made to cease." He lived in hopes "that before long an occasion might arise when in conjunction with our ally on the other side of the channel we shall interfere with effect, and when an endeavor to accommodate matters and restore peace between the two great contending parties will be attended with success."

--Lord John Russell agreed with Lord Brougham that "it is a most horrible war in America. There seems to be such hatred and animosity between great hosts of men, who were lately united under one government, that no consideration seems powerful enough to induce them to put an end to their fratricidal strife; and it is difficult to deal with them on those ordinary principles which have hitherto governed the conduct of civilized mankind."]

[(2) The subscribers to the Confederate loan in England were very numerous. The following were among the most conspicuous, as given in an official list.

Right Hon. Lord Wharncliffe; Marquis of Bath; Marquis of Lothian; Admiral, Right Hon. Lord Fitzardinge; Right Hon. Lord Claud Hamilton, M. P.; Right Hon. Viscount Lefford; Right Hon. Lord Teynham; Viscount Goimanson; Lord Robert Cecil, M. P.; Lord Henry F. Thynne, M. P.; Sir John W. H. Anson; Sir Gerald George Aylmer; Sir George H. Beaumont; Sir Samuel Bignold; Sir W. H. Capell Brook; Sir C. W. C. de Crispigny; Sir T. B. Dancer; Sir Arthur H. Elton; Sir W. H. Fielden; Sir W. Fitzherbert; Rev. Sir C. H. Foster; General Sir J. W. Guise; Sir Robert Harty; Sir William Hartopp; Sir Henry A. Hoare; Sir Henry de Hoghton; Vice-Admiral Hon. Sir Henry Keppel; Sir Edward Kerrison, M. P.; Sir John Dick Lander, M. P.; Sir E. A. H. Lechmere; Sir Coleman M. O. Loghlin, M. P.; Rev. C. R. Lighton, Bart.; Lieut.-Col. Sir Coutts Lindsay; Captain Sir G. N. Brooke Middelton; Sir Edmund Prideaux; Sir George Ramsey; Sir John S. Richardson; Sir George S. Robinson; Sir John S. Robinson; Sir J. A. Stewart; Sir W. D. Stewart; Sir John Tysser Tyrrell; Sir C. F. Lascelles Wraxall; Hon A. Duncombe, M. P.; Colonel, Right Hon. G. C. W. Forester, M. P.; Right Hon. J. Whiteside, M. P.; Hon. Percy S. Windham, M. P.; Lieut.-Col. T. Peers Williams, M. P.; Hon. W. Ashley; Major Hon. W. E. Cochrane; Hon. M. Portman; Hon S. P. Vereker; Richard Breminge, M. P.; W. H. Gregory, M. P.; Judge Halliburton, M. P.; John Hardy, M. P.; Beresford A. J. B. Hope, M. P.; J. T. Hopewood, M. P.; W. S. Lindsay, M. P.; Matthew Henry Marsh, M. P.; Francis Macdonough, M. P.; J. A. Roebuck, M. P.; William Scholefield, M. P.; William Vansittart, M. P.; Arthur Edwin Way, M. P.]

[(3) Three eminent British authorities may be quoted as to the mode in which England had governed Ireland.

--Mr. Lecky, in his history of England in the eighteenth century, in reviewing the condition of Ireland, says, in 1878: "It would be difficult in the whole compass of history to find another instance in which such various and such powerful agencies concurred to degrade the character and to blast the prosperity of a nation. That the greater part of them sprang directly from the corrupt and selfish Government of England is incontestable. No country ever exercised a more complete control over the destinies of another than did England over those of Ireland for three-quarters of a century after the Revolution. No serious resistance of any kind was ever attempted. The nation was as passive as clay in the hands of the potter, and it is a circumstance of peculiar aggravation that a large part of the legislation I have recounted was a distinct violation of a solemn treaty. The commercial legislation which ruined Irish industry, the confiscation of Irish land, which disorganized the whole social condition of the country, the scandalous misapplication of patronage, which at once demoralized and impoverished the nation, were all directly due to the English Government and the English Parliament."

--Mr. Macaulay, in a speech in the House of Commons on the state of Ireland, in Feb., 1844, said: "My first proposition, sir, will scarcely be disputed. Both sides of the House are fully agreed in thinking that the condition of Ireland may well excite great anxiety and apprehension. That island, in extent about one-fourth of the United Kingdom, in population more than one-fourth, superior probably in natural fertility to any area of equal size in Europe, possessed of natural facilities for trade such as can nowhere else be found in an equal extent of coast, an inexhaustible nursery of gallant soldiers, a country far more important to the prosperity, the strength, the dignity of this great empire than all our distant dependencies together, than the Canadas and the West Indies added to Southern Africa, to Australasia, to Ceylon, and to the vast dominions of the Moguls,--that island, sir, is acknowledged by all to be so ill affected and so turbulent that it must, in any estimate of your power, be not added, but deducted. You admit that you govern that island, not as you govern England and Scotland, but as you govern your new conquests in Scinde; not by means of the respect which the people feel for the laws, but by means of bayonets, of artillery, or entrenched camps."

--Edmund Burke, writing to Sir Hercules Langrishe, in 1792, said: "The original scheme was never deviated from for a single hour. Unheard-of confiscations were made in the Northern parts, upon grounds of plots and conspiracies never proved upon their supposed authors. The war of chicane succeeded to the war of arms and of hostile statutes; and a regular series of operations were carried on, particularly from Chichester's time, in the ordinary courts of justice and by special commissions and inquisitions: First under pretense of tenures, and then of titles in the Crown, for the purpose of the total extirpation of the interests of the natives in their own soil, until the species of subtle ravage kindled the flames of that rebellion which broke out in 1641. By the issue of that war, by the turn which the Earl of Clarendon gave to things at the Restoration, and by the total reduction of the kingdom of Ireland in 1691, the ruin of the native Irish, and in a great measure too of the first races of the English, was completely accomplished."]

[(4) The following is the language of President Grant in his message:--

"Toward the close of the last Administration a convention was signed at London for the settlement of all outstanding claims between Great Britain and the United States, which failed to receive the advice and consent of the Senate to its ratification. The time and the circumstances attending the negotiation of that treaty were unfavorable to its acceptance by the people of the United States, and its provisions were wholly inadequate for the settlement of the grave wrongs that had been sustained by this Government as well as by its citizens.

"The injuries resulting to the United States by reason of the course adopted by Great Britain during our late civil war in the increased rates of insurance; in the diminution of exports and imports, and other obstruction to domestic industry and production; in its effect upon the foreign commerce of the country; in the decrease and transfer to Great Britain of our commercial marine; in the prolongation of the war and the increased cost, both in treasure and in lives, of its suppression, could not be adjusted and satisfied as ordinary commercial claims, which continually arise between commercial nations. And yet the convention treated them simply as such ordinary claims, from which they differ more widely in the gravity of their character than in the magnitude of their amount, great even as is that difference. Not a word was found in the treaty, and not an inference could be drawn from it, to remove the sense of the unfriendliness of the course of Great Britain in our struggle for existence, which has so deeply and universally impressed itself upon the people of this country.

"Believing that a convention thus misconceived in its scope and inadequate in its provisions would not have produced the hearty, cordial settlement of pending questions, which alone is consistent with the relations which I desire to have firmly established between the United States and Great Britain, I regarded the action of the Senate in rejecting the treaty to have been wisely taken in the interest of peace, and as a necessary step in the direction of a perfect and cordial friendship between the two countries. A sensitive people conscious of their power are more at ease under a great wrong wholly unatoned than under the restraint of a settlement which satisfies neither their ideas of justice nor their grave sense of the grievance they have sustained."]

[(5) The Commissioners on behalf of Great Britain were the Earl de Grey and Ripon, President of the Queen's Counsel; Sir Stafford Northcote, late Chancellor of the Exchequer; Sir Edward Thornton, British Minister at Washington; Sir John Macdonald, Premier of the Dominion of Canada; and Montague Bernard, Professor of International Law in the university of Oxford. On the part of the United States the Commissioners were Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State; Robert C. Schenck, who had just been appointed Minister to Great Britain; Samuel Nelson, Justice of the Supreme Court; E. Rockwood Hoar, late Attorney-General; and George H. Williams, late senator of the United States from Oregon.--The Secretaries were Lord Tenterden, under secretary of the British Foreign Office, and J. C. Bancroft Davis, Assistant Secretary of State of the United States.]

[(6) The following are the three rules agreed upon:--

"A neutral Government is bound--

"First, to use due diligence to prevent the fitting out, arming, or equipping, within its jurisdiction, of any vessel which it has reasonable ground to believe is intended to cruise or to carry on war against a power with which it is at peace; and also to use like diligence to prevent the departure from its jurisdiction of any vessel intended to cruise or carry on war as above, such vessel having been specially adapted, in whole or in part, within such jurisdiction, to warlike use.

"Secondly, not to permit or suffer either belligerent to make use of its ports of waters as the base of naval operations against the other, or for the purpose of the renewal or augmentation of military supplies or arms, or the recruitment of men.

"Thirdly, to exercise due diligence in its own ports and waters, and, as to all persons within its jurisdiction, to prevent any violation of the foregoing obligations and duties."]

[(7) The Commission that made these labored and accurate awards was composed as follows:--

Right Hon. Russell Gurney, M. P., was the English Commissioner; Hon. James S. Fraser of Indiana was Commissioner for the United States; Count Louis Corti (Minister from Italy to the United States) was selected as third Commissioner. Hon. Robert S. Hale, a learned member of the bar of New York, and distinguished as a representative in Congress, was appointed agent of the United States; and Mr. Henry Howard, one of the British secretaries of Legation at Washington, and most favorably known to the people of the Capital, was agent of Her Majesty's Government.]

[(8) The arbitrators who met at Geneva were as follows:--

Great Britain appointed Sir Alexander Cockburn; the United States appointed Mr. Charles Francis Adams; the King of Italy named Count Frederick Sclopia; the President of the Swiss Confederation named Mr. Jacob Stæmpfli; the Emperor of Brazil named the Baron d'Itajubá. Mr. J. C. Bancroft Davis was appointed Agent of the United States; and Lord Tenterden was the Agent of Great Britain.]

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