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 ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 OF PEACE 
 
 BY HENRY CABOT |j.ODGE 
 
 UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE OUTLOOK COMPANY 
 
 1912 
 
 G, 
 
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 OPS/ oC 
 

 Copyright, 1912, by 
 
 The Outlook Company 
 
 New Vork 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 
 
 I 
 
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF PEACE' 
 
 BY HENRY CABOT LODGE 
 
 UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS 
 
 '~T~^HE last war between Great Britain and 
 I the United States began in June, 1812. 
 ■*- Tiiere has been no war between the 
 two countries since the Treaty of Ghent was 
 signed on Christmas Eve in 1814. Strictly 
 speaking, the absence of war constitutes peace, 
 and therefore we may describe these hundred 
 years just passed as a century of peace be- 
 tween the United States and Great Britain. 
 But in the larger and better sense of the 
 word it must be confessed that the relations 
 between the two countries during that period 
 have been at times anything but peaceful, and 
 often far from friendly. Indeed, there have 
 been some perilous moments when war has 
 seemed verj' imminent. To describe this 
 period therefore as one of unbroken good 
 will merely because there was no actual fight- 
 ing would be wholly misleading. If a review, 
 however brief, of the relations between Great 
 Britain and the United States since 1812 is 
 to possess any value, it can only be through 
 showing how, by slow steps, with many in- 
 terruptions and much bitterness on both sides, 
 we have nevertheless finally attained to the 
 genuine friendship in which all sensible men 
 of both countries rejoice to-day. This fortu- 
 nate condition has been reached only after 
 many years of storm and stress, which it 
 seems to posterity, always blessed with that 
 unerring wisdom which comes after the 
 event, might have been easily avoided. 
 
 To understand the present situation aright, 
 to comprehend the meaning and effects of the 
 War of 1812 and of the ninet3'-eight years 
 of peace which have followed its conclusion, 
 it is necessary to begin with the separation of 
 the two countries, by the peace of 1782, 
 when the connection between England and 
 the United States ceased to be that of mother 
 country and colonies and became the more 
 distant relation which exists between two in- 
 dependent nations. Just now there appears 
 to be a tendency among Englishmen to re- 
 gard that separation of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury as a small matter, especially so far as 
 their own country is concerned, a view which, 
 however comfortable, is hardly sustained by 
 history, and we may well pause a moment at 
 the outset to consider just what the war re- 
 
 ' Copyright, 1912, by the Outlook Company. 
 
 suiting in the treaties of Paris meant, for on 
 that decisive event rests ultimately all that has 
 since come to pass. 
 
 As an illustration of the attitude of mind 
 to which I have referred, let me take the 
 recent case of a well-known writer and very 
 popular novelist. Some years ago Mr. H. 
 G. Wells came to this country, and on his 
 return to England, like many of his country- 
 men, he wrote a book about the United 
 States. Unlike many of his countrymen, 
 however, he wrote a very pleasant and 
 friendly book, enlivened by some characteris- 
 tic remarks in favor of Socialism and of con- 
 verting the Niagara Falls into horse-power. 
 He made, however, one comment which 
 struck me at the time, and which, I think, 
 has been made since by others of his coun- 
 trymen. This comment was in connection 
 with his visit to Boston, as I remember, and 
 criticised us good-naturedly for the extreme 
 care with which we marked all spots con- 
 nected with the Revolution, and for the ap- 
 parent importance which we attached to that 
 event. Mr. Wells, unlike Sir George Trevel- 
 yan, the most brilliant of living English his- 
 torians, seemed to think that this American 
 feeling about the Revolution which resulted 
 in the independence of the United States was 
 provincial, if not parochial. In view of the 
 sound system of British education, which has 
 a great deal to say about English victories 
 great and small, and is curiously reticent as to 
 English defeats, it is perhaps not surprising 
 that the importance attached to the incidents 
 of the American Revolution in this country 
 should surprise the average traveler from 
 Great Britain. But, putting aside the par- 
 tiality which Americans feel toward tb.e Revo- 
 lution, owing to the fact that they were vic- 
 torious, and the lack of interest with which 
 the British regard it, because they were de- 
 feated, it is perhaps not amiss to point out 
 that the war for American independence 
 really was an event of high importance, and 
 was so considered then, as it has been ever 
 since, by dispassionate persons. 
 
 The revolt of the American Colonies in 
 1776 agitated the world of that day far be- 
 yond the parish limits of the United States. 
 That Revolution divided parties and over 
 
threw Ministries in England. It involved 
 France and Spain in war with Great Britain, 
 and created the armed neutrality of the 
 northern Powers, events which are rarely 
 caused by trifling or provincial struggles. 
 But the American Revolution was something 
 much more even than this. It broke the 
 British Empire for the first, and, sp far, for 
 the only time. It took from England her 
 greatest and most valuable possession. With 
 the American Colonies she lost a population 
 equal to about a fifth of the inhabitants of 
 Great Britain at that period, as well as the 
 ownership of the best part of a great continent. 
 The independence of the Colonies was the 
 foundation of the United States, and, whether 
 one approves of the United States or not, 
 there can be no question, I think, that they 
 constitute to-day a large and important fact 
 in the existing world. It was an Englishman, 
 I believe, who said that, after all, England's 
 most considerable achievement was the 
 United States. Finally, and this is some- 
 thing which I feel it would hardly be possi- 
 ble to describe as parochial, modern democ- 
 racy began with the American Revolution. 
 When Emerson, with the insight of the poet, 
 declared that the shot which the embattled 
 farmers fired at Concord Bridge was heard 
 " round the world," he told the exact truth. 
 At that bridge, in that litde New England 
 village, the first drum-beat of democracy 
 broke upon the troubled air, and there the 
 march began. That same drum-beat was 
 heard a little later in France, when several 
 things happened which Mr. Wells would not 
 probably regard as provincial, and which 
 caused some stir at the time. Looking over 
 the world to-day, it may be fairly said that no 
 greater event could be commemorated than 
 the first uprising of democracy which swept 
 over the Governments of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, and which is still pressing onward, 
 crossing even now into the confines of Asia. 
 Yet, very characteristically, this American 
 Revolution, which Mr. Wells smiles at gently 
 as a litde provincial incident, but which seems 
 not to have been without its effect on the his- 
 tory of civilized man, turned on a question of 
 law. That two great branches of the same peo- 
 ple, speaking the same language, holding the 
 same beliefs, and cherishing the same institu- 
 tions, should go to war about a question of 
 legal right in the imposition of taxes is indeed 
 very typical of the race and breed. It is 
 also one reason why the War of the Revolu- 
 tion, as a whole, was sullied by few acts of 
 
 cruelty or ferocity, for, as Macaulay pointed 
 out long ago, the character of a civil war is 
 very largely determined by the amount of op- 
 pression which one side has suffered at the 
 hands of the other. The government of the 
 English colonies in America had been, on the 
 whole, easy and liberal. Sir Robert Walpole, 
 with his wise indifference which allowed the 
 dust to gather upon American despatches, 
 and the elder Pitt, who had the faculty of 
 arousing the enthusiasm of the colonists by 
 appealing to their patriotic impulses and by 
 treating them as friends and equals, had made 
 the bonds between the mother country and 
 her children very strong. But a very dull and 
 narrow-minded King, served by Ministers of 
 slight capacity or of judiciously pliant natures, 
 soon undid the work of the two great Minis- 
 ters and forced on the war which had in it 
 at that moment nothing of the inevitable. 
 The Revolution thus generated was fought 
 out through seven long years, and the Colonies 
 won. There was, of course, bitterness of 
 feeling on both sides, but none which could 
 not have been quickly and easily overcome 
 if right methods had been pursued. The 
 Americans, it is true, did not carry out the 
 treaty properly in regard to the Loyalists, 
 and the British, on their side, failed to observe 
 it in regard to the relinquishment of the 
 Western posts which were an absolute threat 
 not only to the expansion but to the very exist- 
 ence of the United States. One of the great- 
 est achievements of Washington's Adminis- 
 tration was the Jay Treaty, and to make this 
 settlement with England he sacrificed the 
 French alliance, but he removed forever the 
 Western menace and cleared the frontier of 
 the United States from a danger which in 
 time of war might have proved fatal. The 
 French Revolution, which destroyed the 
 American alliance, divided public opinion in 
 the United States, as it did in England, and 
 the immediate result was virtual, although 
 not declared, war with France, a situation 
 that gave England an opportunity to bind her 
 former colonies closely to her, which unfortu- 
 nately did not seem to English statesmen a 
 thing worth doing. Then came the great 
 struggle with Napoleon, and again England 
 might easily have made her former colonies 
 her close friends and allies. This policy in- 
 deed was so obvious that it is hard to under- 
 stand why even English Ministers failed to 
 adopt it. Jefferson, with all his eulogy of 
 France and denunciation of England for 
 political purposes, was more than ready to 
 
unite with lier ag^ainst Napoleon if England 
 would only have allowed him to do so. but 
 after the death of the younger Pitt and the 
 dissolution of the Ministry of " All the Tal- 
 ents," the English Government fell once more 
 into the hands of some very inferior men. 
 Ministers of the caliber of Perceval, Castle- 
 reagh, and Lord Liverpool, united with ex- 
 treme Tories like Lord Eldon, whose ability 
 was crippled by their blind prejudices, were 
 utterly unable to see the value of friendship 
 with the United States and preferred to treat 
 their former colonists with a comfortable con- 
 tempt. The one very clever man not in oppo- 
 sition in those days was Canning, and he did 
 more than any one else perhaps by his unfortu- 
 nate attitude to drive the United States away 
 from England. It was he who said that the 
 navy of the United States consisted of " a 
 few fir frigates with a bit of bunting at the 
 top." For the sake of this not very humor- 
 ous alliteration he paid rather heavily in the 
 loss of a good many English frigates at a 
 later day. 
 
 It is not pleasant to Americans to recall 
 the years which preceded our second war 
 with England. There was no indignity, no 
 humiliation, no outrage, that England on the 
 one side and Napoleon on the other did not 
 inflict upon the United States. Our Gov- 
 ernment submitted and yielded and made 
 sacrifices which it is now difficult to con- 
 template with calmness, until at last a party 
 arose composed of young men who were pro- 
 foundly convinced that anything was better 
 than such conditions, and that if we were to 
 have a National existence worth having we 
 must fight. They did not care very much with 
 whom we fought, but they were determined 
 to fight some one in order to vindicate the 
 right of the United States to live as a Nation 
 without dishonor. The unscrupulous dex- 
 terity of Napoleon and the marvelous stupidity 
 of England resulted in our fighting England 
 instead of France, and thus we came to 
 the War of 1812. 
 
 We had no army and a very small navy. 
 The political group which had forced war 
 upon us, although right in their reasons for 
 going to war, were utterly wrong in the 
 ignorant boasts with which they proclaimed 
 our readiness for battle. Wholly unpre- 
 pared, we suffered many defeats on the 
 Canadian frontier, which were redeemed only 
 by the two battles of Lundy's Lane and 
 Chippewa. On the seas and lakes we had 
 almost unbroken victory, and, finally at New 
 
 Orleans, after peace had reall\- be^n made, 
 but before it was known, Jackson defeated the 
 veterans of Wellington's Peninsula campaigns 
 with' a thoroughness and a severity which 
 were so marked that the battle is hardly alluded 
 to in British histories, and must therefore be 
 relegated to the provincial class of historical 
 events. So the war came to an end before it 
 had lasted three years, and when the Treaty 
 of Ghent was signed that instrument did not 
 contain the settlement of a single one of the 
 questions which had made the war unavoid- 
 able and for which the United States had 
 fought. Yet, none the less, the war had set- 
 ded all those questions. Never again did 
 England attempt to stop an American man- 
 of-war or an American merchantman and 
 take seamen, whom she claimed as deserters, 
 from their decks. Never again did she at- 
 tempt to interfere with American commerce. 
 Whatever losses the United States might 
 have suffered in the war, however much her 
 pride might have been wounded by the 
 destruction of the Capitol at Washington, the 
 real victory was with the Americans. They 
 had fought, and they had gained what they 
 fought for. They sacrificed nothing — not an 
 inch of territory — by so doing. The only 
 losses suffered by the United States were in 
 men and money, and by those losses we 
 had put an end forever to the humiliating 
 treatment which had been meted out to 
 us during the first decade of the century. 
 As the years passed by all this became 
 apparent, and it is now perfectly plain 
 that the War of 1812 achieved the result 
 for which it was fought, by establishing the 
 position of the United States as an inde- 
 pendent Nation and restoring the National 
 self-respect. Although the Treaty of Ghent 
 did not show it, we have but to look behind 
 the curtain which the hand of time has drawn 
 aside in order to learn that the men of that 
 day in England recognized what had hap- 
 pened, although they might not admit it to 
 themselves, much less to the public. They 
 confessed the truth in man}- ways, none the 
 less clearly because the confession was indi- 
 rect. 
 
 Take, for example, this letter from Mr. 
 James, the naval historian, to Mr. Canning : 
 
 MR. W. JAMES TO MR. CANNING. 
 
 "Perry Vale, near Sydenham, Kent: Jany. 9, 1827 
 
 " The menacing tone of the American 
 President's message is now the prevailing 
 topic of conversation, more especially among 
 
the mercantile men in whose company I 
 daily travel to and from town. One says 
 ' We had better cede a point or two rather 
 than go to War with the United States.' 
 ' Yes,' says another, ' for we shall get nothing 
 but hard knocks there.' 'True,' adds a 
 third, ' and what is worse than all, our sea- 
 men are half afraid to meet the Americans 
 at sea.' Unfortunately this depression of 
 feeling, this cowed spirit, prevails very gen- 
 erally over the community, even among per- 
 sons well informed on other subjects, and 
 who, were a British seaman to be named 
 with a Frenchman or Spaniard, would scoff 
 at the comparison." ^ 
 
 The words of Mr. James show the effect 
 upon the public mind in England of the 
 American naval victories, which so pro- 
 foundly interested Napoleon. They pene- 
 trated so deeply that they actually reached 
 the intelligence of the Liverpools and the 
 Castlereaghs. Even they felt the meaning 
 to England's prestige as a naval power of 
 losing eleven out of thirteen single ship 
 actions and two flotilla engagements on the 
 Great Lakes. Their alarm can be measured 
 by the honors they conferred on Captain 
 Broke, who commanded the Shannon when 
 she defeated the Chesapeake — higher honors 
 than Nelson received for his brilliant service 
 in the batde of Cape St. Vincent. Nor was 
 this all. Despite their contempt for the 
 Americans and their loud assertions of satis- 
 faction with their successes, as the war drew 
 to its close the Ministers became so fright- 
 ened that they proposed to send Wellington 
 to America to command their armies on the 
 very scene of the victories which they so 
 loudly proclaimed. The Duke's letters in 
 regard to this proposal are most instructive, 
 and reveal the real results of the war, for 
 Wellington was never the victim of illusions. 
 He had the great faculty of looking facts in 
 the face. 
 
 On the 9th of November, 1814, he wrote 
 from Paris to Lord Liverpool as follows : 
 
 " I have already told you and Lord Bath- 
 urst that I feel no objection to going to 
 America, though I don't promise to myself 
 much success there. I believe there are 
 troops enough there for the defense of 
 Canada forever, and even for the accom- 
 plishment of any reasonable offensive plan 
 that could be formed from the Canadian 
 frontier. I am quite sure that all the Ameri- 
 
 ■ ■■ Canning Correspondeice.' 
 Vol. II. p. 340. 
 
 Edited by E. J. Stapleton. 
 
 can armies of which I have ever read would 
 not beat out of a field of battle the troops 
 that went from Bordeaux last summer, if 
 common precautions and care were taken of 
 them. 
 
 " That which appears to me to be wanting 
 in America is not a General, or General 
 officers and troops, but a naval superiority 
 on the Lakes. Till that superiority is ac- 
 quired, it is impossible, according to my 
 notion, to maintain an army in such a situa- 
 tion as to keep the enemy out of the whole 
 frontier, much less to make any conquest 
 from the enemy, whibh, with those superior 
 means, might, with reasonable hopes of suc- 
 cess, be undertaken. I may be wrong in this 
 opinion, but I think the whole history of the 
 war proves its truth ; and I suspect that you 
 will find that Prevost will justify his misfor- 
 tunes, which, by the by, I am quite certain 
 are not what the Americans represented them 
 to be, by stating that the navy were defeated, 
 and even if he had taken Fort Mason he must 
 have retired. The question is, whether we 
 can acquire this naval superiority on the 
 Lakes. If we can't, I shall do you but little 
 good in America ; and I shall go there only 
 to prove the truth of Prevost's defense, and 
 to sign a peace which might as well be signed 
 now. There will always, however, remain 
 this advantage, that the confidence which I 
 have acquired will reconcile both the army 
 and people in England to terms of which they 
 would not now approve. 
 
 " In regard to your present negotiations, I 
 confess that I think you have no right from 
 the state of the war to demand any conces- 
 sion of territory from America. Considering 
 everything, it is my opinion that the war has 
 been a most successful one, and highly honor- 
 able to the British arms ; but from particular 
 circumstances, such as the want of the naval 
 superiority on the Lakes, you have not been 
 able to carry it into the enemy's territory, not- 
 withstanding your military success, and now 
 undoubted military superiority, and have not 
 even cleared your own territory of the enemy 
 on the point of attack. You cannot then, on 
 any principle of equality in negotiation, claim 
 a cession of territory excepting in exchange 
 for other advantages which you have in your 
 power. 
 
 "I put out of the question the possession 
 taken by Sir John Sherbrooke between the 
 Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Bay. It is 
 evidently only temporary, and till a larger 
 force will drive away the few companies he 
 
has left there : and an officer might as well 
 claim the sovereignty of the ground on which 
 his piquets stand, or over which his patrols 
 pass. 
 
 " Then if this reasoning be true, why- 
 stipulate for the nti possidetis ? You can get 
 no territory ; indeed the state of your mili- 
 tary operations, however creditable, does not 
 entitle you to demand any ; and you only 
 afford the Americans a popular and creditable 
 ground which, I believe, their Government 
 are looking for, not to break off the negotia- 
 tions, but to avoid to make peace. If 5'ou 
 had territory, as I hope you soon will have 
 New Orleans, I should prefer to insist upon 
 the cession of that province as a separate 
 article than upon the //// possidetis as a prin- 
 ciple of negotiation." 
 
 And again, on November 18, 1814, he 
 wrote to the Earl of Liverpool : 
 
 " I have already told you that I have no 
 objection to going to America, and I will go 
 whenever I may be ordered. But does it 
 not occur to your Lordship that, by appoint- 
 ing me to go to America at this moment, you 
 g^ve ground for belief all over Europe that 
 your affairs there are in a much worse situa- 
 tion than they really are .' And will not my 
 nomination at this moment be a triumph to 
 the Americans and their friends here and 
 elsewhere ? It will give satisfaction, and 
 that only momentary, in England ; and it may 
 have the effect of raising hopes and expecta- 
 tions there which, we know, cannot be real- 
 ized." 
 
 Despite the " military successes," Welling- 
 ton did not think that England could make 
 any demand for territory or compensation, 
 which shows that the "successes" had been 
 as barren as they were trivial. The invinci- 
 ble troops from Bordeaux were badly beaten 
 by Jackson, and Pakenham, one of Welling- 
 ton's favorite generals, was killed, so that he 
 did not capture New Orleans, as the Duke 
 expected. 
 
 The result was a treaty of peace that 
 on its face only brought peace, which the 
 Duke evidently thought was all England 
 could expect. There need not have been any 
 war between England and the United States 
 in 1812 if England had only seen fit to make 
 the United States a friend instead of a foe. 
 But England did not so will, and the war 
 taught her that the United States could no 
 longer be bullied and outraged with impunity. 
 Thus the War of 1812 brought, after all, a 
 peace worth having, and laid the foundations 
 
 for that larger peace which has lasted for a 
 hundred jears. During that time, through 
 many vicissitudes, the relations of the two 
 countries have so improved that we are now 
 warranted in believing, what all reflecting 
 men earnestly hope, that another war between 
 England and the United States has become 
 an impossibility. 
 
 These larger results of the war, so plainly 
 to be seen now, were not of course imme- 
 diately apparent. The old attitude was still 
 too fixed, the old habits still too strong, to 
 be abandoned in a moment. We made a 
 brief treaty of commerce and navigation 
 with England in June, 1815, six months 
 after the conclusion of the Treaty of Ghent, 
 but this treaty disposed of none of the out- 
 standing questions as to which the Treaty of 
 Ghent had been silent, and some of these 
 thus passed over were of a nature which 
 imperatively required settlement. A British 
 officer, unconscious apparently that a war 
 had been fought, undertook to search some 
 of our vessels upon the Great Lakes, a little 
 eccentricity which was-not repeated. Despite 
 the agreement of the Ghent Treaty, England 
 held on to Astoria and the posts in the 
 extreme Northwest, and, what was still worse, 
 she also attempted to take the ground that 
 our fishing rights, determined by the treaty 
 of 1783, had been extinguished by the war. 
 Acting on this opinion, British cruisers seized 
 American fishing vessels, and the condition 
 of affairs on the coasts of Nova Scotia. Can- 
 ada, and Newfoundland became serious in 
 the extreme. Mr. Adams, then Minister of 
 the United States in London, brought these 
 questions to the attention of Lord Castle- 
 reagh, urging upon him the necessity of fur- 
 ther treaties to settle these disputes, to extend 
 the commercial convention of 1815, and to 
 make some agreement in regard to the slaves 
 who had been carried off after the conclusion 
 of the war, as well as with reference to the 
 disputed northwestern boundary. His discus- 
 sions with Lord Castlereagh, which are de- 
 tailed at length in his diary, were fruitless, 
 and the British Cabinet declined at that time 
 to enter upon further negotiations. It may 
 be inferred that they did not think it worth 
 while to take any steps toward improving 
 their relations with the American people. 
 Soon after these conferences with Lord Cas- 
 tlereagh Mr. Adams returned to the United 
 States in order to take his place in President 
 Monroe's Cabinet on the 4th of March, 1817, 
 and Mr. Rush succeeded him as Minister at 
 
London. Once more an effort to come to a 
 further agreement on some, at least, of the out- 
 standing questions was made, and Mr. Rush 
 was instructed that if England would assent, 
 Mr. Gallatin, who was our Minister at Paris, 
 would be joined with him in the negotiations. 
 Then it was that the effects of the war 
 began to be really apparent. The exaspera- 
 tion caused b}' the seizure of our fishing 
 vessels and by the refusal to carry out the 
 provisions of the Treaty of Ghent on the 
 northwest coast made it evident that if some- 
 thing was not done the two countries would 
 again be involved in hostilities. This danger, 
 which would have made no impression upon 
 the minds of the British Ministers ten years 
 earlier, was now effective, and England's 
 action showed that she was no longer ready 
 to go to extremes. The Ministry changed its 
 attitude and assented to a new negotiation. 
 The result was the Treaty of 1818, by which 
 England admitted in principle the American 
 contention that the fishing rights conceded in 
 1783 were final in their nature and could not 
 be abrogated by war. Mr. Rush and Mr. 
 Gallatin, moreover, succeeded in obtaining 
 larger concessions in this respect than their 
 instructions called for, and the American fish- 
 ing rights within the three-mile limit, and also 
 the right to dry and cure on the coast, were 
 recognized as to certain portions of Newfound- 
 land, Nova Scotia, and Canada. The treaty 
 also disposed of the boundary from the Lake 
 of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains, and 
 from there westward to the ocean the coun- 
 try was left open to the occupation of the sub- 
 jects and citizens of both Powers for a term 
 of ten years. The commercial convention 
 was extended and provision was made for the 
 settlement of American claims on account of 
 the slaves who had been carried away by 
 referring the whole matter to the decision of 
 some friendly sovereign. Nothing was said 
 about the subject of seamen's rights, which 
 had been so largely the cause of the war. 
 The Treaty of 1818 was as silent on this 
 topic as the Treaty of Ghent, but this ques- 
 tion had in reality been settled by the war 
 itself, for England, having found that the 
 theme was one upon which the United States 
 was ready to fight, quiedy allowed her claims 
 in this direction to die away. 
 
 Four years after the Treaty of 1818, and 
 in accordance with the fifth article, the ques- 
 tion of compensation for slaves or <jther prop- 
 erty carried away after the war was referred 
 to the Emperor of Russia, as arbitrator, 
 
 and the Emperor's award decided that the 
 United States was entitled to just indemnifi- 
 cation for all such private property taken by 
 the British forces, and more especially for 
 all such slaves as were carried away from the 
 places and territories for the restitudon of 
 which the treaty stipulated. The adoption 
 of the Treaty of 1818 was also the signal for 
 the restoration to the United States of 
 Astoria and the other points on the coast of 
 the extreme northwest. In this way the 
 Treaty of 1818, and the award of the Em- 
 peror of Russia, which grew out of it, 
 brought the relations of the two countries 
 into a better condidon than they had been in 
 since the close of the American Revolution, 
 and these treaties may be said to have con- 
 stituted the first step toward the improve- 
 ment of those relations which were desdned 
 to grow better, although with many checks 
 and hindrances, for one hundred years to 
 come. 
 
 The two countries were also drawn nearer 
 together by holding the same attitude in 
 regard to the revolting colonies of Spain in 
 South America, and by their common dislike 
 and distrust of the principles of the Holy 
 Alliance. When Canning broke away from 
 the somewhat musty Toryism which thought 
 everything was to go on just as of old, and 
 as if the French Revolution had never hap- 
 pened, he not only powerfully aided the 
 South American republics, but he greatly 
 strengthened the position of the United 
 States. Canning did not at all approve of 
 the extended form which his policy took on 
 in the Monroe Doctrine, but his work could 
 not be undone, and a common sympathy 
 and a common policy in the South American 
 struggle for freedom drew Great Britain and 
 the United States closely together in the 
 eyes of the world, and, also, although to a 
 less degree, in their own estimation. 
 
 After the award of the Emperor in regard 
 to indemnity for the slaves carried off by the 
 British forces in the War of 1812, there was, 
 with the exception of the conventions of 
 1827, renewing and extending the Treaty of 
 1818 and providing for an arbitration of the 
 disputed northeastern boundary, no inter- 
 national transaction involving serious differ- 
 ences, and no treaty between the two Gov- 
 ernments of Great Britain and the United 
 States, for twenty years. The marked' effect 
 which the War of 1812, as I have pointed 
 out, had produced upon the attitude of 
 England toward the United States was, how- 
 
ever, very largely confined to the intercourse of 
 the two Governments. That intercourse had 
 become what in diplomatic parlance is termed 
 " correct," and the old tone, so familiar in 
 British despatches before the War of 1812, 
 when the Ministry treated the United States 
 as if it were a collection of African tribes, and 
 therefore not entitled to the ordinary good 
 manners of international relations, wholly 
 disappeared. Officially we had forced our 
 way into the family of nations, and had 
 secured the customary courtesies which inter- 
 national intercourse demands. Yet this im- 
 provement, which was of the first impor- 
 tance, did not go very far toward altering the 
 feeling which existed among the peoples of 
 the two countries toward each other. Our 
 intercourse with Great Britain after the 
 Treaty of 1818 entered upon another phase 
 quite outside the scope of governmental 
 action, which in its result did more last- 
 ing harm to the cause of genuine friendship 
 between the two countries than all the 
 best efforts of diplomatists or public men on 
 either side could remedy or undo. Prior to 
 the War of 1812 many books and much 
 writing in reviews and newspapers appeared 
 in England which treated of the United 
 States in the most unfavorable manner, and 
 in a spirit which at times might fairly be 
 called malignant. This systematic defama- 
 tion was carried on so generally and so per- 
 sistently that it gave rise to a fixed belief in 
 the United States not only that it was part 
 of a deliberate plan, but that some of the 
 writers, like Moore, Ashe, and Parkinson, 
 were actually in the pay of the British Gov- 
 ernment, and that they wrote for the purpose 
 of inflaming English hostility toward every- 
 thing American, and of preventing emigra- 
 tion to England's former colonies. During 
 those early years of the century the people 
 of the United States seem to have had the 
 good sense to treat these criticisms with 
 indifference ; and when the controversy be- 
 tween the countries culminated in war, in 
 the presence of real fighting attacks made in 
 print fell unnoticed from the press. After 
 the war, however, and after the settlement 
 of the commercial relations of the two coun- 
 tries by the Treaty of 1818, the habit of 
 depreciadng and libeling the United States, 
 either in books or in more ephemeral publi- 
 cations, entered upon a new phase. Any 
 one who will take the trouble to examine 
 what was written in England about the 
 United States during the period from 1820 
 
 to 1850 will find it difficult to avoid the 
 belief that the assaults upon the Amer- 
 ican people were systematic in their nature. 
 Those who are curious in such matters can 
 find an admirable summary in Mr. McMas- 
 ter's history, where the English comments 
 upon the United States from 1820 to 1840 
 are vividly described. It seems almost in- 
 credible that such things could have been said 
 and written by one ostensibly friendly people 
 about another people who spoke the same 
 language and inherited the same political 
 traditions. There were, without doubt, many 
 things in the United States of that day which 
 were open to just criticism. No successful 
 defense, for example, could be entered be- 
 fore the 'tribunal of the civilized world in 
 behalf of Negro slavery. But the English 
 critics did not confine themselves to that 
 which was deserving of criticism. Every- 
 thing in the United States was to them 
 anathema. The great reviews gave many 
 pages to depicting what the United States 
 was as they beheld and interpreted it. Rob- 
 ert Southey in the " Quarterly," and Sydney 
 Smith in the " Edinburgh," were only two of 
 the most distinguished among the many 
 writers great and small who devoted them- 
 selves not merely to criticising but to slander- 
 ing the United States. They were not 
 ashamed to effect their purpose by telling 
 the most absolute falsehoods, and the lengths 
 to which they went seem now well-nigh 
 incredible. The men of America were said 
 to be " turbulent citizens, abandoned Chris- 
 tians, inconstant husbands, unnatural fathers, 
 and treacherous friends." The men who 
 had whipped English vessels in eleven single 
 ship fights out of thirteen were accused 
 of having run away shamefully when they 
 could not fight to advantage. As they 
 generally fought to advantage at sea, they 
 had not often run away. " In the Southern 
 parts of the Union," says another calm thinker 
 and judicious critic, " the rights of our holy 
 faith are almost never practiced ; one-third of 
 the people have no church at all. The re- 
 ligious principle is gaining ground in the 
 northern parts of the Union. It is becoming 
 fashionable among the better orders of soci- 
 ety to go to church." It is interesting to 
 consider this picture of church-going becom- 
 ing fashionable among the descendants of 
 the Puritans, but the writers had forgotten, 
 probably, that New England was settled when 
 i( was a wilderness by people who went there, 
 as Carlyle puts it, because they wanted to 
 
hear a sermon pieached in their own way. 
 " The supreme felicity of a true-born Ameri- 
 can is inaction of body and inanity of mind," 
 is another description of the people of the 
 United States, and the reproach of inactivity 
 is one of the most comic ever addressed to 
 Americans even at that time. Then, of 
 course, the British critics had a great deal to 
 s:iy about our total lack of literature and the 
 entire absence among us of any men of dis- 
 tinction. Franklin, we were informed, had 
 elicited some useful discoveries, but that was 
 because he had lived in England for some 
 time. It might be suggested that there 
 were many other persons dwelling in England 
 whose residence in that favored island had 
 failed to make them capable of eliciting Frank- 
 lin's useful discoveries. It was also predicted 
 that he would not be remembered for fifty 
 years. Prophecies of fame are always peril- 
 ous, and it is to be feared that Franklin is a 
 good deal better remembered to-day than 
 Sydney Smith or Southey — ^the most consider- 
 / able of our critics in those days — and more 
 read, too, if we may judge from the fact that 
 every civilized nation not long since sent emi- 
 nent representatives to Philadelphia to cele- 
 brate the two hundredth anniversary of his 
 birth, a ceremony which seems to have been 
 omitted in the case of Southey and Sydney 
 Smith when a century had elapsed after their 
 coming into the world. Robert Fulton, it 
 was asserted, stole his invention from seeing 
 the sailing ships which ran on the Clyde with 
 steam power in 1787, although no mention is 
 made elsewhere of the persons who per- 
 formed that feat, which does not seem to 
 have traveled beyond the Clyde, and which is 
 just as veracious as the statement, also made 
 at that time, that Fulton was born in Paisley 
 in Scotland, when in reality he had the mis- 
 fortune to be born in Pennsylvania. 
 
 These instances give a very faint impres- 
 sion of English criticism upon America at 
 that time, although such stuff is hardly to 
 be dignified by the name of criticism. It 
 was in reality childish and rather ignorant 
 abuse. But now, contrary to what had hap- 
 pened in the earlier years, the Americans, 
 unfortunately, were roused into taking it 
 up and making elaborate replies. They 
 had not much difficulty in controverting 
 the false statements and misrepresentations 
 so freely made, but they did not stop there. 
 They naturally availed themselves of the 
 /// qtioque argument, and it was not at all 
 difficult in the history of England to find 
 
 facts which, with appropriate twists and 
 bendings, made the English people appear 
 in a very unenviable light. 
 
 This warfare of books and magazine articles 
 continued and was much emphasized and 
 embittered when it was taken up on a large 
 scale by popular writers like Mrs. Trollope 
 and Captain Hall, but everything else sank 
 into insignificance compared to the effect of 
 one book, much more temperate than any of 
 the others, but written by a great genius who 
 saw fit later to sharpen what he had said in a 
 book of travels by carrying his animosity into 
 the realms of fiction. Charles Dickens came to 
 the United States in 1841. He was received 
 with an outburst of affectionate and admiring 
 enthusiasm which has rarely been seen any- 
 where in the case of a man of letters. He 
 went home and wrote a book about us called 
 " American Notes," and then he immortalized 
 certain types of American character in 
 " Martin Chuzzlewit." He said a great 
 deal that was very true and entirely deserved. 
 The characters of the novel were unfortu- 
 nately in many respects only too real, and, 
 deeply angered as we were at the time, it 
 may be safely said that Elijah Pogram and 
 Jefterson Brick and Hannibal Chollop, Gen- 
 eral Choke and Mrs. Hominy have an immor- 
 tality more assured among the American 
 people than anywhere else, for the anger has 
 long since died away, while the truth of the 
 satire and the comicality of these beings cre- 
 ated by the magic touch of genius still re- 
 main. But at the time the resentment was 
 intense. Whether what was said was just 
 or unjust, true or untrue, there was a wide- 
 spread feeling in the United States that, who- 
 ever else might find fault with and ridicule us, 
 Charles Dickens, after the reception which 
 had been given him, was debarred by every 
 rule of loyalty and good manners from doing 
 so. That this feeling was natural and that 
 the rule was one which could be both accepted 
 and observed was made visible to all men 
 not long after the visit of Dickens. 
 
 A few years later another great English 
 novelist came to the United States ; came 
 twice, in fact. He, too, delivered lectures. 
 No doubt, with his keen and penetrating ob- 
 servation, he perceived many things which 
 lent themselves to criticism, to ridicule, and 
 to satire, of which no living writer was more 
 capable than he. He was by temperament 
 very sensitive to just those shortcomings which 
 are common and repellent in a crude and un- 
 formed society. He was urged in everyway 
 
and tempted with the promise of great profits 
 to write a book about America, but he de- 
 clined. He had been cordially received in 
 the United States ; he had lived in our 
 houses ; he had accepted our hospitality ; 
 only kindness had been shown him. Others 
 might write what they pleased about Amer- 
 ica, but he would not. In other words, 
 Thackeray was a gentleman. Let me recall 
 what he himself said in a " Roundabout " 
 paper : 
 
 " Yonder drawing was made in a country 
 where there was such hospitality, friendship, 
 kindness, shown to the humble designer that 
 his eyes do not care to look for faults or his 
 pen to note them. . . . How hospitable they 
 were, those Southern men ! In the North 
 itself the welcome was not kinder, as I, who 
 had eaten Northern and Southern salt, can 
 testify !" 
 
 How kind and generous it all is, and how 
 pleasant it is now, to every one who loves the 
 , memory of the genius that created Becky 
 Sharp and drew the character of Colonel 
 Newcome, to know that he was, above all 
 things, loyal and true. We had on our own 
 side, too, a distinguished man of letters whose 
 conception of his duty toward the two na- 
 tions who read his books was ■ to cherish 
 friendship and kindliness and not to seek for 
 faults and embitter feelings. Let me describe 
 him in Thackeray's words, for they both 
 thought alike in this great matter which in- 
 volves nothing less than good will among 
 men : 
 
 " Two men, famous, admired, beloved, 
 have just left us, the Goldsmith and Gibbon 
 of our time. . . . One was the first Ambas- 
 sador whom the New World of Letters sent 
 to the Old. He was born almost with the 
 republic ; the pater patriiB had laid his hand 
 on the child's head. He bore Washington's 
 name ; he came amongst us bringing the 
 kindest sympathy, the most artless, smiling 
 good will. His new country (which some 
 people here might be disposed to regard 
 rather superciliously) could send us, as he 
 showed in his own person, a gentleman who, 
 though himself born in no very high sphere, 
 was most finished, polished, easy, witty, quiet; 
 and, socially, the equal of the most refined 
 Europeans. If Irving's welcome in England 
 was a kind one, was it not also gratefully 
 remembered ? If he ate our salt, did he not 
 pay us with a thankful heart ? Who can cal- 
 culate the amount of friendliness and good 
 feeling for our country which this writer's 
 
 generous and untiring regard for us dissemi- 
 nated in his own ? His books are read by 
 millions of his countrymen ; whom he has 
 taught to love England, and why to love 
 her. It would have been easy to speak 
 otherwise than he did ; to inflame national 
 rancors, which, at the time when he first be- 
 came known as a public writer, war had just 
 renewed ; to cry down the old civilization at 
 the expense of the new ; to point out our 
 faults, arrogance, shortcomings, and give the 
 republic to infer how much she was the 
 parent state's superior. There are writers 
 enough in the United States, honest and 
 otherwise, to preach that kind of doctrine. 
 But the good Irving, the peaceful, the 
 friendly, had no place for bitterness in his 
 heart, and no scheme but kindness." 
 
 Unfortunately, the example of Irving and 
 Thackeray had but few imitators. Every- 
 thing which these two said and wrote or 
 omitted to say and write was forgotten in the 
 clash of men who took a precisely opposite 
 course, to the great detriment of all con- 
 cerned, and the bitterness was concentrated 
 around the " American Notes " and their 
 author, whom the American people had loved 
 and honored and taken to their hearts. It 
 was this feeling that the man whom they 
 had admired and cheered and feasted 
 had been disloyal which made Dickens's 
 criticism and ridicule rankle more than that 
 of all others. But if we leave the personal 
 equation aside, Dickens was only the cul- 
 mination of the general commentary which 
 England then made and apparently thought 
 it well to make upon the United States. 
 Both people spoke and read the same lan- 
 guage. In those days they were still closely 
 akin. We read English books, copied Eng- 
 lish fashions, and looked up to English stand- 
 ards in society and in literature, and there- 
 fore all that was said in England of the kind 
 which has just been indicated went home and 
 made Americans very angry and very sore. 
 We were a new people, or rather we were 
 the offspring of an old people settled in a 
 new country, and we were young, very self- 
 conscious, very sensitive, and we felt attacks 
 which would be no more noticed to-day than 
 the ratde of a dead autumn leaf fluttering 
 before the wind. We replied to the criti- 
 cisms in a savage and intemperate manner. 
 Sometimes we wounded; generally we pro- 
 duced no effect. What we felt most w^as 
 the injustice of painting everything black. 
 As I have already said, there was a great 
 
10 
 
 deal in America to be criticised. Dickens's 
 wrath about copyright was wholly justifiable. 
 Our own literary possessions were still meager, 
 and so we stood like highwaymen along the 
 roadside of literature and robbed the passers- 
 by, the very men who " helped us to enjoy 
 life or taught us to endure it." It was 
 utterly indefensible and wholly dishonest. 
 The default on the State bonds, especially 
 upon those of Pennsylvania, which edged the 
 blade of Sydney Smith, who was a personal 
 loser, was not only indefensible, but utterly 
 discreditable. To the great reproach of 
 slavery there was, of course, no reply, no 
 excuse to be made. But those dark spots 
 were not the whole picture, and yet by gross 
 misrepresentation, and even by actual false- 
 hood, the effort was made to prove that everj'- 
 thing was black. For instance, in " Martin 
 Chuzzlewit " the impression is sedulously and 
 strongly given that the entire United States 
 west of the Alleghanies is one huge swamp 
 breathing forth fever and ague. No doubt 
 such spots existed then, and exist now, 
 but as a description of so large a country as 
 the United States it was not strictly accurate. 
 Yet such was the prevailing tone. Every- 
 thing was bad — land, people, institutions. 
 The result naturally was that the just criti- 
 cism had no effect and was merely lost in the 
 cloud of invective and abuse. Many of the 
 deficiencies were those which time alone could 
 supply, but this was not stated any more than 
 it was admitted that there was also in Amer- 
 ica much that was good and not a little that 
 was great. In the days when we were still 
 colonies Edmund Burke and the elder Pitt 
 pictured the people of America and what 
 they had achieved in language to which Par- 
 liament listened then, and which the world 
 has heeded ever since. In the first half of 
 the nineteenth century the American people 
 were engaged in the conquest of a continent ; 
 they were bringing a wilderness within the 
 grasp of civilized man, and at the same time 
 they were making a great experiment in gov- 
 ernment, and had established religious free- 
 dom and individual liberty on a scale never 
 known before. Their political example had 
 affected the entire Western world, and this 
 was really the underlying reason for the 
 attacks upon them, because their success 
 alarmed the ruling classes of England and of 
 Europe, which were likewise the vocal classes, 
 in command of the press and the platform. 
 None the less, these were things quite as 
 worthy of note as our crude manners, our 
 
 rough ways on the \\'estern frontier, our lack 
 of the luxuries of wealth, and of the many 
 other lesser things in which we fell short of 
 the European standards. But the good was 
 never noticed and the bad was exaggerated 
 beyond the bounds of truth. With the ex- 
 ception of what Dickens wrote, everything 
 then said and written in regard to the United 
 States and its people is quite forgotten, ex- 
 cept by the historian, and is as dead to the 
 world as the nun who has taken the black 
 veil. But looking back over that time, the 
 period of the English commentators on 
 America, one can see very plainly now the 
 infinite mischief which was done. In point 
 of taste and good feeling there is little to 
 choose between the English attacks upon the 
 United States and those of Americans upon 
 England, although we had the great disad- 
 vantage of feeling much more keenly about 
 it than our adversaries. Yet England her- 
 self was sensitive enough when Emerson and 
 Hawthorne, two really great writers, ventured, 
 in the most perfectly proper and temperate 
 way, to point out that in certain respects the 
 English people were, after all, merely human. 
 Emerson and Hawthorne, of course, are still 
 read and remembered, quite as much as 
 Dickens, but they do not come within the 
 class that I have been trying to describe. 
 They were later, and their tone was larger 
 and more modern, their criticism more subtle, 
 their praise ample, and their temper fair. 
 During the time which I have attempted to 
 portray the harm done was very great. Eng- 
 lishmen gave comparatively little attention to 
 us or to what we thought or said, but the 
 attacks of her writers upon the United States, 
 running through a long period of years, bred a 
 bitter hatred of England among the American 
 people, which has gradually and fortunately 
 turned into a cold indifference, and this, in 
 turn, it is to be hoped, will become some- 
 thing more and better than occasional friend- 
 ship between individual members of the two 
 nations. 
 
 The question which arises in one's mind in 
 contemplating that time is whether, on the 
 whole, it paid England and was profitable to 
 her to breed enmity and bitterness in a coun- 
 try which had every natural disposition to be 
 her friend. The Government had ceased to 
 aim deliberately at alienating the United 
 States after the Treaty of Ghent was made ; 
 and then it was that English writers, great 
 and small, took up the work which the Gov- 
 ernment, for the lime at least, had abandoned. 
 
11 
 
 Their operations were less dang-erous because 
 the issues of peace and war did not lie in 
 their hands, but in creating a settled hate on 
 the part of one people for another they were 
 more effective than diplomatists and Ministers, 
 because they wounded personal pride and 
 made each member of the community feel 
 humiliation or anger, according to his temper- 
 ament, in his own particular person. To- 
 day such writings on the part of the Eng- 
 lish or any other nation would produce no 
 effect of the slightest seriousness in the 
 United States. After nations pass a cer- 
 tain point in their rise to greatness abuse 
 by inhabitants of other countries may make 
 the person uttering the abuse unpopular, 
 but has less than no effect upon the nation 
 or people abused. Between 1820 and 1850, 
 when the United States was still struggling 
 in the first stages of nation-building, when 
 it was still largely a wilderness and its pioneers 
 were forcing the frontier westward with 
 daring and painful effort, this unmeasured 
 abuse and savage criticism, whether just 
 'or not, was deeply felt. That it had an im- 
 proving or instructive effect upon Ameri- 
 cans, in view of the manner in which the 
 instruction was administered, may well be 
 doubted, but in making them angry and in 
 turning them against England, and causing 
 them to look with the friendly eyes of prefer- 
 ence on almost every other nation, it was 
 highly successful. In the relations of two 
 great nations, speaking the same language 
 and believing in the same political principles, 
 it is not a pleasant period to look upon in the 
 cold light of half a century later ; yet I think, 
 if rightly considered, it is not without its 
 lesson, not only to those concerned, but to 
 all who wish to maintain good relations 
 among the nations of the earth. 
 
 During this same period, which may be 
 called, as I have said, the period of the com- 
 mentators and the critics, certain events 
 occurred of a much more immediately serious 
 nature, and which brought the two countries 
 to the verge of war. In the nature of things, 
 we were certain to have many more matters 
 of difference with Great Britain than with 
 any other country, because her provinces lay 
 to the north of the United States and fur- 
 nished a common boundary line three thou- 
 sand miles in length. What was much worse 
 was the fact that this boundary line was left 
 largely unsettled by the treaties of 1818 and 
 1827. One of the three treaties of 1827 
 provided for arbitration as to the northeast 
 
 boundary, and the question was referred to 
 the King of Holland as arbitrator. In 1831 
 the King rendered a decision, but as he 
 really decided only two points and merely 
 expressed an opinion on all the others, his 
 award was rejected by the United States on 
 the ground that it was not a decision of the 
 questions submitted. Thus the entire matter 
 was left open, and serious troubles soon 
 began to arise on the northeastern boundary 
 between the people of Maine on the one 
 side and those of the adjoining British prov- 
 inces on the other. An American surveyor 
 was arrested. The State of Maine appro- 
 priated money and sent a force of men in 
 Aroostook County to the border. There 
 were similar difficulties in Madawaska. The 
 English Government postponed action, and 
 the question began to assume a very angry 
 and threatening appearance. Meanwhile 
 another disturbance broke out along the New 
 York and Vermont frontiers. There had 
 been a rebellion in Canada against the bad 
 government of that day, and the defeated 
 patriots took refuge in the United States, 
 where they met with a cordial reception. 
 Considerable bodies of volunteers were 
 raised. Secret organizations were formed to 
 support the rebellious Canadians, a party of 
 whom, under the leadership of William 
 McKenzie, seized Navy Island, in the Niagara 
 River, and fortified it. The authorities in 
 Canada despatched Colonel McNab to guard 
 the frontier against this invasion, and McNab 
 sent out a party which seized and burned the 
 steamer Caroline, which had been used to 
 convey volunteers and munitions of war to 
 Navy Island. The destruction of the Caro- 
 line took place at Fort Schlosser, on Amer- 
 ican territory, and was, of course, a gross 
 violation of the sovereignty of the United 
 States. The Government of the United 
 States and the State governments behaved 
 with entire propriety and broke up and 
 checked, so far as they could, the movements 
 of the patriots and their sympathizers. Nev- 
 ertheless, acts of violence continued on both 
 sides. A party of refugees in the Thousand 
 Islands crossed to the Canadian side and 
 burned the steamer Sir Robert Peel as a set- 
 off for the Caroline, while the American 
 steamer Telegraph was fired upon. It would 
 require a volume of reasonable size to give a 
 history of these border troubles, which are 
 not without much human interest, but which 
 have all fallen quite dim now, and which are 
 hardly remembered except by the historian. 
 
12 
 
 In a brief review of the relations of England 
 and the United States during one hundred 
 years it is impossible to do more than allude 
 to them. It must suffice to say here that 
 the whole border from Maine to Michigan 
 was not only disturbed, but in a most inflamed 
 and explosive condition. It was just one of 
 those situations where war might have been 
 precipitated at any moment by reckless men 
 who were quarreling over the possession of 
 land and where a rebellion existed in one coun- 
 try which excited warm sympathy in the other. 
 In addition, a case arose, growing out of the 
 destruction of the Caroline, which aroused 
 animosities even more than the actual troubles 
 along the border. An American named 
 Durfee had been shot and killed on the Car- 
 oline. Two years later a Canadian named 
 Alexander McLeod came down from Canada 
 and while he was drunk bragged of having 
 himself killed Durfee. He was, of course, 
 arrested, although it was afterwards shown 
 that he had not been present at the de- 
 struction of the Caroline. But on his own 
 admission it was perfectly proper to arrest 
 him. The crime had been committed on 
 American soil and McLeod had confessed 
 himself to be the guilty man, yet none the less 
 the English Government flew into a great 
 rage and undertook to interfere with the 
 action of the courts. Not content with this, 
 they also saw fit to offer their advice in regard 
 to the case of the Amistad, a Spanish vessel 
 which had been seized by the slaves which she 
 was carrying and had been run ashore at 
 Long Island, where she was taken possession 
 of by the Government. There was a very 
 serious question as to what was to be done 
 with the Negroes, but no part of the question 
 concerned England the least in the world, and 
 her benevolent advice, coming just at that 
 moment, was deeply resented. In this condi- 
 tion of public sentiment, with England on the 
 edge of declaring war on account of McLeod, 
 and with the popular feeling in the United 
 States greatly excited by the border troubles 
 and the case of the Amistad, the Democrats 
 went out of power and the Whigs came in, 
 with Mr. Webster as Secretary of State. The 
 situation was one of extreme and dangerous 
 complexity. The British having avowed the 
 destrucdon of the Caroline to be a Govern- 
 mental act, it was obvious that McLeod could 
 not properly be held, but his case was in the 
 State courts of New York, over the proceed- 
 ings of which the United States had no con- 
 trol. Mr. Webster endeavored to secure the 
 
 discharge of McLeod, but in vain, and the 
 New York courts refused to grant a writ of 
 habeas corpus. On the other side, Mr. Fox, 
 the British Minister, saw fit to take a most 
 offensive tone, which Mr. Webster was the 
 last man in the world to submit to tamely. 
 He took a firm attitude with England, while 
 suggesting privately that negotiations should 
 be opened for establishing a conventional 
 northeastern line, and, as has just been said, he 
 used his best efforts to secure the discharge 
 of McLeod. This perilous situation was for- 
 tunately relieved by two incidents which came 
 to pass outside the efforts of the Government. 
 McLeod was acquitted at Utica by the simple 
 process of proving an alibi ; and the Whigs 
 were beaten in England, an event which made 
 Lord Aberdeen Secretary of State for Foreign 
 Affairs in place of Lord Palmerston. As 
 has usually happened since the War of 1812, 
 we fared much better with a Tory or Con- 
 servative administration than we did with the 
 Whigs and the Liberals. Response was now 
 made to Mr. Webster's proposal to establish 
 a conventional line, and in January, 1842, 
 information reached Mr. Webster from Mr. 
 Everett that Lord Aberdeen had determined 
 to assent to our proposition, and had sent Lord 
 Ashburton as special Minister to the United 
 States to setde the boundary and all out- 
 standing questions. This marked a sharp 
 change in the English attitude, and was no 
 doubt owing in a measure at least to the 
 confidence which was felt in Mr. Webster 
 personally. Indeed, it is to Mr. Webster that 
 we owe the setdement at that time of ques- 
 tions which had been so inflamed by extra- 
 neous and accidental circumstances that they 
 had brought the two countries to the verge 
 of war. 
 
 Mr. Webster's position had throughout 
 been one of extreme difficulty. Not only did 
 he have to deal with the McLeod case, but the 
 border was in a constant ferment and he was 
 compelled to be constantly on the alert to pre- 
 vent, if possible, outbreaks which might precipi- 
 tate hostilities at any moment. In addition to 
 all this his own personal situation was most 
 trying. General Harrison, who had made him 
 Secretary of State, died a month after his inau- 
 guration, and, although President Tyler gave 
 his entire confidence to Mr. Webster, he im- 
 mediately broke with the Whig party, which 
 had elected him, and Mr. Webster's posidon 
 became, in consequence, a very difficult one. 
 The Whigs felt that he ought immediately to 
 resign. He was denounced as a traitor to 
 
13 
 
 Whig principles, and there was much bitter- 
 ness of feeling. Mr. Webster, however, 
 understood the situation between this country 
 and Great Britain better than any oi^e else. 
 He knew how dangerous it was. He felt, 
 and rightly, that if any one could bring it to 
 a peaceful conclusion he could, and that what- 
 ever his party associates might say or think, 
 it was his plain duty to remain in the Cabinet 
 until the English question was settled. Un- 
 moved, therefore, by the attacks made upon 
 him, he remained at his post, and it was well 
 for the country that he did so. Lord Ash- 
 burton arrived in the United States on the 
 4th of April, 1842, and the result of his 
 negotiations with the Secretary of State was 
 the agreement known in history as the 
 Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which was con- 
 cluded on the 9th of August, 1842, and pro- 
 claimed in the following November. This 
 result, however, was not easily reached, for 
 the settlement was surrounded by difficulties, 
 owing to the fact that the territory of the two 
 States of Maine and Massachusetts was in- 
 volved, and Webster could not deal with this 
 territory, therefore, with a free hand. It was 
 very fortunate that Mr. Webster was a New 
 England man, and his personal influence as well 
 as the tact he displayed were most effective 
 in managing the arrangements with the two 
 States. It is not possible to follow the nego- 
 tiations in their details, for the discussion 
 involved filled volumes at the time and might 
 be made to fill volumes now. All that it is 
 possible to say here is that the treaty brought 
 about, in the first place, a condition of entire 
 peace between the two countries and thus put 
 an end to one in which war was momentarily 
 probable. It settled the northeastern boundary 
 and the northern boundary from Lake Huron 
 to the Lake of the Woods, together with vari- 
 ous matters related to these two questions. 
 It also made .an agreement for joint effort 
 toward the suppression of the slave trade 
 and for joint remonstrances to the other 
 Powers against that traffic. It further pro- 
 vided in another article for the extradition of 
 criminals. As a whole the treaty was a most 
 important advance toward the establishment 
 of good relations between the two branches 
 of the English-speaking people. It was one 
 of Mr. Webster's greatest achievements, and, 
 in view of the extreme irritation existing and 
 the incipient border warfare, it was a very 
 remarkable feat. Benton denounced the 
 treaty in the Senate as a surrender to Eng- 
 land, and Lord Palmerston denounced it in 
 
 Parliament as a surrender by England to the 
 United States; from which it may be inferred 
 that it was, on the whole, a very fair settle- 
 ment. 
 
 The Webster-Ashburton Treaty had, how- 
 ever, one defect ; it did not settle our north- 
 western boundary beyond the Rocky Moun- 
 tains. That region, it will be remembered, 
 under the treaties of 1818 and 1827 was left 
 to the joint occupation of Great Britain and 
 the United States, although Mr. Monroe had 
 offered to settle the question by adopting the 
 forty-ninth parallel as the line of division. The 
 country remained unsettled, but the Hudson 
 Bay Company began to push its posts down 
 to the Columbia River, and just when Mr. 
 Webster was at work on the treaty with Lord 
 Ashburton the American movement toward 
 Oregon began in earnest. As soon as our 
 settlers arrived there troubles at once arose, 
 and the question drifted into the domain of 
 politics. The failure of the Webster-Ashbur- 
 ton Treaty to deal with it and the absorption 
 of the Administration in the much greater 
 question of the annexation of Texas kept the 
 whole matter open with increasing irritation, 
 although Mr. Tyler renewed the offer of the 
 forty-ninth parallel, to which Great Britain 
 paid no attention. The American rights and 
 claims were taken up with noisy enthusiasm in 
 different parts of the country, and were put 
 forward by public meetings in the largest possi- 
 ble way. When the election of 1844 came on. 
 the Democrats took extreme ground in their 
 platform, claiming the whole region which was 
 in dispute, and the cry of " Fifty-four forty or 
 fight " ran through the campaign. The excite- 
 ment was enhanced by the failure of Congress 
 to act, for there were many Senators and Rep- 
 resentatives from the older parts of the country 
 who regarded Oregon as worthless, and who 
 resisted all efforts to take action in regard to 
 it. Mr. Polk, the Democratic candidate, was 
 one of the extremists on the question and in 
 favor of the 54-40 line. Nothing could have 
 been less desirable than this attitude. It is 
 never well to threaten, and it is particularly 
 undesirable to threaten unless you mean just 
 what you say. The people who were respon- 
 sible for the cry of " Fifty- four forty or fight " 
 did not really mean to fight for that line, and 
 therefore the cry was mere bluster for politi- 
 cal purposes. It had, however, the effect of 
 inflaming the question, so that there was talk 
 of war on both sides of the Atlantic. When 
 Mr. Polk came in, he took very extreme 
 ground in his inaugural, and this had a still 
 
14 
 
 worse effect in England, and increased the 
 difficulty of a settlement. After all his 
 bluster, however, Polk, with the very lame 
 excuse that he was involved b}' the acts 
 of his predecessor, renewed the offer of the 
 forty-ninth parallel, which Mr. Pakenham, 
 the British Minister, who was apparently 
 about as judicious as Polk, promptly, and, as 
 it afterward appeared, without authority, de- 
 clined. President Polk in his Message asked 
 Congress for authority to terminate the con- 
 vention of 1827. Resolutions were passed 
 and the convention was terminated. The 
 situation had now become so threatening that 
 Mr. Webster made a strong speech at Boston 
 in which he denounced the folly of going to 
 war with England on such a question and 
 urged its proper settlement. The speech 
 made a deep impression not only in England 
 and America, but in Europe. Pakenham, 
 under instructions from the Ministry, then 
 renewed on his side the offer of the forty-ninth 
 parallel, and the valiant Polk accepted it with 
 the approval of Congress. The treaty of 1846 
 followed, by which the line to the coast was 
 settled. We obtained the Oregon country and 
 granted to Great Britain the right of naviga- 
 tion on the Columbia River. The loss of the 
 region between the forty-ninth parallel and 
 the line of 54-40 was one of the most severe 
 which ever befell the United States. Whether 
 it could have been obtained without a war is 
 probably doubtful, but it never ought to have 
 been said, officially or otherwise, that we 
 would fight for 54-40 unless we were fully 
 prepared to do so. If we had stood firm for 
 the line of 54-40 without threats, it is quite 
 possible that we might have succeeded in the 
 end ; but the hypotheses of history are of 
 little practical value, and the fact remains that 
 by the treaty we lost a complete control of 
 the Pacific coast. 
 
 It is impossible, nor is it necessary, hereto 
 enter into the controversies which arose from 
 the annexation of Texas and in which Eng- 
 land took no little interest, but the great 
 movement of expansion which characterized 
 that period brought on another question with 
 England which at one time was very serious 
 and which resulted in a treaty that was for 
 many years a stumbling-block in the way of all 
 plans for building an Isthmian canal. From 
 the time of Monroe, Clay, and John Quincy 
 Adams the construction of an interoceanic 
 canal had been one of the cherished desires of 
 the United States. It passed through many 
 phases, involved as it was in the tortuous and 
 
 revolutionary conditions of Central America, 
 but the question finally came to a head after 
 the annexation of Texas. Great Britain had 
 always, despite treaties to the contrary, main- 
 tained a hold on the Mosquito Coast and was 
 in the habit of exercising a protectorate over 
 a person whom she humorously called the 
 " Mosquito King," selected from the worth- 
 less savages who inhabited that region. She 
 now took advantage of this interest in the 
 Mosquito Coast to take possession of San 
 Juan, which was at the mouth of the river 
 where it was planned to begin the Nicaragua 
 Canal. On the other hand, the United States 
 engaged in the work of making arrangements 
 with the Central American republics and with 
 Granada to get possession of the canal routes. 
 It is not necessary to follow the treaties 
 made by Mr. Hise and later by Mr. Squier 
 in which they exceeded their instructions and 
 secured for us everything we desired. With 
 England at the mouth of the San Juan and 
 indulging herself in the seizure of Tigre Island 
 and with the United States possessed of 
 treaties entered into by the people of the 
 countries through which the canal must pass, 
 all the conditions were ripe for a very pretty 
 quarrel, which thereupon duly arose There 
 is no necessity of following it in all its intrica- 
 cies, but the result was a treaty hastily made 
 by Sir Henry Bulwer. the British Minister, 
 and Mr. Clayton, Secretary of State, in 
 order to prevent action upon the Squier 
 treaty by the Senate. 
 
 The treaty thus made in 1850 provided 
 that neither the United States nor Great 
 Britain should ever obtain or maintain for 
 themselves any exclusive control over the 
 ship canal, or maintain any fortifications, 
 or assume or exercise any dominion over 
 Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast, 
 or any part of Central America. The treaty 
 further provided for the neutrality of the canal 
 in case of war and for the protection of its 
 construction, which both Powers promised to 
 facilitate. It also arranged for guarantees of 
 neutrality and for invitations to other Powers 
 to co-operate. This agreement settled the 
 outstanding differences between England and 
 the United States, but it was pregnant with 
 other difficulties hardly less serious. In its 
 nature it was an abandonment of the Monroe 
 I )octrine, for it provided for bringing in Euro- 
 pean Powers to deal with a purely American 
 question, and it made it impossible for either 
 the United States or Great Britain to build a 
 canal without mutual co-operation. In proc- 
 
15 
 
 ess of time it became necessary to get rid 
 of this treaty, which was not a wise one ex- 
 cept so far as it removed a subject of great 
 irritation at the moment. 
 
 This immediate effect it certainly had, and 
 the next transaction between the two Govern- 
 ments was the -treaty of 1854, which estab- 
 lished reciprocity with Canada, and which, as 
 was said at the time, was floated through 
 by Lord Elgin upon seas of champagne. 
 Although this treaty in its practical operation 
 proved a disappointment to the United States, 
 it was at least a distinctly friendly arrange- 
 ment, and indicates how much relations be- 
 tween the United States and Great Britain, 
 despite many vicissitudes, had improved since 
 the War of 1812. This was shown even 
 more emphatically a few years later when the 
 Prince of Wales, then a boy of eighteen, 
 came to the United States in the year 1860. 
 Although the fateful election of that year was 
 in progress and the country was torn by the 
 political conflict, the Prince was received with 
 the utmost cordiality by every one in author- 
 ity from the President down and with real 
 enthusiasm by the people. That he carried 
 away pleasant memories of America was 
 made evident throughout his life, and espe- 
 cially after he came to the throne, by his 
 kindliness and friendship not only toward the 
 United States, but toward all Americans. 
 What was more important at the time, the 
 warmth of his reception in the United States 
 deeply gratified the Queen and Prince Albert, 
 and was not without a marked influence 
 a year later when the relations of the two 
 countries and the fate of the American Union 
 were trei^ibling in the balance. 
 
 The Elgin Treaty, and, still more, the visit 
 of the Prince of Wales just on the eve of the 
 Civil War, came at a time when the people of 
 the United States were so deeply absorbed 
 in the slavery question at home that they had 
 little thought to give to their relations with any 
 foreign country. The passions aroused by the 
 slavery struggle were rising to a great intensity 
 and the dark clouds of secession and civil 
 war were already gathering upon the horizon. 
 With the coming of that war all that had been 
 gained in the past years toward the establish- 
 ment of permanent and really friendly rela- 
 tions between the two countries, which had 
 been severed by the American Revolution, 
 was lost in a moment. During the years 
 which had elapsed between 1815 and 1860 
 the most severe reproach uttered by English 
 lips against the United States was the con- 
 
 tinued maintenance of Negro slavery. The 
 reproach was bitterly felt because 'no answer, 
 no explanation, no defense, was possible. 
 Now the United States was plunged in civil 
 war waged by the North for the preservation 
 of the Union, and all the world knew that the 
 cause of the North carried with it freedom to 
 the slaves. The people of the Northern 
 States felt that under these circumstances and 
 in that hour of trial the sympathy of England 
 would go out to them at once without either 
 question or hesitation. To their intense sur- 
 prise, the sympathy of England, as expressed 
 in her magazines and newspapers and by the 
 governing classes, was uniformly hostile. The 
 vocal part of English society seemed to be wholly 
 in sympathy with the South, and the North 
 could not learn until later that the silent 
 masses of England were on the side of the 
 Union and freedom. The bitterness of hatred 
 awakened by the utterances of the English 
 press and English public men can hardly be 
 realized to-day. Early in the struggle its in- 
 tensity was manifested when the Trent affair 
 occurred. The act of Wilkes in stopping the 
 Trent and taking from her the Southern 
 commissioners was entirely indefensible. It 
 was a flat contradiction of the American doc- 
 trine for which the country had fought in 
 1812 ; yet in 1861 the people of the North- 
 ern States hailed the action of Wilkes with 
 wild delight, and the hatred aroused by the 
 English attitude was so great that they were 
 quite ready to go to war, although war at 
 that moment probably meant the establish- 
 ment of the Confederacy and the final sever- 
 ance of the Union. This feeling was rife 
 not only among the people of the North, but 
 among public men in Washington. The atti- 
 tude of England in regard to the Trent affair 
 was not calculated to improve the situation, 
 and yet, in all candor, it must be said that it 
 is difficult to see how England could have 
 assumed any other position than that which 
 she actually took. Fortunately, in his large 
 and patient wisdom, President Lincoln was 
 able to suppress the very natural feeling 
 which he shared with his people, and, looking 
 beyond the passions of the moment, had 
 the courage to withdraw from the untenable 
 situation created by the action of Wilkes. On 
 the other hand, English Ministers who were 
 only too ready to take advantage of the 
 Trent affair in order to precipitate a war 
 which would have insured the destruction of 
 the United States were sufficiently influenced 
 by the wise counsels of Prince Albert, acting 
 
16 
 
 through the Queen, by whom American kind- 
 ness to the Prince of Wales was still freshly 
 remembered, to modify a despatch which, if 
 unaltered, would almost certainly have 
 brought on war and the establishment of the 
 Confederacy. Lincoln gave up Mason and 
 Slidell, and the country, unconvinced, accepted 
 his action. The feeling of the people was 
 exactly expressed in Lowell's lines : 
 
 " We give the critters back, John, 
 
 Cos Abram thought 'twas right ; 
 It warn't your bullying clack, John, 
 
 Provokin' us to fight. 
 Ole Uncle S. sez he, ' I guess 
 We've a hard row,' sez he, 
 
 ' To hoe jest now ; but thet somehow 
 May happen to J. B. 
 
 Ez wal ez you an' me.' " 
 
 The avoidance, by Lincoln'.s action, of 
 this great peril did not, however, alter — 
 on the contrary, it intensified — the hostile feel- 
 ing of the loyal people of the North toward 
 England, nor was there anything in the utter- 
 ances or conduct of those who spoke for 
 England calculated to produce a change. 
 The vilification of the United States and her 
 President and of all her leaders and soldiers in 
 the magazines and newspapers went on with- 
 out ceasing and without modification. From 
 British ports and British shipyards armed ves- 
 sels slipped away which, although nominally 
 ships of the Confederate navy, pursued in 
 reality a simple career of privateering closely 
 akin to piracy. The only one of them which 
 actually came into action was destroyed by 
 the Kearsarge, and an English yacht rescued 
 the Southern officers and the British crew of 
 the sinking Alabama. This business of fur- 
 nishing a Confederate navy from the ports 
 and shipyards of a neutral country went on 
 with the covert support of the British Cabi- 
 net until the case ot the Laird rams was 
 reached. Protests even then were in vain, 
 and it was not until Mr. Adams wrote down 
 the famous words, " It is superfluous in 
 me to point out to your Lordship that 
 this is war," that the rams were stopped 
 and English ports ceased to send forth priva- 
 teers. In the great life and death struggle 
 in which the people of the United States 
 were then engaged the loss of some mer- 
 chant ships on the high seas was an injury 
 so comparatively trifling in its effect upon 
 the result that it was hardly perceptible ; but 
 the course of England which permitted the 
 destruction of merchant vessels in this way 
 was, in the eyes of the American people, a 
 crime of the first magnitude. The leaders 
 
 of the English Cabinet were not friendly, 
 although Lord Palmerston, fortunately for 
 us, was more indifferent and less actively 
 hostile than was generally supposed, and 
 neither he nor Lord John Russell, who was 
 much less friendly, was disposed to precipi- 
 tate war. The one outspoken champion of 
 the Confederacy was Gladstone ; but fate so 
 willed it that in striving to harm the United 
 States he rendered it a great and decisive 
 service. It was in the autumn of 1862, a 
 very dark hour in the fortunes of the United 
 States. The Ministry were preparing to 
 recognize the Confederacy. The Queen, 
 since the death of Prince Albert, as Mr. 
 Charles Francis Adams has recently shown, 
 had ceased to interest herself in American 
 affairs. A Cabinet meeting was called for 
 October 23, and then the recognition of the 
 Confederacy was to be given. On the 7th 
 of October Mr. Gladstone, anticipating the 
 action of the Cabinet, went to Newcastle and 
 delivered the famous speech in which he 
 declared that " Jefferson Davis had made a 
 nation." Lord Palmerston saw his successor 
 in Gladstone, but he had no intendon of 
 letting him rule before his time. He resented 
 the Newcastle speech ; he did not propose to 
 have Mr. Gladstone force his hand, and a 
 week later he sent Sir George Lewis down to 
 Hereford to controvert and disavow the New- 
 castle utterances. The Cabinet meeting on 
 the 23d was postponed, but the accepted 
 time had passed, and never returned. Mr. 
 Gladstone's speech, however, did its work in 
 the United States, still further embittering 
 the already intense and deep-seated enmity 
 toward England and her Government. We 
 had friends, it is true — -some even in the Cab- 
 inet, like Sir George Lewis— but the general 
 attitude of the English Ministry was such 
 that, while it inflamed the enmity of the 
 North, it was far from gaining the friendship 
 of the South, because, while the South was 
 amused with sympathetic expressions and 
 encouraged to hope for substantial support, 
 it never received anything of real value, thus 
 being left with an unpleasant sense of having 
 been betrayed. A system more nicely calcu- 
 lated to incur the hostility of both sides in 
 the great quarrel could not have been im- 
 agined, and it does not seem unjust to sug- 
 gest that such a system did not imply a 
 very high order of intelligence. Only very 
 slowly and entirely outside the Government 
 did it become apparent that the Union and 
 freedom had any friends in England. The 
 
17 
 
 first public man to declare for the North was 
 Richard Cobden, and he was followed by 
 John Bright, whose powerful and most elo- 
 quent speech on the Roebuck resolution was 
 one of the greatest services rendered by any 
 man, not an American, to the cause of the 
 Union. Lord Houghton, then Monckton 
 Milnes, also spoke for us in the House of 
 Commons. Mr. Forster was our friend, so 
 were John Stuart Mill, Goldwin Smith, and 
 Thomas Hughes ; and there were others, of 
 course, like these men, whose support it was 
 an honor to have. 
 
 The workingmen of Lancashire, reduced 
 to misery by the cotton famine, were none 
 the less true in their sympathy for the cause 
 which they believed to be that of human rights 
 and human freedom. But these voice's, 
 potent as they were, were lost in the general 
 clamor which arose from the clubs at Lon- 
 don, from the newspapers, and from the 
 reviews. The desire to side actively with 
 the South declined, of course, as the for- 
 tunes of the Confederacy sank, but the con- 
 temptuous abuse of the North went on with- 
 out abatement. Even so late as the last year 
 ot the war so clever a man as Charles 
 Lever demonstrated, in " Blackwood's Maga- 
 zine," to his own satisfaction the folly and 
 absurdity of Sherman's great movement. 
 The article appeared just in time to greet 
 Sherman as he emerged triumphant at 
 Savannah. 
 
 Sherman's march to the sea, following 
 jeers and predictions like those put forth by 
 Lever, produced a profound impression in 
 England, which then, at last, seemed to become 
 dimly conscious that a great war had been 
 fought out by great armies. The end of 
 the war and the complete triumph of the 
 Union cause soon followed. As in games, 
 so in more serious things. Englishmen are 
 excellent winners, but, as a rule, poor losers, 
 apt to cry out, when they have lost, that there 
 has been something unfair and to try to be- 
 little and explain away their adversary's vic- 
 tory. In this case, however, England showed 
 herself a good loser, for the result was too 
 serious to be treated with contempt or with 
 charges of unfairness. Moreover, England 
 found herself confronted not only by the suc- 
 cess of the United States, and the consequent 
 consolidation of the Union, but by a very 
 unfortunate situation which she had herself 
 created. She had managed to secure the 
 bitter hostility of both sides. She had given 
 sympathy to the South, but had done nothing 
 
 practical for the cause of the Confederacy, 
 and at the same time she had outraged the 
 feelings of the Northern people and devel- 
 oped among them a bitterness and dislike 
 which, when they were flushed with victory, 
 might easily have had most serious conse- 
 quences. It is quite true that she had not 
 behaved so badly toward the United States as 
 France, which had stopped just short of war. 
 When England, France, and Spain united to 
 exact reparation from Mexico, England and 
 Spain withdrew as soon as they discovered 
 that France intended to establish a govern- 
 ment of her own creation on Mexican soil. 
 Not only was the French Government sym- 
 pathetic with the South, but Napoleon was 
 more than anxious to recognize the Confed- 
 eracy, and took advantage of our Civil War 
 to fit out the Mexican expedition and estab- 
 lish Maximilian as Emperor. As soon as 
 the war was over we forced France out of 
 Mexico, and the unfortunate Maximilian, an 
 amiable and brave man, but of less than 
 mediocre capacity, was executed by his sub- 
 jects and offered up as a sacrifice to his 
 incautious reliance upon the French Emperor 
 and to his own ignorance of the peril of 
 infringing the Monroe Doctrine. 
 
 Yet, despite all this, the people of the 
 United States cared very little about what 
 France had done, and felt bitterly all that the 
 English had said. The attitude of the 
 French Government during our Civil War, 
 which there is no reason to suppose was the 
 attitude of the French people, no doubt 
 caused Americans generally to sympathize 
 with Germany in the war of 1870, but ex- 
 cept for that sympathy we regarded with 
 great indifference the French treatment of 
 the United States during the Civil War. Very 
 different was the relation to England. As 
 soon as the war was over the era of apology 
 began on the part of England, finding its 
 first expression in Tom Taylor's well-known 
 verses upon the death of Lincoln. The 
 acknowledgment of these mistakes, however, 
 produced but slight impression in the United 
 States, where there was a universal determi- 
 nation to exact due reparation for the con- 
 duct of England, and especially for the 
 depredations of the Alabama and the other 
 cruisers let loose from British shipyards to 
 prey upon our commerce. Attempts were 
 at once made to settle these differences, but 
 the Johnson-Clarendon treaty was rejected 
 by the Senate, and when Grant came to the 
 Presidency there was a strong feeling, repre- 
 
18 
 
 sented by Mr. Sumner, in favor of making 
 no demands on England, but of obtaining our 
 redress by taking possession of Canada. 
 With a veteran army of a million men and a 
 navy of over seven hundred vessels, includ- 
 ing some seventy ironclads, the task would 
 not have been a difficult one. President 
 Grant and Mr. Fish, however, decided upon 
 another course, and were really unwilling to 
 adopt a policy which, however justifiable, 
 might have carried the country into another 
 war. The result was that England sent out 
 a special commission to Washington to make 
 a treaty. Mr. Gladstone, who was then 
 Prime Minister, behaved with manliness and 
 courage. He admitted frankly the great 
 mistake he had made in his Newcastle 
 speech, and bent all his energies to reaching 
 a settlement with the United States which 
 would satisfy Americans and so far as possi- 
 ble heal the wounds inflicted by England's 
 attitude and by English utterances during the 
 war. In the first article of the treaty of 
 1871, which followed, it is said : 
 
 " Her Britannic Majesty has authorized her 
 high commissioners and plenipotentiaries to 
 express in a friendly spirit the regret felt by 
 her Majesty's Government for the escape 
 under any circumstances of the Alabama and 
 other vessels from British ports and for the 
 depredations committed by those vessels." 
 
 It must have been a serious trial not only 
 for a Ministry but for a proud and powerful 
 nation thus formally and officially to apologize 
 for its past conduct, and yet, unless England 
 was ready for war and for the loss of Can- 
 ada, no other method seemed possible. It is 
 greatly to England's credit and to the credit 
 of the Government of that day that they were 
 willing to express their regret for having 
 done wrong. 
 
 The treaty established a court of arbitra- 
 tion to consider and pass upon the claims. It 
 also provided for referring the differences in 
 regard to the line of our boundary through 
 the Fuca Straits to the Emperor of Germany, 
 who subsequently made an award wholly in 
 favor of the United States. The treaty also 
 dealt with many other questions, including 
 fishery rights, the navigation of the St. 
 Lawrence and of Lake Michigan, the use of 
 canals and the conveyance of merchandise in 
 bond through the United States. In due 
 course the claims were taken before the 
 Geneva tribunal. The arbitration came dan- 
 gerously near shipwreck, owing to the projec- 
 tion into it of the indirect claims, so called, 
 
 which were urged in a powerful speech by 
 Mr. Sumner in the Senate, but the tribunal 
 wisely excluded them, and the case came to 
 a decision, an award of $15,500,000 being 
 made to the United States for the damages 
 caused by the Alabama and her sister ships. 
 
 So far as the official relations of the two 
 countries were concerned the Treaty of Wash- 
 ington restored them to the situation which 
 had existed before the Civil War. Once 
 again we were, officially speaking, on good 
 and friendly terms with Great Britain, but 
 the feeling left among the people of the 
 United States by England's attitude remained 
 unchanged, and the harsh and bitter things 
 which had been said in England during 
 our days of trial and suffering still rankled 
 deeply. This was something which only the 
 passage of time could modify, and the wounds 
 which had been made took long to heal, 
 although the healing process was facilitated 
 by the fact that the Civil War had made the 
 people of the United States profoundly indif- 
 ferent to foreign criticism. There was, more- 
 over, no clash between the countries until 
 many years after the Treaty of Washington, 
 and when the next difficulty arose it came not 
 from any immediate difference between Eng- 
 land and the United States, but grew out of 
 an English invasion of the Monroe Doctrine 
 in South America. 
 
 For many years there had been a dis- 
 pute between England and Venezuela as 
 to the boundary between that country and 
 the possessions of England in British Guiana. 
 Venezuela, weak and distracted by revolu- 
 tion, had sought more than once for arbitra- 
 tion, which England would not grant. On 
 the contrary, the British Government had 
 steadily pushed its line forward and ex- 
 tended its claims until it was found that it 
 was gradually absorbing a large part of 
 what had always been considered Venezuelan 
 territory. Venezuela had broken off diplo- 
 matic relations, but nothing had succeeded in 
 checking the English advances. The offer 
 of the good offices of the United States had 
 been equally fruidess, and finally the matter 
 reached a crisis, and Mr. Cleveland, on De- 
 cember 17, 1895, sent in his famous Message. 
 After reviewing the Venezuelan question and 
 the efforts that we had made toward a peace- 
 ful settlement, the President recommended 
 that 1 n American commission be appointed 
 to examine the question and report upon the 
 matter. He said that when such report was 
 made •• it would be the dutv of the United 
 
19 
 
 States to resist by every means in its power 
 as a willful aggression upon its rights and 
 interests the appropriation by Great Britain 
 of any lands or the exercise of governmental 
 jurisdiction over any territory which after 
 investigation we have determined of right 
 belongs to Venezuela." The Message con- 
 cluded with the following sentence : " I am, 
 nevertheless, firm in my conviction that, while 
 t is a grievous thing to contemplate the two 
 great English-speaking peoples of the world 
 as being otherwise than friendly competitors 
 in the onward march of civilization and stren- 
 uous and worthy rivals in all the arts of peace, 
 there is no calamity which a great nation can 
 invite which equals that which follows a supine 
 submission to wrong and injustice and the 
 consequent loss of national self-respect and 
 honor, beneath which are shielded and de- 
 fended a people's safety and greatness." The 
 language employed by the President was vig- 
 orous and determined. At the time it was 
 thought rough. England was surprised, and 
 operators in the stock market were greatly 
 annoyed. The closing words of the Message, 
 vhich was a very able one, do not seem quite 
 so harsh to-day as they did at the time 
 when they were read to Congress. President 
 Cleveland, moreover, however much Wall 
 Street might cry out, had the country with 
 him, and no one to-day, I think, can question 
 the absolute soundness of his position. 
 
 With the possessions of any European 
 Power in the Western Hemisphere we, of 
 course, did not meddle, but it was the settled 
 policy of the country that those possessions 
 should not be extended or new ones created. 
 The forcible seizure of American territory by 
 a European Power would be, of course, an 
 obvious violation of the Monroe Doctrine, 
 which this country believes essential to its 
 safety; but the gradual grasping of American 
 territory on the basis of shadowy, undeter- 
 mined, and constantly widening claims, dif- 
 fered from forcible seizure only in degree. 
 If the land in dispute belonged to Great 
 Britain, we had nothing whatever to say, but 
 so long as it was in controversy the United 
 States had the right to demand that that con- 
 troversy should be settled by a proper tri- 
 bunal under whose decision the world should 
 know just what belonged to England and 
 what to Venezuela. President Cleveland's 
 strong declaration surprised England, but it 
 brought her to terms. She woke up to the 
 fact that the day had long since passed when 
 the United States could be trifled with on any 
 
 American question, and the soundness of Mr. 
 Cleveland's judgment was shown by the fact 
 that within a year the question was referred 
 to a tribunal which met in Paris and which 
 consisted of two Americans, two English- 
 men, and one Russian jurist. The Ameri- 
 can judges were Chief Justice Fuller and Mr. 
 Justice Brewer, of the Supreme Court. They 
 went to Paris with the somewhat innocent 
 idea that they were to hear the case and de- 
 cide it on its merits, exactly as they decided 
 a case in their own Supreme Court. They 
 found, however, that the two English judges 
 had no such conception of their functions, 
 but were there as representatives of England, 
 holding the positions of advocates instead of 
 judges. The result was that the decision 
 rested with the fifth man, Mr. Martens, and 
 he, apparently under instructions not strictly 
 judicial, was prepared to decide entirely in 
 favor of England, although the English case 
 for a large part of the claim was of the most 
 shadowy character. It was very important, 
 however, to England that the award should 
 be signed by all the arbitrators, and that 
 which was most essential to Venezuela was 
 to preserve her control of the mouths of the 
 Orinoco. The American arbitrators consented 
 to sign the award if the mouths of the Orinoco 
 were left to Venezuela, and this was done, all 
 the rest of the disputed territory going to 
 England. If the rest of the territory be- 
 longed to England, the mouths of the Orinoco 
 also should have been hers. If the mouths 
 of the Orinoco belonged to Venezuela, 
 England was not entitled to a large part 
 of what she received. In other words, 
 the judgment of the arbitral tribunal was 
 a compromise and not a decision on the 
 merits of the case, in which it followed the 
 course of most arbitrations and disclosed 
 the weakness of which arbitral tribunals 
 have hitherto nearly always been guilty. 
 This failing is that they do not decide a case 
 on its merits, but make a diplomatic com- 
 promise, giving something to each side. It 
 is this tendency or practice of arbitral tribu- 
 nals which has caused them to be distrusted, 
 and especially in the United States, because, 
 while the United States has no questions in 
 Europe, Europe has many questions of inter- 
 est in the Western Hemisphere, and the 
 result has been on more occasions than one 
 that the United States has been drawn into 
 an arbitration where it could gain nothing and 
 was certain to lose if any compromise was 
 effected. In this particular instance, however. 
 
MAY 31 1912 
 
 20 
 
 the result which Mr. Cleveland desired and 
 which he sought to reach by his Message was 
 fully attained. The boundary was deter- 
 mined, the process of gradual encroachment 
 on a weak American state under cover of 
 claims more or less artificial and advanced 
 by a powerful European nation was stopped, 
 and an end was put once and for all to the 
 plan of securing new American possessions 
 by the insidious method of starting and de- 
 veloping claims and then refusing to have the 
 claims settled and boundaries determined by 
 any tribunal. Mr. Cleveland rendered a very 
 great public service by his action and caused 
 the Powers of Europe to understand and 
 appreciate the force and meaning of the 
 Monroe Doctrine as they had never done 
 before. 
 
 Three years after President Cleveland's 
 Venezuelan Message the United States was 
 at war with Spain. Admiral Dewey's fleet 
 had captured Manila and the great European 
 Powers hastened to send war-ships to the 
 scene of action. Some of these vessels were 
 more powerful than any which Admiral 
 Dewey had in his fleet, and the German Ad- 
 miral behaved in a way which came very near 
 bringing on serious trouble between his 
 country and the United States. Admiral 
 Dewey's firmness put an end to the disagree- 
 able attitude of the Germans, but he also 
 received assurances of support from Captain 
 Chichester, in command of the English ships, 
 which were of great value. This almost open 
 act of friendliness, which recalled the old days 
 in China when Commodore Tatnall went to 
 the aid of the English, declaring that " blood 
 was thicker than water," was merely repre- 
 sentative of the attitude of the English Gov- 
 ernment. The sympathies of Europe were 
 with Spain, but England stood by the United 
 States, and this fact did more to wipe out the 
 past and make the relations between the two 
 countries what they should have been long 
 before than all the years which had elapsed 
 since the bitter days of the Civil War. 
 
 England's attitude, moreover, toward the 
 United States during the war with Spain was 
 only a part of the general policy of the Gov- 
 ernment then in control. When the Pan- 
 ama Canal, the interest in which had been 
 steadily growing, reached a point where the 
 United States was determined that the Canal 
 should be built, it was found that the Clayton- 
 Bulvver Treaty was a stumbling-block to any 
 movement on the part of the United States. 
 The American feeling was so stronsf that 
 
 Congress was only too ready to abrogate 
 the treaty by its own action, but, the ques-^'lMA 
 tion being brought to the attention of '^ 
 Lord Salisbury, the English Government 
 showed itself more than willing to join with 
 the United States in superseding the Clayton- 
 Bulwer Treaty by a new one under which 
 the United States should have a free hand in 
 dealing with the Canal. The first Hay- 
 Pauncefote Treaty failed, owing chiefly to 
 having incorporated in it a provision by which 
 it was agreed that the Powers of Europe 
 should be entitled to join in the neutralization 
 of the Canal. This, on our part, was of 
 course inviting the destruction of the Monroe 
 Doctrine, and the Senate amended the treaty. 
 England refused to accept the Senate amend- 
 ments, but proceeded to make with us a 
 second treaty which conformed to the changes 
 proposed by the Senate, and this was ratified 
 without opposition. 
 
 The policy manifested by the attitude of 
 England in regard to the Canal question, 
 which had followed upon the end of the 
 Spanish War, was closely followed, and was 
 indeed enlarged, by Mr. Balfour when he 
 succeeded Lord Salisbury as Prime Minister. 
 President McKinley, in his desire to settle 
 all possible outstanding questions with Great 
 Britain — questions which related entirely to 
 Canada — had brought about a meeting of an 
 Anglo-American commission in Washington. 
 It became evident that all questions could be 
 easily arranged, with the exception of the x\las- 
 kan boundary, and upon that the difference 
 was so sharp that the commission adjourned 
 without having reached any conclusion at all in 
 any direction. All the other differences re- 
 mained in abeyance, but the Alaskan question 
 became constantly more perilous. Nations, 
 like men, will fight about the possession of 
 land when they will fight about nothing else, 
 and the Alaskan question, which caused a 
 great deal of feeling in the Northwest, was 
 rapidly approaching the dangerous stage. A 
 treaty to submit the boundary of Alaska to 
 an international tribunal, consisting of three 
 Americans and three representatives of Can- 
 ada and Great Britain, was made and ratified 
 in 1903. The English representatives were 
 two distinguished Canadians and Lord Alver- 
 stone, the Lord Chief Justice of England. 
 The case was fully argued, and the decision 
 was almost wholly in favor of the contention 
 of the I'nited States, which was owing to the 
 action of Lord Alverstone, who decided in 
 the main against the Canadian claim. 
 
21 
 
 
 
 Thus the one question which was pregnant 
 h real danger was eliminated, and the 
 Iher questions with Canada were rapidly 
 settled in the succeeding years of President 
 Roosevelt's Administration while Mr. Root 
 was Secretary of State. One treaty settled 
 the international boundary, another provided 
 for the protection of the fisheries on the 
 Lakes, another for the international water- 
 ways, and, finally, the long-contested ques- 
 tion of our rights in the Newfoundland fish- 
 eries went to The Hague for determination 
 under a treaty framed by Mr. Root. 
 
 All these important agreements which 
 made for the best relations between Great 
 Britain and the United States grew out of 
 the attitude of England at the time of the 
 Spanish War, and were due to the policy of 
 which Mr. Balfour in particular, and Lord 
 Lansdowne, the Secretary of State for Foreign 
 Affairs, were the chief exponents. In a 
 speech at Manchester Mr. Balfour said : 
 
 The time may come — nay, the time must 
 come — when some statesman of authority, more 
 fortunate even than President Monroe, will lay 
 do,/n the doctrine that between English-speak- 
 ing peoples war is impossible. 
 
 To that noble sentiment Mr. Balfour and 
 
 Lord Lansdowne strictly adhered, and to 
 their action we owe the settlement of all 
 these questions which have perplexed us with 
 our northern neighbor, and, in consequence, 
 the good relations which now exist between 
 Great Britain and the United States, and 
 which it is to be hoped will always continue. 
 The policy might have been adopted in 1798 
 as well as in 1898. but Mr. Balfour and Lord 
 Lansdowne were the first English statesmen 
 who saw that the true policy for England was 
 to be friends with the United States, and that 
 that friendship could be brought about by 
 treating the United States not as had been 
 the practice in the past but as one great 
 nadon should always be treated by another. 
 They came to us, it is true, in the hour 
 of our success, but none the less they are 
 entitled to a place in the memory of Ameri- 
 cans with Burke and Fox and Chatham, with 
 Cobden and with Bright, who did not forget 
 the common language and the common aspi- 
 rations for freedom in the days when the 
 Americans were a little people struggling to 
 exist, or in those still darker days when the 
 United States was trying to preserve the 
 unity of the great Nation which Washington 
 had founded and which Lincoln was destined 
 to save. 
 
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