Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2)

J >> James Gillespie Blaine >> Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--March 23, 1863. Lord Campbell said: "Swelling with omnipotence,
Mr. Lincoln and his colleagues dictate insurrection to the slaves of
Alabama." And he spoke of the administration as "ready to let loose
four million negroes on their compulsory owners and to renew from sea
to sea the horrors and crimes of San Domingo."--He argued earnestly
in favor of the British Government joining the government of France in
acknowledging Southern independence. He boasted that within the last
few days a Southern loan of L3,000,000 sterling had been offered in
London, and that L9,000,000 were subscribed. He said: "Southern
recognition will take away from the Northern mind the hope which
lingers yet of Southern subjugation. From the Government of
Washington it will take away the power of describing eleven communities
contending for their liberty as rebels. . . . Victorious already,
animated then, the Southern armies would be doubly irresistible. They
would not have, if they retain it now, the power to be vanquished."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A neutral Government is bound--

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXI.

The opening of the Forty-second Congress, on the 4th of March, 1871,
was disfigured by an act of grave injustice committed by the Senate of
the United States. Charles Sumner was deposed from the chairmanship
of the Committee on Foreign Relations,--a position he had held
continuously since the Republican party gained control of the Senate.
The cause of his displacement may be found in the angry contentions
to which the scheme of annexing San Domingo gave rise. Mr. Sumner's
opposition to that project was intense, and his words carried with them
what was construed as a personal affront to the President of the United
States,--though never so intended by the Massachusetts senator. When
the committees were announced from the Republican caucus on the 10th of
March, 1871, by Mr. Howe of Wisconsin, Mr. Cameron of Pennsylvania
appeared as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations and Mr.
Sumner was assigned to the chairmanship of a new committee,--Privileges
and Elections,--created for the exigency.(1)