CHAPTER XI.
RECONCILIATION. THE DISMEMBERED EMPIRE RE-UNITED IN BONDS OF FRIENDSHIP. "BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER."
It is well known and now acknowledged that for the past hundred years it has been the deliberate and well considered policy of the United States to eradicate everything British from the country to the north of us.
During the Canadian rebellion of 1837, as well as during the Fenian raid of 1866, the American frontier was openly allowed to be made a base of operation against British North America.
Canada has always claimed that she has been deprived of enormous areas of territory by the United States through sharp practice and unjustifiable means, especially in Oregon, Maine and Alaska. The most notable case of duplicity on the part of the United States was that of the Northeast boundary settled under the Ashburton Treaty of Washington in 1842. After a bitter controversy it was left out to arbitration for the King of the Netherlands to decide. The award was accepted by Great Britain and rejected by the United States. The question remained in abeyance for two years, during which there was imminent danger of a collision and of war. Military posts were simultaneously established and rashly advanced into the wild country which both parties claimed as their own. Redoubts and blockhouses were erected at several points. Reinforcement of troops from either side poured in. The public mind in the United States became inflamed by the too ready cry of "British outrage," proclaimed in all quarters by the reckless politicians of both parties in order to lash the national spirit into fury. The people in the whole length and breadth of the Union were, to a man, convinced of the justice of their claim and of the manifest wrong intended by Great Britain. The Nation at large was ready and anxious for war, and had a skirmish taken place on the frontier involving the death of a dozen men during the so-called "Aroostook War," the whole country would have rushed to war and plunged the two nations into hostilities, the end of which no man then living could have foreseen.
During this trouble, the English people were quite calm and almost apathetic. With a vague notion of the locality of the disputed territory, a total ignorance of the merits or demerits of the dispute, and a profound contempt of the blustering and abuse of American politicians and newspapers, they were perfectly content to leave affairs in the hands of the government.
Finally a joint commission was appointed from the States of Maine and Massachusetts (both having rights in the disputed territory) and sent to Washington to negotiate a treaty with Lord Ashburton, a nobleman well adapted to the occasion from his connection by marriage, and property in the United States.
The odds were greatly against the British negotiator. His principal adversary was Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, who in one of his letters said: "I must be permitted to say that few questions have arisen under this government in regard to which a stronger or more general conviction was felt that the country was in the right than this question of the northeast boundary." He reiterated his own belief in "the justice of the claim which arose from our honest conviction that it was founded in truth and accorded with the intention of the negotiators of the treaty of 1783." The whole of the disputed territory amounted to 6,750,000 acres. At last a compromise was effected which granted to Great Britain 3,337,000 acres, and to the United States 3,413,000 acres, and acknowledged the title of England to all the military positions upon the frontier, and 700,000 acres more was awarded her than was assigned to her by the King of the Netherlands.
But the decision of the Commissioners suited neither party. The factions in England pronounced Lord Ashburton to have been sold, and those in America declared that Webster had been bought. The most violent opposition to the treaty was made; every part of it was denounced, and it became at last doubtful if the Senate would ratify it. That final consummation was, however, suddenly effected in a most remarkable manner, the Senate coming to its decision by an unexpected majority of thirty-nine to nine, after several days of secret debate. The sanction of the Queen and the British government had been given without hesitation and the people on both sides of the Atlantic were well satisfied with the termination of the long and virulent dispute, and the Northeastern Boundary Question would have sunk into the archives of diplomatic history, but truth like murder will out, and it so happened that Mr. Thomas Colley Grattan, British Consul for Massachusetts[99] who, at the request of the commissioners, had accompanied them to Washington to assist them in their negotiation, had the fortune to discover after the treaty was signed, the duplicity of the Senate during their secret debates leading to the ratification of the treaty. He says: "My informant gave unmeasured expression to his indignation, which he assured me was fully shared in by his friends, Judge Story and Dr. Channing. Judge Story expressed himself without reserve on Webster's conduct as a 'most disgraceful proceeding.'" Other gentlemen of Boston entirely coincided in these opinions.
Map of the Boundary Line between Maine and New Brunswick.
"It is obvious to all persons familiar with boundary disputes that the most important evidence in such disputes is founded on surveys and maps. Early in the controversy there was a strange disappearance of the one in the archives of the State Department, that had been transmitted by Franklin to Jefferson in October, 1790, with the true boundary line traced on it. It was, therefore, with great astonishment that I learned from the confidential communication just alluded to that during the whole of the negotiations at Washington, while the highest functionaries of the American Government were dealing with Lord Ashburton with seeming frankness and integrity, pledging their faith for a perfect conviction of the justice of their claim to the territory which was in dispute. Mr. Webster had in his possession and had communicated to them all—President, Cabinet, Commissioners and Senate—the highest evidence which the case admitted, that the United States had never had a shadow of right to any part of the territory which they had so pertinaciously claimed for nearly fifty years. This evidence, as my conscientious informant told me, was nothing less than a copy of an original map presented by Dr. Franklin to Count de Vergennes, the Minister of Louis XVI, on December 6, 1782 (six days after the preliminaries of the treaty of Paris of 1783 were signed) tracing the boundary, as agreed upon by himself and the other commissioners, with a strong red line south of the St. John, and exactly where a similar line appears in an unauthenticated map discovered in London subsequent to Lord Ashburton's departure on his mission."
Public attention being aroused by the statements made by the British Consul to his government, the injunction of secrecy imposed by the Senate on its members was dissolved, and permission was given for the publication of the speeches made in secret session of August 17-19, 1842. The most important of those speeches was that of Mr. Rives, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. His principal argument was that if they did not sign the treaty, the dispute would be referred to a second arbitration with very great danger of their losing the whole, Mr. Webster, the Secretary of State, having sent to him to be laid before the Senate a communication and a copy of the map presented by Dr. Franklin to Count de Vergennes. In short, it is exactly the line contended for by Great Britain except that it concedes more than is claimed. When this communication was read, Senator Benton informed the Senate that he could produce a map of higher validity than the one referred to. He accordingly repaired to the library of Congress and soon returned with a map which there is no doubt was the one sent by Franklin to Jefferson already alluded to as having been surreptitiously removed from the archives of the State Department some years before. The moment it was examined it was found to sustain, by the most precise and remarkable correspondence in every feature, the map communicated by Mr. Webster. Mr. Benton then stated that "if the maps were really authentic the concealment of them was a fraud on the British, and that the Senate was insulted by being a party to the fraud," and further that "if evidence had been discovered which deprived Maine of the title to one-third of its territory, honor required that it should be made known to the British."
The sudden acceptance of the treaty was in consequence of the evidence of the maps, and the conviction of all concerned that a discovery of their existence before the conclusion of a treaty would have given irresistible strength to the English claims.
Calhoun said: "It would be idle to suppose that these disclosures would not weigh heavily against the United States in any future negotiations."
The settlement of the Oregon boundary question again showed American hatred of England to be chronic. The question finally resolved itself into whether the threat of 54.40 or fight should be carried out, (a threat to deprive Canada of access to the Pacific Ocean and the possession of most of the enormous wheat fields now being developed in the northwest) or to fight Mexico and extend its boundaries to the South instead of the north. This latter scheme suited the slaveholders best who were then in power. The United States government then entered into a war with Mexico, one of the most unjustifiable contests ever entered into by a civilized nation. By this war of conquest the United States nearly doubled its territory. It must be said to the credit of New England that she would not take any part in this war any more than she did in the war of 1812.
When confederation of the Canadian provinces occurred in 1867, there was placed on record in the House of Representatives at Washington that it was disapproved and that the House regarded the Act of Confederation as a menace to the United States. For a hundred years after the Revolution it had been the policy of the United States to force Canada into annexation, and it was considered that she would be more likely to come into the Union if she was harrassed by a high tariff, boundary and fishing disputes, but now it is known to have been all wrong. The factors worked out just the reverse. Conditions have arrived that were little foreseen until within ten years. The American people have recognized the fact that a great change has taken place in Canada which materially effects the relation between Canada and the United States. Mr. Root, U. S. Secretary of State, recently said:
"Canada is no longer the outlying northern country in which a fringe of descendants of royalists emigrating from the colonies when they became independent of Great Britain, lived and gained a precarious subsistence from a fertile soil. It has become the home of a great people increasing in population and wealth. The stirrings of a national sentiment are to be felt. In their relations to England one can see that while still loyal to their mother country, still a loyal part of the British Empire, they are growing up, and, as the boy is to his parents when he attains manhood, they are a personality of themselves. In their relations to us they have become a sister nation. With their enormous national wealth, with their vigor and energy following the pathway that we have followed, protecting their industries as we have protected ours, proud of their country as we are proud of ours, they are no longer the little remnants upon our borders; they are a great and powerful sister nation."
For years after the Civil War there came from the press, from the lecture platform, and from the political rostrum, the most relentless abuse of Great Britain and everything British. Lecturers gave their audiences vivid descriptions of the Revolution and the war of 1812, in which American valor was always rated high and British brutality was held up to scorn. These lectures were frequently of thrilling interest because the speakers were not handicapped by matters so paltry as facts of history. But the most formidable batteries of wrath were trained against everything British from the political stump. The iron-lunged orators told of the iniquity of England, of its infamous tariff laws, the oppression of Ireland, etc. He was but a poor speaker who could not enliven a political meeting by twisting the tail of the British lion. All this is now changed. It was brought about by President Cleveland's Venezuelian message of December, 1895, and the Spanish War. When the Venezuelian episode occurred, England was believed to be isolated and without an ally. It proved that war could be declared against Great Britain at any time, in ten minutes, upon any pretext. The insolent message fell upon every one in England, from Lord Salisbury down, as a bolt from the blue sky. Englishmen were as innocent as babes of intentional offence to the United States. They had no conception that there existed in the United States such latent irritation or antagonism as under the first provocation would lead to an almost open avowal of national enmity. It, however, happily disclosed the fact that there still existed in the United States a numerous highly educated and conservative element (not dissimilar to the vanished Loyalists of the last century) in which one seldom finds a trace of antagonism to the old mother country. Following the message, magazine reviews, the public press, and the pulpit overflowed with a brilliant series of public utterances and these soon checked the noisy approving outbursts of a reckless half-educated majority to obtain whose votes at the next election undoubtedly prompted the presumptuous interference of the chief of the Republic and the unfriendly tone of his message.
Within three years after the message a wonderful change came over the people of the United States. The Spanish War had taken place and instead of finding Great Britain to be the hereditary enemy of the United States, which they had been taught in the school histories to believe, it was found that among the great powers of the world, Great Britain was the only friend which the United States had, and that "blood was thicker than water." It was discovered that the nations were envious of the great Republic, and that Britain alone was proud of her eldest daughter. It was remarked to the writer by a Spanish officer shortly after the surrender of Porto Rico: "But mind you, this from an old man who has studied history. You would never have had these islands had not England stepped in at the beginning of the trouble and said to all the nations of the world, 'Allow me to present my daughter, America.'" It was found, too, that the "traditional friendship" of Russia was of but little account at that time.
It was Russia that eagerly became the spokesman for envious Europe and gave voice to the words: "Now is the time for us to combine and crush this huge American monster before she becomes too strong for all of us, as she is already too strong for any one of us." It was Russia that planned to have the "concert of Europe" warn us that we were not to pose as champion of any other American people against any form of misrule by Europe—and that we were not to dare to meddle in Europe on any pretext.
She failed because England refused to join the league, or to enter with the other powers into a naval demonstration before Cuba, but so long as the war lasted with Spain the Russian diplomats kept pounding at every backdoor in Europe with an insistence that something be done to cut our comb, or make trouble or lose us the friendship of England. Our people in Washington know all this. They know also the behavior of the Russian minister at Washington who thought to poison us against England in the very days when we were buying in that country and shipping in secret from that country the vital necessities which the war demanded and which we had not got; when great steamers were found abandoned off New York loaded with contraband of war, cannon, arms, ammunition, etc., and towed into port by United States warships; when coal and ammunition were left on desert islands in the Philippines by British warships for the use of the United States navy; when England's fleet at Manila stood ready to take sides with Dewey and to open fire, to begin war on the Germans should occasion arise. American naval officers who were there know these facts to be true, and it is very significant that the Navy Department has not published the correspondence between it and Admiral Dewey at that time. We are hated all over the continent of Europe. Paris made a fete day when she imagined Sampson's fleet was destroyed.
The Germans hate us for taking 3,000,000 fighting men away from them, and also because we prevented them from purchasing the Philippines from Spain, and because the Monroe doctrine prevents them from obtaining colonies or naval stations in the Western Hemisphere. The Austrians hate us for humiliating Spain. There is not a country to the south of us but what hates us. Every republic in South America would put a knife in our back if the opportunity occurs.
Very significant, too, was the reception and banquet given at Windsor Castle in 1896 by Queen Victoria to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston—the oldest military organization in the Western Hemisphere—and the grand reception they received everywhere they went in England. It was a revelation to the Americans, as every one of them acknowledged, to receive such marked expression of kindliness and brotherhood at the old home. It was something they did not expect. The company more than reciprocated when the parent company, The Honourable Artillery of London, visited Boston in 1903. Once more were seen armed British sailors and soldiers marching through Boston's streets under the British flag, the buildings along the entire route beautifully decorated, and the visitors received with vociferous welcome wherever they went. We will hope that something even better and more substantial may yet come to us, when the United States and Great Britain will be allied in amity as firm as that which now holds together these federal states. "Old prejudices should be cast aside; the English-speaking states recognizing their kinship, should knit bonds together around the world, forming a kingly brotherhood inspired by beneficence, to which supreme dominion in the earth would be sure to fall; for whatever may be said today for other stocks, the 135,000,000 of English-speaking men have been able to make themselves masters of the world to an extent which no people has thus far approached.
"If love would but once unite, the seas could never sever. Earth has never beheld a co-mingling of men, so impressive, so likely to be frought with noble advantages through ages to come, as would be the coming together of English-speaking men in one cordial bond."[100]
The statesmen of Britain and America can do no worthier service than to find a way by which their strength may be combined to secure the peace of the world and the betterment of mankind. It is not necessary that their governments should be unified, or even that any hard and fast treaty obligation incurred. It is only necessary that they should agree to be friends and to stand by each other in all that will further these great objects. They alone of all the nations can do this and that they ought to do it few will deny. Both must forget certain bitterness born of the past and certain jealousies growing out of the greatness of both.
What Great Britain is doing for the many peoples under her care and what this nation is doing for the few outside our borders that we have in hand we might unitedly do for a great portion of the globe and its inhabitants. This combination must be strong enough to check certain highwaymen in international relations and to install a wholesome regard for human rights. Such an outcome of present friendliness will not be achieved in a day or generation. But it will come; it must come. Asia and the continent of Europe may become Chinese or Cossack, but the English-speaking race shall rule over every other land and all the islands and every sea.
The present time is a critical period in the life of the American Republic, and therefore in the life of the world. The impotence of the federal government to stop strike disturbances, lynchings and disfranchisements, the growing power of an oligarchial and plutocratic Senate, and the perils of imperialism are disquieting enough, but worst of all is the evil of party rule and party strife.
Washington abhorred party and regarded it as a disease which he hoped to avert by putting federalists and anti-federalists in his cabinet together. The intuition of the founders of the Republic was that the president should be elected by a chosen body of select and responsible citizens, but since the Jacksonian era, nomination and election have been completely in the hands of the Democracy at large, and the election has been performed by a process of national agitation and conflict which sets at work all the forces of political intrigue and corruption on the most enormous scale, besides filling the country with persons almost as violent and anti-social as those of the Civil War.
The qualification for public office from that of president down to that of a member of a city council in national, state or city politics is not a question of which man is most worthy of public confidence. It is no longer eminence but availability. The great aim of each party is to prevent the country from being successfully governed by its rival. Each will do anything to catch votes and anything rather than lose them. Government consequently is at the mercy of any organization which has votes on a large scale to sell, or corporations that will freely contribute its funds. The Grand Army of the Republic is thus enabled to levy upon the nation tribute to the amount of a hundred and fifty million dollars each year, thirty-six years after the war, although General Grant at the close of the war said that the pensions should never exceed seven millions each year. And now both parties in their platform promise their countenance to this exaction.
The recent exposures of the millions contributed by the trusts, tariff protected industries, life insurance companies, etc., to the campaign funds has astonished the world. The history of the most corrupt monarchies could hardly furnish a more monstrous case of financial abuse, to say nothing of the effect upon national character.
Each party machine has a standing army of wire pullers with an apparatus of intrigue and corruption to the support of which holders of office under government are assessed. The boss is a recognized authority, and mastery of unscrupulous intrigue is his avowed qualification for his place. The pest of partyism invades all the large cities of the country. New York is made the plunder of the thieves of one party and Philadelphia of thieves of the other. It is surely impossible that any nation should endure such a system forever. A nation which deliberately gives itself up to government by faction, under the name of party, signs its own doom. The end may be delayed but it is sure. The American people undoubtedly have the political wisdom and force to deal with this crisis, but there is no evidence that these qualities are being brought to bear on the situation nor is there any great man arisen to lead the reform.