Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 2

by Andrew Dickson White

CHAPTER XXXIX

AS MEMBER OF THE VENEZUELA COMMISSION—1895-1896

Early one morning, just at the end of 1895, as I was at work before the blazing fire in my library at the university, the winter storms howling outside, a card was brought in bearing the name of Mr. Hamlin, assistant secretary of the treasury of the United States. While I was wondering what, at that time of the year, could have brought a man from such important duties in Washington to the bleak hills of central New York, he entered, and soon made known his business, which was to tender me, on the part of President Cleveland, a position upon the commission which had been authorized by Congress to settle the boundary between the republic of Venezuela and British Guiana.

The whole matter had attracted great attention, not only in the United States, but throughout the world. The appointment of the commission was the result of a chain of circumstances very honorable to the President, to his Secretary of State, Mr. Olney, and to Congress. For years the Venezuelan government had been endeavoring to establish a frontier between its territory and that of its powerful neighbor, but without result; and meantime the British boundary seemed to be pushed more and more into the territory of the little Spanish-American republic. For years, too, Venezuela had appealed to the United States, and the United States had appealed to Great Britain. American secretaries of state and ambassadors at the Court of St. James had "trusted," and "regretted," and had "the honor to renew assurances of their most distinguished consideration"; but all in vain. At last the matter had been presented by Secretary Olney to the government of Lord Salisbury; and now, to Mr. Olney's main despatch on the subject, Lord Salisbury, after some months' delay, had returned an answer declining arbitration, and adding that international law did not recognize the Monroe Doctrine. This seemed even more than cool; for, when one remembered that the Monroe Doctrine was at first laid down with the approval of Great Britain, that it was glorified in Parliament and in the British press of 1823 and the years following, and that Great Britain had laid down policies in various parts of the earth, especially in the Mediterranean and in the far East, which she insisted that all other powers should respect without reference to any sanction by international law, this argument seemed almost insulting.

So it evidently seemed to Mr. Cleveland. Probably no man less inclined to demagogism or to a policy of adventure ever existed; but as he looked over the case his American instincts were evidently aroused. He saw then, what is clear to everybody now, that it was the time of all times for laying down, distinctly and decisively, the American doctrine on the subject. He did so, and in a message to Congress proposed that, since Great Britain would not intrust the finding of a boundary to arbitration, the United States should appoint commissioners to find what the proper boundary was, and then, having ascertained it, should support its sister American republic in maintaining it.

Of course the President was attacked from all sides most bitterly; even those called "the better element" in the Republican and Democratic parties, who had been his ardent supporters, now became his bitter enemies. He was charged with "demagogism" and "jingoism," but he kept sturdily on. Congress, including the great body of the Republicans, supported him; the people at large stood by him; and, as a result, a commission to determine the boundary was appointed and began its work in Washington, the commissioners being, in the order named by the President, David J. Brewer of Kansas, a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; Chief Justice Alvey of the District of Columbia; Andrew D. White of New York; F. R. Coudert, an eminent member of the New York bar; and Daniel C. Gilman of Maryland, President of Johns Hopkins University.

On our arrival in Washington there was much discouragement among us. We found ourselves in a jungle of geographical and legal questions, with no clue in sight leading anywhither. The rights of Great Britain had been derived in 1815, from the Netherlands; the rights of Venezuela had been derived, about 1820, from Spain; but to find the boundary separating the two in that vast territory, mainly unsettled, between the Orinoco and the Essequibo rivers, seemed impossible.

The original rights of the Netherlands had been derived from Spain by the treaty of Munster in 1648; and on examining that enormous document, which settled weighty questions in various parts of the world, after the life-and-death struggle, religious, political, and military, which had gone on for nearly eighty years, one little clause arrested our attention: that, namely, in which the Spaniards, despite their bitter hatred of the Dutch, agreed that the latter might carry on warlike operations against "certain other people" with reference to territorial rights in America. These "certain other people" were not precisely indicated; and we hoped, by finding who they were, to get a clue to the fundamental facts of the case. Straightway two of our three lawyers, Mr. Justice Brewer and Mr. Coudert, grappled on this question, one of them taking the ground that these "other people" referred to were the Caribbean Indians who had lived just south of the mouth of the Orinoco, and had been friendly to the Dutch but implacable toward the Spaniards, and that their territory was to be considered as virtually Dutch, and, therefore, as having passed finally to England. But the other disputant insisted that it referred to the Brazilians and had no relation to the question with which we had to deal. During two whole sessions this ground was fought over in a legal way by these gentlemen, with great acumen, the rest of us hardly putting in a word.

At the beginning of the third session I ventured a remonstrance, saying that it was a historical, and not a legal, question; that it could not possibly be settled by legal argument; that the first thing to know was why the clause was inserted in the treaty, and that the next thing was to find, from the whole history leading up to it, who those "other persons" thus vaguely referred to and left by the Spaniards to the tender mercies of the Dutch might be; and I insisted that this, being a historical question, must be solved by historical experts. The commission acknowledged the justice of this; and on my nomination we called to our aid Mr. George Lincoln Burr, professor of history in Cornell University. It is not at all the very close friendship which has existed for so many years between us which prompts the assertion that, of all historical scholars I have ever known, he is among the very foremost, by his powers of research, his tenacity of memory, his almost preternatural accuracy, his ability to keep the whole field of investigation in his mind, and his fidelity to truth and justice. He was set at the problem, and given access to the libraries of Congress and of the State Department, as also to the large collections of books and maps which had been placed at the disposal of the commission. Of these the most important were those of Harvard University and the University of Wisconsin. Curious as it may seem, this latter institution, far in the interior of our country, possesses a large and most valuable collection of maps relating to the colonization history of South America. Within two weeks Professor Burr reported, and never did a report give more satisfaction. He had unraveled, historically, the whole mystery, and found that, the government of Brazil having played false to both Spaniards and Dutch, Spain had allowed the Netherlands to take vengeance for the vexations of both. We also had the exceedingly valuable services, as to maps and early colonization history, of Mr. Justin Winsor, librarian of Harvard University, eminent both as historian and geographer, and of Professor Jameson of Brown University, who had also distinguished himself in these fields. Besides these, Mr. Marcus Baker of the United States Coast Survey aided us, from day to day, in mapping out any territories that we wished especially to study.

All this work was indispensable. At the very beginning of our sessions there had been laid before us the first of a series of British Blue Books on the whole subject; and, with all my admiration for the better things in British history, politics, and life, candor compels me to say that it was anything but creditable to the men immediately responsible for it. It made several statements that were absolutely baseless, and sought to rest them upon authorities which, when examined, were found not to bear in the slightest degree the interpretation put upon them. I must confess that nothing, save, perhaps, the conduct of British "experts" regarding the Behring Sea question, has ever come so near shaking my faith in "British fair play." Nor were the American commissioners alone in judging this document severely. Critics broke forth, even in the London "Times," denouncing it, until it was supplanted by another, which was fair and just.