James Russell Lowell and His Friends

by Edward Everett Hale

The reader ought to understand that while the Spanish mission has always been spoken of by uninformed people as a somewhat lazy corner in that somewhat old-fashioned salon which takes the name of “Diplomacy,” the United States minister in Spain has always been walking amidst hot coals, or explosive friction matches. Some drowsy people, whose principal business in life has been to cut off the coupons from securities which other people had earned for them, waked up with surprise when they learned that this country had at last taken up the gauntlet of war. The United States meant to finish the job which Drake and Burleigh and Howard and Elizabeth left unfinished three centuries ago. But other people were not surprised. If they have cared about the history of the hundred years which have made the United States a nation,—and which have seen ten or twelve changes either of constitution or of dynasty in Spain,—men have known that open questions, some of them of great seriousness, have all the time entangled the diplomatic web which was woven between the two nations.

Into the heritage of these complications Lowell came when—in a pacific time—he presented his credentials at Madrid. The sovereign then on the throne was Alfonso XII., and one of Lowell’s earliest dispatches describes the ceremonies attending his marriage with Mercedes, the young princess. The minister of foreign affairs was Don Fernando Calderon Collantes. The short-lived republic which began in 1873, on the abdication of Amadeo of Savoy, had, in its time, given way, and the old Bourbon family had returned in the person of Alfonso XII.

In the short period of the republic I happened to be editing the magazine called “Old and New,” in Boston. Like most intelligent Americans, I hoped to see republican government extend itself in Europe.

I wanted, at all events, that our readers should know the truth about it. I struck high, as an editor always should do. So I waited on Charles Francis Adams, the same who had carried through our negotiations with England in the civil war with such masterly success. If there ever were a Republican and Democrat, it was he; if there ever were a person confident in the strength of America, it was he; and I certainly expected his sympathy in the cause of the new-born Spanish republic.

I asked him to write our article on Spain and the new republic. He listened to me with all his perfect courtesy; and then he advised me—I might say he bade me—take no stock in the enterprise. I pressed him; I said, “Surely, we want to extend republican institutions in Europe?” And he smiled, sadly enough, and said, “Do not expect anything of Spain, Mr. Hale. The truth is not in them.”

In this old Bible axiom of Covenanters and of Puritans is the secret of all the difficulties between England and Spain in Drake’s time, between this country and Spain in Jefferson’s day, and in each of the crises of negotiation since. Spain and her statesmen really think that a lie well stuck to is as good as the truth. Our representatives do not think so. The difference makes a jar when the neophyte in diplomacy discovers it.

In the unpublished “Pickering correspondence” are some curious memoranda which show what Jefferson thought and planned. Jefferson had seen the real Philip Nolan killed, and nine American companions of his kept in lifelong imprisonment in Mexico because the Spanish government violated its own passports. This all began as early as 1801. In 1825 Mr. Alexander Everett, our minister in Spain, offered the Spanish government one hundred millions for Cuba. Under Mr. Polk’s government, twenty years after, the offer was renewed. Mr. Soulé, our minister in Madrid between 1853 and 1855, complicated matters by his personal quarrels. He fought a duel with Turgot, the French minister, and incurred the dislike, naturally enough, of the French government. At a conference of three American foreign ministers at Ostend in 1854, Buchanan, Mason, and himself, Soulé pressed the importance of the annexation of Cuba to the United States, and carried with him both of his coadjutors.

But it is not at all necessary that we should enter into the details of these complications. The history of all this diplomacy has been admirably written by Professor Hart, and is published in “Harper’s Magazine” of June, 1898. We should probably have gone to war with Spain at Mr. Soulé’s suggestion, but that at that moment, in 1854 and 1855, the weak government of that weakest of men, Franklin Pierce, was in very hot water at home. The administration had offended the whole North by its operations in Kansas, and it was no time to ask for a war which seemed likely to end in the annexation of another slave State to the Union. Mr. Soulé was recalled, and some sort of modus vivendi was patched up which carried us through the civil war. Mr. Lincoln appointed Mr. Koerner as our minister in Spain, who was succeeded by Mr. John Parker Hale.

One is glad to say that at this time the drift of the somewhat wayward movements of Spanish administration was in our favor. A curious little anecdote, which I think has never been printed, illustrates this; and as it has an indirect bearing on after diplomacy, I will repeat it here. After our civil war had ground along for nearly three years, Louis Napoleon, as will be remembered, took a hand in it. He formed the ingenious plan of uniting other nations in a change of the international law governing blockades. The admiralty law of the world at present extends the jurisdiction of any nation for one marine league from its shores. If, therefore, a blockade-runner could get within three miles of Jamaica, Cuba, or Porto Rico, he was safe from any interference from our blockading fleet. Napoleon ingeniously proposed that, instead of one league, this limit of local sovereignty should be extended to three leagues from shore. He knew well enough that England would never consent to this change; but he had that audacity which enabled him to persuade the Spanish minister to come into his plan.

Maps of the West Indies are now plenty, and any reader who will look at the position of Cuba, Porto Rico, and the little French islands in the West Indies will see how seriously such an extension of a neutral limit would have hindered the operations of our blockading fleets. All this negotiation was conducted with great secrecy, and orders were sent from Spain to the West Indies, instructing the local authorities there to extend threefold the range of their dominion over the sea. These orders had already gone when Mr. Horatio Perry, our secretary of legation at that time, got wind of this treachery of our ally.