Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

The preamble to the treaty established its character and proved its utter inadequacy to meet the demands of the United States. It was in these words: "Whereas claims have at various times since the exchange of the ratifications of the convention between Great Britain and the United States of America, signed at London on the 8th of February, 1853, been made upon the Government of her Britannic Majesty on the part of citizens of the United States, and upon the Government of the United States on the part of subjects of her Britannic Majesty; and whereas some of such claims are still pending and remain unsettled, her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the President of the United States of America, being of opinion that a speedy and equitable settlement of all such claims will contribute much to the maintenance of the friendly feelings which subsist between the two countries, have resolved to make arrangements for that purpose by means of a convention."

Among the first provisions of the treaty was a declaration that the result of the proceedings of the commission thus to be provided for, should be considered as "a full and final settlement of every claim upon either government arising out of any transaction of a date prior to the exchange of ratifications;" and all claims thereafter were to be "considered and treated as finally settled and barred, and thenceforth inadmissible." For eight years the Government of the United States had been protesting against the unfriendly course of Great Britain, against her premature recognition of the Confederate States as belligerents, against her special concession of ocean belligerency, against her making the dockyards and arsenals on her own soil the dockyards and arsenals of the Confederacy, against her wilful depredation upon the commerce of the United States, against the destruction of property belonging to American citizens by her agency and her fault. And now Mr. Johnson and Lord Clarendon had concluded a treaty which practically admitted that the complaints of the United States, as a government, against the conduct of Great Britain, as a government, had been mere rant and bravado on the part of the United States, and were not to be insisted on before any International tribunal, but to be merged in an ordinary claims convention, by whose award a certain amount in dollars and cents might be paid to the American claimants and a certain amount in pounds, shillings, and pence might be paid to British claimants. The text of the treaty did not indicate in any manner whatever that either nation was more at fault than the other touching the matters to be arbitrated.

The treaty had short life in the Senate. The Committee of Foreign Relations, after examination of its provisions, reported that it should "be rejected." Mr. Sumner, who made the report, said it was the first time since he had entered the Senate that such a report had been made concerning any treaty. Amendments, he said, were sometimes suggested, and sometimes a treaty had been reported without any recommendations; but the hostility to the entire spirit and to every detail of the Johnson-Clarendon treaty was so intense that the Committee had made the positive recommendation that it be rejected. This action was taken in the month of April, 1869, a few weeks after President Grant had entered upon his office. It was accompanied by a speech from Mr. Sumner, made in Executive session, but by direction of the Senate given to the public, in which the reasons for the action of the Senate were stated with great directness, precision and force.

After enumerating the extent of our losses, National and individual, direct and indirect, Mr. Sumner said: "If the case against England is strong, and if our claims are unprecedented in magnitude, it is only because the conduct of that power at a trying period was most unfriendly, and the injurious consequences of this conduct were on a scale corresponding to the theatre of action. Life and property were both swallowed up, leaving behind a deep-seated sense of enormous wrong, as yet unatoned and even unacknowledged, which is one of the chief factors in the problem now presented to the statesmen of both countries. . . . The truth must be told, not in anger, but in sadness. England has done to the United States an injury most difficult to measure. Considering when it was done and in what complicity, it is most unaccountable. At a great epoch of history, not less momentous than that of the French Revolution or that of the Reformation, when civilization was fighting a last battle with slavery, England gave her influence, her material resources, to the wicked cause, and flung a sword into the scale with slavery."

President Grant was in full sympathy with the Senate in its prompt rejection of the Johnson-Clarendon treaty, and in his annual message to Congress in the ensuing December (1869) he expressed his entire dissent from its provisions.(4) He thought the rejection of the treaty was "followed by a state of public opinion on both sides not favorable to an immediate attempt at renewed negotiation," and expressed "the hope that the time will soon arrive when the two Governments can approach the solution of this momentous question, with an appreciation of what is due to the rights, dignity, and honor of each."

The rejection of the Johnson-Clarendon treaty was formally announced to the British Government through Mr. Motley, who succeeded Mr. Johnson as Minister in London. Mr. Fish, in his letter of instructions, suggested to Mr. Motley the propriety of suspending negotiations for the present on the whole question. At the same time he committed the Government of the United States anew to the maintenance of the claim for National damages, as well as for the losses of individual citizens. And thus the matter was allowed to rest. The United States, though deeply aggrieved, did not desire to urge the negotiation in a spirit of hostility that implied readiness to go to war upon the issue, and simply trusted that a returning sense of justice in the British Government would lead to a renewal of negotiations and a friendly adjustment of all differences between the two Governments.

A year went by and nothing was done. The English Government was not disposed to go a step beyond the provisions of the Johnson-Clarendon treaty, and had indeed been somewhat offended by the promptness with which the Senate had rejected that agreement, especially by the emphasis which the speech of Mr. Sumner had given to the Senate's action. President Grant remained altogether patient and composed—feeling that postponement could not be a loss to the American Government, and would certainly prove no gain to the British Government. In his annual message to Congress of December, 1870, he assumed a position which proved embarrassing to England. He recognized the fact that "the Cabinet at London does not appear willing to concede that her Majesty's Government was guilty of any negligence, or did or permitted any act of which the United States has just cause of complaint;" and he re-asserted with great deliberation and emphasis that "our firm and unalterable convictions are directly the reverse." The President therefore recommended that Congress should "authorize the appointment of a commission to take proof of the amounts and the ownership of these several claims, on notice to the representative of her Majesty at Washington, and that authority be given for the settlement of these claims by the United States, so that the Government shall have the ownership of the private claims, as well as the responsible control of all the demands against Great Britain."

President Grant was evidently resolved that the Government of the United States should not allow the pressing need of private claimants to operate in any degree upon public opinion in the United States, so as to create a demand for settlement with England on any basis below that which National dignity required. He felt assured that Congress would respond favorably to his recommendation, and that with the individual claimants satisfied our Government could afford to wait the course of events. This position convinced the British Government that the President intended to raise the question in all its phases above the grade of private claims, and to make it purely an international affair. No more effective step could have been taken; and the President and his adviser, Secretary Fish, are entitled to the highest credit for thus elevating the character of the issue—an issue made all the more impressive from the quiet manner in which it was presented, and from the characteristic coolness and determination of the Chief Magistrate who stood behind it.

Meanwhile the sanguinary war between Germany and France has broken out, and was still flagrant when President Grant's recommendation for paying the Alabama claims from the National Treasury was sent to Congress. Though the foreign conflict terminated without involving other nations, it forcibly reminded England of the situation in which she might be placed if she should be drawn into a European war, the United States being a neutral power. It would certainly be an unjust imputation upon the magnanimity and upon the courage of the people of the United States to represent them as waiting for an opportunity to inflict harm upon England for her conduct towards this Government in the hour of its calamity and its distress. It was not by indirection, or by stealthy blows, or by secret connivance with enemies, or by violations of international justice, that the United States would ever have sought to avenge herself on England for the wrongs she had received. If there had been a disposition among the American people impelling them to that course, it would assuredly have impelled them much farther.

But England was evidently apprehensive that if she should become involved in war, the United States would, as a neutral power, follow the precedent which the English Government had set in the war of the rebellion, and in this way inflict almost irreparable damage upon British shipping and British commerce. Piratical Alabamas might escape from the harbors and rivers of the United States as easily as they had escaped from the harbors and rivers of England; and she might well fear that if a period of calamity should come to her, the people of the United States, with the neglect or connivance of their Government, would be as quick to add to her distress and embarrassment as the people of England, with the neglect or connivance of their Government, had added to the distress and embarrassment of the United States. Conscience does make cowards of us all; and Great Britain, foreseeing the possibility of being herself engaged in a European war, was in a position to dread lest her ill intentions and her misdeed in the time of our civil struggle should return to plague her.