This difference of opinion between the President and Mr. Sumner led to the removal of John L. Motley, our minister to England, who sided with Sumner, and unquestionably intensified the feeling that had arisen from the San Domingo treaty.
As to that treaty it was a conceded fact that before the President had become publicly committed to it he had, waiving his official rank, sought the advice and counsel of Mr. Sumner, and was evidently misled as to Mr. Sumner's views on this subject. The subsequent debating, in both open and executive session, led to Mr. Sumner's taking the most extreme and active opposition to the treaty, in which he arraigned with great severity the conduct of the naval officers, the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Fish and the President. This was aggravated by alleged public conversations with Mr. Sumner by "interviewers," in which the motives of the President and others were impugned.
In the meantime, social relations between the Secretary of State and Mr. Sumner had become impossible; and—considering human passion, prejudice and feeling—anything like frank and confidential communication between the President and Mr. Sumner was out of the question.
A majority of the Republican Senators sided with the President. We generally agreed that it was a false-pretended neutrality, and not a too hasty proclamation of neutrality, that gave us an unquestionable right to demand indemnity from Great Britain for the depredations of the Alabama and other English cruisers. And as for the San Domingo treaty, a large majority of Republican Senators had voted for it—though I did not; and nearly all of us had voted for the commission of inquiry of which Mr. Wade was the chief member.
When we met in March, it was known that both these important subjects would necessarily be referred to the committee on foreign relations, and that, aside from the hostile personal relations of Mr. Sumner and the Secretary of State, he did not, and could not, and would not, represent the views of a majority of his Republican colleagues in the Senate, and that a majority of his committee agreed with him. Committees are and ought to be organized to represent the body, giving a majority of the members to the prevailing opinion, but fairly representing the views of the minority. It has been the custom in the Senate to allow each party to choose its own representatives in each committee, and in proportion to its numbers.
In the Republican conference the first question that arose was as to Mr. Sumner. He was the oldest Senator in consecutive service. He was eminent not only as a faithful representative of Republican principles, but as especially qualified to be chairman of our foreign relations. He had long held that position, and it was not usual in the Senate to change the committees, but to follow the rule of seniority, placing Senators of the majority party in the order of their coming into the Senate and those of the minority at the foot of the list.
In deciding Mr. Sumner's case, in view of the facts I have stated, two plans were urged;
First—To place him at the head of the new and important committee of privileges and elections, leaving the rest of the committee on foreign relations to stand in the precise order it had been, with one vacancy to be filled in harmony with the majority.
Second—To leave Mr. Sumner to stand in his old place as chairman, and to make a change in the body of the committee by transferring one of its members to another committee, and fill the vacancy by a Senator in harmony with the majority.
My own opinion was that the latter course was the most polite and just; but the majority decided, after full consideration and debate, upon the first alternative.