Many of my friends among the more conservative of the Danes scorned the idea of the sale on any terms. Among these was Admiral de Richelieu, whose father is buried in St. Thomas, and who is the most intense of Danish patriots. If objections to the sale on the part of my best friends in Denmark had governed me, I should have despaired of it. However, my friends, like de Richelieu, felt that our Government would be glad to see the Danish West India Islands improved as far as the Danes could improve them. De Richelieu, Etatsraad Andersen—Etatsraad meaning Councillor of State—Holger Petersen, Director Cold, formerly Governor of the Islands, Hegemann, who bore the high title of Geheimekonferensraad, were among those most interested in the Islands.
Hegemann, since dead, was the only one of the group who thought that the Danish Government could never either improve the Islands socially or make them pay commercially. 'The Danes are bad colonisers,' he said. He was a man of great common-sense, of wide experience, and a philanthropist who never let his head run away with his heart. He did a great deal for technical education in Denmark. In fact, there was scarcely any movement for the betterment of the country economically in which he was not interested. He had great properties in the island of Santa Cruz; but he looked on the Danish possession of the Islands as bad for the reputation of his native country and worse for the progress of the Islands and the Islanders. 'The present Government is too mild in its treatment of the blacks,' he said; 'equality, liberty and fraternity, the motto of the ruling party, is excellent, but it will not work in the Islands.' Besides, the construction of the Panama Canal was drawing the best labourers from them. He was interested in sugar and even in sea cotton; he thought that, the tariff restrictions being removed and a market for labour made, something might be done by us towards making the Islands a profitable investment. I was entirely indifferent as to that—our great need of the Islands was not for commercial uses.
The prevailing opinion in Court circles was against the sale, based on no antagonism to the United States, but on the desire that Denmark should not lose more of its territory. The Faroe Islands, Greenland and Iceland were still appendages; but Iceland was always restive, and Greenland seemed, in the eyes of the Danes, to have only the value of remotely useful territory. They had been shorn of territory by England, by Sweden, and, last of all, by Germany.
Our Government, knowing well how strong the national pride was, and how reasonable, permitted me to show it the greatest consideration. When the East-Asiatic Company, which had important holdings in St. Thomas, proposed that the national sentiment should be tested, and each Danish citizen asked to make a pecuniary sacrifice for the retention of the Islands, I was permitted to express sympathy with the movement, and to assist it in every way compatible with my position.
The attempt failed. It was evident that the majority of the people, whatever were their sentiments, knew that it was impracticable to attempt to govern the Islands from such a distance. If it had been possible to retain them with honour, with justice to the inhabitants, who for a long time had been desirous of union with the United States, no amount of money would have induced Denmark to part with the last of her colonial possessions. As it was, the prospect was not at all clear.
In modern times, a man who aspires to do his duty in diplomacy must be honest and reasonably frank. To pretend to admire the institutions of a nation, to affect a sympathy one does not feel, with a view to obtaining something of advantage to one's own country, was no doubt possible when foxes were preternaturally cunning and crows unbelievingly vain, but not now. The whole question of the Islands was a matter which must be settled by the commonsense of the Danes at the expense of their sentiment; no pressure on our part could be used, short of such arguments as might point to the forcible possession of the Islands temporarily in case of war; but the fact that the United States preferred to give what seemed to be an enormous sum—(though $25,000,000 have to-day scarcely the purchasing power of the $15,000,000 demanded for the three Islands from Secretary Seward in 1867)—rather than run the risk of future unpleasant complications with a small and friendly State, showed that the intentions of our Government were on a par with its professions.
When the proposed sale of the Islands stopped, largely because Senator Sumner disliked President Johnson, and the treaty lapsed in 1870 in spite of the support of Secretary Fish, King Christian IX. wrote, in a proclamation to the people of the Danish Islands—a majority of whom had consented to the proposed sale,—'The American Senate has not shown itself willing to maintain the treaty made, although the initiative came from the United States themselves.' The king had only consented to the sale to lighten the terrible financial burdens imposed on his country by the unjust war which Germany and Austria had forced upon Denmark with a view to the theft of Slesvig; and his consent would never have been given had not Secretary Seward, the predecessor of Secretary Fish, reluctantly agreed that the vote of the inhabitants should be taken. He was more democratic than Mr. Seward.
King Christian would not sign the treaty, which gave $7,500,000 to Denmark for the two Islands of St. Thomas and St. John, until Mr. Seward consented to 'concede the vote.' The Danes were frank in admitting that their 'poverty, but not their will,' consented. 'Ready as We were to subdue the feelings of Our heart, when We thought that duty bade Us so to do,' continued the king in his proclamation, 'yet We cannot otherwise than feel a satisfaction that circumstances have relieved Us from making a sacrifice which, notwithstanding the advantages held out, would always have been painful to Us. We are convinced that You share these sentiments, and that it is with a lightened heart You are relieved from the consent which only at Our request You gave for a separation from the Danish crown.'
The king added that he entertained the firm belief that his Government, supported by the Islanders, would succeed in making real progress, and end by effacing all remembrances of the disasters that had come upon them, his overseas dominions. Affairs in the mother country did look up; the Danes developed their country, in spite of the worst climatic conditions, into a land famous for its scientific farming. A wit has said that Denmark, after the loss of Slesvig, was divided like old Gaul, itself, into three parts,—butter, eggs and bacon. The Danes, cast into a condition of moral despondency and temporal poverty, with their national pride stricken, and their soil outworn, seized the things of the spirit and made material things subservient. Religion and patriotism, developed by Bishop Grundtvig, saved the mother country; but the Islands continued to go through various stages of hope and fear. The United States was too near and Denmark too far off. Home politics were generally paramount, and each new governor was always obliged to consider the sensitiveness of his Government to the amount of expenditure allowed. There were persons in power at home who seemed to see the Islands from the point of view of Bernardin de Saint Pierre—sentimentally. The happy black men were to dance under spreading palms, gently guided by Danish Pauls and Virginias! The black men were only too willing to dance under palms, whether spreading or not, and to be guided by any idyllic persons who, leaving them the pleasures of existence, would take the trials. All the governors suffered more or less from the Rousseau-like point of view taken by the Government. Mr. Helvig Larsen was the last who was expected to be 'idyllic.' One of the fears often expressed to me was that 'the Americans would treat the blacks badly—we have all read Uncle Tom's Cabin, you know.'
Even Her Majesty, the Dowager Queen Louise, one of the best-informed women in Europe, had her doubts about our attitude to the negroes. 'You have black nurses,' Her Majesty said to me; 'why are your people, especially in the South, not more kind to their race?' Queen Louise, who was sincerely interested in the welfare of her coloured subjects, would listen to reason. I sent her the Soul of the Black, which shows unconsciously why social equality in this case would be undesirable, but not until Booker Washington's visit did Her Majesty understand the attitude that sensible Americans, who know the South, take on the subject of the social equality of our coloured fellow-citizens. During my stay in Europe this matter was frequently discussed.