The Fenians would be as absolutely without strength in America as they are without credit were it not for the anti-British traditions of the Democratic party, and the rankling of the Alabama question, or rather of the remembrance of our general conduct during the rebellion, in the hearts of the Republicans. It is impossible to spend much time in New England without becoming aware that the people of the six Northeastern States love us from the heart. Nothing but this can explain the character of their feeling toward us on these Alabama claims. That we should refuse an arbitration upon the whole question is to them inexplicable, and they grieve with wondering sorrow at our perversity.
It is not here that the legal question need be raised; for observers of the present position of the English race it is enough that there exists between Britain and America a bar to perfect friendship—a ground for future quarrel—upon which we refuse to allow an all-embracing arbitration. We allege that we are the best judges of a certain portion of the case, that our dignity would be compromised by arbitration upon these points; but such dignity must always be compromised by arbitration, for common friends are called in only when each party to the dispute has a case, in the justice of which his dignity is bound up. Arbitration is resorted to as a means of avoiding wars; and, dignity or no dignity, everything that can cause war is proper matter for arbitration. What even if some little dignity be lost by the affair, in addition to that which has been lost already? No such loss can be set against the frightful hurtfulness to the race and to the cause of freedom, of war between Britain and America.
The question comes plainly enough to this point; we say we are right; America says we are wrong; they offer arbitration, which we refuse upon a point of etiquette—for on that ground we decline to refer to arbitration a point which to America appears essential. It looks to the world as though we offer to submit to the umpire chosen those points only on which we are already prepared to admit that we are in the wrong. America asks us to submit, as we should do in private life, the whole correspondence on which the quarrel stands. Even if we, better instructed in the precedents of international law than were the Americans, could not but be in the right, still, as we know that intelligent and able men in the United States think otherwise, and would fancy their cause the just one in a war which might arise upon the difficulty, surely there is ground for arbitration. It would be to the eternal disgrace of civilization that we should set to work to cut our brothers’ throats upon a point of etiquette; and, by declining on the ground of honor to discuss these claims, we are compromising that honor in the eyes of all the world.
In democracies such as America or France, every citizen feels an insult to his country as an insult to himself. The Alabama question is in the mouth or in the heart—which is worse—of every American who talks with an Englishman in England or America.
All nations commit, at times, the error of acting as though they think that every people on earth, except themselves, are unanimous in their policy. Neglecting the race distinctions and the class distinctions which in England are added to the universal essential differences of minds, the Americans are convinced that, during the late war, we thought as one man, and that, in this present matter of the Alabama claims, we stand out and act as a united people.
A New Yorker with whom I stayed at Quebec—a shrewd but kindly fellow—was an odd instance of the American incapacity to understand the British nation, which almost equals our own inability to comprehend America. Kind and hospitable to me, as is any American to every Englishman in all times and places, he detested British policy, and obstinately refused to see that there is an England larger than Downing Street, a nation outside Pall Mall. “England was with the rebels throughout the war.” “Excuse me; our ruling classes were so, perhaps, but our rulers don‘t represent us any more than your 39th Congress represents George Washington.” In America, where Congress does fairly represent the nation, and where there has never been less than a quarter of the body favorable to any policy which half the nation supported, men cannot understand that there should exist a country which thinks one way, but, through her rulers, speaks another. We may disown the national policy, but we suffer for it.
The hospitality to Englishmen of the American England-hater is extraordinary. An old Southerner in Richmond said to me in a breath, “I‘d go and live in England if I didn‘t hate it as I do. England, sir, betrayed us in the most scoundrelly way—talked of sympathy with the South, and stood by to see us swallowed up. I hate England, sir! Come and stay a week with me at my place in —— County. Going South to-day? Well, then, you return this way next week. Come then! Come on Saturday week.”
When we ask, “Why do you press the Alabama claims against us, and not the Florida, the Georgia, and the Rappahannock claims against the French?” the answer is: “Because we don‘t care about the French, and what they do and think; besides, we owe them some courtesy after bundling them out of Mexico in the way we did.” In truth there is among Americans an exaggerated estimate of the offensive powers of Great Britain; and such is the jealousy of young nations that this exaggeration becomes of itself a cause of danger. Were the Americans as fully convinced, as we ourselves are, of our total incapacity to carry on a land war with the United States on the western side of the Atlantic, the bolder spirits among them would cease to feel themselves under an assumed necessity to show us our own weakness and their strength.
The chief reason why America finds much to offend her in our conduct is, that she cares for the opinion of no other people than the English. America, before the terrible blow to her confidence and love that our conduct during the rebellion gave, used morally to lean on England. Happily for herself she is now emancipated from the mental thraldom; but she still yearns toward our kindly friendship. A Napoleonic Senator harangues, a French paper declaims, against America and Americans; who cares? But a Times’ leader, or a speech in Parliament from a minister of the Crown, cuts to the heart, wounding terribly. A nation, like an individual, never quarrels with a stranger; there must be love at bottom for even querulousness to arise. While I was in Boston, one of the foremost writers of America said to me in conversation: “I have no son, but I had a nephew of my own name; a grand fellow; young, handsome, winning in his ways, full of family affections, an ardent student. He felt it his duty to go to the front as a private in one of our regiments of Massachusetts volunteers, and was promoted for bravery to a captaincy. All of us here looked on him as a New England Philip Sidney, the type of all that was manly, chivalrous, and noble. The very day that I received news of his being killed in leading his company against a regiment, I was forced by my duties here to read a leader in one of your chief papers upon the officering of our army, in which it was more than hinted that our troops consisted of German cut-throats and pot-house Irish, led by sharpers and broken politicians. Can you wonder at my being bitter?”
That there must be in America a profound feeling of affection for our country is shown by the avoidance of war when we recognized the rebels as belligerents; and, again, at the time of the Trent affair, when the surface cry was overwhelmingly for battle, and the cabinet only able to tide it over by promising the West war with England as soon as the rebellion was put down. “One war at a time, gentlemen,” said Lincoln. The man who, of all in America, had most to lose by war with England, said to me of the Trent affair: “I was written to by C—— to do all I could for peace. I wrote him back that if our attorney-general decided that our seizure of the men was lawful, I would spend my last dollar in the cause.”