A lively episode in international politics occurred in July, 1852, which Perry was called upon to settle. New England was convulsed over the seizure of American fishing vessels by British cruisers. Congress being still in session, the opposition were not slow to denounce the Administration.
Mr. Fillmore invited Mr. John P. Kennedy of “Swallow Barn” literary fame to succeed Mr. Graham as Secretary of the Navy. Mr. Kennedy took his seat in the cabinet July 24th. The excitement over the fishery question was then at fever heat. Mutterings of war were already heard in the newspapers. Employment for the Mexican veterans seemed promising.
The cabinet decided that the new secretary should give the law, and that Perry should execute it. Mr. Kennedy, who wisely saw Perry first, proceeded to draft the letter. On the night of July 28th his studies resulted in a brilliant state paper, which occupies seven folio pages in the Book of Confidential Letters, and he then retired to rest. Naturally his maiden effort in diplomacy tried his nerves. His broken sleep was disturbed with dreams of codfish and the shades of Lord Aberdeen till morning.
Once more summoning to his aid his old sea-racer the Mississippi, Captain McCluney, Perry left New York July 31st, 1852, stopping at Eastport, Maine, to get fresh information. There was much irritation felt by British residents at the alleged depredations of American fishermen, who, instead of buying their ice, bait, fuel and other supplies, were sometimes tempted to make raids on the shores of the islands. One excited person wrote to the admiral of the fleet:
“For God’s sake send a man-of-war here, for the Americans are masters of the place—one hundred sail are now lying in the harbor. They have stolen my fire-wood and burnt it on the beach.” They had also set fire to the woods and committed other spoliations. Collisions with the British cruisers were imminent, and acts easily leading to war were feared by the cabinet.
Perry proceeded to Halifax. He traversed the coast of Cape Breton Island, around Magdalen, and along the north shore of Prince Edward’s Island, visiting the resorts of the Yankee fishermen, and passing large fleets of our vessels. He found by experience, and was satisfied, that there had been repeated infractions of treaty, for which seven seizures had been made by British cruisers then in command of Admiral Seymour. The question, at this issue, concerning the rights of Americans fishing in Canadian waters, was one of geographical science rather than of diplomacy. It rested upon the answer given to this, “What are bays?” The last convention between the two countries had been made in 1818, when the United States renounced her right to fish within three miles of any of the coasts, bays and harbors of Canada. Only after a number of American vessels had been seized and prosecuted in the court at Halifax, was this treaty made. Including those captured for violating the convention of 1818, the number was sixty in all. The British said to Perry that the Americans had no right to take fish within three marine miles of the shore of a British province, or within three miles of a line drawn from headland to headland across bays. Canadians in American bottoms were especially expert in evading this law.
Perry found the American fishermen were intelligent and understood the treaty, but he thought that the Canadian government was too severe upon them. About 2500 vessels and 27,500 men from our ports took part in the hazardous occupation, “thus furnishing,” said the Commodore, “a nursery for seamen, of inestimable advantage to the maritime interests of the nation.” Added to the force employed in whaling in the North Atlantic, there were thirty thousand men, mostly native Americans, whose business was with salt-water fish and mammals. At one point he saw a fleet of five hundred sail of mackerel fishers.
This diplomatic voyage revealed both the dangers and pathos of the sailor-fisherman’s life. No class of men engaged in any industry are subjected to such sufferings, privations and perils. Their own name for the fishing grounds is “The Graveyard.”
The commercial and naval success of this country is largely the result of the enterprise and seamanship shown in the whaling fisheries. These nurseries of the American navy had enabled the United States in two wars to achieve on the seas so many triumphs over Great Britain. By the same agencies, Perry hoped to see his country become the greatest commercial rival of Great Britain. This could be done by looking to the quality of the common sailor, and maintaining the standard of 1812. For such reasons, if for no others, the fisheries should be encouraged.
Perry came to adjust amicably the respective rights of both British and American seamen. He warned his countrymen against encroaching upon the limits prescribed by the convention of 1818, but at the same time he would protect American vessels from visitation or interference at points left in doubt. His mission had a happy consummation. The wholesome effect of the Mississippi’s visit paved the way for the reciprocity treaty between Canada and the United States, negotiated at Washington soon after by Sir Ambrose Shea, and signed June 5th, 1854. The entrance of Mr. Kennedy in the cabinet was thus made both successful and brilliant by Commodore Perry. The “hiatus secretary” bridged the gulf of war with the firm arch of peace. The reciprocity treaty lasted twelve years, when the irrepressible root of bitterness again sprouted. Despite diplomacy, correspondence, treaties, and Joint High Commissions, still, at this writing, in 1887, it vexes the peace of two nations. The axe is not yet laid at the root of the trouble.