Unpropitious Conditions. There were, however, other difficulties than those occasioned by "the confused light of an incoming administration." Though Mr. Seward was not unconscious that the conditions were not propitious, his hopeful nature had led him to believe that the negotiations would in the end be successful,' and it is not improbable that this hopefulness, reinforced by the wish to close an important diplomatic chapter which he had himself so largely written, in a measure accounts for the lack of preparation and preconcert which the course of the negotiations in London betrays. But, apart from these circumstances, a new class of claims, generically known as "national claims" or "indirect claims," of which Mr. Sumner became the chief exponent, had begun to assume a definite form in the United States. To these claims the Johnson-Clarendon convention did not refer. Rejection of the Convention. On the 29th of March 1869 Mr. Johnson tendered his resignation of the office of minister to England, to take effect at such time as might be designated. Before taking this step, however, he had proposed to Lord Clarendon, with a view to meet objections in the United States, to include in the claims convention all claims of either government, as well as of their citizens or subjects. This proposal was made by Mr. Johnson under his "The treaties will prove satisfactory in the end, and the wisdom of the speeches you have made will thus be fully vindicated by the achievements which follow them. "I am, my dear Mr. Johnson, very sincerely yours, (MSS. Dept. of State.) "WILLIAM H. SEWARD." 1 In the London Times of March 26, 1872 (page 10, column 5), while the controversy was pending as to the competency of the tribunal of arbitration under the treaty of Washington to entertain the indirect claims, of which much will be said hereafter, there is an extract from a conversation with Mr. Seward, published in the New York Herald, in which, referring to the controversy in question, he is reported to have said: "Well, sir, I do think that the Johnson-Clarendon treaty was the best treaty that could have been negotiated, and having rejected that, they ought to be precluded from making any more treaties for the settlement of the Alabama claims. My opinion is that the treaty which I negotiated failed because of the passions and prejudices engendered between the two countries. The settlement of the Alabama claims is reserved for the future. The time has not yet arrived, because those passions and prejudices have not yet sufficiently subsided." general powers, and not in pursuance of specific instructions; and on the 10th of April he telegraphed to Mr. Fish, who had then become Secretary of State, that he thought the amendment could be secured. On the 12th of April Mr. Fish replied that as the treaty was before the Senate no change in it was deemed advisable; and on the 19th he informed Mr. Johnson of its rejection by the Senate on the 13th of the month. In communicating this information Mr. Fish said: "The vote of the Senate in opposition to the ratification of the convention was practically unanimous, there being only 1 in favor of it and 44 against it. The President, however, is not without hope that upon a further consideration by the two governments of the questions involved in the negotiation they may still be found to be susceptible of an amicable and satisfactory adjustment." To this declaration of the President's posiComments of Lord tion, which was duly communicated by Mr. Clarendon and Mr. Johnson to the British Government, with the notification that the convention had been re Johnson. jected, Lord Clarendon replied: "In the hope thus expressed by the President, I have the honor to state to you that Her Majesty's Government cordially concur. During your residence in this country you must have had abundant evidence that it was the desire of the government and the people of England that all differences between the two countries should be honorably settled, and that their relations with the United States should be of a most friendly character." In a subsequent dispatch to Mr. Fish, Mr. Johnson, referring to the proposition he had made to Lord Clarendon for a modification of the convention, said: "Whether such a modification would have rendered the convention acceptable to the President and Senate I can not know. I deem it my duty, however, to add that such a modification can not now be obtained. I think that this is owing to the publication of Mr. Sumner's speech, which has not only had an unfavorable effect upon the government, but upon the people of this country. If an opinion may be formed from the public press, there is not the remotest chance that the demands contained in that speech will ever be recognized by England. The universal sentiment will be found adverse to such a recognition. It would be held, as I hear from every reliable source, to be an abandonment of the rights and a disregard of the honor of the government.” 1 1 May 10, 1896, MSS. Dept. of State. Whether Mr. Johnson could have obtained the modification which he proposed if Mr. Sumner's speech had not been published is perhaps more than doubtful. When he telegraphed to Mr. Fish on the 10th of April, he was laboring under a misapprehension. In a note of the 8th of April Lord Clarendon, while observing that Mr. Johnson's proposal "involved a wide departure from the tenor and terms of the convention of 1853,” to which Mr. Johnson had, in compliance with his instructions, "constantly pressed Her Majesty's Government to adhere as necessary to insure the ratification of a new convention by the Senate of the United States," added: "No undue importance is attached to this deviation, but I beg leave to inform you that in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government it would serve no useful purpose now to consider any amendment to a convention which gave full effect to the wishes of the United States Government and was approved by the late President and Secretary of State, who referred it for ratification to the Senate, where it appears to have encountered objections the nature of which has not been officially made known to Her Majesty's Government." When Lord Clarendon said that "no undue importance" was "attached to this devitaion," Mr. Johnson, perhaps not unnaturally, understood him to refer to the precise deviation which had been proposed, and it was upon the strength of this understanding that he telegraphed to Mr. Fish on the 10th of April. Lord Clarendon, however, when made acquainted with the construction placed upon his words, made haste to say that the meaning he intended to convey was that Her Majesty's Government did not think that a rigid adherence to the terms and tenor of the convention of 1853 was material, but that he did not intend to imply that the particular alteration proposed by Mr. Johnson would be acceptable.1 Nevertheless it is true that the speech of Mr. Sumner's Speech. Mr. Sumner, which though made in executive session was published with the authority of the Senate, played a most important part in the subsequent history of the Alabama claims. Not only was it received as an expression of the grounds on which the convention was rejected, and as formulating the demands on which the future negotiations of the United States would be based, but it served 1 Lord Clarendon to Mr. Johnson, April 16, 1869. (MSS. Dept. of State.) to set the standard of public expectation as to the terms that would be exacted by the United States as the final conditions of an amicable settlement. It is therefore important to understand the precise grounds on which the argument of Mr. Sumner proceeded. In the first place, Mr. Sumner objected to the convention on the ground that, for the "massive grievance" under which the country had suffered for years" and "the painful sense of wrong planted in the national heart," it offered "not one word of regret, or even of recognition," nor "any semblance of compensation." The convention was, he said, obviously made for the setlement of private claims, and even if the "aleatory proceeding" of choosing an umpire by lot were a proper device for the umpirage of private claims, it was strangely inconsistent with the solemnity which belonged to the present question. The convention, Mr. Sumner declared, made "no provision for the real question;" and he then proceeded to set forth the "true grounds of complaint" of the United States against Great Britain. In this catalogue the first article was the concession to the Confederacy of "ocean belligerency," which was described as "the first stage in the depredations on our commerce." Next came "the building of the pirate ships, one after another," and their escape with so much of negligence on the part of the British Government as to "constitute sufferance, if not connivance," and "the welcome and hospitality accorded" to them. Summing up these articles of complaint, Mr. Sumner said: "Thus at three different stages the British Government is compromised: First, in the concession of ocean belligerency, on which all depended; secondly, in the negligence which allowed the evasion of the ship, in order to enter upon the hostile expedition for which she was built, manned, armed, and equipped; and, thirdly, in the open complicity which, after this evasion, gave her welcome, hospitality, and supplies in British ports. Thus her depredations and burnings, making the ocean blaze, all proceeded from England, which by three different acts lighted the torch. To England must be traced, also, all the widespread consequences which ensued." Mr. Sumner also referred to the "multitudinous blockade runners from England" as "kindred to the pirate ships," since 1 Mr. Pierce, in his Life of Sumner (IV. p. 389), quotes from Harper's Weekly, March 16, 1872, the statement that this was "the most popular speech that he (Mr. Sumner) ever delivered." they "were of the same bad family, having their origin and home in England," and since they could not have sailed without "the manifesto of belligerency." Proceeding then to the reparation due from England, Mr. Sumner estimated the pri vate claims at about $15,000,000; but he said that, even in respect of these, nothing was admitted by the convention; no rule for the future was established; while nothing was said "of the indignity to the nation, nor of the damages to the nation." The damages due to the nation Mr. Sumner "National Claim." described as follows: * * * "How to authenticate the extent of national loss with reasonable certainty is not without difficulty; but it can not be doubted that such a loss occurred. It is folly to question it. The loss may be seen in various circumstances: as, in the rise of insurance on all American vessels; the fate of the carrying trade, which was one of the greatest resources of our country; the diminution of our tonnage, with the corresponding increase of British tonnage; the falling off in our exports and imports, with due allowance for our abnormal currency and the diversion of war. Beyond the actual loss in the national tonnage, there was a further loss in the arrest of our natural increase in this branch of industry, which an intelligent statistician puts at five per cent. annually, making in 1866 a total loss on this account of 1,384,953 tons, which must be added to 1,229,035 tons actually lost. The same statistician, after estimating the value of a ton at forty dollars gold, and making allowance for old and new ships, puts the sum total of national loss on this account at $110,000,000. Of course this is only an item in our bill. * This is what I have to say for the present on national losses through the destruction of commerce. These are large enough; but there is another chapter, where they are larger far. I refer, of course, to the national losses caused by the prolongation of the war, and traceable directly to England. * No candid person, who studies this eventful period, can doubt that the rebellion was originally encouraged by hope of support from England,-that it was strengthened at once by the concession of belligerent rights on the ocean,that it was fed to the end by British supplies,-that it was encouraged by every well-stored British ship that was able to defy our blockade,-that it was quickened into frantic life with every report from the British pirates, flaming anew with every burning ship. Not weeks or months, but years, were added in this way to our war, so full of costly sacrifice. The sacrifice of precious life is beyond human compensation; but there may be an approximate estimate of the national loss in treasure. Everybody can make the calcula * * ** * |