Autobiography of Seventy Years Part 49

CHAPTER XII FISHERIES

If, on looking back, I were to select the things which I have done in public life in which I take the most satisfaction, they would be, the speech in the Senate on the Fisheries Treaty, July 10, 1886, the letter denouncing the A. P. A., a secret, political a.s.sociation, organized for the purpose of ostracizing our Catholic fellow-citizens, and the numerous speeches, letters and magazine articles against the subjugation of the Philippine Islands.

I do not think any one argument, certainly that my argument, caused the defeat of the Fisheries Treaty, negotiated by Mr.

Joseph Chamberlain and Mr. Bayard during Mr. Cleveland's first Administration. The argument against it was too strong not to have prevailed without any one man's contribution to it; and the Senate was not so strongly inclined to support President Cleveland as to give a two-thirds majority to a measure, unless it seemed clearly for the public interest.

He had his Republican opponents to reckon with, and the Democrats in the Senate disliked him very much, and gave him a feeble and half-hearted support.

The question of our New England fisheries has interested the people of the country, especially of New England, from our very early history. Burke spoke of them before the Revolutionary War, as exciting even then the envy of England. One of the best known and most eloquent pa.s.sages in all literature is his description of the enterprise of our fathers. Burke adds to that description:

"When I reflect upon the effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My rigor relents. I pardon something to the spirit of Liberty."

The War of the Revolution, of course, interrupted for a time the fisheries of the American colonies. But the fishermen were not idle. They manned the little Navy whose exploits have never yet received from history its due meed of praise.

They furnished the ships' companies of Manly and Tucker and Biddle and Abraham Whipple. They helped Paul Jones to strike terror into St. George's Channel. In 1776, in the first year of the Revolutionary War, American privateers, most of them manned by our fishermen, captured three hundred and forty- two British vessels.

The fisheries came up again after the war. Mr. Jefferson commended them to the favor of the nation in an elaborate and admirable report. He said that before the war 8,000 men and 52,000 tons of shipping were annually employed by Ma.s.sachusetts in the cod and whale fisheries. England and France made urgent efforts and offered large bounties to get our fishermen to move over there.

For a long time the fisheries were aided by direct bounties.

Later the policy of protection has been subst.i.tuted.

John Adams has left on record that when he went abroad as our representative in 1778, and again when the Treaty of 1783 was negotiated, his knowledge of the fisheries and his sense of their importance were what induced him to take the mission.

He declared that unless our claims were fully recognized, the States would carry on the war alone. He said:

"Because the people of New England, besides the natural claim of mankind to the gifts of Providence on their coast, are specially ent.i.tled to the fishery by their charters, which have never been declared forfeited."

In the debate on the articles of peace in the House of Lords, Lord Loughborough, the ablest lawyer of his party, said:

"The fishery on the sh.o.r.es retained by Britain is in the next article not ceded, but recognized as a right inherent in the Americans, which though no longer British subjects, they are to continue to enjoy unmolested."

This was denied nowhere in the debate.

John Adams took greater satisfaction in his achievement when he secured our fisheries in the treaty of 1783 than in any other of the great acts of his life.* After the treaty of 1783 he had a seal struck with the figures of the pine tree, the deer and the fish, emblems of the territory and the fisheries secured in 1783. He had it engraved anew in 1815 with the motto, "Piscemur, venemur, ut olim." I have in my possession an impression taken from the original seal of 1815. This letter from John Quincy Adams tells its story:

"QUINCY, September 3, 1836.

_"My Dear Son:_ On this day, the anniversary of the definitive treaty of peace of 1783, whereby the independence of the United States of America was recognized, and the anniversary of your own marriage, I give you a seal, the impression upon which was a device of my father, to commemorate the successful a.s.sertion of two great interests in the negotiation for the peace, the liberty of the fisheries, and the boundary securing the acquisition of the western lands. The deer, the pine tree, and the fish are the emblems representing those interests.

"The seal which my father had engraved in 1783 was without the motto. He gave it in his lifetime to your deceased brother John, to whose family it belongs. That which I now give to you I had engraved by his direction at London in 1815, shortly after the conclusion of the treaty of peace at Ghent, on the 24th of December, 1814, at the negotiation of which the same interests, the fisheries, and the bounty had been deeply involved.

The motto, 'Piscemur, venemur, ut olim,' is from Horace.

"I request you, should the blessing of heaven preserve the life of your son, Charles Francis, and make him worthy of your approbation, to give it at your own time to him as a token of remembrance of my father, who gave it to me, and of yours.

"JOHN QUINCY ADAMS."

"My son Charles Francis Adams."

[Footnote]

* See Ante, p. 131.

[End of Footnote]

The negotiations of 1815 and 1818 were under the control of as dauntless and uncompromising a spirit, and one quite as alive to the value of the fisheries and the dishonor of abandoning them as that of John Adams himself. If John Quincy Adams, the senior envoy at Ghent, and the Secretary of State in 1818, had consented to a treaty bearing the construction which is lately claimed he never could have gone home to face his father. When the War of 1812 ended, Great Britain set up the preposterous claim that the war had abrogated all treaties, and that with the treaty of 1783 our rights in the fisheries were gone. There was alarm in New England; but it was quieted by the knowledge that John Quincy Adams was one of our representatives.

It was well said at that time that, as

"John Adams saved the fisheries once, his son would a second time."

When someone expressed a fear that the other commissioners would not stand by his son, the old man wrote in 1814, that--

"Bayard, Russell, Clay, or even Gallatin, would cede the fee-simple of the United States as soon as they would cede the fisheries." (pp. 21-22).

These fisheries still support the important city of Gloucester, and are a very valuable source of wealth to the hardy and enterprising people who maintain them. Their story is full of romance. A touching yearly ceremonial is celebrated at the present time in Gloucester in commemoration of the men who are lost in this dangerous employment.

But the value of the fisheries does not consist chiefly in historic a.s.sociation or in the wealth which they contribute to any such community.

They are the nursery of seamen, more valuable and less costly than the Naval School at Annapolis. They train the men who are employed in them to get to be at home on the sea. They are valuable for naval officers and for sailors. Whenever there shall be a war with a naval power, they will be thrown out of employ, and will seek service in our Navy. All the English authorities, I believe, concur in this opinion. I read in my speech a very interesting letter from Admiral Porter who testified strongly to that effect.

While it is true that many of our common sailors engaged in our cod and other fisheries are of foreign birth, it is equally true that they, almost all of them, come to live in this country, get naturalized and become ardent Americans.

This is true of the natives of the British Dominions. But it is still more true of the Scandinavians, a hardy and adventurous race, faithful and brave, who become full of the spirit of American nationality.

Mr. Bayard who was, I think, inspired by a patriotic and praiseworthy desire to establish more friendly relations with Great Britain, seemed to me to give away the whole American case, and to have been bamboozled by Joseph Chamberlain at every point. The Treaty gave our markets to Canada without anything of value to us in return, and afforded no just indemnity for the past outrages of which we justly complained, and gave no security for the future.

The Treaty, which required a two-thirds majority for its ratification, was defeated by a vote of twenty-seven yeas to thirty nays. There were nine Senators paired in the affirmative, and eight in the negative. The vote was a strict party vote, with the exception of Messrs. Palmer and Turpie, Democrats, who were against it.

I discussed the subject with great earnestness, going fully into the history of the matter, and the merits of the Treaty.

I think I may say without undue vanity that my speech was an important and interesting contribution to a very creditable chapter of our history.

CHAPTER XIII THE FEDERAL ELECTIONS BILL

In December, 1889, the Republican Party succeeded to the legislative power in the country for the first time in sixteen years.

Since 1873 there had been a Democratic President for four years, and a Democratic House or Senate or both for the rest of the time. There was a general belief on the part of the Republicans, that the House of Representatives, as const.i.tuted for fourteen years of that time, and that the Presidency itself when occupied by Mr. Cleveland, represented nothing but usurpation, by which, in large districts of the country, the will of the people had been defeated. There were some faint denials at the time when these claims were made in either House of Congress as to elections in the Southern States. But n.o.body seems to deny now, that the charges were true. Mr. Senator Tillman of South Carolina stated in my hearing in the Senate:

"We took the Government away. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it. The Senator from Wisconsin would have done the same thing. I see it in his eye right now. He would have done it. With that system--force, tissue ballots, etc.--we got tired ourselves. So we called a Const.i.tutional Convention, and we eliminated, as I said, all of the colored people whom we could under the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments.

"I want to call your attention to the remarkable change that has come over the spirit of the dream of the Republicans; to remind you, gentlemen of the North, that your slogans of the past--brotherhood of man and fatherhood of G.o.d--have gone glimmering down the ages. The brotherhood of man exists no longer, because you shoot negroes in Illinois, when they come in compet.i.tion with your labor, and we shoot them in South Carolina, when they come in compet.i.tion with us in the matter of elections. You do not love them any better than we do.

You used to pretend that you did; but you no longer pretend it, except to get their votes.

"You deal with the Filipinos just as you deal with the negroes, only you treat them a heap worse."

No Democrat rose to deny his statement, and, so far as I know, no Democratic paper contradicted it. The Republicans, who had elected President Harrison and a Republican House in 1888, were agreed, with very few exceptions, as to the duty of providing a remedy for this great wrong. Their Presidential Convention, held at Chicago in 1888, pa.s.sed a resolution demanding, "effective legislation to secure integrity and purity of elections, which are the fountains of all public authority," and charged that the "present Administration and the Democratic majority in Congress owe their existence to the suppression of the ballot by a criminal nullification of the Const.i.tution and the laws of the United States."

In the Senate at the winter session of 1888 and at the beginning of the December session of 1889, a good many Bills were introduced for the security of National elections. Similar Bills were introduced in the House. A special Committee was appointed there to deal with that subject. I had, myself, no doubt of the Const.i.tutional authority of Congress, and of its duty, if it were able, to pa.s.s an effective law for that purpose.

I was the Chairman of the Committee on Privileges and Elections, and it was my duty to give special attention to that subject.

I had carefully prepared a Bill in the vacation, based on one introduced by Mr. Sherman, providing for holding, under National authority, separate registrations and elections for Members of Congress. But when I got to Washington, I found, on consultation with every Republican Senator except one, that a large majority were averse to an arrangement which would double the cost of elections throughout the country, and which, in States where personal registration every year is required, would demand from every citizen his presence at the place of polling or registration four times every alternate year. That is, in the years when there were Congressmen to be elected he must go twice to be registered--once for the State election, and once for the Congressional--and twice to vote. So I drew another Bill. I say I drew it. But I had the great advantage of consultation with Senator Spooner of Wisconsin, a very able lawyer who had lately come to the Senate, and I can hardly say that the Bill, as it was finally drafted, was more mine or his. This Bill provided, in substance, that there should be National officers of both parties who should be present at the registration and election of Members of Congress, and at the count of the vote, and who should know and report everything which should happen, so that all facts affecting the honesty of the election and the return might be before the House of Representatives. To this were added some section providing for the punishment of bribery, fraud and misconduct of election officers.

In the meantime the House of Representatives had appointed a special Committee charged with a similar duty. Members of that Committee saw me, and insisted, with a good deal of reason, that a measure which concerned the election of members of the House of Representatives, should originate in that body. Accordingly the Senate Committee held back its Bill, and awaited the action of the House, which sent a Bill to the Senate, July 15, 1890. The House Bill dealt not only with the matter of elections, but also with the selection of juries, and some other important kindred subjects. Our Committee struck out from it everything that did not bear directly on elections; mitigated the severity of the penalties, and reduced the bulk of the Bill very considerably. The measure was reported in a new draft by way of subst.i.tute. It remained before the Senate until the beginning of the next Session, when it was taken up for action. It was a very simple measure.

It only extended the law which, with the approbation of both parties, had been in force in cities of more than twenty thousand inhabitants, to Congressional districts, when there should be an application to the Court, setting forth the necessity for its protection. That law had received the commendation of many leading Democrats, including S. S. c.o.x, Secretary Whitney, the four Democratic Congressmen who represented Brooklyn, and General Sloc.u.m, then Representative at large from the State of New York. It had been put in force on the application of Democrats quite as often as on that of Republicans.

We added to our Bill a provision that in case of a dispute concerning an election certificate, the Circuit Court of the United States in which the district was situated should hear the case and should award a certificate ent.i.tling the member to be placed on the Clerk's roll, and to hold his seat until the House itself should act on the case. That provision was copied from the English law of 1868 which has given absolute public satisfaction there. This was the famous Force Bill, and the whole of it--a provision that, if a sufficient pet.i.tion were made to the court for that purpose, officers, appointed by the court, belonging to both parties should be present and watch the election; that the Judge of the Circuit Court should determine, in case of dispute, what name should be put on the roll of the House of Representatives, in the beginning, subject to the Const.i.tutional power of the House to correct it, and that a moderate punishment for bribery, intimidation and fraud, on indictment and conviction by a jury of the vicinage, should be imposed. That was the whole of it.

But the Southern Democratic leaders, with great adroitness, proceeded to repeat the process known as "firing the Southern heart." They persuaded their people that there was an attempt to control elections by National authority. They realized that the waning power of their party at the South, many of whose business men saw that the path of prosperity for the South as well as for the North lay in the adoption of Republican policies, might be reestablished by exciting the fear of negro domination. The Northern Democrats, either very ignorantly or wilfuly, united in the outcry. Governor William E. Russell of Ma.s.sachusetts, a gentleman of large influence and popularity with both parties, telegraphed to President Cleveland a pious thanksgiving for the defeat of this "wicked Bill."