Twenty Years of Congress Volume Ii Part 30

--Feb. 9, 1864. Mr. Haliburton said: "The Canadians feel that the Americans are a lawless people, who are bound by no ties, who disregard International Law, who resort to violence and force."

--March 4, 1864. Lord Robert Montagu tauntingly remarked that it seemed to him "that it is the Federals who are bound to stop the depredations of the _Alabama_. Why have they not a ship quick enough to catch her and strong enough to destroy her?"

--March 14, 1864. Sir James Fergusson declared that "wholesale peculations and robbery have been perpetrated under the form of war by the Generals of the Federal States, and worse horrors than, I believe, have ever in the present century disgraced European armies, have been perpetrated under the eyes of the Federal Government and yet remain unpunished. These things are notorious as the proceedings of a Government which seems anxious to rival one despotic and irresponsible power of Europe in its contempt for the public opinion of mankind."

--March 18, 1864. The Earl of Donoughmore, referring to a statement in regard to the enlistments made by Captain Winslow of the United States ship _Kearsarge_, said that "either he stated what was a transparent falsehood or else he was not fit for his post." He then added: "The fact, however, is that any transparent falsehood seems to be a sufficient excuse for a particular line of conduct when it comes from the Federal Government."

--May 19, 1864. Mr. Alderman Rose declared "the whole system of Government in the Northern States is false, rotten, and corrupt; while the South is making for herself a great name and a glorious history."

--June 9, 1864. Lord Brougham said that he believed there was "but one universal feeling not only in this country, but all over Europe, of reprobation of the continuance of this war, of deep lamentation for its existence, and of an anxious desire that it should at length be made to cease." He lived in hopes "that before long an occasion might arise when in conjunction with our ally on the other side of the channel we shall interfere with effect, and when an endeavor to accommodate matters and restore peace between the two great contending parties will be attended with success."

--Lord John Russell agreed with Lord Brougham that "it is a most horrible war in America. There seems to be such hatred and animosity between great hosts of men, who were lately united under one government, that no consideration seems powerful enough to induce them to put an end to their fratricidal strife; and it is difficult to deal with them on those ordinary principles which have hitherto governed the conduct of civilized mankind."]

[(2) The subscribers to the Confederate loan in England were very numerous. The following were among the most conspicuous, as given in an official list.

Right Hon. Lord Wharncliffe; Marquis of Bath; Marquis of Lothian; Admiral, Right Hon. Lord Fitzardinge; Right Hon. Lord Claud Hamilton, M. P.; Right Hon. Viscount Lefford; Right Hon. Lord Teynham; Viscount Goimanson; Lord Robert Cecil, M. P.; Lord Henry F. Thynne, M. P.; Sir John W. H. Anson; Sir Gerald George Aylmer; Sir George H. Beaumont; Sir Samuel Bignold; Sir W. H. Capell Brook; Sir C. W. C. de Crispigny; Sir T. B. Dancer; Sir Arthur H. Elton; Sir W. H. Fielden; Sir W.

Fitzherbert; Rev. Sir C. H. Foster; General Sir J. W. Guise; Sir Robert Harty; Sir William Hartopp; Sir Henry A. h.o.a.re; Sir Henry de Hoghton; Vice-Admiral Hon. Sir Henry Keppel; Sir Edward Kerrison, M. P.; Sir John d.i.c.k Lander, M. P.; Sir E. A. H. Lechmere; Sir Coleman M. O.

Loghlin, M. P.; Rev. C. R. Lighton, Bart.; Lieut.-Col. Sir Coutts Lindsay; Captain Sir G. N. Brooke Middelton; Sir Edmund Prideaux; Sir George Ramsey; Sir John S. Richardson; Sir George S. Robinson; Sir John S. Robinson; Sir J. A. Stewart; Sir W. D. Stewart; Sir John Tysser Tyrrell; Sir C. F. Lascelles Wraxall; Hon A. Duncombe, M. P.; Colonel, Right Hon. G. C. W. Forester, M. P.; Right Hon. J. Whiteside, M. P.; Hon. Percy S. Windham, M. P.; Lieut.-Col. T. Peers Williams, M. P.; Hon. W. Ashley; Major Hon. W. E. Cochrane; Hon. M. Portman; Hon S. P.

Vereker; Richard Breminge, M. P.; W. H. Gregory, M. P.; Judge Halliburton, M. P.; John Hardy, M. P.; Beresford A. J. B. Hope, M. P.; J. T. Hopewood, M. P.; W. S. Lindsay, M. P.; Matthew Henry Marsh, M.

P.; Francis Macdonough, M. P.; J. A. Roebuck, M. P.; William Scholefield, M. P.; William Vansittart, M. P.; Arthur Edwin Way, M. P.]

[(3) Three eminent British authorities may be quoted as to the mode in which England had governed Ireland.

--Mr. Lecky, in his history of England in the eighteenth century, in reviewing the condition of Ireland, says, in 1878: "It would be difficult in the whole compa.s.s of history to find another instance in which such various and such powerful agencies concurred to degrade the character and to blast the prosperity of a nation. That the greater part of them sprang directly from the corrupt and selfish Government of England is incontestable. No country ever exercised a more complete control over the destinies of another than did England over those of Ireland for three-quarters of a century after the Revolution. No serious resistance of any kind was ever attempted.

The nation was as pa.s.sive as clay in the hands of the potter, and it is a circ.u.mstance of peculiar aggravation that a large part of the legislation I have recounted was a distinct violation of a solemn treaty. The commercial legislation which ruined Irish industry, the confiscation of Irish land, which disorganized the whole social condition of the country, the scandalous misapplication of patronage, which at once demoralized and impoverished the nation, were all directly due to the English Government and the English Parliament."

--Mr. Macaulay, in a speech in the House of Commons on the state of Ireland, in Feb., 1844, said: "My first proposition, sir, will scarcely be disputed. Both sides of the House are fully agreed in thinking that the condition of Ireland may well excite great anxiety and apprehension. That island, in extent about one-fourth of the United Kingdom, in population more than one-fourth, superior probably in natural fertility to any area of equal size in Europe, possessed of natural facilities for trade such as can nowhere else be found in an equal extent of coast, an inexhaustible nursery of gallant soldiers, a country far more important to the prosperity, the strength, the dignity of this great empire than all our distant dependencies together, than the Canadas and the West Indies added to Southern Africa, to Australasia, to Ceylon, and to the vast dominions of the Moguls,--that island, sir, is acknowledged by all to be so ill affected and so turbulent that it must, in any estimate of your power, be not added, but deducted. You admit that you govern that island, not as you govern England and Scotland, but as you govern your new conquests in Scinde; not by means of the respect which the people feel for the laws, but by means of bayonets, of artillery, or entrenched camps."

--Edmund Burke, writing to Sir Hercules Langrishe, in 1792, said: "The original scheme was never deviated from for a single hour. Unheard-of confiscations were made in the Northern parts, upon grounds of plots and conspiracies never proved upon their supposed authors. The war of chicane succeeded to the war of arms and of hostile statutes; and a regular series of operations were carried on, particularly from Chichester's time, in the ordinary courts of justice and by special commissions and inquisitions: First under pretense of tenures, and then of t.i.tles in the Crown, for the purpose of the total extirpation of the interests of the natives in their own soil, until the species of subtle ravage kindled the flames of that rebellion which broke out in 1641. By the issue of that war, by the turn which the Earl of Clarendon gave to things at the Restoration, and by the total reduction of the kingdom of Ireland in 1691, the ruin of the native Irish, and in a great measure too of the first races of the English, was completely accomplished."]

[(4) The following is the language of President Grant in his message:--

"Toward the close of the last Administration a convention was signed at London for the settlement of all outstanding claims between Great Britain and the United States, which failed to receive the advice and consent of the Senate to its ratification. The time and the circ.u.mstances attending the negotiation of that treaty were unfavorable to its acceptance by the people of the United States, and its provisions were wholly inadequate for the settlement of the grave wrongs that had been sustained by this Government as well as by its citizens.

"The injuries resulting to the United States by reason of the course adopted by Great Britain during our late civil war in the increased rates of insurance; in the diminution of exports and imports, and other obstruction to domestic industry and production; in its effect upon the foreign commerce of the country; in the decrease and transfer to Great Britain of our commercial marine; in the prolongation of the war and the increased cost, both in treasure and in lives, of its suppression, could not be adjusted and satisfied as ordinary commercial claims, which continually arise between commercial nations. And yet the convention treated them simply as such ordinary claims, from which they differ more widely in the gravity of their character than in the magnitude of their amount, great even as is that difference. Not a word was found in the treaty, and not an inference could be drawn from it, to remove the sense of the unfriendliness of the course of Great Britain in our struggle for existence, which has so deeply and universally impressed itself upon the people of this country.

"Believing that a convention thus misconceived in its scope and inadequate in its provisions would not have produced the hearty, cordial settlement of pending questions, which alone is consistent with the relations which I desire to have firmly established between the United States and Great Britain, I regarded the action of the Senate in rejecting the treaty to have been wisely taken in the interest of peace, and as a necessary step in the direction of a perfect and cordial friendship between the two countries. A sensitive people conscious of their power are more at ease under a great wrong wholly unatoned than under the restraint of a settlement which satisfies neither their ideas of justice nor their grave sense of the grievance they have sustained."]

[(5) The Commissioners on behalf of Great Britain were the Earl de Grey and Ripon, President of the Queen's Counsel; Sir Stafford Northcote, late Chancellor of the Exchequer; Sir Edward Thornton, British Minister at Washington; Sir John Macdonald, Premier of the Dominion of Canada; and Montague Bernard, Professor of International Law in the university of Oxford. On the part of the United States the Commissioners were Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State; Robert C. Schenck, who had just been appointed Minister to Great Britain; Samuel Nelson, Justice of the Supreme Court; E. Rockwood h.o.a.r, late Attorney-General; and George H.

Williams, late senator of the United States from Oregon.--The Secretaries were Lord Tenterden, under secretary of the British Foreign Office, and J. C. Bancroft Davis, a.s.sistant Secretary of State of the United States.]

[(6) The following are the three rules agreed upon:--

"A neutral Government is bound--

"First, to use due diligence to prevent the fitting out, arming, or equipping, within its jurisdiction, of any vessel which it has reasonable ground to believe is intended to cruise or to carry on war against a power with which it is at peace; and also to use like diligence to prevent the departure from its jurisdiction of any vessel intended to cruise or carry on war as above, such vessel having been specially adapted, in whole or in part, within such jurisdiction, to warlike use.

"Secondly, not to permit or suffer either belligerent to make use of its ports of waters as the base of naval operations against the other, or for the purpose of the renewal or augmentation of military supplies or arms, or the recruitment of men.

"Thirdly, to exercise due diligence in its own ports and waters, and, as to all persons within its jurisdiction, to prevent any violation of the foregoing obligations and duties."]

[(7) The Commission that made these labored and accurate awards was composed as follows:--

Right Hon. Russell Gurney, M. P., was the English Commissioner; Hon.

James S. Fraser of Indiana was Commissioner for the United States; Count Louis Corti (Minister from Italy to the United States) was selected as third Commissioner. Hon. Robert S. Hale, a learned member of the bar of New York, and distinguished as a representative in Congress, was appointed agent of the United States; and Mr. Henry Howard, one of the British secretaries of Legation at Washington, and most favorably known to the people of the Capital, was agent of Her Majesty's Government.]

[(8) The arbitrators who met at Geneva were as follows:--

Great Britain appointed Sir Alexander c.o.c.kburn; the United States appointed Mr. Charles Francis Adams; the King of Italy named Count Frederick Sclopia; the President of the Swiss Confederation named Mr. Jacob Staempfli; the Emperor of Brazil named the Baron d'Itajuba.

Mr. J. C. Bancroft Davis was appointed Agent of the United States; and Lord Tenterden was the Agent of Great Britain.]

CHAPTER XXI.

The opening of the Forty-second Congress, on the 4th of March, 1871, was disfigured by an act of grave injustice committed by the Senate of the United States. Charles Sumner was deposed from the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Relations,--a position he had held continuously since the Republican party gained control of the Senate.

The cause of his displacement may be found in the angry contentions to which the scheme of annexing San Domingo gave rise. Mr. Sumner's opposition to that project was intense, and his words carried with them what was construed as a personal affront to the President of the United States,--though never so intended by the Ma.s.sachusetts senator. When the committees were announced from the Republican caucus on the 10th of March, 1871, by Mr. Howe of Wisconsin, Mr. Cameron of Pennsylvania appeared as chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations and Mr.

Sumner was a.s.signed to the chairmanship of a new committee,--Privileges and Elections,--created for the exigency.(1)

The removal of Mr. Sumner from his place had been determined in a caucus of Republican senators, and never was the power of the caucus more wrongfully applied. Many senators were compelled, from their sense of obedience to the decision of the majority, to commit an act against their conceptions of right, against what they believed to be justice to a political a.s.sociate, against what they believed to be sound public policy, against what they believed to be the interest of the Republican party. The caucus is a convention in party organization to determine the course to be pursued in matters of expediency which do not involve questions of moral obligation or personal justice.

Rightfully employed, the caucus in not only useful but necessary in the conduct and government of party interests. Wrongfully applied, it is a weakness, an offense, a stumbling-block in the way of party prosperity.

Mr. Sumner's deposition from the place he had so long honored was not accomplished, however, without protest and contest. Mr. Schurz made an inquiry of Mr. Howe as to the grounds upon which the senator was to be deposed; and the answer was that "the personal relations between the senator from Ma.s.sachusetts and the President of the United States and the head of the State Department are such as preclude all social intercourse between them." "In brief," said Mr. Howe, "I may say that the information communicated to us was that the senator from Ma.s.sachusetts refused to hold personal intercourse with the Secretary of State."

--Mr. Schurz, sitting near Mr. Sumner, immediately answered for that senator that "he had not refused to enter into any official relations, either with the President of the United States or with the Secretary of State; and that upon inquiry being made of him, Mr. Sumner had answered that he would receive Mr. Fish as an old friend, and would not only be willing but would be glad to transact such matters and to discuss such questions as might come up for consideration." And Mr.

Sumner added: "_In his own house_."

--Mr. Wilson, the colleague of Mr. Sumner, spoke with great earnestness against the wrong contemplated by the act: "Sir," said he, "we saw Stephen A. Douglas, on this floor, at the bidding of Mr. Buchanan's administration, in obedience to the demands of the slave-holding leaders and the all-conquering slave power, put down, disrated, from his committee. We saw seeds then sown that blossomed and bore bitter fruit at Charleston in 1860. Now we propose to try a similar experiment. I hope and trust in G.o.d that we shall not witness similar results. I love justice and fair play, and I think I know enough of the American people to know that ninety-nine hundredths of the men who elected this administration in 1868 will disapprove this act." Mr.

Trumbull, Mr. Logan and Mr. Tipton were the only Republican senators who joined with Mr. Wilson in openly deprecating the decree of the party caucus.

--Mr. Edmunds, who was one of the active promoters of Mr. Sumner's deposition, declared that the question was "whether the Senate of the United States and the Republican party are quite ready to sacrifice their sense of duty to the whims of one single man, whether he comes from New England, or from Missouri, or from Illinois, or from anywhere else." He described the transaction as a business affair of changing a member from one committee to another for the convenience of the Senate, and said: "When I hear my friend from Ma.s.sachusetts [Mr.

Wilson] and the senator from Missouri [Mr. Schurz] making these displays about a mere matter of ordinary convenience, it reminds me of the nursery story of the children who thought the sky was going to fall, and it turned out in the end that it was only a rose-leaf that had fallen from a bush to the ground."

--Senator Sherman defended the right of the caucus to make the decision. "Whenever that decision is made known," said he, "every one, however high may be his position, however great his services, is bound by the common courtesies which prevail in these political bodies to yield at once. . . . I feel it my duty to make this explanation of the vote I shall give. I think I am bound by the decision made after full debate on this mere personal point, involving only the question whether the honorable senator from Ma.s.sachusetts shall occupy the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Relations or the chairmanship of the Committee on Privileges and Elections."

Other incidents connected with the removal tended to give it the air of discourtesy to Mr. Sumner. One feature of it was especially marked and painful. Mr. Sumner's acquaintance in Europe, certainly in England, was larger than that of any other member of the Senate. His speech on the _Alabama_ claims was the first utterance on the subject which had arrested the attention of England, and now, as if in rebuke of his patriotic position, the Queen's High Commissioners directly after their arrival in Washington were called to witness a public indignity to Mr. Sumner. The action of the Senate was, in effect, notice to the whole world that Mr. Sumner was to have no further connection with a great international question to which he had given more attention than any other person connected with the Government.

Mr. Sumner declined the service to which he was a.s.signed, and from that time forward to the day of his death he had no rank as chairman, no place upon a committee of the Senate, no committee-room for his use, no clerk a.s.signed to him for the needed discharge of his public duties.

When Mr. Sumner entered the Senate twenty years before, the pro-slavery leaders who then controlled it had determined at one time in their caucus to exclude him from all committee service on account of his offensive opinions in regard to slavery, but upon sober second thought they concluded that a persecution of that kind would add to Mr.

Sumner's strength rather than detract from it. He was therefore given the ordinary a.s.signment of a new member by the Southern men in control and was thence regularly advanced until he became a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, under the chairmanship of James M.

Mason, with Douglas and Slidell as fellow-members.

For his fidelity to principle and his boldness in a.s.serting the truth at an earlier day Mr. Sumner was struck down in the Senate chamber by a weapon in the hands of a political foe. It was impossible to antic.i.p.ate that fifteen years later he would be even more cruelly struck down in the Senate by the members of the party he had done so much to establish. The cruelty was greater in the latter case, as the anguish of spirit is greater than suffering of body. In both instances Mr. Sumner's bearing was distinguished by dignity and magnanimity. He gave utterance to no complaints, and silently submitted to the unjustifiable wrong of which he was a victim. That nothing might be lacking in the extraordinary character of the final scene of his deposition, the Democratic senators recorded themselves against the consummation of the injustice. They had no co-operation from the Republicans. The caucus dictation was so strong that discontented Republicans merely refrained from voting.

The personal changes in the Senate, under the new elections, were less numerous than usual. General Logan took the place of Richard Yates from Illinois, having been promoted from the House, where his service since the war had been efficient and distinguished.--Matt W. Ransom, a Confederate soldier who had held high command in General Lee's army, took the place of Joseph C. Abbott of North Carolina. Mr. Ransom had been well educated at the University of Chapel Hill, was a lawyer by profession, had been Attorney-General of his State, and had served several years in this Legislature. Severe service in the field during the four years of the war had somewhat impaired his health, but his personal bearing and the general moderation of his views rapidly won for him many friends in both political parties.

--General Frank P. Blair, jun., entered as senator from Missouri a few weeks preceding the 4th of March, filling the place made vacant by the resignation of Senator Drake, who was appointed to the Bench of the Court of Claims. General Blair's political career had been somewhat checkered and changeful. Originally a Democrat of the Van Buren type, he had helped to organize the Republican party after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He remained a Republican until the defection of Andrew Johnson, when he joined the Democrats, and became so vituperatively hostile that the Senate in 1866 successively rejected his nomination for Collector of Internal Revenue in the St.

Louis district, and for Minister to Austria. He was a good soldier, rose to the rank of Major-General, and secured the commendation of General Grant, which was far more than a _brevet_ from the War Department. His defeat for the Vice-Presidency had, if possible, increased his antagonism to the Republican party, and he now came to the Senate as much embittered against his late a.s.sociates as he had been against the Democrats ten years before. He was withal a generous-minded man of strong parts, but the career for which nature fitted him was irreparably injured by the unsteadiness of his political course.