Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs, Accompanying the Annual Message of the President to the Third Session of the Fortieth Congress

Mr. Johnson to Mr. Seward

No. 119.]

Legation of the United States, London, February 20, 1869.

Sir: I find, by an editorial in the Times of yesterday, that there are objections to the claims convention, which are not noticed in my dispatch No. 112, of the 17th instant. To these I propose now briefly to address myself.

1. It is said that the time of the exchange of the ratifications allowed by the convention is too long. The purpose of that provision was not to delay such ratifications, but to insure their being made. Circumstances might possibly occur which would necessarily prevent such an exchange if a short period was only provided. And to guard against such a result, the period for the exchange is made longer than in fact would be found necessary. The time stipulated in the present convention, of twelve months for the purpose, is the same as that which was allowed in the claims convention between this country and our own of the 8th February, 1853.

2. The time allowed for rendering the awards and their payment. When it is remembered what the character of the most of these claims is, the novelty of the questions which for the most part they involve, and the probability that these will be submitted to the arbitration of “some sovereign or head of a friendly state,” who will be at a great distance from Washington, the place of meeting of the commissioners, and that if he decides the question of liability the claims are to be returned to the commissioners to ascertain the amount due upon each, I do not see how it can be maintained that the two years is a longer time than is necessary and should be allowed for the completion of the whole work. This provision does not require the commissioners or the arbitrator to delay their or his decision for two years. They may, and no doubt will, discharge their duties within a much shorter period.

It is designed to guard against a failure of the adjustment consequent upon a shorter period, and to render unnecessary what has been found necessary in all previous cases, to prolong the time by an additional convention, which either government might refuse to enter into, and that would defeat the claims not acted upon.

3. The time allowed for the payment of the awards. This, it is objected, is too protracted. The time stipulated for this purpose in the convention of February, 1853, was twelve months from the date of each award. The time in the present convention is eighteen months from the date of each decision. This government would have been willing to fix the period at twelve months, but, looking to the condition of our treasury, and acting under instructions from the department, I thought it advisable to put it at eighteen months. But either government will have a right to pay at an earlier time if the claimants shall wish it.

4. That the claims of British subjects on the United States are submitted. This objection seems to me to be not only unreasonable, but grossly unjust. It goes upon the ground, as I understand, that this government have been knowingly false to their duty, and have been governed by disreputable influence as concerns the causes which have given rise to the claims of our citizens. To suppose that a government alive to its own honor, as this government have ever been, would consent to negotiate upon the hypothesis that they had forfeited it, is as absurd as it would be insulting. How would our government answer the same objection if urged by Great Britain against our right to have submitted the claims of our citizens under such a convention? They would consider it a degrading imputation, to be met at all hazards with a stern rebuke.

But independent of these considerations, the object being to settle at the earliest period all the causes of difference between the two nations, (a settlement called for by the obvious interests of both,) it would seem to be manifest that they should all, as far as claims are concerned, be included within the convention. In no other way could the object be accomplished.

I remain, with high regard, your obedient servant,

REVERDY JOHNSON.

Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.

[Untitled]

[From the London Times, February 19, 1869.—Editorial.]

The news we publish elsewhere this morning will show that the caution observed with reference to the Alabama claims in her Majesty’s speech was not excessive. We were not led to expect an immediate settlement of the question, but only encouraged to hope that a durable friendship between Great Britain and America might be the result of the negotiations carried on by three successive governments. The cordial reception of this sentiment in both houses of Parliament fairly represents the feeling prevalent throughout this country, but we hear with less surprise than regret that the committee of foreign relations of the United States Senate yesterday rejected the convention almost unanimously. In spite of Mr. Reverdy Johnson’s repeated assurances, we have never allowed ourselves to count too confidently on the assent of the Senate to any treaty signed by President Johnson on the eve of his retirement. That body is intrusted by the Constitution with no merely nominal responsibility in such cases. The President can only make treaties “by and with the advice of the Senate,” and it is further required that at least two-thirds of the senators present should concur. After all that had passed, the republican majority might well grudge Mr. Johnson the honor of any diplomatic triumph which could be reserved for his successor. It appears, however, that a strong party in the United States opposed the ratification on independent grounds. While some writers and politicians exulted over the concessions extorted from Great Britain, others complain that Mr. Seward had sacrificed the interests of his own country. A petition embodying this view was presented by Mr. Sumner to the Senate in open session on January 30. It was signed by Mr. George B. Upton, a large ship-owner of Boston, and alleged two chief reasons why the convention should not be confirmed. The first of these objections is founded on the excessive time allowed for making the award and carrying it into effect. It was provided by the 7th article that ratifications should be exchanged within 12 months from the 14th of January, 1869, being the date of the convention. By the 3d article it was agreed that every claim should be presented within six months (or nine months at latest) of the first meeting of the commissioners, which was to be held “at the earliest possible period” after their appointment. A final decision was to be given on every claim within two years from the first meeting, but a further period of 18 months was fixed by the 4th article for the payment of any sums of money found to be due. We are disposed to agree with Mr. Upton that under these provisions redress would have been too long delayed. Two years may not be too much for the consideration of claims and counterclaims dating back to 1853, but if the convention were to be ratified at all, it ought surely to have been ratified within much less than a year, and if damages were to be paid, they might be paid within much less than a year and a half.

Mr. Upton’s second objection, however, was of a very different nature, and one much more likely to have influenced the committee of the Senate. He protests against British claims upon the United States being placed on the same footing as American claims upon Great Britain. He assumes that whatever injury may have been inflicted on our ship-owners by the negligence of his own government, was inflicted without malice and in good faith. He not only assumes, but afterwards explicitly states, that whatever injury may have resulted to American commerce from the depredations of the Alabama and her consorts was inflicted by the British government willfully and in bad faith. These depredations he describes as “piracies committed by British-built, British-manned, and British-armed vessels, by vessels and armaments which left British ports under the protection of the British flag, and burnt American ships, and your memorialist’s among the number, upon the high seas, without taking them into port for condemnation, and without any action being taken upon the part of the said British government, when these atrocities were laid before it, to prevent the same; but, on the contrary, these pirates were everywhere received with rejoicing when visiting British ports, and when the notorious builder of one of them boasted of the same in the British Parliament, of which he was a member, he was received with cheers and expressions of satisfaction.” We have quoted this passage at length, both because we believe it to state the grounds upon which the committee of the Senate has acted in rejecting the convention, and because it well illustrates the confusion, as we regard it, which obscures the ultra-American view of this controversy. To assert that no action was taken by the British government to prevent the equipment of cruisers like the Alabama, in the face of such notorious facts as the seizure of the rams, is sufficiently audacious. But we do not speak of this; we speak of the misconception involved in connecting, for purposes of international arbitration, supposed breaches of neutrality by a government with the supposed manifestation of an unfriendly animus by its subjects. Far be it from us to excuse the unseemly applause which greeted Mr. Laird from the conservative benches on the occasion in question, or the sympathy with Captain Semmes’s enterprise which may or may not have been shown at Nassau, or any other colonial port. It is natural that such ebullitions should at the time have aggravated the sense of injury received at the hands of our government in the American mind; but it is unreasonable to make them a part of the case against this country, or to insist on their being mixed up with pecuniary demands. Long before the civil war broke out, abuse of Great Britain was a favorite theme with the American press, and would generally bring down a storm of cheers at a popular meeting. Yet who ever thought of importing such an element as this into the negotiations about Oregon or the Maine boundary, and who would think of importing it into the settlement, contemplated by this very treaty, of British claims arising out of the Russian war? The more the subject is considered, the more absurd and impossible will it appear to found a substantive charge upon the confederate “proclivities” avowed by individual British subjects.

The real defect in the convention was one to which Mr. Upton does not seem to have called attention. It consisted, as we have before indicated, in the want of a definite basis for arbitration. There is no use in disguising this defect, since it would have become patent at the very first sitting of the commission. The liability of Great Britain must essentially have been made to depend upon the old question whether or not there was such a war in America as to justify us in recognizing the southern confederacy as a belligerent power. It is tolerably clear, indeed, that as no specific claim had ever been preferred, so none would have been preferred, against us on this score. But, on the other hand, the whole official correspondence between the two governments would have been made evidence in the suit, and this correspondence embodies many protests against “premature” recognition as a primary cause of the gigantic proportions assumed by the insurrection. Now, if this argument had been pushed to extremes, it would obviously have shaken the whole ground of arbitration. If no war existed when the Alabama escaped, or if it had been called into existence by our malfeasance, the particular wrong involved in the failure of our government to arrest the Alabama would be merged in a prior and still more flagrant breach of neutrality. If a war did exist, then, and then only, the commissioners could have proceeded to deal on intelligible principles with the special claims that might have been presented to them. This obvious defect goes far to reconcile us to the rejection of the convention, and, in the event of another being proposed, this point ought certainly to be cleared up. For the present, however, we have nothing to do but to await the proposals of the United States government. We have done our best; we have gone to the very verge—if we have not transgressed it—of national humiliation; the minister of the United States has wearied every audience by the emphatic testimony he has borne to our anxious desire to conciliate the country he represents; Mr. Seward has twice expressed his apprval of the convention the Senate has rejected, and, in the consciousness of having made every reasonable concession, we must now wait to see what mode President Grant will propose for the settlement of claims which have been admitted to form a fair subject for friendly arbitration.