654

Review of the period

[1865-85

had just been beaten by a comparatively unknown man. In the place of these a new race of leaders had come up, in whom the passions of the Civil War did not burn as in those who had fought the fight through -a cooler tempered race, less masterful, and inclined to rely on business methods rather than on the iron hand. Among the voters, too, the veterans were now outnumbered by hundreds of thousands who did not come to manhood until after 1871, and by masses of foreign-born immigrants. This new electorate had settled into the mechanism of the old parties, but it was held together by no such ties as those that bound the older Democrats and Republicans. In the South, of course, the case was different. There the Reconstruction period had left ineffaceable traces in the permanent incorporation of the race question in society and politics; but outside the South the times were ripe for a change; and the new tendencies of the years 1879 to 1885 marked the path which the new developments were to follow.

In looking at the Reconstruction period as a whole we find a prolonged and involved struggle, dramatic at times, but seldom heroic. It lacks the moral intensity of the earlier slavery controversy, or of the war which followed, and takes its tone from a partisan and rather reckless society. We find the unrelenting use of strength without accompanying coolness of judgment, contests of more bitterness than dignity, and, above all, the marks of an attempt to reverse the order of nature. The years 1865-85 display in the United States a parallel to the simultaneous efforts of liberal reform in Europe. In each continent the solution of problems of national sovereignty, first attempted by the sword, was continued by masterful legislation, the result of the mingled influence of the fading doctrinaire liberalism and of a new materialistic political thought. On both continents the attempt to subvert the rooted habits and beliefs of generations failed; in Europe when in the Culturkampf the Catholic Church emerged victorious; in America when the effort to place the negro on an equality with his former master broke down. With these defeats the last victory of abstract liberalism crumbled; and the way was cleared for new questions of national growth and international politics, and for new political creeds.

CHAPTER XXI

THE UNITED STATES AS A WORLD-POWER

(1885-1902)

ALTHOUGH the inauguration on March 4, 1885, of Grover Cleveland, the nominee of the Democratic party, as President, marked the end of twenty-four years of continuous Republican administration, the transition was not attended by symptoms of radical change. An eminent orator, who afterwards declined to support Blaine for the presidency, had, in a speech at the Republican National Convention of 1884, described the Democratic party as "very hungry and very thirsty." The implication that the Federal offices were then held almost exclusively by Republicans was quite true. It had been the practice of the great political parties, when in power, to fill vacancies in office with their own adherents, there being no marked difference of opinion except as to the extent to which vacancies should be created by removals on political grounds. But the Act of January 16, 1883, "to regulate and improve the civil service of the United States," laid the foundation of a system designed to place the bulk of Federal posts beyond the reach of political contests; and with this system the new President was known to be entirely in accord. His declaration that "public office is a public trust" was one of the watchwords of the campaign; and his practical application of the principle, first as mayor of Buffalo, and then as governor of the State of New York, had helped to win for him as a national candidate the support of many leading men who were devoted to the cause of Civil Service Reform. While, therefore, the political transition was necessarily accompanied by many changes in office, it was distinguished by an obvious effort to observe the provisions of the law in spirit as well as in letter.

Nor was there any sudden and violent rupture in matters of policy. In his first annual message to Congress (December 8, 1885), President Cleveland stated that there were "no questions of difficulty pending with any foreign government." In his review of foreign affairs, the

656

The Nicaraguan Canal.

The Tariff

[1885 largest place was given to the question of an interoceanic canal. Under the previous Administration a treaty had been concluded with Nicaragua for the construction by the United States and at its sole cost of a canal through Nicaraguan territory, to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This treaty had been submitted to the Senate; but no definitive action upon it had been taken. In some quarters the objection was made that it committed the United States to a scheme of joint action and political alliance with Nicaragua, while in others the stipulations of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty were urged as an obstacle to ratification. President Cleveland, soon after his inauguration, withdrew the treaty from the Senate; and in his annual message to Congress he declared his intention not to submit it again. Adhering, as he said, "to the tenets of a line of precedents from Washington's day, which proscribe entangling alliances with foreign States," he was "unable to recommend propositions involving paramount privileges of ownership or right outside of our own territory, when coupled with absolute and unlimited engagements to defend the territorial integrity of the State where such interests lie." He moreover affirmed that any highway that might be constructed across the isthmus "must be for the world's benefit, a trust for mankind, to be removed from the chance of domination by any single Power, nor become a point of invitation for hostilities or a prize for warlike ambition"; and he quoted with approval the words of Cass, while Secretary of State in 1858, that "What the United States want in Central America, next to the happiness of its people, is the security and neutrality of the interoceanic routes which lead through it."

With regard to the question of the tariff, which was so soon to overshadow all other issues, the President said little. The fact that the revenue for the preceding fiscal year had exceeded the expenditure led him to recommend a reduction of taxes: but he added that "justice and fairness" dictated that, in any modification of existing laws, "the industries and interests which have been encouraged by such laws, and in which our citizens have large investments, should not be ruthlessly injured or destroyed"; that the subject should be dealt with "in such manner as to protect the interests of American labour," whose remuneration furnished "the most justifiable pretext for a protective policy"; and that, "within these limitations, a certain reduction should be made in our customs revenue," particularly in respect of taxes "upon the imported necessaries of life." In these phrases, the advocates of a protective tariff scented no special danger.

But there was another subject which President Cleveland, besides devoting to it the largest place in his message, discussed with a directness and precision that none could mistake. This was the subject of currency reform, a cause with which, by reason of the high and inflexible resolution with which he maintained and advanced it, against opposition

in both parties and at the sacrifice of personal popularity, his fame will be peculiarly identified. In presenting it to Congress, he stated that under the law of February, 1878, by which the government was required to purchase and coin silver bullion at the rate of more than $2,000,000 a month, more than 215,000,000 silver dollars, which were each worth only eighty cents as compared with gold, had been coined, while only 50,000,000 had actually found their way into circulation, leaving more than 165,000,000 in the possession of the government, against which there were outstanding $93,000,000 in silver certificates. As the silver thus coined was made legal tender for all debts and dues, a large proportion of what was issued found its way back into the Treasury. The hoarding of gold had, so the President declared, already begun; and the country had been saved from disaster only by careful management and unusual expedients, by a combination of fortunate conditions, and by a confident expectation that the course of the government would be speedily changed. "Prosperity," said the President, "hesitates upon our threshold because of the dangers and uncertainties surrounding this question. ... No interest appeals to us so strongly for a safe and stable currency as the vast army of the unemployed. I recommend the suspension of the compulsory coinage of silver dollars, directed by the law passed in February, 1878." This recommendation was not adopted.

The lack of "questions of difficulty" with foreign governments was supplied early in 1886 by the revival of the controversy with Great Britain touching the fisheries adjacent to the eastern coasts of British North America. Under the treaty of peace of 1783, not only were American fishermen acknowledged to have the right to take fish on the banks of Newfoundland, in the Gulf of St Lawrence, and at all other places in the sea, but they also enjoyed the liberty of taking fish on the coasts of British America generally, and of drying and curing fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbours, and creeks of Nova Scotia, Magdalen Islands, and Labrador. After the war of 1812 the British government held that the liberty of inshore fishing had been terminated by the rupture, while the United States maintained that the treaty was permanent in its nature and was not affected by the war. This difference was adjusted by the compromise embodied in the convention of October 20, 1818, by which the United States renounced, except as to parts of the coasts of Newfoundland, the Magdalen Islands, and Labrador, the liberty to take fish inshore, and, except as to parts of Newfoundland and the coast of Labrador, the liberty to dry and cure fish. With these exceptions the United States renounced any liberty previously enjoyed "to take, dry, or cure fish on or within three marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks, or harbours" of the British dominions in America; with the proviso, however, that American fishermen should be admitted "to enter such bays or harbours for the purpose of shelter and of repairing damages therein, of purchasing wood,

C. M. H. VII.

42

658

History of the Fisheries question

[1818-85

and of obtaining water, and for no other purpose whatever," subject to such restrictions as might be "necessary to prevent their taking, drying, or curing fish therein, or in any other manner whatever abusing the privileges hereby reserved to them."

In the years that followed the conclusion of this convention various questions arose as to its proper interpretation. What were the "bays intended by the convention? Did they include only bodies of water not more than six marine miles wide at the mouth, or all bodies of water bearing the name of bays, such even as the Bay of Fundy or the Bay of Chaleurs? Were the three marine miles to be measured from a line following the sinuosities of the coast, or from a line drawn from headland to headland, even where there might be no body of water bearing the name of a bay? Did the stipulations of the convention prohibit American fishing vessels from trafficking or obtaining supplies in the British colonial ports, even when they had entered for one of the four specified purposes? Might the colonial authorities prohibit such vessels from navigating the Strait of Canso, which was at least a way of convenience if not of necessity between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of St Lawrence? All these questions, and particularly the first three, were discussed with more or less acrimony, especially after 1836, when the authorities of Nova Scotia adopted measures for the more stringent enforcement of the convention. They were temporarily put to rest by the reciprocity treaty of 1854, under which mutual privileges as to inshore fishing in the waters of both countries were coupled with certain privileges in trade and navigation. They were revived by the termination of that treaty in 1866, but were again suspended by the fishery clauses of the Treaty of Washington of May 8, 1871, under which the United States, in return for the privilege of inshore fishing, gave to the products of the Canadian fisheries a free market, and agreed to submit to arbitration the question whether further compensation should be paid. The award made at Halifax in 1877 of $5,500,000, or nearly half a million dollars for each of the twelve years during which the treaty was certainly to continue in force, produced in the United States a feeling of dissatisfaction, not only because the rate of compensation thus sanctioned was believed to be excessive, but also because the choice of the third arbitrator, by whose vote the award was determined, was attended with unusual incidents.

These circumstances combined to ensure the denunciation of the fishery articles at the earliest possible moment; and in due time, on notice given by the United States, July 1, 1885, was fixed as the date of their termination. In the preceding spring, however, it was agreed, as the result of overtures made by the British Legation, that American fishermen should continue to enjoy their treaty privileges during the pending season, in consideration of the President undertaking to recommend to Congress at its next session the creation of a joint