The impulse for expansion upon which Buchanan floated his political raft into the presidency was not a party affair. It was felt by men of all party creeds, and it seemed for a moment to be the dominant national ideal. Slaveholders and other men who had special interests sought to make use of it, but the fundamental feeling did not rest on their support. American democracy, now confident of its growing strength, believed that the happiness of the people and the success of the institutions of the United States would prove a loadstone which would bring under the flag all peoples of the New World, while those of the Old World would strike off their shackles and remold their governments on the American pattern. Attraction, not compulsion, was the method to be used, and none of the paeans of American prophets in the editorials or the fervid orations of the fifties proposed an additional battleship or regiment.
No one saw this bright vision more clearly than did William H. Seward, who became Secretary of State under Lincoln. Slight of build, pleasant, and talkative, he gave an impression of intellectual distinction, based upon fertility rather than consistency of mind. He was a disciple of John Quincy Adams, but his tireless energy had in it too much of nervous unrest to allow him to stick to his books as did his master, and there was too wide a gap between his beliefs and his practice. He held as idealistic views as any man of his generation, but he believed so firmly that the right would win that he disliked hastening its victory at the expense of bad feeling. He was shrewd, practical—maliciously practical, many thought. When, in the heat of one of his perorations, a flash of his hidden fires would arouse the distrust of the conservative, he would appear to retract and try to smother the flames in a cloud of conciliatory smoke. Only the restraining hand of Lincoln prevented him from committing fatal blunders at the outset of the Civil War, yet his handling of the threatening episode of the French in Mexico showed a wisdom, a patient tact, and a subtle ingenuity which make his conduct of the affair a classic illustration of diplomacy at almost its best. *
In 1861 Seward said that he saw Russia and Great Britain building on the Arctic Ocean outposts on territory which should belong to his own country, and that he expected the capital of the great federal republic of the future would be in the valley of Mexico. Yet he nevertheless retained the sentiment he had expressed in 1846: "I would not give one human life for all the continent that remains to be annexed." The Civil War prevented for four years any action regarding expansion, and the same conspiracy which resulted in the assassination of Lincoln brought Seward to the verge of the grave. He recovered rapidly, however, and while on a recuperating trip through the West Indies he worked for the peaceable annexation of the Danish Islands and Santo Domingo. His friend, Charles Sumner, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, was framing his remarkable project for the annexation of Canada. President Johnson and, later, President Grant endorsed parts of these plans. Denmark and Santo Domingo were willing to acquiesce for money, and Sumner believed, although he was preposterously wrong, that the incorporation of Canada in our Union would be welcomed by the best sentiment of England and of Canada.
To willing ears, therefore, came in 1867 the offer of the Russian Minister, Baron Stoeckl, to sell Alaska. The proposal did not raise a question which had been entirely unthought of. Even before the Civil War, numbers of people on the Pacific coast, far from being overawed by the responsibility of developing the immense territories which they already possessed, had petitioned the Government to obtain Alaska, and even the proper purchase price had been discussed. The reasons for Russia's decision to sell, however, have not been sufficiently investigated. It is apparent from the conduct of the negotiation that it was not a casual proposal but one in which Baron Stoeckl, at least, was deeply interested. It is to be remembered that at this time Russia's ambitions were in Asia, and that her chief rival was Great Britain. Russia's power was on land; the seas she could not hope to control. The first moment of war would put Russian rule in, Alaska at the mercy of the British fleet. In those days when a Siberian railroad was an idle dream, this icebound region in America was so remote from the center of Russian power that it could be neither enjoyed nor protected. As Napoleon in 1803 preferred to see Louisiana in the hands of the United States rather than in those of his rival England, so Russia preferred Alaska to fall to the United States rather than to Canada, especially as she could by peaceful cession obtain money into the bargain.
Seward was delighted with the opportunity, but diplomatically concealed his satisfaction and bargained closely. Stoeckl asked ten million dollars; Seward offered five. Stoeckl proposed to split the difference; Seward agreed, if Stoeckl would knock off the odd half million. Stoeckl accepted, on condition that Seward add two hundred thousand as special compensation to the Russian American Company. It was midnight of the 29th of March when $7,200,000 was made the price. Seward roused Sumner from bed, and the three worked upon the form of a treaty until four o'clock in the morning. No captains of industry could show greater decision.
The treaty, however, was not yet a fact. The Senate must approve, and its approval could not be taken for granted. The temper of the majority of Americans toward expansion had changed. The experiences of the later fifties had caused many to look upon expansion as a Southern heresy. Carl Schurz a little later argued that we had already taken in all those regions the climate of which would allow healthy self-government and that we should annex no tropics. Hamilton Fish, then Secretary of State, wrote in 1873 that popular sentiment was, for the time being, against all expansion. In fact, among the people of the United States the idea was developing that expansion was contrary to their national policy, and their indisposition to expand became almost a passion. They rejected Santo Domingo and the Danish Islands and would not press any negotiations for Canada.
What saved the Alaska Treaty from a similar disapproval was not any conviction that Alaska was worth seven million dollars, although Sumner convinced those who took the trouble to read, that the financial bargain was not a bad one. The chief factor in the purchase of Alaska was almost pure sentiment. Throughout American history there has been a powerful tradition of friendliness between Russia and the United States, yet surely no two political systems have been in the past more diametrically opposed. The chief ground for friendship has doubtless been the great intervening distance which has reduced intercourse to a minimum. Some slight basis for congeniality existed in the fact that the interests of both countries favored a similar policy of freedom upon the high seas. What chiefly influenced the public mind, however, was the attitude which Russia had taken during the Civil War. When the Grand Duke Alexis visited the United States in 1871, Oliver Wendell Holmes greeted him with the lines:
This Russian friendship had presented itself dramatically to the public at a time when American relations with Great Britain were strained, for Russian fleets had in 1863 suddenly appeared in the harbors of New York and San Francisco. These visits were actually made with a sole regard for Russian interests and in anticipation of the outbreak of a general European war, which the Czar then feared. The appearance of the fleets, however, was for many years popularly supposed to signify sympathy with the Union and a willingness to defend it from attack by Great Britain and France. Many conceived the ingenuous idea that the purchase price of Alaska was really the American half of a secret bargain of which the fleets were the Russian part. Public opinion, therefore, regarded the purchase of Alaska in the light of a favor to Russia and demanded that the favor be granted.
Thus of all the schemes of expansion in the fifty years between the Mexican and the Spanish wars, for the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 was really only a rectification of boundary, this alone came to fruition. Seward could well congratulate himself on his alertness in seizing an opportunity and on his management of the delicate political aspects of the purchase. Without his promptness the golden opportunity might have passed and never recurred. Yet he could never have saved this fragment of his policy had not the American people cherished for Russia a sentimental friendship which was intensified at the moment by anger at the supposed sympathy of Great Britain for the South.
If Russia hoped by ceding Alaska to involve the United States in difficulties with her rival Great Britain, her desire was on one occasion nearly gratified. The only profit which the United States derived from this new possession was for many years drawn from the seal fishery. The same generation of Americans which allowed the extermination of the buffalo for lap robes found in the sealskin sack the hall mark of wealth and fashion. While, however, the killing of the buffalo was allowed to go on without official check, the Government in 1870 inaugurated a system to preserve the seal herds which was perhaps the earliest step in a national conservation policy. The sole right of killing was given to the Alaska Commercial Company with restrictions under which it was believed that the herds would remain undiminished. The catch was limited to one hundred thousand a year; it was to include only male seals; and it was to be limited to the breeding grounds on the Pribilof Islands.
The seals, however, did not confine themselves to American territory. During the breeding season they ranged far and wide within a hundred miles of their islands; and during a great part of the year they were to be found far out in the Pacific. The value of their skins attracted the adventurous of many lands, but particularly Canadians; and Vancouver became the greatest center for deep-sea sealing. The Americans saw the development of the industry with anger and alarm. Considering the seals as their own, they naturally resented this unlimited exploitation by outsiders when Americans themselves were so strictly limited by law. They also believed that the steady diminution of the herds was due to the reckless methods of their rivals, particularly the use of explosives which destroyed many animals to secure a few perfect skins.
Public opinion on the Pacific coast sought a remedy and soon found one in the terms of the treaty of purchase. That document, in dividing Alaska from Siberia, described a line of division running through Bering Sea, and in 1881 the Acting Secretary of the Treasury propounded the theory that this line divided not merely the islands but the water as well. There was a widespread feeling that all Bering Sea within this line was American territory and that all intruders from other nations were poachers. In accordance with this theory, the revenue cutter Corwin in 1886 seized three British vessels and hauled their skippers before the United States District Court of Sitka. Thomas F. Bayard, then Secretary of State under President Cleveland, did not recognize this theory of interpreting the treaty, but endeavored to right the grievance by a joint agreement with France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and Great Britain, the sealing nations, "for the better protection of the fur seal fisheries in Bering Sea."
A solution had been almost reached, when Canada interposed. Lord Morley has remarked, in his "Recollections," how the voice of Canada fetters Great Britain in her negotiations with the United States. While Bayard was negotiating an agreement concerning Bering Sea which was on the whole to the advantage of the United States, he completed a similar convention on the more complicated question of the northeastern or Atlantic fisheries which was more important to Canada. This latter convention was unfavorably reported by the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, which foreshadowed rejection. Thereupon, in May, 1888, Lord Salisbury, the British Foreign Minister, withdrew from the Bering Sea negotiation.
At this critical moment Cleveland gave place to Harrison, and Bayard was succeeded by James G. Blaine, the most interesting figure in our diplomatic activities of the eighties. These years marked the lowest point in the whole history of our relations with other countries, both in the character of our agents and in the nature of the public opinion to which they appealed. Blaine was undoubtedly the most ill-informed of our great diplomats; yet a trace of greatness lingers about him. The exact reverse of John Quincy Adams, he knew neither law nor history, and he did not always inspire others with confidence in his integrity. On the other hand, the magnetic charm of his personality won many to a devotion such as none of our great men except Clay has received. Blaine saw, moreover, though through a glass darkly, farther along the path which the United States was to take than did any of his contemporaries. It was his fate to deal chiefly in controversy with those accomplished diplomats, Lord Salisbury and Lord Granville, and it must have been among the relaxations of their office to point out tactfully the defects and errors in his dispatches. Nevertheless when he did not misread history or misquote precedents but wielded the broadsword of equity, he often caught the public conscience, and then he was not an opponent to be despised.
Blaine at once undertook the defense of the contention that Bering Sea was "closed" and the exclusive property of the United States, in spite of the fact that this position was opposed to the whole trend of American opinion, which from the days of the Revolution had always stood for freedom of the high seas and the limitation of the water rights of particular nations to the narrowest limits. The United States and Great Britain had jointly protested against the Czar's ukase of 1821, which had asserted Russia's claim to Bering Sea as territorial waters; and if Russia had not possessed it in 1821, we certainly could not have bought it in 1867. In the face of Canadian opinion, Great Britain could never consent, even for the sake of peace, to a position as unsound as it was disadvantageous to Canadian industry. Nor did Blaine's contention that the seals were domestic animals belonging to us, and therefore subject to our protection while wandering through the ocean, carry conviction to lawyers familiar with the fascinating intricacies of the law, domestic and international, relating to migratory birds and beasts. To the present generation it seems amusing that Blaine defended his basic contention quite as much on the ground of the inhumanity of destroying the seals as of its economic wastefulness. Yet Blaine rallied Congress to his support, as well as a great part of American sentiment.
The situation, which had now become acute, was aggravated by the fact that most American public men of this period did not separate their foreign and domestic politics. Too many sought to secure the important Irish vote by twisting the tail of the British lion. The Republicans, in particular, sought to identify protection with patriotism and were making much of the fact that the recall of Lord Sackville-West, the British Minister, had been forced because he had advised a correspondent to vote for Cleveland. It spoke volumes for the fundamental good sense of the two nations that, when relations were so strained, they could agree to submit their differences to arbitration. For this happy outcome credit must be given to the cooler heads on both sides, but equal credit must be given to their legacy from the cool heads which had preceded them. The United States and Great Britain had acquired the habit of submitting to judicial decision their disputes, even those closely touching honor, and this habit kept them steady.
In accepting arbitration in 1892, the United States practically gave up her case, although Blaine undoubtedly believed it could be defended, and in spite of the fact that it was ably presented by John W. Foster from a brief prepared by the American counsel, Edward J. Phelps, Frederic R. Coudert, and James C. Carter. The tribunal assembled at Paris decided that Bering Sea was open and determined certain facts upon which a subsequent commission assessed damages of nearly half a million against the United States for the seizure of British vessels during the period in which the American claim was being asserted. Blaine, however, did not lose everything. The treaty contained the extraordinary provision that the arbitration tribunal, in case it decided against the United States, was to draw up regulations for the protection of the seal herds. These regulations when drafted did not prove entirely satisfactory, and bound only the United States and Great Britain. It required many years and much tinkering to bring about the reasonably satisfactory arrangement that is now in force. Yet to leave to an international tribunal not merely the decision of a disputed case but the legislation necessary to regulate an international property was in itself a great step in the development of world polity. The charlatan who almost brought on war by maintaining an indefensible case was also the statesman who made perhaps the greatest single advance in the conservation of the world's resources by international regulation.
During the half century that intervened between John Quincy Adams and James G. Blaine, the Monroe Doctrine, it was commonly believed, had prevented the expansion of the territories of European powers in the Americas. It had also relieved the United States both of the necessity of continual preparation for war and of that constant tension in which the perpetual shifting of the European balance of power held the nations of that continent. But the Monroe Doctrine was not solely responsible for these results. Had it not been for the British Navy, the United States would in vain have proclaimed its disapproval of encroachment. Nor, had Europe continued united, could the United States have withstood European influence; but Canning's policy had practically destroyed Metternich's dream of unity maintained by intervention, and in 1848 that whole structure went hopelessly tumbling before a new order. Yet British policy, too, failed of full realization, for British statesmen always dreamed of an even balance in continental Europe which Great Britain could incline to her wishes, whereas it usually proved necessary, in order to preserve a balance at all, for her to join one side or the other. Divided Europe therefore stood opposite united America, and our inferior strength was enhanced by an advantageous position.
The insecurity of the American position was revealed during the Civil War. When the United States divided within, the strength of the nation vanished. The hitherto suppressed desires of European nations at once manifested themselves. Spain, never satisfied that her American empire was really lost, at once leaped to take advantage of the change. On a trumped up invitation of some of the inhabitants of Santo Domingo, she invaded the formerly Spanish portion of the island and she began war with Peru in the hope of acquiring at least some of the Pacific islands belonging to that state.
More formidable were the plans of Napoleon III, for the French, too, remembered the glowing promise of their earlier American dominions. They had not forgotten that the inhabitants of the Americas as far north as the southern borders of the United States were of Latin blood, at least so far as they were of European origin. In Montevideo there was a French colony, and during the forties France had been active in proffering her advice in South American disputes. When the second French Republic had been proclaimed in 1848, one of the French ministers in South America saw a golden chance for his country to assume the leadership of all Latin America, which was at that time suspicious of the designs of the United States and alarmed by its rapid expansion at the expense of Mexico. With the power of the American Government neutralized in 1861, and with the British Navy immobilized by the necessity of French friendship, which the "Balance" made just then of paramount interest to Great Britain, Napoleon III determined to establish in Mexico an empire under French influence.
It is instructive to notice that General Bernhardi states, in "Germany and the Next War" which has attracted such wide attention and which has done so much to convince Americans of the bad morals of autocracy, that Great Britain lost her great chance of world dominance by not taking active advantage of this situation, as did France and Spain. It is indeed difficult to see what would have been the outcome had Great Britain also played at that time an aggressive and selfish part. She stayed her hand, but many British statesmen were keenly interested in the struggle, from the point of view of British interests. They did not desire territory, but they foresaw that the permanent separation of the two parts of the United States would leave the country shorn of weight in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. North and South, if separated, would each inevitably seek European support, and the isolation of the United States and its claim to priority in American affairs would disappear. The balance of power would extend itself to the Western Hemisphere and the assumption of a sphere of influence would vanish with the unity of the United States.
Nor did the close of the Civil War reveal less clearly than its beginning the real international position of the United States. When the country once more acquired unity, these European encroachments were renounced, and dreams of colonial empire in America vanished. There was a moment's questioning as to the reality of the triumph of the North—a doubt that the South might rise if foreign war broke out; but the uncertainty was soon dispelled. It was somewhat embarrassing, if not humiliating, for the Emperor of the French to withdraw from his Mexican undertaking, but the way was smoothed for him by the finesse of Seward. By 1866 the international position of the United States was reestablished and was perhaps the stronger for having been tested.
In all these years, however, the positive side of the Monroe Doctrine, the development of friendly cooperation between the nations of America under the leadership of the United States, had made no progress. In fact, with the virtual disappearance of the American merchant marine after the Civil War, the influence of the United States diminished. Great Britain with her ships, her trade, and her capital, at that time actually counted for much more, while German trade expanded rapidly in the seventies and eighties and German immigration into Brazil gave Prussia a lever hold, the ultimate significance of which is not even yet fully evident.
Under these circumstances, Blaine planned to play a brilliant role as Secretary of State in President Garfield's Cabinet. Though the President was his personal friend, Blaine regarded him as his inferior in practical statecraft and planned to make his own foreign policy the notable feature of the Administration. His hopes were dashed, however, by the assassination of Garfield and by the accession of President Arthur. The new Secretary of State, F T. Frelinghuysen, reversed nearly all of his predecessor's policies. When Blaine returned to the Department of State in 1889, he found a less sympathetic chief in President Harrison and a less brilliant role to play. Whether his final retirement before the close of the Harrison Administration was due directly to the conflict of views which certainly existed or was a play on his part for the presidency and for complete control is a question that has never been completely settled.
Narrow as was Blaine's view of world affairs, impossible as was his conception of an America divided from Europe economically and spiritually as well as politically and of an America united in itself by a provoked and constantly irritated hostility to Europe, he had an American program which, taken by itself, was definite, well conceived, and in a sense prophetic. It is interesting to note that in referring to much the same relationship, Blaine characteristically spoke of the United States as "Elder Sister" of the South American republics, while Theodore Roosevelt, at a later period, conceived the role to be that of a policeman wielding the "Big Stick."
Blaine's first aim was to establish peace in the Western Hemisphere by offering American mediation in the disputes of sister countries. When he first took office in 1881, the prolonged and bitter war existing between Chili, Bolivia, and Peru for the control of the nitrate fields which lay just where the territories of the three abutted, provided a convenient opportunity. If he could restore peace on an equitable basis here, he would do much to establish the prestige of the United States as a wise and disinterested counselor in Spanish American affairs. In this his first diplomatic undertaking, there appeared, however, one of the weaknesses of execution which constantly interfered with the success of his plans. He did not know how to sacrifice politics to statesmanship, and he appointed as his agents men so incompetent that they aggravated rather than settled the difficulty. Later he saw his mistake and made a new and admirable appointment in the case of Mr. William H. Trescot of South Carolina. Blaine himself, however, lost office before new results could be obtained; and Frelinghuysen recalled Trescot and abandoned the attempt to force peace.
A second object of Blaine's policy was to prevent disputes between Latin American and European powers from becoming dangerous by acting as mediator between them. When he took office, France was endeavoring to collect from Venezuela a claim which was probably just. When Venezuela proved obdurate, France proposed to seize her custom houses and to collect the duties until the debt was paid. Blaine protested, urged Venezuela to pay, and suggested that the money be sent through the American agent at Caracas. He further proposed that, should Venezuela not pay within three months, the United States should seize the custom houses, collect the money, and pay it to France. Again his short term prevented him from carrying out his policy, but it is nevertheless of interest as anticipating the plan actually followed by President Roosevelt in the case of Santo Domingo.
Blaine was just as much opposed to the peaceful penetration of European influence in the Western Hemisphere as to its forceful expression. The project of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, to be built and owned by a French company, had already aroused President Hayes on March 8, 1880, to remark: "The policy of this country is a canal under American control. The United States cannot consent to the surrender of this control to any European power or to any combination of European powers." Blaine added that the passage of hostile troops through such a canal when either the United States or Colombia was at war, as the terms of guarantee of the new canal allowed, was "no more admissible than on the railroad lines joining the Atlantic and Pacific shores of the United States."
It is characteristic of Blaine that, when he wrote this dispatch, he was apparently in complete ignorance of the existence of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, in which the United States accepted the exactly opposite principles—had agreed to a canal under a joint international guarantee and open to the use of all in time of war as well as of peace. Discovering this obstacle, he set to work to demolish it by announcing to Great Britain that the treaty was antiquated, thirty years old, that the development of the American Pacific slope had changed conditions, and that, should the treaty be observed and such a canal remain unfortified, the superiority of the British fleet would give the nation complete control. Great Britain, however, could scarcely be expected to regard a treaty as defunct from old age at thirty years, especially as she also possessed a developing Pacific coast. Moreover, if the treaty was to British advantage, at least the United States had accepted it. Great Britain, therefore, refused to admit that the treaty was not in full force. Blaine then urged the building of an American canal across the Isthmus of Nicaragua, in defiance of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty—a plan which received the support of even President Arthur, under whom a treaty for the purpose was negotiated with the Republic of Nicaragua. Before this treaty was ratified by the Senate, however, Grover Cleveland, who had just become President, withdrew it. He believed in the older policy, and refused his sanction to the new treaty on the ground that such a canal "must be for the world's benefit, a trust for mankind, to be removed from the chance of domination by any single power."
The crowning glory of Blaine's system, as he planned it, was the cooperation of the American republics for common purposes. He did not share Seward's dream that they would become incorporated States of the Union, but he went back to Henry Clay and the Panama Congress of 1826 for his ideal. During his first term of office he invited the republics to send representatives to Washington to discuss arbitration, but his successor in office feared that such a meeting of "a partial group of our friends" might offend Europe, which indeed was not improbably part of Blaine's intention. On resuming office, Blaine finally arranged the meeting of a Pan-American Congress in the United States. Chosen to preside, he presented an elaborate program, including a plan for arbitrating disputes; commercial reciprocity; the establishment of uniform weights and measures, of international copyright, trade-marks and patents, and, of common coinage; improvement of communications; and other subjects. At the same time he exerted himself to secure in the McKinley Tariff Bill, which was just then under consideration, a provision for reciprocity of trade with American countries. This meeting was not a complete success, since Congress gave him only half of what he wanted by providing for reciprocity but making it general instead of purely American. Nevertheless one permanent and solid result was secured in the establishment of the Bureau of American Republics at Washington, which has become a clearing house of ideas and a visible bond of common interests and good feeling.
Throughout the years of Blaine's prominence, the public took more interest in his bellicose encounters with Europe, and particularly with Great Britain, than in his constructive American policy; and he failed to secure for either an assured popular support. His attempt to widen the gulf between Europe and America was indeed absurd at a time when the cable, the railroad, and the steamship were rendering the world daily smaller and more closely knit, and when the spirit of democracy, rapidly permeating western Europe, was breaking down the distinction in political institutions which had given point to the pronouncement of 1823. Nevertheless Blaine did actually feel the changing industrial conditions at home which were destroying American separateness, and he made a genuine attempt to find a place for the United States in the world, without the necessity of sharing the responsibilities of all the world, by making real that interest in its immediate neighbors which his country had announced in 1823. Even while Blaine was working on his plan of "America for the Americans," events were shaping the most important extension of the interests of the United States which had taken place since 1823.
Long before the westward march of Americans had brought their flag to the Pacific, that ocean was familiar to their mariners. From Cape Horn to Canton and the ports of India, there ploughed the stately merchantmen of Salem, Providence, and Newburyport, exchanging furs and ginseng for teas, silks, the "Canton blue" which is today so cherished a link with the past, and for the lacquer cabinets and carved ivory which give distinction to many a New England home. Meanwhile the sturdy whalers of New Bedford scoured the whole ocean for sperm oil and whalebone, and the incidents of their self-reliant three-year cruises acquainted them with nearly every coral and volcanic isle. Early in the century missionaries also began to brave the languor of these oases of leisure and the appetite of their cannibalistic inhabitants.
The interest of the Government was bound to follow its adventurous citizens. In 1820 the United States appointed a consular agent at Honolulu; in the thirties and forties it entered into treaty relations with Siam, Borneo, and China; and owing to circumstances which were by no means accidental it had the honor of persuading Japan to open her ports to the world. As early as 1797 an American vessel chartered by the Dutch had visited Nagasaki. From time to time American sailors had been shipwrecked on the shores of Japan, and the United States had more than once picked up and sought to return Japanese castaways. In 1846 an official expedition under Commodore Biddle was sent to establish relationships with Japan but was unsuccessful. In 1853 Commodore Perry bore a message from the President to the Mikado which demanded—though the demand was couched in courteous language—"friendship, commerce, a supply of coal and provisions, and protection for our shipwrecked people." After a long hesitation the Mikado yielded. Commodore Perry's success was due not solely to the care with which his expedition was equipped for its purpose nor to his diplomatic skill but in part to the fact that other countries were known to be on the very point of forcing an entrance into the seclusion of Japan. Few Americans realize how close, indeed, were the relations established with Japan by the United States. The treaty which Townsend Harris negotiated in 1858 stated that "The President of the United States, at the request of the Japanese Government, will act as a friendly mediator in such matters of difference as may arise between the Government of Japan and any European power." Through his personal efforts Harris may almost be said to have become the chief adviser of the Japanese Government in the perplexities which it encountered on entering international society.
Not only did the United States allow itself a closer intimacy with this new Pacific power than it would have done with a state of Europe, but it exhibited a greater freedom in dealing with the European powers themselves in the Far East than at home or in America. In 1863 the United States joined—in fact, in the absence of a naval force it strained a point by chartering a vessel for the purpose—with a concert of powers to force the opening of the Shimonoseki Straits; subsequently acting with Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands, the United States secured an indemnity to pay the cost of the expedition; and in 1866 it united with the same powers to secure a convention by which Japan bound herself to establish certain tariff regulations.
Nor were the relations of the United States with the Pacific Ocean and its shores confined to trade and international obligations. The American flag waved over more than ships and a portion of the Pacific coast. Naval officers more than once raised it over islands which they christened, and Congress authorized the President to exercise temporary authority over islands from which American citizens were removing guano and to prevent foreign encroachment while they were so engaged. In the eighties, fifty such islands of the Pacific were in the possession of the United States.
In 1872 an American naval officer made an agreement with the local chieftain of Tutuila, one of the Samoan Islands, for the use of Pago Pago, which was the best harbor in that part of the ocean. The United States drifted into more intimate relationship with the natives until in 1878 it made a treaty with the Samoan king allowing Americans to use Pago Pago as a coaling station. In return the United States agreed: "If unhappily, any differences should have arisen, or shall hereafter arise, between the Samoan government and any other government in amity with the United States, the government of the latter will employ its good offices for the purpose of adjusting those differences upon a satisfactory and solid foundation." In 1884 the Senate insisted on securing a similar harbor concession from Hawaii, and within the next few years the American Navy began to arise again from its ashes. The obligation incurred in exchange for this concession, however, although it resembled that in the Japanese treaty, was probably an unreflecting act of good nature for, if it meant anything, it was an entangling engagement such as the vast majority of Americans were still determined to avoid.
The natives of Samoa did not indulge in cannibalism but devoted the small energy the climate gave them to the social graces and to pleasant wars. They were governed by local kings and were loosely united under a chief king. At Apia, the capital, were three hundred foreigners, nearly all connected in one way or another with trade. This commerce had long been in the hands of English and Americans, but now the aggressive Germans were rapidly winning it away. Three consuls, representing the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, spent their time in exaggerating their functions and in circumventing the plots of which they suspected each other. The stage was set for comic opera, the treaty with the United States was part of the plot, and several acts had already been played, when Bismarck suddenly injected a tragic element.
In 1884, at the time when the German statesman began to see the vision of a Teutonic world empire and went about seeking places in the sun, the German consul in Samoa, by agreement with King Malietoa, raised the German flag over the royal hut, with a significance which was all too obvious. In 1886 the American consul countered this move by proclaiming a United States protectorate. The German consul then first pressed home a quarrel with the native king at a time opportunely coinciding with the arrival of a German warship, the Adler; he subsequently deposed him and put up Tamasese in his stead. The apparently more legitimate successor, Mataafa, roused most of the population under his leadership. The Adler steamed about the islands shelling Mataafa villages, and the American consul steamed after him, putting his launch between the Adler and the shore. In the course of these events, on December 18, 1888, Mataafa ambushed a German landing party and killed fifty of its members.
German public opinion thereupon vociferously demanded a punishment which would establish the place of Germany as a colonial power in the Pacific. Great Britain, however, was not disposed to give her growing rival a free hand. The United States was appealed to under the Treaty of 1878, and American sentiment determined to protect the Samoans in their heroic fight for self-government. All three nations involved sent warships to Apia, and through the early spring of 1889 their chancelleries and the press were prepared to hear momentarily that some one's temper had given way in the tropic heat and that blood had been shed—with what consequences on the other side of the globe no man could tell.
Very different, however, was the news that finally limped in, for there was no cable. On March 16, 1889, a hurricane had swept the islands, wrecking all but one of the warships. The common distress had brought about cooperation among all parties. Tales of mutual help and mutual praise of natives and the three nations filled the dispatches. The play turned out to be a comedy after all. Yet difficulties remained which could be met only by joint action. A commission of the three nations therefore was arranged to meet in Berlin. The United States insisted on native government; Germany, on foreign control. Finally they agreed to a compromise in the form of a General Act, to which Samoa consented. The native government was retained, but the control was given to a Chief Justice and a President of the Municipal Council of Apia, who were to be foreigners chosen by the three powers. Their relative authority is indicated by the fact that the king was to receive $1800 a year, the Chief Justice, $6000, and the President, $5000.
Small as was the immediate stake, this little episode was remarkably significant of the trend of American development. Begun under Grant and concluded under Blaine and Harrison, the policy of the United States was the creation of no one mind or party nor did it accord with American traditions. Encountering European powers in the Pacific, with no apparent hesitation though without any general intent, the United States entered into cooperative agreements with them relating to the native governments which it would never have thought proper or possible in other parts of the world. The United States seemed to be evolving a new policy for the protection of its interests in the Pacific. This first clash with the rising colonial power of Germany has an added interest because it revealed a fundamental similarity in colonial policy between the United States and Great Britain, even though they were prone to quarrel when adjusting Anglo-American relations.
While the Samoan affair seemed an accidental happening, there was taking shape in the Pacific another episode which had a longer history and was more significant of the expansion of American interests in that ocean. Indeed, with the Pacific coast line of the United States, with the superb harbors of San Francisco, Portland, and Puget Sound, and with Alaska stretching its finger tips almost to Asia, even Blaine could not resist the lure of the East, though he endeavored to reconcile American traditions of isolation with oceanic expansion. Of all the Pacific archipelagoes, the Hawaiian Islands lie nearest to the shores of the United States. Although they had been discovered to the European world by the great English explorer, Captain Cook, their intercourse had, for geographic reasons, always been chiefly with the United States. Whalers continually resorted to them for supplies. Their natives shipped on American vessels and came in numbers to California in early gold-mining days. American missionaries attained their most striking success in the Hawaiian Islands and not only converted the majority of the natives but assisted the successive kings in their government. The descendants of these missionaries continued to live on the islands and became the nucleus of a white population which waxed rich and powerful by the abundant production of sugar cane on that volcanic soil.
In view of this tangible evidence of intimacy on the part of the United States with the Hawaiian Islands, Webster in 1842 brought them within the scope of the Monroe Doctrine by declaring that European powers must not interfere with their government. Marcy, Secretary of State, framed a treaty of annexation in 1853, but the Hawaiian Government withdrew its assent. Twenty years later Secretary Fish wrote: "There seems to be a strong desire on the part of many persons in the islands, representing large interests and great wealth, to become annexed to the United States and while there are, as I have already said, many and influential persons in the country who question the policy of any insular acquisition, perhaps even any extension of territorial limits, there are also those of influence and wise foresight who see a future that must extend the jurisdiction and the limits of this nation, and that will require a resting spot in the mid-ocean, between the Pacific coast and the vast domains of Asia, which are now opening to commerce, and Christian civilization."
All immediate action, however, was confined to a specially intimate treaty of reciprocity which was signed in 1875, and which secured a substantial American domination in commerce. When Blaine became Secretary of State in 1881, he was, or at least he affected to be, seriously alarmed at the possibility of foreign influence in Hawaiian affairs, particularly on the part of Great Britain. The native population was declining, and should it continue to diminish, he believed that the United States must annex the islands. "Throughout the continent, north and south," he wrote, "wherever a foothold is found for American enterprise, it is quickly occupied, and the spirit of adventure, which seeks its outlet, in the mines of South America and the railroads of Mexico, would not be slow to avail itself of openings of assured and profitable enterprise even in mid-ocean." As the feeling grew in the United States that these islands really belonged to the American continent, Blaine even invited Hawaii to send representatives to the Pan-American Congress of 1889. When he again became Secretary of State, he was prepared to give indirect support at least to American interests, for the new queen, Liliuokalani, was supposed to be under British influence. On the arrival of a British gunboat in Honolulu, J. L. Stevens, the American Minister, went so far as to write on February 8, 1892: "At this time there seems to be no immediate prospect of its being safe to have the harbor of Honolulu left without an American vessel of war."
Revolution was, indeed, impending in Hawaii. On January 14, 1893, the Queen abolished the later constitution under which the Americans had exercised great power, and in its place she proclaimed the restoration of the old constitution which established an absolutism modified by native home rule. At two o'clock on the afternoon of the 16th of January, the resident Americans organized a committee of safety; at half-past four United States marines landed at the call of Stevens. The Queen was thereupon deposed, a provisional government was organized, and at its request Stevens assumed for the United States the "protection" of the islands. Without delay, John W. Foster, who had just succeeded Blaine as Secretary of State, drew up a treaty of annexation, which he immediately submitted to the Senate.
On March 4, 1893, Cleveland became President for the second time. He at once withdrew the treaty and appointed James H. Blount special commissioner to investigate the facts of the revolt. While the report of Commissioner Blount did not, indeed, convict Stevens of conspiring to bring about the uprising, it left the impression that the revolt would not have taken place and certainly could not have succeeded except for the presence of the United States marines and the support of the United States Minister. Cleveland recalled Stevens and the marines, and requested the provisional government to restore the Queen. This Sanford Ballard Dole, the President of the new republic, refused to do, on the contention that President Cleveland had no right to interfere in the domestic affairs of Hawaii. On the legality or propriety of Stevens's conduct, opinion in Congress was divided; but with regard to Dole's contention, both the Senate and the House were agreed that the islands should maintain their own domestic government without interference from the United States. Thus left to themselves, the Americans in Hawaii bided their time until public opinion in the United States should prove more favorable to annexation.