been forced to reorganize for his own ends, as Jackson did. In any such reconstruction of the council board, Clayton, Ewing, and Collamer would well have been retained. Clayton, the Secretary of State, had no commanding gifts, and such as he possessed shone better in debate than in the transaction of affairs. He was of a kindly and somewhat indolent disposition, promising all things to all men, and in his new station reputed leaky as to official secrets. In a jovial way he used to speak of his own "colloquial eloquence."* A good scholar, nevertheless, courteous, highly honorable in all the relations of life, Clayton, who was ripe in public experience, proved himself at least a sagacious and prudent counsellor. On the slavery issue, as might be supposed, he was flabby, like most other border slaveholders, easy-going, in fact, rather than enlightened or philanthropic. But the people of the free States at this time liked him for holding aloof from those Southern conferences which followed Taylor's election, and keeping his name from the manifesto which Calhoun was earliest in concocting. That course was much to Clayton's credit, though after all the merit of it was negative. Clayton, while Secretary, negotiated an important treaty with the British minister, Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer. It was the only important achievement of this brief administration in diplomacy, and it related to Central America and to a new canal which it was now proposed to construct from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific by way of San Juan River of Nicaragua and a chain of inland lakes in that region. That treaty, familiar in following years as the "Clayton-Bulwer Treaty," because of the heated controversies to which it gave rise, was signed at Washington on the 19th of April, and sent to the Senate for approval during the lull which followed the selection of Clay's compromise committee. Since the acquisition of Cali * 1 Coleman's Crittenden, 348, etc. 1850. THE CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY. 175 fornia and the impulse given to universal traffic by our gold discovery, the project of connecting the two great oceans of the world by a ship canal became invested with an immediate and practical importance. Nature invited such an enterprise at the narrow ligament which bound the two Americas. Polk's administration had sought arrangements with Mexico for facilitating a transit through Tehuantepec, and Mexico would not grant it. Railway and canal projects of this character engaged the attention of commercial nations in Europe as well as ourselves and of Great Britain in particular. Already was a railroad under way at the Isthmus of Panama. Nicaragua, though of broader expanse, offered some natural advantages for a transit by water courses. But connected with such a question was the more difficult one of controlling jurisdiction of the soil and protecting the enterprise. Central America was weakly governed; and the feverish passion of extending our empire to the southward- faintly connected under every phase with dreams of an independent slave confederacy-was not easily allayed. 1847-1849. While American dominion loomed more and more portentously over this continent, like the genie escaping from Solomon's vase, Great Britain and France, on their part, worked covertly for a counterpoise to it; and among the footprints of this latter receding influence was a British protectorate established on the Caribbean side of Central America over the squalid king of the Mosquito Indians and what was called the Mosquito coast. Central America consisted at this time of independent states or republics which preserved the sacred right of constantly quarrelling with one another. Polk, proclaiming to the world in 1847, as he had proclaimed before, that no European power should, with our assent, be allowed to gain any new foothold on this continent, Congress, at his request, appropriated for a mission to Guatemala, the most flourishing of these Central American States. But before Hise, Polk's chosen minister, left home, an insurrection broke out, in which the weaker party appeared disposed to transfer to our control. what they had not power to control for themselves, a situation of which Polk desired to take advantage.* The difficult subject went over to a Whig administration, and as Whigs were strongly suspicious that the Monroe Doctrine was used by their adversaries as a stalking horse for slavery expansion, President Taylor lost little time in compressing the subject to its practical and honest relations. Accordingly, one of his first acts was to send a special minister to Nicaragua, empowered to agree with that State to extend protection over any company which should engage in good faith to build a ship canal. Hise, in the meantime, had negotiated a treaty there, conformable to his own idea of American wishes; and the guaranties of protection which it stipulated on the part of the United States were so flagrantly unconstitutional and dangerous that Taylor, with the advice of his cabinet, suppressed it. Squier, the Whig chargé, next concluded a treaty for an inter-oceanic. canal, not for our own benefit exclusively, but so that all nations might traverse it, and it bound the United States to no greater interference, should local disorders arise, than a general protectorate.† Upon the same safe basis of self-denial was framed, afterwards, the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. A private company of American capitalists, had been organized to construct a ship canal. As to any such work this treaty forbade the exclusive control by either Great Britain or the United States; but mutual assurance was given that each power would facilitate its construction and maintain the neutrality of its common use. That friendly compact, confirmed by the Senate and proclaimed on our anniversary of July 4th, was hailed by the American people as just and liberal to the commerce of the world, and honorable through its forbearance. But schemes of 1849-1850. 1850. *2 Curtis's James Buchanan, c. 22 † Clayton's Speech in Senate, March 1, 1853. The latter treaty, approved by President Taylor, was sent to the Senate; but it does not appear to have been acted on. 9 U. S. Stats. 995. 1850. THE GALPHIN CLAIM. 177 inter-oceanic transit at the Isthmus ripened after all very slowly; five years opened up a railway at Panama, but neither there nor at Nicaragua has a ship canal been built in forty years. And for a deeper disappointment, it soon turned out that the self-denying check upon colonizing designs, to which both countries seemed so generously to bind themselves, involved on Great Britain's part, as she understood it, no abandonment of her present protectorate. To this subject we shall recur hereafter. A mortifying scandal of this cabinet was the Galphin claim, a demand against our government, growing out of Georgia land reservations, and as ancient as the Revolutionary War. It happened that Crawford (who was a son of the famous Secretary of Monroe's cabinet) had been employed for years as counsel to press that claim upon the United States with the promise of a large contingent fee. Congress, in 1848, directed the Secretary of the Treasury to investigate and make whatever adjustment should be found suitable. Polk's Secretary pronounced the claim valid, and paid over the principal sum; but the question of paying intervening interest went over to his successor. Crawford took the portfolio of war under President Taylor, as he never ought to have done under such circumstances, and with no very scrupulous sense of public propriety transferred his agency for prosecuting the claim, but retained his contingent interest in it. A coterie of professional brethren in the new cabinet helped one another out, as lawyers are apt to do when contingent fees are at stake, if unaccustomed to looking at questions on their political side. The faithful comptroller rejected the claim for interest, which, right or wrong, the government had at least never been in the habit of paying, aside from some express contract. The Galphin claimants appealed to Secretary Meredith; he asked the advice of the Attorney-General; the latter prepared an opinion favorable to the claimants, whereupon Meredith reversed his subordinate's decision and ordered the interest paid. This amounted to about VOL. V. - 12 $191,000, and more than four times the principal claim already settled. A stroke from the pen of a fellowofficial made Crawford a rich man, and he took his third of the prize with neither delay nor delicacy. The transaction got abroad, as all such matters will, and the House was requested to investigate. But while Whig journalists assumed, as in duty bound, to make April. light of it, opponents were horrified, and the President, without question, was very seriously distressed. No man ever had a keener sense of official integrity than General Taylor, nor meant more earnestly to have an administration, like Cæsar's wife, above suspicion. He fully resolved to make official change, and rid himself of the counsellors who had compromised him. But he did not move as swiftly to his purpose as Jackson, perhaps, would have done, and factious enemies in the House who fought his anti-slavery policy, used the weapon to better advantage at their opportune moment.* It was the 8th of May when Clay submitted to an eager Senate, as chairman, the report of his committee of thirteen. The scheme they had agreed upon conMay. sisted of three bills. The first rolled into one measure the three incongruous subjects of California's admission, the establishment of territorial governments for New Mexico and Utah with a dubious clause as to freedom and slavery, and the offer to Texas of a good round sum, on condition of relinquishing her claim of jurisdiction upon New Mexico and agreeing to an arbitrary boundary line. The second bill provided new and more stringent measures for recapturing fugitive slaves upon free soil. And the third abolished the slave market from the capital and District of Columbia. All this was a patchwork of separate bills which had been lying loose * See 1 Thurlow Weed's Life, c. 59. Among the changes intended (so Thurlow Weed relates on the strength of his private interviews) was that of putting Hamilton Fish, governor of New York, into Meredith's place and sending Meredith, to whom Taylor, socially, was warmly attached, on some foreign mission |