not only compatible with but promotive of the widest and most permanent advantage to commerce and civilization." 22

This message should have cooled somewhat the ardor of De Lesseps, who on the day it was delivered himself appeared before a Congressional committee to explain the nature of his plans. It did so only temporarily. De Lesseps went ahead and to disaster. Hayes in his way also went ahead and his annual message for 1880, his last to Congress, developed our policy from another angle, namely our right, in view of the Colombia treaty of 1846 by which we guaranteed neutrality of the Isthmus and the maintenance of Colombian sovereignty, to determine the conditions under which that guarantee should be enforced.23

Again the President's message synchronized with a movement of De Lesseps. Stock was being sold and the great venture being launched. Opposition of President and Congress was embarrassing, and the French promoter conceived the subtle plan of grafting on his organization an American advisory board to propitiate American opinion. To head this board Grant was first approached. On his refusal, the offer went to Colonel R. W. Thompson, Secretary of the Navy in Hayes' own cabinet. The offer was preposterous. It was unthinkable that the agent of a foreign corporation should sit in the executive council. Yet Thompson dallied with it on the ground that "it had occurred to him that the influence of an American president might be so used as to Americanize the enterprise and thus remove the principal objection made in this country." If Thompson was obtuse, the President was not. He made Thompson's acceptance of the offer the occasion for immediate acceptance of his resignation, yet accomplished it so neatly that Thompson could not take offense.

The response of Congress to the message was the introduction of a vigorous resolution reaffirming the Monroe Doctrine. But no action followed. An attempt to obtain Colombian recognition of our sole responsibility for Isthmian neutrality likewise failed. The issue passed over

23 Richardson, James D., Op. Cit. VII, especially pages 610-611. 24 Williams, Charles Richard, Op. Cit. II, 223.

in an unsettled state to the Garfield Administration. But Hayes had certainly forecast its eventual solution when he said "the policy of this country is a canal under American control." 25

The fame of American presidents is subject to strange whims of fortune. Even as James K. Polk, before the War one of the most successful men to occupy the chair, was promptly buried in obloquy and oblivion, so Rutherford B. Hayes, whose ability and character were indispensable to restoring national integrity after twelve years' loss of tone, is too little remembered for his straightforward handling of the problems of his office.

25 Ibid. p. 224.

T

CHAPTER XIX

A PERIOD OF ROUTINE

HE administration of James A. Garfield promised a new era in American diplomacy. The choice of James G. Blaine for Secretary of State inaugurated a vigorous program. For Blaine was committed to a welldefined development of the Monroe Doctrine, whereby the United States should not merely safeguard Southern neighbors from aggression, but should assume an active hegemony in American affairs.

BLAINE AND LATIN-AMERICA

This leadership, in Blaine's opinion, should extend to all matters in which the two Americas had common interests. The United States should be an elder brother insuring with its wealth and strength stability to both continents. It should exercise a moral leadership over a new world in which ties of commerce and of culture should ever knit toward unity. The direction of so vast a movement would afford the Secretary ample scope for his extraordinary talents, and bind him with unhesitating loyalty to a President whose abilities so inferior to his own had won the greater prize.

Disputes in Latin-America gave immediate opportunity for execution of these plans. A triangular war in which Peru, Bolivia, and Chile fought to determine the ownership of valuable nitrate beds gave excuse for intervention. The American ministers to Peru and Chile took sides with the respective combatants, and quarreled with each other. General Hurlbut urged the State Department not to countenance the surrender of Peruvian territory, while General Kilpatrick, though seriously ill, earned for himself a costly funeral at Chilean expense by upholding the utmost claims

of the victorious power. Kilpatrick's zeal was no doubt stimulated by his marriage to a Chilean lady, niece to a high dignitary in the Church.

Blaine personally preferred Peru on grounds both economic and political. Financially, he seized the occasion to promote the nitrate claims of Landreau, a Frenchman naturalized in the United States. These totaled $7,300,000, and Blaine's excessive lust for riches exposed his motives in the Peruvian dispute to sordid imputations. Politically, he believed Great Britain to be supporting Chile, and he was no Anglophile. He did not dispute, however, Chile's right of conquest, and he preserved the forms of neutrality in happy contrast with the dangerous commitments of Hurlbut and Kilpatrick. It was to unravel their entanglements that he named as special envoy to all three countries William H. Trescot, who recently had served with Dr. Angell on the Chinese mission under Hayes.

First proceeding to Peru, the commissioner was almost overwhelmed by the civilities of the defeated, who beheld in him their only hope. As Walker Blaine, who accomplished the mission, wrote his father, "I think if we had given a hint the Peruvians would have presented us with fortunes. It was really embarrassing to avoid the attentions. I really think that they look upon us as sort of saviors and Trescot says it will be necessary to send a fleet to rescue us at the end of the mission, so little will the performance, that we hope to succeed in, correspond with Peruvian expectation." At Chile, Trescot met with less enthusiasm but equal courtesy, but his opinion which was favorable to Peru gained no concessions from the victors. Their peace was "hard." One province, that of Tarapaca, they obtained in fee. Two others yielded to a temporary occupation. Their final ownership is at the basis of the Tacna-Arica dispute, whose terms will be considered in a later chapter.1

On a larger scale than Trescot's mission was the Secretary's plan to revive on United States' initiative the idea of

1 The Trescot mission is described in Foreign Relations, 1881, p. 54 and passim.

a Panama Congress first projected in 1825 in the administration of John Quincy Adams. It was Blaine's ambition to call a gathering, similar to those which meet to-day, of representatives from every independent nation in the Western Hemisphere. The Congress should aim at economic and cultural solidarity for the new world. Blaine blazed a trail. To-day his vision has become reality, and the Pan-American Union stands in Washington a monument to Blaine's constructive thinking.

Invitations to this Congress had been already sent, and some acceptances received, when the death of Garfield removed the Secretary, altered the policies of the United States, and exposed Blaine to humiliation. Blaine's resignation was inevitable. His influence with Garfield was believed to underly the appointment which led to the final split between the President and the New York machine that looked to Roscoe Conkling as its leader. The new President was Conkling's friend. To retain Blaine was unthinkable, yet the Secretary was not summarily ejected. Twice in the autumn of 1881 he submitted his resignation, only to be told each time that the President preferred not to consider it till after Congress met.

With Congress sitting, the President lost little time in naming as his Secretary of State, Senator Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, and Blaine withdrew from office December 19, 1881, having been in public life since March 4, 1863. For a time it seemed that his policies might be continued, but Frelinghuysen had less imagination or greater caution, and in essential objects, Blaine's policies were soon reversed.

To Blaine's particular regret the invitations to the PanAmerican Congress were withdrawn, and in circumstances humiliating to himself, for Trescot, who was still in Chile, obtained an audience with Balmaceda, the Secretary of State, in order to convey an invitation to the Peace Congress, only to be informed that the United States had changed its plans without notifying its own envoy. The situation was embarrassing to Trescot and eminently calculated to destroy our national prestige in South America. The excuse advanced