without difficulty; but it cannot be doubted that such a loss occurred. It is folly to question it. The loss may be seen in various circumstances, as, in the rise of insurance on all American vessels, the fate of the carrying trade, which was one of the great resources of our country; the diminution of our tonnage... the falling off in our exports and imports, with due allowance for our abnormal currency and the diversion of war. . . .

Beyond the actual loss in the national tonnage, there was a further loss in the arrest of our natural increase in this branch of industry, which an intelligent statistician puts at 5% annually, making in 1866 a total loss on this account of 1,384,953 tons, which must be added to the 1,229,035 tons actually lost. The same statistician, after estimating the value of a ton at $40 gold, . . . puts the sum-total of our national loss on this account at $110,000,000. Of course this is only an item in our bill. . . .

This is what I have to say at present on national losses through the destruction of commerce. These are large enough; but there is another chapter, where they are far larger: I refer, of course, to the national losses caused by the prolongation of the war, and traceable directly to England. . . . No candid person who studies this eventful period can doubt that the Rebellion was originally encouraged by hope of support from England — that it was strengthened at once by the concession of belligerent rights on the ocean - that it was fed to the end by British supplies that it was encouraged by every wellstored British ship that was able to defy our blockade — that it was quickened into frantic life with every report from the British pirates, flaming anew with every burning ship.... Not weeks nor months, but years, were added in this way to our war, so full of costly sacrifice.

The Rebellion was suppressed at a cost of more than $4,000,000,000.... If through British intervention, the war was doubled in duration, or in any way extended, as cannot be doubted, then is England justly responsible for the additional expenditure to which our country was doomed. . This plain statement, without one word of exaggeration or aggravation, is enough to exhibit the magnitude of the national losses, whether

from the destruction of our commerce, the prolongation of the war, or the expense of the blockade.1

President Grant, who later called the exorbitant claims advanced by Sumner the "indirect damage humbug,' opened the way for a friendly renewal of the negotiations by the following friendly passage in his Message of December 5, 1870:

I regret to say that no conclusion has been reached for the adjustment of the claims against Great Britain, growing out of the course adopted by that Government during the rebellion. The Cabinet of London, so far as its views have been expressed, does not appear to be willing to concede that Her Majesty's Government was guilty of any negligence, or did or permitted any act during the war by which the United States has just cause of complaint. Our firm and unalterable convictions are directly the reverse. I therefore recommend to Congress to authorize the appointment of a commission to take proof of the amount and the ownership of these several claims, on notice to the representative of Her Majesty at Washington, and that authority be given for the settlement of these claims by the United States, so that the Government shall have the ownership of the private claims as well as the responsible control of all the demands against Great Britain. It cannot be necessary to add that whenever Her Majesty's Government shall entertain a desire for a full and friendly adjustment of these claims, the United States will enter upon their consideration with an earnest desire for a conclusion consistent with the honor and dignity of both nations.2

1 Sumner's bill against England was $15,000,000 for individual losses, $110,000,000 for the loss of our merchant marine, and $2,000,000,000 for the prolongation of the war- a grand total of $2,125,000,000!

2 Grant's recommendation resulted in the appointment of a joint high commission, which concluded the Treaty of Washington (1871), by which the claims of the United States were referred to a tribunal at Geneva. It was chiefly due to Charles Francis Adams, the American member of the board of five arbitrators (and our minister to England at the time of the "escape" of the Alabama), that the "indirect claims"

The most remarkable proposal of the solution of the difficulty with England over the Alabama claims came from Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, if we may fully trust the account of his colleague, Senator W. M. Stewart of Nevada, the knight-errant of the American frontier democracy.

During the latter part of February, 1865, it became evident that the Civil War was drawing to a close, and there was great joy in Washington, and intense relief felt among the officers at the helm of government when the surrender at Appomattox, April 9, 1865, virtually terminated the frightful struggle.

England had wiped our commerce from the seas by building the Alabama, the Florida, the Shenandoah, and other swift privateers for the Confederates, which were let loose upon the shipping of the United States. There is no doubt that this country had ample cause for war with Great Britain, and there was a strong undercurrent of sentiment in favor of it.

Senator Zach Chandler of Michigan was one of the leaders of the Senate, and a man of wealth and patriotism. No Senator contributed more in brains and action to assist the Union cause than he. He wished to see the speedy restoration of the Southern States, and was anxious to smite the British Lion for the destruction of our commerce. He inaugurated a movement which secretly spread with great rapidity, and brought us almost to a rupture with England. At that time our ships of trade had been obliterated from every ocean, and the American flag, which once had been carried by our fast sailing ships to every port, had disappeared. We had no navy, but practically every harbor was protected by the iron-clads, called Monitors, which had been invented and built during the war. Our big sea-coast cities were so thoroughly defended, therefore, that no foreign enemy could have made a successful assault upon us by sea... were dropped and the negotiations conducted on the basis of what Sumner called the personal losses ($15,000,000) only. The anxiety in England over these critical negotiations at a most critical moment in the history of Europe (the Franco-Prussian War) is reflected in John Morley's Life of Gladstone, Vol. II, chap. ix.

This started Senator Chandler thinking, and he evolved a daring scheme. His bitterness against England seemed to increase after the war had been terminated. One day he drew me aside in the Senate cloak-room and unfolded his plan.

"I propose that we take an appeal to President Lincoln," he said, "signed by influential men, to call an extra session of Congress, and send 200,000 trained veterans into the British possessions north of us; 100,000 picked troops from the Federal Army, and the same number from the flower of Lee's army. I have thought of this seriously for weeks, and I shall make every effort to bring it about." He was intensely in earnest, and I knew that he would back his plan up with all the brains and energy at his command.

"We have confronting us," he continued, "a great problem. Our country is rent in twain. If we could march into Canada an army composed of the men who have worn the gray side by side with the men who have worn the blue to fight against a common hereditary enemy, it would do much to heal the wounds of the war, hasten reconstruction, and weld the North and South together in a bond of friendship.

"I believe from my knowledge of human nature that those fellows who have been fighting each other for the past four years would sail in and lick any army on the face of the globe, and be glad, and proud, and anxious to do it. I believe that 100,000 of Grant's men and 100,000 of Lee's could whip any army of twice the size on earth. .

"It would be impossible for England and the Canadians to organize an armed force to meet the splendid army of veterans we could throw across the border. England has a navy, of course, but she can't do us any harm, because we have n't any commerce to be injured, and our ports are impregnable."

It was Senator Chandler's idea, of course, that the United States should seize Canada from Great Britain in payment for the enormous losses inflicted on our commerce by Britishbuilt vessels sold to the Confederate Government. He talked this matter over with me many times. The prospect of extending our northern boundary to the North Pole pleased him.... At that time Alaska was about to be annexed, and

105. The farmer and

the railroad

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it was realized that the British possessions in Canada would come in handy.

Finally, so far had the plot progressed that thirty Senators had been pledged to support it, and I attended many informal caucuses at which the next steps to be taken were discussed.

Then, at almost the very instant the scheme was to be sprung upon the country, and pressure brought to bear upon the President to secure his coöperation, Mr. Lincoln was assassinated. This made the carrying out of the plan impossible. From the very first day Johnson took the oath of office as President he was at war with Congress, and the invasion of Canada never materialized. Chandler's faith and enthusiasm in the scheme won some of the best minds in the Senate to his proposition.

A NEW INDUSTRIAL AGE

The years immediately following the Civil War saw a rapid increase in farm acreage and railroad mileage in the United States. The farmers, dependent on the railroads for transporting their crops to the markets and shipping centers of the East, watched with hostile jealousy the rising schedule of freight rates, which the railroads maintained was necessary to pay the current expenses of operation in a thinly populated country and a fair rate of interest on the enormous initial cost of the construction of the roads. In March, 1869, Mr. H. C. Wheeler, a farmer of Illinois, sent out the following call for a convention to be held at Bloomington to consider the case against the railroads :

To the Farmers of the Northwest: Will you permit a working farmer, whose entire interest is identified with yours, to address to you a word of warning?

A crisis in our affairs is approaching, and dangers threaten. You are aware that the price of many of our leading staples is so low that they cannot be transported to the markets of Europe, or even to our own seaboard, and leave a margin for profits, by reason of the excessive rates of transportation.