Are Americans Suckers?

VOLUME 173

NUMBER 4

APRIL, 1944

87th YEAR OF CONTINUOUS PUBLICATION

by GERALD W. JOHNSON

ONCE upon a time the British put over a smart deal in which they burned the Americans for five and a half million dollars. It was in the matter of the Canadian fisheries, settled in 1871 at the same time as the Alabama claims.

On this point historians are pretty generally agreed. The fishing rights were worth something, but not that much. The British negotiators on that occasion really did take us to the cleaners. This is in the record and is not to be denied.

Yet how many Americans realize that this is not part of the record of our diplomatic defeats at the hands of the British, but all of it? On some other occasions our diplomatists have been fought to a standstill. On some it is a matter of doubt who got the worst of it. But in the hundred and twenty-nine years since 1815, when wre abandoned the policy of fighting the British and adopted the policy of dickering with them, they have never again completely out-traded us.

These, of course, were diplomatic negotiations. Private business is another matter. Many a time and oft an American businessman has made the sad error of presuming that because British businessmen look slow they are slow. Not once, but countless times, the result has been that the American came out of the deal owing money. Yet even in the field of private enterprise the record is not one of unrelieved gloom. In spite of a tremendous initial advantage, British businessmen have not been able to prevent the development of this country into a trading nation of colossal proportions. Obviously, the individual Yankee trader has managed to make headway against British competition.

Our blushes are not for our businessmen, but for our diplomatists when they meet the British.

The most superficial observer must be aware of a widespread belief in the United States that while we can light against the British with a fair assurance of success, and fight alongside them with absolute assurance of success, when it comes to making a trade we are as putty in their hands.

This American modesty may be an obstacle in the way of making a reasonable peace when the fighting is over. The suggestion that American modesty — above all, modesty about our trading ability — may be an obstacle to peace is something to stir the laughter of the ironic gods; but it is a fact. Almost the only thing of which we are certain at this moment is that the establishment of a reasonably durable peace will require the closest sort of collaboration between Great Britain and the United States. Russia and China must help, too, if full success is to be attained, but unless the English-speaking nations work together we shall not be able even to make a start.

Copyright by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass. All rights reserved.

Yet it is hard for partners to work together vigorously and smoothly when one is convinced that the other is vastly the better trader and therefore must be watched carefully every minute. The American impression that our negotiators have never been able to handle the British on anything like equal terms is already being used by isolationists and other troublemakers to create an atmosphere of nervous apprehension about post-war diplomacy.

Nevertheless, merely a superficial examination of the record is enough to show how little foundation there is for that impression. Even the school histories now admit that at the very beginning of the long reign of peace we did pretty well. After the War of 1812 we made a remarkably good deal, considering the military situation. On the surface it appeared that we had lost that war. The military situation was not, in fact, so bad as it seemed to be, for although Washington had been burned, the British expeditionary force had been thrown back at Baltimore, while the force coming down from Canada had been definitely beaten and the one supposed to come up from New Orleans was not yet in place. This is why the Duke of Wellington told Canning privately that it would take a hundred thousand men to whip the United States.

On the other hand, Napoleon had been disposed of, temporarily, and the British fleet and army were available for use in full strength against this country. The Americans, therefore, were pretty sure that they were going to have to pay a high price for the injudicious attack on Great Britain, and when the dealing and dickering started at Ghent their utmost hope was to hold that price somewhere within reason. As it turned out, they paid exactly nothing — not one foot of territory, not one dollar of indemnity, not even an acknowledgment of the principles of international law for which Great Britain had fought. This happy escape was not due to any important change in the military situation. It was a diplomatic victory, due almost entirely to the extraordinary trading ability of three members of our delegation, Albert Gallatin, John Quincy Adams, and Henry Clay. There is no ground for believing we were out-traded in the Treaty of Ghent. It was the British who lost that round.

Set that against the Canadian fisheries deal and honors are certainly even. In truth, the advantage is with us, for what we won at Ghent was worth vastly more than five and a half million dollars; but, for the purpose of argument, call the score even, one to one. That will leave the question of our ability to handle the British still open. How does the rest of the record look?

2

IN DEALING with the British during the last hundred and twenty-nine years we have had thousands of contacts, but in only four fields of negotiation has anything of desperate importance been involved. These four are boundaries, fishing and navigation rights, the Isthmian canal, and the hegemony of the Western Hemisphere. But of these four, each has held the making of a dozen wars, and each is of such importance that total defeat in any would have laid a heavy handicap on the development of the United States as a first-class world power.

How have we come out. in the incessant negotiation that has been conducted in these fields? To find the general answer, take a look at the country. Although the British had a long start, we have become a first-class power and that without war. We have had four thousand miles of boundary to adjust, almost every mile of it involving some difficulties. But every mile was definitely surveyed and fixed years ago. In the course of that adjustment Aroostook County, Maine, lost a few acres of what it claimed, but the British lost more of what they claimed. The northern boundary of Oregon does not go up to meet the southern boundary of Alaska, but that was not our original claim. “Fifty-four forty or fight” was never a serious claim, but only a talking point. The line is at 49 degrees today.

It must be admitted that we have never traded the British out of Canada, but have we ever seriously tried to do so? The record shows that American negotiators were instructed a dozen times to raise the question of Canada, but always as a threat to induce the British to yield on some other point. The fact is, the existence of Canada as a British possession more than once proved highly convenient to American negotiators, when the trading grew really tight. It was an exposed flank that the British always had to take into account. If they became too tough, it was always possible for the Americans to seize Canada; and we never let them forget it. For example, there is little doubt that Canada’s exposed position helped Grover Cleveland to win in Venezuela, in 1895.

Our hegemony in the Western Hemisphere dates from the Monroe Doctrine, which was originally a British idea. Most Americans are vaguely aware of this fact, but not many know how neatly the American Secretary of State hoisted the British Foreign Minister with his own petard in that deal. About 1821 the Holy Alliance (Russia, Austria, France) began to talk of rehabilitating Spain, which was in a bad way, what with internal troubles and the revolt of its American colonies. Because Spain was an ally of Great Britain, Canning, the British Foreign Minister, could not object openly; but he did object, for he was certain that ostensible assistance to Spain would really redound to the strengthening of France, since the scheme involved putting a lot of young Bourbon princes on South American thrones.

Therefore he quietly suggested to Rush, American Minister at London, that if the United States should raise a howl about the South American scheme, the British would be happy to back us. Rush was delighted and promptly tipped off Washington, where the astute John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State in President Monroe’s cabinet. But there were at the moment two developments that were troubling this country. The threat of the Holy Alliance to South America was the more conspicuous, but there was another. This was Oregon, where Russia and Great Britain were threatening to cut the United States off from the Pacific, since California still — and for twenty-five years longer — belonged to Mexico.

So Adams drafted — and persuaded the President to insert in his next message to Congress — a thundering defiance of any European power that should undertake to establish new colonies on American soil, and aimed the blast at Russia, thereby strengthening the American claim to Oregon. In a subsequent paragraph he directed another blast at the Holy Alliance; so Canning perforce had to back him, to the weakening of his own position in Oregon. Well, who won that round? In a sense, we pulled Canning’s chestnuts out of the fire; but by dragging in the Oregon issue we collected a neat little advantage of our own.

3

BECAUSE the final disposition of the affair occurred within memory of men living, the Panama Canal business is perhaps regarded as the most conspicuous instance in which the wily British outwitted, out-traded, and out-bluffed the guileless Americans. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty was ratified in 1850 and received the usual furious denunciation at the time. Since then it has become almost an article of faith that we suffered a dreadful diplomatic defeat.

But what are the facts? There was a terrific contest in Central America, without doubt. The activities of the British agent, Chatsworth, and the American, Hise, later succeeded by Squier, were frantic and tortuous in the extreme — dubious, too, from the standpoint of good faith and good morals. By winning the Mexican War the United States had acquired California and had swept down the Gulf Coast to the Rio Grande. It was apparently on the march to the Isthmus, and the British felt that it was now or never; so they made every effort to stop us.

To make a long, intricate, and questionable story short, we beat them to it in Panama by making a treaty with New Granada (now Colombia) giving us exclusive control of the Panama route, and the British beat us to it in Costa Rica. That left the Nicaraguan route, then regarded as the best of all, and there we arrived pretty much together. Our man secured title to Tigre Island, at the western end of the route, but a British naval captain seized the island by force. A group of British irregulars from the Mosquito Coast seized San Juan (Greytown) at the eastern end of the route, and an American naval squadron blew them out. Acts of war had been committed by both sides.

But at the moment the British didn’t want to fight, because their navy was already entangled with the French down at the La Plata, and one war at a time was felt by London to be enough. Nor did the United States want to fight, because the country was split by the question of slavery, and secession seemed to be imminent. Henry Clay was working on his Compromise of 1850, but nobody was sure it would succeed; and if it failed, the Union would certainly be rent. Therefore when the British sent Sir Henry Bulwer over on a special mission to settle the Isthmian affair, Secretary of State Clayton was willing to talk. The outcome was a stalemate. Each signatory bound itself not to build or seek to build a canal or railway across the Isthmus, except on terms that would assure exactly the same rights of transit to the nationals of both.

On that occasion the British diplomatists may have fought ours to a standstill, but it is hard to see where they won any overwhelming victory. Half a century later, when Great Britain had given up any idea of building the canal, and we were ready to do it, that compromise proved valuable to them, for under it we had to permit British ships to go through the Panama Canal on the same terms as ours. Even so, it has cost us no money. We are merely estopped from holding up the British captains for a heavier toll than we charge our own; but we are at liberty to fix the tolls at. any figure we please, as long as it applies to all ships alike.

4

THE gaudiest of all negotiations with the British, however, was that which resulted in the WebsterAshburton Treaty of 1842. This really had everything. It involved the Canadian boundary. It involved commerce, navigation, and fisheries. It involved the freedom of the seas. It involved an invasion of the United States by British forces, a war on Britain by American forces, the murder of an American citizen by the British, and the threatened hanging of a British subject by the Americans. It involved every great field of dispute between the two countries except South America, and in addition questions of national prestige were raised on both sides. Finally, as if to add the last touch of the fantastic, it became known long afterward that, as regards the boundary question, Webster had documentary evidence that the British were right, and Ashburton had similar evidence that the Americans were right; so each was under the impression that he was running a tremendous bluff.

As astute a judge as S. F. Bemis is inclined to believe that the British negotiator, Lord Ashburton, had a shade the best of it in this transaction, but even he is careful to point out that if this is true it is because Daniel Webster held bad cards, not because he played them unskillfully. This impression is confirmed by a mere glance at Webster’s hand.

Among the many points at issue the central one was the boundary between Maine and Canada, and a subsidiary one the boundary between New YorkVermont and Canada. As regards the latter, Webster had no standing whatever. The line was the 45th parallel. On that, everyone was agreed. Everyone had to agree, too, however reluctantly, that at the outlet of Lake Champlain the original surveyor had made a mistake and run the line too far north, with the result, that the fort the United States had just completed at Rouses Point was actually on Canadian soil. This was certainly a weak card in Webster’s hand.

Furthermore, on the principal issue, the MaineCanada boundary, the State of Maine, like Br’er Goat, had done voted. The Governor of Maine had called out the militia and occupied the disputed area, ejecting the Canadian officials and grimly announcing that if they tried to come back they would not be put out, they would be blasted out. This has come down in history as the “Aroostook War,” from the name of the Maine county involved. With the State of Maine already committing acts of war against the British Empire, the American negotiator was obviously in a delicate position — another weak card.

Again, the whole dispute arose because, when the Treaty of 1783 declared that the boundary should run according to a red line drawn on the attached map, somebody forgot, or failed, to attach the map. But Jared Sparks, the American historian, rummaging through some Revolutionary archives in Paris, had discovered a map very much like the missing one — and the red line on it sustained the British claims! This Webster regarded as a fatal card, if the British discovered its existence. He never dreamed that one of Ashburton’s advisers had discovered, in the British archives, a similar map with a red line sustaining the American claims.

Finally, at the moment the negotiations started, the State of New York was vigorously preparing to hang a British subject, despite the assurance of the British government that the act with which the man was charged had been committed under orders of British authorities. It all began when parties of Irishmen calling themselves the Society of Fenians began to raid Canada from the New York side of the line. In the end the infuriated Canadians raided back, crossing the Niagara River, seizing a ship, the Caroline, which the Fenians were openly loading for another raid, and cutting her loose to drift over the Falls. In the disturbance, somebody killed an American, and later one McLeod, a Canadian, came to the New York side and, becoming somewhat exhilarated in a tavern, declared that he had done the deed. He was promptly arrested, and although Washington tried to intervene, New York would not surrender the prisoner, even on the British Minister’s assurance that he had acted under orders.

How, then, did our player come out? It must be admitted that the luck broke in his favor at the last moment. Several witnesses came forward to swear that McLeod was not a murderer but merely a liar, because they had seen him miles away from the scene at the time of the fight. That was one weakness eliminated. Then Webster privately informed the Governor of Maine about Sparks’s map with the red line, which took the fight out of the Governor, eliminating another weakness. Beyond that he bluffed, matching the Fenians with the Caroline. In the end Ashburton, worried about his own map with a red line, agreed to split the difference as regards Maine and, as regards Rouses Point, to accept the wobbly surveyor’s line as if it were correct.

Was Webster defeated? Perhaps, but certainly not badly; and if one considers the weakness of his hand, the outcome looks more like a triumph.

5

LET us proceed, then, to the last sharp clash between the two countries, the Venezuela affair, involving the hegemony of the Western Hemisphere, in 1895. This was unquestionably a smashing defeat for the British which they brought upon themselves. Their original error was in putting foreign affairs in the hands of a silly fellow, Lord Salisbury, a supercilious type who knew nothing of men and therefore was crassly incompetent as a diplomatist.

The boundary line bet ween Venezuela and British Guiana had never been precisely defined; for although one line had been run, Venezuela had never accepted it. Nobody really cared, for the area in dispute was a wild and apparently worthless jungle; but when gold was discovered there the British proceeded to take over, and after a long series of squabbles Venezuela appealed to the United States for aid. Our State Department had already proffered our good offices, and now it ventured to call to Lord Salisbury’s attention the fact that the Monroe Doctrine was involved and the United States urged some kind of settlement. For four months Salisbury did not deign even to reply, and then he took a high-handed tone, sharply informing the United States that Britain would make its own interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine and this case did not concern it.

It was to Grover Cleveland, of all men, that the poor fool sent this sort of message. The response was instant and terrific. The President promptly informed Congress that the United States would send a party of competent geographers to South America to determine where the line really was, and that when it was determined the army and navy of the United States would defend it; and Secretary of State Olney informed Lord Salisbury that “the fiat of the United States is law” in such matters. Congress received the message enthusiastically, and the country instantly began to prepare for war.

Salisbury was caught in a bad jam; for at that moment the German Kaiser had chosen to send a telegram of congratulation to the South African Boers who had just wiped out a party of British raiders, and war between Germany and Great Britain seemed to be impending. When the British people realized that their Foreign Minister had provoked the United States into something very like a general mobilization, a blast of indignation struck the noble lord and he hurriedly acceded to arbitration. Incidentally, the arbitrators, including two justices of the United States Supreme Court, gave Great Britain most of what she had claimed. But the important point established was that the fiat of the United States is law on the Western Hemisphere. Cleveland had to pull a gun to do it, but he took the pot.

6

THIS is the record, in its main points. Why, then, this excessive modesty, why this impression on the part of the Americans that in all their dealings with the British they have been consistently out-traded, not to say swindled? There must be some reason for a belief so widespread.

There is, and an adequate reason, too, although it does not show in the record. The reason is domestic politics.

Whenever a treaty is made, someone must make it. That someone must be an official of the United States, which is to say, a member of the party in power. It is therefore to the interest of the opposition to maintain that any treaty whatsoever is a bad treaty, simply because it was made by untrustworthy men.

Note that in the whole long list the Treaty of Ghent is the only one that was not instantly and venomously attacked by the opposition party. The reason for that is plain: there was no opposition party. The Hartford Convention, with its threat of secession by New England, had torpedoed the Federalist Party in 1814, and a new opposition had not yet had time to coalesce. This was the beginning of the so-called “Era of Good Feeling.” Gallatin’s treaty escaped because there was no organized opposition.

But by the time the Webster-Ashburton Treaty wais made, partisan antagonism was not only organized, it was at white heat. The administration was in an extraordinary position. The Whigs had won the election of 1840 with William Henry Harrison; but to help in the campaign they had named a disgruntled Democrat, John Tyler, as Harrison’s running mate. Harrison died thirty days after his inauguration and that left in the Presidency a man who was a Democrat in everything except his hatred of Andrew Jackson. Tyler proved it by promptly vetoing every important piece of legislation the Whigs put through. Henry Clay, the Whig Party leader, indignantly ordered all members of the Cabinet to resign, and they did, with the exception of Webster, who was so much interested in the treaty that he would not quit until it was completed. This infuriated the Whigs, and as for the Democrats, they already held to the position that any treaty negotiated by a Whig was bound to be a bad one. The wonder is, not that the WebsterAshburton Treaty was denounced, but that it was ever ratified by the Senate.

So with the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850. Taylor was President then, and Taylor was merely an old soldier, with no great political strength. Taylor was technically a Whig, too, but neither Clay nor Webster, the great party leaders, had much respect for him and made little effort to defend him. So the Democrats had a field day.

Cleveland, on the other hand, was a Democrat, but he was heartily detested by the radical wing of his own party. The Venezuela affair came up just a year before the election of 1896, and both Republicans and Free-Silver Democrats were swift to accuse the President of trying to make political capital of the whole affair. Cleveland’s diplomatic victory was too overwhelming to be denied outright; so the line in that case was that the British really had not been beaten, but that they had connived with Cleveland to create an issue for the political benefit of the President.

This practice of regarding foreign affairs as legitimate issues in domestic politics has been remarked, and deprecated, by every student of American government. The usual argument against it is, however, that it tends to betray us into making war foolishly. At present its tendency is rather to handicap us in making peace wisely. If we go into the negotiations thoroughly distrustful of our ability to hold our own against the British, we shall be handicapped in attempting to judge proposals accurately.

If the record means anything, this distrust may be of small significance in the actual negotiations. On the face of the record, Americans have always done well at the council table. The crucial point, because it is the point at which public opinion is felt, is the matter of ratification. Furthermore, this point is not likely to be passed quickly and definitely after the present war; for there is every indication that the negotiations will be prolonged, perhaps for years, and the settlement will be embodied, not in one document, but in a series of treaties, each of which presumably will have to be ratified by the Senate and accepted by the people if peace is to be firmly established.

It makes no difference which party is in power when these treaties come before the Senate and the people. The abler men in both parties may be agreed, but small-sized politicians in the opposition will certainly try to persuade us that we have been swindled again. If they are successful, then the treaties will be rejected or, at most, accepted so grudgingly that it will be hard to make them effective in the fullest sense; and that would threaten the durability of the peace.

Yet the widespread delusion that t he record is one of consistent failure gives the little politicians an excellent chance to succeed. It seems to be a fact, therefore, that at present the American’s undue modesty about his ability as a trader constitutes a real danger; and who would have believed it?

What about the war debts? Well, what about them? Whatever the British did in relation to the war debts, they did not out-trade us.

About the war debts, one must accept the theory that they should have been paid or the theory that they shouldn’t. If they should have been paid, then the Americans were not out-traded: they were simply robbed, for the British defaulted.

If they shouldn’t have been paid, then again the Americans were not out-traded. On the contrary, they had made so good a trade that the British thought they could not meet it without ruin, and chose the disgrace of default rather than try to meet it.

My own belief is that we skinned the British unmercifully in that deal; nevertheless, the British should have paid, not because the debt was just, but to protect their own credit. I think that refusing to pay is just another instance of the senile futility of British government between 1920 and 1940. It is off the same bolt of cloth as the refusal to stop Japan in Manchuria, the Hoare-Laval deal to sell out Abyssinia, the Spanish non-intervention deal, and the Munich deal. In 1939 and 1940 the British, as a matter of fact, did pay the war debt about three times in the form of high prices for American goods. They didn’t get the Lend-Lease Act until March 11, 1941, and one reason for the delay was their failure to pay the war debts. Politically that failure was foolish, for it very nearly cost them their national existence.

In any event, they didn’t out-trade us. Only in the case of the Canadian fisheries have they done that.