cede the island to the United States. The proposal was declined; and the manner in which the resolution of intervention was kept, by the establishment of an independent government under safeguards which cannot hamper the exercise of the island's sovereignty for any legitimate purpose, forms one of the most honorable chapters in diplomatic history.

In 1848 an offer of the sovereignty of Yucatan was made to the United States, but the occasion for its consideration soon passed away.

In negotiations with the Dominican Republic, in 1854, for a commercial treaty, an effort was made to obtain for the United States a coaling station in Samana Bay. An examination of the bay had been made by Captain George B. McClellan, whose report may be found among the Congressional documents. The effort to obtain the desired privilege was renewed in 1855, but without success. In 1866, Mr. F. W. Seward, Assistant Secretary of State, was sent to Santo Domingo for the purpose of securing a cession or lease of the peninsula of Samana as a naval station. His mission was not successful, but its object was not abandoned, and his powers were transferred to the commercial agent at Santo Domingo City. In 1868 the President of the Dominican Republic requested the United States immediately to take the country under its protection and occupy Samana Bay and other strategic points

as a preliminary to annexation. In his annual message of December 9, 1868, President Johnson, Mr. Seward still being Secretary of State, advocated the acquisition of "the several adjacent continental and insular communities as speedily as it may be done peacefully, lawfully, and without any violation of national justice, faith, or honor," and declared that, while foreign possession or control of them had "hindered the growth and impaired the influence of the United States," "chronic revolution and anarchy would be equally injurious." A joint resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives for the annexation of the Dominican Republic. An agent from Santo Domingo was then in Washington awaiting action. The project was warmly espoused by President Grant, and on November 29, 1869, two treaties were concluded, one for the annexation of the Dominican Republic and the other for the lease of Samana Bay. Both instruments were communicated to the Senate on January 10, 1870. They failed to receive that body's approval. In his last annual message to Congress, in 1876, President Grant recurred to the subject, reaffirming his belief in the wisdom of the policy that he had proposed.

In 1867, George Bancroft was instructed, while proceeding as minister to Berlin, to call at Madrid and sound the Spanish government as to the cession of the islands of Culebra and Culebrita, in the Spanish West Indies, to the United States as a naval sta

tion. The results of his inquiries were so discouraging that the subject was peremptorily dropped; but the islands have come into the possession of the United States under the treaty of peace with Spain of 1898.

In his efforts to obtain the cession of islands in the West Indies, Mr. Seward did not overlook the Danish possessions in that quarter. His informal negotiations probably began as early as January, 1865. The Danish government discouraged his advances, but they were renewed in an official form in July, 1866. A convention for the cession of St. Thomas and St. John for $7,500,000, leaving Santa Cruz to Denmark, was signed at Copenhagen on October 24, 1867. As stipulated in the treaty, a vote was taken in the islands; it was almost unanimously in favor of annexation to the United States. This circumstance greatly increased the embarrassment of the Danish government when the United States Senate failed to approve the treaty. On January 24, 1902, a convention was signed at Washington for the cession to the United States of the islands of St. Thomas, St. John, and Santa Cruz, with the adjacent islands and rocks, all for the sum of $5,000,000. It was approved by the Senate on February 17, 1902. It was approved by the lower house of the Danish Rigsdag; but on October 21, 1902, it failed in the upper house, by an even division.

The Mole St. Nicolas, in Hayti, was leased by the United States during the civil war as a naval station. In 1891, however, the Haytian government declined to let the harbor again for a similar purpose.

X

INFLUENCE AND TENDENCIES

NOTHING could have been further from the thoughts of the wise statesmen who guided the United States through the struggle for independence and laid the foundations of the government's foreign policy than the institution of a philosophical propagandism for the dissemination of political principles of a certain type in foreign lands. Although the Declaration of Independence loudly proclaimed the theory of the natural rights of man, they gave to this theory, in its application to their own concerns, a qualified interpretation, and, as practical men, forbore to push it at once to all its logical consequences. On the continent of Europe, the apostles of reform, directing their shafts against absolutism and class privileges, spoke in terms of philosophical idealism, while the patriots of America, though they did not eschew philosophy, debated concrete questions of constitutional law and commonplace problems of taxation. In Europe, the revolution meant first of all a destructive upheaval; in America, where the ground was clear, it meant a constructive de