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

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

for such a change of front was weak, the Secretary merely urging that the Peace Congress by not including Europe defeated its own purposes. Blaine felt the weakness of the argument and in a pointed letter told the President that Europe surely could not take offense "unless it be the interest of the European powers that the American nations should at intervals fall into war and bring reproach on republican institutions." 2

If Blaine's statesmanship was impugned by abandoning the Congress, his honor was involved in the Peruvian mission. His reputation for financial probity had been attacked before, and on this point he was peculiarly vulnerable. He was accused of a conspiracy to monopolize Peruvian guano, and the charges were put forth with such insistence that Congress ordered an investigation. With one exception, the committee reported in Blaine's favor. The lone exception was a Democrat, Perry Belmont, who hectored Blaine unmercifully when the ex-Secretary appeared before the committee. In the circumstances it was regrettable that Blaine's persistent speculating in stocks afforded a wedge for such accusations.

On still another issue Blaine's plans were overthrown, though, as in the case of the Pan-American Congress, his idea was later followed. The Hayes Administration passed out with Isthmian relations far from satisfactory. Blaine's contribution toward their settlement was a move to modify the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. In his opinion, the treaty tied our hands. While it remained in force we could scarcely be termed free agents. In a strongly worded dispatch he called the attention of Great Britain to our attitude. Even had he remained in office, it is unlikely that he could have accomplished his purposes in as much as Great Britain had no intention of forfeiting her rights under the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. The credit falls, however, to John Hay, a later Secretary, for accomplishing what Blaine desired. He enjoyed the advantage of treating with Great Britain in her

2 Rhodes, James Ford, History of the United States, VIII, p. 157. Citing Foreign Relations 1882, p. 407.

3 Stanwood, Edward, James G. Blaine (Boston, 1908), 235-257.