tion from Grant, had continued in friendly personal relations with Fish. Within a fortnight he had dined at Fish's home. When he read this passage, which he not unreasonably applied to himself, his wrath was hot. He felt that he had been betrayed by a pretended friend. From that time he had only formal relations with Fish. It was on January 15, only a week later, that Fish had to seek the interview with regard to the mission of Sir John Rose through the mediation of a common friend. Thereafter Sumner was ignored by the Administration in handling questions of diplomacy. Grant had set his heart on being rid of him.

A new Congress came into being on the 4th of March. When the Senate entered on the task of organizing its committees, the supporters of the Administration served notice that Sumner should be deposed from his position at the head of the Committee on Foreign Relations. The Massachusetts Senator had few real friends among his associates. His manner for years had been overbearing. Adams says that, while not exacting deference, "habitual deference was essential to his good-will." Those who, had he been of different temper, might have sustained hira, now left him to his fate. Thenceforward, he pursued Grant without mercy. His vehement denunciation inspired others to unsparing criticism,

and who can say how far the impressions of writers of history may have been due to him? Yet Grant said to Lowell years later at Madrid: "Sumner is the only man I was ever anything but my real self to; the only man I ever tried to conciliate by artificial means." A curious comment.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE CUBAN PROBLEM-SOUND FINANCE

"BLACK FRIDAY"

OVER half of Grant's inaugural was devoted to a discussion of the nation's financial credit. Four other topics were treated. He pledged himself to enforce all laws for the security of "person, property, and free religion, and political opinion in every part of our common country without regard to local prejudice," an unmistakable warning to the lawless element in the South. He declared that he would favor any course toward the Indians which would tend to their civilization and ultimate citizenship, the first of our Presidents to take such advanced position. He expressed a desire for the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, giving to the negro the right of suffrage, a wish fulfilled in the first year of his Administration.

Grant in his inaugural enunciated his foreign policy in a few robust and pregnant sentences, the sturdy tone of which carried throughout his entire Administration. "I would deal with nations as equitable law requires individuals to deal with each other, and I would protect the law-abiding citizen, whether of native or foreign birth, wherever his

rights are jeopardized, or the flag of our country floats. I would respect the rights of all nations, demanding equal respect for our own. If others depart from this rule in their dealings with us, we may be compelled to follow their precedent."

The spirit of this declaration pervaded and galvanized our treatment of Great Britain and Canada in the Alabama claims and the fisheries and boundary disputes; of Spain in her relations with Cuba and in the Virginius affair; of Mexico and the South and Central American Republics in the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine.

We have seen how delicately the British and San Domingan questions were interlaced. The Cuban problem was a third thread in the skein.

While Fish, with the aid of Rose, was trying to bring about a renewal of negotiations with Great Britain, Grant had turned his attention to the West Indies where Cuba and San Domingo filled for the moment the field of vision. Spectacularly the rapid developments in the Antilles counted for more than the deft and cautious diplomatic approaches between our State Department and the British Foreign Office, but Fish retained throughout a sense of international proportion. He did not personally approve Grant's course in San Domingo and felt it necessary to moderate his chief's desire to meddle in the Cuban

insurrection, but so long as he had a clear path in what he deemed the greater problem, he was content in general to let Grant have his way without the risk of strained relations through offering unasked advice. There was much interest throughout the North, especially in New York financial circles, in the Cuban revolutionists, who had appealed to our Government for aid and had enlisted in their cause the sympathetic Rawlins, now Secretary of War.

Grant was strongly inclined to Rawlins's view, and as early as June 9, 1869, he asked Sumner about issuing a proclamation according belligerent rights to the insurgents, thus doing unto Spain as Spain had done to us at the beginning of the Civil War. Sumner advised against it, but Grant stuck to his idea, and having ordered a proclamation to be drawn up, he signed it on August 19 in the cabin of one of the Fall River boats and sent it to Washington by the hand of Bancroft Davis, the Assistant Secretary of State, with instructions to Fish to issue the proclamation after signing it and affixing the official seal. Fish, gingerly feeling his way toward reopening negotiations with Great Britain, was keenly alive to the difficulty involved in England's recognition of Confederate belligerency, too great emphasis upon the enormity of which by Sumner threatened to make his essay at negotiations abortive.