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civil officers so far as practicable, internal improvements, free grants of public land to actual settlers, and a tariff sufficient to provide revenue adequate for the government; but it enlarged on the slavery issue, disclaiming any intention to interfere with that institution in the slave states, but declaring that the proper policy was to "limit, localize, and discourage" it. It concluded by proclaiming as the motto of the party, "Free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men." The organization thus formed, known as the Free Soil party, lasted under various names nearly eight years, but was never able to get more than a handful of members into Congress, and it was finally swallowed up by the Republican party.1

The campaign of 1848 was marked by no such enthusiasm as those of 1840 and 1844. The popular vote, exclusive of the four new states, showed a very slight increase over that of 1844. Taylor had a majority over Cass of nearly one hundred and fifty thousand at the polls and of thirty-six in the electoral college, so that if either New York or Pennsylvania had voted for Cass he would have won. In Pennsylvania the dominant influences were not yet reconciled to the Walker tariff; in New York the Hunkers and the national Democratic party were duly punished, for the vote of that state was, in round numbers, 218,000 for Taylor, 120,000 for Van Buren, and 114,000 for Cass-that is, Taylor took the electoral vote only by the division of the Demo

1 Smith, Liberty and Free Soil Parties, chap. xi.

crats. The result for the whole country was a serious illustration of the political inertia of the period, against which the tremendous economic and social forces working for sectionalization exerted themselves for the moment in vain. Eight free and seven slave states were for Cass, while for Taylor these figures were exactly reversed. Disunion was still a question for the future.

The result of the congressional elections was, on the whole, in favor of the Democrats, who elected 112 congressmen, against 105 Whigs.' The FreeSoilers held the balance of power with thirteen members. In the New York delegation the defection of the Barnburners was notably apparent; among its thirty-four members there were one Free-Soiler and one Democrat, and the rest were Whigs. The Federal Senate, however, remained Democratic by a majority of ten.

It would hardly be speaking too strongly to characterize the election of 1848 as a contest without an issue. Neither of the two great parties which alone might expect to win sought to rally the people to the defence of any important principle. Practically the only thing it decided was that a Whig general should be made president because he had done effective work in carrying on a Democratic war. It was only an eddy in the historical current in which force and direction seemed to have been lost.

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CHAPTER XVIII

ISTHMIAN DIPLOMACY

(1846-1850)

HE settlement of the Oregon question and the prospect of the acquisition of California naturally gave a new importance to the old plan of a route across the isthmus of Panama that would materially shorten the line of communication with the new possessions and make the bond which held them to the Union more intimate and vital.1 It is the purpose of this chapter to explain the revival of interest in the project and to show how it worked itself out in the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850.

As early as the reign of the Emperor Charles V. the desirability of better facilities for the carryingtrade between Spain and her colonies of Peru and the Philippines led to a scheme for a waterway across the isthmus;' but it was too large an undertaking for the free capital and energy of any European government at that time. By the end of the sixteenth century, when the Armada had been destroyed and the English sea-dogs had broken

'Schouler, United States, V., 260.

'Keasbey, Nicaragua Canal and Monroe Doctrine, 68.

through the Spanish monopoly in the American trade, the dream of such an enterprise for Spain vanished completely and forever.

For the English themselves, however, the achievement was still possible; and with the increasing influence of Great Britain in isthmian affairs it seemed to grow more likely. During the first half of the seventeenth century English settlers obtained lodgment in what became known as Belize, or British Honduras, and farther southward on the Mosquito Coast, in what is now Nicaragua. By the treaty of Versailles, in 1783, the English settlers in Belize were confirmed in the enjoyment of certain commercial privileges; but all other English settlers who might be dispersed throughout the “Spanish Continent" were to retire within that district within eighteen months, and the sovereignty of Spain over the isthmus was conceded. The settlers, however, were never concentrated as required by the treaty.

In 1823 the Central American states formed a union and declared themselves independent of Spain. In 1835 the British settlers of Belize, which was within the territorial limits claimed by Guatemala, held a convention, changed the name of the district to British Honduras, and petitioned the government in London to recognize it and its dependencies, including the Mosquito Coast, as regular English colonies. Without acting on the petition for the time, the British government, claiming a 1 Senate Exec. Docs., 47 Cong., 1 Sess., VI., No. 194, p. 26.

protectorate over the Mosquito territory, or "Mosquitia," undertook to establish its independence of Nicaragua; but after a few years' delay British Honduras was formally recognized as a British colony. The Nicaraguans were then driven from Mosquitia, and in 1848 were forced to renounce by treaty the control they had claimed over the port at the mouth of the San Juan River, which the British had renamed Greytown.' These encroachments seemed to indicate that Great Britain would have to be reckoned with in any attempt to construct and control a transit-way across the isthmus.

By this time the United States, which had for many years been watching the course of affairs in Central America with a degree of interest, but apparently little disposition to interfere, had begun to take a share. The isthmian transit scheme had a logical place in the expansion policy of Polk; and in 1846 a treaty of amity and commerce with New Granada, afterwards known as the United States of Colombia, was signed, at the instance and urgency of the New Granada government, which secured, in the twenty-fifth article, a guarantee to the government and citizens of the United States of a right of way across the isthmus by any available method of transit on the same terms as those that might be fixed for the people of New Granada themselves. On the other side, the neutrality of the isthmus and the sovereignty of New Granada over it were to be 1 Travis, Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 45.

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