The Treaty of Washington arbitrated several contentious issues that had soured relations between Britain, Canada, and the United States in the mid-19th century. First, there was a dispute over the boundary between the United States and Canada on the West Coast. The Oregon Treaty of 1846 had set the boundary at the middle of the channel separating Vancouver Island from the mainland, but since there was no well-defined channel, sovereignty over the midchannel San Juan Islands was left in question. There was also the fisheries problem, since Americans had been fishing in Canadian coastal waters for many years, much to that dominion’s annoyance. A recent irritant to Anglo-American relations was the American failure to prevent the raids in 1866 and 1870 on Canada perpetrated by Irish-American Fenians in the hopes of instigating an Anglo-American war that would free Ireland from British rule.
The foremost issue, however, was the Alabama claims. The question of the recompense for damage done to American shipping during the Civil War by British-built cruisers (the Alabama and her sister ships) had poisoned Anglo-American relations since that war’s conclusion. Britain had repeatedly rebuffed American demands that it express regrets for its actions and make payment to the United States for shipping losses and the costly pursuit of the commerce raiders. Charles Sumner, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the British owed the Americans not only $15 million in direct damages but also an additional $2 billion for prolonging the war two years by its support of the Confederacy. It was obvious that Sumner and like-minded expansionists would accept Canada in lieu of cash.
For years the situation defied settlement, but President Ulysses S. Grant soured on Sumner and gave his moderate secretary of state Hamilton Fish a free hand. Meanwhile, Britain, fearing that neutrals might build cruisers bent on destroying British commerce in a future conflict, was having second thoughts about its dubious neutrality during the Civil War. On May 8, 1871, Britain, with Canada represented among its negotiators, and the United States signed the Treaty of Washington, which stipulated that the Alabama claims would be settled by an international arbitration panel that would meet in Geneva. The British expressed regret for the damage done by British-built warships and agreed to rules defining neutral behavior. Both sides agreed to reciprocal fishing rights in American and Canadian territorial waters, with the price of the Canadian rights, which were of greater value, to be determined by a joint commission. It was also agreed that the emperor of Germany, Wilhelm I, would arbitrate the settlement of the San Juan boundary dispute. The treaty passed the Senate on May 24, 1871, by a vote of 50 to 12.
At the commencement of the arbitration panel in Geneva in December 1871, the United States renewed the Sumner claim for indirect damages, inspired some months of war talk, and jeopardized the treaty until cooler heads prevailed and the Americans retreated. On June 19, 1872, the tribunal’s president Count Federico Sclopis of Italy announced that the indirect claims were outside the avowed purview of the panel. Getting down to business, on September 14, 1872, the arbitration panel ordered Great Britain to pay the United States $15.5 million. Later in 1872 the German emperor awarded the San Juan Islands to the United States; in 1873 a commission on the outstanding claims of both the United States and Britain awarded almost $2 million to the latter; and in 1875 the fisheries commission awarded the British $5.5 million. Although Canadians, Britons, and Americans all grumbled, all were winners in the most successful arbitration treaty the world had yet witnessed.
Further reading: Adrian Cook, The Alabama Clai-ms: American Politics and Anglo-American Relations, 18961872 (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975); Allan Nevins, Hamilton Fish: The Inner History of the Grant Administration (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1936).
—Timothy E. Vislocky
Watterson, Henry (1840-1921) journalist, newspaper editor
Although only five feet tall and weighing 80 pounds in his maturity, Henry Watterson was a larger-than-life editor. He was born in Washington, D. C., on February 16, 1840. Watterson, whose father was a U. S. representative, as a child sat on Andrew Jackson’s knee. A frail child whose eyesight was damaged by scarlet fever, Watterson was tutored by his mother until he was 12. He frequented the Capitol and was on the floor of the House and wept when John Quincy Adams, who had often taken him to the Library of Congress, was fatally stricken. From 1852 to 1856 Watterson attended the Academy of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, where for four years he edited the school paper. Fearing he was too frail for college, his parents had him tutored at their McMinnville, Tennessee, home. When his father gave him a printing press in the summer of 1856, he began publishing the New Era, a two-page broadside. His first editorial, warning that the election of the Republican John Charles Fremont would dissolve the Union, was reprinted by Democratic papers throughout the East.
In 1858, when he was 18, Watterson went to New York City and worked briefly for the Tribune and the Times. By the end of the year he was back in Washington, D. C., where his father had influential friends. He was appointed a clerk in the Interior Department, became a reporter for the Washington States, and a correspondent for the Philadelphia Press. He interviewed John Brown immediately after his raid on Harpers Ferry, ardently supported Stephen A. Douglas for president in 1860, and became his personal friend and stood with him near the new president, when
386 Weather Bureau, U. S.
Abraham Lincoln delivered his inaugural address in March 1861.
The coming of the Civil War in April left Watterson, who was an ardent unionist and hated slavery, in a quandary. Since his father’s close friend was Secretary of War Simon Cameron, he explored the possibility of a War Department clerkship but decided to go home to Tennessee to sit out the war. Within a month Watterson joined the Confederate army. His size and eyesight made him an unlikely soldier, and he only served intermittently, often as a staff officer. More often he edited newspapers, such as the Rebel, which was aimed at rallying troops and which he edited in Chattanooga from 1862 to 1863. His lively, irreverent, critical style made Watterson popular with soldiers but not necessarily their generals. With the Confederacy collapsing in early 1865, Watterson made his way north to relatives in Cincinnati, Ohio. Through his uncle, Stanley Matthews (a future Supreme Court justice), he got a job editing the Cincinnati Evening Times, which he rejuvenated.
In September 1865 Watterson returned to the South as coeditor of the Nashville Republican Banner, and on December 20 he married Rebecca Ewing. They had five children. Editorially, Watterson pled for sectional reconciliation and for national harmony. He favored the Reconstruction policies of President Andrew Johnson but feared that the resultant election of former Confederate leaders and the enactment of Mississippi’s Black Code would play into the hands of Radical Republicans. He preached moderation, welcomed the end of slavery, and thought education more important for Aerican Americans than the ballot. He warned them that their best friends were unprejudiced, intelligent, supportive white Southerners, rather than carpetbaggers. When in 1867 Radical Republicans imposed military Reconstruction on the South, Watterson angered white supremacists when he advised them to utilize what rights they had to create good governments.
In 1868 Watterson moved to Louisville, Kentucky, to edit the Louisville Journal. By the end of the year he and Walter Haldeman, the proprietor of the Louisville Courier, merged their papers to create the Courier-Journal, which Watterson edited. His wish was to lead the South in bridging the “bloody chasm” to restore the Union of the 1850s, with its low tariffs, states rights, and the political supremacy of the Democratic Party. To unite Northern and Southern moderates, he attacked Radical Republicans but especially concentrated on unreconstructed rebel Bourbon Democrats, telling them to accept the Reconstruction civil rights and voting rights amendments. He successfully fought for anti-Ku Klux Klan legislation, for the right of blacks to ride on Louisville’s street cars, and for the admission of blacks’ testimony in Kentucky state courts. Watterson also advocated the development of a “New South” of diversified crops and of railroads and cotton mills, financed by Northern capital.
Watterson’s outspoken views achieved a national reputation for the Courier-Journal and a place for himself among party leaders. In 1872 he attended the Liberal Republican convention, dedicated to reunion and reform, and joined the quadrilateral of newspaper editors who thought they could dictate the nomination of Charles Francis Adams. When Horace Greeley was nominated, Watterson supported him for the Democratic nomination, but, despite both nominations, Greeley lost to Ulysses S. Grant. In 1876 Watterson chaired the Democratic National Convention that nominated his ideal candidate, Samuel Jones Tilden, who lost the ensuing disputed election to Ruthereord B. Hayes. Having been elected to Congress to serve the remaining six months of a deceased member, Watterson spoke in the House for Tilden during the election dispute. At a rally he also called for a protest march on Washington by 100,000 unarmed citizens. Unfortunately, when Joseph Pulitzer spoke after him, calling for 100,000 armed men, Watterson was condemned as an irresponsible hothead, rather than Pulitzer.
Watterson rejoiced in 1884, when the Democratic Party finally had a winner in Grover Cleveland. Although Cleveland’s commitment to civil service reeorm irked him, Watterson was pleased in 1888 when Cleveland embraced TARIEE reform. In 1892, however, Watterson tried to prevent Cleveland’s nomination. When Watterson, a consistent opponent of inflation, refused to support William Jennings Bryan and the Free Silver movement in 1896, the Courier-Journal lost Democratic subscribers. Watterson supported the Spanish-American War, thinking it would bring the North and South together and hoping that war’s imperialism would generate international trade, benefiting Kentucky and the South. He reluctantly supported Bryan on his subsequent runs for the presidency and gave Woodrow Wilson only lukewarm support, since he paid little attention to his advice. Watterson vigorously supported American participation in World War I, but in its aftermath opposed the League of Nations and was appalled by the Prohibition and woman suffrage constitutional amendments. He retired in April 1919 and died on December 22, 1921.
Further reading: Daniel S. Margolies, Henry Watterson and the New South: The Politics of Empire, Free Trade, and Globalization (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2006); Joseph Frazier Wall, Henry Watterson: Reconstructed Rebel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956).
World History
