University of Virginia Library

39. CHAPTER XXXIX
AS MEMBER OF THE VENEZUELA COMMISSION—1895-1896

EARLY one morning, just at the end of 1895, as I was at work before the blazing fire in my library at the university, the winter storms howling outside, a card was brought in bearing the name of Mr. Hamlin, assistant secretary of the treasury of the United States. While I was wondering what, at that time of the year, could have brought a man from such important duties in Washington to the bleak hills of central New York, he entered, and soon made known his business, which was to tender me, on the part of President Cleveland, a position upon the commission which had been authorized by Congress to settle the boundary between the republic of Venezuela and British Guiana.

The whole matter had attracted great attention, not only in the United States, but throughout the world. The appointment of the commission was the result of a chain of circumstances very honorable to the President, to his Secretary of State, Mr. Olney, and to Congress. For years the Venezuelan government had been endeavoring to establish a frontier between its territory and that of its powerful neighbor, but without result; and meantime the British boundary seemed to be pushed more and more into the territory of the little Spanish-American republic. For years, too, Venezuela had appealed to the United States, and the United States had appealed to Great Britain. American secretaries of state and ambassadors at the Court of St. James had "trusted,'' and "regretted,''

and had "the honor to renew assurances of their most distinguished consideration''; but all in vain. At last the matter had been presented by Secretary Olney to the government of Lord Salisbury; and now, to Mr. Olney's main despatch on the subject, Lord Salisbury, after some months' delay, had returned an answer declining arbitration, and adding that international law did not recognize the Monroe Doctrine. This seemed even more than cool; for, when one remembered that the Monroe Doctrine was at first laid down with the approval of Great Britain, that it was glorified in Parliament and in the British press of 1823 and the years following, and that Great Britain had laid down policies in various parts of the earth, especially in the Mediterranean and in the far East, which she insisted that all other powers should respect without reference to any sanction by international law, this argument seemed almost insulting.

So it evidently seemed to Mr. Cleveland. Probably no man less inclined to demagogism or to a policy of adventure ever existed; but as he looked over the case his American instincts were evidently aroused. He saw then, what is clear to everybody now, that it was the time of all times for laying down, distinctly and decisively, the American doctrine on the subject. He did so, and in a message to Congress proposed that, since Great Britain would not intrust the finding of a boundary to arbitration, the United States should appoint commissioners to find what the proper boundary was, and then, having ascertained it, should support its sister American republic in maintaining it.

Of course the President was attacked from all sides most bitterly; even those called "the better element'' in the Republican and Democratic parties, who had been his ardent supporters, now became his bitter enemies. He was charged with "demagogism'' and "jingoism,'' but he kept sturdily on. Congress, including the great body of the Republicans, supported him; the people at large stood by him; and, as a result, a commission to determine

the boundary was appointed and began its work in Washington, the commissioners being, in the order named by the President, David J. Brewer of Kansas, a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; Chief Justice Alvey of the District of Columbia; Andrew D. White of New York; F. R. Coudert, an eminent member of the New York bar; and Daniel C. Gilman of Maryland, President of Johns Hopkins University.

On our arrival in Washington there was much discouragement among us. We found ourselves in a jungle of geographical and legal questions, with no clue in sight leading anywhither. The rights of Great Britain had been derived in 1815, from the Netherlands; the rights of Venezuela had been derived, about 1820, from Spain; but to find the boundary separating the two in that vast territory, mainly unsettled, between the Orinoco and the Essequibo rivers, seemed impossible.

The original rights of the Netherlands had been derived from Spain by the treaty of Münster in 1648; and on examining that enormous document, which settled weighty questions in various parts of the world, after the life-and-death struggle, religious, political, and military, which had gone on for nearly eighty years, one little clause arrested our attention: that, namely, in which the Spaniards, despite their bitter hatred of the Dutch, agreed that the latter might carry on warlike operations against "certain other people'' with reference to territorial rights in America. These "certain other people'' were not precisely indicated; and we hoped, by finding who they were, to get a clue to the fundamental facts of the case. Straightway two of our three lawyers, Mr. Justice Brewer and Mr. Coudert, grappled on this question, one of them taking the ground that these "other people'' referred to were the Caribbean Indians who had lived just south of the mouth of the Orinoco, and had been friendly to the Dutch but implacable toward the Spaniards, and that their territory was to be considered as virtually Dutch, and, therefore, as having passed finally to England. But the

other disputant insisted that it referred to the Brazilians and had no relation to the question with which we had to deal. During two whole sessions this ground was fought over in a legal way by these gentlemen, with great acumen, the rest of us hardly putting in a word.

At the beginning of the third session I ventured a remonstrance, saying that it was a historical, and not a legal, question; that it could not possibly be settled by legal argument; that the first thing to know was why the clause was inserted in the treaty, and that the next thing was to find, from the whole history leading up to it, who those "other persons'' thus vaguely referred to and left by the Spaniards to the tender mercies of the Dutch might be; and I insisted that this, being a historical question, must be solved by historical experts. The commission acknowledged the justice of this; and on my nomination we called to our aid Mr. George Lincoln Burr, professor of history in Cornell University. It is not at all the very close friendship which has existed for so many years between us which prompts the assertion that, of all historical scholars I have ever known, he is among the very foremost, by his powers of research, his tenacity of memory, his almost preternatural accuracy, his ability to keep the whole field of investigation in his mind, and his fidelity to truth and justice. He was set at the problem, and given access to the libraries of Congress and of the State Department, as also to the large collections of books and maps which had been placed at the disposal of the commission. Of these the most important were those of Harvard University and the University of Wisconsin. Curious as it may seem, this latter institution, far in the interior of our country, possesses a large and most valuable collection of maps relating to the colonization history of South America. Within two weeks Professor Burr reported, and never did a report give more satisfaction. He had unraveled, historically, the whole mystery, and found that, the government of Brazil having played false to both Spaniards and Dutch, Spain had allowed the

Netherlands to take vengeance for the vexations of both. We also had the exceedingly valuable services, as to maps and early colonization history, of Mr. Justin Winsor, librarian of Harvard University, eminent both as historian and geographer, and of Professor Jameson of Brown University, who had also distinguished himself in these fields. Besides these, Mr. Marcus Baker of the United States Coast Survey aided us, from day to day, in mapping out any territories that we wished especially to study.

All this work was indispensable. At the very beginning of our sessions there had been laid before us the first of a series of British Blue Books on the whole subject; and, with all my admiration for the better things in British history, politics, and life, candor compels me to say that it was anything but creditable to the men immediately responsible for it. It made several statements that were absolutely baseless, and sought to rest them upon authorities which, when examined, were found not to bear in the slightest degree the interpretation put upon them. I must confess that nothing, save, perhaps, the conduct of British "experts'' regarding the Behring Sea question, has ever come so near shaking my faith in "British fair play.'' Nor were the American commissioners alone in judging this document severely. Critics broke forth, even in the London "Times,'' denouncing it, until it was supplanted by another, which was fair and just.

I, of course, impute nothing to the leading British statesmen who had charge of the whole Venezuelan question. The culprits were, undoubtedly, sundry underlings whose zeal outran their honesty. They apparently thought that in the United States, which they probably considered as new, raw, and too much engaged in dollar-hunting to produce scholars, their citations from authorities more or less difficult of access would fail to be critically examined. But their conduct was soon exposed, and even their principals joined in repudiating some of their fundamental statements. Professor Burr was sent abroad, and at The Hague was able to draw treasures from the library

and archives regarding the old Dutch occupation and to send a mass of important material for our deliberations. In London also he soon showed his qualities, and these were acknowledged even by some leading British geographers. The latter had at first seemed inclined to indulge in what a German might call "tendency'' geography; but the clearness, earnestness, and honesty of our agent soon gained their respect, and, after that, the investigators of both sides worked harmoniously together. While the distinguished lawyers above named had main charge of the legal questions, President Gilman, who had in his early life been professor of physical and general geography at Yale, was given charge of the whole matter of map-seeking and -making; and to me, with the others, was left the duty of studying and reporting upon the material as brought in. Taking up my residence at Washington, I applied myself earnestly to reading through masses of books, correspondence, and other documents, and studied maps until I felt as if I had lived in the country concerned and was personally acquainted with the Dutch governors on the Cuyuni and the Spanish monks on the Orinoco. As a result lines more or less tentative were prepared by each of us, Judge Brewer and myself agreeing very closely, and the others not being very distant from us at any important point. One former prime minister of Great Britain I learned, during this investigation, to respect greatly,—Lord Aberdeen, whom I well remembered as discredited and driven from power during my stay in Russia at the time of the Crimean War. He was wise enough in those days to disbelieve in war with Russia, and to desire a solution of the Turkish problem by peace, but was overruled, and the solution was attempted by a war most costly in blood and treasure, which was apparently successful, but really a failure. He was driven from his post with ignominy; and I well remembered seeing a very successful cartoon in "Punch'' at that period, representing him, wearing coronet and mantle and fast asleep, at the helm of the ship of state, which was rolling in the trough of the sea and apparently about to founder.

Since that time his wisdom has, I think, been recognized; and I am now glad to acknowledge the fact that, of all the many British statesmen who dealt with the Venezuelan question, he was clearly the most just. The line he drew seemed to me the fairest possible. He did not attempt to grasp the mouth of the Orinoco, nor did he meander about choice gold-fields or valuable strategic points, seeking to include them. The Venezuelans themselves had shown willingness to accept his proposal; but alleged, as their reason for not doing so, that the British government had preached to them regarding their internal policy so offensively that self-respect forbade them to acquiesce in any part of it.

Toward this Aberdeen line we tended more and more; and in the sequel we heard, with very great satisfaction, that the Arbitration Tribunal at Paris had practically adopted this line, which we of the commission had virtually agreed upon. It need hardly be stated that, each side having at the beginning of the arbitration claimed the whole vast territory between the Orinoco and the Essequibo, neither was quite satisfied with the award. But I believe it to be thoroughly just, and that it forms a most striking testimony to the value of international arbitration in such questions, as a means, not only of preserving international peace, but of arriving at substantial justice.

Our deliberations and conclusions were, of course, kept secret. It was of the utmost importance that nothing should get out regarding them. Our sessions were delayed and greatly prolonged, partly on account of the amount of work to be done in studying the many questions involved, and partly because we hoped that, more and more, British opinion would tend to the submission of the whole question to the judgment of a proper international tribunal; and that Lord Salisbury, the prime minister, who, in his rather cynical, "Saturday-Review,'' high-Tory way, had scouted the idea of arbitration,

would at last be brought to it. Of course, every thinking Englishman looked with uneasiness toward the possibility that a line might be laid down by the United States which it would feel obliged to maintain, and which would necessitate its supporting Venezuela, at all hazards, against Great Britain.

The statesmanship of Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Olney finally triumphed. Most fortunately for both parties, Great Britain had at Washington a most eminent diplomatist, whose acquaintance I then made, but whom I afterward came to know, respect, and admire even more during the Peace Conference at The Hague—Sir Julian, afterward Lord, Pauncefote. His wise counsels prevailed; Lord Salisbury receded from his position; Great Britain agreed to arbitration; and the question entered into a new stage, which was finally ended by the award of the Arbitration Tribunal at Paris, presided over by M. de Martens of St. Petersburg, and having on its bench the chief justices of the two nations and two of the most eminent judges of their highest courts. It is with pride and satisfaction that I find their award agreeing, substantially, with the line which, after so much trouble, our own commission had worked out. Arbitration having been decided upon, our commission refrained from laying down a frontier-line, but reported a mass of material, some fourteen volumes in all, with an atlas containing about seventy-five maps, all of which formed a most valuable contribution to the material laid before the Court of Arbitration at Paris.

It was a happy solution of the whole question, and it was a triumph of American diplomacy in the cause of right and justice.

I may mention, in passing, one little matter which throws light upon a certain disgraceful system to which I have had occasion to refer at various other times in these memoirs; and I do so now in the hope of keeping people thinking upon one of the most wretched abuses in the United States. I have said above that we were, of course,

obliged to maintain the strictest secrecy. To have allowed our conclusions to get out would have thwarted the whole purpose of the investigation; but a person who claimed to represent one of the leading presses in Washington seemed to think that consideration of no special importance, and came to our rooms, virtually insisting on receiving information. Having been told that it could not be given him, he took his revenge by inserting a sensational paragraph in the papers regarding the extravagance of the commission. He informed the world that we were expending large sums of public money in costly furniture, in rich carpets, and especially in splendid silverware. The fact was that the rooms were furnished very simply, with plain office furniture, with cheap carpets, and with a safe for locking up the more precious documents intrusted to us and such papers as it was important to keep secret. The "silverware'' consisted of two very plain plated jugs for ice-water; and I may add that after our adjournment the furniture was so wisely sold that very nearly the whole expenditure for it was returned into the treasury.

These details would be utterly trivial were it not that, with others which I have given in other places, they indicate that prostitution of the press to sensation-mongering which the American people should realize and reprove.

While I have not gone into minor details of our work, I have thought that thus much might be interesting. Of course, had these reminiscences been written earlier, this sketch of the interior history of the commission would have been omitted; but now, the award of the Paris tribunal having been made, there is no reason why secrecy should be longer maintained. Never, before that award, did any of us, I am sure, indicate to any person what our view as to the line between the possessions of Venezuela and Great Britain was; but now we may do so, and I feel that all concerned may be congratulated on the fact that two tribunals, each seeking to do justice, united on the same line, and that line virtually the same which one of

the most just of British statesmen had approved many years before.

During this Venezuela work in Washington I made acquaintance with many leading men in politics; and among those who interested me most was Mr. Carlisle of Kentucky, Secretary of the Treasury. He had been member of Congress, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and senator, and was justly respected and admired. Perhaps the most peculiar tribute that I ever heard paid to a public man was given him once in the House of Representatives by my friend Mr. Hiscock, then representative, and afterward senator, from the State of New York. Seated by his side in the House, and noting the rulings of Mr. Carlisle as Speaker, I asked, "What sort of man is this Speaker of yours?'' Mr. Hiscock answered, "As you know, he is one of the strongest of Democrats, and I am one of the strongest of Republicans; yet I will say this: that my imagination is not strong enough to conceive of his making an unfair ruling or doing an unfair thing against the party opposed to him in this House.''

Mr. Carlisle's talents were of a very high order. His speeches carried great weight; and in the campaign which came on later between Mr. McKinley and Mr. Bryan, he, in my opinion, and indeed in the opinion, I think, of every leading public man, did a most honorable thing when he deliberately broke from his party, sacrificed, apparently, all hopes of political preferment, and opposed the regular Democratic candidate. His speech before the working-men of Chicago on the issues of that period was certainly one of the two most important delivered during the first McKinley campaign, the other being that of Carl Schurz.

Another man whom I saw from time to time during this period was the Vice-President, Mr. Stevenson. I first met him at a public dinner in New York, where we sat side by side; but we merely talked on generalities. But the next time I met him was at a dinner given by the Secretary of War, and there I found that he was one of the most admirable

raconteurs I had ever met. After a series of admirable stories, one of the party said to me: "He could tell just as good stories as those for three weeks running and never repeat himself.''

One of these stories by the Vice-President, if true, threw a curious light over the relations of President Lincoln with three men very distinguished in American annals. It was as follows: One day, shortly before the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation, a visitor, finding Mr. Lincoln evidently in melancholy mood, said to him, "Mr. President, I am sorry to find you not feeling so well as at my last visit.'' Mr. Lincoln replied: "Yes, I am troubled. One day the best of our friends from the border States come in and insist that I shall not issue an Emancipation Proclamation, and that, if I do so, the border States will virtually cast in their lot with the Southern Confederacy. Another day, Charles Sumner, Thad Stevens, and Ben Wade come in and insist that if I do not issue such a proclamation the North will be utterly discouraged and the Union wrecked,—and, by the way, these three men are coming in this very afternoon.'' At this moment his expression changed, his countenance lighted up, and he said to the visitor, who was from the West, "Mr. —, did you ever go to a prairie school?'' "No,'' said the visitor, "I never did.'' "Well,'' said Mr. Lincoln, "I did, and it was a very poor school, and we were very poor folks,—too poor to have regular reading-books, and so we brought our Bibles and read from them. One morning the chapter was from the Book of Daniel, and a little boy who sat next me went all wrong in pronouncing the names of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. The teacher had great difficulty in setting him right, and before he succeeded was obliged to scold the boy and cuff him for his stupidity. The nest verse came to me, and so the chapter went along down the class. Presently it started on its way back, and soon after I noticed that the little fellow began crying. On this I asked him, `What 's the matter with you?' and he answered,

`Don't you see? Them three miserable cusses are coming back to me again.' ''

I also at that period made the acquaintance of Senator Gray of Delaware, who seemed to me ideally fitted for his position as a member of the Upper House in Congress. Speaker Reed also made a great impression upon me as a man of honesty, lucidity, and force. The Secretary of State, Mr. Olney, I saw frequently, and was always impressed by the sort of bulldog tenacity which had gained his victory over Lord Salisbury in the arbitration matter.

But to give even the most hasty sketch of the members of the Supreme Court, the cabinet, and of both houses of Congress whom I met would require more time than is at my disposal.

This stay in Washington I enjoyed much. Our capital city is becoming the seat of a refined hospitality which makes it more and more attractive. Time was, and that not very long since, when it was looked upon as a place of exile by diplomatists, and as repulsive by many of our citizens; but all that is of the past: the courtesy shown by its inhabitants is rapidly changing its reputation.

Perhaps, of all the social enjoyments of that time, the most attractive to me was an excursion of the American Geographical Society to Monticello, the final residence of President Jefferson. Years before, while visiting the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, I had been intensely interested in that creation of Mr. Jefferson and in the surroundings of his home; but the present occupant of Monticello, having been greatly annoyed by visitors, was understood to be reluctant to allow any stranger to enter the mansion, and I would not intrude upon him. But now house and grounds were freely thrown open, and upon a delightful day. The house itself was a beautiful adaptation of the architecture which had reached its best development at the time of Jefferson's stay in France; and the decorations, like those which I had noted years before in some of the rooms of the university, were of an exquisite Louis Seize character.

Jefferson's peculiarities, also, came out in various parts of the house. Perhaps the most singular was his bed, occupying the whole space of an archway between two rooms, one of which, on the left, served as a dressing-room for him, and the other, on the right, for Mrs. Jefferson; and, there being no communication between them save by a long circuit through various rooms, it was evident that the ex-President had made up his mind that he would not have his intimate belongings interfered with by any of the women of the household, not even by his wife.

But most attractive of all was the view through the valleys and over the neighboring hills as we sat at our picnic-tables on the lawn. Having read with care every line of Jefferson's letters ever published, and some writings of his which have never been printed, my imagination was vivid. It enabled me to see him walking through the rooms and over the estate, receiving distinguished guests under the portico, discussing with them at his dinner-table the great questions of the day, and promulgating his theories, some of which were so beneficent and others so noxious.

The only sad part of this visit was to note the destruction, by the fire not long before, of the columns in front of the rotunda of the university. I especially mourned over the calcined remains of their capitals, for into these Jefferson had really wrought his own heart. With a passion for the modern adaptation of classic architecture, he had poured the very essence of his artistic feelings into them. He longed to see every stroke which his foreign sculptors made upon them. Daily, according to the chronicle of the time, he rode over to see how they progressed, and, between his visits, frequently observed them through his telescope; and now all their work was but calcined limestone. Fortunately, the burning of the old historical buildings aroused public spirit; large sums of money were poured into the university treasury; and the work was in process which, it is to be hoped, will restore the former

beauty of the colonnade and largely increase the buildings and resources of the institution.

During my work upon the commission I learned to respect more and more the calm, steady, imperturbable character of Mr. Cleveland. Of course the sensational press howled continually, and the press which was considered especially enlightened and which had steadily supported him up to this period, was hardly less bitter; but he persevered. During the period taken by the commission for its work, both the American and British peoples had time for calm thought. Lord Salisbury, especially, had time to think better of it; and when he at last receded from his former haughty position and accepted arbitration, Mr. Cleveland and the State Department gained one of the most honorable victories in the history of American diplomacy.