Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 4

[619] British gold find its way into Cameron's pockets? How were Morton, Patterson, Harlan, Casserly, and Sumner taken care of? One, without recurring to Horace (Nec deus intersit, etc.), ought to be wiser than to resort to such an unnatural explanation.

The Danish negotiator, in his letters to Mr. Sumner and in his speech at Copenhagen, named as his only difficulties ‘the prevailing ignorance of facts’ (which he hoped to remove by proof of the value of the islands as a naval station), and the contest between the President and Congress; but he gave no hint of foreign influence. In fact, the only influence of this kind exerted at Washington was in favor of the treaty, through the attractive qualities of General Raasloff, whom all wished if possible to serve, and the refined hospitality which he freely dispensed. Besides, he argued his case on two different days before the committee on foreign relations, and did what he could to affect public opinion. He called to his service as counsel to enlighten senators a gentleman (the Marquis de Chambrun) who combined social favor with professional accomplishments. He employed an able and well-known writer (Mr. Parton) to prepare a pamphlet argument in favor of ratification, and supplied him with documents concerning the treaty which had been printed by the Senate as confidential; and he sent this pamphlet to senators and to the leading journals of the country, in which it was reviewed. Articles in favor of the ratification appeared in Paris contemporaneously in the ‘Moniteur’ and ‘Pays,’ which indicated a prompting from the same source. It is safe to say that a pressure of such various kinds by a foreign power to carry a treaty in the Senate is without precedent.

The paper under consideration seems to attribute to Mr. Sumner altogether the failure of the treaty in the foreign relations committee, for the reason that he was ‘almost implicitly followed by it.’ He had indeed with the committee the weight which comes from a combination of perfect integrity, sound judgment, large experience, and technical knowledge; but the other members— Fessenden, Cameron, Harlan, Morton, Patterson, and Casserly—were not men naturally of his type, none of them antislavery leaders like himself, every one of them at times strongly differing from him. Mr. Fessenden was at that time antipathetic to him, and disposed to be critical of what he did. If Mr. Sumner was unfair, if he did aught unbecoming a senator, there were sharp eyes to follow him. Mr. Fessenden, it may be remarked, was the member most demonstrative against the St. Thomas treaty, and he was one of the only two senators who voted against the Alaska purchase. Clearly Mr. Sumner's ‘over-mastering advocacy’ in favor of this last treaty did not influence the senator from Maine; and the latter's resistance to the St. Thomas project came equally from his own independent volition.

There are insinuations in Miss Seward's paper which are unworthy of any kinswoman of the distinguished statesman whose name she bears, and which he, if living, would be the first to rebuke. In three passages, at least, she imputes to Mr. Sumner an unworthy and deceptive silence, and a hypocritical purpose to mislead General Raasloff, and give him false hopes of a ratification of the treaty. In all this, as well as in the other charge of ‘smothering’ the treaty (‘secretly and silently done,’ she says), there is no truth. Happily, the amplest record evidence is at hand to disprove them. As many as twenty-five letters or notes from General Raasloff to Mr. Sumner,—from December,