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

[622] exact time and place are unimportant, except as bearing on her method of dealing with facts. She quotes three sentences from the speech, and at the end of the first one there are stars, indicating an omission. The next sentence was the following, at the beginning of which she was careful to stop:—

‘It must, however,’ continued General Raasloff,

not be forgotten that the treaty has not been rejected; its ratification has only been postponed; and that it is so is owing to the stand taken by some few wise statesmen, foremost among whom is my friend the Hon. Charles Sumner, one of the most prominent and experienced statesmen of the age, for many years the leader of the Senate in regard to foreign relations, and a man who never loses sight of the regard and consideration due from one friendly nation to another.

Miss Seward might well omit this sentence, as it spoils entirely her theory. The omission of Mr. Seward's name from the speech is significant. He had led the Danish negotiator into a pitfall, and his name therefore received no grateful mention. Raasloff's career as a public man ended with his diplomatic failure, and with the fall of his ministry as the consequence; and leaving his country he passed the rest of his life abroad, chiefly in Paris, and died in the suburb of Passy, Feb. 14, 1883, at the age of sixty-seven. He was in New York in May, 1872, but he had become soured by disappointment, and kept aloof from Washington.

Within a month before General Raasloff left Washington in 1869, there was a new President, General Grant, and a new Secretary of State, Mr. Fish, neither of whom showed favor to the treaty, the former dismissing it summarily as ‘a scheme of Seward's, and he would have nothing to do with it;’ and the latter sending to Mr. Sumner notes which indicated an adverse leaning. As appears by one bearing date Oct. 8, 1869, Mr. Fish peremptorily refused, at the urgent request of De Bille, the new Danish minister, to ask for another extension of time for the ratification, leaving De Bille to ask for it, and took pains to guard against any expression in favor of its ratification. A few months later, Jan. 28, 1870, he transmitted to Mr. Sumner, for use at his discretion, a letter from R. C. Kirk, minister resident at Buenos Ayres, dated Dec. 13, 1869, who, in an account of a recent visit, described St. Thomas as ‘one of the most God-forsaken islands; . . . the great majority of its inhabitants filthy-looking negroes,’ subject to earthquakes, one of which occurred on the morning of his arrival, and the island itself as ‘not desirable even as a gift.’

Miss Seward undertakes to give matters of record concerning the treaty which at the time she wrote were under the seal of secrecy. But upon the removal of the injunction, Jan. 5, 1888, on Mr. Hoar's motion, it was found that Mr. Sumner did not, as she states, indorse ‘the one word “adversely” on the treaty,’ and that neither he nor any one indorsed that or any other words upon it, it being absolutely free from any notes whatever. Even the wrapper contains only a memorandum of the reference to the committee. The words ‘suspension of action’ which she puts in quotation marks as Mr. Sumner's recommendation, are her words, not Mr. Sumner's or the committee's.

The committee took definite action at the time General Raasloff left Washington finally. It laid the treaty on the table March 30, 1869, and recorded on its minutes the words, ‘The understanding being that this was equivalent to rejection, and was a gentler method of effecting it.’ For his sake it held back