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228 caution and cooperation 11 War’s End Retrenchment and Commerce Ascendant The Civil War’s end brought the rapid disbandment of the Union military and a return to a peacetime economy. Obviously, this event would not have occurred if the United States had wanted to settle its disputes with Britain with force. After Lincoln was assassinated, his plans for peaceful foreign and domestic postwar policies remained in place. The British-American relationship did not falter when Palmerston passed away six months later, on 8 October 865, and Clarendon, back at the Foreign Office, struggled in the short-lived Russell government that failed to pass a reform bill and went out on 8 June 866. With the deaths of two great leaders, the instability in both governments was fortunately not emulated in their diplomatic relations because of the proven cooperation on a host of disputes before and during the Civil War. The stability in relations proved strong enough to withstand outcries in the United States after the war. During the postwar period, American problems headed by the Alabama claims caused the continuation of cautious diplomacy. Queen Victoria was often militant toward France and Russia, but she “remained remarkably temperate vis- à-vis the United States, and she never criticized Gladstone for appeasement of the United States.” She urged her ministers to be understanding about the Alabama claims, thinking that the United States “have just cause of complaint” and not to become upset at the bluster of American senators such as Sumner; she also encouraged Gladstone to continue the wartime rapprochement.¹ The queen’s instincts were correct. Americans showed no interest in invading Canada or annexation. Only Sumner and a few Radical Republicans pressed Seward for annexation. Sumner’s idea that Canada be annexed as payment for the indirect damages of the Confederate raiders fell on deaf ears, especially when he mentioned the sum of more than 2 billion for the damages. But even Sumner did not want to take Canada by force, and he of all people did not want war with England no matter how loud he ranted about Britain’s supposed support for the Confederacy. Seward toyed with annexation, partially to keep Sumner at bay, and 228 retrenchment and commerce ascendant 229 by the last months of his secretaryship in 868 and 869, he had discarded the idea in favor of a convention to settle all of the main questions to cap his cooperative history with Britain. He failed for a number of reasons, and the Senate refused to approve the Johnson-Clarendon Convention of 3 January 869, with the chief elements of a comprehensive treaty contained within it. Private diplomacy in 869 and 870 moved in that direction. Thus, instead of moving steadily toward con- flict, relations focused on peaceful settlement. On the Alabama claims, Russell and Clarendon refused to accept British responsibility and stalled for good terms from Seward. As in 850s, Clarendon wanted an entente with the United States to smooth the way to negotiations, and his policy met with a modicum of success. From 865 to 87, the Alabama claims kept the rapprochement alive because both governments wanted to settle in peace. In other words, as had happened so often before, the longer the dispute went unsettled , the more that fact said about the stability of relations. Indeed, the foreign policy of both powers had by now become exceedingly similar. Both were forced to practice patience and indifference before a vexatious Congress, split apart by the battle over the form of Reconstruction, and generally in opposition to President Andrew Johnson’s moderate Lincolnian plan. In support of this interpretation is the reality that along the Canadian-American frontier private cooperation erased Fenian threats midway through 866 and 870 and kept the fisheries peaceful after energetic Canadian efforts to impose a tax on Americans fishing in Canadian inshore waters in the wake of the abrogated Reciprocity Treaty. Britain understood that Seward and Johnson could do nothing public to show the Fenians or the New England fishing interests that it meant business because of the impact that Reconstruction politics was having on them. Seward especially did not want to lose political ground, as he still had aspirations of being president. Moreover, his longtime battle with the Radicals continued unabated, and the latter group was sensitive to all that the secretary of state enacted publicly for ammunition to oust him. Thus, as disclosed in the many private letters of Sir Frederick Bruce, Lyons’s successor...

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