Great Britain and the American Civil War | Page 6

outlawed for the flags of all nations. But America, smarting under the
memory of impressment injuries, and maintaining in any case the
doctrine that in time of peace the national flag protected a vessel from
interference or search by the naval vessels of any other power, refused
to sign mutual right of search treaties and denied, absolutely, such a
right for any cause whatever to Great Britain or to any other nation.
Being refused a treaty, Britain merely renewed her assertion of the right

and continued to exercise it.
Thus the right of search in time of peace controversy was not ended
with the war of 1812 but remained a constant sore in national relations,
for Britain alone used her navy with energy to suppress the slave trade,
and the slave traders of all nations sought refuge, when approached by
a British naval vessel, under the protection of the American flag. If
Britain respected the flag, and sheered off from search, how could she
stop the trade? If she ignored the flag and on boarding found an
innocent American vessel engaged in legal trade, there resulted claims
for damages by detention of voyage, and demands by the American
Government for apology and reparation. The real slave trader, seized
under the American flag, never protested to the United States, nor
claimed American citizenship, for his punishment in American law for
engaging in the slave trade was death, while under the law of any other
nation it did not exceed imprisonment, fine and loss of his vessel.
Summed up in terms of governmental attitude the British contention
was that here was a great international humanitarian object frustrated
by an absurd American sensitiveness on a point of honour about the
flag. After fifteen years of dispute Great Britain offered to abandon any
claim to a right of search, contenting herself with a right of visit,
merely to verify a vessel's right to fly the American flag. America
asserted this to be mere pretence, involving no renunciation of a
practice whose legality she denied. In 1842, in the treaty settling the
Maine boundary controversy, the eighth article sought a method of
escape. Joint cruising squadrons were provided for the coast of Africa,
the British to search all suspected vessels except those flying the
American flag, and these to be searched by the American squadron. At
once President Tyler notified Congress that Great Britain had
renounced the right of search. Immediately in Parliament a clamour
was raised against the Government for the "sacrifice" of a British right
at sea, and Lord Aberdeen promptly made official disclaimer of such
surrender.
Thus, heritage of the War of 1812 right of search in time of peace was a
steady irritant. America doubted somewhat the honesty of Great Britain,

appreciating in part the humanitarian purpose, but suspicious of an
ulterior "will to rule the seas." After 1830 no American political leader
would have dared to yield the right of search. Great Britain for her part,
viewing the expansion of domestic slavery in the United States, came
gradually to attribute the American contention, not to patriotic pride,
but to the selfish business interests of the slave-holding states. In the
end, in 1858, with a waning British enthusiasm for the cause of slave
trade suppression, and with recognition that America had become a
great world power, Britain yielded her claim to right of search or visit,
save when established by Treaty. Four years later, in 1862, it may well
have seemed to British statesmen that American slavery had indeed
been the basic cause of America's attitude, for in that year a treaty was
signed by the two nations giving mutual right of search for the
suppression of the African Slave Trade. In fact, however, this was but
an effort by Seward, Secretary of State for the North, to influence
British and European opinion against the seceding slave states of the
South.
The right of search controversy was, in truth, ended when American
power reached a point where the British Government must take it
seriously into account as a factor in general world policy. That power
had been steadily and rapidly advancing since 1814. From almost the
first moment of established independence American statesmen
visualized the separation of the interests of the western continent from
those of Europe, and planned for American leadership in this new
world. Washington, the first President, emphasized in his farewell
address the danger of entangling alliances with Europe. For long the
nations of Europe, immersed in Continental wars, put aside their
rivalries in this new world. Britain, for a time, neglected colonial
expansion westward, but in 1823, in an emergency of European origin
when France, commissioned by the great powers of continental Europe,
intervened in Spain to restore the deposed Bourbon monarchy and
seemed about to intervene in Spanish