2. S. Navy, I do Tsoesima, Jokami, on certify: con = That having this day met for the purpose of exchanging the ratifications of the Treaty of peace and amity between the United States of America and the Empire of Japan, cluded at Kanagawa, the thirty-first day of March, last : after due comparison of raid ratifications each with the other and with the ripical of the said Treaty. the said exchange has been effected by themes. In uitress whereof, we have hereunto hands and affixed. our seals at: Simoda this 21′′ day of Febz in eighteen hundred and fifty five the year 2 Ratification, dated February 21, 1855, of the treaty made by Commodore Perry in 1854. From the original in the Department of State. Washington. day, the 13th, the warship opened fire upon the town, the bombardment being kept up at intervals during the afternoon, when a party was sent on shore to fire the houses and complete the work of destruction. Lieutenant Jolley, of the British warship Bermuda, protested in vain against this course, but was not strong enough to offer resistance. This unjustified procedure on the part of the American naval commander did not secure the payment of the claim, and was repudiated by the president in his message of December, 1854. Cuba continued to be coveted, but neither filibustering expeditions nor the arts of diplomacy could take it from Spain. On October 10, 1854, a conference of the American ministers to Great Britain, France, and Spain was called at Ostend, transferring its deliberations to Aix-laChapelle. They continued in deliberation until the 18th. The object of this conference was to further the efforts of the American minister at Madrid for the acquisition of Cuba. They drew up a report which proposed a bold enterprise on the part of the United States government. This was to the effect that Spain should be compelled to part with Cuba at a price not exceeding one hundred and twenty million dollars. The grounds for this recommendation were stated to be the benefit that would accrue to all the commercial nations of Europe, the benefit which Spain herself would derive, and the securing of an equivalent to Spain for the island which was certain at some future time to be lost to her. It was also declared that the continued possession of Cuba by Spain affected the internal peace of the United States and furnished ground for the latter to wrest it from Spain. European conditions were such that an enterprise of this sort might be recommended with little probability of check from that source, but on the other hand domestic conditions in the United States, of which the ministers in conference appeared not to be informed, effectually set at naught any proposition for the acquisition of further territory to the south. The expedition already noticed that secured commercial advantages from Japan was more in line with the country's true policy. Not only in 1854, but for the next six years, there is little of political importance to relate aside from the great overshadowing struggle for control of the country by the forces of freedom and slavery respectively. The triumvirate of statesmen who had so long exercised a preponderating influence in determining the course of legislative action in Congress had now passed from the arena of national politics. Calhoun, the forceful champion of State sovereignty, was the first to answer the summons, dying at Washington, March 31, 1850; Clay, the great compromiser, passed peacefully away at the national capital on June 29, 1852; while Webster, the unflinching friend of the Union, "one and indissoluble," lived but four months longer, dying at his old home in Marshfield, Massachusetts, on October 24, 1852. The forces of which they had been the peerless exponents were already being marshaled by new leaders for the impending conflict. The period of Pierce's administration, so unfruitful in works of peace and contributing so little to history in the way of foreign relations, yet was prolific of events which we shall now trace. CHAPTER VI STATE OF SOCIETY SO CLOSELY was the question of slavery interwoven with the geographical conditions and the character of the people who had settled the South that no adequate idea of the problem presented by slavery can be obtained without an understanding of those other aspects of the South. And in the same measure were the people of other parts of the Union influenced by the original stock from which they drew their ideas as well as by the character of the country in which they made their homes. So evident was this difference between the sections in the days before easy transportation tended to weld the Union. into a cosmopolitan whole that to a traveller who went from the extreme North to the South it seemed as if he had come into a foreign country, where even the speech was peculiar. The wide coastal plain of the region south of Mason and Dixon's line was particularly well adapted to the large estates which were in such contrast to the small holdings of the Northern farmers. Towns were few, and cities of any extent still less frequent. The centre of the Southern social life was the plantation. Here the "big house," as the negroes called it, was the source of authority, and around it were clustered the workshops and the servants' quarters. The Northern colonies had been settled by the hardy and industrial classes of Great Britain, with a subsequent influx |