=The Alabama Claims Arbitrated.=—­Indeed, it had in hand a far more serious matter, a vexing issue that grew out of Civil War diplomacy.  The British government, as already pointed out in other connections, had permitted Confederate cruisers, including the famous Alabama, built in British ports, to escape and prey upon the commerce of the Northern states.  This action, denounced at the time by our government as a grave breach of neutrality as well as a grievous injury to American citizens, led first to remonstrances and finally to repeated claims for damages done to American ships and goods.  For a long time Great Britain was firm.  Her foreign secretary denied all obligations in the premises, adding somewhat curtly that “he wished to say once for all that Her Majesty’s government disclaimed any responsibility for the losses and hoped that they had made their position perfectly clear.”  Still President Grant was not persuaded that the door of diplomacy, though closed, was barred.  Hamilton Fish, his Secretary of State, renewed the demand.  Finally he secured from the British government in 1871 the treaty of Washington providing for the arbitration not merely of the Alabama and other claims but also all points of serious controversy between the two countries.

The tribunal of arbitration thus authorized sat at Geneva in Switzerland, and after a long and careful review of the arguments on both sides awarded to the United States the lump sum of $15,500,000 to be distributed among the American claimants.  The damages thus allowed were large, unquestionably larger than strict justice required and it is not surprising that the decision excited much adverse comment in England.  Nevertheless, the prompt payment by the British government swept away at once a great cloud of ill-feeling in America.  Moreover, the spectacle of two powerful nations choosing the way of peaceful arbitration to settle an angry dispute seemed a happy, if illusory, omen of a modern method for avoiding the arbitrament of war.

=Samoa.=—­If the Senate had its doubts at first about the wisdom of acquiring strategic points for naval power in distant seas, the same could not be said of the State Department or naval officers.  In 1872 Commander Meade, of the United States navy, alive to the importance of coaling stations even in mid-ocean, made a commercial agreement with the chief of Tutuila, one of the Samoan Islands, far below the equator, in the southern Pacific, nearer to Australia than to California.  This agreement, providing among other things for our use of the harbor of Pago Pago as a naval base, was six years later changed into a formal treaty ratified by the Senate.