wed the negotiations
through Motley, the American minister at London, but the latter was
unduly influenced by the extreme views of Sumner, chairman of the
Senate committee on foreign relations, to whose influence he owed his
appointment, and got things in a bad tangle. Fish then transferred the
negotiations to Washington, where a joint high commission, appointed to
settle the various disputes with Canada, convened in 1871. A few
months later the treaty of Washington was signed. Among other things
it provided for submitting the _Alabama_ Claims to an arbitration
tribunal composed of five members, one appointed by England, one by the
United States, and the other three by the rulers of Italy, Switzerland,
and Brazil. When this tribunal met at Geneva, the following year, the
United States, greatly to the surprise of everybody, presented not only
the direct claims for the damage inflicted by the Confederate cruisers,
but also indirect claims for the loss sustained through the transfer of
American shipping to foreign flags, for the prolongation of the war,
and for increased rates of insurance. Great Britain threatened to
withdraw from the arbitration, but Charles Francis Adams, the American
member of the tribunal, rose nobly to the occasion and decided against
the contention of his own government. The indirect claims were
rejected by a unanimous vote and on the direct claims the United States
was awarded the sum of $15,500,000. Although the British member of the
tribunal dissented from the decision his government promptly paid the
award. This was the most important case that had ever been submitted
to arbitration and its successful adjustment encouraged the hope that
the two great branches of the English-speaking peoples would never
again have to resort to war.

Between the settlement of the _Alabama_ Claims and the controversy over
the Venezuelan boundary, diplomatic intercourse between the two
countries was enlivened by the efforts of Blaine and Frelinghuysen to
convince the British Government that the Clayton-Bulwer treaty was out
of date and therefore no longer binding, by the assertion of American
ownership in the seal herds of Bering Sea and the attempt to prevent
Canadians from taking these animals in the open sea, and by the summary
dismissal of Lord Sackville-West, the third British minister to receive
his passports from the United States without request.

President Cleveland's bold assertion of the Monroe D