ommittee on foreign relations, and no
doubt exercised a domineering power in this branch of the public
service. Mr. Fish and Mr. Sumner had differed widely in respect
to the annexation of San Domingo and certain diplomatic appointments
and former treaties, among them the highly important English
negotiations for the settlement of claims growing out of the war.
On these topics the President and Mr. Sumner could not agree. Mr.
Sumner insisted that the hasty proclamation by Great Britain of
neutrality between the United States and the Southern Confederacy
was the gravamen of the Alabama claims. The President and Mr. Fish
contended that this proclamation was an act of which we could not
complain, except as an indication of an unfriendly spirit by Great
Britain, and that the true basis of the Alabama claims was that
Great Britain, after proclaiming neutrality, did not enforce it,
but allowed her subjects to build cruisers, and man, arm and use
them, under cover of the rebel flag, to the destruction of our
commercial navy.

This difference of opinion between the President and Mr. Sumner
led to the removal of John L. Motley, our minister to England, who
sided with Sumner, and unquestionably intensified the feeling that
had arisen from the San Domingo treaty.

As to that treaty it was a conceded fact that before the President
had become publicly committed to it he had, waiving his official
rank, sought the advice and counsel of Mr. Sumner, and was evidently
misled as to Mr. Sumner's views on this subject. The subsequent
debating, in both open and executive session, led to Mr. Sumner's
taking the most extreme and active opposition to the treaty, in
which he arraigned with great severity the conduct of the naval
officers, the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Fish and the President.
This was aggravated by alleged public conversations with Mr. Sumner
by "interviewers," in which the motives of the President and others
were impugned.

In the meantime, social relations between the Secretary of State
and Mr. Sumner had become impossible; and--considering human passion,
prejudice and feeling--anything like frank and confidential
communication between the President and Mr. Sumner was out of the
question.

A majority of the Republican Senators sided with the President. We
generally agreed that it was a false-pretended neutrality, and not
a too hasty proclamation of neutrality, that gave us an unquestionable
right to demand indemnity