uding the Mosquito protectorate and certain Bay Islands
which were claimed by Great Britain as dependencies of Belize and by
Honduras as a part of her territory.

In vain did Webster, who succeeded Clayton, seek an agreement. His
term of office passed, and the controversy fell into the hands of Lord
Palmerston, the jingoistic spirit who began at this time to dominate
British foreign policy, and of James Buchanan, who, known to us as a
spineless seeker after peace where there was no peace, was at this time
riding into national leadership on a wave of expansionist enthusiasm.
Buchanan and Palmerston mutually shook the stage thunder of verbal
extravagance, but probably neither intended war. Poker was at this time
the national American game, and bluff was a highly developed art. The
American player won a partial victory. In 1856 Great Britain agreed
to withdraw her protectorate over the Mosquitoes, to acknowledge the
supremacy of Honduras over the Bay Islands, and to accept a reasonable
interpretation of the Belize boundary. Though this convention was never
ratified, Great Britain carried out its terms, and in 1860 Buchanan
announced himself satisfied.

The dreams of 1850, however, were not satisfied. A railroad was
completed across Panama in 1855, but no canal was constructed until
years after the great transcontinental railroads had bound California
to the East by bonds which required no foreign sanction. Yet the
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty remained an entangling alliance, destined to give
lovers of peace and amity many more uncomfortable hours.

During the Civil War other causes of irritation arose between the United
States and Great Britain. The proclamation of neutrality, by which the
British Government recognized the Confederacy as a belligerent, seemed
to the North an unfriendly act. Early in the war occurred the Trent
affair, which added to the growing resentment. * It was held to be a
violation of professed neutrality that Confederate commerce destroyers
were permitted to be built and fitted out in British yards. The
subsequent transfer of hundreds of thousands of tons of American
shipping to British registry, owing to the depredations of these
raiders, still further incensed the American people. It was in the midst
of these strained relations that the Fenian Brotherhood in the United
States attempted the invasion of Canada.

* See Stephenson, "Abraham Lincoln and the Union," in "The
Chronicles of America."