dom and courage of Adams. At his suggestion the five arbitrators
announced on June 19, 1872, that they would not consider claims for
indirect damages, because such claims did "not constitute, upon
the principles of international law applicable to such cases, good
foundation for an award of compensation, or computations of damages
between nations." These claims dismissed, the arbitrators entered into
an examination of the direct American claims and on September 14, 1872,
decided upon an award of fifteen and a half million dollars to the
United States. The Treaty of Washington and the Geneva Tribunal
constituted the longest step thus far taken by any two nations toward
the settlement of their disputes by judicial process.

CHAPTER III. Alaska And Its Problems

The impulse for expansion upon which Buchanan floated his political raft
into the presidency was not a party affair. It was felt by men of all
party creeds, and it seemed for a moment to be the dominant national
ideal. Slaveholders and other men who had special interests sought
to make use of it, but the fundamental feeling did not rest on their
support. American democracy, now confident of its growing strength,
believed that the happiness of the people and the success of the
institutions of the United States would prove a loadstone which would
bring under the flag all peoples of the New World, while those of the
Old World would strike off their shackles and remold their governments
on the American pattern. Attraction, not compulsion, was the method to
be used, and none of the paeans of American prophets in the editorials
or the fervid orations of the fifties proposed an additional battleship
or regiment.

No one saw this bright vision more clearly than did William H. Seward,
who became Secretary of State under Lincoln. Slight of build, pleasant,
and talkative, he gave an impression of intellectual distinction, based
upon fertility rather than consistency of mind. He was a disciple of
John Quincy Adams, but his tireless energy had in it too much of nervous
unrest to allow him to stick to his books as did his master, and there
was too wide a gap between his beliefs and his practice. He held as
idealistic views as any man of his generation, but he believed so firmly
that the right would win that he disliked hastening its victory at the
expense of bad feeling. He was shrewd, practical--maliciously practical,
many thought. When, in the heat of one of his peroratio