and as a man new to the diplomatic service he attached
to it an unusual importance, even, seemingly, to the extent of
permitting personal chagrin at the ultimate failure of the negotiation
to distort his usually cool and fair judgment. The matter in question
was the offer of the United States to accede by a convention to the
Declaration of Paris of 1856, establishing certain international rules
for the conduct of maritime warfare.

This negotiation has received scant attention in history. It failed to
result in a treaty, therefore it has appeared to be negligible. Yet it
was at the time of very great importance in affecting the attitude
toward each other of Great Britain and the United States, and of the men
who spoke for their respective countries. The bald facts of the
negotiation appear with exactness in Moore's _Digest of International
Law_[236], but without comment as to motives, and, more briefly, in
Bernard's _Neutrality of Great Britain during the American Civil
War_[237], at the conclusion of which the author writes, with sarcasm,
"I refrain from any comment on this negotiation[238]." Nicolay and Hay's
_Lincoln_, and Rhodes' _United States_, give the matter but passing and
inadequate treatment. It was reviewed in some detail in the American
argument before the Geneva court of arbitration in the case of the
_Alabama_, but was there presented merely as a part of the general
American complaint of British neutrality. In fact, but three historical
students, so far as the present writer has been able to discover, have
examined this negotiation in detail and presented their conclusions as
to purposes and motives--so important to an understanding of British
intentions at the moment when the flames of civil war were rapidly
spreading in America.

These three, each with an established historical reputation, exhibit
decided differences in interpretation of diplomatic incidents and
documents. The first careful analysis was presented by Henry Adams, son
of the American Minister in London during the Civil War, and then acting
as his private secretary, in his _Historical Essays_, published in 1891;
the second study is by Bancroft, in his _Life of Seward_, 1900; while
the third is by Charles Francis Adams (also son of the American
Minister), who, in his _Life_ of his father, published 1900, gave a
chapter to the subject and treated it on lines similar to those laid
down by his brother Henry, but who, in 1912, came to the conc