way; but, yielding to this application, and departing from our former
principle of avoiding European combinations upon subjects not American,
we stipulated in a solemn treaty that we would carry into effect our own
laws, and fixed the minimum force we would employ for that purpose."

The letter of this department of the 14th of November, having quoted
this passage, proceeds to observe, that "the President cannot conceive
how you should have been led to adventure upon such a statement as this.
It is but a tissue of mistakes. England did not urge the United States
to enter into this conventional arrangement. The United States yielded
to no application from England. The proposition for abolishing the
slave-trade, as it stands in the treaty, was an American proposition; it
originated with the executive government of the United States, which
cheerfully assumes all its responsibility. It stands upon it as its own
mode of fulfilling its duties and accomplishing its objects. Nor have
the United States departed in the slightest degree from their former
principles of avoiding European combinations upon subjects not American;
because the abolition of the African slave-trade is an American subject
as emphatically as it is a European subject, and, indeed, more so,
inasmuch as the government of the United States took the first great
step in declaring that trade unlawful, and in attempting its extinction.
The abolition of this traffic is an object of the highest interest to
the American people and the American government; and you seem strangely
to have overlooked altogether the important fact, that nearly thirty
years ago, by the treaty of Ghent, the United States bound themselves,
by solemn compact with England, to continue their efforts to promote its
entire abolition; both parties pledging themselves by that treaty to use
their best endeavors to accomplish so desirable an object."

Now, in answer to this, you observe in your last letter: "That the
particular mode in which the governments should act in concert, as
finally arranged in the treaty, was suggested by yourself, I never
doubted. And if this is the construction I am to give to your denial of
my correctness, there is no difficulty upon the subject. The question
between us is untouched. All I said was, that England continued to
prosecute the matter; that she presented it for negotiation, and that we
thereupon consented to its introduction. And if Lord Ashburton did not
come