xation of Texas and the Mexican War, but advocated the
active prosecution of the latter once it was begun. In March 1849 he
became secretary of state in the cabinet of President Zachary Taylor, to
whose nomination and election his influence had contributed. His brief
tenure of the state portfolio, which terminated on the 22nd of July
1850, soon after Taylor's death, was notable chiefly for the negotiation
with the British minister, Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, of the
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty (q.v.). He was once more a member of the Senate
from March 1853 until his death at Dover, Delaware, on the 9th of
November 1856. By his contemporaries Clayton was considered one of the
ablest debaters and orators in the Senate.

See the memoir by Joseph P. Comegys in the _Papers_ of the Historical
Society of Delaware, No. 4 (Wilmington, 1882).

CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY, a famous treaty between the United States and
Great Britain, negotiated in 1850 by John M. Clayton and Sir Henry
Lytton Bulwer (Lord Dalling), in consequence of the situation created by
the project of an interoceanic canal across Nicaragua, each signatory
being jealous of the activities of the other in Central America. Great
Britain had large and indefinite territorial claims in three
regions--Belize or British Honduras, the Mosquito Coast and the Bay
Islands.[1] On the other hand, the United States, without territorial
claims, held in reserve, ready for ratification, treaties with Nicaragua
and Honduras, which gave her a certain diplomatic vantage with which to
balance the _de facto_ dominion of Great Britain. Agreement on these
points being impossible and agreement on the canal question possible,
the latter was put in the foreground. The resulting treaty had four
essential points. It bound both parties not to "obtain or maintain" any
exclusive control of the proposed canal, or unequal advantage in its
use. It guaranteed the neutralization of such canal. It declared that,
the intention of the signatories being not only the accomplishment of "a
particular object"--i.e. that the canal, then supposedly near
realization, should be neutral and equally free to the two contracting
powers--"but also to establish a general principle," they agreed "to
extend their protection by treaty stipulation to any other practicable
communications, whether by canal or railway, across the isthmus which
connects North and South America." Finally, it stipulated that neither
signatory would