ight of a naval officer to visit and search a ship
suspected of piracy, her officers should be permitted to visit and
search ships found off the west coast of Africa under the American flag
which were suspected of being engaged in the slave trade. The United
States stoutly refused to acquiesce in this view. In the
Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 it was finally agreed that each of the
two powers should maintain on the coast of Africa a sufficient squadron
"to enforce, separately and respectively, the laws, rights, and
obligations of each of the two countries for the suppression of the
slave trade." It was further agreed that the officers should act in
concert and cooeperation, but the agreement was so worded as to avoid
all possibility of our being drawn into an entangling alliance.

The United States has upon various occasions expressed a humanitarian
interest in the natives of Africa. In 1884 two delegates were sent to
the Berlin conference which adopted a general act giving a recognized
status to the Kongo Free State. The American delegates signed the
treaty in common with the delegates of the European powers, but it was
not submitted to the Senate for ratification for reasons stated as
follows by President Cleveland in his annual message of December 8,
1885:

"A conference of delegates of the principal commercial nations was held
at Berlin last winter to discuss methods whereby the Kongo basin might
be kept open to the world's trade. Delegates attended on behalf of the
United States on the understanding that their part should be merely
deliberative, without imparting to the results any binding character so
far as the United States were concerned. This reserve was due to the
indisposition of this Government to share in any disposal by an
international congress of jurisdictional questions in remote foreign
territories. The results of the conference were embodied in a formal
act of the nature of an international convention, which laid down
certain obligations purporting to be binding on the signatories,
subject to ratification within one year. Notwithstanding the
reservation under which the delegates of the United States attended,
their signatures were attached to the general act in the same manner as
those of the plenipotentiaries of other governments, thus making the
United States appear, without reserve or qualification, as signatories
to a joint international engagement imposing on the signers the
conser