e as the north star in the flag of our Union.

* * *

When the British Government proposed, in 1871, a joint commission to
settle the Canadian fisheries dispute, Secretary of State Hamilton Fish
replied that the settlement of the claims for depredations by
Anglo-Confederate cruisers would be "essential to the restoration of
cordial and amicable relations between the two governments." In the
following February five high commissioners from each country met in
Washington, and a treaty was agreed upon providing for arbitration upon
the issues between the American Republic and Great Britain. These issues
included the "Alabama Claims"--so-called because the Alabama was the most
notorious and destructive of the Anglo-Confederate sea rovers--the
question of the Northwest boundary, and the Canadian fisheries.

The Tribunal of Arbitration upon the "Alabama Claims" met at Geneva,
Switzerland, December 15, 1871. Charles Francis Adams, American Minister
to England during the war, was member of the Tribunal for the United
States, and Lord Chief Justice Cockburn acted for Great Britain. Baron
Itajuba, Brazilian Minister to France; Count Sclopis, an Italian
statesman, and M. Jaques Staempfii, of Switzerland, were the other members
of the illustrious and memorable court. Caleb Cushing, William M. Evarts
and Morrison R. Waite, counsel for the United States, presented an
indictment against England which should have made British statesmen
shrink from the evidence of their unsuccessful conspiracy against the
life of a friendly State. The course of Great Britain during the war was
reviewed in language not less forcible and convincing because it was
calm, dignified and restrained. A fortress of facts was presented
impregnable to British reply, and highly creditable to the forethought
and skill with which the American State Department had gathered the
material for its case from the very beginning of the war. So strong and
unanswerable was the proof against the Alabama that the British
arbitrator voted in favor of the United States on the issue of British
responsibility for that vessel.

The Tribunal awarded $15,500,000 in gold for the vessels and cargoes
destroyed by the Alabama, with her tender; the Florida, with her three
tenders, and the Shenandoah, or Sea King, during a part of her piratical
career. England promptly paid the award, and learned for the third time
in her history that the rights an