=§ 22. Status of the question from 1823 to 1847.=--Although no amendment could be procured to the act of 1793, the government of the United States had repeatedly, by diplomatic demands and treaties, undertaken to recover fugitives, or their value, for Southern owners. The first Indian treaty negotiated under the Constitution, that of April 7, 1790, with the Creeks, required the return of negroes held as prisoners of war.[119] A similar clause appeared in the treaty made in 1814, at the end of the war with the Creeks, a war which had been provoked in part by their ready reception of fugitives.[120] In 1832 the government went so far as to promise to expend seven thousand dollars in paying for "slaves and other property alleged to have been stolen" by the Seminoles.[121] With Great Britain, also, the encouragement of fugitives became a subject for negotiation. Much bitterness had been felt at the carrying away by the British, in 1783, of slaves who had taken refuge with them.[122] In the treaty of Ghent, therefore, a strict clause forbade the carrying away by the British of "any slaves or other private property."[123] A large number of slaves had, during the war, been received on board British vessels, and the humane but specious plea was set up by the British government that the clause applied only to slaves received after the date of the peace. A convention of 1818 submitted the question to the Emperor of Russia, who in 1822 made a decision not wholly favorable to either party; and in 1826,[124] by a second convention, Great Britain agreed to pay $1,204,960. This last award was obtained by a Pennsylvanian, Gallatin, acting under the direction of President John Quincy Adams, a citizen of Massachusetts. [Sidenote: Canada and Mexico Places of Refuge.] =§ 23. Canada and Mexico places of refuge.=--The existence on the northern and southwestern frontiers of regions in which slavery was practically, if not yet legally, extinct, brought about another set of complications. January 24, 1821, a resolution was presented in Congress from the General Assembly of Kentucky, protesting against the kindly reception of fugitives in Canada, and asking for negotiation with Great Britain on the subject.[125] In 1826, Mr. Clay, Secretary of State, instructed Mr. Gallatin, United States Minister at the Court of St. James, to propose the "mutual surrender of all persons held to service or labor under the laws of either country who escape into the territory of the other." The British government replied that any such agreement was impossible, and, though a second attempt was made by the United States, it was without success.[126]