CHAPTER XIX. THE BROAD PENNANT IN AFRICA. THE work to which Matthew Perry was assigned during the next three years grew out of the famous treaty made by Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton. Of this treaty we, in 1883 and 1884, on account of the transfer of so much of our financial talent across the Canadian border, heard nearly as much as our fathers before us in 1842. In addition to the rectification of the long-disputed boundary question, the eighth and ninth articles contained provisions for extirpating the African slave-trade. By the tenth article, the two governments agreed to the mutual extradition of suspected criminals. Out of the interpretation of this last, grew the famous “Underground Railway” of slavery days, besides the residence in Canada of men fleeing from conscription during the civil war, and of defaulting bank officers in later years. To the crimes making offenders liable to extradition, in the supplementary treaty made under President Cleveland’s administration, four others are added, including larceny to the amount of fifty dollars, and malicious destruction of property endangering life. It is very probable that war was averted by the sound diplomacy of the Webster-Ashburton treaty. The two nations instead of crossing swords were enabled through creative statesmanship, to join hands for wholesome moral work, and especially to improve off the face of the ocean, “the sum of all villainies.” The discovery of America had given a vast impulse to this ancient and horrible traffic, and about forty millions of negroes had been seized for the markets of the western continent. About seventy thousand of these victims were brought to our country prior to the year 1808, and many thousands have been surreptitiously introduced since that epoch. The United States was to send an eighty-gun squadron to Africa to suppress piracy and the slave-trade. The preparation for this real service to humanity and the world’s commerce was curiously interpreted in South America, as a menace to the states of that continent. In their first thrills of independence, these republics were naturally suspicious of their nearest strong neighbor. The work of the American men-of-war in overhauling slavers, involved the question of the right of search. Notwithstanding that the war of 1812 had been fought to settle the question, it was not yet decided. It required secession and the so-called Southern Confederacy to arise, with the aid of Captain Wilkes and Mr. Seward, to force the British government to disown her ancient claim.