[Sidenote: The Johnson-Clarendon treaty.] Before, however, the discussion had fairly begun Mr. Adams returned to the United States, and Mr. Reverdy Johnson was sent out to the British Court. Mr. Johnson yielded much of the ground assumed by Mr. Adams in reference to claims for national injury, and in January of 1869 concluded an agreement with the Earl of Clarendon for submitting to arbitration the claims for direct damage to property rights. [Sidenote: President Grant's statement in his first Annual Message.] The Senate of the United States promptly rejected the treaty with much feeling, because it did not contain proper provision, in its view, for the reparation of wrongs to the Nation. The feeling among the people of both countries ran so high that the Governments deemed it wise to cease, for a time, negotiations upon the subject. The new President, Grant, in his Message of December 6th, 1869, described the situation in the following language: {304} "Toward the close of the last Administration a convention was signed in London for the settlement of all outstanding claims between Great Britain and the United States, which failed to receive the advice and consent of the Senate to its ratification. The time and the circumstances attending the negotiation of that treaty were unfavorable to its acceptance by the people of the United States, and its provisions were wholly inadequate for the settlement of the grave wrongs that had been sustained by this Government, as well as by its citizens. The injuries resulting to the United States by reason of the course adopted by Great Britain during our late Civil War in the increased rates of insurance, in the diminution of exports and imports and other obstructions to domestic industry and production, in its effect upon the foreign commerce of the country, in the decrease and transfer to Great Britain of our commercial marine, in the prolongation of the war and the increased cost, both in treasure and lives, of its suppression, could not be adjusted and satisfied as ordinary commercial claims which continually arise among commercial nations; and yet the convention treated them as such ordinary claims, from which they differ more widely in the gravity of their character than in the magnitude of their amount, great even as is that difference. Not a word was found in the treaty, and not an inference could be drawn from it, to remove the sense of the unfriendliness of the course of Great Britain in our struggle for existence, which had so deeply and universally impressed itself upon the people of this country. Believing that a convention thus misconceived in its scope and inadequate in its provisions would not have produced the hearty, cordial settlement of pending questions, which alone is consistent with the relations which I desire to have firmly established {305} between the United States and Great Britain, I regarded the action of the Senate in rejecting the treaty to have been