The Clayton-Bulwer treaty was negotiated with the expectation that the construction of a ship canal would rapidly follow, but the unfortunate entanglements that grew out of the variant constructions put upon that treaty by the contracting powers deferred to an indefinite period the accomplishment of the object it was designed to promote. By the time these differences were adjusted the attention of the American public was centered upon the first throes of the gigantic struggle of the war of secession and the canal question was for several years completely overshadowed. The government of the United States emerged from that struggle with larger ideas of its position among the powers of the world and with broader views of national policy. Mr. Seward gave expression to that feeling in the purchase of Alaska, in his interposition in Mexico and in his efforts to secure a position for the United States in the West Indies. In order to strengthen the position of the United States he wished to purchase Tiger Island, a possession of Honduras in Fonseca bay on the Pacific coast. As this island lay in Central America, Mr. Seward could not take any steps in the matter without the consent of Great Britain, on account of the renunciatory clause with respect to that territory in the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. He, therefore, directed Mr. Adams, April 25, 1866, to sound Lord Clarendon as to the disposition of the British government toward the United States acquiring a coaling station in Central America. In this dispatch we find the first suggestion of a repudiation of the Clayton-Bulwer treaty on the ground that it was a special and not a general contract, and that the work for which it had been negotiated had never been undertaken. Mr. Seward uses these words: At the time the treaty was concluded there was every prospect that that work would not only soon be begun, but that it would be carried to a successful conclusion. For reasons, however, which it is not necessary to specify, it never was even commenced, and at present there does not appear to be a likelihood of its being undertaken. It may be a question, therefore, supposing that the canal should never be begun, whether the renunciatory clauses of the treaty are to have perpetual operation. Technically speaking, this question might be decided in the negative. Still, so long as it should remain a question, it would not comport with good faith for either party to do anything which might be deemed contrary to even the spirit of the treaty.[164] The subject was brought to the attention of Lord Clarendon in a casual way by Mr. Adams, but it was not pressed and Mr. Seward refrained from disregarding the renunciatory clause of the treaty.