244 THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 



Britain would bring the desired settlement. 

 The internal political conditions in America 

 were decidedly unpropitious. A presidential 

 election in November of 1868 resulted in the 

 choice of General Grant to succeed Andrew 

 Johnson in the following March. There was 

 extreme antipathy, personal and partisan, be 

 tween the outgoing and the incoming admin 

 istrations, and nothing so dear to Seward s 

 heart as ratification of his final treaty could be 

 anticipated. More than this, there was a wide 

 spread feeling in the United States that the 

 offence of Great Britain was not of a kind to be 

 expiated by the mere compensation of private 

 individuals for financial losses. Seward had 

 once instructed Adams that the conduct of 

 Great Britain during the war must be regarded 

 as &quot;a national wrong and injury to the United 

 States,&quot; for which indemnity to private citizens 

 would be only the lowest form of satisfaction. 

 The spirit of this declaration was not reflected 

 in the Johnson-Clarendon convention, and the 

 omission had much to do with the fate of the 

 agreement. On the I3th of April, 1869, the 

 Senate of the United States refused its consent 

 to the ratification of the treaty by a vote of 

 forty-four to one. 



