Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir

[397] treaty never became international law. Its failure was a source of disappointment and mortification to Grant. He was pained to find that his influence was so insufficient and his views so unimportant with those who controlled affairs; and that neither the weight of his past services nor the gravity of his arguments, enforced by so wide and varied an experience, could bring his country to approve the policy that he proposed. He had many notions in regard to an American system on the American continent which one would suppose would have attracted the approbation both of statesmen and the country. His desire to increase the influence of the United States, to extend her territory, and to develop relations with all the sister republics was incessant: but the time seemed not ripe. He was not destined to achieve so much additional renown as the inauguration of a Continental policy would have insured. It was enough for one man to play the most important part in the salvation and reconstruction of the Union. But in the future, when some other statesman shall elaborate and carry out his views and accomplish the unity of relation and interest of all the American republics, it should be remembered that Grant foresaw the result and was anxious to bring it about in his time. Those who belittle his statesmanship will then, perhaps, recognize its far-reaching character and lofty intentions.

In all this Continental policy Romero was the worthy colleague of Grant. No diplomatist has ever been accredited to this country who established more intimate relations with the important personages of the State; who appreciated better the national institutions and character; who played the legitimate role of a foreign minister with greater skill or success. For he had everything against him; even for a while, it seemed, the indifference of our own State Department, certainly the listlessness of the people, the antipathy of race, and the difference of creed and language.