state paper, and the principles it enunciates have been approved by leading authorities on international law. In the same year he secured the negotiation of the Gadsden Treaty (see Gadsden, James), by which the boundary dispute between Mexico and the United States was adjusted and a large area was added to the Federal domain; and in June 1854 he concluded with Lord Elgin, governor-general of Canada, acting for the British Government, a treaty designed to settle the fisheries question and providing for tariff reciprocity (as regards certain enumerated commodities) between Canada and the United States. In 1854 Marcy had to deal with the complications growing out of the bombardment of San Juan del Norte (Greytown), Nicaragua, by the United States sloop-of-war “Cyane” for insults offered the American minister by its inhabitants and for their refusal to make restitution for damages to American property. The expedition of William Walker (q.v.) to Nicaragua in 1855 further complicated the Central American question. The Crimean War, on account of the extensive recruiting therefor by British consuls in several American cities, in violation of American neutrality, led to a diplomatic controversy with Great Britain, and in May 1856 the British minister, John F. T. Crampton (1805–1886), received his passports, and the exequaturs of the British consuls at New York, Philadelphia and Cincinnati were revoked. The incident created great excitement in England, but in 1857 the British government sent Sir Francis Napier to Washington to take Crampton’s place. To the Declaration of Paris of 1856, prescribing certain rules of naval warfare, Marcy on behalf of his government refused to subscribe, because Great Britain had rejected his proposed amendment exempting from seizure in time of war all private property not contraband. The diplomatic relations of the United States and Spain furnished, perhaps, the most perplexing of Marcy’s problems. Upon the seizure (on Feb. 28, 1854) of the American vessel “Black Warrior,” the confiscation of her cargo, and the fining of her captain by the Cuban authorities, on the ground that this vessel had violated the customs regulations of the port of Havana, slavery propagandists sought to force the administration into an attitude that would lead to war with Spain and make possible the seizure of Cuba; and it was largely due to Marcy’s influence that war was averted, Spain restoring the confiscated cargo and remitting the captain’s fine.[1] The secretary, however, was not averse to increasing his popularity and his chances for the presidency by obtaining Cuba in an honourable manner, and it was at his suggestion that James Buchanan, J. Y. Mason and Pierre Soulé, the ministers respectively to Great Britain, France and Spain, met at Ostend and Aix-la-Chapelle in October 1854 to discuss the Cuban question. But the remarkable “Ostend Manifesto” (see Buchanan, James), the outcome of their conference, was quite unexpected, and Marcy promptly disavowed the document. Marcy died at Ballston Spa, New York, on the 4th of July 1857, a short time after the close of Pierce’s administration. In domestic affairs Marcy was a shrewd, but honest partisan; in diplomacy he exhibited the qualities of a broad-minded, patriotic statesman, endowed, however, with vigour, rather than brilliancy, of intellect.
For his early career, consult J. S. Jenkins, Lives of the Governors of New York (Auburn, New York, 1851), and for his work as secretary of state, see James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States (vols. i. and ii., New York, 1892), and an article by Sidney Webster, “Mr Marcy, the Cuban Question, and the Ostend Manifesto,” in vol. viii. of the Political Science Quarterly (New York, 1893).
MARDIN, the chief town of a sanjak of the Diarbekr vilayet of Asiatic Turkey. It is a military station on the Diarbekr-Mosul road. It occupies a remarkable site on the south side of a conical hill of soft limestone, and the houses rise tier above tier. The streets are narrow and paved in steps, while often the roadway runs along the roof of the house in the tier below. The hill is almost surrounded by old walls, while on the summit are the remains of the famous castle of the Kaleh Shubha (Lat. Maride or Marde,) which from Roman times has played an important part in history. The Arab geographers considered it impregnable, and from its steep approaches and well-arranged defences it was able to offer a protracted resistance to the Mongolian conqueror Hulagu and to the armies of Timur. It was also for several centuries the residence of more or less independent princes of the Ortokid Turkoman dynasty. The climate is healthy and dry, and fruit grows well, but water is sometimes scanty in the summer. Mardin is the centre of a good corn-growing district, and is important chiefly as a border town for the Kurds on the north and the Arab tribes to the south. It is the chief centre of the Jacobite Christians, who have many villages in the Tor Abdin hills to the north-east, and whose patriarch lives at Deir Zaferan, a Syrian monastery of the 9th century not far off in the same direction. The population is estimated at 27,000, of whom about one-half are Christians of the Armenian, Chaldean, Jacobite, Protestant and Roman Catholic communities. Besides many mosques and churches there are three monasteries (Syrian, Franciscan and Capuchin), and an important American Mission station, with church, schools and a medical officer.
MARDUK (Bibl. Merodach[2]), the name of the patron deity
of the city of Babylon, who, when Babylon permanently became
the political centre of the united states of the Euphrates valley
under Khammurabi (c. 2250 B.C.), rose to the position of the
head of the Babylonian pantheon. His original character
was that of a solar deity, and he personifies more specifically the
sun of the spring-time who conquers the storms of the winter
season. He was thus fitted to become the god who triumphs
over chaos that reigned in the beginning of time. This earlier
Marduk, however, was effaced by the reflex of the political
development through which the Euphrates valley passed and
which led to imbuing him with traits belonging to gods who at
an earlier period were recognized as the heads of the pantheon.
There are more particularly two gods—Ea and Bel—whose
powers and attributes pass over to Marduk. In the case of Ea
the transfer proceeds pacifically and without involving the effacement
of the older god. Marduk is viewed as the son of Ea.
The father voluntarily recognizes the superiority of the son and
hands over to him the control of humanity. This association of Marduk and Ea, while indicating primarily the passing of the
supremacy once enjoyed by Eridu to Babylon as a religious and
political centre, may also reflect an early dependence of Babylon
upon Eridu, not necessarily of a political character but, in view
of the spread of culture in the Euphrates valley from the south
to the north, the recognition of Eridu as the older centre on the
part of the younger one. At all events, traces of a cult of Marduk
at Eridu are to be noted in the religious literature, and the most
reasonable explanation for the existence of a god Marduk in
Eridu is to assume that Babylon in this way paid its homage to
the old settlement at the head of the Persian Gulf.
While the relationship between Ea (q.v.) and Marduk is thus marked by harmony and an amicable abdication on the part of the father in favour of his son, Marduk’s absorption of the power and prerogatives of Bel of Nippur was at the expense of the latter’s prestige. After the days of Khammurabi, the cult of Marduk eclipses that of Bel (q.v.), and although during the five centuries of Cassite control in Babylonia (c. 1750–1200 B.C.), Nippur and the cult of the older Bel enjoy a period of renaissance, when the reaction ensued it marked the definite and permanent triumph of Marduk over Bel until the end of the Babylonian empire. The only serious rival to Marduk after 1200 B.C. is Assur (q.v.) in Assyria. In the south Marduk reigns supreme, and his supremacy is indicated most significantly by making him the Bel, “the lord,” par excellence.
The old myths in which Bel of Nippur was celebrated as the hero were transformed by the priests of Babylon in the interest
- ↑ See Henry L. James, “The Black Warrior Affair” in the American Historical Review, vol. xii. (1907).
- ↑ The name Mordecai denotes “belonging to Marduk.”
character—he can claim the protection of this government, and it may respond to that claim without being obliged to explain its conduct to any foreign power; for it is its duty to make its nationality respected by other nations and respectable in every quarter of the globe.” Eventually Koszta was released and returned to the United States. The Hülsemann letter was published and greatly increased Marcy’s popularity.
