instructed that it was "highly desirable that a vessel of each nation should, as far as possible, cruise in company with a vessel of the other, so that each may be in a position to assert the rights and prevent the abuse of the flag of its own country.”
"To assert the rights" was put first, of course; joint cruising was desirable rather to keep the British from American traders than to suppress the slavetrade.
"Joint cruising”? was one of the stock terms in use at Washington before the civil war. Every administration believed in “joint cruising" as the right way to suppress the slave-trade.
Says the chaplain to the African squadron in the years 1855-57, himself a believer in slavery, in his book “Adventures and Observations on the West Coast of Africa’ (p. 318): “The joint cruising has been from the first in spirit and letter dead. It is hardly worth while to inquire upon which party the greater blame rests in the non-fulfilment of this provision; but it is certainly true that the object of the treaty could be better carried out by a hearty and well-understood co-operation. The prevailing indifference on this subject may be seen by the following statement: The flagships of the American and British squadrons on the coast in the years 1855, 1856 and part of 1857 met but once, and that at sea. They were two miles apart; they recognized each other by signal, and by the same means held the following communication:
"'Anything to communicate?'
"Answer. — 'Nothing to communicate,'”
Perry himself summed up the result of his work as
