A  blockade  of  3,000  miles  of  seacoast  could  not  be  established  and
vigorously  enforced  in  a  season  of  great  commercial  activity  like  the
present  without  committing  occasional  mistakes  and  inflicting  uninten-
tional injuries  upon  foreign  nations  and  their  subjects.
A  civil  war  occurring  in  a  country  where  foreigners  reside  and  carry
on  trade  under  treaty  stipulations  is  necessarily  fruitful  of  complaints  of
the  violation  of  neutral  rights.  All  such  collisions  tend  to  excite  misap-
prehensions, and  possibly  to  produce  mutual  reclamations  between  nations
which  have  a  common  interest  in  preserving  peace  and  friendship.  In
clear  cases  of  these  kinds  I  have  so  far  as  possible  heard  and  redressed
complaints  which  have  been  presented  by  friendly  powers.  There  is
still,  however,  a  large  and  an  augmenting  number  of  doubtful  cases
upon  which  the  Government  is  unable  to  agree  with  the  governments
whose  protection  is  demanded  by  the  claimants.  There  are,  moreover,
many  cases  in  which  the  United  States  or  their  citizens  suffer  wrongs
from  the  naval  or  military  authorities  of  foreign  nations  which  the  gov-
ernments of  those  states  are  not  at  once  prepared  to  redress.  I  have
proposed  to  some  of  the  foreign  states  thus  interested  mutual  conventions
to  examine  and  adjust  such  complaints.  This  proposition  has  been  made
especially  to  Great  Britain,  to  France,  to  Spain,  and  to  Prussia.  In  each
case  it  has  been  kindly  received,  but  has  not  yet  been  formally  adopted.
