argued that Britain should pay the entire expense of those two years and the unspoken assumption was that Washington would take parts of Canada in exchange for that debt; British Columbia, Red River (Manitoba), and Nova Scotia seemed possible. London naturally refused. Washington looked the other way when Irish activists known as Fenians tried and failed in a small invasion of Canada in 1866 and 1870-1871. Canada could never be defended so the British decided to cut their losses and eliminate the risk of a conflict with the U.S. The first ministry of William Gladstone withdrew from all its historic military and political responsibilities in North America. It brought home its troops (keeping Halifax as an Atlantic naval base), and turned responsibility over to the locals. That made it wise to unify the separate Canadian colonies into a self-governing confederation named the Dominion of Canada. Negotiations for the Alabama Claims dragged on for years until Hamilton Fish became Secretary of State under President Ulysses S. Grant in 1869. Fish ranks with Webster as the leading American diplomat of the 19th century, and he worked out an amicable solution with Britain. The controversy was peacefully resolved in 1872 by an international arbitration tribunal, in which the U.S. received $15.5 million from Britain for damages caused by British-built Confederate warships. James G. Blaine James G. Blaine, a leading Republican (and its losing candidate for president in 1884) was a highly innovative Secretary of State in the 1880s. By 1881, Blaine had completely abandoned his high-tariff Protectionism and used his position as Secretary of State to promote freer trade, especially within the Western Hemisphere. His reasons were twofold: firstly, Blaine's wariness of British interference in the Americas was undiminished, and he saw increased trade with Latin America as the best way to keep Britain from dominating the region. Secondly, he believed that by encouraging exports, he could increase American prosperity. President Garfield agreed with his Secretary of State's vision and Blaine called for a Pan-American conference in 1882 to mediate disputes among the Latin American nations and to serve as a forum for talks on increasing trade. At the same time, Blaine hoped to negotiate a peace in the War of the Pacific then being fought by Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. Blaine sought to expand American influence in other areas, calling for renegotiation of the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty to allow the United States to