CHAPTER VI.
The news of Erskine’s disavowal reached America so slowly that merchants enjoyed three months of unrestricted trade, and shipped to England or elsewhere the accumulations of nearly two years’ produce. From April 21 till July 21 this process of depletion continued without an anxiety; and when July 21 news arrived that the arrangement had been repudiated, merchants still had time to hurry their last cargoes to sea before the government could again interpose.
The first effect of Canning’s disavowal seemed bewilderment. No one in the United States, whether enemy or friend of England, could for a time understand why Canning had taken so perplexing a course. Very few of England’s friends could believe that her conduct rested on the motives she avowed; they sought for some noble, or at least some respectable, object behind her acts. For several months the Federalist newspapers were at a loss for words, and groped in the dark for an English hand to help them; while the Republican press broke into anger, which expressed the common popular feeling. “The late conduct of the British ministry,” said the “National Intelligencer” of July 26, “has capped the climax of atrocity toward this country.” Every hope of reconciliation or even of peace with England seemed almost extinguished; yet the country was still far from a rupture. Not until popular feeling could express itself in a new election would the national will be felt; and the next election was still more than a year away, while the Congress to be then chosen would meet only in December, 1811. Until then war was improbable, perhaps impossible, except by the act of England.
When the news arrived, President Madison was at his Virginia plantation. During his absence Gallatin was in charge of matters at Washington, and on the instant wrote that he thought the President should return. In a letter of July 27, three days after the news reached Washington, Gallatin gave his own view of the situation:[83]—
“I will not waste time in conjectures respecting the true cause of the conduct of the British government, nor can we, until we are better informed, lay any permanent plan of conduct for ourselves. I will only observe that we are not so well prepared for resistance as we were one year ago. Then all or almost all our mercantile wealth was safe at home, our resources entire, and our finances sufficient to carry us through during the first year of the contest. Our property is now all afloat; England relieved by our relaxations might stand two years of privations with ease. We have wasted our resources without any national utility; and our treasury being exhausted, we must begin our plan of resistance with considerable and therefore unpopular loans.”
The immediate crisis called first for attention. Gallatin held that the Non-intercourse Act necessarily revived from the moment the supposed fact on which alone its suspension rested was shown not to have taken place. The remoter problem of Jackson’s mission seemed to the secretary simpler than the question of law:[84]—
“If we are too weak or too prudent to resist England in the direct and proper manner, I hope at least that we shall not make a single voluntary concession inconsistent with our rights and interest. If Mr. Jackson has any compromise to offer which would not be burdened with such, I shall be very agreeably disappointed. But judging by what is said to have been the substance of Mr. Erskine’s instructions, what can we expect but dishonorable and inadmissible proposals? He is probably sent out like Mr. Rose to amuse and to divide; and we shall, I trust, by coming at once to the point, bring his negotiation to an immediate close.”
The President heard the news with as much perplexity as anger, and even tried to persuade himself that Canning would be less severe than he threatened. Madison still clung to hope when he first replied to Gallatin’s summons:[85]—
“The conduct of the British government in protesting the arrangement of its minister surprises one in spite of all their examples of folly. If it be not their plan, now that they have filled their magazines with our supplies and ascertained our want of firmness in withholding them, to adopt openly a system of monopoly and piracy, it may be hoped that they will not persist in the scandalous course in which they have set out. Supposing Erskine to have misunderstood or overstrained his instructions, can the difference between our trading directly and indirectly with Holland account for the violent remedy applied to the case? Is it not more probable that they have yielded to the clamors of the London smugglers in sugar and coffee, whose numbers and impudence are displayed in the scandalous and successful demand from their government that it should strangle the lawful trade of a friendly nation lest it should interfere with their avowed purpose of carrying on a smuggling trade with their enemies? Such an outrage on all decency was never before heard of even on the shores of Africa.”
Madison exaggerated. The outrage on decency committed by the British government in May, 1809, was on the whole not so great as that of Sir William Scott’s decision in the case of the “Essex” in July, 1805; or that of the blockade of New York and the killing of Pierce in April, 1806; or that of Lord Howick’s Order in Council of January, 1807, when the signatures to Monroe’s treaty were hardly dry; or that of Spencer Perceval’s Orders in November, 1807, and the speeches made in their defence; or the mission of George Henry Rose in the winter of 1807–1808; or Erskine’s letter of February 23, or Canning’s letters of September 23, 1808,—for all these left the United States in a worse position than that created by the disavowal of Erskine. Indeed, except for the disgrace of submitting to acts of illegal force, the United States stood in a comparatively easy attitude after the orders of April 26, 1809, so long as Napoleon himself enforced within his empire a more rigid exclusion of neutral commerce than any that could be effected by a British blockade.
“Still, I cannot but hope,” continued Madison, “on the supposition that there be no predetermined hostility against our commerce and navigation, that things may take another turn under the influence of the obvious and striking considerations which advise it.”
The hope vanished when Erskine’s instructions became known, and was succeeded by consternation when the public read the reports made by Erskine and Canning of the language used by Madison, Gallatin, and Pinkney. For the first time in this contest, Englishmen and Americans could no longer understand each other’s meaning. Erskine had so confused every detail with his own ideas, and Canning’s course on one side the Atlantic seemed so little to accord with his tactics on the other, that neither party could longer believe in the other’s good faith. Americans were convinced that Canning had offered terms which he intended them to refuse. Englishmen were sure that Madison had precipitated a settlement which he knew could not be carried out. Madison credited Canning with fraud as freely as Canning charged Madison with connivance.
“I find myself under the mortifying necessity of setting out to-morrow morning for Washington,” wrote Madison to Jefferson, August 3.[86] “The intricate state of our affairs with England produced by the mixture of fraud and folly in her late conduct, and the important questions to be decided as to the legal effect of the failure of the arrangement of April on our commercial relations with her are thought by the heads of departments to require that I should join them.... You will see by the instructions to Erskine, as published by Canning, that the latter was as much determined that there should be no adjustment as the former was that there should be one.”
The President remained three days in Washington in order to sign, August 9, a Proclamation reviving the Non-intercourse Act against Great Britain. On the same day the Secretary of the Treasury enclosed this Proclamation to the Collectors of Customs in a circular, with instructions not to enforce the penalties of the law against vessels entering American ports on the faith of Erskine’s arrangement. This done, Madison returned to Montpelier, August 10, leaving Erskine to exchange apologetic but very unsatisfactory explanations with Robert Smith and Gallatin.
The Proclamation of August 9 was sharply criticised, and with reason; for Congress had given the President no express authority to revive the Non-intercourse Act, and he had clearly exceeded his powers, if not in the Proclamation which revived the Act, then certainly in the original Proclamation of April 19, which set it aside. Even this stretch of authority hardly equalled Gallatin’s assumption of the power to admit what vessels he pleased without regard to the Non-intercourse Act. Yet right or wrong the President had no choice but to use all the powers he needed. Evidently his original mistake in opening intercourse was a greater stretch of authority than any subsequent act could be, except that of leaving it open after the mistake was admitted. Sullenly and awkwardly the Government restored some degree of order to its system, and then President and Cabinet scattered once more, leaving the village of Washington to the solitude of August and September.
A month passed without further change, until September 5 Jackson landed at Annapolis, whence he reached Washington September 8. He came with his wife—a fashionable Prussian baroness with a toilette—and young children, for whose health a Washington September was ill suited; he came too with a carriage and liveries, coachmen and servants, and the outfit of a long residence, as though neither he nor Canning doubted his welcome.
Francis James Jackson had many good qualities, and was on the whole the only English minister of his time so severely treated by the American government as to warrant almost a feeling of sympathy. He was probably suffering from some organic disease which made his temper irritable, while his instructions were such as to leave him no room to show his best capacities in his profession. In ordinary times a man of his experience, intelligence, and marked character might have succeeded in winning at Washington a name for ability and straightforwardness; but he was ill fitted for the special task he had undertaken, and had no clear idea of the dangers to which he was exposed. Gallatin expressed the feeling of the Administration when he advised coming at once to the point with Jackson, and bringing his negotiation to an immediate close. Madison could not have wished to repeat his experience with Rose, or to allow a British minister to reside at Washington for the sole purpose of dividing American counsels and intriguing with Senator Pickering. Had Jackson been quick in his perceptions, he would have seen early that nothing but mortification could be in store for him; but he had the dogged courage and self-confidence of his time, and undertook to deal single-handed with a government and people he did not trouble himself to understand.
The President was not in Washington when the British minister drove into that “famous city,” as he called it, which “resembles more nearly Hampstead Heath than any other place I ever saw.”[87] Robert Smith apologized for the incivility of leaving him without the usual public recognition, and explained that the risk of fever and the fatigue of four days’ journey made the President extremely unwilling to return before October 1, the day fixed for Jackson’s reception. Indirectly Smith suggested that Jackson might visit the President at Montpelier, or even begin negotiation before being officially received; but the minister replied that he would cheerfully wait. Gallatin wrote to the President, September 11,—
“I do not think that there is any necessity to hurry yourself beyond your convenience in returning here. It will be as well the 10th as the 1st of October, for I am sure, although I have not seen Mr. Jackson and can judge only from what has passed between him and Mr. Smith, that he has nothing to say of importance, or pleasant.”[88]
Madison replied, proposing to set out for Washington about the 29th, but agreeing with Gallatin that in view of “Jackson’s apparent patience and reserve,” his disclosures “would not be either operative or agreeable.”[89]
Whether Jackson showed patience or activity, he could not avoid giving offence; and perhaps he did wisely to gain all the time he could, even if he gained nothing else. Unlike some of his predecessors, he understood how to make the best of his situation. He found amusement for a month of idleness, even though the month was September and the place was Washington. He took the house which Merry and Erskine had occupied,—a house that stood amid fields looking over Rock Creek to Georgetown:
“Erskine had let it go to such a state of ruin and dirt that it will be several weeks before we can attempt to move into it. A Scotchman with an American wife who would be a fine lady, are not the best people to succeed on such an occasion.
“It is but justice to say that I have met with nothing but the utmost civility, and with none of those hardships and difficulties of which the Merrys so bitterly complained. The travelling is not worse than much that I have met with before in my life, and the accommodations are better than many I have thought supportable. The expense is about the same as in England, and must be considered most exorbitant when the inferiority of their arrangements to ours and the greater cheapness of provisions are taken into account.”[90]
As the season advanced, Jackson began to enjoy his autumn picnic on the heath of Washington. He had an eye for the details which gave interest to travel. “I put up a covey of partridge,” he wrote October 7, “about three hundred yards from the House of Congress, yclept the Capitol.” He had the merit of being first to discover what few men of his time had the taste to feel,—that Washington was beautiful:—
“I have procured two very good saddle-horses, and Elizabeth and I have been riding in all directions round this place whenever the weather has been cool enough. The country has a beautifully picturesque appearance, and I have nowhere seen finer scenery than is composed by the Potomac and the woods and hills about it; yet it has a wild and desolate air from being so scantily and rudely cultivated, and from the want of population.... So you see we are not fallen into a wilderness,—so far from it that I am surprised no one should before have mentioned the great beauty of the neighborhood. The natives trouble themselves but little about it; their thoughts are chiefly of tobacco, flour, shingles, and the news of the day. The Merrys, I suppose, never got a mile out of Washington, except on their way to Philadelphia.”
Part of Jackson’s leisure was employed in reading Erskine’s correspondence, although he would have done better had he neglected this customary duty, and had he brought to his diplomacy no more prejudices than such as belonged to his nature and training. His disgust with Erskine only added to his antipathy for Erskine’s objects, methods, and friends.
“My visitors,” he wrote, “are a different set from Erskine’s, I perceive; many of them he says he never saw. Per contra, many of the Democrats who were his intimates never come to me, and I am well pleased and somewhat flattered by the distinction.... Erskine is really a greater fool than I could have thought it possible to be, and it is charity to give him that name.... Now that I have gone through all his correspondence, more than ever am I at a loss to comprehend how he could have been allowed to remain here for the last two years.... To be obliged to wade through such a mass of folly and stupidity, and to observe how our country has been made, through Erskine’s means, the instrument of these people’s cunning, is not the least part of my annoyance. Between them our cause is vilified indeed. The tone which Erskine had accustomed them to use with him, and to use without any notion whatever being taken of it, is another great difficulty I have had to overcome. Every third word was a declaration of war.”
The month passed only too soon for Jackson’s comfort, and October 1, punctual to his word, the President arrived. The next day Erskine had his farewell audience, and October 3 Jackson was officially received. Merry’s experience had not been without advantage to both sides; and Jackson, who seemed to feel more contempt for his own predecessors—Merry and Erskine—than for his American antagonists, accepted everything in good part.
“Madison, the President, is a plain and rather mean-looking little man, of great simplicity of manners, and an inveterate enemy to form and ceremony; so much so that I was officially informed that my introduction to him was to be considered as nothing more than the reception of one gentleman by another, and that no particular dress was to be worn on the occasion,—all which I was very willing to acquiesce in. Accordingly I went in an afternoon frock, and found the President in similar attire. Smith, the Secretary of State, who had walked from his office to join me, had on a pair of dusty boots, and his round hat in his hand. When he had introduced us he retired, and the President then asked me to take a chair. While we were talking, a negro servant brought in some glasses of punch and a seed-cake. The former, as I had been in conference the whole morning, served very agreeably to wet, or whet, my whistle, and still more strongly to contrast this audience with others I had had with most of the sovereigns of Europe.”
Perhaps this passing allusion to previous acquaintance with “most of the sovereigns of Europe” threw a light, somewhat too searching, into the recesses of Jackson’s character. The weakness was pardonable, and not specially unsuited to success in his career, but showed itself in private as a form of self-deception which promised ill for his coming struggle. Madison’s civility quite misled him.
“I do not know,” he wrote October 24, “that I had ever more civility and attention shown me than at a dinner at the President’s yesterday, where I was treated with a distinction not lately accorded to a British minister in this country. A foolish question of precedence, which ever since Merry’s time has been unsettled, and has occasioned some heart-burnings among the ladies, was also decided then by the President departing from his customary indifference to ceremony and etiquette, and taking Elizabeth in to dinner, while I conducted Mrs. Madison.”
Evidently this deference pleased the British minister, who saw nothing behind it but a social triumph for himself and his wife; yet he had already been forced to protest against the ceremonial forms with which Madison studiously surrounded him, and had he read Shakspeare rather than Erskine’s writings, he might have learned from Julius Cæsar the general diplomatic law that “when love begins to sicken and decay, it useth ever an enforced ceremony.” A man of tact would have seen that from the moment Madison became formal he was dangerous. The dinner of October 23 at the White House came at a moment when Jackson had been so carefully handled and so effectually disarmed as to stand at Madison’s mercy; and although he was allowed to please himself by taking Mrs. Madison to dinner, the “mean-looking little man” at the head of the table, was engaged only in thinking by what stroke the British minister’s official life should be most quickly and quietly ended.
Jackson’s interviews with Robert Smith began immediately after the President’s arrival in Washington. The first conversation was reported by the British minister to his Government in language so lifelike, but showing such astonishment on both sides at the attitude of each, as to give it place among the most natural sketches in American diplomatic history. After some fencing on the subject of Erskine’s responsibility, Jackson passed to the subject of his own instructions, and remarked that he was ordered to wait for propositions from the President.
“Here the American minister,” reported Jackson,[91] “exhibited signs of the utmost surprise and disappointment. He seemed to be so little prepared for this close of my conversation that he was some time before he could recollect himself sufficiently to give me any answer at all. Expecting to meet suggestions of a totally different nature, and finding that what he had ready to say to them did not suit the occasion, he seemed to require some time and reflection to new arrange his thoughts. Accordingly a considerable pause in our conversation took place, which at length he broke in upon by saying: ‘Then, sir, you have no proposal to make to us,—no explanation to give? How shall we be able to get rid of the Non-intercourse Act?’”
Robert Smith was a wearisome burden to Madison, and his incompetence made no agreeable object of study; but his apparent bewilderment at Jackson’s audacity was almost as instructive as the sincere astonishment of the Englishman at the effect of his own words. The game of cross-purposes could not be more naturally played. Robert Smith had been requested by Madison to ascertain precisely what Jackson’s instructions were; and both at the first and at a second interview he pressed this point, always trying to discover what Jackson had to offer, while the Englishman always declined to offer anything whatever. Two conversations satisfied the President that Jackson’s hands were fast tied, and that he could open no door of escape. Then Madison gently set the Secretary of State aside, and, as openly as the office of Chief Magistrate permitted, undertook to deal with the British minister.
October 9 the Secretary of State sent to the British Legation a formal letter, written, like all Robert Smith’s important papers, by the President.[92] After recapitulating the negative results reached in the two interviews, Jackson was asked whether he had been rightly understood; and the letter ended by saying, that, “to avoid the misconceptions incident to oral proceeding, I have also the honor to intimate that it is thought expedient that our further discussions on the present occasion be in the written form.”[93]
Jackson saw a challenge in this change of attitude, and undertook to meet it by vigorous resistance. He had no mind to be thrown on the defensive; as he wrote to Canning, he wished to teach the American government not to presume on his patience.
“On connecting all these circumstances,” he reported,[94]—“the manner in which Mr. Smith had conducted our conferences; the abruptness, especially, with which he had put an end to them; and the style in which he announces to me, without leaving any choice or alternative, but as the absolute decision of his Government, ‘that it is thought expedient that our future discussions on the present occasion’ (i. e., the only occasion of doing away existing differences) ‘should be in the written form,’—it occurred to me to be necessary to put the matter on such a footing as to preclude, in limine, the idea that every species of indirect obloquy was to be patiently submitted to by his Majesty’s minister in this country.”
In this temper Jackson wrote a long letter, dated October 11, for the purpose, as he reported to Canning,[95] of checking “that spirit which can never lead to conciliation, by which America thinks herself entitled to make her will and her view of things the criterion by which they are to be generally approved or condemned.” Beginning with the assertion that “there does not exist in the annals of diplomacy a precedent” for stopping verbal communication within so few days after the delivery of credentials, he rehearsed the story of Erskine’s arrangement, and justified his refusal of apology or explanation. In doing so, he allowed himself to insinuate what Canning expressly asserted in his instructions, that Robert Smith had connived at Erskine’s misconduct:—
“It was not known when I left England whether Mr. Erskine had, according to the liberty allowed him, communicated to you in extenso his original instructions. It now appears that he did not. But ... I find ... that he has submitted to your consideration the three conditions specified in those instructions as the ground-work of an arrangement.... Mr. Erskine reports, verbatim et seriatim, your observations upon each of the three conditions, and the reasons which induced you to think that others might be substituted in lieu of them. It may have been concluded between you that these latter were an equivalent for the original conditions; but the very act of substitution evidently shows that those original conditions were in fact very explicitly communicated to you, and by you, of course, laid before the President for his consideration.”
After justifying the disavowal of Erskine on the admitted ground that he had disobeyed instructions, Jackson came to the point of his own powers. “His Majesty has authorized me,” he said, “notwithstanding the ungracious manner in which his former offer of satisfaction for the affair of the ‘Chesapeake’ was received, to renew that which Mr. Erskine was instructed to make.” As for the Orders in Council, these had been so far modified by the blockade of April 26 as to make any formal agreement on that subject seem unnecessary, and he reserved his proposals until he should hear those of the President.
Two days after this letter was despatched, Robert Smith sent a civil message that there had been no intention to stop personal intercourse; “he should be most happy to see me whenever I would call upon him; we might converse upon indifferent subjects; but that his memory was so incorrect that it was on his account necessary that in making his reports to the President he should have some written document to assist him.”[96] With this excuse for the secretary’s sudden withdrawal from the field the British minister contented himself until October 19, when he received an official letter, signed as usual by Robert Smith, but written with ability such as that good-natured but illiterate Secretary of State never imagined himself to possess.
The American note of October 19, far too long to quote or even to abridge, was perhaps the best and keenest paper Madison ever wrote. His faults of style and vagueness of thought almost wholly disappeared in the heat of controversy; his defence was cool, his attack keen, as though his sixty years weighed lightly the day when he first got his young antagonist at his mercy. He dealt Jackson a fatal blow at the outset, by reminding him that in July, 1808, only the previous year, Canning had put an end to oral communication after two interviews with Pinkney on the subjects under negotiation. He then made three points, well stated and easily remembered: (1) That when a government refuses to fulfil a pledge, it owes a formal and frank disclosure of its reasons. (2) That, in the actual situation, Mr. Erskine’s successor was the proper channel for that disclosure. (3) That since Mr. Jackson disclaimed authority to make either explanations or proposals, the President could do no more than express his willingness to favor any honorable mode of settling the matters in dispute.
In enlarging on the subjects touched by Jackson’s letter, the President made more than one remark of the kind that most exasperated the British minister. Since no settlement of the dispute was possible or even desired by Jackson, such flashes of Madison’s temper were neither harmful nor inappropriate, yet they were certainly on the verge of insult. He told Jackson plainly that Great Britain, by retaining her so-called retaliation after admitting that it no longer retaliated, was guilty of deception:—
“You cannot but be sensible that a perseverance under such circumstances in a system which cannot longer be explained by its avowed object would force an explanation by some object not avowed. What object might be considered as best explaining it is an inquiry into which I do not permit myself to enter, further than to remark that in relation to the United States it must be an illegitimate object.”
On the other hand, Madison seemed not to resent, as warmly as he might have done, the intimation that he had induced Erskine to violate instructions. The President either affected not to see, or failed fully to grasp at first, the serious scope of this charge:
“The stress you have laid on what you have been pleased to state as the substitution of the terms finally agreed on for the terms first proposed, has excited no small degree of surprise. Certain it is that your predecessor did present for my consideration the three conditions which now appear on the printed document; that he was disposed to urge them more than the nature of two of them (both palpably inadmissible, and one more than merely inadmissible) could permit; and that on finding his first proposals unsuccessful, the more reasonable terms ... were adopted. And what, sir, is there in this to countenance the conclusion you have drawn in favor of the right of his Britannic Majesty to disavow the proceeding? Is anything more common in public negotiations than to begin with a higher demand, and that failing, to descend to a lower?”
Contenting himself with the remark that he had for the first time learned, from Jackson’s note, the restrictions on Erskine’s authority, the President passed to other points as though unaware that his good faith was in question.
The letter of October 19 forced Jackson one step backward, and drove him nearly to the wall. Obliged to choose between the avowal that he had no proposal to make, or the assertion that he had both explanations and proposals, he yielded, somewhat surlily, to the weakness of offering explanations, such as they were, and of inviting proposals eventually to be embodied in a convention. In a note dated October 23 he answered the American note of October 19.[97] If Madison had doubted his own advantage, his doubts must have vanished in reading Jackson’s second note, which shuffled and evaded the issues in a manner peculiar to disconcerted men; but the most convincing proof of Jackson’s weakness appeared in the want of judgment he showed in exposing himself to attack at the moment when he was seeking safety. He committed the blunder of repeating the charge that Madison was responsible for Erskine’s violation of instructions:—
“These instructions ... were at the time, in substance, made known to you.... So far from the terms which he was actually induced to accept having been contemplated in that instruction, he himself states that they were substituted by you in lieu of those originally proposed.”
Jackson’s folly in thus tempting his fate was the more flagrant because his private letters proved that he knew something of his true position. “Madison is now as obstinate as a mule,” he wrote October 26.[98] “Until he gets [the absolute surrender of the Orders in Council] he will not even accept any satisfaction for the affair of the ‘Chesapeake,’ which has been now for the third time offered to him in vain;” and he added: “There is already a great and growing fermentation in the United States, which shows itself in a manner highly prejudicial to the amity and good understanding which doubtless our ministers wish to see established between the two countries.”
A few days after writing this evidence of his own uneasiness, the British minister received from the Department of State a third note, dated November 1, which left no doubt that the President meant to push his antagonist to extremes. After accepting the explanations at last made in regard to the Orders in Council, and pointing out that they did not apply to the case of the “Chesapeake,” Madison requested Jackson to show his full powers, as an “indispensable preliminary to further negotiation.” The letter was short, and ended with a stern warning:—
“I abstain, sir, from making any particular animadversions on several irrelevant and improper allusions in your letter, not at all comporting with the professed disposition to adjust, in an amicable manner, the differences unhappily subsisting between the two countries; but it would be improper to conclude the few observations to which I purposely limit myself, without adverting to your repetition of a language implying a knowledge on the part of this Government that the instructions of your predecessor did not authorize the arrangement formed by him. After the explicit and peremptory asseveration that this Government had no such knowledge, and that with such a knowledge no such arrangement would have been entered into, the view which you have again presented of the subject makes it my duty to apprise you that such insinuations are inadmissible in the intercourse of a foreign minister with a Government that understands what it owes to itself.”
This letter placed Jackson in a position which he could not defend, and from which he thought, perhaps with reason, that he could not without disgrace retreat. The insinuations he had made were but a cautious expression of the views he was expressly ordered to take. November 4 he replied, with more ability than he had hitherto shown, to the letter of November 1; but he gave himself, for a mere point of temper, into Madison’s hands.
“I am concerned, sir, to be obliged, a second time, to appeal to those principles of public law, under the sanction and protection of which I was sent to this country.... You will find that in my correspondence with you I have carefully avoided drawing conclusions that did not necessarily follow from the premises advanced by me, and least of all should I think of uttering an insinuation where I was unable to substantiate a fact. To facts, such as I have become acquainted with them, I have scrupulously adhered; and in so doing I must continue, whenever the good faith of his Majesty’s government is called in question, to vindicate its honor and dignity in the manner that appears to me best calculated for that purpose.”
When Jackson was sent to Copenhagen with a message whose general tenor resembled that which he brought to the United States, he was fortunate enough to be accompanied by twenty ships of the line, forty frigates, and thirty thousand regular troops. Even with this support, if court gossip could be believed, King George expressed to him surprise that he had escaped being kicked downstairs. At Washington he had no other force on his side than such as his footman or his groom could render, and the destiny that King George predicted for him could not, by any diplomatic weapons, be longer escaped. November 8, Secretary Smith sent to the Legation one more note, which closed Jackson’s diplomatic career:—
“Sir,—... Finding that in your reply of the 4th instant you have used a language which cannot be understood but as reiterating and even aggravating the same gross insinuation, it only remains, in order to preclude opportunities which are thus abused, to inform you that no further communications will be received from you....”