CHAPTER III.
Before the familiar figure of Robert Smith quite fades from the story of his time, the mystery which he succeeded in throwing around his true sympathies needs explanation. When dismissed from the Cabinet in March, he was supposed to be a friend of France and of the President’s French policy. In June he appeared before the public as an opponent of Madison and of French influence. Perhaps in reality he neither supported nor opposed either policy; but he deserves such credit as friendly hands gave him at the moment of his disgrace, and on no one had he made a happier impression than on Serurier, the new French minister. After six weeks’ experience, Serurier, who looked upon Gallatin as little better than an enemy, regarded Robert Smith as a friend. March 5, while Gallatin was writing his resignation, Serurier wrote a despatch to Cadore giving his estimates of the two Cabinet officers:[44]—
“Mr. Gallatin, perhaps the most capable man in the Republic, under an exterior rigidly Republican hides his ambitious designs, his feelings of superiority, which torment him without his being able to satisfy them. People maintain that all his system as a financier is English,—a thing simple enough; and that, on another side, he thinks himself obliged to expiate the sin of being a stranger and born on our frontiers, by separating himself from us in his political principles. I am told also that he has seen with annoyance the occupation by France of Geneva, his country,—whither he expected to withdraw himself with his riches, if his ambition should be crossed here by events. I have as yet no cause for complaint in regard to him, but this is the way he is talked about by the Frenchmen here, and by the party most nearly in sympathy with us (le parti qui se rapproche le plus de nous).”
The fable of Gallatin’s richesses revealed the source of Serurier’s information. The party most nearly in sympathy with France was the “Aurora” faction, which spread stories of Gallatin’s speculations and treated him with vindictive enmity, but regarded Robert Smith as a friend. Serurier’s description of Gallatin’s character contrasted darkly with his portrait of Robert Smith:—
“Mr. Smith shows certainly a character equally decided, but more open. His system seems more Continental; at least he wishes me to think so. With perhaps less breadth of mind, he has more elevation. I know that he nourishes a secret admiration of the Emperor, which he very wisely hides. I dined with him three days ago; it was my first dinner. On leaving the table he sent for a bust and an engraving of his Majesty, and on this subject said to me things full of politeness. In the conversation which followed, he became more expansive: ‘The nation’ (it is he who is speaking) ‘is bold and enterprising at sea; and if war should break out with England, supposing this rupture to be accompanied by a full reconciliation with France, the commerce between Europe and America might become more active than ever. The Americans possess a sort of vessels called schooners, the swiftest sailers in the world, and for that reason beyond insult and capture; while their sailors are full of confidence in the advantage given them by this sort of vessel in time of war.’ He affirmed to me that the great majority of the nation, if satisfied on the side of France, will be much inclined to war with her rival; but that the mild, prudent, and perhaps too timid administration of Mr. Jefferson heretofore, and now that of Mr. Madison, had thus far repressed the national enthusiasm; but he was convinced that under the administration, for example, of the Vice-President General Clinton, or of any other statesman of his character, war would have already broken out.”
This was not the only occasion when Robert Smith showed himself to the French minister as restive under restraint.
“I asked him,” reported Serurier at another time,[45] “what the Government expected to do if the English resented its pretension to the independence of its flag? ‘War,’ he replied with perfect frankness, ‘is the inevitable result of our position toward the English if they refuse to recognize our rights.’ Mr. Smith then admitted to me that his Government certainly had the best founded hope that the establishment of the regency in England would bring about a change of ministry and probably of system, and that the Orders in Council would be repealed; that in this case, neutral rights being re-established, the motive for all this discussion would cease. But he repeated to me that in the contrary case war would, in his eyes, be inevitable, and that the Americans, in deciding on this course, had perfectly foreseen where it would lead them, without being, on that account, deterred from a decision dictated by their honor or their interest.”
These remarks were made February 17, the day when the President decided to accept Napoleon’s conditions; and they helped to convince Serurier that Robert Smith was more “continental,” or Napoleonic, than Gallatin. For this reason, when he heard that Gallatin had prevailed, and Smith was to take the Russian Mission, he wrote to his Government with regret:[46]—
“The Secretary of State has taken his resolution like a man of courage. Instead of sulking and going to intrigue in his province, he has preferred to remain attached to the government of his country, and to go for some time to enjoy the air of our Europe, whither his tastes lead him, and to reserve himself for more favorable circumstances. His frank and open character makes him generally regretted. I think he must have had a share at the time in the fit of energy which his Government has shown. His language was measured; but very certainly his system drew him much nearer to France than to England.”
Perhaps Serurier was misled by Robert Smith’s habit of taking tone from the person nearest him; but as the French minister learned more of Monroe, his regrets for Smith became acute. “I regard as an evil,” he wrote, April 5,[47] “the removal of a man whose elevated views,—noble in foreign policy at least,—and whose decided character, might have given to affairs a direction which must be at least counteracted by his absence, and especially by the way in which his place is filled.”
Monroe took charge of the State Department April 1, and within a few days Serurier became unpleasantly conscious of the change. He still met with civility, but he felt new hesitation. Joel Barlow had been appointed minister to France, and should have started instantly for his post. Yet Barlow lingered at Washington; and when Serurier asked the reason of the delay, Monroe merely said he was waiting for the arrival of the frigate “Essex” with despatches from France and England to the middle of April. The expected despatches did not arrive until July; and in the interval Serurier passed a season of discomfort. The new Secretary of State, unlike his predecessor, showed no admiration for Napoleon. Toward the end of June, the French consuls in the United States made known that they were still authorized and required by the Emperor to issue permits or certificates to American vessels destined for France. Monroe sent at once for Serurier, and admonished him in language that seemed to the French minister altogether out of place:[48]—
“Mr. Monroe’s countenance was absolutely distorted (tout-à-fait décomposeé). I could not conceive how an object, apparently so unimportant, could affect him so keenly. He continued thus: ‘You are witness, sir, to the candor of our motives, to the loyalty of our principles, to our immovable fidelity to our engagements. In spite of party clamor and the extreme difficulty of the circumstances, we persevere in our system; but your Government abandons us to the attacks of its enemies and ours, by not fulfilling on its side the conditions set forth in the President’s proclamation. We are daily accused of a culpable partiality for France. These cries were at first feeble, and we flattered ourselves every day to be able to silence them by announcing the Emperor’s arrangements in conformity with ours; but they become louder by our silence. The Administration finds itself in the most extreme embarrassment (dans le plus extrême embarras); it knows neither what to expect from you, nor what to say to its constituents. Ah, sir!’ cried Mr. Monroe, ‘if your sovereign had deigned to imitate the promptness (empressement) which our President showed in publishing his proclamation; if he had re-opened, with the necessary precautions, concerted with us, his ports and his vessels,—all the commerce of America was won for France. A thousand ships would have sailed at all risks to your ports, where they would have sought the products of your manufactures which are so much liked in this country. The English would have certainly opposed such a useful exchange between the two peoples; our honor and interest would have united to resist them; and the result, for which you are doubtless more desirous than you admit, could not have failed to happen at last.’”
Serurier tried, in vain to soothe the secretary; Monroe was not to be appeased. Oratory so impassioned was not meant for mere show; and as causes of grievance multiplied, the secretary gathered one after another, evidently to be used for a rupture with France. Each stage toward his end he marked by the regular shade of increasing displeasure that he had himself, as a victim, so often watched. Enjoying the pleasure of doing to others what Cevallos and Harrowby, Talleyrand and Canning had done to him, Monroe, familiar with the accents of the most famous school in European diplomacy, ran no risk of throwing away a single tone.
When the secretary told Serurier that Joel Barlow’s departure depended on the news to be brought by the “Essex,” he did not add that he was himself waiting for the arrival of Foster, the new British minister; but as it happened, Foster reached Washington July 1, at the same instant with the despatches brought by the “Essex.” The crisis of Serurier’s diplomatic fortune came with the arrival of Foster, and during the next two weeks the French minister passed through many uncomfortable scenes. He knew too little of American affairs to foresee that not himself, but Monroe, must in the end be the victim. As soon as the “Essex” was announced, bringing William Pinkney from London and Jonathan Russell’s despatches from Paris,—including his report of Napoleon’s tirade to the Paris merchants, but no sign that his decrees were repealed,—Serurier called at the Department to learn what Monroe had to say. “I found him icy; he told me that, contrary to all the hopes of the Government, the ‘Essex’ had brought nothing decisive, and asked if I was more fortunate.”[49] Serurier had despatches, but as the story has shown[50] they were emphatic in forbidding him to pledge himself in regard to the Emperor’s course. Obliged to evade Monroe’s inquiry, he could only suggest hopes of more decisive news by the next arrival, and then turned the subject to Napoleon’s zeal in revolutionizing Spanish America:—
“I was heard with politeness, but coldly. Then I talked of the abrupt and improper tone of Mr. Russell’s correspondence. I said that it did not offend, because Mr. Russell was not of enough consequence to give offence; but that it was considered altogether indecorous. I made him aware, on this occasion, of the necessity that the Republic should have a minister at Paris. Mr. Monroe answered that the Government had already made that remark; he repeated to me that he had intended, long before, to send away Mr. Barlow, but that the daily expectation of despatches from France had made him always delay. Here he stopped himself, and returned for the tenth time upon the difficult position of the Government; upon the universal outcry of commerce, which would become a kind of revolt in the North if the Government could offer nothing to counteract it. He recalled to me the effect produced by the announcement of new licenses issued at Boston and Baltimore, and the equally annoying effect of a pamphlet by the ex-Secretary of State, Mr. Smith, which revealed to the public the declaration made by me on my arrival, that the old confiscations made by way of reprisals, could not be matter of discussion,—‘information,’ said he, ‘which had at the time profoundly afflicted the Administration, and which it had counted on publishing only at the moment when it could simultaneously announce a better outlook, and the absolute restoration of commercial relations.’ He ended, at last, this conference by telling me that he had not yet finished reading all his papers; that the Government was that moment deliberating on its course, and that in a few days we would have a new conference.”
Serurier felt his danger, and expected to be sacrificed. Society turned against him. Even Duane became abusive of France.
“Already, within a few days, I notice a change in the manners of every one about me. The general attention of which I was the object during the first five months has been suddenly followed by a general reserve; people are civil, but under a thousand pretexts they avoid being seen in conversation with me. The journals hitherto most favorable to France begin to say that since we will not keep our engagements, a rupture must take place.”
Thinking that he had nothing to lose, the French minister took a high tone, and July 3, through a private channel, conveyed to the President a warning that the course threatened might lead too far.
“The person in question having answered that I might depend on the Government’s fidelity to its engagements, I replied that I would believe it all if the new American minister should be despatched to Paris, and that I would believe nothing if this departure were again postponed.”
Everything depended on Foster, who had been received by the President July 2, the day before Serurier’s message was sent. Apparently, the first impression made by Foster’s letters and conversation was decisive, for Monroe told the French minister at the public dinner of July 4, that Barlow was to start at once on his mission.
“This news,” reported Serurier, “caused me great pleasure. This success, though doubtless inconsiderable, made all my ambition for the moment; it delays for several months the crisis that the English party was trying to force, in the hope of making it decisive against us; it neutralizes the effect of the arrival of the British minister, whose want of influence down to this point it reveals; it withdraws the initiative from the President and restores to his Majesty the decision of our great affairs.”
No sooner had this decision been made, than Monroe seemed to repent it. The conduct of France had been of late more outrageous than that of England; and Monroe, who found his worst expectations fulfilled, could not easily resign himself to accepting a yoke against which he had for five years protested. The departure of Barlow, ordered July 4, was countermanded July 5; and this proof of Monroe’s discontent led to a striking interview, July 9, in which the Secretary of State became more impassioned than ever.[51] Serurier began by asking what he was to think of the Government’s conduct. Monroe replied by recalling what had happened since the appointment of Barlow as minister to France, a fortnight after Serurier’s arrival. Then the Proclamation of November 2 had been supposed sufficient to satisfy the Emperor; the Non-intercourse Act followed,—yet the President was still waiting for the assurance that the French Decrees were repealed, without which knowledge Barlow’s instructions could not be written.
“So we reached the day when the ‘Essex’ arrived,” continued Monroe. “Not an officer of the government, not a citizen in the Republic, but was convinced that this frigate brought the most satisfactory and the most decisive news. Yet to our great astonishment—even to our confusion—she has brought nothing. In spite of a deception so afflicting, the President had still decided to make a last attempt, and this was to send off Mr. Barlow. I had the honor to announce it to you; but on the news of our frigate’s arrival without satisfactory information from France, a general cry of discontent rose all over the Republic, and public opinion pronounced itself so strongly against Mr. Barlow’s departure that the Government can to-day no longer give the order without raising from all parts of the Union the cry of treason. I am myself a daily witness of the general effervescence that this silence of your Government excites. I cannot walk from my house to this office without being accosted by twenty citizens, who say to me: ‘What, sir! shall you send off a minister to France, when the Imperial government shows itself unwilling to carry out its’ engagements; when it treats our citizens with so much injustice, and you yourself with so much contempt? No! the honor of the Republic will not permit you to send your ambassador under such circumstances, and you will be responsible for it to the country.’”
Monroe’s objection seemed reasonable. The sending a new minister to France was in no way necessary for making an issue with England. Indeed, if only a simple issue with England had been wanted, the permanent presence of British frigates off Sandy Hook, capturing American vessels and impressing American seamen, was sufficient. No further protest against it needed to be made, seeing that it had been the subject of innumerable protests. If President Madison wanted an issue that should oblige Great Britain to declare war, or to take measures equivalent to war, he could obtain it in a moment by ordering Rodgers and Decatur to drive the British frigates away and rescue their victims. For such a purpose he needed no minister in France, and had no occasion to make himself a party to fraud. Monroe’s language implied that he would have preferred some such issue.
“‘Believe me,’ said Mr. Monroe in finishing, and as we were about to separate, ‘the American government will not be inconsequent; but its patience is exhausted, and as regards foreign Powers it is determined to make itself respected. People in Europe suppose us to be merchants, occupied exclusively with pepper and ginger. They are much deceived, and I hope we shall prove it. The immense majority of citizens do not belong to this class, and are, as much as your Europeans, controlled by principles of honor and dignity. I never knew what trade was. The President is as much of a stranger to it as I; and we accord to commerce only the protection that we owe it, as every government owes it to an interesting class of its citizens.’”
Commerce would have listened with more amusement than conviction to Monroe’s ideas on the “principles of honor and dignity” which led a government of Virginia and Pennsylvania farmers to accord protection in the form of embargoes and non-intercourses to commerce which it distrusted and despised; but Monroe meant only that France, as well as England, must reckon on a new national spirit in Virginia,—a spirit which they had themselves roused, and for whose bad qualities they had only themselves to blame.
Yet Monroe found himself in an attitude not flattering to his pride. All his life a representative of the Virginia school,—more conservative than Jefferson, and only to be compared with John Randolph, and John Taylor of Caroline,—he had come to the State Department to enforce his own principles and overrule the President; but he found himself helpless in the President’s hands. That the contest was in reality between Monroe’s will and Madison’s became clear to Serurier; and that Monroe’s pliable nature must succumb to Madison’s pertinacity, backed as it was by authority, could not be doubtful. Six months seemed to Virginians a short time for Monroe’s submission, but in truth Monroe had submitted long before; his rebellion itself had been due to William Pinkney and John Randolph rather than to impulses of his own; he regretted it almost as soon as it was made, and he suffered little in allowing Madison to control the course of events. Yet he would certainly have preferred another result, and his interview with Serurier, July 9, recorded the policy he had meant to impose, while preparing for its abandonment.
The secretary waited only for a pretext to accept Madison’s dogma that the French Decrees were withdrawn, although his conversations with Serurier proved his conviction to the contrary. A few days later, a vessel arrived from England bringing unofficial news from France, to May 24, that the Emperor had released the American vessels kept in sequestration since November 1, and had admitted their cargoes for sale. Without the form of further struggle, Monroe followed the footsteps of his predecessor.
“The Secretary of State sent for me three days ago to his office,” wrote Serurier, July 20.[52] “After having congratulated me on this decision [of the Emperor], he told me that he had no doubt of its producing on the public the same excellent impression it had made on the Government; but he added that as it was not official, the President would like to have me write a letter as confirmative as possible, in the absence of instructions, both of these events and of his Majesty’s good intentions; and that if I could write him this letter, Mr. Barlow should immediately depart.”
The only instructions possessed by Serurier on the subject of the decrees warned him against doing what Monroe asked; but the temptation to win a success was strong, and he wrote a cautious letter,[53] dated July 19, saying that he had no official knowledge on the subject, but that “it is with reason, sir, that you reject the idea of a doubt on the fidelity of France in fulfilling her engagements; for to justify such a doubt one must have some contradictory facts to cite,—one must show that judgments have been rendered in France on the principle of maintaining the Decrees of Berlin and Milan, or that a series of American ships coming from England to America, or from America to England, have been captured by our privateers in virtue of the blockade of the British Isles. Nothing of the sort has become known to any of us, and, on the contrary,” all advices showed that the decrees in France and on the ocean had ceased to affect American commerce.
Probably this letter disappointed the President, for it was never published, nor was any allusion made to it in the correspondence that followed. Without even such cover, Monroe ordered Barlow to depart, and made the decision public. Serurier, puzzled though delighted by his success, groped in the dark to discover how the Government had reached its decision. Foster’s attitude failed to enlighten him; and he could see no explanation, except that the result was a personal victory of Madison over Monroe and the Cabinet.
“The joy is general among the authorities,” he wrote July 20,[54] “except among some friends of Mr. Foster; but more than any one else, Mr. Madison seems enchanted to see himself confirmed (raffermi) in a system which is wholly his own, but which he began to see no means of maintaining. I do him the justice to say that if he had a movement of hesitation on the point of Mr. Barlow’s departure, it was more the effect of public clamor than of his own sentiments,—a movement of spite (dépit) and discouragement, rather than of inclination toward England, which he frankly detests, as does his friend Mr. Jefferson,—and that he has not been for a moment unfaithful to his engagements with us. I have never seen him more triumphant. The Secretaries of State, of the Treasury, and of War are doubtful, perhaps, and conduct themselves more according to events; but happily the President, superior to them in enlightenment as in position, governs entirely by himself, and there is no reason to fear his being crossed by them.”
Serurier knew Madison and Jefferson only as a Frenchman might, and his ideas of their feelings toward England were such as a Frenchman could understand. In truth, Madison did not want a distinct issue of peace or war with England. Had he wished for such an issue, he would have made it. Disbelieving in war, as war approached, he clung to the last chances of peaceful coercion. The fiction that Napoleon’s decrees were repealed enabled him to enforce his peaceful coercive measures to avoid war. Not because he wanted war, but because he wanted peace, Madison insisted that the decrees were withdrawn. As he carried each point, he stood more and more alone; he was misunderstood by his enemies and overborne by his friends; he failed in his policy of peace, and knew himself unfit to administer a policy of war. Yet he held to his principle, that commercial restrictions were the true safeguards of an American system.
A man of keen intelligence, Madison knew, quite as well as Monroe, Serurier, or Foster, that the French Decrees were not repealed. His alleged reason for despatching Barlow was unsatisfactory to himself as to Monroe, and doubly worthless because unofficial. Even while he insisted on his measures, he made no secret of his discontent. When official despatches arrived a few days later, Serurier was puzzled at finding Madison well aware that the Emperor had not withdrawn and did not mean to withdraw his decrees. July 23 Serurier communicated[55] to Monroe the substance of the despatches from France. The next day he called at the Department and at the White House to watch the effect of his letter, which announced the admission of American merchandise into French ports.
“Mr. Monroe showed himself less satisfied than I had hoped, either because the President had so directed, in order to reserve the right of raising new pretensions, or because, already advised by Mr. Russell, he had been at the same time informed that the prizes made since November by our privateers were not restored; and these restrictions had been represented in an unfavorable light by the chargé d’affaires. He confined himself to telling me that certainly there were things agreeable to the American government in the Emperor’s arrangements, but that there were others wholly contrary to expectation, and that before his departure he would send me a list of the complaints left unsatisfied.. .. As the President is to start to-morrow for his estate in Virginia, I called this morning to bid him good-by. I had on this occasion with Mr. Madison an interview which put the last stroke to my suspicions. When I told him that I was glad to see him a last time under auspices so happy as the news I had officially given him the evening before, he answered me that he had learned with pleasure, though without surprise, the release of the sequestered ships and the Emperor’s decision to admit American products; but that one thing pained him profoundly. This was that the American ships captured since last November, under pretext of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, had not been released with those which voluntarily entered French ports; and he pretended that this failure to execute the chief of our engagements destroyed the effect of all the rest.”[56]
The opinion scarcely admitted dispute. Reversing Madison’s theory, Napoleon had relieved American vessels from the “municipal operation” of his decrees in France, while he enforced that international operation on the high seas which alone Madison declared himself bound by the law of nations to resist. The blockade thus enforced by Napoleon against England was more extravagant than any blockade England had ever declared. Of his acts in Denmark and on the Baltic Madison took no notice at all, though these, more than the detention of American prizes in France, “destroyed the effect of all the rest.” If, then, the decrees were still enforced on the ocean,—as Madison insisted they were,—they could not have been repealed; and Madison, by submitting to their enforcement on the ocean, not only recognized their legality, but also required England to make the same submission, under penalty of a declaration of war from the United States. This dilemma threatened to overthrow Madison’s Administration, or even to break up the Union. Serurier saw its dangers, and did his utmost to influence Napoleon toward concessions:
“The revocation of the Decrees of Milan and Berlin has become a personal affair with Mr. Madison. He announced it by proclamation, and has constantly maintained it since. The English party never stops worrying him on this point, and saying that he has been made a tool of France,—that the decrees have not been repealed. He fears the effect of this suspension, and foresees that it will cause great discussions in the next Congress, and that it alone may compromise the Administration, triumphant on all other points.”
Under such circumstances, Monroe needed more than common powers in order to play his part. Talleyrand himself would have found his impassive countenance tried by assuring Foster in the morning that the decrees were repealed, and rating Serurier in the afternoon because they were in force. Such conversations, extended over a length of time, might in the end raise doubts of a statesman’s veracity; yet this was what Monroe undertook. On the day when Serurier communicated the news that disturbed the President, Monroe sent to the British minister the note maintaining broadly that France had revoked her decrees. Three days later, after the President had told Serurier that “the failure to execute the chief of our engagements destroyed the effect of all the rest,” Monroe gave to Barlow his instructions founded on the revocation of the decrees. Doubtless this double-dealing exasperated all the actors concerned in it. Madison and Monroe at heart were more angry with France than with England, if indeed degrees in anger could be felt where the outrages of both parties were incessant and intolerable. Yet Barlow took his instructions and set sail for France; a proclamation appeared in the “National Intelligencer” calling Congress together for November 1; and the President and his Secretary of State left Washington for their summer vacation in Virginia, having accepted, once for all, the conditions imposed by Napoleon.
For some years afterward Monroe said no more about old Republican principles; but twelve months later he wrote to Colonel Taylor a letter[57] which began with a candid confession:—
“I have been afraid to write to you for some time past, because I knew that you expected better things from me than I have been able to perform. You thought that I might contribute to promote a compromise with Great Britain, and thereby prevent a war between that country and the United States; that we might also get rid of our restrictive system. I own to you that I had some hope, though less than some of my friends entertained, that I might aid in promoting that desirable result. This hope has been disappointed.”
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY,
J. W. POWELL, DIRECTOR.
MAP OF
THE
STATE OF INDIANA
Exhibiting the Lands ceded by the
Indian Tribes
TO THE
UNITED STATES
BY
C. C. ROYCE
CESSIONS OF INDIAN TERRITORY IN INDIANA,
1795–1810.
1. Tract ceded by Treaty of Greenville, August 3rd, 1795.
2. Tract about Fort Wayne, ceded by the same Treaty.
3. Two miles square on the Miami portage, ceded by the same Treaty.
4. Six miles square at Old Wea Town on the Wabash, ceded by the same Treaty.
5. Clark’s Grant on the Ohio, reserved by the same Treaty.
6. Vincennes tract, reserved by the same Treaty.
7. Tract ceded by Treaties of August 18th and 27th, 1804.
8. Tract ceded by Treaty of August 21st, 1805.
9, 10, 11. Tracts ceded by Treaty of September 30th, 1809.
12. Tract ceded by Treaty of December 9th, 1809.