CHAPTER I.
During the spring and summer of 1814 the task of diplomacy was less hopeful than that of arms. Brown and Izard with extreme difficulty defended the frontier; but Gallatin and Bayard could find no starting-point for negotiation. Allowed by Castlereagh’s courtesy to visit England, they crossed the Channel in April, and established themselves in London. There Gallatin remained until June 21, waiting for the British government to act, and striving with tact, caution, and persistency to bring both governments on common ground; but the attempt was hopeless. England was beside herself with the intoxication of European success.
Although the English newspapers expressed a false idea of the general will, and were even at cross purposes with the Ministry in American matters, their tone was in some respects an indifferent barometer for measuring the elation or depression of the public temper, and exercised some influence, rather apparent than real, on the momentary attitudes of government. Had Castlereagh and his colleagues been really controlled by the press, no American peace could have been made. Whatever spirit of friendship for America might exist was necessarily silent, and only extravagant enmity found expression either in the press or in society.
Perhaps because ministers were believed to wish for peace with the United States, the London “Times,” which was not a ministerial journal, made itself conspicuous in demanding war. The “Times” had not previously shown a vindictive spirit, but it represented the Wellesley and Canning interest, which could discover no better course than that of being more English than England, and more patriotic than the Government. The “Times” was always ably written and well edited, but its language toward the United States showed too strong a connection with that of the Federalists, from whose public and private expressions the press of England formed its estimate of American character.
The “Times” indulged to excess in the pleasure of its antipathy. Next to Napoleon, the chief victim of English hatred was Madison. For so mild a man Madison possessed a remarkable faculty of exciting invective. The English press surpassed the American Federalists in their allusions to him, and the “Times” was second to no English newspaper in the energy of its vituperation. “The lunatic ravings of the philosophic statesman of Washington” were in its political category of a piece with “his spaniel-like fawning on the Emperor of Russia.[1]... The most abject of the tools of the deposed tyrant; ... doubtless he expected to be named Prince of the Potomack or Grand Duke of Virginia.”[2] The “Sun” somewhat less abusively spoke of “that contemptible wretch Madison, and his gang;”[3] but the “Times” habitually called him liar and impostor.
“Having disposed of all our enemies in Europe,” the “Times” in the middle of April turned its attention to the United States. “Let us have no cant of moderation,” was its starting-point. “There is no public feeling in the country stronger than that of indignation against the Americans; ... conduct so base, so loathsome, so hateful.... As we urged the principle, No peace with Bonaparte! so we must maintain the doctrine of, No peace with James Madison!”[4] To this rule the “Times” steadily adhered with a degree of ill-temper not easily to be described, and with practical objects freely expressed. “Mr. Madison’s dirty, swindling manœuvres in respect to Louisiana and the Floridas remain to be punished,” it declared April 27; and May 17 it pursued the idea: “He must fall a victim to the just vengeance of the Federalists. Let us persevere. Let us unmask the impostor.... Who cares about the impudence which they call a doctrine?... We shall demand indemnity.... We shall insist on security for Canada.... We shall inquire a little into the American title to Louisiana; and we shall not permit the base attack on Florida to go unpunished.” May 18 it declared that Madison had put himself on record as a liar in the cause of his Corsican master. “He has lived an impostor, and he deserves to meet the fate of a traitor. That fate now stares him in the face.” May 24 the “Times” resumed the topic: “They are struck to the heart with terror for their impending punishment; and oh may no false liberality, no mistaken lenity, no weak and cowardly policy, interpose to save them from the blow! Strike! chastise the savages, for such they are!... With Madison and his perjured set no treaty can be made, for no oath can bind them.” When British commissioners were at last announced as ready to depart for Ghent to negotiate for peace with the United States, June 2, the “Times” gave them instructions: “Our demands may be couched in a single word,—Submission!”
The “Morning Post,” a newspaper then carrying higher authority than the “Times,” used language if possible more abusive, and even discovered, Jan. 18, 1814, “a new trait in the character of the American government. Enjoying the reputation of being the most unprincipled and the most contemptible on the face of the earth, they were already known to be impervious to any noble sentiment; but it is only of late that we find them insensible of the shame of defeat, destitute even of the brutish quality of being beaten into a sense of their unworthiness and their incapacity.” Of Madison the “Morning Post” held the lowest opinion. He was “a despot in disguise; a miniature imitation” and miserable tool of Bonaparte, who wrote his Annual Message; a senseless betrayer of his country.[5]
The “Times” and “Morning Post” were independent newspapers, and spoke only for themselves; but the “Courier” was supposed to draw inspiration from the Government, and commonly received the first knowledge of ministers’ intentions. In temper the “Courier” seemed obliged to vie with its less favored rivals. The President’s Annual Message of 1813 resembled in its opinion “all the productions of that vain and vulgar Cabinet;” it was “a compound of canting and hypocrisy, of exaggeration and falsehood, of coarseness without strength, of assertions without proof, of the meanest prejudices, and of the most malignant passions; of undisguised hatred of Great Britain, and of ill-concealed partiality and servility toward France.”[6] “We know of no man for whom we feel greater contempt than for Mr. Madison,” said the “Courier” of May 24. These illustrations of what the “Courier” called “exaggeration and falsehood, of coarseness without strength, of assertions without proof, of the meanest prejudices, and of the most malignant passions” were probably in some degree a form as used by the “Courier,” which would at a hint from the Ministry adopt a different tone; but announcements of official acts and intentions were more serious, and claimed more careful attention.
Immediately after the capitulation of Paris, March 31, the Ministry turned its attention to the United States, and the “Courier” announced, April 15, that twenty thousand men were to go from the Garonne to America. Mr. Madison, the “Courier” added, had “made a pretty kettle of fish of it.” Twenty thousand men were about two thirds of Wellington’s English force, and their arrival in America would, as every Englishman believed, insure the success of the campaign. Not until these troops were embarked would the Ministry begin to negotiate; but in the middle of May the military measures were complete, and then the “Courier” began to prepare the public mind for terms of peace.
These terms were the same as those announced by the “Times,” except that the “Courier” did not object to treating with Madison. The United States were to be interdicted the fisheries; Spain was to be supported in recovering Louisiana; the right of impressment must be expressly conceded,—anything short of this would be unwise and a disappointment. “There are points which must be conceded by America before we can put an end to the contest.”[7] Such language offered no apparent hope of peace; yet whatever hope existed lay in Castlereagh, who inspired it. Extravagant as the demands were, they fell short of the common expectation. The “Courier” admitted the propriety of negotiation; it insisted neither on Madison’s retirement nor on a division of the Union, and it refrained from asserting the whole British demand, or making it an ultimatum.
The chief pressure on the Ministry came from Canada, and could not be ignored. The Canadian government returned to its old complaint that Canadian interests had been ignorantly and wantonly sacrificed by the treaty of 1783, and that the opportunity to correct the wrong should not be lost. The Canadian official “Gazette” insisted that the United States should be required to surrender the northern part of the State of New York, and that both banks of the St. Lawrence should be Canadian property.[8] A line from Plattsburg to Sackett’s Harbor would satisfy this necessity; but to secure Canadian interests, the British government should further insist on acquiring the east bank of the Niagara River, and on a guaranty of the Indian Territory from Sandusky to Kaskaskias, with the withdrawal of American military posts in the Northwest. A pamphlet was published in May to explain the subject for the use of the British negotiators, and the required territorial cessions were marked on a map.[9] The control of the Lakes, the Ohio River as the Indian boundary, and the restitution of Louisiana were the chief sacrifices wished from the United States. The cession of a part of Maine was rather assumed than claimed, and the fisheries were to be treated as wholly English. A memorial from Newfoundland, dated Nov. 8, 1813,[10] pointed out the advantages which the war had already brought to British trade and fisheries by the exclusion of American competition, to the result of doubling the number of men employed on the Labrador shores; and the memorialists added,—
“They cannot too often urge the important policy ... of wholly excluding foreigners from sharing again in the advantages of a fishery from which a large proportion of our best national defence will be derived.”
British confidence was at its highest point when the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia visited London, June 7, and received an enthusiastic welcome. Gallatin obtained an interview with the Czar, June 17, and hoped that Russian influence might moderate British demands; but the Czar could give him no encouragement.[11] Gallatin wrote home an often-quoted despatch, dated June 13, warning the President that fifteen or twenty thousand men were on their way to America, and that the United States could expect no assistance from Europe.
“I have also the most perfect conviction,” Gallatin continued, “that under the existing unpropitious circumstances of the world, America cannot by a continuance of the war compel Great Britain to yield any of the maritime points in dispute, and particularly to agree to any satisfactory arrangement on the subject of impressment; and that the most favorable terms of peace that can be expected are the status ante bellum.”
Even these terms, Gallatin added, depended on American success in withstanding the shock of the campaign. He did not say that at the time he wrote, the status ante bellum would be scouted by public opinion in England as favorable to the United States; but his estimate of the situation was more nearly exact than though he had consulted only the apparent passions of the British press.
“Lord Castlereagh,” wrote Gallatin to Clay,[12] “is, according to the best information I can collect, the best disposed man in the Cabinet.” Yet Castlereagh did not venture at that stage to show a disposition for peace. He delayed the negotiation, perhaps wisely, six weeks after the American negotiators had assembled at Ghent; and his instructions[13] to the British commissioners, dated July 28, reflected the demands of the press. They offered, not the status ante bellum, but the uti possidetis, as the starting-point of negotiation. “The state of possession must be considered as the territorial arrangement which would revive upon a peace, except so far as the same may be modified by any new treaty.” The state of possession, in view of the orders that had then been given, or were to be given, for the invasion of the United States, was likely to cost the Americans half of Maine, between the Penobscot and the Passamaquoddy; Plattsburg, and the northern part of New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire; Fort Niagara, Mackinaw, and possibly New Orleans and Mobile. Besides this concession of the uti possidetis, or military occupation at the date of peace, the Americans were required at the outset to admit as a sine qua non, or condition precedent to any negotiation, that England’s Indian allies, the tribes of the Northwestern Territory, should be included in the pacification, and that a definite boundary should be assigned to them under a mutual guaranty of both Powers. Eastport, or Moose Island, and the fishing privileges were to be regarded as British. With these instructions of July 28, the British commissioners, early in August, started for Ghent.
Between Castlereagh’s ideas and those of Madison no relation existed. Gallatin and his colleagues at Ghent were provided with two sets of instructions. The first set had been written in 1813, for the expected negotiation at Petersburg. The second set was written in January, 1814, and was brought to Europe by Clay. Neither authorized the American commissioners to discuss such conditions as Castlereagh proposed. The President gave his negotiators authority to deal with questions of maritime law; but even there they were allowed to exercise no discretion on the chief issue in dispute. Monroe’s latest letter, dated January 28, was emphatic. “On impressment, as to the right of the United States to be exempted from it, I have nothing to add,” said the secretary;[14] “the sentiments of the President have undergone no change on that important subject. This degrading practice must cease; our flag must protect the crew, or the United States cannot consider themselves an independent nation.” The President would consent to exclude all British seamen, except those already naturalized, from American vessels, and to stipulate the surrender of British deserters; but the express abandonment of impressment was a sine qua non of treaty. “If this encroachment of Great Britain is not provided against,” said Monroe, “the United States have appealed to arms in vain. If your efforts to accomplish it should fail, all further negotiations will cease, and you will return home without delay.”
On territorial questions the two governments were equally wide apart. So far from authorizing a cession of territorial rights, Monroe instructed the American commissioners, both at St. Petersburg and at Ghent, “to bring to view the advantage to both countries which is promised by a transfer of the upper parts and even the whole of Canada to the United States.”[15] The instructions of January 1 and January 28, 1814, reiterated the reasoning which should decide England voluntarily to cede Canada. “Experience has shown that Great Britain cannot participate in the dominion and navigation of the Lakes without incurring the danger of an early renewal of the war.”[16]
These instructions were subsequently omitted from the published documents, probably because the Ghent commissioners decided not to act upon them;[17] but when the American negotiators met their British antagonists at Ghent, each party was under orders to exclude the other, if possible, from the Lakes, and the same divergence of opinion in regard to the results of two years’ war extended over the whole field of negotiation. The British were ordered to begin by a sine qua non in regard to the Indians, which the Americans had no authority to consider. The Americans were ordered to impose a sine qua non in regard to impressments, which the British were forbidden to concede. The British were obliged to claim the basis of possession; the Americans were not even authorized to admit the status existing before the war. The Americans were required to negotiate about blockades, contraband and maritime rights of neutrals; the British could not admit such subjects into dispute. The British regarded their concessions of fishing-rights as terminated by the war; the Americans could not entertain the idea.
The diplomacy that should produce a treaty from such discordant material must show no ordinary excellence; yet even from that point of view the prospect was not encouraging. The British government made a peculiar choice of negotiators. The chief British commissioner, Lord Gambier, was unknown in diplomacy, or indeed in foreign affairs. A writer in the London “Morning Chronicle” of August 9 expressed the general surprise that Government could make no better selection for the chief of its commission than Lord Gambier, “who was a post-captain in 1794, and happened to fight the ‘Defence’ decently in Lord Howe’s action; who slumbered for some time as a Junior Lord of the Admiralty; who sung psalms, said prayers, and assisted in the burning of Copenhagen, for which he was made a lord.”
Gambier showed no greater fitness for his difficult task than was to be expected from his training; and the second member of the commission, Henry Goulburn, could not supply Gambler’s deficiencies. Goulburn was Under-Secretary of State to Lord Bathurst; he was a very young man, but a typical under-secretary, combining some of Francis James Jackson’s temper with the fixed opinions of the elder Rose, and he had as little idea of diplomacy as was to be expected from an Under-Secretary of State for the colonies. The third and last member was William Adams, Doctor of Civil Law, whose professional knowledge was doubtless supposed to be valuable to the commission, but who was an unknown man, and remained one.
Experience had not convinced the British government that in dealing with the United States it required the best ability it could command. The mistake made by Lord Shelburne in 1783 was repeated by Lord Castlereagh in 1814. The miscalculation of relative ability which led the Foreign Office to assume that Gambier, Goulburn, and William Adams were competent to deal with Gallatin, J. Q. Adams, J. A. Bayard, Clay, and Russell was not reasonable. Probably the whole British public service, including Lords and Commons, could not at that day have produced four men competent to meet Gallatin, J. Q. Adams, Bayard, and Clay on the ground of American interests; and when Castlereagh opposed to them Gambier, Goulburn, and Dr. Adams, he sacrificed whatever advantage diplomacy offered; for in diplomacy as in generalship, the individual commanded success.
The only serious difficulty in the American commission was its excess of strength. By a natural reaction against the attempt to abolish diplomatic offices, the United States government sent into diplomacy its most vigorous men. Under favorable conditions, four minds and wills of so decided a character could not easily work together; but in the Ghent commission an additional difficulty was created by the unfortunate interference of the Senate. Originally Gallatin, as was due to his age, services, and ability, had been the head of the St. Petersburg commission; but the Senate refused to confirm the appointment. The President at last removed Gallatin from the Treasury, and renominated him as a member of the Ghent commission after the other members had been nominated and confirmed. The Senate then gave its approval,—thus making Gallatin the last member of the commission instead of the first, and placing J. Q. Adams above them all.
Gallatin was peculiarly fitted to moderate a discordant body like the negotiators, while Adams was by temperament little suited to the post of moderator, and by circumstances ill-qualified to appear as a proper representative of the commission in the eyes of its other members. Unless Gallatin were one of the loftiest characters and most loyal natures ever seen in American politics, Adams’s chance of success in controlling the board was not within reasonable hope. Gallatin was six years the senior, and represented the President, with the authority of close and continuous personal friendship. The board, including Adams himself, instinctively bowed to Gallatin’s authority; but they were deferential to no one else, least of all to their nominal head. Bayard, whose age was the same as that of Adams, was still in name a Federalist; and although his party trusted him little more than it trusted Adams or William Pinkney, who had avowedly become Republicans, he was not the more disposed to follow Adams’s leadership. Clay, though ten years their junior, was the most difficult of all to control; and Jonathan Russell, though a New Englander, preferred Clay’s social charm, and perhaps also his political prospects, to the somewhat repellent temper and more than doubtful popularity of Adams.
Personal rivalry and jealousies counted for much in such a group; but these were not the only obstacles to Adams’s influence. By a misfortune commonly reserved for men of the strongest wills, he represented no one but himself and a powerless minority. His State repudiated and, in a manner, ostracized him. Massachusetts gave him no support, even in defending her own rights; by every means in her power she deprived him of influence, and loaded him with the burden of her own unpopularity. Adams represented a community not only hostile to the war, but avowedly laboring to produce peace by means opposed to those employed at Ghent. If the Ghent commission should succeed in making a treaty, it could do so only by some sacrifice of Massachusetts which would ruin Adams at home. If the Ghent commission should fail, Adams must be equally ruined by any peace produced through the treasonable intrigues or overt rebellion of his State.
Such a head to a commission so constituted needed all the force of character which Adams had, and some qualities he did not possess, in order to retain enough influence to shape any project into a treaty that he could consent to sign; while Gallatin’s singular tact and nobility of character were never more likely to fail than in the effort to make allowance for the difficulties of his chief’s position. Had Castlereagh improved the opportunity by sending to Ghent one competent diplomatist, or even a well-informed and intelligent man of business, like Alexander Baring, he might probably have succeeded in isolating Adams, and in negotiating with the other four commissioners a treaty sacrificing Massachusetts.
The five American commissioners were ready to negotiate in June; but Castlereagh, for obvious reasons, wished delay, and deferred action until August, doubtless intending to prevent the signature of a treaty on the basis of uti possidetis until after September, when Sherbrooke and Prevost should have occupied the territory intended to be held. In May and June no one in England, unless it were Cobbett, entertained more than a passing doubt of British success on land and water; least of all did the three British commissioners expect to yield British demands. They came to impose terms, or to break negotiation. They were not sent to yield any point in dispute, or to seek a cessation of arms.
At one o’clock on the afternoon of August 8, the first conference took place in the Hotel des Pays Bas at Ghent. After the usual civilities and forms had passed, Goulburn took the lead, and presented the points which he and his colleagues were authorized to discuss,—(1) Impressment and allegiance; (2) the Indians and their boundary, a sine qua non; (3) the Canadian boundary; (4) the privilege of landing and drying fish within British jurisdiction. Goulburn declared that it was not intended to contest the right of the United States to the fisheries, by which he probably meant the deep-sea fisheries; and he was understood to disavow the intention of acquiring territory by the revision of the Canada boundary; but he urged an immediate answer upon the question whether the Americans were instructed on the point made a sine qua non by the British government.
The Americans, seeing as yet only a small part of the British demands, were not so much surprised at Goulburn’s points as unable to answer them. The next day they replied in conference that they had no authority to admit either Indian boundary or fisheries into question, being without instructions on these points; and in their turn presented subjects of discussion,—Blockades and Indemnities; but professed themselves willing to discuss everything.
In the conversation following this reply, the British commissioners, with some apparent unwillingness, avowed the intention of erecting the Indian Territory into a barrier between the British possessions and the United States; and the American commissioners declined even to retire for consultation on the possibility of agreeing to such an article. The British commissioners then proposed to suspend conferences until they could receive further instructions, and their wish was followed. Both parties sent despatches to their Governments.
Lord Castlereagh was prompt. As soon as was reasonably possible he sent more precise instructions. Dated August 14,[18] these supplementary instructions gave to those of July 28 a distinct outline. They proposed the Indian boundary fixed by the Treaty of Greenville for the permanent barrier between British and American dominion, beyond which neither government should acquire land. They claimed also a “rectification” of the Canadian frontier, and the cession of Fort Niagara and Sackett’s Harbor, besides a permanent prohibition on the United States from keeping either naval forces or land fortifications on the Lakes. Beyond these demands the British commissioners were not for the present to go, nor were they to ask for a direct cession of territory for Canada “with any view to an acquisition of territory as such, but for the purpose of securing her possessions and preventing future disputes;”[19] yet a small cession of land in Maine was necessary for a road from Halifax to Quebec, and an arrangement of the Northwestern boundary was required to coincide with the free navigation of the Mississippi.
As soon as the new instructions reached Ghent the British commissioners summoned the Americans to another conference, August 19; and Goulburn, reading from Castlereagh’s despatch, gave to the Americans a clear version of its contents.[20] When he had finished, Gallatin asked what was to be done with the American citizens—perhaps one hundred thousand in number—already settled beyond the Greenville line, in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan? Goulburn and Dr. Adams replied that these people must shift for themselves. They added also that Moose Island and Eastport belonged to Great Britain as indisputably as the county of Northamptonshire, and were not a subject for discussion; but they would not then make a sine qua non of the proposition regarding the Lakes. The conference ended, leaving the Americans convinced that their answer to these demands would close the negotiation. Clay alone, whose knowledge of the Western game of brag stood him in good stead, insisted that the British would recede.[21]
The British commissioners the next day, August 20, sent an official note containing their demands, and the Americans before sending their reply forwarded the note to America, with despatches dated August 19 and 20, announcing that they intended to return “a unanimous and decided negative.”[22] They then undertook the task of drawing up their reply. Upon Adams as head of the commission fell the duty of drafting formal papers,—a duty which, without common consent, no other member could assume. His draft met with little mercy, and the five gentlemen sat until eleven o’clock of August 24, “sifting, erasing, patching, and amending until we were all wearied, though none of us was yet satiated with amendment.” At the moment when they gave final shape to the note which they believed would render peace impossible, the army of General Ross was setting fire to the Capitol at Washington, and President Madison was seeking safety in the Virginia woods.
Only to persons acquainted with the difficulties of its composition did the American note of August 24 show signs of its diverse origin.[23] In dignified temper, with reasoning creditable to its authors and decisive on its issues, it assured the British negotiators that any such arrangement as they required for the Indians was contrary to precedent in public law, was not founded on reciprocity, and was unnecessary for its professed object in regard to the Indians. The other demands were equally inadmissible:—
“They are founded neither on reciprocity, nor on any of the usual bases of negotiation, neither on that of uti possidetis nor of status ante bellum. They are above all dishonorable to the United States in demanding from them to abandon territory and a portion of their citizens; to admit a foreign interference in their domestic concerns, and to cease to exercise their natural rights on their own shores and in their own waters. A treaty concluded on such terms would be but an armistice.”
The negotiators were ready to terminate the war, both parties restoring whatever territory might have been taken, and reserving their rights over their respective seamen; but such demands as were made by the British government could not be admitted even for reference.
The American reply was sent to the British commissioners August 25, “and will bring the negotiation,” remarked J. Q. Adams, “very shortly to a close.”[24] The American commissioners prepared to quit Ghent and return to their several posts, while the British commissioners waited for instructions from London. Even Gallatin, who had clung to the hope that he could effect an arrangement, abandoned the idea, and believing that the British government had adopted a system of conquest, prepared for an immediate return to America.[25] Goulburn also notified his Government that the negotiation was not likely to continue, and reported some confidential warnings from Bayard that such conditions of peace would not only insure war, but would sacrifice the Federalist party. “It has not made the least impression upon me or upon my colleagues,” reported Goulburn to Bathurst.[26]
At that point the negotiation remained stationary for two months, kept alive by Liverpool, Castlereagh, and Bathurst, while they waited for the result of their American campaign. The despatch of August 20 crossed the Atlantic, and was communicated to Congress October 10, together with all other papers connected with the negotiation; but not until October 25 did the American commissioners write again to their Government.