Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 1

by A. T. Mahan

Wherever the misunderstanding lay, matters had not advanced in the least towards a solution when Monroe reached England, in 1803, as King's successor. Up to that time, no tabular statement seems to have been prepared, showing the total number of seamen impressed from American vessels during the first war, 1793-1801; nor does the present writer think it material to ascertain, from the fragmentary data at hand, the exact extent of an injury to which the question of more or less was secondary. The official agent of the American Government, for the protection of seamen, upon quitting his post in London in 1802, wrote that he had transferred to his successor "A list of 597 seamen, where answers have been returned to me, stating that, having no documents to prove their citizenship, the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty could not consent to their discharge." Only seven cases then remained without replies, which shows at the least a decent attention to the formalities of intercourse; and King, in his letter of October 7, 1799, had acknowledged that the Secretary to the Admiralty had "given great attention to the numerous applications, and that a disposition has existed to comply with our demands, when the same could be done consistently with the maxims and practice adopted and adhered to by Great Britain." The Admiralty, however, maintained that "the admission of the principle, that a man declaring himself to belong to a foreign state should, upon that assertion merely, and without direct or very strong circumstantial proof, be suffered to leave the service, would be productive of the most dangerous consequences to his Majesty's Navy." The agent himself had written to the Secretary of the Admiralty, "I freely confess that I believe many of them are British subjects; but I presume that all of them were impressed from American vessels, and by far the greater proportion are American citizens, who, from various causes, have been deprived of their certificates, and who, from their peculiar situation, have been unable to obtain proofs from America."[154]

When Mr. Monroe arrived in England in 1803, after the conclusion of the Louisiana purchase from France, war had just re-begun. Instructions were sent him, in an elaborate series of articles framed by Madison, for negotiating a convention to regulate those matters of difference which experience had shown were sure to arise between the two countries in the progress of the hostilities. Among them, impressment was given the first place; but up to 1806, when Pinkney was sent as his associate, nothing had been effected, nor does urgency seem to have been felt. So long as in practice things ran smoothly, divergences of opinion were easily tolerable. Soon after the receipt of the instructions, in March, 1804,[155] the comparatively friendly administration of Addington gave way to that of Pitt; and upon this had followed Monroe's nine-months absence in Spain. Before departure, however, he had written, "The negotiation has not failed in its great objects, ... nor was there ever less cause of complaint furnished by impressment."[156] The outburst of seizure upon the plea of a constructively direct trade, already mentioned, had followed, and, with the retaliatory non-importation law of the United States, made the situation acute and menacing. Further cause for exasperation was indicated in a report from the Secretary of State, March 5, 1806, giving, in reply to a resolution of the House, a tabulated statement, by name, of 913 persons, who "appear to have been impressed from American vessels;" to which was added that "the aggregate number of impressments into the British service since the commencement of the present war in Europe (May, 1803) is found to be 2,273."[157]

Confronted by this situation of wrongs endured, by commerce and by seamen, the mission of Monroe and Pinkney was to negotiate a comprehensive treaty of "amity, commerce, and navigation," the first attempted between the two countries since Jay's in 1794. When Pinkney landed, Fox was already in the grip of the sickness from which he died in the following September. This circumstance introduced an element of delay, aggravated by the inevitable hesitations of the new ministry, solicitous on the one hand to accommodate, but yet more anxious not to incense British opinion. The Prime Minister, in room of Mr. Fox, received the envoys on August 5, and, when the American demand was explained to him, defined at once the delicacy of the question of impressment. "On the subject of the impressment of our seamen, he suggested doubts of the practicability of devising the means of discrimination between the seamen of the two countries, within (as we understood him) their respective jurisdictions; and he spoke of the importance to the safety of Great Britain, in the present state of the power of her enemy, of preserving in their utmost strength the right and capacity of Government to avail itself in war of the services of its seamen. These observations were connected with frequent professions of an earnest wish that some liberal and equitable plan should be adopted, for reconciling the exercise of this essential right with the just claims of the United States, and for removing from it all cause of complaint and irritation."[158]

In consequence of Mr. Fox's continued illness two negotiators, one of whom, Lord Holland, was a near relative of his, were appointed to confer with the American envoys, and to frame an agreement, if attainable. The first formal meeting was on August 27, the second on September 1.[159] As the satisfactory arrangement of the impressment difficulty was a sine quâ non to the ratification of any treaty, and to the repeal of the Non-Importation Act, this American requirement was necessarily at once submitted. The reply was significant, particularly because made by men apparently chosen for their general attitude towards the United States, by a ministry certainly desirous to conciliate, and to retain the full British advantage from the United States market, if compatible with the preservation of an interest deemed greater still. "It was soon apparent that they felt the strongest repugnance to a formal renunciation, or the abandonment, of their claim to take from our vessels on the high seas such seamen as should appear to be their own subjects, and they pressed upon us with much zeal a provision" for documentary protection to individuals; "but that, subject to such protections, the ships of war of Great Britain should continue to visit and impress on the main ocean as heretofore."

In the preliminary discussions the British negotiators presented the aspect of the case as it appeared to them and to their public. They "observed that they supposed the object of our plan to be to prevent the impressment at sea of American seamen, and not to withdraw British seamen from the naval service of their country in times of great national peril, for the purpose of employing them ourselves; that the first of these purposes would be effectually accomplished by a system which should introduce and establish a clear and conclusive distinction between the seamen of the two countries, which on all occasions would be implicitly respected; that if they should consent to make our commercial navy a floating asylum for all the British seamen who, tempted by higher wages, should quit their service for ours, the effect of such a concession upon their maritime strength, on which Great Britain depended, not only for her prosperity but for her safety, might be fatal; that on the most alarming emergency they might be deprived, to an extent impossible to calculate, of their only means of security; that our vessels might become receptacles for deserters to any amount, and when once at sea might set at defiance the just claims of the service to which such deserters belonged; that, even within the United States, it could not be expected that any plan for recovering British deserters could be efficacious; and that, moreover, the plan we proposed was inadequate in its range and object, inasmuch as it was merely prospective, confined wholly to deserters, and in no respect provided for the case of the vast body of British seamen now employed in our trade to every part of the world."

To these representations, which had a strong basis in fact and reason, if once the British principle was conceded, the American negotiators replied in detail as best they could. In such detail, the weight of argument and of probability appears to the writer to rest with the British case; but there is no adequate reply to the final American assertion, which sums up the whole controversy, "that impressment upon the high seas by those to whom that service is necessarily confided must under any conceivable guards be frequently abused;" such abuse being the imprisonment without trial of American citizens, as "a pressed man," for an indefinite period. Lord Cochrane, a British naval officer of rare distinction, stated in the House of Commons a few years later that "the duration of the term of service in his Majesty's Navy is absolutely without limitation."[160]

The American envoys were prevented by their instructions from conceding this point, and from signing a treaty without some satisfactory arrangement. Meantime, impressed by the conciliatoriness of the British representatives, and doubtless in measure by the evident seriousness of the difficulty experienced by the British Government, they wrote home advising that the date for the Non-Importation Act going into operation, now close at hand, should be postponed; and, in accordance with a recommendation from the President, the measure was suspended by Congress, with a provision for further prolongation in the discretion of the Executive. On September 13 Fox died, an event which introduced further delays, esteemed not unreasonable by Monroe and Pinkney. Their next letter home, however, November 11,[161] while reporting the resumption of the negotiation, announced also its failure by a deadlock on this principal subject of impressment: "We have said everything that we could in support of our claim, that the flag should protect the crew, which we have contended was founded in unquestionable right.... This right was denied by the British commissioners, who asserted that of their Government to seize its subjects on board neutral vessels on the high seas, and also urged that the relinquishment of it at this time would go far to the overthrow of their naval power, on which the safety of the state essentially depended." In support of the abstract right was quoted the report from a law officer of the Crown, which "justified the pretension by stating that the King had a right, by his prerogative, to require the services of all his seafaring subjects against the enemy, and to seize them by force wherever found, not being within the territorial limits of another Power; that as the high seas were extra-territorial, the merchant vessels of other Powers navigating on them were not admitted to possess such a jurisdiction as to protect British subjects from the exercise of the King's prerogative over them."

This was a final and absolute rejection of Madison's doctrine, that merchant vessels on the high seas were under the jurisdiction only of their own country. Asserted right was arrayed directly and unequivocally against asserted right. Negotiation on that subject was closed, and to diplomacy was left no further resort, save arms, or submission to continued injury and insult. The British commissioners did indeed submit a project,[162] in place of that of the United States, rejected by their Government. By this it was provided that thereafter the captain of a cruiser who should impress an American citizen should be liable to heavy penalties, to be enacted by law; but as the preamble to this proposition read, "Whereas it is not lawful for a belligerent to impress or carry off, from on board a neutral, seafaring persons who are not the subjects of the belligerent," there was admitted implicitly the right to impress those who were such subjects, the precise point at issue. The Americans therefore pronounced it wholly inadmissible, and repeated that no project could be adopted "which did not allow our ships to protect their crews."

The provision made indispensable by the United States having thus failed of adoption, the question arose whether the negotiation should cease. The British expressed an earnest desire that it should not, and as a means thereto communicated the most positive assurances from their Government that "instructions have been given, and will be repeated and enforced, for the observance of the greatest caution in the impressing of British seamen; that the strictest care shall be taken to preserve the citizens of the United States from molestation or injury; and that prompt redress shall be afforded upon any representation of injury."[163] To this assurance the American commissioners attached more value as a safeguard for the future than past experience warranted; but in London they were able to feel, more accurately than an official in Washington, the extent and complexity of the British problem, both in actual fact and in public feeling. They knew, too, the anxious wish of the President for an accommodation on other matters; so they decided to proceed with their discussions, having first explicitly stated that they were acting on their own judgment.[164] Consequently, whatever instrument might result from their joint labors would be liable to rejection at home, because of the failure of the impressment demand.

The discussions thus renewed terminated in a treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation, signed by the four negotiators, December 31, 1806. Into the details of this instrument it is unnecessary to go, as it never became operative. Jefferson persisted in refusing approval to any formal convention which did not provide the required stipulation against impressment. He was dissatisfied also with particular details connected with the other arrangements. All these matters were set forth at great length in a letter[165] of May 20, 1807, from Mr. Madison to the American commissioners; in which they were instructed to reopen negotiations on the basis of the treaty submitted, endeavoring to effect the changes specified. The danger to Great Britain from American commercial restriction was fully expounded, as an argument to compel compliance with the demands; the whole concluding with the characteristic remark that, "as long as negotiation can be honorably protracted, it is a resource to be preferred, under existing circumstances, to the peremptory alternative of improper concessions or inevitable collisions." In other words, the United States Government did not mean to fight, and that was all Great Britain needed to know. That she would suffer from the closure of the American market was indisputable; but, being assured of transatlantic peace, there were other circumstances of high import, political as well as commercial, which rendered yielding more inexpedient to her than a commercial war.