“Every morning at daybreak,” according to his story,[81] “we set about arresting the progress of all the vessels we saw, firing off guns to the right and left to make every ship that was running in heave to, or wait until we had leisure to send a boat on board ‘to see,’ in our lingo, ‘what she was made of.’ I have frequently known a dozen, and sometimes a couple of dozen, ships lying a league or two off the port, losing their fair wind, their tide, and worse than all their market, for many hours, sometimes the whole day, before our search was completed.”
An informality in papers, a suspicion of French ownership, a chance expression in some private letter found and opened in the search, insured seizure, a voyage to Halifax, detention for months, heavy costs, indefinite damage to vessel and cargo, and at best release, with no small chance of re-seizure and condemnation under some new rule before the ship could reach port.
Such vexations were incident to a state of war. If the merchants of New York disliked them, the merchants might always ask Government to resent them; but in truth commerce found its interest in submission. These vexations secured neutral profits; and on the whole the British frigates and admiralty courts created comparatively little scandal by injustice, while they served as a protection from the piratical privateers of Spain and France. Madison, Gallatin, and the newspapers grumbled and complained; but the profits of neutrality soothed the offended merchant, and the blockade of New York was already a fixed practice. Had the British commanders been satisfied with a moderate exercise of their power, the United States would probably have allowed the habit of neutral blockade to grow into a belligerent right by prescription. Neither the mercantile class nor the government would have risked profit or popularity on such a stake; but fortunately the British officers steadily became more severe, and meanwhile in their practice of impressment roused extreme bitterness among the seafaring classes, who had nothing to gain by submission. In Basil Hall’s words, the British officers took out of American vessels every seaman “whom they had reason, or supposed or said they had reason, to consider” a British subject, “or whose country they guessed from dialect or appearance.” By these impressments American vessels were often left short-handed, and were sometimes cast away or foundered. In such cases the owners were greatly irritated; but commonly the exasperation was most deeply felt by the laboring class and among the families of seafaring men. The severity with which impressment was enforced in 1805 excited hatred toward England among people who had at best no reason to love her. More than twenty years afterward, when Basil Hall revisited New York, he was not surprised to find the name of his old ship, the “Leander,” still held in detestation. Not only were the duties harsh, but, as he frankly admitted, they were harshly performed.
After Pitt’s return to power impressments increased until they averaged about a thousand a year. Among them were cases of intolerable outrage; but neither President, Congress, nor people, nor even the victims themselves, cared as a body to fight in defence of their rights and liberties. Where an American-born citizen had been seized who could prove his birth, Madison on receiving the documents sent them to Monroe, who transmitted them to the British Admiralty, which ordered an inquiry; and if the man had not been killed in action or died of disease and hard usage, he was likely, after a year or two of service, to obtain a release. The American-born citizen was admitted to be no subject for impressment, and the number of such persons actually taken was never so large as the number of British-born sailors who were daily impressed; but both the mercantile and the national marine of the United States were largely manned by British seamen, and could not dispense with them. According to Gallatin’s calculation,[82] American tonnage increased after 1803 at the rate of about seventy thousand tons a year; and of the four thousand two hundred men required to supply this annual increase, about two thousand five hundred were British. If the British marine lost two thousand five hundred men annually by desertion or engagement in the American service, even after recovering one thousand seamen a year by impressment, the British navy made good only a fraction of the loss. On the other hand, if the United States government went to war to protect British seamen, America would lose all her mercantile marine; and these same seamen for whom she was fighting must for the most part necessarily return to their old flag, because they would then have no other employer. The immediate result of war must strengthen the British marine by sending back to it ten thousand seamen whom America could no longer employ.
Nations rarely submit to injury without a motive. If Jefferson and the Republican party, if Timothy Pickering and George Cabot, the merchants of Boston and New York, and even the seamen themselves, rejected the idea of war, it was because they found a greater interest in maintaining peace. This interest consisted, as regarded England, in the large profits realized in neutral freights. So long as the British navy protected this source of American wealth, Americans said but little about impressments; but in the summer of 1805 Pitt thought proper to obstruct this source, and suddenly the whole American seaboard, from Machias to Norfolk, burst into excitement, and demanded that the President should do something,—they knew not what, but at moments they seemed to ask for war.
The news of Sir William Scott’s decision in the case of the “Essex” reached America in the month of September, while the President and Madison were discussing an alliance with England to protect themselves against France and Spain. The announcement that Great Britain had suddenly begun to seize American ships by scores at the moment when Jefferson counted most confidently on her willingness to oblige, was a blow to the Administration so severe that a long time elapsed before either Jefferson or Madison realized its violence. Their minds were intent on the Spanish problem; and with the question of war pressing upon them from the south, they did not at once perceive that another war was actually declared against their commerce from the north. Jefferson disliked commercial disputes, and gladly shut his eyes to their meaning; Madison felt their importance, but was never quick to meet an emergency.
Merry was near Philadelphia during the autumn, when Mrs. Madison’s illness obliged the secretary to remain in that city. Early in September Merry wrote to his Government that the complete failure of Monroe’s Spanish mission was no secret, and that Madison expected some collision with Spain in West Florida, but would wait for the meeting of Congress before taking action. “Such a determination on the part of the President,” continued Merry,[83] “is so consonant with his usual caution and temporizing system (to which the opposition here give the character of timidity and irresolution), that I cannot but be disposed to give entire credit to the information.” Shortly after the date of this despatch, news arrived that the British government had altered its rules in regard to the neutral carrying-trade, and that British cruisers were everywhere seizing American ships. Merry, who had not been forewarned by Lord Mulgrave, and who had no wish to see his own position made more uncomfortable than it already was, became uneasy. “The sensation and clamor,” he wrote,[84] “excited by this news from England (which has already caused the insurance on such cargoes to be raised to four times the usual premium) is rendered the greater by such events having been totally unexpected, and by the merchants here having, on the contrary, considered themselves as perfectly secured against them.” Merry saw that his Government had in the midst of peace taken a measure which Madison could hardly fail to denounce as an act of war. Dreading a violent explosion, the British minister waited anxiously; but, to his surprise, nothing happened. “Although I have seen Mr. Madison twice since the attention of the public has been so much engaged with this object, he has not thought proper to mention it to me.”[85] At first Merry could not account for this silence; only by degrees was he taught to connect it with the Spanish quarrel, and to understand that Madison hoped to conciliate England in order to overawe France. In this play of cross-purposes Merry’s account of Madison’s conversation was not calculated to alarm the British government:[86]—
“Before I quitted the vicinity of Philadelphia to return to this place [Washington], I had an interview with Mr. Madison, who having then received accounts from Mr. Monroe respecting the detention by his Majesty’s ships of several American vessels in consequence of their being loaded with the produce of the enemy’s colonies, brought forward that subject to me,—speaking upon it, however, with much more moderation than from his natural irritability, and the sensation which it had produced throughout this country, I could have expected on his part. It is unnecessary for me to trouble your Lordship by detailing to you the several observations which he made to me to endeavor to prove the impropriety of the principle upon which the detention of those vessels has taken place.... As I had the honor to observe in the former part of this letter, the American Secretary of State delivered his sentiments on this subject with great temper, and concluded by expressing only a wish that Mr. Monroe’s remonstrances upon it might prove so far efficacious as at least to procure the liberation of the vessels and cargoes which were already detained, as well as of those which might be stopped before the new system adopted by his Majesty’s government in regard to the trade in question should be generally known. Our conversation afterward turned upon some circumstances, the accounts of which had just been received, of the recent conduct of Spain toward this country, when Mr. Madison was much less reserved in expressing his sentiments than on former occasions, and gave me the detail of the perfidious and insolent proceedings of some of the Spanish officers who still remain at New Orleans, and of others who command in the disputed territory,—which, combined with information he had received of the departure of four hundred troops with a quantity of military stores from the Havana, supposed to be destined to reinforce the garrisons in East and West Florida, and with a report which prevailed at New Orleans of a considerable force advancing from Mexico toward Louisiana, could not, he observed, fail to render the differences subsisting between the two governments still more difficult of accommodation.”
This conversation took place about the middle of October, before the President had decided to acquiesce in the acts of Spain and France. As a result of the high tone taken toward England in the winter of 1803–1804, the secretary’s mildness might well surprise a British minister, who was not quick of comprehension, and required to be told in plain language the meaning of Madison’s manœuvres. No sooner had Merry returned to Washington than “a confidential person” was sent to him to explain the mystery:[87]—
“On this subject it has been remarked to me by a person in a confidential situation here that the detention of the American vessels by his Majesty’s ships has happened very unseasonably to divert the attention of the people of the United States and of the Government from a proper consideration of the grievances and injuries which they have experienced from Spain, and which the Government were disposed and had actually taken the measures to resent; and he conceived that when the state of the relations between the United States and other Powers should be laid by the President before Congress at their approaching meeting, the circumstance abovementioned, of what is considered to be so unfriendly a proceeding on the part of Great Britain, will have the same effect upon the resolutions of that body by blunting the feelings which would otherwise have been excited by the conduct of Spain, supported by France, against this country.”