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.”