“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the Non-intercourse Act followed,—yet the President was still waiting for the assurance that the French Decrees were repealed, without which knowledge Barlow’s instructions could not be written.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.