The very earliest despatch they had occasion to send showed Mr. Gallatin the delicacy of his ground. As first member of the commission, Mr. Adams drafted this despatch and gave his draft for revision to the other gentlemen, who showed it little mercy; Mr. Bayard used it merely as the foundation for an entirely new draft of his own, which was substituted by the commission for that of Mr. Adams. Mr. Bayard’s essay, however, proved to be little more satisfactory than Mr. Adams’s, and at last it was referred to Mr. Gallatin to be put in final shape. This was done, and the commissioners ended by adopting his work. The next despatch was drafted at once by him and accepted with little alteration. Henceforth the duty of drawing up all papers was regularly performed by him. Mr. Adams’s account of the characteristic criticisms of his four colleagues, as well as of his own peculiarities of thought and expression, is very amusing, and probably very exact. “On the general view of the subject [of the note in reply to the British commissioners] we are unanimous, but, in my exposition of it, one objects to the form and another to the substance of almost every paragraph. Mr. Gallatin is for striking out every expression that may be offensive to the feelings of the adverse party. Mr. Clay is displeased with figurative language, which he thinks improper for a state paper. Mr. Russell, agreeing in the objections of the two other gentlemen, will be further for amending the construction of every sentence; and Mr. Bayard, even when agreeing to say precisely the same thing, chooses to say it only in his own language.”

At this moment, that is to say, from the 10th August to the 8th October, it was a matter of little consequence what form these personal annoyances might take, for no doubt was felt by any of the commissioners that negotiation was at an end. Even Mr. Gallatin abandoned hope. That the British government was really disposed to make peace seemed to him, as to his colleagues, too improbable to be worth discussion. On the 20th August he wrote privately to Mr. Monroe: “The negotiations at this place will have the result which I have anticipated. In one respect, however, I had been mistaken. I had supposed whilst in England that the British ministry, in continuing the war, yielded to the popular sentiment, and were only desirous of giving some éclat to the termination of hostilities, and, by predatory attacks, of inflicting gratuitous injury on the United States. It appears now certain that they have more serious and dangerous objects in view.” After dwelling at some length on the indications that pointed to New Orleans as the spot where the ultimate struggle for supremacy was to come, he concluded: “I do not expect that we can be detained more than two or three weeks longer for the purpose either of closing the negotiation, of taking every other necessary step connected with it, and of making all the arrangements for our departure.” To Mr. Dallas he wrote the same day: “Our negotiations may be considered as at an end. Some official notes may yet pass, but the nature of the demands of the British, made also as a preliminary sine qua non, to be admitted as a basis before a discussion, is such that there can be no doubt of a speedy rupture of our conferences, and that we will have no peace. Great Britain wants war in order to cripple us; she wants aggrandizement at our expense; she may have ulterior objects: no resource left but in union and vigorous prosecution of the war. When her terms are known it appears to me impossible that all America should not unite in defence of her rights, of her territory, I may say of her independence. I do not expect to be longer than three weeks in Europe.”

Nevertheless, the three weeks passed without bringing the expected rupture. None of the American envoys knew the reasons of this delay; but the letters of the British negotiators, since published, explain the steps in that backward movement which at last brought about an abandonment of every point the British government had begun by declaring essential. Mr. Goulburn, who from the first was strongly inclined to obstruct a settlement and to put forward impossible conditions,[129] announced to his chief on the 23d August: “We are still without any answer to the note which we addressed to the American plenipotentiaries on Friday last. We have, however, met them to-day at dinner at the intendants, and it is evident from their conversation that they do not mean to continue the negotiations at present. Mr. Clay, whom I sat next to at dinner, gave me clearly to understand that they had decided upon a reference to America for instructions, and that they considered our propositions equivalent to a demand for the cession of Boston or New York; and after dinner Mr. Bayard took me aside and requested that I would permit him to have a little private and confidential conversation. Upon my expressing my readiness to hear whatever he might like to say to me, he began a very long speech by saying that the present negotiation could not end in peace, and that he was desirous of privately stating (before we separated) what Great Britain did not appear to understand, viz., that, by proposing terms like those which had been offered, we were not only ruining all prospects of peace, but were sacrificing the party of which he was a member to their political adversaries. He went into a long discussion upon the views and objects of the several parties in America, the grounds upon which they had hitherto proceeded, and the effect which a hostile or conciliatory disposition on our part might have upon them. He inculcated how much it was for our interest to support the Federalists, and that to make peace was the only method of supporting them effectually; that we had nothing to fear for Canada if peace were made, be the terms what they might; that there would have been no difficulty about allegiance, impressment, &c.; but that our present demands were what America never could or would accede to. This was the general tenor of his conversation, to which I did not think it necessary to make much reply, and which I only mention to you in order to let you know at the earliest moment that the negotiation is not likely now to continue.... As I find, upon reading over what I have written, that I have drily stated what the American plenipotentiaries said to me, I cannot let it go without adding that it has made not the least impression upon me or upon my colleagues, to whom I have reported it.”

If the notes and conversation of the American commissioners made no impression on Mr. Goulburn and his colleagues, the case was very different with their chiefs. A few days before Mr. Goulburn’s letter was written, Lord Castlereagh passed through Ghent on his way to Vienna. He found that Goulburn had made a series of blunders, and was obliged to check him abruptly,[130] writing at the same time to Lord Liverpool, advising a considerable “letting down of the question.”[131] Lord Liverpool replied on the 2d September, saying that his advice had already been followed: “Our commissioners had certainly taken a very erroneous view of our policy. If the negotiation had been allowed to break off upon the two notes already presented, or upon such an answer as they were disposed to return, I am satisfied the war would have become quite popular in America.”[132] Mr. Goulburn himself became a little nervous; he wrote on the 2d September of the American Commissioners: “Their only anxiety appears to me to get back to America. Whenever we meet them they always enter into unofficial discussions, much of the same nature as the conversation with which Mr. Bayard indulged me; but we have given no encouragement to such conversations, thinking that they are liable to much misrepresentation and cannot lead to any good purpose. All that I think I have learnt from them is this: that Mr. Adams is a very bad arguer, and that the Federalists are quite as inveterate enemies to us as the Madisonians. Those who know anything of America or Americans probably knew this before. We await with some anxiety your note.”[133] On the 5th September, only three days afterwards, Mr. Goulburn’s temper, in view of the awkward position he was in, had become irritable; the American commissioners had never, he thought, had any intention of making peace: “They gave it out all over the town (previously even to sending their note) that the negotiations would end in nothing, and I have never met them anywhere without hearing their complaints at being detained here, and their wish to leave the place on the 1st of October at the latest. Some days since they gave their landlord notice that they meant to quit their house, and two of their private secretaries set out to make a tour in England before their note was written, one of whom openly stated to me that, as they were on the point of returning to America, he wished, first of all, to see London.”[134]

The result of the first round in this encounter was clearly in favor of the American champions. The unfortunate Goulburn was worsted, and forced, with very bad grace, to accept the admonitions of his chiefs and to endure the triumph of his opponents.

Lord Bathurst accordingly undertook to correct the mistakes of his envoys, and forwarded on the 1st September an argumentative note calculated to persuade the Americans that nothing could be more becoming in them than to surrender the lakes to Great Britain and the North-West Territory to the Indians. The long reply of the American commissioners, delivered on the 9th September, was mostly written by Mr. Gallatin, and Mr. Adams candidly says in his Diary: “I struck out the greatest part of my own previous draft, preferring that of Mr. Gallatin upon the same points.” Its contents were briefly characterized in a short note from the Foreign Office to the Duke of Wellington, dated September 13: “It rejects all our proposals respecting the boundary and the military flag on the lakes, and refuses even to refer them to their government, offering at the same time to pursue the negotiation on the other points;” and on the 16th the Duke was notified that: “We mean in our reply to admit that we do not intend to make the exclusive military possession of the lakes a sine qua non of the negotiation.” This was, however, not the only concession; the new ground which Lord Bathurst now marked out for his negotiators was still further in the rear of Mr. Goulburn’s first position, and abandoned not only the lakes but also the attempt to create an Indian sovereignty. The British note was sent in on the 19th September, and Mr. Adams gives in his Diary a graphic account of the conflicting feelings it aroused: “The effect of these notes upon us when they first come is to deject us all. We so fondly cling to the vain hope of peace that every new proof of its impossibility operates upon us as a disappointment. We had a desultory and general conversation upon this note, in which I thought both Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Bayard showed symptoms of despondency. In discussing with them I cannot always restrain the irritability of my temper. Mr. Bayard meets it with more of accommodation than heretofore, and sometimes with more compliance than I expect. Mr. Gallatin, having more pliability of character and more playfulness of disposition, throws off my heat with a joke. Mr. Clay and Mr. Russell are perfectly firm themselves, but sometimes partake of the staggers of the two other gentlemen. Mr. Gallatin said this day that the sine qua non now presented—that the Indians should be positively included in the peace, and placed in the state they were in before the war—would undoubtedly be rejected by our government if it was now presented to them, but that it was a bad point for us to break off the negotiation upon; that the difficulty of carrying on the war might compel us to admit the principle at last, for now the British had so committed themselves with regard to the Indians that it was impossible for them further to retreat. Mr. Bayard was of the same opinion, and recurred to the fundamental idea of breaking off upon some point which shall unite our own people in the support of the war.... I said ... that if the point of the Indians was a bad point to break upon, I was very sure we should never find a good one; if that would not unite our people, it was a hopeless pursuit. Mr. Gallatin repeated, with a very earnest look, that it was a bad point to break upon. ‘Then,’ said I, with a movement of impatience and an angry tone, ‘it is a good point to admit the British as the sovereigns and protectors of our Indians.’ Gallatin’s countenance brightened, and he said in a tone of perfect good humor, ‘That’s a non-sequitur.’ This turned the edge of the argument into mere jocularity. I laughed, and insisted that it was a sequitur, and the conversation easily changed to another point.”

Mr. Gallatin was right, and he drafted the reply to the British note accordingly. There was a somewhat warm discussion over his draft, but his influence was now so decisive that Mr. Adams declares opposition useless; unless Gallatin voluntarily abandoned his point, he was uniformly sustained. This note, while refusing to admit the Indians into the treaty in any manner that would recognize them as independent nations, offered a stipulation that they should retain all their old rights, privileges, and possessions. It was signed and sent on the 26th September; on October 1 the news of the capture of Washington arrived.

The following letters give some conception of what was passing in the United States while the American commissioners were forcing Great Britain to abandon one position after another:

MRS. MADISON TO MRS. GALLATIN.

28th July, 1814.