The Treaty of Ghent
On May 9, 1813, the ship Neptune sailed from New Castle on the Delaware, having on board Albert Gallatin and James A. Bayard, ministers of the United States, with their four secretaries, of whom were Mr. Gallatin's son James, and George M. Dallas, son of his old Pennsylvania friend. They were accompanied to sea by a revenue cutter. Off Cape Henlopen they were overhauled by the British frigate on the station, and their passport was countersigned by the English captain. On June 20 they reached the mouth of the river Gotha. Here the vessel lay at quarantine for forty-eight hours, during which the gentlemen paid a flying visit to Gottenburg. At dusk, on the 24th, the Neptune anchored in Copenhagen inner roads, the scene of Nelson's attack in 1801. Mr. Gallatin's brief memoranda of his voyage contain some crisp expressions. He found “despotism and no oppression. Poverty and no discontent. Civility and no servile obsequiousness amongst the people. Decency and sobriety.”
St. Petersburg was reached on July 21. Here Gallatin and Bayard found John Quincy Adams, then minister to Russia. He was one of the three commissioners appointed to treat for peace under the mediation which the Emperor Alexander had offered to the United States. Bayard and Adams were Federalists. To the moderate counsels of the former Jefferson owed his peaceable election. Gallatin and Adams had the advantage of thorough acquaintance with European politics. To Gallatin the study of history was a passion. He was familiar with the facts and traditions of diplomacy. He knew the purpose, the tenor, and the result of every treaty made for centuries between the great powers; even their dates were at ready command in his wonderful memory. But, excepting the few Frenchmen of distinction who in the exile which political revulsions imposed upon them had crossed the sea, he had no acquaintance with Europeans of high position, and none whatever with the diplomatic personnel of European courts. In this Adams was more fortunate. Educated abroad, while his father was minister to the court of St. James, he was from youth familiar with courts and their ways. To be the son of a president of the United States was no small matter at that day. The conjunction of these two men was rare. One of European birth and trained to American politics, the other of American birth and brought up in the atmosphere of European diplomacy. In their natural characteristics they were the opposite of one another. Adams was impetuous, overbearing, impatient of contradiction or opposition. Gallatin was calm, self-controlled, persistent; not jealous of his opinions, but ready to yield or abandon his own methods, if those of others promised better success; never blinded by passion or prejudice, but holding the end always in view. That end was peace; “peace at all times desirable,” as Mr. Gallatin said a few days before his departure on his mission, but much more so, 'because of the incapacity shown in the conduct of the war, its inefficiency when compared with its expense, and the open hostility to it of a large number of the American people.' In the face of the disasters which had befallen the country Mr. Gallatin must have felt some qualms of conscience for his persistent opposition to the military and naval establishments. Their reorganization had place in his desire for peace. He said, May 5, 1813: “Taught by experience, we will apply a part of our resources to such naval preparations and organization of the public force as will, within less than five years, place us in a commanding situation.” With the particulars of the dispute between the two countries he was perfectly familiar. His report prepared in 1808 for Mr. Campbell, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, covered the whole ground of the American argument.
At the outset there seemed good ground for hope of an early agreement. European politics were at a critical point, and England naturally wished to husband her resources for a sudden emergency. The mediation of Russia Mr. Gallatin considered a salve to the pride of England. This reasoning seemed sound enough, but it had not taken account of one important element: the jealousy of England of any outside interference between herself and her ancient dependencies. Mr. Gallatin did not hold English diplomacy in very high regard. Late in life he said that the history of the relations of England and France was a story of the triumphs of English arms and of French diplomacy; that England was always victorious, but France had as often negotiated her out of the fruits of success. True as this remark was in general, it cannot be said of the policy of England in American affairs. She pushed to the utmost her exclusion of France from the American continent when the States were colonies, and now that they were free and independent she would listen to no foreign intervention. Neither in peace nor war should any third government stand between the two nations. This was and ever has been the true policy of Great Britain, and that it was not lost sight of in the heat of war is to the credit of her diplomacy. The offer of Russia to mediate was not welcome, and was set aside by Lord Castlereagh in a note of discouragement. There was no ground for the commissioners to stand upon; moreover the emperor and Count Nesselrode were absent from St. Petersburg, Count Romanzoff being left in charge of the foreign relations. The offer of mediation had originated with him. His policy was to curb the maritime power of England, and to secure in the negotiation a modification at least of the offensive practice of Great Britain in her assumed police of the sea.
The war was in fact a legacy of the necessarily incomplete diplomacy of Washington's administration and the Jay treaty. The determining cause was the enforcement of the right of search and the impressment of seamen from American vessels; a practice at variance with the rights and the law of nations. Monroe, Madison's secretary of state, urged the clear and distinct forbearance of this British practice as the one object to be obtained. An article in the treaty giving security in that respect was by Gallatin, as well as by Monroe, considered a sine qua non condition; while Mr. Bayard viewed an informal arrangement as equally efficient and more practicable than a solemn article. But there was no doubt of Bayard's determination to reach the result prescribed in their instructions.
Mr. Gallatin's first act after setting foot on European shores was to write to Baring Brothers & Co. at London. This he did from Gottenburg, requesting a passport for the Neptune, which the commission proposed to retain at St. Petersburg until their return. At the same time he intimated that he wished the British government to be informed of the object of the mission. For the expenses of the commission the ambassadors had authority to draw on the Barings. The reply of Mr. Alexander Baring must at once have opened Mr. Gallatin's eyes to the futility of the errand of the commissioners. His words clearly state the British grounds of objection: “The mediation of Russia was offered, not sought,—it was fairly and frankly accepted,—I do not see how America could with any consistency refuse it; but to the eyes of a European politician it was clear that such an interference could produce no practical benefit. The only question now seriously at issue between us is one purely of a domestic nature in each country respectively; no foreign government can fairly judge of it.” Pointing out the difficulty of establishing any distinction between the great masses of the seafaring population of Great Britain and America, he finds that no other country can judge of the various positions of great delicacy and importance which spring from such a state of things; and says: “This is not the way for Great Britain and America really to settle their disputes; intelligent persons of the two countries might devise mutual securities and concessions which perhaps neither country would offer in the presence of a third party. It is a sort of family quarrel where foreign interference can only do harm and irritate at any time, but more especially in the present state of Europe, when attempts would be made to make a tool of America.” These, he said he had good reason to know, were the sentiments of the British cabinet on the question of place of negotiation and foreign mediation. He also informed Mr. Gallatin that the mediation of Russia had been refused, and that the British government would express its desire to treat separately and directly either at London or Gottenburg. He warned Mr. Gallatin that an opinion prevailed in the British public that the United States were engaged to France by a secret political connection, which belief, though perhaps not shared by the government, would lead it to consider the persevering of the American commission upon bringing the insulated question before the powers of the Continent as a touchstone of their sincerity. He hoped that the American commissioners would come at once in contact with the British ministers, and pointed out the hesitation that every minister would feel at giving instructions on a matter so delicate as that “involving the rights and duties of sovereign and subject.” He then declared that there was in England a strong desire for peace and for ending a contest in which the “two countries could only tease and weaken each other without any practical result,” and at a time when England desired to carry her resources into the “more important field of European contest.” He then gave Castlereagh's assurance, that the cartel-ship, the Neptune, should be respected, and expressed his own personal hope that he should ere long be gratified by seeing it bring, with the commissioners, the hope of peace to the shores of England.
Meanwhile Mr. Gallatin was engaged in explaining the American case to Romanzoff by conversation and by a written statement of the facts in the form of an unofficial note to the emperor. On August 10 word was received from the Emperor Alexander authorizing the renewal of the offer of mediation; and shortly after a letter from General Moreau, written to Mr. Gallatin from the imperial headquarters at Hrushova, assured him of his sympathy and assistance. His relations with Gallatin were of long standing and of an intimate nature. Moreau, after a long residence in America, to which he was warmly attached, had lately crossed the ocean and tendered his able sword to the coalition against Bonaparte. He informed Gallatin that one of the British ministers had said to him in Germany that England would not treat of her maritime rights under any mediation. He feared that American vanity would hardly consent to treat directly with Great Britain, and foresaw that the political adversaries of Madison and Gallatin would blame the precipitation of the United States government in sending over the envoys before the adhesion of England to the proposed arbitration was secured. He assured Gallatin of the interest of the Emperor Alexander in the Americans.
On August 24 Count Romanzoff read to the envoys his dispatch to Count Lieven, the Russian minister at London, renewing the offer of mediation. The commissioners considering their authority as limited to treating under the mediation of Russia, Mr. Gallatin wrote to Monroe, inclosing a copy of Baring's letter, which he looked upon as an informal communication of the views of the British government, and asked for contingent powers and instructions. These they could not expect to receive before February. Gallatin replied to Mr. Baring that no information of the refusal of Great Britain to the mediation had been received, but, even if it had, the commission was not authorized to negotiate in any other manner. They were, however, competent to treat of commerce without mediation. He declined to discuss the objection of Great Britain to the mediation of Russia, confining himself to an expression of ignorance in America of any such feeling on the part of the British ministry, and of the confidence placed in the personal character of the emperor, which was considered a sufficient pledge of impartiality; while the selection of a sovereign at war with France was clear evidence that America neither had nor wished to have any political connection with that power. That he himself believed an arrangement to be practicable, he said to Mr. Baring, was evident from the fact that he had given up his political existence, and separated himself from his family. His opinion was, that while neither nation would be induced to abandon its rights or pretensions in the matter of impressment, an arrangement might be made by way of experiment which would reserve to both their respective abstract rights, real or assumed.
To Moreau he wrote stating his hope that, notwithstanding the first objections of Great Britain, the mediation of the emperor would be accepted, and he asked the general for his personal interposition to this end. France and England he held to be equally at fault in the great European contest; the one usurping and oppressing the land, the other dominating and tyrannizing the sea. They alone, said he, have gained, if not happiness, at least power. Russia, he was firmly persuaded, was the only power at heart friendly to America. History has shown the sagacity of this judgment. This letter was never answered. Moreau was at death's door.
Early in October Mr. Dallas was sent to London to open relations with the British ministry. His presence there would save two months at least in each correspondence which involved communication between Washington, London, and St. Petersburg. Count Romanzoff gave the necessary letter of introduction to Count Lieven. Gallatin's instructions to the young secretary were explicit as to the caution he should exercise in a country where he could consider himself as only on sufferance. Hardly were these preliminaries concluded, and Dallas had not started on his journey, when Mr. Gallatin received word from America that the Senate had refused to confirm him in his position as commissioner. Mr. Gallatin had not resigned his position of secretary of the treasury. The Senate refused to sanction the cumulative appointment.