John Quincy Adams / American Statesmen Series

by Jr. John T. Morse

On August 21 the Englishmen invited the Americans to dinner on the following Saturday. "The chance is," wrote Mr. Adams, "that before that time the whole negotiation will be at an end." The banquet, however, did come off, and a few more succeeded it; feasts not marked by any great geniality or warmth, except perhaps occasionally warmth of discussion. So sure were the Americans that they were about to break off the negotiations that Mr. Adams began to consider by what route he should return to St. Petersburg; and they declined to renew the tenure of their quarters for more than a few days longer. Like alarms were of frequent occurrence, even almost to the very day of agreement. On September 15, at a dinner given by the American Commissioners, Lord Gambier asked Mr. Adams whether he would return immediately to St. Petersburg. "Yes," replied Mr. Adams, "that is, if you send us away." His lordship "replied with assurances how deeply he lamented it, and with a hope that we should one day be friends again." On the same occasion Mr. Goulburn said that probably the last note of the Americans would "terminate the business," and that they "must fight it out." Fighting it out was a much less painful prospect for Great Britain just at that juncture than for the United States, as the Americans realized with profound anxiety. "We so fondly cling to the vain hope of peace, that every new proof of its impossibility operates upon us as a disappointment," wrote Mr. Adams. No amount of pride could altogether conceal the fact that the American Commissioners represented the worsted party, and though they never openly said so even among themselves, yet indirectly they were obliged to recognize the truth. On November 10 we find Mr. Adams proposing to make concessions not permitted by their instructions, because, as he said:—

"I felt so sure that [the home government] would now gladly take the state before the war as the general basis of the peace, that I was prepared to take on me the responsibility of trespassing upon their instructions thus far. Not only so, but I would at this moment cheerfully give my life for a peace on this basis. If peace was possible, it would be on no other. I had indeed no hope that the proposal would be accepted."

Mr. Clay thought that the British would laugh at this: "They would say, Ay, ay! pretty fellows you, to think of getting out of the war as well as you got into it." This was not consoling for the representatives of that side which had declared war for the purpose of curing grievances and vindicating alleged rights. But that Mr. Adams correctly read the wishes of the government was proved within a very few days by the receipt of express authority from home "to conclude the peace on the basis of the status ante bellum." Three days afterwards, on November 27, three and a half months after the vexatious haggling had been begun, we encounter in the Diary the first real gleam of hope of a successful termination: "All the difficulties to the conclusion of a peace appear to be now so nearly removed, that my colleagues all consider it as certain. I myself think it probable."

There were, however, some three weeks more of negotiation to be gone through before the consummation was actually achieved, and the ill blood seemed to increase as the end was approached. The differences between the American Commissioners waxed especially serious concerning the fisheries and the navigation of the Mississippi. Mr. Adams insisted that if the treaty of peace had been so far abrogated by the war as to render necessary a re-affirmance of the British right of navigating the Mississippi, then a re-affirmance of the American rights in the Northeastern fisheries was equally necessary. This the English Commissioners denied. Mr. Adams said it was only an exchange of privileges presumably equivalent. Mr. Clay, however, was firmly resolved to prevent all stipulations admitting such a right of navigation, and the better to do so he was quite willing to let the fisheries go. The navigation privilege he considered "much too important to be conceded for the mere liberty of drying fish upon a desert," as he was pleased to describe a right for which the United States has often been ready to go to war and may yet some time do so. "Mr. Clay lost his temper," writes Mr. Adams a day or two later, "as he generally does whenever this right of the British to navigate the Mississippi is discussed. He was utterly averse to admitting it as an equivalent for a stipulation securing the contested part of the fisheries. He said the more he heard of this [the right of fishing], the more convinced he was that it was of little or no value. He should be glad to get it if he could, but he was sure the British would not ultimately grant it. That the navigation of the Mississippi, on the other hand, was an object of immense importance, and he could see no sort of reason for granting it as an equivalent for the fisheries." Thus spoke the representative of the West. The New Englander—the son of the man whose exertions had been chiefly instrumental in originally obtaining the grant of the Northeastern fishery privileges—naturally went to the other extreme. He thought "the British right of navigating the Mississippi to be as nothing, considered as a grant from us. It was secured to them by the peace of 1783, they had enjoyed it at the commencement of the war, it had never been injurious in the slightest degree to our own people, and it appeared to [him] that the British claim to it was just and equitable." Further he "believed the right to this navigation to be a very useless thing to the British.... But their national pride and honor were interested in it; the government could not make a peace which would abandon it." The fisheries, however, Mr. Adams regarded as one of the most inestimable and inalienable of American rights. It is evident that the United States could ill have spared either Mr. Adams or Mr. Clay from the negotiation, and the joinder of the two, however fraught with discomfort to themselves, well served substantial American interests.

Mr. Adams thought the British perfidious, and suspected them of not entertaining any honest intention of concluding a peace. On December 12, after an exceedingly quarrelsome conference, he records his belief that the British have "insidiously kept open" two points, "for the sake of finally breaking off the negotiations and making all their other concessions proofs of their extreme moderation, to put upon us the blame of the rupture."

On December 11 we find Mr. Clay ready "for a war three years longer," and anxious "to begin to play at brag" with the Englishmen. His colleagues, more complaisant or having less confidence in their own skill in that game, found it difficult to placate him; he "stalked to and fro across the chamber, repeating five or six times, 'I will never sign a treaty upon the status ante bellum with the Indian article. So help me God!'" The next day there was an angry controversy with the Englishmen. The British troops had taken and held Moose Island in Passamaquoddy Bay, the rightful ownership of which was in dispute. The title was to be settled by arbitrators. But the question, whether the British should restore possession of the island pending the arbitration, aroused bitter discussion. "Mr. Goulburn and Dr. Adams (the Englishman) immediately took fire, and Goulburn lost all control of his temper. He has always in such cases," says the Diary, "a sort of convulsive agitation about him, and the tone in which he speaks is more insulting than the language which he uses." Mr. Bayard referred to the case of the Falkland Islands. "'Why' (in a transport of rage), said Goulburn, 'in that case we sent a fleet and troops and drove the fellows off; and that is what we ought to have done in this case.'" Mr. J. Q. Adams, whose extensive and accurate information more than once annoyed his adversaries, stated that, as he remembered it, "the Spaniards in that case had driven the British off,"—and Lord Gambier helped his blundering colleague out of the difficulty by suggesting a new subject, much as the defeated heroes of the Iliad used to find happy refuge from death in a god-sent cloud of dust. It is amusing to read that in the midst of such scenes as these the show of courtesy was still maintained; and on December 13 the Americans "all dined with the British Plenipotentiaries," though "the party was more than usually dull, stiff, and reserved." It was certainly forcing the spirit of good fellowship. The next day Mr. Clay notified his colleagues that they were going "to make a damned bad treaty, and he did not know whether he would sign it or not;" and Mr. Adams also said that he saw that the rest had made up their minds "at last to yield the fishery point," in which case he also could not sign the treaty. On the following day, however, the Americans were surprised by receiving a note from the British Commissioners, wherein they made the substantial concession of omitting from the treaty all reference to the fisheries and the navigation of the Mississippi. But Mr. Clay, on reading the note, "manifested some chagrin," and "still talked of breaking off the negotiation," even asking Mr. Adams to join him in so doing, which request, however, Mr. Adams very reasonably refused. Mr. Clay had also been anxious to stand out for a distinct abandonment of the alleged right of impressment; but upon this point he found none of his colleagues ready to back him, and he was compelled perforce to yield. Agreement was therefore now substantially reached; a few minor matters were settled, and on December 24, 1814, the treaty was signed by all the eight negotiators.

It was an astonishing as well as a happy result. Never, probably, in the history of diplomacy has concord been produced from such discordant elements as had been brought together in Ghent. Dissension seemed to have become the mother of amity; and antipathies were mere preliminaries to a good understanding; in diplomacy as in marriage it had worked well to begin with a little aversion. But, in truth, this consummation was largely due to what had been going on in the English Cabinet. At the outset Lord Castlereagh had been very unwilling to conclude peace, and his disposition had found expression in the original intolerable terms prepared by the British Commissioners. But Lord Liverpool had been equally solicitous on the other side, and was said even to have tendered his resignation to the Prince Regent, if an accommodation should not be effected. His endeavors were fortunately aided by events in Europe. Pending the negotiations Lord Castlereagh went on a diplomatic errand to Vienna, and there fell into such threatening discussions with the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia, that he thought it prudent to have done with the American war, and wrote home pacific advices. Hence, at last, came such concessions as satisfied the Americans.

The treaty established "a firm and universal peace between his Britannic Majesty and the United States." Each party was to restore all captured territory, except that the islands of which the title was in dispute were to remain in the occupation of the party holding them at the time of ratification until that title should be settled by commissioners; provision was made also for the determination of all the open questions of boundary by sundry boards of commissioners; each party was to make peace with the Indian allies of the other. Such were, in substance, the only points touched upon by this document. Of the many subjects mooted between the negotiators scarcely any had survived the fierce contests which had been waged concerning them. The whole matter of the navigation of the Mississippi, access to that river, and a road through American territory, had been dropped by the British; while the Americans had been well content to say nothing of the Northeastern fisheries, which they regarded as still their own. The disarmament on the lakes and along the Canadian border, and the neutralization of a strip of Indian territory, were yielded by the English. The Americans were content to have nothing said about impressment; nor was any one of the many illegal rights exercised by England formally abandoned. The Americans satisfied themselves with the reflection that circumstances had rendered these points now only matters of abstract principle, since the pacification of Europe had removed all opportunities and temptations for England to persist in her previous objectionable courses. For the future it was hardly to be feared that she would again undertake to pursue a policy against which it was evident that the United States were willing to conduct a serious war. There was, however, no provision for indemnification.

Upon a fair consideration, it must be admitted that though the treaty was silent upon all the points which the United States had made war for the purpose of enforcing, yet the country had every reason to be gratified with the result of the negotiation. The five Commissioners had done themselves ample credit. They had succeeded in agreeing with each other; they had avoided any fracture of a negotiation which, up to the very end, seemed almost daily on the verge of being broken off in anger; they had managed really to lose nothing, in spite of the fact that their side had had decidedly the worst of the struggle. They had negotiated much more successfully than the armies of their countrymen had fought. The Marquis of Wellesley said, in the House of Lords, that "in his opinion the American Commissioners had shown a most astonishing superiority over the British during the whole of the correspondence." One cannot help wishing that the battle of New Orleans had taken place a little earlier, or that the negotiation had fallen a little later, so that news of that brilliant event could have reached the ears of the insolent Englishmen at Ghent, who had for three months been enjoying the malicious pleasure of lending to the Americans English newspapers containing accounts of American misfortunes. But that fortunate battle was not fought until a few days after the eight Commissioners had signed their compact. It is an interesting illustration of the slowness of communication which our forefathers had to endure, that the treaty crossed the Atlantic in a sailing ship in time to travel through much of the country simultaneously with the report of this farewell victory. Two such good pieces of news coming together set the people wild with delight. Even on the dry pages of Niles's "Weekly Register" occurs the triumphant paragraph: "Who would not be an American? Long live the Republic! All hail! last asylum of oppressed humanity! Peace is signed in the arms of victory!" It was natural that most of the ecstasy should be manifested concerning the military triumph, and that the mass of the people should find more pleasure in glorifying General Jackson than in exalting the Commissioners. The value of their work, however, was well proved by the voice of Great Britain. In the London "Times" of December 30 appeared a most angry tirade against the treaty, with bitter sneers at those who called the peace an "honorable" one. England, it was said, "had attempted to force her principles on America, and had failed." Foreign powers would say that the English "had retired from the combat with the stripes yet bleeding on their backs,—with the recent defeats at Plattsburgh and on Lake Champlain unavenged." The most gloomy prognostications of further wars with America when her naval power should have waxed much greater were indulged. The loss of prestige in Europe, "the probable loss of our trans-Atlantic provinces," were among the results to be anticipated from this treaty into which the English Commissioners had been beguiled by the Americans. These latter were reviled with an abuse which was really the highest compliment. The family name of Mr. Adams gained no small access of distinction in England from this business.

After the conclusion of the treaty Mr. Adams went to Paris, and remained there until the middle of May, 1815, thus having the good fortune to witness the return of Napoleon and a great part of the events of the famous "hundred days." On May 26 he arrived in London, where there awaited him, in the hands of the Barings, his commission as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain. His first duty was, in connection with Mr. Clay and Mr. Gallatin, to negotiate a treaty of commerce, in which business he again met the same three British Commissioners by whom the negotiations at Ghent had been conducted, of whose abilities the government appeared to entertain a better opinion than the Marquis of Wellesley had expressed. This negotiation had been brought so far towards conclusion by his colleagues before his own arrival that Mr. Adams had little to do in assisting them to complete it. This little having been done, they departed and left him as Minister at the Court of St. James. Thus he fulfilled Washington's prophecy, by reaching the highest rank in the American diplomatic service.