I have made a copious chapter upon the subject of this episodical controversy with France—more full, it might seem, than the subject required, seeing its speedy and happy termination: but not without object. Instructive lessons result from this history; both from the French and American side of it. The wrong to the United States came from the French chamber of deputies—from the opposition part of it, composed of the two extremes of republicans and legitimists, deadly hostile to each other, but combined in any attempt to embarrass a king whom both wished to destroy: and this French opposition inflamed the question there. In the United States there was also an opposition, composed of two, lately hostile parties (the modern whigs and the southern dissatisfied democracy); and this opposition, dominant in the Senate, and frustrating the President's measures, gave encouragement to the French opposition: and the two together, brought their respective countries to the brink of war. The two oppositions are responsible for the hostile attitude to which the two countries were brought. That this is not a harsh opinion, nor without foundation, may be seen by the history which is given of the case in the chapter dedicated to it; and if more is wanting, it may be found in the recorded debates of the day; in which things were said which were afterwards regretted; and which, being regretted, the author of this View has no desire to repeat:—the instructive lesson of history which he wishes to inculcate, being complete without the exhumation of what ought to remain buried. Nor can the steadiness and firmness of President Jackson be overlooked in this reflective view. In all the aspects of the French question he remained inflexible in his demand for justice, and in his determination, so far as it depended upon him to have it. In his final message, communicating to congress the conclusion of the affair, he gracefully associated congress with himself in their joy at the restoration of the ancient cordial relations between two countries, of ancient friendship, which misconceptions had temporarily alienated from each other.
CHAPTER CXXXIV.
PRESIDENT JACKSON'S FOREIGN DIPLOMACY.
A view of President Jackson's foreign diplomacy has been reserved for the last year of his administration, and to the conclusion of his longest, latest, and most difficult negotiation; and is now presented in a single chapter, giving the history of his intercourse with foreign nations. From no part of his administration was more harm apprehended, by those who dreaded the election of General Jackson, than from this source. From his military character they feared embroilments; from his want of experience as a diplomatist, they feared mistakes and blunders in our foreign intercourse. These apprehensions were very sincerely entertained by a large proportion of our citizens; but, as the event proved, entirely without foundation. No part of his administration, successful, beneficial, and honorable as it was at home, was more successful, beneficial and honorable than that of his foreign diplomacy. He obtained indemnities for all outrages committed on our commerce before his time, and none were committed during his time. He made good commercial treaties with some nations from which they could not be obtained before—settled some long-standing and vexatious questions; and left the whole world at peace with his country, and engaged in the good offices of trade and hospitality. A brief detail of actual occurrences will justify this general and agreeable statement,
1. The Direct Trade with the British West Indies.—I have already shown, in a separate chapter, the recovery, in the first year of his administration, of this valuable branch of our commerce, so desirable to us from the nearness of those islands to our shore, the domestic productions which they took from us, the employment it gave to our navigation, the actual large amount of the trade, the acceptable articles it gave in return, and its satisfactory establishment on a durable basis after fifty years of interrupted, and precarious, and restricted enjoyment: and I add nothing more on that head. I proceed to new cases of indemnities obtained, or of new treaties formed.
2. At the head of these stands the French Indemnity Treaty.—The commerce of the United States had suffered greatly under the decrees of the Emperor Napoleon, and redress had been sought by every administration, and in vain, from that of Mr. Madison to that of Mr. John Quincy Adams, inclusively. President Jackson determined from the first moment of his administration to prosecute the claims on France with vigor; and that not only as a matter of right, but of policy. There were other secondary powers, such as Naples and Spain, subject to the same kind of reclamation, and which had sheltered their refusal behind that of France; and with some show of reason, as France, besides having committed the largest depredation, was the origin of the system under which they acted, and the inducing cause of their conduct. France was the strong power in this class of wrong-doers, and as such was the one first to be dealt with. In his first annual message to the two Houses of Congress, President Jackson brought this subject before that body, and disclosed his own policy in relation to it. He took up the question as one of undeniable wrong which had already given rise to much unpleasant discussion, and which might lead to possible collision between the two governments; and expressed a confident hope that the injurious delays of the past would find a redress in the equity of the future. This was pretty clear language, and stood for something in the message of a President whose maxim of foreign policy was, to "ask nothing but what was right, and to submit to nothing that was wrong." At the same time, Mr. William C. Rives, of Virginia, was sent to Paris as minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary, and especially charged with this reclamation. His mission was successful; and at the commencement of the session 1831-'32, the President had the gratification to communicate to both Houses of Congress and to submit to the Senate for its approbation, the treaty which closed up this long-standing head of complaint against an ancient ally. The French government agreed to pay twenty-five millions of francs to American citizens "for (such was the language of the treaty) unlawful seizures, captures, sequestrations, confiscations or destruction of their vessels, cargoes or other property;" subject to a deduction of one million and a half of francs for claims of French citizens, or the royal treasury, for "ancient supplies or accounts," or for reclamations on account of commercial injury. Thus all American claims for spoliation in the time of the Emperor Napoleon were acknowledged and agreed to be satisfied, and the acknowledgment and agreement for satisfaction made in terms which admitted the illegality and injustice of the acts in which they originated. At the same time all the French claims upon the United States, from the time of our revolution, of which two (those of the heirs of Beaumarchais and of the Count Rochambeau) had been a subject of reclamation for forty years, were satisfied. The treaty was signed July 4th, 1831, one year after the accession of Louis Phillippe to the French throne—and to the natural desire of the new king (under the circumstances of his elevation) to be on good terms with the United States; and to the good offices of General Lafayette, then once more influential in the councils of France, as well as to the zealous exertions of our minister, the auspicious conclusion of this business is to be much attributed. The indemnity payable in six annual equal instalments, was satisfactory to government and to the claimants; and in communicating information of the treaty to Congress, President Jackson, after a just congratulation on putting an end to a subject of irritation which for many years had, in some degree, alienated two nations from each other, which, from interest as well as from early recollections, ought to cherish the most friendly relations—and (as if feeling all the further consequential advantages of this success) went on to state, as some of the good effects to result from it, that it gave encouragement to persevere in demands for justice from other nations; that it would be an admonition that just claims would be prosecuted to satisfactory conclusions, and give assurance to our own citizens that their own government will exert all its constitutional power to obtain redress for all their foreign wrongs. This latter declaration was afterwards put to the proof, in relation to the execution of the treaty itself, and was kept to the whole extent of its letter and spirit, and with good results both to France and the United States. It so happened that the French legislative chambers refused to vote appropriations necessary to carry the treaty into effect. An acrimonious correspondence between the two governments took place, becoming complicated with resentment on the part of France for some expressions, which she found to be disrespectful, in a message of President Jackson. The French minister was recalled from the United States; the American minister received his passport; and reprisals were recommended to Congress by the President. But there was no necessity for them. The intent to give offence, or to be disrespectful, was disclaimed; the instalments in arrear were paid; the two nations returned to their accustomed good feeling; and no visible trace remains of the brief and transient cloud which for a while overshadowed them. So finished, in the time of Jackson, with entire satisfaction to ourselves, and with honor to both parties, the question of reclamations from France for injuries done our citizens in the time of the Great Emperor; and which the administrations of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and John Quincy Adams had been unable to enforce.
3. Danish Treaty.—This was a convention for indemnity for spoliations on American commerce, committed twenty years before the time of General Jackson's administration. They had been committed during the years 1808, 1809, 1810, and 1811, that is to say, during the last year of Mr. Jefferson's administration and the three first years of Mr. Madison's. They consisted of illegal seizures and illegal condemnations or confiscations of American vessels and their cargoes in Danish ports, during the time when the British orders in council and the French imperial decrees were devastating the commerce of neutral nations, and subjecting the weaker powers of Europe to the course of policy which the two great belligerent powers had adopted. The termination of the great European contest, and the return of nations to the accustomed paths of commercial intercourse and just and friendly relations, furnished a suitable opportunity for the United States, whose citizens had suffered so much, to demand indemnity for these injuries. The demand had been made; and had been followed up with zeal during each succeeding administration, but without effect, until the administration of Mr. John Quincy Adams. During that administration, and in the hands of the American Chargé d'Affaires (Mr. Henry Wheaton), the negotiation made encouraging progress. General Jackson did not change the negotiator—did not incur double expense, a year's delay, and substitute a raw for a ripe minister—and the negotiation went on to a speedy and prosperous conclusion. The treaty was concluded in March, 1830, and extended to a complete settlement of all questions of reclamation on both sides. The Danish government renounced all pretension to the claims which it had preferred, and agreed to pay the sum of six hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the government of the United States, to be by it distributed among the American claimants. This convention, which received the immediate ratification of the President and Senate, terminated all differences with a friendly power, with whom the United States never had any but kind relations (these spoliations excepted), and whose trade to her West India islands, lying at our door, and taking much of our domestic productions, was so desirable to us.
4. Neapolitan Indemnity Treaty.—When Murat was King of Naples, and acting upon the system of his brother-in-law, the Emperor Napoleon, he seized and confiscated many vessels and their cargoes, belonging to citizens of the United States. The years 1809, 1810, 1811 and 1812 were the periods of these wrongs. Efforts had been made under each administration, from Mr. Madison to Mr. John Quincy Adams, to obtain redress, but in vain. Among others, the special mission of Mr. William Pinkney, the eminent orator and jurist, was instituted in the last year of Mr. Madison's administration, exclusively charged, at that court, with soliciting indemnity for the Murat spoliations. A Bourbon was then upon the throne, and this 'legitimate,' considering Murat as an usurper who had taken the kingdom from its proper owners, and done more harm to them than to any body else, was naturally averse to making compensation to other nations for his injurious acts. This repugnance had found an excuse in the fact that France, the great original wrongdoer in all these spoliations, and under whose lead and protection they were all committed, had not yet been brought to acknowledge the wrong and to make satisfaction. The indemnity treaty with France, in July 1831, put an end to this excuse; and the fact of the depredations being clear, and the law of nations indisputably in our favor, a further and more earnest appeal was made to the Neapolitan government. Mr. John Nelson, of Maryland, was appointed United States Chargé to Naples, and concluded a convention for the payment of the claims. The sum of two millions one hundred and fifteen thousand Neapolitan ducats was stipulated to be paid to the United States government, to be by it distributed among the claimants; and, being entirely satisfactory, the convention immediately received the American ratification. Thus, another head of injury to our citizens, and of twenty years' standing, was settled by General Jackson, and in a case in which the strongest prejudice and the most revolting repugnance had to be overcome. Murat had been shot by order of the Neapolitan king, for attempting to recover the kingdom; he was deemed a usurper while he had it; the exiled royal family thought themselves sufficiently wronged by him in their own persons, without being made responsible for his wrongs to others; and although bound by the law of nations to answer for his conduct while king in point of fact, yet for almost twenty years—from their restoration in 1814 to 1832—they had resisted and repulsed the incessant and just demands of the United States. Considering the sacrifice of pride, as well as the large compensation, which this branch of the Bourbons had to make in paying a bill of damages against an intrusive king of the Bonaparte dynasty, and this indemnity obtained from Naples in the third year of General Jackson's first presidential term, which had been refused to his three predecessors—Messrs. Madison, Monroe and John Quincy Adams—may be looked upon as one of the most remarkable of his diplomatic successes.
Spanish Indemnity Treaty.—The treaty of 1819 with Spain, by which we gained Florida and lost Texas, and paid five millions of dollars to our own citizens for Spanish spoliations, settled up all demands upon that power up to that time; but fresh causes of complaint soon grew up. All the Spanish-American states had become independent—had established their own forms of government—and commenced political and commercial communications with all the world. Spanish policy revolted at this escape of colonies from its hands; and although unable to subdue the new governments, was able to refuse to acknowledge their independence—able to issue paper blockades, and to seize and confiscate the American merchant vessels trading to the new states. In this way much damage had been done to American commerce, even in the brief interval between the date of the treaty of 1819 and General Jackson's election to the presidency, ten years thereafter. A new list of claims for spoliations had grown up; and one of the early acts of the new President was to institute a mission to demand indemnity. Mr. Cornelius Van Ness, of New-York, was the minister appointed; and having been refused in his first application, and given an account of the refusal to his government, President Jackson dispatched a special messenger to the American minister at Madrid, with instructions, "once more" to bring the subject to the consideration of the Spanish government; informing Congress at the same time, that he had made his last demand; and that, if justice was not done, he would bring the case before that body, "as the constitutional judge of what was proper to be done when negotiation fails to obtain redress for wrongs." But it was not found necessary to bring the case before Congress. On a closer examination of the claims presented and for the enforcement of which the power of the government had been invoked, it was found that there had occurred in this case what often takes place in reclamation upon foreign powers; that claims were preferred which were not founded in justice, and which were not entitled to the national interference. Faithful to his principle to ask nothing but what was right, General Jackson ordered these unfounded claims to be dropped, and the just claims only to be insisted upon; and in communicating this fact to Congress, he declared his policy characteristically with regard to foreign nations, and in terms which deserve to be remembered. He said: "Faithful to the principle of asking nothing but what was clearly right, additional instructions have been sent to modify our demands, so as to embrace those only on which, according to the laws of nations, we had a strict right to insist upon." Under these modified instructions a treaty of indemnity was concluded (February, 1834), and the sum of twelve millions of reals vellon stipulated to be paid to the government of the United States, for distribution among the claimants. Thus, another instance of spoliation upon our foreign commerce, and the last that remained unredressed, was closed up and satisfied under the administration of General Jackson; and this last of the revolutionary men had the gratification to restore unmixed cordial intercourse with a power which had been our ally in the war of the Revolution; which had ceded to us the Floridas, to round off with a natural boundary our Southern territory; which was our neighbor, conterminous in dominions, from the Atlantic to the Pacific; and which, notwithstanding the jars and collisions to which bordering nations are always subject, had never committed an act of hostility upon the United States. The conclusion of this affair was grateful to all the rememberers of our revolutionary history, and equally honorable to both parties: to General Jackson, who renounced unfounded claims, and to the Spanish government, which paid the good as soon as separated from the bad.