In his letters Fulton has made a number of references to his friends who were associated with him. In the above letter he gives the only clue as to whom they might be. At the time when this letter was written, both Robert R. Livingston and Joel Barlow had returned to the United States.

The above two letters on which he staked everything, were too important to be entrusted to a messenger, so Fulton carried them himself. In order to be sure that Lord Grenville should be acquainted with the contents, Fulton read them aloud as is shown by the following footnote:

On the 3r of September 1806 I had an interview with Lord Grenville in Downing street I entered his room about three oclock he was, alone handed me a chair I sat down near him and after a few words I read him the preceding letters, on which no comment whatever was made His Lordship only observed that he could not then say anything on the Subject and I retired.

That was the end. His work of twenty years in Europe was finished!

Chapter XI
RETURN TO AMERICA

Summary of the British negotiations. America used as a threat. Offer of neutrality. Fulton’s review of the past and plans for the future. Appeal to Jefferson. Departure for home.

One’s sympathy goes unreservedly to Fulton. He was at this time almost forty-one years old. He had fought his battle of life alone, without money, and with only such friends as he had attracted to himself from time to time. He had tried several avenues that might lead to success, but he found that one after the other came to an end in desert fields. To his latest effort he had devoted nine years. It had been the most promising of them all. It had brought him in contact with many powerful people, it had provided action that he sought, it was lighted with the bright hopes for success, and for the past two years had furnished a comfortable living, the first of any of his efforts so to do. But now this avenue like the others had reached an end. This disappointment must have exceeded all his previous disappointments. He had abandoned art, small canal construction and his excavating devices at a time when no one of them offered any great encouragement. In none of his earlier efforts had he attained a good foothold. In his submarine he had buried more time and energy than he had in any of his other lines: in fact, he had spent nearly one half of the years since leaving home in its study. Whatever estimate he had placed on art and his various engineering projects, this time he knew that he was right. There was no doubt in his own mind as to the correctness of his reasoning and the workable qualities of his invention. All the harder it must have been, when he realized that he could not make men see it as he did, other than his two unnamed friends in America and his one friend in England, the Earl of Stanhope.

His emotions on sailing from England were of a distinctly different character from those he felt when leaving France. In the latter country he had been rejected with contumely, the first real shock that he had experienced. He departed from France sore and angry, as has been shown. In England he had been treated quite otherwise. Throughout his stay of twenty-eight months he had been shown every courtesy. He had the entrée to government offices and enjoyed the confidence of the highest officials, including Mr. Pitt and Lord Grenville, in turn prime ministers. The disagreement with the British Government was on financial grounds. During his period of work he had received a generous salary in addition to reimbursement for all his expenses. Development of events made Fulton no longer necessary to the Government on the one hand, while on the other his steamboat arrangement with Chancellor Livingston was forcing Fulton’s return to America. Both parties were ready to end the contractual relation. The British Government, not having received any direct benefit from Fulton’s ideas, except the indirect one that he had been kept from going over to the enemy, naturally sought a means of terminating the contract without further payment. Fulton, equally naturally, sought substantial pecuniary reward. He was past the age when men have usually made their mark, and had accomplished nothing. His steamboat plans were as yet on paper with nothing more definite than hope. He was in debt to his “two friends in America,” a debt that he could repay by no other means in sight than through his submarine contract. He, therefore, made the best fight he could, single-handed, to obtain a favorable settlement.

It is interesting to follow the working of Fulton’s mind in these final negotiations for a satisfactory adjustment, as shown by his own letters. In his original contract of May, 1804, he made no reservation, but placed his ideas wholly and exclusively at the disposition of the British Government. It does not appear that he gave any thought to the use of his device by the United States. This is not remarkable. He had left America when he was but twenty-one years old. At that time there was no constitution, no federal government, nothing but a confederacy of colonies disturbed by strong jealousies of each other. He had lived abroad for twenty years, including the formative period of a man’s character. His sole tie with his native country, his mother, had been cut by her death. The Barlows were quite as much French as American. There was nothing except the friendship and personality of Livingston to rouse in him a sense of patriotism, or lead him to feel the existence of a national spirit in a united country in America.

The first reference to the use of his submarine by America appears in his letter to Lord Castlereagh, dated “London December 13th, 1805,” given on pages 104–8. When this letter was written, it was becoming clear to Fulton that the British Government might refuse to make payment under the contract, and that he would have to use some sort of force to compel a compliance with the terms. The only force that he could employ would be a threat to give his secret to some other power. France was now quite out of the question, and there was no one power in Europe that could serve as a means to scare. The United States, now become a nation, was the only hope. In his letter to Lord Castlereagh he advances the ingenious solution that he receive a substantial cash payment and an annuity, the latter to continue only so long as the secret was kept inviolate by him. He concludes by diplomatically hinting that the only government to whom he would be likely to explain his invention would be his own. In the paper that he read to the Arbitrators he makes a distinct threat that, unless a satisfactory offer be made, he will not only give his secret to America but publish it to the whole world, although he modified this by stating that he had “no desire to introduce my Engines into practice for the benefit of any other Nation.” (page 126.)