President Jefferson, however, chose not to submit the treaty to the Senate. “To tell you the truth,” he reportedly told a friend, “I do not wish any treaty with Great Britain.”60 Jefferson considered the British concessions trifling and was unwilling to give up the weapon of commercial sanctions without a British promise to end impressment. In addition, he was convinced that France and Russia would ultimately prevail in the European war and force the British to accept a much broader definition of neutral rights. The points contended for by the United States, he insisted, were matters of right. “They are points which Bonaparte & [Czar] Alexander will concur in settling at the Treaty of peace, & probably in more latitude than Gr. Br. would now yield.”61 Even if Britain’s enemies failed to win a broad definition of neutral rights, Jefferson was confident that he could achieve his aims by employing economic sanctions.
The rejection of the Monroe–Pinkney Treaty was a great turning point in the Age of Jefferson. Republicans would later claim that their only options in this era were submission, commercial sanctions, or war. But the Monroe–Pinkney Treaty offered another alternative, that of accommodation. By rejecting this treaty, the United States missed an opportunity to reforge the Anglo-American accord of the 1790s and to substitute peace and prosperity for commercial restrictions and war.
The Chesapeake Affair (1807)
After the loss of the Monroe–Pinkney Treaty, Anglo-American relations steadily deteriorated. In the summer of 1807 the Chesapeake affair created a full-blown war scare.62 The American frigate had a large number of British subjects among its crew. British officials knew that four deserters from the Royal Navy were serving on the vessel but were unable to secure their return through diplomatic channels. Accordingly, Rear Admiral Sir George Berkeley, the commander-in-chief of the British squadron at Halifax, decided to take matters into his own hands by ordering naval commanders assigned to his station to recover the deserters, employing force if necessary.
On June 22, 1807, nine miles off the American coast, H.M. Ship Leopard (52 guns) approached the Chesapeake (40 guns) and demanded that a boarding party be allowed to search for the deserters. When the American commander demurred, the British vessel fired three broadsides into the ship, killing three men and wounding sixteen others (one of whom later died). Unable to get any guns into service to defend itself, the Chesapeake struck its colors. The British removed the four deserters, and the American ship limped back into port.
The Chesapeake affair stirred public outrage throughout the United States. “But one feeling pervades the Nation,” Republican Joseph H. Nicholson said; “all distinctions of Federalism and Democracy are banished.”63 Jefferson ordered all British warships out of American waters, but instead of fanning the flames, he waited for Britain’s official response.
The British did not normally claim the right to search or impress from neutral warships, which were considered an extension of a nation’s territory. Hence they disavowed the attack and ordered Berkeley’s recall (although he was later given another command). The British also offered to pay reparations and to return three of the men, all of whom were apparently American citizens who had deserted only after being impressed into British service. (The fourth, a British subject, was summarily hanged.) The issue, however, became entangled with others, and a settlement was delayed until 1811. In the meantime, the Chesapeake affair continued to fester, contributing to the rising anti-British feeling in America.
The Orders-in-Council and Continental Decrees
Shortly after the Chesapeake outrage, another problem surfaced that was to bedevil Anglo-American relations even more. This was the Orders-in-Council, a series of executive decrees issued by the British government that restricted neutral trade with the Continent.64 The British were no strangers to commercial warfare. Often they had used their naval power to destroy an enemy’s shipping or trade, and sometimes their practices skirted the edge of international law. The Fox Blockade, for example, was probably too sweeping to be strictly legal.
It was the French, however, who initiated the commercial warfare of the Napoleonic era. Napoleon’s brilliant military triumph at Austerlitz in late 1805 had made him master of the Continent, but there was no way he could invade Britain because her great naval victory at Trafalgar six weeks earlier had left her undisputed mistress of the seas. Hence, Napoleon resorted to commercial warfare, claiming that this was “the only way to strike a blow at England and force her to peace.”65 His plan was to destroy Britain’s prosperity by cutting off its trade with Europe. He hoped to accomplish this with a series of decrees that established the Continental System.
The first Continental decree—the Berlin Decree, issued in 1806—proclaimed a blockade of the British Isles, excluded from French-occupied ports all neutral vessels that had touched at a British port, and declared all British-made goods lawful prize even when owned by neutrals. The British retaliated in 1807 with several Orders-in-Council, the most important of which prohibited any trade from which the British were excluded unless the ships headed for those ports stopped in Britain first and paid transit duties. Napoleon replied with the Milan Decree, which proclaimed that any neutral vessel submitting to the British trade regulations or even permitting a British search party to board was subject to seizure. The British issued a new Order-in-Council in 1809 that substituted an extensive blockade for the earlier restrictions.
Great Britain and France both conceded that their commercial decrees violated international law, but each claimed that it was only retaliating for the illegal acts of the other. The French insisted that the Fox Blockade was the opening round in the commercial war, while the British pointed to the Berlin Decree. Both sides also used the war on trade as a pretext for looting neutral commerce. The British seized neutral ships on the high seas, while the French confiscated neutral property near the coast or in continental ports. For both belligerents, greed and mercantilism played as much a role in the commercial war as higher reasons of state.
The British and French decrees appeared to render any trade with the Continent impossible, but appearances were deceptive. With a little bit of luck, enterprising merchants could still make a profit. The British made it clear that they had no intention of ending all trade with Europe. As Spencer Perceval, the British prime minister, put it: “The object of the Orders in Council was not to destroy the trade of the Continent, but to force the Continent to trade with us.”66 To facilitate this trade, the British in 1807 began issuing thousands of licenses that authorized trade with ports that the Orders-in-Council had targeted. France often winked at this license trade and granted exemptions from the Continental System when it suited her interest.67
Moreover, the countervailing decrees never applied to all of Europe. At no time did Napoleon control the entire Continent, and the British applied their restrictions only to ports under enemy control. Thus at one time or another Americans could freely trade with ports in Portugal, Spain, the Baltic, the Ottoman Empire, and the Austrian Empire. The trade at Europe’s periphery was so extensive that John Quincy Adams compared the Continental System to “an attempt to exclude the air from a bottle, by sealing up hermetically the mouth, while there was a great hole in the side.”68 Beyond this, the British before 1809 allowed the shipment of certain commodities directly from the United States to the Continent, and some American merchants covered trade in other goods by purchasing British licenses, which were openly hawked in British port cities. In addition, American merchants sometimes circumvented the European restrictions by carrying dual papers or by bribing customs officials in French-occupied ports.
In spite of these opportunities, the losses under the British and French regulations were heavy. Between 1807 and 1812 the two belligerents and their allies seized about 900 American ships.69 Given these losses, it is little wonder that the repeal of the belligerent decrees became the overriding objective of American foreign policy in the years before the War of 1812.
The Restrictive System (1806–1811)
By
late 1807 Americans were under heavy pressure from both belligerents. France had begun to enforce the Berlin Decree, and Britain had reaffirmed the right of impressment and announced her intention of issuing the Orders-in-Council. Under these circumstances, Republican leaders decided to retaliate by imposing economic sanctions. The restrictive system, as these measures were called, was a series of trade restrictions adopted between 1806 and 1811 to force the belligerents to show greater respect for American rights.70
The restrictive system had its origins in the era of the American Revolution. In the 1760s and 1770s the American colonies had employed non-importation, non-exportation, and non-consumption agreements against the mother country in the hope of forcing her to change her tax and trade policies. Although these measures had had little impact on British colonial policy, men like Jefferson and Madison interpreted history otherwise. Convinced that America’s greatest weapon was her economic power, Republican leaders believed that the United States held the key to the prosperity of Britain and to a lesser extent of France as well. “Our trade,” said the Boston Chronicle in 1805, “is the most powerful weapon we can use in our defence.”71 All the United States had to do, the Republicans believed, was to turn the economic screws and the European belligerents would be brought to terms, if not to their knees.
The first restriction adopted was the partial non-importation act of 1806.72 This law prohibited the importation of a select list of British manufactured goods. It did not strike at the heart of Britain’s export trade because it excluded few textiles or metal products. It was more of a threat than anything else, designed to warn the British of what to expect if they did not show greater respect for American rights. To give the British time to make concessions in the Monroe–Pinkney negotiations, the law was repeatedly suspended and did not go into operation until December 1807.
Shortly after this law went into effect, the Republicans adopted an embargo, the most comprehensive and controversial of all the trade restrictions.73 Essentially a non-exportation law, the embargo prohibited American ships and goods from leaving port. In principle the measure was extraordinarily sweeping, and many regarded the cure as worse than the disease. Republican critic John Randolph, for example, compared the embargo to an attempt “to cure corns by cutting off the toes.”74
Federalists made a lot of political capital out of the embargo. In their cartoons, they usually depicted it as a snapping turtle because, like a turtle, the nation was withdrawing into its shell by giving up its trade. The turtle snapped at everyone’s livelihood, in this case a smuggler trying to get his tobacco to a British ship (incorrectly portrayed here as a warship). To illustrate the measure’s coercive nature, the cartoons invariably included the phrase “Ograbme,” which is “embargo” spelled backwards. (Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812)
In practice, however, the law had numerous loopholes, at least at first. Many ships were able to slip out of port before official news of the embargo arrived and once at sea made no effort to return. Merchants could legally dispatch ships to pick up American property abroad, and some 600 vessels sailed on this pretext. Some ships left port illegally, while others—nominally plying the coasting trade—were “blown” off course to a port in the West Indies or Canada. Foreign ships could still bring cargoes to the United States as long as they left in ballast—a rule they sometimes evaded. There was also a good deal of overland trade, especially along Canadian frontier.75
To enforce the embargo, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin told Jefferson that government officials would need “arbitrary powers” that were “equally dangerous & odious.” The president was undeterred. “Congress,” he replied, “must legalise all means which may be necessary to obtain it’s end.”76 Accordingly, the administration asked for and received increasingly broad powers. The climax was the enforcement act of 1809, which gave customs officials sweeping powers and authorized the use of the army and navy to suppress smuggling.77
The enforcement campaign was largely successful, but Republicans and Federalists alike became increasingly disillusioned with the whole policy. Likening the embargo to a turtle because the nation was drawing into itself, Federalists spelled the word backwards to illustrate its effects. “O-grab-me,” they said, and at one time or another the turtle-like embargo snapped at almost everyone’s livelihood.
Economically, the embargo drove the nation into a deep depression, perhaps the worst experienced since the beginning of colonial times. Exports, which had peaked at $108 million in 1807, plummeted (officially at least) to $22 million in 1808.78 Farmers could not ship their produce to foreign markets, and merchants could not send their ships to sea. For many people, the result was loss and suffering if not bankruptcy and debtors’ prison.79
Politically, the embargo rejuvenated the Federalist party, which only a year or two before had seemed headed for extinction. The howls of protest from commercial New England steadily mounted, and there was even talk of nullification and secession. Although the embargo was conceived of as a substitute for foreign war—as a peaceful means of upholding American rights—it threatened to precipitate civil war.
Yet for all this the embargo elicited hardly a peep from Britain or France. According to the American minister in Paris, the coercive effects of the measure were overrated. “Here it is not felt, and in England . . . it is forgotten.”80 Napoleon used the embargo as a pretext for seizing American vessels, claiming that they must be British ships in disguise.81 Great Britain was deprived of some of her customary imports, but she found new markets for her exports in South America and welcomed the withdrawal of a commercial rival. A British subject later made fun of the measure: “The late Jeffersonian Embargo was a Rod which produced no other sensation on the rough hide of John Bull, than the pleasurable one which arises from titilation. The poor Animal was delighted, and not suspecting that this philosophical experiment on his Hide was intended to produce pain, he regretted that weariness had ultimately compelled Mr. Jefferson to cease scratching.”82
In March 1809—after fifteen months of national suffering—Congress repealed the embargo and non-importation laws and substituted a non-intercourse act.83 This measure prohibited all trade with Britain and France and their colonies but permitted it with the rest of the world. It imposed both non-importation and non-exportation on the belligerents, but only part of the law could be enforced. Ships and goods from Britain and France could be kept from American ports, but there was no way to prevent American vessels from going where they pleased once they departed from the United States. American merchants often traded with the British in neutral ports or sailed directly to Great Britain, where they were welcomed despite faulty papers. Given the failure of the embargo, which was far more sweeping, few people expected non-intercourse to work. It was designed primarily to save face, to keep up the appearance of commercial warfare while giving up the rigors of the embargo.
Since the early days of the embargo, the administration had expressed a willingness to give up commercial warfare if either belligerent suspended its restrictions on trade. In April 1809, the British minister in Washington, David M. Erskine, signed a convention providing for the mutual suspension of the British and American restrictions. But the agreement was repudiated in London because Erskine had exceeded his instructions. Hence, non-intercourse was restored against Britain.84
In May 1810, Congress repealed the non-intercourse act and substituted a measure known as Macon’s bill #2.85 This law reopened trade with Britain and France but promised to reimpose non-importation against either belligerent if the other rescinded its restrictions on neutral trade. Seeing an opportunity to hoodwink the United States, Napoleon ordered his foreign minister, the Duc de Cadore, to promise French cooperation. In the so-called Cadore letter, sent to the American government in August 1810, France pledged to suspend the Continental Decrees if the United States “shall cause their rights to be respected by the English,” presumably by reimposing non-importation.86
Napoleon had no intention of making good on this promise. Although some American vessels were released for the sake of appearances, the French continued to prey on American shipping, and a new series of French tariffs and export restrictions rendered American trade with the Continent almost impossible. Moreover, in the Trianon Decree (which was issued at the same time as the Cadore letter), the Emperor secretly ordered the condemnation of American ships in French hands that had not even violated his decrees. Clearly, Napoleon’s plan was not to make concessions to the United States, but to give the appearance of doing so in the hope of further embroiling the new nation with Britain.87
This plan worked because President Madison chose to accept the Cadore letter at face value. Not only did he hope that Napoleon would live up to his word, but he thought that he could use the French pledge as a lever to force the British to suspend the Orders-in-Council. The British, however, refused to budge, claiming that the French repeal was spurious. Hence Madison issued a proclamation reimposing non-importation against Great Britain and her colonies as of February 1811. The following month Congress passed a bill to give this proclamation the full force of law.88
The second non-importation act was the last coercive measure adopted by the United States before the War of 1812. With this measure the nation had come full circle—from non-importation to non-exportation and back to non-importation—as Republican leaders searched in vain for an instrument that would have a decisive impact on the belligerents while doing the least damage to the United States. The second non-importation law was probably the best of these measures, although it turned the normally prosperous Anglo-American trade into a stagnant one-sided exchange and led to the accumulation of American capital in Great Britain.
The War of 1812 Page 4
