by Mark Zuehlke
Goulburn and Clay had an almost civil conversation during which the Kentuckian explained that even if America acceded to the Indian boundary proposition and the eastern states and Great Britain tried to enforce such an agreement, they would not be able to “restrain that part of the American population which is to the Westward of the Alleghany, from encroaching upon the Indian Territory and gradually expelling the aboriginal inhabitants.” Goulburn, as usual, listened and said little. But he then wrote Bathurst that under “these circumstances I do not deem it possible to conclude a good peace now—as I cannot consider that a good peace … leaves the Indians to a dependence on the liberal policy of the United States.”23
But even as Goulburn wrote his mentor in London, the foundation of this position was weakening, indeed crumbling to dust, as, independent of the other, Lord Liverpool and Viscount Castlereagh each succumbed to second thoughts.
Moving slowly from one seat of European power to another on a winding path that would end in Vienna, the foreign secretary found the American war ever less important. The puzzle of reconstructing the stability of the continental European empires was a heady, demanding challenge, one that perforce required his full attention. Yet this unnecessary and costly war across the Atlantic continued to impinge upon his time. He fretted that the commissioners had taken too hard a line and that, when the record of the discussions was disclosed, the opposition in the House of Commons would hold the government accountable for failing to negotiate a treaty. Perhaps the British position should be softened some way to conciliate the Americans.
Liverpool reached the same conclusion for similar reasons. “I quite agree with you,” he wrote Bathurst on the 11th, “in the Absolute Necessity, of including the Indians in the Treaty of Peace …. but I would not make a sine qua non of more.” He thought that the Great Lakes demands could be modified. Perhaps Sackets Harbor could be left to the Americans.24 Four days later he complained to Bathurst that the commissioners “evidently do not feel the inconveniences of the war. I feel it strongly, but I feel it is nothing now compared with what it may be a twelve-month hence, and I am particularly anxious therefore, that we should avoid anything … which may increase our difficulties concluding it.”25 Thus, a chink in the British armour now opened.
TWENTY-FIVE
Shifting Stances
FALL 1814
Henry Goulburn registered the softening British stance with dismay. The earnest undersecretary for war and the colonies detected a weakening resolve to decide the issue on the battlefield. He was disappointed by the haphazard campaign arrangements for the attack on New Orleans.1 As originally conceived, 15,000 Peninsular veterans were to sail from southern France on this mission. The British had long realized the city’s strategic importance. Whoever held it controlled the mouth of the Mississippi River and could effectively cork the most essential line of communication for every American west of the Appalachians, for it was down this waterway their exports flowed. Until the victory over France, there had never been enough soldiers to undertake this operation.
But no sooner was the decision made to assemble the great invasion force than Lord Liverpool’s cabinet cancelled its creation. Mild strains between Russia and Great Britain over dominance in Europe posed sufficient concern to warrant maintaining a sizable army on the continent. Only 2,600 would be sent to North America, where they would unite with 3,400 men under Maj. Gen. Robert Ross. When these instructions were issued on September 6, Ross was already a week dead at Baltimore.
Lord Bathurst believed the British in North America were everywhere triumphant—or hoped that was the case. Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane had certainly expressed only optimism for the summer operations. It was mainly his assurance that New Orleans and Louisiana could be easily won that led cabinet to scrap the large-scale operation. A couple of thousand men could do the job, he had written. The Admiralty tripled that number for insurance and delayed the operation until December because of the harsh tropical Gulf of Mexico climate. Command the mouth of the Mississippi and seize some important possession that could be used as a bargaining chip in the negotiations, Bathurst instructed Cochrane and the dead Ross. Whether that chip was New Orleans or some chunk of Georgia, where it was believed friendly Indians waited to greet the British with open arms, was left to the two officers on the scene.2
Goulburn considered the scheme fatally flawed, doomed by the ravages of malaria and cholera as much as possible enemy action. “Though a small force might gain possession of the point which they are destined to occupy,” he advised, “yet it will be difficult … to retain it under the disadvantages of an unhealthy climate and a constant reduction of numbers incident to its defence against the Enemy.”3
But Goulburn was in Ghent, his absence from No. 14 Downing Street denying him influence over the war’s prosecution. And Bathurst was not a man to second-guess the military men. If Cochrane thought 2,000 sufficient, surely 6,000 would ensure success.
Too little, Goulburn reiterated, but then that was also true of the efforts made by Governor Sir George Prevost in Canada. That he could not gain supremacy on the Great Lakes was incomprehensible, his “indisposition to attempt any thing” almost treasonable. “It appears to me as it has always done that the ascendancy on the lakes must be attained by military operations against the land side of the Enemy’s harbours. It is impossible for us to outbuild the Americans whatever exertions we might make for the purpose of increasing our fleets and unless Prevost will attempt something of this kind while the Enemy’s troops are raw and their ports not completely fortified Canada will always be kept in a state of anxiety.”4
Goulburn saw the initiative in North America being surrendered through Prevost’s incompetence. A burdensome sense of futility weighed on his slight shoulders as he witnessed the cabinet soften its stance at the negotiating table. He had sought to win the battle for the lakeshore that Prevost refused to fight. Looking at the new instructions from London, Goulburn sensed the Indians might be completely abandoned. Gone was insistence on a distinct Indian nation with guaranteed boundaries based on the Treaty of Greenville. In its stead the Indians should be included in the treaty and “restored to all the rights, privileges, and territories which they enjoyed in the year 1811 previous to the commencement of the war.” Boundaries were open to discussion and a reciprocal agreement proposed that neither side purchase lands lying within these “lines of demarcation.” No longer did the word otherwise appear; nor did the phrase sine qua non. Further, the boundaries could be revised on agreement. As for the Great Lakes and other territorial alignments between the United States and Canada, those could be set aside in order to concentrate on the Indian question. These essential points were buried at the end of a document that contained a long, tortuous preamble setting out the reasons Britain had to fear America’s expansionist tendencies, given a long history of past conduct that was meticulously, often inaccurately, outlined.5
Receiving the note on September 20, the Americans quickly recognized the shift it represented. But that little lifted their spirits. John Quincy Adams noticed that when each note arrived its immediate effect was “to deject us all. We so fondly cling to the vain hope of peace, that every new proof of its impossibility operates upon us as a disappointment.” Albert Gallatin and James Bayard were openly despondent, a fact that increased Adams’s irritability. Bayard no longer rose to the bait when Adams scolded them like some schoolmaster disappointed in his students, while Gallatin playfully brushed these displays of temper aside with a well-delivered joke. Clay and Russell grimly kept to the business at hand, carefully reading the British note and expressing their thoughts on how it should be received.
Despite the significant movement, Gallatin cautioned that Washington would still never agree to include any articles regarding the Indians. However, it would be “a bad point for us to break off the negotiations upon; that the difficulty of carrying on the war might compel us to admit the principle at least, for now the British had so committed themse
lves with regard to the Indians that it was impossible for them to further retreat.”
Bayard concurred. If the negotiation was to end, best to find a point that would unite Americans in support of the war. Everyone agreed, but Adams counselled them to not let this knowledge lead them into complying with British claims. That the sine qua non had been discarded should not preclude the British later abandoning their new position. And surely if the Indian question would not serve to rally America behind the war, its entire pursuit was “hopeless.”
Earnestly, Gallatin repeated that breaking off over the Indians was a bad idea.
Pointing a blunt finger at him, Adams snapped, “Then it is a good point to admit the British as the sovereigns and protectors of our Indians.”
Gallatin shook his head and said with a smile, “That’s a non sequitur.” No, it’s a sequitur, Adams laughed, and the mood lifted noticeably. As previously, Gallatin analyzed the note to frame the basis for their draft response.
At 4:30 the following morning Adams was at his desk writing proposals for consideration. It was the autumnal equinox and he noted that for the next half-year it would be necessary “to rise by the light of the morning stars.”6 With each British note, it seemed the need to respond by committee dragged out the time needed. Six days this time, the arguments intense and far ranging. Gallatin typically desired to respond only to the proposals offered, which he then did in great detail. Equally to type, Adams dealt with the proposals tersely and then waded into a polemical reply to all the allegations raised in the long British preamble. In the midst of their discussions a packet of English newspapers was delivered that contained an account of the American defeat at Lundy’s Lane in July. The mood grew increasingly sombre, Adams confiding to his diary that this was likely the first of “a long and heavy series before us.”
Adams noticed a distasteful trend. Should Gallatin disagree with any suggestion Adams made for revision of the proposal, inevitably the other three commissioners would back him. The simple fact was that Gallatin, rather than Adams, to whom the position had been given by the president, had emerged as the commission’s leader. And Adams feared this worldly European-turned-American was overly inclined toward compromise to achieve peace.
Goulburn, too, seemed to entertain this possibility. After the American note was delivered, he visited Gallatin alone. Dropping his normal brusque and superior manner, Goulburn was unusually gracious during their conversation. “I rely on your tact and good sense,” the young man confided. “You’re a man I can treat with. In fact, you’re not the least like an American.” Gallatin’s son was unable to read whether his father was pleased by this or not. With a bemused smile Gallatin told James that the “only Americans are the Red Indians.”7
Goulburn’s reading of Gallatin might have been different had he realized that most of the current reply emanated from his hand. It contained no concessions. The Americans rigidly held their ground, recasting the previous long arguments into slightly more strident language that circled with much repetition back upon itself. Several times within adjoining paragraphs they hammered home the point that America would always treat the Indians fairly but that the nation must be free, “in proportion as their growing population may require, to reclaim from a state of nature, and to bring into cultivation” territory as needed. Yet in doing so “they will not violate any dictate of justice or humanity; for they will not only give to the few thousand savages, scattered over that territory, an ample equivalent for any right they may surrender, but will always leave them the possession of lands more than they can cultivate, and more than adequate to their subsistence, comfort, and enjoyment by cultivation.”
As far as the Americans were concerned, “peace would long since have been concluded, had not an INSUPERABLE BAR against it been raised by the NEW and unprecedented demands of the British government.”8 That said, they delivered their note on September 26 and tried to calmly await a response.
All was not going well in the house dubbed Bachelor.’ Hall. Russell was increasingly unhappy with lodging among men whose company he did not enjoy. Although he idolized Clay, his attitude toward the others was completely different. Every suggestion he offered regarding the replies to the British was, in his estimation, ignored. Not given to outbursts like Adams, or gifted with Bayard’s oratorical skill, or possessed of the certitude of America’s position evinced by Clay, or blessed with Gallatin’s keen intelligence, Russell monitored proceedings in sulky silence. At month’s end, he moved back to the Hôtel des Pays-Bas. None of the others objected. Indeed, they barely noted his departure.9
October 1 dawned cold and wet. Rain spattered the windows of Adams’s room. This fall was proving Belgium’s wettest on record, a fact that made all the commissioners more miserable. Clay, Russell, and Hughes were sightseeing in Brussels. The house seemed hollow, bitterly cold before the servants lit the fires. Adams found it too chill and damp to rise before dawn to see to his writing. The journal entries shortened, dashed off in the midst of the day’s other duties. Midday, he ventured out on a walk and upon returning was met by a much-distressed Gallatin. Washington taken, the man reported, the navy yard and public buildings burned on August 25. The word was unofficial, delivered by a passing American who had read of it in a British newspaper.10
Gallatin raged that burning the Capitol and presidential residence was purely “an act of vandalism” with no compare in the twenty-year European war. Paris had been spared by the Russians, Naples by Napoleon. The British had acted out of petty envy because, except for a few cathedrals, they had no public buildings to compare with the grandeur of those in Washington.11
This is “only the beginning of sorrows; the lightest of a succession of calamities through which our country must pass, and by which all the infirmities and all the energies of its character will be brought to light,” Adams wrote Louisa. “In itself the misfortune of Washington is a trifle.” The British success, he predicted, would result in their commissioners finally breaking up this “idle and hopeless farce of … negotiation. There can be no possible advantage to us in continuing it any longer.”12
Perhaps because Clay had always espoused America’s military prowess more than the others, Goulburn took it upon himself to forward to him in Brussels a packet of newspapers detailing Washington’s destruction. “If you find Brussels as little interesting as I have done you will not be sorry to have the occupation of reading the latest Newspapers which I have received,” his covering note observed.13
Having only just received the news themselves, the British were uncertain how best to exploit it. Bathurst, who like Goulburn preferred a tough stance, instructed the commissioners to put the Indian nation proposal back on the table with the old statement of willingness to accept a provisional agreement subject to U.S. government approval. If the Americans claimed lack of authority, Bathurst was ready to “suggest that the talks shall be suspended” until they received instructions.14 In a private letter to Goulburn, he urged his young protégé “to put on a face of compress’d joy … in communicating the news to the American ministers.”15 Except for forwarding newspapers to Clay, Goulburn restrained his elation. The British commissioners instead did nothing until receiving instructions from London.
This was just as well, because Bathurst’s position was unsupported by either Liverpool or Castlereagh. While the prime minister considered the destruction of Washington “very satisfactory,” he assured the foreign secretary and the Duke of Wellington—the latter serving as ambassador to the restored Bourbon court in Paris—that it made “no difference in our anxious desire to put an end to the war if it can be done consistently with our honour.” The terms being offered the Americans, Liverpool believed, were so conciliatory that were they accepted it was inevitable the government would face censure domestically. “But I feel too strongly the inconvenience of a continuance of the war not to make me desirous of concluding it at the expense of some popularity; and it is a satisfaction to reflect that our military success wi
ll at least divest the peace of anything which could affect our national character.” Whether peace was possible remained to be seen, however, as Liverpool thought the American “tone in the negotiation very different from what their situation appears to warrant.”16
Yet his October 1 instruction to Bathurst advocated a less conciliatory tone. The response, he advised, should condemn the “spirit of acquisition and aggrandizement” demonstrated by America’s seizure of parts of the Floridas. It should also make clear that whatever the commissioners and their government claimed, Britain knew the war was motivated by desire to conquer Canada. If the Americans refused serious negotiation “we might as well suspend or break off the negotiations at Ghent, and settle our instructions to Sir G. Prevost in the course of the next week.”17
The British viewed the forthcoming exchange as the make-or-break point. On October 5, Bathurst appended a note to the draft reply that instructed the commissioners to feel free to alter it if doing so would render it more palatable to the Americans. But the proposed Indian article was not to be modified or expanded upon, as its substance was too important. If the Americans refused to accept this, he said curtly, “you will return home.”18
In substance, the British note was moderately less combative but ran to a tedious fifteen pages. Much legal precedence was trotted out to justify the British claims to a right to negotiate on behalf of the Indians. No longer, however, was there any mention of creating an Indian nation. Rather, it alleged that the United States considered all Indians living within lands claimed by it as American subjects and so when these peoples sided with the British in the current war they were exposed to retribution “as rebels, or disaffected persons.” The Americans, then, could dispossess them of their lands at will. Such pretensions “Great Britain CAN NEVER RECOGNIZE: however reluctant his Royal Highness, the Prince Regent may be to continue the war, that evil must be preferred, if peace can only be obtained on such conditions.”
