by Mark Zuehlke
To Viscount Castlereagh, Liverpool wrote, “I feel most anxious, under all circumstances, that he should accept the command in America. There is no other person we can send there really equal to the situation …. The Duke of Wellington would restore confidence to the army, place the military operations on a proper footing, and give us the best chance of peace. I know he is very anxious for the restoration of peace with America if it can be made upon terms at all honourable. It is a material consideration, likewise, that if we shall be disposed for the sake of peace to give up something of our just pretensions, we can do this more creditably through him than through any other person.”4
Wellington replied on November 9. “I have already told you and Lord Bathurst that I feel no objection to going to America, though I don’t promise … much success there. I believe there are troops enough there for the defence of Canada for ever.” Even limited offensive action seemed possible. He dismissed the American army as incapable of beating Peninsular veterans, “if common precautions and care were taken.”
The problem, he said, was not command incompetence but lack of “naval superiority on the Lakes. Till that superiority is acquired, it is impossible … to keep the enemy out of the whole frontier, much less to make any conquest from the enemy…. The question is, whether we can acquire this naval superiority on the Lakes. If we can’t I shall do you but little good in America; and I shall go there only to prove the truth of Prevost’s defence, and to sign a peace which might as well be signed now.”
Wellington told Liverpool, “You have no right from the state of the war to demand any concession of territory from America.” Having failed to carry the war effectively onto American soil, the cabinet could not “on any principle of equality in negotiation, claim a cession of territory excepting in exchange for other advantages which you have in your power.”
Wellington dismissed any notion that the British could maintain the occupation between Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Bay if attacked by a determined American force. Only if significant ground was captured at New Orleans could cession of land be demanded.
The day after Wellington’s scathing analysis of Britain’s military prospects in America and their ramifications for the negotiation, the American draft treaty was delivered to the monastery. Coming to agreement on the articles and their wording had fractured the previously united front that the Americans had maintained by treating each other with careful consideration. Most stubborn and angrily outspoken, Clay almost deadlocked the undertaking by opposing the clauses retaining the fishery rights in exchange for Mississippi navigation rights.
On November 4, he retracted his earlier agreement to leave impressment to future negotiations, insisting the matter be resolved in this treaty. It was put to a vote, and Clay, Russell, and Adams favoured such an article, so a clause was included. The precedent of resolving sticking points through ballots established, prospects for concluding the discussion looked good until Monday, November 7, when the fishery issue was voted on. Adams backed Bayard and Gallatin in supporting inclusion of articles, with Russell—choosing friendship over regional loyalty—and Clay in opposition. If the articles were included, Clay declared, he would not sign the treaty.
Tuesday afternoon Clay offered to compromise: instead of treaty articles, merely mention the fisheries in the covering note as a subject for possible inclusion. Adams submitted an article that would return fishery rights and British navigation rights to their original status before hostilities. Gallatin worried that the tack Clay and Adams were taking would result in the British not replying on the fisheries and declaring the earlier liberty to fish and dry catch within British jurisdiction abrogated by the war. The debate stalemated until Bayard backed substituting Clay’s paragraph for the proposed article. Slowly, patiently, he cajoled the others into this course.
While finalizing the documents, Adams inserted a new idea on the morning of the 10th. When he met with the others later, Adams saw that virtually his entire draft had been erased in favour of Gallatin’s version. Adams had expected this—his language was always considered inflammatory and discursive—but he was dismayed to see his new paragraph deleted.
This idea was one Adams had been considering for some time. Their own discussions proved that negotiating terms upon which a new state of peace between Britain and the United States was going to be difficult. Each side naturally wanted gains that generally represented losses to the other.
In the past, relations had been uneasy but not intolerable—especially if one considered that impressment and order-in-council trade restrictions were no longer at issue. So why not simply “conclude the peace on the footing of the state before the war, applied to all the subjects of dispute between the two countries, leaving all the rest for future and pacific negotiation?”
Adams insisted the paragraph to this effect be resurrected. Clay objected that their instructions forbade renewing the Treaty of 1794 terms allowing British trade with Indians inside American territory. Gallatin temporized that the proposal did not necessarily mean renewal of that treaty as “it only offers the state before the war with regard to the objects in dispute. The Indian trade had never been in dispute.” Clay forced him to concede that if the British accepted the proposal and suggested renewing all treaties then in force, then the Americans would not be able to refuse.
Sensing he was gaining ground, Adams pressed the issue. Yes, they would be exceeding their instructions. But those had been written in April 1813. The government had since revoked some points in favour of new propositions. Surely they would revoke this point if it were realized that it posed a final obstacle to peace. Adams declared he would personally “take on … the responsibility of trespassing upon their instruction 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.” And, if Britain refused, it “would put the continuance of the war entirely at the door of England.”
Clay argued that the timing was wrong. The proposal should be offered only as a last recourse, if at all.
Weighing in on Adams’s side, Bayard thought the moment ripe. Delay a couple more months and the war might have turned further against America.
“How does the proposal offer more than the [treaty] itself?” Russell asked.
The treaty, Adams answered, “offered all the knots of the negotiation for solution now; and the proposal was to make peace first, and leave them to be solved hereafter.”
Clay relented to the proposal being part of the covering note, but warned he might still not sign the treaty. Upon examining the covering note, he snorted that the British “would laugh at us for it. They would say, ‘Ay, ay! pretty fellows you, to think of getting out of the war as well as you got into it.’ ”
Secretly Adams feared this precise response, but he hoped that Britain would hesitate to protract the war by refusing such terms.5
Goulburn’s reaction accorded with Clay’s expectation and Adams’s fears. “The greater part of their projet,” he wrote Bathurst, “is by far too extravagant to leave any doubts upon our minds as to the mode in which it could be combated.” But to respond with reasons why each clause was objectionable “would be voluminous.” Goulburn, however, was in such haste to get the American materials off to London that he failed to comment on the proposal offered in the note. His main concern regarded clauses that would recognize America’s right to Louisiana and vague wording of the northern boundary that opened the door to encroachment all the way to the northwest coast. With the American papers, Goulburn included a proposed British counter-projet that he, Gambier, and Dr. Adams had drawn up.6
Four days later Goulburn wrote to Bathurst again. The American scheme was clear to him now. “We shall have no peace with America unless we accede to their proposition of placing things upon the same footing in point of privileges as well as rights as they stood when war was declared to which I presume we are not ready to accede.” He doubted that the Americans would give up Fort Nia
gara and Michilimackinac on Lake Huron or agree that their right to fisheries within British jurisdiction had been abrogated by the war. “If you agree with me in opinion that our insisting on either of these propositions will break off the negotiation, the question to be decided will be merely upon which of the two it would be most advantageous to us to break off.” Goulburn inclined toward the fishery issue. He then detailed various negotiating ploys that might gain Britain advantage on precise treaty clauses, assuming by some miracle the negotiation continued.7
Even as the young hard-liner was outlining his plan to defeat the Americans at the bargaining table, the mood at No. 10 Downing Street favoured peace at any price. Wellington’s harsh assessment had badly rattled Liverpool. On every horizon dark clouds formed. From Vienna, Castlereagh warned that the war with America weakened Britain’s position in negotiations. The war was a liability from which little of worth could be won. Equally worrisome, pro-Bonaparte movements in France were gaining support. Should there be a rising against the imposed monarchy, Europe might again plunge into war. Having Wellington and a large share of the British army overseas would be disastrous. The political opposition at home was also reaping much hay from the publication of the Ghent negotiation papers up to the end of August. Cast in a certain light, the papers exposed a British government making war for little purpose other than territorial acquisition. Finances were even more of a concern. With the European war at an end, continuing the property tax courted political ruin, yet that tax was necessary to fund the war with America.
Cabinet mulled all these issues, read and reread the American projet and accompanying note and considered their own previous position. Then, as Liverpool explained to Castlereagh, “we … determined, if all other points can be satisfactorily settled, not to continue the war for the purpose of obtaining or securing any acquisition of territory.”8
It fell to Bathurst to break the news to the commissioners in Ghent. He did so reluctantly, with a hand that trembled so that ink drops spattered among the words on the page like so many shed tears. Struggling to explain reasons he little agreed with, the secretary for war and the colonies wrote three separate letters to Goulburn over the course of November 21 and 22.
Three days later, Goulburn received them in a scattershot of deliveries over several hours. His reply was taut with barely contained anger and deep regret. “You know that I was never much inclined to give way to the Americans. I am still less inclined to do so after the statement of our demands with which the negotiation opened and which has in every point of view proved most unfortunate. Believing however in the necessity of the measure you may rely upon our doing the utmost to bring the negotiation to a speedy issue; but I confess I shall be much surprised if the Americans do not by cavilling and long debate upon every alteration proposed by us contrive to keep us in suspense for a longer time than under present circumstances desirable.”
Goulburn agreed with Bathurst’s instruction that Britain must “practically admit the Americans to the Fisheries as they enjoyed them before the War and shall not without a new war be able to exclude them.” Dr. Adams and Gambier, however, did not consent to this, so for now the commissioners would hold out against such articles unless ordered to do otherwise.
Retention of Passamaquoddy Bay would be attempted, but Goulburn expected “the Americans will … fight hard to get possession in the first instance.” Again, he sought clarification on how hard this acquisition should be pushed. In closing, Goulburn’s bitterness at the virtual abandonment of the Indians spilled forth. “I had till I came here no idea of the fixed determination which prevails in the breast of every American to extirpate the Indians and appropriate their Territory; but I am now sure that there is nothing which the people of America would so reluctantly abandon as what they are pleased to call their natural right to do so.”9
Some men might have resigned rather than continue a negotiation considered as good as lost. But Goulburn was too dutiful a public servant to turn his back on the government he served. So he joined the other two commissioners at a long table in the monastery and for two days they carefully worked through the American treaty, noting their comments and proposed rewordings in the margins. They would not submit the draft they had earlier prepared. If there was to be a treaty, the base for it would be that drawn by the Americans.
On November 27, they sent their work to the Americans for consideration. Adams was initially unsure what to make of it all. “They have rejected all the articles … on impressment, blockade, indemnities, amnesty, and Indians. They have definitively abandoned the Indian boundary, the exclusive military possession of the Lakes … but with a protestation that they will not be bound to adhere to these terms hereafter, if the peace should not be made now …. All the difficulties to the conclusion of a peace appear to be now so nearly removed, that my colleagues all considered it as certain. I think it myself probable. But unless we take it precisely as it is now offered, to which I strongly incline, I distrust so much the intentions of the British Government, that I still consider the conclusion as doubtful and precarious.”10
It was not the nature of the American commissioners to act precipitously. Instead they moved cautiously. The group caucused after Gallatin and Adams prepared separate minutes. “There are still some things … so objectionable that they ought on no consideration to be admitted,” Gallatin advised. The main disagreement regarded a northwest boundary and Britain’s related claim to Mississippi navigation rights.
Clay vehemently opposed the latter, while Gallatin favoured its acceptance contingent on restoration of American fishery rights. Typically, Clay lost his temper, declaring the fishery “of little or no value.” No amount of reasoning would sway him, not even Gallatin’s impassioned argument that abandoning the fishery issue and potentially America’s claim of sovereignty over Moose Island in Passamaquoddy Bay could create a national schism that caused New England’s separation from the Union. “No use in attempting to conciliate people who would never be conciliated,” Clay retorted. The government was too willing “to sacrifice the interests of its best friends for those of its bitterest enemies … there might be a party for separation at some future day in the Western States too.”
“You speak under the impulse of passion,” Adams protested. As a man of Massachusetts, he “should be ashamed to show my face among my countrymen” if the commissioners agreed to surrender Moose Island or failed to rigorously pursue restoration of fishery rights. British navigation on the Mississippi was the trivial concession, of no particular commercial value as Britain was ceding any claim to territorial acquisition bordering the river itself.
Exhausted, tempers frayed, the three men consented when Bayard proposed a vote. Gallatin would draft for consideration an article swapping fishery rights for Mississippi navigation. Hoping to speed the negotiation’s conclusion, he also wanted a direct conference with the British commissioners so they could together draft a final treaty. It was agreed to sleep on these matters.11
“A dreadful day,” James Gallatin confided to his diary. The argument had echoed through the large house, leaving all the secretaries and servants shaken and nervous. That afternoon, an unusual letter had been delivered for his father. Intrigued, James noted that it was from the Duke of Wellington and marked “Strictly confidential.” After reading it, Gallatin set the letter on a table and walked out of the room. Impulsively, James picked it up. Wellington reported that he had “brought all his weight to bear to ensure peace.” James was even more surprised by the next paragraph. “I gather, Mr. Madison, as well as Mr. Monroe gave you full power to act, without even consulting your colleagues on points you considered of importance. I now feel that peace is shortly in view. Mr. Goulburn has made grave errors and Lord Castlereagh has read him a sharp lesson.” Hurriedly he began copying the letter, as he normally did with important correspondence to ensure their preservation, but stopped when his father burst in. Without noting that James had recorded a small part of it, Gallatin snatched up t
he letter “and burned it.”12 That Wellington, Britain’s senior general and a serving ambassador, would correspond privately with a commissioner representing a belligerent nation startled young James, and clearly his father had realized the potentially treasonous import. But what was Wellington hinting? That Goulburn was on such a tight leash that the Americans could insist on almost anything and have it acceded to? Some on the commission—Clay particularly—might read this intelligence thusly. Best if Gallatin kept the entire thing secret, knowledge to use only with greatest care.
The morning brought a return to the same arguments. In the heat of discussion that followed, Gallatin sought to lighten the mood. “Mr. Adams,” he noted, “cared nothing at all about the navigation of the Mississippi, and thought of nothing but the fisheries. Mr. Clay cared nothing at all about the fisheries, and thought of nothing but the Mississippi. The East was perfectly willing to sacrifice the West and the West was equally ready to sacrifice the East. Now he was a Western man, and would give the navigation of the river for the fisheries. Mr. Russell was an Eastern man, and was ready to do the same.”
Taking the hint, Adams proposed a coalition of east and west whereby he and Clay agreed that if the British refused the fishery renewal he would deny them access to the Mississippi. “The consequence of our making the offer would be that we should lose both,” Clay replied, and the argument resumed, though, not so heatedly.13
On the last day of November, the commissioners reached a series of compromises to send to their British counterparts. By a three–two vote, Clay and Russell dissenting, the fisheries and navigation rights would be united in a single article.14 The British were invited to conference the following day. They responded a few hours later that they would host the meeting.
