For Honour's Sake
Page 42
Adams was uneasy about the conference, “while we were so far from being agreed among ourselves.” For the past three months all negotiation had been via exchanged notes. He feared the British would see that the Americans were far from united. He could not imagine Clay presenting a position in a way agreeable to him or that anything he said would accord with the Kentuckian’s opinion. But Gallatin insisted this was the only way to conclude matters, so Adams acquiesced.15
At noon the next day, Gambier expressed happiness that they met now “with much fairer prospects of success than when we had last met,” in late August.16 This cordial opening represented the last pleasantry during the long afternoon of argument that followed. Most of the debate revolved around two issues. The first part of the treaty attempted to restore the boundaries of each nation to their pre-war condition and established a dispute-resolution mechanism whereby a commissioner from each nation would be appointed to examine each case. If agreement could not be reached, disputes would be referred to an agreed third-party nation. Here, the Americans butted up against British resolve to keep Moose Island, which they claimed historically fell within the boundaries of Nova Scotia despite its having been part of the District of Maine prior to the war.
Equally contentious was the fishery–Mississippi issue. Clay might dismiss the relevance of having the right to fish and dry catch in British waters, but everybody else comprehended its economic value. The year before the war 1,200 American ships totalling 43,000 tons of shipping had landed catches worth $1.4 million in those waters. Loss of that right would cost New England mightily while certainly expanding British North America’s fishing fleet as it moved to fill the commercial gap.17Accordingly, the British commissioners argued their right to access the Mississippi while declaring the fishery rights abrogated by the war.
After much argument, Goulburn agreed to refer both issues to his government. “But, gentlemen, we cannot say that our Government will not require something else. We had hoped we could have concluded without referring again to our Government. We mean to say, that we were now authorized to sign the treaty as we sent it to you.”
“We made no question,” Clay snapped, “that you would sign the treaty if we agreed to it in your own terms.”
Goulburn, seemingly awkward at this blunt reply, responded: “Yes, but we only regret the delay, and should have wished to have concluded now. We wish the delay may not be imputed to us.”18
Immediately after seeing the Americans out the door, Goulburn scribbled a hasty letter to Bathurst. “Knowing … the anxiety of the Government to have an early and favourable termination of this negotiation we felt ourselves … inclined to give up … the free navigation of the Mississippi … as we had obtained … the important admission that our right to [that] and their right to the Fisheries both rest on the footing of a stipulation in a Treaty and consequently if we give up the Mississippi we have a full right to exclude them from the use of our Territory for purposes connected with the Fishery.”
Goulburn reported surprise that the Americans seemed in no haste to sign the treaty even when told that if they declined the British commissioners would not feel “bound to accede to the articles already agreed” later on. “This however produced no effect.”
He urged Bathurst to secure a response from cabinet quickly because more delay might mean the treaty would fail to reach America for ratification before the House of Representatives dissolved on March 2. “There is not much time to lose,” he warned.19
It was December 10 when the eight commissioners next met, this time at Bachelor.’ Hall. Gambier explained each British proposition. Regarding return of territory, the British insisted that “belonging to” be embedded into the clause—an obvious sally to prevent Moose Island having to be restored. John Quincy Adams curtly replied that the Americans would have to consider their response.
Proceeding to the eighth article, Gambier said his government considered the 49th parallel serving as the boundary gave America more territory than before and therefore a British right to the Mississippi would serve as a compensatory measure. The British offered a new clause setting aside for future negotiation both the right of fishery and navigation of the Mississippi. After two hours of discussion, the meeting ended and the Americans returned home to discuss the proposals. In less than an hour they agreed to reject all the British proposals.
Bayard said the British had neatly inverted the American eighth article. Where the Americans had offered Mississippi navigation in exchange for fishery rights, the British were willing to abandon navigation rights if the Americans gave up the fishery claim. This Gallatin argued was inescapable, the American ground for claiming fishery rights “untenable.” He was ready to abandon the demand.
“I pledged to it as mine,” Adams stated. Further, he believed the British willingness to abandon the Mississippi claim in return for their giving up the fishery indicated they knew the American case was strong and that this was more valuable than the Mississippi right.
“It was an extraordinary thing,” Gallatin allowed, “that the question of peace or war now depended solely upon two points in which the people of the State of Massachusetts alone were interested”—Moose Island, and the fisheries within British jurisdiction. Adams sensed in this evidence of “the very perfidious character of the British propositions.” They hoped to foment separatist sentiment in New England by forcing the American government to sacrifice interests there for gains in the west. When Russell bemoaned the fact that the issues centred on “a disaffected part of the country,” Clay retorted that he “would do nothing to satisfy disaffection and treason; he would not yield anything for the sake of them.”
Better, Clay claimed, to continue the war three years longer. “He had no doubt but three years more of war would make us a warlike people, and that then we should come out of the war with honor …. He was for playing brag with the British … they had been playing brag with us throughout the whole negotiation.” Clay asked if Adams knew how to play brag. Adams confessed to having forgotten. “The art of it,” Clay said, is “to beat your adversary by holding your hand with a solemn and confident phiz, and outbragging him.”
“Ay,” said Bayard, “but you may lose the game by bragging until the adversary sees the weakness of your hand.” Sotto voce to Adams, Bayard said, “Mr. Clay is for bragging a million against a cent.”
Perhaps, Gallatin suggested, now was the time to raise the idea of settling the entire treaty by agreeing to the status quo ante bellum upon all subjects of difference. Clay flew into a tirade, proclaiming that he “would never sign a treaty on the general status ante bellum, including the British right to trade with the Indian, so help him God to keep him steady to his purpose.” Shaking with rage, Clay “stalked to and fro across the chamber, repeating five or six times, ‘I will never sign a treaty upon the status ante bellum with the Indian article, so help me God.’ ” In the face of this ultimatum, all but Adams quickly backed down.
“Clay actually beat again a majority,” Adams reflected, “by outbragging us.”
But Clay was not yet done. The peace as currently proposed was a bad one. Signing it “would break him down entirely, and we should all be subject to much reproach.”
“On the contrary,” Bayard said, “it would be highly creditable to us. It would relieve the country from such an immense pressure—twenty-one millions of taxes, commerce restored, and substantially nothing given up.”
“When the people were secure in the enjoyment of all we should obtain,” Adams replied, “they will count it for nothing, and only look at what we yielded; and the very people now the most clamorous against the war will then be equally clamorous against the concessions made by us for peace.”
“Most all treaties are unpopular,” Gallatin counselled. “Ours, if we make one, will share the common fate.”20
Tempers still festering, the Americans entered the monastery meeting hall the next day to find a similar mood prevailed among their counterparts. Goulburn’s
every comment was combative. Gambier’s attempts to float a sense of joviality and camaraderie about the table were wrecked on shoals of stony indifference projected by the seven others.
John Quincy Adams got to the point. Two differences remained. America could not cede Moose Island either temporarily or permanently because the federal government had no authority to do so without consent of the State of Massachusetts of which the island was a part.
“Goulburn lost all control of his temper. He has always in such cases,” Adams observed, “a sort of convulsive agitation about him, and the tone in which he speaks is more insulting than the language that he uses.” It was merely a desire to avoid hostilities with the United States that had prevented Great Britain from occupying these rightful possessions of British North America in the past, he argued. If this was refused on grounds that there was no consent from a particular state, “there could be no safety for Great Britain in treating with the United States at all,” for this excuse would be proffered whenever a decision to return territory to Britain was agreed by the commission that the treaty would create. Deadlocked, everyone agreed to move on to the equally contentious eighth article.
The Americans declined the British substitute clause as amounting to nothing. Although the two sides made various attempts to write a clause acceptable to them all, no progress was made. Finally the British left the room to talk privately. They returned with a request that the Americans give them a written ultimatum upon these two points that could then be submitted to their cabinet.
Adams believed the British were setting up an excuse to rupture the negotiations. Clay, however, was in a grand mood, “so confident that the British Government had resolved upon peace that … he would give himself as a hostage and a victim to be sacrificed if they broke off on these points.”21
Two days passed as the Americans wrangled over the content of the ultimatum, and the final draft written by Gallatin was surprisingly conciliatory. The Americans would exempt the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay from the restoration of territory required by the first article so long as their claim was not sacrificed. If no agreement on possession was settled within a given time, the island would revert to whoever had held it before the war.
As for article eight, they proposed inserting “an article which should recognize the right of Great Britain to the navigation of that river, and that of the United States to a liberty in certain fisheries, which the British Government considered as abrogated by the war.” They would not subscribe to any clause indicating an abandonment of this right.22
Goulburn forwarded the American note to Bathurst with a covering letter. He recommended accepting the Passamaquoddy proposal providing the time limit was dropped, as that gave them “inducement to decline acting or to practice some fraud in order to delay the decision of the Commissioners.” The possibility of leaving out the eighth article entirely was broached as likely to succeed.23
Each side passed the ensuing days restlessly waiting for Bathurst’s instructions. On the 22nd, Adams was intercepted by Bayard while on a walk. The British note had been delivered. The two men hurried back to the house. Instead of the timeline on restoration of islands in Passamaquoddy Bay, the British proposed “that no unnecessary delay of the settlement should be interposed.”
Clay, upon seeing that the eighth article was to be struck, took exception, for he had expected the rights of navigation and fisheries would both be maintained by the British as abrogated and preferred that outcome. He threatened again not to sign the treaty. That evening Clay argued that they should delay their response, that doing so would gain more concessions. Russell appeared to support him. Gallatin and Bayard were too eager for peace, Clay said. Adams later wrote that Clay then turned to him and asked “whether I would not join him now and break off the negotiation. I told him no; it was now too late. I had offered to break off on the Indian article, which he had chosen not to do. There was nothing now to break off upon.” Finally they agreed to meet the British the next day.
When the three British commissioners arrived at the American residence, they were quickly apprised that their proposals were acceptable. The conference this day was “to make final arrangements for the conclusion of the treaty … and to sign it whenever it would be agreeable to them.” Peace suddenly at hand, everyone grasped hold. Final wording was agreed with relative ease and only a small amount of face-saving argument. Clay permitted the Indian article to pass without protest. The British commissioners consented to a significant departure from standard treaty protocol—instead of hostilities considered ended once the eight men signed and exchanged the documents, the war would cease only upon ratification by each government. But in exchange, the British insisted the clause require each government to accept the whole without any modification or reject it. It then fell to the two secretaries to each draft three exact copies for signing the following day.
Late on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, the Americans crowded into a carriage, spread blankets over their knees against the bitter chill, and were carried to the monastery. The British greeted them in the grand refectory, where the documents were laid out on the long table over which they had so often haggled. For two hours the men and their secretaries meticulously compared the drafts. Some commas were inserted, but everyone decided to turn a blind eye to a discrepancy in how the secretaries had spelled out the dates in order to avoid having to redo the whole. Then came the signing, an event that took thirty minutes. The British inscribed their signatures first, then the Americans. Gambier then handed the British copies to Adams in exchange for the American ones. The old naval officer proclaimed a fervent wish that the peace be permanent, to which Adams expressed his hope that it be the last treaty of peace Great Britain and the United States should make.
Outside a carriage waited to speed Anthony St. John Baker and the treaties to London. In the late afternoon, giving the commissioners time to write covering letters, Christopher Hughes would depart for Bordeaux, where the U.S. ship Transit waited to carry him to Washington. As Baker’s carriage clattered down the darkened streets, the Americans boarded their own and clip-clopped home. It was 6:30, and throughout the city pealing church bells signalled the commencement of the celebration of Christ’s birth.
That night, by candlelight, Adams closed his journal entry for the day with “a humble offering to God for the conclusion to which it has pleased him to bring the negotiation for peace at this place, and a fervent prayer that its result may be propitious to the welfare, the best interests, and the union of my country.”24
In a private letter to James Monroe written on Christmas Day, Gallatin stated with reserve that the treaty was “as favourable as could be expected under existing circumstances, so far as they were known to us.” The European powers, he believed, desired the war to continue in order to weaken Britain. But none would assist America in it. With peace those same powers could be expected to desire more formal relations with the United States, due to its having not been beaten. As for the treaty itself, he believed they had surrendered nothing of consequence, but claimed no significant gain besides peace. To Gallatin that was sufficient.25
Surprisingly, the man who had threatened to break the negotiation at the last moment put the most favourable interpretation on the treaty’s signing. While the terms were not what he and America had expected to gain, Clay wrote, “they cannot be pronounced unfavorable. We lose no territory, I think no honor. If we lost a particular liberty in the Fisheries, on the one hand … we gain, on the other the exemption of the Navigation of the Mississippi from British claims. We gain also the right of exemption from the practice of trading with the Indians.
“Judged by another standard, the pretensions of the enemy at the opening of the negotiation, the conditions of the peace certainly reflect no dishonour on us.”26 In this way the man who had led a nation and its president to war explained away the fact that none of the war’s goals, officially stated or not, had been won. Honour had been preserved. That sufficed.
The Blessing of Peace
WINTER 1814–15
As the American commissioners wrote to James Monroe, Anthony St. John Baker’s carriage rumbled toward Ostend, where a ship waited. Sweat steamed off the hides of the straining, tiring horses, but the secretary allowed few pauses for rest, food, or water. He slept as possible in the rocking, swaying carriage. Then, in the early morning of Christmas Day, came the sharp, splintering crack of a wheel spoke breaking. For hours the secretary paced impatiently by the roadside in the damp cold while repairs were made. Even with this delay, he delivered the treaties to Lord Liverpool forty-three hours after their signing.
Within hours Liverpool presented the treaty to the Prince Regent, who ratified it after the most cursory glance. Baker, accompanied by Clay’s secretary, Henry Carroll, quickly boarded HMS Favourite and sailed for America. Christopher Hughes was already at sea aboard Transit, each man serving as insurance in case the other and his precious documents were lost to storm or brigands.1 Originally, Carroll was to have provided a third assurance that the treaty reached America by travelling on another ship from Amsterdam, but that vessel was already locked in ice as winter crushed down upon Europe.2
Until the United States ratified the treaty, peace was not final, and the treaty set a deadline of four months from December 24, 1814, for that to occur or it was nullified. Even after ratification, there was the complicated problem of getting the word out to ships at sea. Both nations had naval forces scattered far across the world’s oceans, many of them hunting each other. It would take weeks for messenger ships to bear the news to the many ports where they must eventually call for supplies. Realizing the time required to get word to the Indian Ocean must be longer than to a port close to North America, such as the Bahamas, a schedule was drafted that allotted twelve days for the news to be spread to ships closest to the North American coast and up to 120 days for those in the southern Pacific or Indian oceans. Prizes taken in this time would be returned.