The Life of Albert Gallatin

While Mr. Gallatin was engaged in arranging the preliminaries of negotiation and in bringing to bear on the British ministry such pressure as he was able to command, he did not neglect to act the part of diplomatic agent for the instruction of his own government. The time was long gone by when Mr. Gallatin and his party had declaimed against the diplomatic service. Mr. Madison had now sent abroad nearly every man in America whose pretensions to civil distinction were considerable. There were six full ministers between London, Holland, and Paris, and among them were included two Senators, the Speaker of the House, and the Secretary of the Treasury. The position of Mr. Gallatin in London was particularly delicate, since he was in a manner bound not to betray the confidence which Lord Castlereagh had placed in him by permitting his residence in England; but he knew little more of military movements than was known to all the world, and within these limits he might without impropriety correspond with his government. Thus his well-known despatch of June 13 was written.127 In this letter he gave a sketch of the whole field of diplomatic and military affairs. Beginning with the announcement that England was fitting out an armament which, besides providing for Canada, would enable her to land at least 15,000 to 20,000 men on the Atlantic coast; that the capture of Washington and New York would most gratify them, and the occupation of Norfolk, Baltimore, &c., might be expected; this letter continued:

“Whatever may be the object and duration of the war, America must rely on her resources alone. From Europe no assistance can for some time be expected. British pride begins, indeed, to produce its usual effect. Seeds of dissension are not wanting. Russia and England may at the approaching Congress of Vienna be at variance on important subjects, particularly as relates to the aggrandizement of Austria. But questions of maritime rights are not yet attended to, and America is generally overlooked by the European sovereigns, or viewed with suspicion. Above all, there is nowhere any navy in existence, and years of peace must elapse before the means of resisting with effect the sea-power of Great Britain can be created. In a word, Europe wants peace, and neither will nor can at this time make war against Great Britain. The friendly disposition of the Emperor of Russia, and a just view of the subject, make him sincerely desirous that peace should be restored to the United States. He may use his endeavors for that purpose; beyond that he will not go, and in that it is not probable he will succeed. I have also the most perfect conviction that, under the existing unpropitious circumstances of the world, America cannot by a continuance of the war compel Great Britain to yield any of the maritime points in dispute, and particularly to agree to any satisfactory arrangement on the subject of impressment; and that the most favorable terms of peace that can be expected are the status ante bellum, and a postponement of the questions of blockade, impressment, and all other points which in time of European peace are not particularly injurious; but with firmness and perseverance those terms, though perhaps unattainable at this moment, will ultimately be obtained, provided you can stand the shock of this campaign, and provided the people will remain and show themselves united.” …

This despatch arrived in Washington only when one part of its advices had been already verified by the capture and destruction of that city. Meanwhile the other American commissioners were beginning to assemble at Ghent, and the British government showed no sign of haste in opening the negotiation. Mr. Gallatin, on the 9th June, attempted to hurry Lord Castlereagh’s movements by asking when the British commissioners would be ready. He was told they would start for Ghent on the 1st July, and on the strength of this information he himself left London on June 21, and, after a rapid visit to Paris, arrived at Ghent on July 6.

Nearly three months had Mr. Gallatin thus passed in London, and, after all his efforts, little enough had been attained. His hopes of success were certainly not brighter than when he left America, more than a year before; indeed, it was not easy to deny that there had been actual loss of ground. Mr. Gallatin had undertaken a diplomatic tour de force, and thus far his successes had been far from brilliant; his failures had been conspicuous. Nevertheless he persisted with endless patience and with his usual resource. His residence in London could not but be unpleasant, and perhaps the brightest spot in his whole experience there was the meeting with his old friend and school-fellow Dumont, the Genevan, whom he had once half wished to tempt into the Ohio wilderness, but who had remained in Europe to float on the waves of revolution until they threw him into the arms of Jeremy Bentham, whose friend and interpreter he became. Through him Mr. Gallatin became acquainted with Bentham, but Gallatin had drifted further than his school-mate from the theorizing tastes of his youth, and he now found quite as much satisfaction in discussing finance with Alexander Baring as in reforming mankind with Bentham and Dumont.

From the 6th July till the 6th August the American commissioners waited the arrival of their British colleagues, and amused themselves as they best might. This delay was the more irritating to Mr. Gallatin because his own visit to Paris was said to have been given by Lord Castlereagh in the House of Commons, on the 20th July, as an excuse for the delay of the British commissioners. The conduct of the English government promised ill for the success of the mission, and it was natural that the Americans should believe they were a second time to be made the victims of diplomacy. This inference was not necessarily a fair one; the motives which influenced Lord Castlereagh varied from day to day, and events proved that he acted more shrewdly in the interests of peace than Mr. Gallatin imagined. There was more to be hoped from delay than from haste.

At last the British commissioners arrived: Lord Gambier, Henry Goulburn, and William Adams; none of them very remarkable for genius, and still less for weight of influence; as compared with the American commissioners they were unequal to their task. This again, unpromising as it looked, was not really a misfortune, for the British commissioners, deficient as they were in ability, polish of manners, and even in an honest wish for peace, were the mere puppets of their government, and never ventured to move a hair’s-breadth without at once seeking the approval of Lord Castlereagh or Lord Liverpool. Mr. Gallatin had nothing to fear from them; singly or together he was as capable of dealing with them as Benjamin Franklin, under very similar conditions, had proved himself equal to dealing with their predecessors thirty years before. Gallatin’s great difficulty was the same with which Dr. Franklin had straggled. The American habit of negotiating by commissions may have its advantages for government, but it enormously increases the labor of the agents, for it compels each envoy to expend more effort in negotiating with his colleagues in the commission than in negotiating with his opponents. Mr. Gallatin had four associates, none of whom was easily managed, and two of whom, Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay, acted upon each other as explosives. To keep the peace between them was no easy matter, and to keep the peace between them and the Englishmen was a task almost beyond hope; indeed, Mr. Gallatin’s own temper was severely tried in his conversations with the English envoys, and perhaps a little more roughness on his part would have been better understood and better received by them than his patient forbearance. If Gallatin had a fault, it was that of using the razor when he would have done better with the axe.

If all the preliminaries were calculated to discourage, the opening of the negotiation justified something worse than discouragement. Very unwillingly and with deep mortification the President and his advisers had submitted to the inevitable and consented to offer terms of peace which settled no one principle for which they had fought. They had agreed to what was in fact an armistice; restoration of the status ante bellum; a return to the old condition of things when war was always imminent and American rights were always trampled upon. Now that Europe was again at peace, they were willing to leave the theoretical questions of belligerency undetermined, since it was clear that England preferred war to concession. To Mr. Clay, who had made the war, and to Mr. Adams, who fully sympathized with Mr. Clay in his antipathy to the English domination, these concessions seemed enormous; even to Mr. Gallatin, always the friend of peace, they seemed to reach the extreme verge of dignity; but when the English envoys unfolded their demands, the mildest of the Americans was aghast; it is a matter of surprise that there was not an outburst of indignation on the spot, and that negotiation did not end the day it began. In the first interview, which took place on August 8 and was continued the next day, the British commissioners required as a preliminary basis of discussion and a sine qua non of the treaty that the United States government should set apart forever for the Indian tribes the whole North-West Territory, as defined by the treaty of Greenville in 1795; that is to say, the whole country now represented by the States of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois, four-fifths of Indiana, and one-third of Ohio; so that an Indian sovereignty should be constituted in that region under the guaranty of Great Britain, for the double purpose of interposing neutral territory between Canada and the United States and curbing the progress of the latter. Mr. Gallatin suggested that there were probably one hundred thousand American citizens settled within that region, and what was to become of them? “Undoubtedly they must shift for themselves,” was the reply.

In comparison with so enormous a pretension the smaller demands of the British government were of trifling importance, even though they included a “rectification” of the frontier and a cession of Sackett’s Harbor and Fort Niagara as a guaranty for the British control of the lakes.128

Under such circumstances, the path of the American commissioners was plain. They had no opportunity to disagree on so simple an issue, and they wanted no better popular argument for unanimity in support of the war than this avowed determination to dismember the United States. They had merely to draft their rejection of the British sine qua non.

The negotiation with the British commissioners was, however, much more simple than the negotiation with one another; of the first the diplomatic notes and protocols give a fair description, but of the last a far more entertaining account is given in the Diary of John Quincy Adams. The accident which placed Mr. Gallatin at the foot of the commission placed Mr. Adams at its head, – a result peculiarly unfortunate, because, even if the other commissioners had conceded respect to the age, the services, and the tact of Mr. Gallatin, they had no idea of showing any such deference to Mr. Adams. From the outset it was clear that Messrs. Bayard, Clay, and Russell meant to let Mr. Adams understand that though he might be the nominal mouth-piece he was not the autocrat of the commission, and their methods of conveying this information were such as in those days Mr. Clay was celebrated for successfully using. Mr. Adams had little of Mr. Gallatin’s capacity for pacifying strife; he was by nature as combative as Mr. Clay, and before the commission separated there were exciting and very amusing scenes of collision, in one of which Mr. Adams plainly intimated his opinion of the conduct of his colleagues, and Mr. Clay broke out upon him with: “You dare not, you cannot, you SHALL not insinuate that there has been a cabal of three members against you.”

In this affair Mr. Gallatin’s situation was delicate in the highest degree. All recognized the fact that he was properly head of the mission; his opinion carried most weight; his pen was most in demand; his voice was most patiently heard. The tact with which he steered his way between the shoals that surrounded him is the most remarkable instance in our history of perfect diplomatic skill; even Dr. Franklin, in a very similar situation, had not the same success. In no instance did Mr. Gallatin allow himself to be drawn into the conflicts of his colleagues, and yet he succeeded in sustaining Mr. Adams in every essential point without appearing to do so. When the negotiation was closed, all his four colleagues were united, at least to outward appearance, in cordiality to him, and Mr. Adams had reason to be, and seems in fact always to have been, positively grateful. If Mr. Clay felt differently, as there was afterwards reason to believe, he showed no such feeling at the time. The story as told in Mr. Adams’s Diary proves clearly enough that this delicate tact of Mr. Gallatin probably saved the treaty.

The very earliest despatch they had occasion to send showed Mr. Gallatin the delicacy of his ground. As first member of the commission, Mr. Adams drafted this despatch and gave his draft for revision to the other gentlemen, who showed it little mercy; Mr. Bayard used it merely as the foundation for an entirely new draft of his own, which was substituted by the commission for that of Mr. Adams. Mr. Bayard’s essay, however, proved to be little more satisfactory than Mr. Adams’s, and at last it was referred to Mr. Gallatin to be put in final shape. This was done, and the commissioners ended by adopting his work. The next despatch was drafted at once by him and accepted with little alteration. Henceforth the duty of drawing up all papers was regularly performed by him. Mr. Adams’s account of the characteristic criticisms of his four colleagues, as well as of his own peculiarities of thought and expression, is very amusing, and probably very exact. “On the general view of the subject [of the note in reply to the British commissioners] we are unanimous, but, in my exposition of it, one objects to the form and another to the substance of almost every paragraph. Mr. Gallatin is for striking out every expression that may be offensive to the feelings of the adverse party. Mr. Clay is displeased with figurative language, which he thinks improper for a state paper. Mr. Russell, agreeing in the objections of the two other gentlemen, will be further for amending the construction of every sentence; and Mr. Bayard, even when agreeing to say precisely the same thing, chooses to say it only in his own language.”

At this moment, that is to say, from the 10th August to the 8th October, it was a matter of little consequence what form these personal annoyances might take, for no doubt was felt by any of the commissioners that negotiation was at an end. Even Mr. Gallatin abandoned hope. That the British government was really disposed to make peace seemed to him, as to his colleagues, too improbable to be worth discussion. On the 20th August he wrote privately to Mr. Monroe: “The negotiations at this place will have the result which I have anticipated. In one respect, however, I had been mistaken. I had supposed whilst in England that the British ministry, in continuing the war, yielded to the popular sentiment, and were only desirous of giving some éclat to the termination of hostilities, and, by predatory attacks, of inflicting gratuitous injury on the United States. It appears now certain that they have more serious and dangerous objects in view.” After dwelling at some length on the indications that pointed to New Orleans as the spot where the ultimate struggle for supremacy was to come, he concluded: “I do not expect that we can be detained more than two or three weeks longer for the purpose either of closing the negotiation, of taking every other necessary step connected with it, and of making all the arrangements for our departure.” To Mr. Dallas he wrote the same day: “Our negotiations may be considered as at an end. Some official notes may yet pass, but the nature of the demands of the British, made also as a preliminary sine qua non, to be admitted as a basis before a discussion, is such that there can be no doubt of a speedy rupture of our conferences, and that we will have no peace. Great Britain wants war in order to cripple us; she wants aggrandizement at our expense; she may have ulterior objects: no resource left but in union and vigorous prosecution of the war. When her terms are known it appears to me impossible that all America should not unite in defence of her rights, of her territory, I may say of her independence. I do not expect to be longer than three weeks in Europe.”

Nevertheless, the three weeks passed without bringing the expected rupture. None of the American envoys knew the reasons of this delay; but the letters of the British negotiators, since published, explain the steps in that backward movement which at last brought about an abandonment of every point the British government had begun by declaring essential. Mr. Goulburn, who from the first was strongly inclined to obstruct a settlement and to put forward impossible conditions,129 announced to his chief on the 23d August: “We are still without any answer to the note which we addressed to the American plenipotentiaries on Friday last. We have, however, met them to-day at dinner at the intendants, and it is evident from their conversation that they do not mean to continue the negotiations at present. Mr. Clay, whom I sat next to at dinner, gave me clearly to understand that they had decided upon a reference to America for instructions, and that they considered our propositions equivalent to a demand for the cession of Boston or New York; and after dinner Mr. Bayard took me aside and requested that I would permit him to have a little private and confidential conversation. Upon my expressing my readiness to hear whatever he might like to say to me, he began a very long speech by saying that the present negotiation could not end in peace, and that he was desirous of privately stating (before we separated) what Great Britain did not appear to understand, viz., that, by proposing terms like those which had been offered, we were not only ruining all prospects of peace, but were sacrificing the party of which he was a member to their political adversaries. He went into a long discussion upon the views and objects of the several parties in America, the grounds upon which they had hitherto proceeded, and the effect which a hostile or conciliatory disposition on our part might have upon them. He inculcated how much it was for our interest to support the Federalists, and that to make peace was the only method of supporting them effectually; that we had nothing to fear for Canada if peace were made, be the terms what they might; that there would have been no difficulty about allegiance, impressment, &c.; but that our present demands were what America never could or would accede to. This was the general tenor of his conversation, to which I did not think it necessary to make much reply, and which I only mention to you in order to let you know at the earliest moment that the negotiation is not likely now to continue… As I find, upon reading over what I have written, that I have drily stated what the American plenipotentiaries said to me, I cannot let it go without adding that it has made not the least impression upon me or upon my colleagues, to whom I have reported it.”

If the notes and conversation of the American commissioners made no impression on Mr. Goulburn and his colleagues, the case was very different with their chiefs. A few days before Mr. Goulburn’s letter was written, Lord Castlereagh passed through Ghent on his way to Vienna. He found that Goulburn had made a series of blunders, and was obliged to check him abruptly,130 writing at the same time to Lord Liverpool, advising a considerable “letting down of the question.”131 Lord Liverpool replied on the 2d September, saying that his advice had already been followed: “Our commissioners had certainly taken a very erroneous view of our policy. If the negotiation had been allowed to break off upon the two notes already presented, or upon such an answer as they were disposed to return, I am satisfied the war would have become quite popular in America.”132 Mr. Goulburn himself became a little nervous; he wrote on the 2d September of the American Commissioners: “Their only anxiety appears to me to get back to America. Whenever we meet them they always enter into unofficial discussions, much of the same nature as the conversation with which Mr. Bayard indulged me; but we have given no encouragement to such conversations, thinking that they are liable to much misrepresentation and cannot lead to any good purpose. All that I think I have learnt from them is this: that Mr. Adams is a very bad arguer, and that the Federalists are quite as inveterate enemies to us as the Madisonians. Those who know anything of America or Americans probably knew this before. We await with some anxiety your note.”133 On the 5th September, only three days afterwards, Mr. Goulburn’s temper, in view of the awkward position he was in, had become irritable; the American commissioners had never, he thought, had any intention of making peace: “They gave it out all over the town (previously even to sending their note) that the negotiations would end in nothing, and I have never met them anywhere without hearing their complaints at being detained here, and their wish to leave the place on the 1st of October at the latest. Some days since they gave their landlord notice that they meant to quit their house, and two of their private secretaries set out to make a tour in England before their note was written, one of whom openly stated to me that, as they were on the point of returning to America, he wished, first of all, to see London.”134

The result of the first round in this encounter was clearly in favor of the American champions. The unfortunate Goulburn was worsted, and forced, with very bad grace, to accept the admonitions of his chiefs and to endure the triumph of his opponents.

Lord Bathurst accordingly undertook to correct the mistakes of his envoys, and forwarded on the 1st September an argumentative note calculated to persuade the Americans that nothing could be more becoming in them than to surrender the lakes to Great Britain and the North-West Territory to the Indians. The long reply of the American commissioners, delivered on the 9th September, was mostly written by Mr. Gallatin, and Mr. Adams candidly says in his Diary: “I struck out the greatest part of my own previous draft, preferring that of Mr. Gallatin upon the same points.” Its contents were briefly characterized in a short note from the Foreign Office to the Duke of Wellington, dated September 13: “It rejects all our proposals respecting the boundary and the military flag on the lakes, and refuses even to refer them to their government, offering at the same time to pursue the negotiation on the other points;” and on the 16th the Duke was notified that: “We mean in our reply to admit that we do not intend to make the exclusive military possession of the lakes a sine qua non of the negotiation.” This was, however, not the only concession; the new ground which Lord Bathurst now marked out for his negotiators was still further in the rear of Mr. Goulburn’s first position, and abandoned not only the lakes but also the attempt to create an Indian sovereignty. The British note was sent in on the 19th September, and Mr. Adams gives in his Diary a graphic account of the conflicting feelings it aroused: “The effect of these notes upon us when they first come is 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. We had a desultory and general conversation upon this note, in which I thought both Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Bayard showed symptoms of despondency. In discussing with them I cannot always restrain the irritability of my temper. Mr. Bayard meets it with more of accommodation than heretofore, and sometimes with more compliance than I expect. Mr. Gallatin, having more pliability of character and more playfulness of disposition, throws off my heat with a joke. Mr. Clay and Mr. Russell are perfectly firm themselves, but sometimes partake of the staggers of the two other gentlemen. Mr. Gallatin said this day that the sine qua non now presented – that the Indians should be positively included in the peace, and placed in the state they were in before the war – would undoubtedly be rejected by our government if it was now presented to them, but that it was a bad point for us to break off the negotiation upon; that the difficulty of carrying on the war might compel us to admit the principle at last, for now the British had so committed themselves with regard to the Indians that it was impossible for them further to retreat. Mr. Bayard was of the same opinion, and recurred to the fundamental idea of breaking off upon some point which shall unite our own people in the support of the war… I said … that if the point of the Indians was a bad point to break upon, I was very sure we should never find a good one; if that would not unite our people, it was a hopeless pursuit. Mr. Gallatin repeated, with a very earnest look, that it was a bad point to break upon. ‘Then,’ said I, with a movement of impatience and an angry tone, ‘it is a good point to admit the British as the sovereigns and protectors of our Indians.’ Gallatin’s countenance brightened, and he said in a tone of perfect good humor, ‘That’s a non-sequitur.’ This turned the edge of the argument into mere jocularity. I laughed, and insisted that it was a sequitur, and the conversation easily changed to another point.”