Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 2

Under these flattering anticipations were formulated the bases upon which to treat, now that the Indian question was out of the way. On October 18 and 20 Bathurst instructed the commissioners to propose, as a starting point, the principle that each party should hold what it had, subject to modifications for mutual accommodation. "Considering the relative situation of the two countries, the moderation evinced by his Majesty's Government in admitting this principle, (thereby surrendering claim to the future conquests), in the present state of the contest, must be manifest." When this was accepted, but not before, the mutual accommodations were to be suggested. The present captured possessions were stated to be: British, Fort Michilimackinac, Fort Niagara, and all the country east of the Penobscot; the American, Fort Erie and Fort Malden. Upon the surrender of the two latter, Great Britain would restore the forts at Castine and Machias. She would retain Mackinac and Fort Niagara, the latter with a surrounding strip of five miles of territory; and in exchange (apparently) for "all the country east of the Penobscot," would accept that part of Maine which lies north of the Aroostook River, thus insuring between Quebec and Halifax a direct communication, wholly under British jurisdiction.

There were some further minor matters of detail, unnecessary to mention; the more so that they did not come formally before the American commissioners, who immediately rejected the proposed principle of uti possidetis, and replied, October 24, that they were not empowered to yield any territory, and could treat only on the basis of entire mutual restitution. This Liverpool testily likened to the claim of the French revolutionary Government508 that territory could not be ceded because contrary to the fundamental law of the Republic. In the American case, however, it was substantially an affirmation that the military conditions did not warrant surrender. Meanwhile, on October 21, the news of Macdonough's victory reached London from American sources. Although the British official accounts did not arrive until some time later, Liverpool, writing to Castlereagh on that day, admitted that there could be no doubt of the defeat of the flotilla.509 Despite this check, the Cabinet still cherished hopes of further successes, and were unwilling yet to abandon entirely the last inches of the ground heretofore assumed. "Had it not been for this unfortunate adventure on Lake Champlain," wrote Bathurst to Castlereagh, "I really believe we should have signed a peace by the end of this month. This will put the enemy in spirits. The campaign will end in our doing much where we thought we should have done little, and doing nothing where we expected everything."510 He announced the intention to send Pakenham in Ross' place for the New Orleans expedition, and to increase his force in the spring, should the war last till then. Meanwhile, it might be well to let the Powers assembled at Vienna understand that, whatever the success in Louisiana, the inhabitants would be distinctly told that in no case would the country be taken under British protection. They might be granted independence, but preferably would be urged to place themselves again under the Spanish Crown; but they must know that, in treating with the United States, neither of these solutions would be made by Great Britain a sine quâ non. The Government had probably taken a distaste to that peremptory formula by the unsatisfactory result of the proposition about the Indians.

This care concerning the effect produced upon the course of events at Vienna appears forcibly in the letters of Liverpool. After the receipt of the American commission's refusal to accept the basis of the uti possidetis, he wrote to Castlereagh, October 28, that he feared it put an end to any hopes of bringing the American war to a conclusion. The expectation of some favorable change in the aspect of affairs, however, decided the ministry to gain a little more time before bringing the negotiation to a close; and the envoys at Ghent were therefore to be instructed to demand a full projet of all the American conditions before entering on further discussion. The same day Liverpool sent a second letter,511 in which he said distinctly that, in viewing the European settlement, it was material to consider that the war with America would probably be of some duration; that enemies should not be made in other quarters by holding out too long on the questions of Poland, Naples, and Saxony, for he was apprehensive that "some of our European allies will not be indisposed to favor the Americans; and, if the Emperor of Russia should be desirous of taking up their cause, we are well aware from some of Lord Walpole's late communications that there is a most powerful party in Russia to support him. Looking to a continuance of the American war, our financial state is far from satisfactory. We shall want a loan for the ensuing year of £27,000,000 or £28,000,000. The American war will not cost us less than £10,000,000, in addition to our peace establishment and other expenses. We must expect, therefore, to have it said that the property tax is continued for the purpose of securing a better frontier for Canada." Castlereagh himself had already spoken of the financial conditions as "perfectly without precedent in our financial history."512

The renewal of the European war, avowedly dreaded by Liverpool,513 was thought not impossible by Castlereagh and Wellington; while conditions in France already threatened an explosion, such as Bonaparte occasioned in the succeeding March. "It is impossible," wrote Wellington, "to conceive the distress in which individuals of all descriptions are. The only remedy is the revival of Bonaparte's system of war and plunder; and it is evident that cannot be adopted during the reign of the Bourbons."514 Neither he nor Castlereagh doubted the imminence of the danger. "It sounds incredible," wrote the latter, "that Talleyrand should treat the notion of any agitation at Paris as wholly unfounded."515 A plot was believed to exist, which embraced as one of its features the seizing of the Duke, and holding him as a hostage. He himself thought it possible, and saw no means in the French Government's hands adequate to resist. "You already know my opinion of the danger at Paris.... The event may occur any night, and if it should occur, I don't think I should be allowed to depart. My safety depends upon the King's;"516 but he was characteristically averse to any step which bore the appearance of precipitate withdrawal.

While the American negotiators were drawing up the projet which they had decided to present in response to the British demand, the combination of circumstances just stated led the British ministry to resolve on removing Wellington from Paris on some pretext, lest his services should be lost to them in the emergency now momentarily dreaded. The urgency for peace with America co-operated to determine the ostensible reason, which was almost a true one. The American command was offered to him. "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 honorable. 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."517 Liverpool voiced the conclusions of the Cabinet, and it would be difficult for words to manifest more forcibly anxiety to escape from a situation. Wellington himself drew attention to this. "Does it not occur to your lordship that, by appointing me to go to America at this moment, you give ground for belief, all over Europe, that your affairs there are in a much worse situation than they really are? and will not my nomination at this moment be a triumph to the Americans, and their friends here and elsewhere?"518 Conditions were alarming, but the action resembled panic.

The offer, which was really a request, brought Wellington by a side wind into the American negotiations, and enabled him to give the Government the weight of his name and authority in concluding a peace otherwise than on their "just pretensions." The war, he said, has been honorable to Great Britain; meaning doubtless that, considering the huge physical mass and the proximity of the United States, it was well done to have escaped injury, as it was militarily disgraceful to the American Government, with such superiority, to have been so impotent. But, he continued, neither I nor any one else can achieve success, in the way of conquests, unless you have naval superiority on the lakes. That was what was needed; "not a general, nor general officers and troops. Till that superiority is acquired, it is impossible, according to my notion, to maintain an army in such a situation as to keep the enemy out of the whole frontier, much less to make any conquest from the enemy, which, with those superior means, might, with reasonable hopes of success, be undertaken.... The question is, whether we can obtain this naval superiority on the lakes. If we cannot, 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." This endorsed not only Prevost's retreat, but also the importance of Macdonough's victory. The Duke then added frankly that, in the state of the war, they had no right to demand any concession of territory. He brushed contemptuously aside the claim of occupying the country east of the Penobscot, on the ground of Sherbrooke's few companies at Castine, ready to retreat at a moment's notice. "If this reasoning be true, why stipulate for the uti possidetis?"519

Penned November 9, the day before the American negotiators at Ghent handed in their requested projet, this letter may be regarded as decisive. November 13, Liverpool replied that the ministry was waiting anxiously for the American projet, … and, "without entering into particulars, I can assure you that we shall be disposed to meet your views upon the points on which the negotiation appears to turn at present;" the points being the uti possidetis, with the several details of possession put forward by Bathurst. The American paper was in London before the 18th, when Liverpool wrote to Castlereagh, "I think we have 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. We have been led to this determination by the consideration of the unsatisfactory state of the negotiations at Vienna, and by that of the alarming situation of the interior of France." "Under such circumstances, it has appeared to us desirable to bring the American war, if possible, to a conclusion."520 The basis of the status quo ante bellum, sustained all along by the American commission, was thus definitely accepted, and so stated formally by Bathurst.521

This fundamental agreement having been reached, the negotiations ran rapidly to a settlement without further serious hitch; a conclusion to which contributed powerfully the increasing anxiety of the British ministry over the menacing aspect of the Continent. The American projet,522 besides the customary formal stipulations as to procedure for bringing hostilities to a close, consisted of articles embodying the American positions on the subjects of impressment and blockade, with claims for indemnity for losses sustained by irregular captures and seizures during the late hostilities between France and Great Britain; a provision aimed at the Orders in Council. These demands, which covered the motives of the war, and may be regarded as the offensive side of the American negotiation, were pronounced inadmissible at once by the British, and were immediately abandoned. Their presentation had been merely formal; the United States Government, within its own council chamber, had already recognized that they could not be enforced. The projet included the agreement previously framed concerning the Indians; who were thus provided for in the treaty, though excluded from any recognition as parties to it, or as independent political communities. This was the only demand which Great Britain can be said fairly to have carried, and it was so far a reduction from her original requirement as to be unrecognizable. An American proposition, pledging each of the contracting parties not again to employ Indians in war, was rejected.

The remaining articles of the projet, although entirely suitable to a treaty of peace, were not essentially connected with the war. The treaty merely gave a suitable occasion for presenting them. They provided for fixing, by mixed commissions, the boundary lines between the British possessions and the United States. These the Treaty of 1783 had stated in terms which had as yet received no proper topographical determination. From the mouth of the St. Croix River, and the islands within it and in the adjacent sea, around, north and west, as far as the head of Lake Superior, the precise course of the bounding line needed definition by surveyors. These propositions were agreed to; but when it came to similar provision for settling the boundary of the new territories acquired by the Louisiana purchase, as far as the Rocky Mountains, difficulties arose. In the result it was agreed that the determination of the boundary should be carried as far as the most northwestern point of the Lake of the Woods, "in conformity with the true intent of the said Treaty of Peace of one thousand seven hundred and eighty-three." The treaty was silent on the subject of boundary westward of the Lake of the Woods, and this article of the projet was dropped. It differed indeed from its associates, in providing the settlement for a new question, and not the definition of an old settlement. In conclusion, the British commissioners obtained the adoption of an agreement that both parties "would use their best endeavors to promote the entire abolition of the slave trade." In Great Britain the agitation for this measure had reached proportions which were not the least among the embarrassments of the ministry; and at this critical juncture the practical politicians conducting affairs found themselves constrained by a popular demand to press the subject upon the less sympathetic statesmen of the Cabinet.

The American commissioners had made a good fight, and shown complete appreciation of the factors working continuously in their behalf. To the end, and even more evidently at the end, was apparent the increasing anxiety of the British Government, the reasonable cause for it in European conditions, and the immense difficulty under such circumstances of accomplishing any substantial military successes in America. The Duke of Wellington wrote that "all the American armies of which I ever read would not beat out of a field of battle the troops that went from Bordeaux last summer;"523 but still, "his opinion is that no military advantage can be expected if the war goes on, and he would have great reluctance in undertaking the command unless we made a serious effort first to obtain peace, without insisting upon keeping any part of our conquests."524 On December 23, Liverpool sent a long and anxious letter to Castlereagh, in reply to his late despatches. The fear of a renewal of war on the Continent is prominent in his consideration, and it was recognized that the size of the European armaments, combined with the pecuniary burden of maintaining them, tended of itself to precipitate an outbreak. Should that occur, France could scarcely fail to be drawn in; and France, if involved, might direct her efforts towards the Low Countries, "the only object on the continent which would be regarded as a distinct British interest of sufficient magnitude to reconcile the country to war," with its renewed burden of taxation. "We are decidedly and unanimously of opinion that all your efforts should be directed to the continuance of peace. There is no mode in which the arrangements in Poland, Germany, and Italy, can be settled, consistently with the stipulations of the Treaty of Paris, which is not to be preferred, under present circumstances, to a renewal of hostilities between the Continental Powers." Coincidently with this, in another letter of the same day, he mentions the meetings which have taken place on account of the property tax, and the spirit which had arisen on the subject. "This, as well as other considerations, make us most anxious to get rid of the American war."525

The Treaty of Ghent was signed December 24, 1814, by the eight commissioners. The last article provided for its ratification, without alteration, at Washington, within four months from the signature. A chargé d'affaires to the United States was appointed, and directed to proceed at once in a British ship of war to America, with the Prince Regent's ratification, to be exchanged against that of the President; but he was especially instructed that the exchange should not be made unless the ratification by the United States was without alteration, addition, or exclusion, in any form whatsoever. Hostilities were not to cease until such action had taken place. The British Government were apparently determined that concessions wrung from them, by considerations foreign to the immediate struggle, should not be subjected to further modification in the Senate.

Mr. Baker, the British chargé, sailed in the British sloop of war "Favorite," accompanied by Mr. Carroll bearing the despatches of the American commissioners. The "Favorite" arrived in New York on Saturday, February 11. The treaty was ratified by the President, as it stood, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, on the 17th of February, 1815.

A year after the conclusion of peace, a weighty opinion as to the effect of the War of 1812 upon the national history was expressed by one of the commissioners, Mr. Albert Gallatin. For fifteen years past, no man had been in closer touch with the springs of national life, national policy, and national action; as representative in Congress, and as intimate adviser of two consecutive Presidents, in his position as Secretary of the Treasury. His experience, the perspicuity of his intellect, and his lucidity of thought and expression, give particular value to his conclusions; the more so that to some extent they are the condemnation, regretfully uttered, of a scheme of political conduct with the main ideas of which he had been closely identified. He wrote: "The war has been productive of evil and of good, but I think the good preponderates. Independent of the loss of lives, and of the property of individuals, the war has laid the foundations of permanent taxes and military establishments, which the Republicans526 had deemed unfavorable to the happiness and free institutions of the country. But under our former system we were becoming too selfish, too much attached exclusively to the acquisition of wealth, above all, too much confined in our political feelings to local and state objects. The war has renewed and reinstated the national feelings and character which the Revolution had given, and which were daily lessening. The people have now more general objects of attachment, with which their pride and political opinions are connected. They are more Americans; they feel and act more as a nation; and I hope that the permanency of the Union is thereby better secured."527

Such, even at so early a date, could be seen to be the meaning of the War of 1812 in the progress of the national history. The people, born by war to independence, had by war again been transformed from childhood, absorbed in the visible objects immediately surrounding it, to youth with its dawning vision and opening enthusiasms. They issued from the contest, battered by adversity, but through it at last fairly possessed by the conception of a national unity, which during days of material prosperity had struggled in vain against the predominance of immediate interests and local prepossessions. The conflict, indeed, was not yet over. Two generations of civic strife were still to signalize the slow and painful growth of the love for "The Union"; that personification of national being, upon which can safely fasten the instinct of human nature to centre devotion upon a person and a name. But, through these years of fluctuating affections, the work of the War of 1812 was continuously felt. Men had been forced out of themselves. More and more of the people became more Americans; they felt and acted more as a nation; and when the moment came that the unity of the state was threatened from within, the passion for the Union, conceived in 1812, and nurtured silently for years in homes and hearts, asserted itself. The price to be paid was heavy. Again war desolated the land; but through war the permanency of the Union was secured. Since then, relieved from internal weakness, strong now in the maturity of manhood, and in a common motive, the nation has taken its place among the Powers of the earth.

1

Captains' Letters. Navy Department.

2

Ibid., Bainbridge, Oct. 13, 1812.

3

Niles' Register, vol. iv. p. 25.

4

Bainbridge's report is in the Captains' Letters. Navy Department, Jan. 3, 1813. It will be found also in Niles' Register, vol. iii. p. 410. Both give extracts from Bainbridge's journal, which is very full on the subject of manœuvres and times. The British account will be found in the Naval Chronicle, vol. xxix. pp. 403-408, from which the plan of the battle is copied.

5

James' Naval History, edition 1824, vol. v. p. 313.

6

Bainbridge in a private letter speaks of the men looking forward to prize money for the "Guerrière" on their return. Niles' Register, vol. iii. p. 411.

7

Lawrence's Report of these transactions is in Captains' Letters, March 19, 1813. It will be found also in Niles' Register, vol. iv. p. 84.

8

Naval Chronicle, vol. xxviii. p. 305.

9

Admiralty to Warren, British Records Office.

10

Niles' Register, vol. iii. p. 383.

11

Captains' Letters.

12

Niles' Register, vol. iv. p. 159. The Admiralty's letter to Warren to institute this blockade is dated March 25. British Records Office.

13

Niles' Register, vol. v. p. 264.

14

Naval Chronicle, vol. xxxi. p. 464.

15

Naval Chronicle, vol. xxxi. p. 475.

16

Captains' Letters.

17

American State Papers, Naval Affairs, vol. i. p. 280.

18

Captain Evans' Report, April 10, 1813. Captains' Letters.

19

Captains' Letters.

20

Ibid, Dec. 17, 1812.

21

Niles' Register, vol. iv. p. 119. Naval Chronicle, vol. xxix. p. 501.

22

March 17, 1813. Captains' Letters.

23

March 17, 18, and 21. Ibid.

24

Niles' Register, vol. iv. p. 222.

25

Columbian Centinel.

26

Niles' Register, vol. iv. p. 117.

27

Captains' Letters.

28

Message of the Governor of Rhode Island, May 5, 1813.

29

Niles' Register, vol. iv. pp. 200, 209. There were reported in Cadiz at this time 160,000 barrels of flour, unsold. The Columbian Centinel (Feb. 17) speaks of the Lisbon market as deplorable.

30

Niles' Register, vol. iv. p. 150.

31

Niles' Register, vol. iv. p. 101.

32

Ibid., p. 117.

33

American State Papers, Foreign Relations, vol. iii. p. 584. France in the same period had seized five hundred and fifty-eight.