THE news of Erskine’s disavowal reached America so slowly that
merchants enjoyed three months of unrestricted trade, and shipped to
England or elsewhere the accumulations of nearly two years’ produce.
From April 21 till July 21 this process of depletion continued without
an anxiety; and when July 21 news arrived that the arrangement had been
repudiated, merchants still had time to hurry their last cargoes to sea
before the government could again interpose.
The first effect of Canning’s disavowal seemed bewilderment. No one in
the United States, whether enemy or friend of England, could for a time
understand why Canning had taken so perplexing a course. Very few of
England’s friends could believe that her conduct rested on the motives
she avowed; they sought for some noble, or at least some respectable,
object behind her acts. For several months the Federalist newspapers
were at a loss for words, and groped in the dark for an English hand to
help them; while the Republican press broke into anger, which expressed
the common popular feeling. “The late conduct of the British ministry,”
said the “National Intelligencer” of July 26, “has capped the climax
of atrocity toward this country.” Every hope of reconciliation or even
of peace with England seemed almost extinguished; yet the country was
still far from a rupture. Not until popular feeling could express
itself in a new election would the national will be felt; and the
next election was still more than a year away, while the Congress to
be then chosen would meet only in December, 1811. Until then war was
improbable, perhaps impossible, except by the act of England.
When the news arrived, President Madison was at his Virginia
plantation. During his absence Gallatin was in charge of matters at
Washington, and on the instant wrote that he thought the President
should return. In a letter of July 27, three days after the news
reached Washington, Gallatin gave his own view of the situation:[83]--
“I will not waste time in conjectures respecting the true cause
of the conduct of the British government, nor can we, until
we are better informed, lay any permanent plan of conduct for
ourselves. I will only observe that we are not so well prepared
for resistance as we were one year ago. Then all or almost all
our mercantile wealth was safe at home, our resources entire,
and our finances sufficient to carry us through during the first
year of the contest. Our property is now all afloat; England
relieved by our relaxations might stand two years of privations
with ease. We have wasted our resources without any national
utility; and our treasury being exhausted, we must begin our
plan of resistance with considerable and therefore unpopular
loans.”
The immediate crisis called first for attention. Gallatin held that the
Non-intercourse Act necessarily revived from the moment the supposed
fact on which alone its suspension rested was shown not to have taken
place. The remoter problem of Jackson’s mission seemed to the secretary
simpler than the question of law:[84]--
“If we are too weak or too prudent to resist England in the
direct and proper manner, I hope at least that we shall not
make a single voluntary concession inconsistent with our rights
and interest. If Mr. Jackson has any compromise to offer which
would not be burdened with such, I shall be very agreeably
disappointed. But judging by what is said to have been the
substance of Mr. Erskine’s instructions, what can we expect but
dishonorable and inadmissible proposals? He is probably sent out
like Mr. Rose to amuse and to divide; and we shall, I trust,
by coming at once to the point, bring his negotiation to an
immediate close.”
The President heard the news with as much perplexity as anger, and
even tried to persuade himself that Canning would be less severe than
he threatened. Madison still clung to hope when he first replied to
Gallatin’s summons:[85]--
“The conduct of the British government in protesting the
arrangement of its minister surprises one in spite of all their
examples of folly. If it be not their plan, now that they
have filled their magazines with our supplies and ascertained
our want of firmness in withholding them, to adopt openly a
system of monopoly and piracy, it may be hoped that they will
not persist in the scandalous course in which they have set
out. Supposing Erskine to have misunderstood or overstrained
his instructions, can the difference between our trading
directly and indirectly with Holland account for the violent
remedy applied to the case? Is it not more probable that they
have yielded to the clamors of the London smugglers in sugar
and coffee, whose numbers and impudence are displayed in the
scandalous and successful demand from their government that
it should strangle the lawful trade of a friendly nation lest
it should interfere with their avowed purpose of carrying on
a smuggling trade with their enemies? Such an outrage on all
decency was never before heard of even on the shores of Africa.”
Madison exaggerated. The outrage on decency committed by the British
government in May, 1809, was on the whole not so great as that of Sir
William Scott’s decision in the case of the “Essex” in July, 1805; or
that of the blockade of New York and the killing of Pierce in April,
1806; or that of Lord Howick’s Order in Council of January, 1807,
when the signatures to Monroe’s treaty were hardly dry; or that of
Spencer Perceval’s Orders in November, 1807, and the speeches made in
their defence; or the mission of George Henry Rose in the winter of
1807–1808; or Erskine’s letter of February 23, or Canning’s letters of
September 23, 1808,--for all these left the United States in a worse
position than that created by the disavowal of Erskine. Indeed, except
for the disgrace of submitting to acts of illegal force, the United
States stood in a comparatively easy attitude after the orders of April
26, 1809, so long as Napoleon himself enforced within his empire a more
rigid exclusion of neutral commerce than any that could be effected by
a British blockade.
“Still, I cannot but hope,” continued Madison, “on the
supposition that there be no predetermined hostility against our
commerce and navigation, that things may take another turn under
the influence of the obvious and striking considerations which
advise it.”
The hope vanished when Erskine’s instructions became known, and was
succeeded by consternation when the public read the reports made by
Erskine and Canning of the language used by Madison, Gallatin, and
Pinkney. For the first time in this contest, Englishmen and Americans
could no longer understand each other’s meaning. Erskine had so
confused every detail with his own ideas, and Canning’s course on one
side the Atlantic seemed so little to accord with his tactics on the
other, that neither party could longer believe in the other’s good
faith. Americans were convinced that Canning had offered terms which
he intended them to refuse. Englishmen were sure that Madison had
precipitated a settlement which he knew could not be carried out.
Madison credited Canning with fraud as freely as Canning charged
Madison with connivance.
“I find myself under the mortifying necessity of setting out
to-morrow morning for Washington,” wrote Madison to Jefferson,
August 3.[86] “The intricate state of our affairs with England
produced by the mixture of fraud and folly in her late conduct,
and the important questions to be decided as to the legal effect
of the failure of the arrangement of April on our commercial
relations with her are thought by the heads of departments
to require that I should join them.... You will see by the
instructions to Erskine, as published by Canning, that the
latter was as much determined that there should be no adjustment
as the former was that there should be one.”
The President remained three days in Washington in order to sign,
August 9, a Proclamation reviving the Non-intercourse Act against
Great Britain. On the same day the Secretary of the Treasury enclosed
this Proclamation to the Collectors of Customs in a circular, with
instructions not to enforce the penalties of the law against vessels
entering American ports on the faith of Erskine’s arrangement. This
done, Madison returned to Montpelier, August 10, leaving Erskine to
exchange apologetic but very unsatisfactory explanations with Robert
Smith and Gallatin.
The Proclamation of August 9 was sharply criticised, and with reason;
for Congress had given the President no express authority to revive
the Non-intercourse Act, and he had clearly exceeded his powers, if
not in the Proclamation which revived the Act, then certainly in the
original Proclamation of April 19, which set it aside. Even this
stretch of authority hardly equalled Gallatin’s assumption of the power
to admit what vessels he pleased without regard to the Non-intercourse
Act. Yet right or wrong the President had no choice but to use all the
powers he needed. Evidently his original mistake in opening intercourse
was a greater stretch of authority than any subsequent act could be,
except that of leaving it open after the mistake was admitted. Sullenly
and awkwardly the Government restored some degree of order to its
system, and then President and Cabinet scattered once more, leaving the
village of Washington to the solitude of August and September.
A month passed without further change, until September 5 Jackson landed
at Annapolis, whence he reached Washington September 8. He came with
his wife--a fashionable Prussian baroness with a toilette--and young
children, for whose health a Washington September was ill suited; he
came too with a carriage and liveries, coachmen and servants, and the
outfit of a long residence, as though neither he nor Canning doubted
his welcome.
Francis James Jackson had many good qualities, and was on the whole the
only English minister of his time so severely treated by the American
government as to warrant almost a feeling of sympathy. He was probably
suffering from some organic disease which made his temper irritable,
while his instructions were such as to leave him no room to show his
best capacities in his profession. In ordinary times a man of his
experience, intelligence, and marked character might have succeeded in
winning at Washington a name for ability and straightforwardness; but
he was ill fitted for the special task he had undertaken, and had no
clear idea of the dangers to which he was exposed. Gallatin expressed
the feeling of the Administration when he advised coming at once to the
point with Jackson, and bringing his negotiation to an immediate close.
Madison could not have wished to repeat his experience with Rose, or to
allow a British minister to reside at Washington for the sole purpose
of dividing American counsels and intriguing with Senator Pickering.
Had Jackson been quick in his perceptions, he would have seen early
that nothing but mortification could be in store for him; but he had
the dogged courage and self-confidence of his time, and undertook to
deal single-handed with a government and people he did not trouble
himself to understand.
The President was not in Washington when the British minister drove
into that “famous city,” as he called it, which “resembles more nearly
Hampstead Heath than any other place I ever saw.”[87] Robert Smith
apologized for the incivility of leaving him without the usual public
recognition, and explained that the risk of fever and the fatigue of
four days’ journey made the President extremely unwilling to return
before October 1, the day fixed for Jackson’s reception. Indirectly
Smith suggested that Jackson might visit the President at Montpelier,
or even begin negotiation before being officially received; but the
minister replied that he would cheerfully wait. Gallatin wrote to the
President, September 11,--
“I do not think that there is any necessity to hurry yourself
beyond your convenience in returning here. It will be as well
the 10th as the 1st of October, for I am sure, although I have
not seen Mr. Jackson and can judge only from what has passed
between him and Mr. Smith, that he has nothing to say of
importance, or pleasant.”[88]
Madison replied, proposing to set out for Washington about the 29th,
but agreeing with Gallatin that in view of “Jackson’s apparent patience
and reserve,” his disclosures “would not be either operative or
agreeable.”[89]
Whether Jackson showed patience or activity, he could not avoid giving
offence; and perhaps he did wisely to gain all the time he could,
even if he gained nothing else. Unlike some of his predecessors, he
understood how to make the best of his situation. He found amusement
for a month of idleness, even though the month was September and the
place was Washington. He took the house which Merry and Erskine had
occupied,--a house that stood amid fields looking over Rock Creek to
Georgetown:
“Erskine had let it go to such a state of ruin and dirt that it
will be several weeks before we can attempt to move into it. A
Scotchman with an American wife who would be a fine lady, are
not the best people to succeed on such an occasion.
“It is but justice to say that I have met with nothing but
the utmost civility, and with none of those hardships and
difficulties of which the Merrys so bitterly complained. The
travelling is not worse than much that I have met with before
in my life, and the accommodations are better than many I
have thought supportable. The expense is about the same as
in England, and must be considered most exorbitant when the
inferiority of their arrangements to ours and the greater
cheapness of provisions are taken into account.”[90]
As the season advanced, Jackson began to enjoy his autumn picnic on the
heath of Washington. He had an eye for the details which gave interest
to travel. “I put up a covey of partridge,” he wrote October 7, “about
three hundred yards from the House of Congress, yclept the Capitol.” He
had the merit of being first to discover what few men of his time had
the taste to feel,--that Washington was beautiful:--
“I have procured two very good saddle-horses, and Elizabeth and
I have been riding in all directions round this place whenever
the weather has been cool enough. The country has a beautifully
picturesque appearance, and I have nowhere seen finer scenery
than is composed by the Potomac and the woods and hills about
it; yet it has a wild and desolate air from being so scantily
and rudely cultivated, and from the want of population.... So
you see we are not fallen into a wilderness,--so far from it
that I am surprised no one should before have mentioned the
great beauty of the neighborhood. The natives trouble themselves
but little about it; their thoughts are chiefly of tobacco,
flour, shingles, and the news of the day. The Merrys, I suppose,
never got a mile out of Washington, except on their way to
Philadelphia.”
Part of Jackson’s leisure was employed in reading Erskine’s
correspondence, although he would have done better had he neglected
this customary duty, and had he brought to his diplomacy no more
prejudices than such as belonged to his nature and training. His
disgust with Erskine only added to his antipathy for Erskine’s objects,
methods, and friends.
“My visitors,” he wrote, “are a different set from Erskine’s, I
perceive; many of them he says he never saw. Per contra, many
of the Democrats who were his intimates never come to me, and I
am well pleased and somewhat flattered by the distinction....
Erskine is really a greater fool than I could have thought
it possible to be, and it is charity to give him _that_
name.... Now that I have gone through all his correspondence,
more than ever am I at a loss to comprehend how he could have
been allowed to remain here for the last two years.... To be
obliged to wade through such a mass of folly and stupidity, and
to observe how our country has been made, through Erskine’s
means, the instrument of these people’s cunning, is not the
least part of my annoyance. Between them our cause is vilified
indeed. The tone which Erskine had accustomed them to use with
him, and to use without any notion whatever being taken of it,
is another great difficulty I have had to overcome. Every third
word was a declaration of war.”
The month passed only too soon for Jackson’s comfort, and October 1,
punctual to his word, the President arrived. The next day Erskine
had his farewell audience, and October 3 Jackson was officially
received. Merry’s experience had not been without advantage to both
sides; and Jackson, who seemed to feel more contempt for his own
predecessors--Merry and Erskine--than for his American antagonists,
accepted everything in good part.
“Madison, the President, is a plain and rather mean-looking
little man, of great simplicity of manners, and an inveterate
enemy to form and ceremony; so much so that I was officially
informed that my introduction to him was to be considered as
nothing more than the reception of one gentleman by another, and
that no particular dress was to be worn on the occasion,--all
which I was very willing to acquiesce in. Accordingly I went in
an afternoon frock, and found the President in similar attire.
Smith, the Secretary of State, who had walked from his office to
join me, had on a pair of dusty boots, and his round hat in his
hand. When he had introduced us he retired, and the President
then asked me to take a chair. While we were talking, a negro
servant brought in some glasses of punch and a seed-cake. The
former, as I had been in conference the whole morning, served
very agreeably to wet, or whet, my whistle, and still more
strongly to contrast this audience with others I had had with
most of the sovereigns of Europe.”
Perhaps this passing allusion to previous acquaintance with “most of
the sovereigns of Europe” threw a light, somewhat too searching, into
the recesses of Jackson’s character. The weakness was pardonable, and
not specially unsuited to success in his career, but showed itself in
private as a form of self-deception which promised ill for his coming
struggle. Madison’s civility quite misled him.
“I do not know,” he wrote October 24, “that I had ever more
civility and attention shown me than at a dinner at the
President’s yesterday, where I was treated with a distinction
not lately accorded to a British minister in this country. A
foolish question of precedence, which ever since Merry’s time
has been unsettled, and has occasioned some heart-burnings among
the ladies, was also decided then by the President departing
from his customary indifference to ceremony and etiquette, and
taking Elizabeth in to dinner, while I conducted Mrs. Madison.”
Evidently this deference pleased the British minister, who saw nothing
behind it but a social triumph for himself and his wife; yet he had
already been forced to protest against the ceremonial forms with which
Madison studiously surrounded him, and had he read Shakspeare rather
than Erskine’s writings, he might have learned from Julius Cæsar the
general diplomatic law that “when love begins to sicken and decay, it
useth ever an enforced ceremony.” A man of tact would have seen that
from the moment Madison became formal he was dangerous. The dinner of
October 23 at the White House came at a moment when Jackson had been so
carefully handled and so effectually disarmed as to stand at Madison’s
mercy; and although he was allowed to please himself by taking Mrs.
Madison to dinner, the “mean-looking little man” at the head of
the table, was engaged only in thinking by what stroke the British
minister’s official life should be most quickly and quietly ended.
Jackson’s interviews with Robert Smith began immediately after the
President’s arrival in Washington. The first conversation was reported
by the British minister to his Government in language so lifelike, but
showing such astonishment on both sides at the attitude of each, as to
give it place among the most natural sketches in American diplomatic
history. After some fencing on the subject of Erskine’s responsibility,
Jackson passed to the subject of his own instructions, and remarked
that he was ordered to wait for propositions from the President.
“Here the American minister,” reported Jackson,[91] “exhibited
signs of the utmost surprise and disappointment. He seemed to be
so little prepared for this close of my conversation that he
was some time before he could recollect himself sufficiently to
give me any answer at all. Expecting to meet suggestions of a
totally different nature, and finding that what he had ready to
say to them did not suit the occasion, he seemed to require some
time and reflection to new arrange his thoughts. Accordingly
a considerable pause in our conversation took place, which at
length he broke in upon by saying: ‘Then, sir, you have no
proposal to make to us,--no explanation to give? How shall we be
able to get rid of the Non-intercourse Act?’”
Robert Smith was a wearisome burden to Madison, and his incompetence
made no agreeable object of study; but his apparent bewilderment
at Jackson’s audacity was almost as instructive as the sincere
astonishment of the Englishman at the effect of his own words. The game
of cross-purposes could not be more naturally played. Robert Smith
had been requested by Madison to ascertain precisely what Jackson’s
instructions were; and both at the first and at a second interview
he pressed this point, always trying to discover what Jackson had to
offer, while the Englishman always declined to offer anything whatever.
Two conversations satisfied the President that Jackson’s hands were
fast tied, and that he could open no door of escape. Then Madison
gently set the Secretary of State aside, and, as openly as the office
of Chief Magistrate permitted, undertook to deal with the British
minister.
October 9 the Secretary of State sent to the British Legation a
formal letter, written, like all Robert Smith’s important papers, by
the President.[92] After recapitulating the negative results reached
in the two interviews, Jackson was asked whether he had been rightly
understood; and the letter ended by saying, that, “to avoid the
misconceptions incident to oral proceeding, I have also the honor to
intimate that it is thought expedient that our further discussions on
the present occasion be in the written form.”[93]
Jackson saw a challenge in this change of attitude, and undertook to
meet it by vigorous resistance. He had no mind to be thrown on the
defensive; as he wrote to Canning, he wished to teach the American
government not to presume on his patience.
“On connecting all these circumstances,” he reported,[94]--“the
manner in which Mr. Smith had conducted our conferences; the
abruptness, especially, with which he had put an end to them;
and the style in which he announces to me, without leaving
any choice or alternative, but as the absolute decision of
his Government, ‘that it is thought expedient that our future
discussions on the present occasion’ (_i. e._, the only
occasion of doing away existing differences) ‘should be in the
written form,’--it occurred to me to be necessary to put the
matter on such a footing as to preclude, _in limine_, the
idea that every species of indirect obloquy was to be patiently
submitted to by his Majesty’s minister in this country.”
In this temper Jackson wrote a long letter, dated October 11, for
the purpose, as he reported to Canning,[95] of checking “that spirit
which can never lead to conciliation, by which America thinks herself
entitled to make her will and her view of things the criterion by
which they are to be generally approved or condemned.” Beginning with
the assertion that “there does not exist in the annals of diplomacy
a precedent” for stopping verbal communication within so few days
after the delivery of credentials, he rehearsed the story of Erskine’s
arrangement, and justified his refusal of apology or explanation.
In doing so, he allowed himself to insinuate what Canning expressly
asserted in his instructions, that Robert Smith had connived at
Erskine’s misconduct:--
“It was not known when I left England whether Mr. Erskine had,
according to the liberty allowed him, communicated to you
_in extenso_ his original instructions. It now appears
that he did not. But ... I find ... that he has submitted to
your consideration the three conditions specified in those
instructions as the ground-work of an arrangement.... Mr.
Erskine reports, _verbatim et seriatim_, your observations
upon each of the three conditions, and the reasons which induced
you to think that others might be substituted in lieu of them.
It may have been concluded between you that these latter were
an equivalent for the original conditions; but the very act of
substitution evidently shows that those original conditions were
in fact very explicitly communicated to you, and by you, of
course, laid before the President for his consideration.”
After justifying the disavowal of Erskine on the admitted ground that
he had disobeyed instructions, Jackson came to the point of his own
powers. “His Majesty has authorized me,” he said, “notwithstanding
the ungracious manner in which his former offer of satisfaction for
the affair of the ‘Chesapeake’ was received, to renew that which Mr.
Erskine was instructed to make.” As for the Orders in Council, these
had been so far modified by the blockade of April 26 as to make any
formal agreement on that subject seem unnecessary, and he reserved his
proposals until he should hear those of the President.
Two days after this letter was despatched, Robert Smith sent a civil
message that there had been no intention to stop personal intercourse;
“he should be most happy to see me whenever I would call upon him;
we might converse upon indifferent subjects; but that his memory was
so incorrect that it was on his account necessary that in making his
reports to the President he should have some written document to assist
him.”[96] With this excuse for the secretary’s sudden withdrawal from
the field the British minister contented himself until October 19, when
he received an official letter, signed as usual by Robert Smith, but
written with ability such as that good-natured but illiterate Secretary
of State never imagined himself to possess.
The American note of October 19, far too long to quote or even to
abridge, was perhaps the best and keenest paper Madison ever wrote.
His faults of style and vagueness of thought almost wholly disappeared
in the heat of controversy; his defence was cool, his attack keen, as
though his sixty years weighed lightly the day when he first got his
young antagonist at his mercy. He dealt Jackson a fatal blow at the
outset, by reminding him that in July, 1808, only the previous year,
Canning had put an end to oral communication after two interviews with
Pinkney on the subjects under negotiation. He then made three points,
well stated and easily remembered: (1) That when a government refuses
to fulfil a pledge, it owes a formal and frank disclosure of its
reasons. (2) That, in the actual situation, Mr. Erskine’s successor
was the proper channel for that disclosure. (3) That since Mr. Jackson
disclaimed authority to make either explanations or proposals, the
President could do no more than express his willingness to favor any
honorable mode of settling the matters in dispute.
In enlarging on the subjects touched by Jackson’s letter, the President
made more than one remark of the kind that most exasperated the British
minister. Since no settlement of the dispute was possible or even
desired by Jackson, such flashes of Madison’s temper were neither
harmful nor inappropriate, yet they were certainly on the verge of
insult. He told Jackson plainly that Great Britain, by retaining her
so-called retaliation after admitting that it no longer retaliated, was
guilty of deception:--
“You cannot but be sensible that a perseverance under such
circumstances in a system which cannot longer be explained by
its avowed object would force an explanation by some object not
avowed. What object might be considered as best explaining it is
an inquiry into which I do not permit myself to enter, further
than to remark that in relation to the United States it must be
an illegitimate object.”
On the other hand, Madison seemed not to resent, as warmly as he might
have done, the intimation that he had induced Erskine to violate
instructions. The President either affected not to see, or failed fully
to grasp at first, the serious scope of this charge:
“The stress you have laid on what you have been pleased to state
as the substitution of the terms finally agreed on for the terms
first proposed, has excited no small degree of surprise. Certain
it is that your predecessor did present for my consideration
the three conditions which now appear on the printed document;
that he was disposed to urge them more than the nature of two
of them (both palpably inadmissible, and one more than merely
inadmissible) could permit; and that on finding his first
proposals unsuccessful, the more reasonable terms ... were
adopted. And what, sir, is there in this to countenance the
conclusion you have drawn in favor of the right of his Britannic
Majesty to disavow the proceeding? Is anything more common in
public negotiations than to begin with a higher demand, and that
failing, to descend to a lower?”
Contenting himself with the remark that he had for the first time
learned, from Jackson’s note, the restrictions on Erskine’s authority,
the President passed to other points as though unaware that his good
faith was in question.
The letter of October 19 forced Jackson one step backward, and drove
him nearly to the wall. Obliged to choose between the avowal that he
had no proposal to make, or the assertion that he had both explanations
and proposals, he yielded, somewhat surlily, to the weakness of
offering explanations, such as they were, and of inviting proposals
eventually to be embodied in a convention. In a note dated October 23
he answered the American note of October 19.[97] If Madison had doubted
his own advantage, his doubts must have vanished in reading Jackson’s
second note, which shuffled and evaded the issues in a manner peculiar
to disconcerted men; but the most convincing proof of Jackson’s
weakness appeared in the want of judgment he showed in exposing himself
to attack at the moment when he was seeking safety. He committed the
blunder of repeating the charge that Madison was responsible for
Erskine’s violation of instructions:--
“These instructions ... were at the time, in substance, made
known to you.... So far from the terms which he was actually
induced to accept having been contemplated in that instruction,
he himself states that they were substituted by you in lieu of
those originally proposed.”
Jackson’s folly in thus tempting his fate was the more flagrant
because his private letters proved that he knew something of his true
position. “Madison is now as obstinate as a mule,” he wrote October
26.[98] “Until he gets [the absolute surrender of the Orders in
Council] he will not even accept any satisfaction for the affair of the
‘Chesapeake,’ which has been now for the third time offered to him in
vain;” and he added: “There is already a great and growing fermentation
in the United States, which shows itself in a manner highly prejudicial
to the amity and good understanding which doubtless our ministers wish
to see established between the two countries.”
A few days after writing this evidence of his own uneasiness, the
British minister received from the Department of State a third note,
dated November 1, which left no doubt that the President meant to push
his antagonist to extremes. After accepting the explanations at last
made in regard to the Orders in Council, and pointing out that they did
not apply to the case of the “Chesapeake,” Madison requested Jackson
to show his full powers, as an “indispensable preliminary to further
negotiation.” The letter was short, and ended with a stern warning:--
“I abstain, sir, from making any particular animadversions on
several irrelevant and improper allusions in your letter, not
at all comporting with the professed disposition to adjust,
in an amicable manner, the differences unhappily subsisting
between the two countries; but it would be improper to conclude
the few observations to which I purposely limit myself,
without adverting to your repetition of a language implying a
knowledge on the part of this Government that the instructions
of your predecessor did not authorize the arrangement formed
by him. After the explicit and peremptory asseveration that
this Government had no such knowledge, and that with such a
knowledge no such arrangement would have been entered into, the
view which you have again presented of the subject makes it my
duty to apprise you that such insinuations are inadmissible in
the intercourse of a foreign minister with a Government that
understands what it owes to itself.”
This letter placed Jackson in a position which he could not defend, and
from which he thought, perhaps with reason, that he could not without
disgrace retreat. The insinuations he had made were but a cautious
expression of the views he was expressly ordered to take. November 4 he
replied, with more ability than he had hitherto shown, to the letter
of November 1; but he gave himself, for a mere point of temper, into
Madison’s hands.
“I am concerned, sir, to be obliged, a second time, to appeal
to those principles of public law, under the sanction and
protection of which I was sent to this country.... You will find
that in my correspondence with you I have carefully avoided
drawing conclusions that did not necessarily follow from the
premises advanced by me, and least of all should I think of
uttering an insinuation where I was unable to substantiate a
fact. To facts, such as I have become acquainted with them, I
have scrupulously adhered; and in so doing I must continue,
whenever the good faith of his Majesty’s government is called in
question, to vindicate its honor and dignity in the manner that
appears to me best calculated for that purpose.”
When Jackson was sent to Copenhagen with a message whose general tenor
resembled that which he brought to the United States, he was fortunate
enough to be accompanied by twenty ships of the line, forty frigates,
and thirty thousand regular troops. Even with this support, if court
gossip could be believed, King George expressed to him surprise that
he had escaped being kicked downstairs. At Washington he had no other
force on his side than such as his footman or his groom could render,
and the destiny that King George predicted for him could not, by any
diplomatic weapons, be longer escaped. November 8, Secretary Smith
sent to the Legation one more note, which closed Jackson’s diplomatic
career:--
“SIR,--... Finding that in your reply of the 4th
instant you have used a language which cannot be understood but
as reiterating and even aggravating the same gross insinuation,
it only remains, in order to preclude opportunities which are
thus abused, to inform you that no further communications will
be received from you....”