AUGUST 27, 1805, President Jefferson, writing to Madison
from Monticello, said:[89] “Considering the character of Bonaparte, I
think it material at once to let him see that we are not of the Powers
who will receive his orders.” In Europe, on the same day, the Emperor
broke up the camp at Boulogne and set his army in motion toward Ulm and
Austerlitz. September 4 he was at Paris, busy with the thousand details
of imminent war: his armies were in motion, his vast diplomatic and
military plans were taking shape.
The United States minister at Paris had little to do except to watch
the course of events, when during the Emperor’s absence at Boulogne he
received a visit from a gentleman who had no official position, but who
brought with him a memorandum, written in Talleyrand’s hand, sketching
the outlines of an arrangement between the United States and Spain.
The United States, said this paper, should send another note to the
Government at Madrid, written in a tone and manner that would awaken
Spain from her indifference. In this note the Prince of Peace should
be warned of the consequences that would follow a persistence in his
course, and should be encouraged to join with the United States in
referring to Napoleon the matters in dispute. In case Spain would not
unite in asking the good offices of France, a copy of the note must be
sent by Armstrong to Talleyrand, with a request for the good offices
of Napoleon. “The more you refer to the decision of the Emperor, the
more sure and easy will be the settlement.” If Spain, on the Emperor’s
representations, should consent to part with the Floridas, as she no
doubt would do, France would propose the following terms: Commercial
privileges in Florida as in Louisiana; the Rio Colorado and a line
northwestwardly, including the headwaters of all those rivers which
fall into the Mississippi, as the western boundary of Louisiana, with
thirty leagues on each side to remain unoccupied forever; the claims
against Spain, excluding the French spoliations, to be paid by bills on
the Spanish colonies; and, finally, ten million dollars to be paid by
the United States to Spain.
Armstrong rejected the conditions on the spot. They sacrificed, he
said, the whole country between the Colorado and the Rio Bravo;
abandoned the claim to West Florida, the claim to damages from the
violation of _entrepôt_ at New Orleans, and the claim, estimated
at six millions, for French spoliations. They gave to Spain an
accommodation for her payments beyond what she herself required; and
they exacted the enormous sum of ten million dollars for a barren and
expensive province.
September 4, the day of Napoleon’s return to Paris, a long conversation
followed. On both sides vigorous argument was pressed; but the
Frenchman closed by saying: “I see where the shoe pinches. It is ‘the
enormous sum of ten million dollars;’ but say seven! Your undisputed
claims on Spain amount to two and a half or three millions. The
arrangement as thus altered would leave four for Spain. Is not this
sum within the limits of moderation?” Armstrong replied that he had
nothing to say on the money transaction, but would immediately transmit
Talleyrand’s memorandum to the President. His despatch on the subject
was accordingly sent, Sept. 10, 1805.[90]
Armstrong had little acquaintance with the person who brought the
memorandum for his sole credential, and knew him only as a political
agent of the government, who rested his claim to credit not on any
authority from the Emperor, but on an unsigned document in Talleyrand’s
handwriting. “This form of communication he said had been preferred on
account of greater security; it was a proof of the minister’s habitual
circumspection, and of nothing else.” To most Frenchmen it might have
seemed rather an example of Talleyrand’s supposed taste for jobbery,
and the United States government had reason to know what was likely
to be the outcome of such overtures; but Armstrong was not unused to
intrigue, and did not affect virtue above the comprehension of the
society in which he lived.
A fortnight afterward the Emperor left Paris for his campaign in
Germany. While Armstrong’s despatch was still on its way to Washington,
Napoleon captured Ulm, and November 13 entered Vienna. On the same day
the despatch reached the United States.
Jefferson’s Cabinet council of November 12 had barely come to its
long-disputed conclusion, and decided to reopen the Florida negotiation
as a French bargain, when Talleyrand’s memorandum arrived, fixing
definitely his terms. Naturally, the President supposed that Florida
might thenceforward be looked upon as his own. At the next Cabinet he
laid Armstrong’s letter before the four secretaries; and the result of
their deliberation was recorded in his own hand:[91]--
“November 19. Present the same.--Since our last meeting we have
received a letter from General Armstrong containing Talleyrand’s
propositions, which are equivalent to ours nearly, except as to
the sum, he requiring seven million dollars. He advises that we
alarm the fears of Spain by a vigorous language and conduct, in
order to induce her to join us in appealing to the interference
of the Emperor. We now agree to modify our propositions, so as
to accommodate them to his as much as possible. We agree to pay
five million dollars for the Floridas as soon as the treaty is
ratified by Spain, a vote of credit obtained from Congress,
and orders delivered us for the surrender of the country. We
agree to his proposition that the Colorado shall be our western
boundary, and a belt of thirty leagues on each side of it to be
kept unsettled. We agree that joint commissioners shall settle
all spoliations, and to take payment from Spain by bills on her
colonies. We agree to say nothing about the French spoliations
in Spanish ports which broke off the former convention. We
propose to pay the five millions after a simple vote of credit,
by stock redeemable in three years, within which time we can pay
it. We agree to order to the commanding officer at Natchitoches
to patrol the country on this side the Sabine and all the Red
River as being in our possession, except the settlement of Bayou
Pierre, which he is not to disturb unless they aggress; he is to
protect our citizens and repel all invasions of the preceding
country by Spanish soldiers; to take all offenders without
shedding blood, unless his orders cannot otherwise be executed.”
At last, after more than six months of hesitation, a Spanish policy
was fixed; and since it conceded every point which had been required
by France, the President might reasonably hope that his difficulties
were at an end. He did not venture to send instructions to Armstrong
at once, because the authority of Congress was needed before pledging
the government to pay so large a sum of money; but Congress was to
meet within a few weeks, and Jefferson could safely assume that the
instructions would not be delayed beyond the New Year.
The President was greatly relieved to see the end of this annoying
imbroglio; the more, because he could no longer shut his eyes to
the conduct of Great Britain. The merchants of Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore were frantic with rage and despair,
hearing every day of new seizures, which swelled their losses to a
sum then quite appalling, and carried ruin to their fairest fortunes.
The carrying-trade was not a matter about which Jefferson cared to
quarrel, for he held that Americans should not meddle with a commerce
which did not belong to them; yet the public anger was far stronger
against England than against Spain, and although the newspapers talked
incessantly of a Spanish war, Jefferson soon felt that he should find
great difficulty in preserving a British peace. That he should incline
to a war with Spain in alliance with England was natural; but under
no circumstances, and for no object, did Jefferson wish for war with
Great Britain. From the first he had relied upon his power to coerce
her by peaceable means; and the time had come when some coercion must
be applied. No one could longer doubt that Pitt meant to keep what he
had taken, and that the British policy was preconcerted with deliberate
purpose.
When Merry next called at the State Department he heard nothing more
about the misconduct of Spain or the advantages of a powerful British
navy.
“The lively sensation” produced by the seizures, wrote Merry
to Mulgrave,[92] December 2, “appears to have increased
considerably since I had the honor of writing to your Lordship
by the last mail. The commercial bodies at Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and Norfolk have held public meetings on this
subject, and come to resolutions to transmit to the Government
of the United States particular statements of the injuries they
allege to be sustaining daily in their trade. I am sorry to add
that those public prints which are considered as the organs of
the Government ... have of late lost sight in a great measure
of their complaints against Spain, with a view, as may be
suspected, to excite and direct the whole national indignation
against Great Britain....
“In addition, my Lord, to these circumstances, I have been sorry
to find in my recent conversations with Mr. Madison that he
has treated this subject in a much more serious light than he
had at first represented it to me. At my last interview with
him, two days ago, he said that he had flattered himself that
Mr. Monroe’s remonstrances to your Lordship would not only
have produced the liberation of all the vessels which should
have been detained previously to the 1st November, but that,
as that minister had been promised an answer in writing to his
representations, the reconsideration of the matter which would
probably have taken place before a written answer was given
might have induced his Majesty’s government, if not to give
up entirely, at least to modify to a tolerable degree, the
principle upon which they acted. It was true that the answer in
question had not as yet reached him, nor had he heard lately
from Mr. Monroe; but he had recently received information from
an authentic though not an official quarter, which gave him
the strongest reason to apprehend that if any reply at all in
writing should be made on the subject, it would contain nothing
satisfactory.”
Madison raised his tone awkwardly. Mysterious “information from an
authentic quarter” was scarcely sufficient ground for so abrupt a
change, but Merry failed to press him on this point. The secretary told
the British minister that the government of England had committed “an
act of commercial hostility on this country, and that the citizens of
the United States would have a just claim of indemnity for whatever
effective losses they might sustain in consequence of it; and he feared
that these would be very considerable.” He hinted that measures would
be taken to seek redress; and although he did not then foreshadow these
measures, Merry read two days afterward in the “National Intelligencer”
the Resolutions and speech in which Madison, in the year 1794, had
urged commercial restrictions as the true policy of the United States
against the same British outrages. The motive of republication was
plain.
At about the same time Madison finished his pamphlet called
“Examination of the British Doctrine,” which in the course of the
coming session was laid on the desk of every senator and member. The
book was creditable to his literary and scholarly qualities. Clear,
calm, convincing, it left the British government no excuse for its
conduct; but, not without reason, John Randolph objected that as an
argument it was but a shilling pamphlet against eight hundred British
ships of war. That Pitt could occasionally be convinced of his mistakes
was certain; but no reasoners except Napoleon and Moreau had ever
effectually convinced him.
Meanwhile the President prepared his Message. Of all Jefferson’s
writings none had a livelier interest than the Annual Message at the
meeting of the Ninth Congress. The Second Inaugural, nine months
before, prepared the public for new political opinions; but the Message
surprised even those who looked for surprises. The Second Inaugural
seemed to sweep old Republican principles to the common rubbish-heap
of out-worn political toys. The Message went even further, and seemed
to announce that the theory of foreign affairs on which the Republican
Administration began its career must be abandoned. Jefferson intended
it to carry such a meaning.
“The love of peace,” he wrote to one of his old friends,[93]
“which we sincerely feel and profess, has begun to produce an
opinion in Europe that our government is entirely in Quaker
principles, and will turn the left cheek when the right has
been smitten. This opinion must be corrected when just occasion
arises, or we shall become the plunder of all nations. The moral
duties make no part of the political system of those governments
of Europe which are habitually belligerent.”
The Message began by an allusion to the yellow fever; from which it
quickly turned to discuss the greater scourge of war:--
“Since our last meeting the aspect of our foreign relations has
considerably changed. Our coasts have been infested and our
harbors watched by private armed vessels; some of them without
commissions, some with illegal commissions, others with those of
legal form, but committing piratical acts beyond the authority
of their commissions.... The same system of hovering on our
coasts and harbors, under color of seeking enemies, has been
also carried on by public armed ships, to the great annoyance
and oppression of our commerce. New principles, too, have been
interpolated into the law of nations, founded neither in justice
nor the usage or acknowledgment of nations.... With Spain our
negotiations for a settlement of differences have not had a
satisfactory issue.... Propositions for adjusting amicably the
boundaries of Louisiana have not been acceded to.... Inroads
have recently been made into the territories of Orleans and the
Mississippi; our citizens have been seized and their property
plundered in the very parts of the former which had actually
been delivered up by Spain, and this by the regular officers and
soldiers of that government. I have therefore found it necessary
at length to give orders to our troops on that frontier to be
in readiness to protect our citizens and to repel by arms any
similar aggressions in future. Other details necessary for your
full information of the state of things between this country
and that shall be the subject of another communication. In
reviewing these injuries from some of the belligerent Powers,
the moderation, the firmness, and the wisdom of the Legislature
will all be called into action. We ought still to hope that
time, and a more correct estimate of interest as well as of
character, will produce the justice we are bound to expect; but
should any nation deceive itself by false calculations, and
disappoint that expectation, we must join in the unprofitable
contest of trying which party can do the other the most harm.
Some of these injuries may perhaps admit a peaceable remedy.
Where that is competent it is always the most desirable. But
some of them are of a nature to be met by force only, and all of
them may lead to it.”
From this preamble the public would naturally infer that measures of
force were to be the object of the special message promised in regard
to Spanish aggressions. As though to leave no doubt on the subject,
the President urged the fortification of seaports, the building of
gunboats, the organization of militia, the prohibition of the export of
arms and ammunition; and added that the materials for building ships of
the line were on hand.
All this formality of belligerent language was little better than
comedy. Jefferson could hardly be charged with a wish to deceive, since
he could not wear the mask of deception. Both friends and enemies
were amused to see how naturally he betrayed objects which his plan
required should be concealed. In the first draft of the Message, sent
for correction to Gallatin, the financial prospect was as pacific as
the diplomatic was warlike; the Message not only announced a surplus
for the coming year, but suggested the reduction of taxes. Gallatin
pointed out that the English seizures alone would affect the revenue,
and any measure of retaliation would still further diminish it; while
the navy had increased its estimates from six hundred and fifty
thousand dollars to one million and seventy thousand dollars. As for
the hint at a reduction of taxes, Gallatin at once struck it out.[94]
“As it relates to foreign nations, it will certainly destroy the
effect intended by other parts of the Message. They never can think us
serious in any intentions to resist, if we recommend at the same time a
diminution of our resources.” The President made these corrections, and
returned the draft for revisal, with a note:[95]--
“On reviewing what had been prepared as to Great Britain and
Spain, I found it too soft toward the former compared with the
latter, and that so temperate a notice of the greater enormity
of British invasions of right might lessen the effect which
the strong language toward Spain was meant to produce at the
Tuileries. I have therefore given more force to the strictures
on Britain.”
In studying “the effect which the strong language toward Spain was
meant to produce at the Tuileries,” Jefferson had in mind the effect
which his strong language produced at the Tuileries in 1803. He
played a game of finesse hardly safe in the face of men like Godoy,
Talleyrand, and Napoleon, whose finesse was chiefly used to cover
force, and was not betrayed or derided by factious opposition in the
press. Besides being unsafe, it was unfair to himself. Jefferson was an
honest man, and in putting on the outward appearance of a Talleyrand,
he resembled an amateur imitating Talma and Garrick. Gestures and tones
alike were unnatural, awkward, and false; they exposed him to ridicule.
If President Jefferson had taken the public into his confidence,
he would have told the people that under no circumstances would he
consent to war; but that if the great Powers of Europe combined to
injure America, she would close her ports, abandon her commerce, shut
herself within her own continent, and let the world outside murder
and rob elsewhere. Such an avowal implied no disgrace; the policy it
proclaimed was the alternative to war; and as the radical doctrine of
the Republican party, the course was not only that which Jefferson
meant to take, but it was that which he took. The avowal might have
invited aggression, and have been followed by failure; but he would
have done better to fail on a direct issue of principle, than to fail
after evading the issue until the issue itself was lost.
To carry out his scheme, the President put forward two policies,--a
public and a secret; or, as he called it, an ostensible and a real one.
The warlike recommendations of the Annual Message were the public
and ostensible policy; the real one was to be expressed in a secret
message, announced in advance. To this coming message the President
next turned his attention; but he found himself quickly involved in
complications of his own creating. He had not only to recommend a
double series of measures to Congress, but he had to frame a double
series of replies which Congress was to return to him. He tried at
first to combine the two answers in one. After writing a secret message
asking for money to buy Florida, he drafted a series of Resolutions[96]
which Congress was to adopt in reply to both messages at once, and
in which “the citizens of the United States, by their Senate and
Representatives in Congress assembled, do pledge their lives and
fortunes” to maintain the line of the Sabine and the free navigation
of the Mobile, pending negotiations, while the President should be
authorized to take whatever unappropriated moneys might lie in the
Treasury in order to carry these Resolutions into effect.
Clearly this would not do; and Gallatin undertook to set the matter
right.
“The apparent difficulty in framing the Resolutions,” he wrote
to the President,[97] “arises from the attempt to blend the
three objects together. The same reasons which have induced the
President to send two distinct messages render it necessary
that the public Resolutions of Congress should be distinct from
the private ones; that those which relate to the war posture of
the Spanish affairs, which are intended to express the national
sense on that subject, and to enable the President to take the
steps which appear immediately necessary on the frontier, should
not be mixed with those proceedings calculated only to effect an
accommodation.”
The Secretary of the Treasury frequently corrected his chief, and still
more frequently hinted a correction. Only a few days had passed since
Jefferson had spoken to Gallatin of the “strong language toward Spain”
as “meant to produce an effect at the Tuileries.” Gallatin ignored this
object, and spoke of the strong language toward Spain as intended to
express the national sense, and as restricted in its bearing to the
steps immediately necessary for protecting the frontier. The difference
was worth noting. Evidently Gallatin felt no great confidence in
producing an effect on the Tuileries.
“The course now recommended,” he continued, “is precisely that
which was followed in the Louisiana business when the deposit
was withdrawn. A public Resolution ... was moved by Randolph,
and adopted by the House. A committee in the mean while brought
in a confidential report sufficient to support and justify
the President in the purchase he was going to attempt, and to
this an appropriation law in very general terms was added. To
follow a similar course appears not only best, but will also,
as founded on precedent, be the smoothest mode of doing the
business in Congress.”
The President adopted Gallatin’s suggestions.[98] The double messages
breathing war and peace were prepared. The double answers were sketched
out. Congress had only to act with the same quickness and secrecy which
it had shown in the Louisiana business; and of its readiness to do so,
no one in the Cabinet seemed to doubt.
Yet nations could not so readily as individuals swing about on a course
opposite to that which they had been led to expect. The American
public had been wrought to anger against Spain. Of the negotiations
little was publicly known. Monroe had come, and gone; the Marquis
Yrujo had remonstrated, and had written in newspapers; but the rights
and wrongs of the Spanish dispute remained a mystery to the public at
large, which knew only that Spain had rejected all the offers made by
the United States, had resumed her depredations on American commerce,
and had taken a menacing attitude at Mobile and on the Sabine.
Throughout the year the Republican press had followed hints from the
Government at Washington, all looking toward a rupture with Spain. The
same newspapers had shown at first a wish to make light of the late
British seizures,--a course which misled the Federalist press into
denunciations of England such as would never have been risked had the
party in power not seemed disposed to apologize for England’s conduct.
The country at large was prepared to hear the President advise a
rupture with Spain, and upon that rupture to found his hope of success
in negotiating with Pitt. The warlike tone of the Annual Message was
certain to give additional strength to this expectation; and Jefferson
might have foreseen that the sudden secret change of tone to be taken
immediately afterward in the special message on Spanish affairs would
produce bewilderment among his followers.
No one could doubt where the confusion would first appear. The last
session had ended in a series of quarrels, in which party distinctions
had been almost forgotten. The summer had done nothing to reunite
the factions; on the contrary, it had done much to widen the breach.
Already the “Aurora” announced that the Yazoo question was to determine
“the relations, the principles, the characters, and the strength of
parties in the next session of Congress;” and the public knew that
the Yazoo question had passed beyond the stage of rational argument,
and had become the test of personal devotion, the stepping-stone to
favor or proscription with the next President. Three years before the
election of 1808 Congress was already torn by a Virginia feud,--a
struggle for power between John Randolph and James Madison.
As though to hurry and prolong this struggle, Jefferson announced,
after his second inauguration, that he should retire at the close of
his term, March 4, 1809. Without expressly recommending Madison as his
successor, his strong personal attachment insured to the Secretary of
State the whole weight of Executive influence. The whole weight was
needed. The secretary, with all his amiable qualities, was very far
from controlling the voice of Virginia. His strength lay rather among
the Northern democrats, semi-Federalists, or “Yazoo men,” as they
were called, who leaned toward him because he, of all the prominent
Virginians, was least Virginian. His diplomatic triumph in buying
Louisiana had given him an easy advantage over his rivals; but even his
reputation might sink with the failure of the Spanish treaty and the
aggression of England.
No one who knew the men, or who had followed the course of President
Jefferson’s first Administration, could feel surprise that Madison’s
character should act on John Randolph as an irritant. Madison was
cautious, if not timid; Randolph was always in extremes. Madison was
apt to be on both sides of the same question, as when he wrote the
“Federalist” and the Virginia Resolutions of 1798; Randolph pardoned
dalliance with Federalism in no one but himself. Madison was in person
small, retiring, modest, with quiet malice in his humor, and with
marked taste for closet politics and delicate management; Randolph
was tall in stature, abrupt in manner, self-asserting in temper,
sarcastic, with a pronounced taste for publicity, and a vehement
contempt for those silent influences which more practical politicians
called legitimate and necessary, but which Randolph, when he could
not control them, called corrupt. Jefferson soon remarked, in regard
to what Randolph denounced as back-stairs influence, “We never heard
this while the declaimer was himself a back-stairs man.”[99] Just as
the criticism was, no one could deny that Randolph seemed much out of
place on the back-stairs of the White House, whereas Madison seemed
to him in place nowhere else. The Spanish papers, which Randolph must
read, were not likely to increase his respect for the Secretary of
State; while Madison’s candidacy made a counter-movement necessary for
those Virginians who would not be dragged at the heels of the Northern
democracy.
Long before the month of December Randolph foresaw the coming trouble.
The Yazoo men in the Ninth Congress were more numerous than ever; and
they were credited with the wish to eject Speaker Macon from the chair,
and to put some Northern democrat in Randolph’s place at the head of
the Committee of Ways and Means. Oct. 25, 1805, Randolph wrote to
Gallatin from Bizarre:--
“I look forward to the ensuing session of Congress with no very
pleasant feelings. To say nothing of the disadvantages of the
place, natural as well as acquired, I anticipate a plentiful
harvest of bickering and blunders; of which, however, I hope
to be a quiet, if not an unconcerned, spectator.... I regret
exceedingly Mr. Jefferson’s resolution to retire, and almost
as much the premature annunciation of that determination. It
almost precludes a revision of his purpose, to say nothing
of the intrigues which it will set on foot. If I were sure
that Monroe would succeed him, my regret would be very much
diminished.”[100]
Intrigue and dissension could not be confined to the House, but must
spread to the Senate, and could hardly fail to affect even the Cabinet.
While Gallatin’s personal sympathies were with Madison, his political
bias was on the opposite side. The old Republicans, with John Randolph
at their head, had steadily protected the Treasury from jobs and
extravagance; without their help Gallatin would lie at the mercy of
the Northern democrats, who were not behind the Federalists in their
willingness to spend money. He might expect an alliance between the
Northern democrats and the Smith faction which controlled the Navy
Department. To such a combination he must have foreseen that Madison
would yield.
In the face of such latent feuds nothing could be more hazardous than
to spring upon Congress, in Madison’s interests, a new, tortuous,
complicated Spanish policy, turning on the secret assurance that France
could be bribed with five million dollars, at the moment when Congress
would be required to begin a commercial war upon England. Whether
Madison was responsible for these measures or not, his enemies would
charge him with the responsibility; and even without such attacks from
his own party, he was struggling with enemies enough to have crushed
Jefferson himself.
Early in December, all the actors in the drama assembled, to play
another act in a tragi-comedy of increasing interest. With his
old sanguine hopes, but not with all his old self-confidence, the
President watched them slowly arrive,--Democrats, Federalists, Southern
Republicans, all equally ignorant of what had been done, and what
they were expected to do; but more curious, better-informed, and more
sharp-sighted than these, the three diplomatists, Turreau, Merry,
and Yrujo, waiting with undisguised contempt to see what species of
coercion was to be employed against England, France, and Spain.
To impose on hostile forces and interests the compulsion of a single
will was the task and triumph of the true politician, which had
been accomplished, under difficult conditions, by men of opposite
characters. A political leader might be combative and despotic, or
pliant and conciliatory. The method mattered little, provided it
obtained success,--but success depended more on character than on
manœuvres. In the winter of 1805–1806 President Jefferson dealt with
a problem such as few Americans have been required to solve. Other
Presidents have met with violent opposition both within and without
the ranks of their party; but no other President has been obliged to
face a hostile minority, together with violent factiousness in the
majority, and at the same time a spirit of aggression showing itself
in acts of war from three of the greatest Powers of Europe. By what
resources of skill or character President Jefferson was to restrain
this disorder from becoming chaos, only a prophet could foretell. If
ever the Federalist “crisis” seemed close at hand, it was in December,
1805. Some energetic impulse could alone save the country from drifting
into faction at home and violence abroad.
All might go well if England, France, and Spain could be obliged to
respect law. To restrain these three governments was Jefferson’s most
urgent need. The three envoys waited to see what act of energy he would
devise to break through the net which had been drawn about him. Turreau
enjoyed most of his confidence; and soon after the meeting of Congress,
at the time when Jefferson was publicly using “strong language toward
Spain,” meant to produce an effect at the Tuileries, Turreau wrote
interesting accounts of his private conversation for the guidance of
Talleyrand and Napoleon;[101]--
“One may perhaps draw some inferences in regard to the true
sense of the Message from some words which escaped the President
in a private conversation with me. ‘I see with pain,’ he
said, ‘that our people have a tendency toward commerce which
no other kind of interest will be able to balance; we should
be essentially agricultural, and yet agriculture will never
be more than a secondary interest here.’... In a preceding
interview the President invited me to a discussion of Spanish
affairs.... After some complaints about Spanish privateers,
and the protection which Spain granted to ours in particular,
Mr. Jefferson expanded on the griefs of the Americans in
regard to some excursions of Spanish patrols beyond the limits
provisionally established, and, in consequence, within the
territory of Louisiana. I replied that doubtless the Spanish
government had not authorized these steps, and that the mistakes
of a few subalterns could not produce serious differences
between the two Powers. ‘That is true; but,’ he added, ‘these
Spaniards are so stupid (_bêtes_), their government so
detested,’ etc. It was not easy to contradict him on this
point. As for the English, his complaints and reproaches have
been much more serious. He has assured me that they have taken
five hundred American ships; that they could not have done
more harm had they been at war with America; yet that England
would in vain try, as against the Americans, to destroy neutral
rights. ‘In that respect,’ added Mr. Jefferson, ‘we have
_principles_ from which we shall never depart; our people
have commerce everywhere, and everywhere our neutrality should
be respected. On the other hand, we do not want war,--and all
this is very embarrassing.’”
Turreau’s comment on these words may have affected the policy of
Napoleon, as it must certainly have had weight with Talleyrand:--
“If your Excellency was not already acquainted with the man and
his government, this last phrase would be enough to enable you
to judge the one and the other.”