BRITISH TREATY; AFRICAN SQUADRON FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF THE
SLAVE TRADE; MR. BENTON'S SPEECH; EXTRACT.
The suppression of the African slave-trade is the second subject
included in the treaty; and here the regret renews itself at the
absence of all the customary lights upon the origin and progress
of treaty stipulations. No minutes of conference; no protocols; no
draughts or counterdraughts; no diplomatic notes; not a word of any
kind from one negotiator to the other. Nothing in relation to the
subject, in the shape of negotiation, is communicated to us. Even
the section of the correspondence entitled "_Suppression of the
slave-trade_"--even this section professedly devoted to the subject,
contains not a syllable upon it from the negotiators to each other,
or to their Governments; but opens and closes with communications
from American naval officers, evidently extracted from them by the
American negotiator, to justify the forthcoming of preconceived and
foregone conclusions. Never since the art of writing was invented
could there have been a treaty of such magnitude negotiated with
such total absence of necessary light upon the history of its
formation. Lamentable as is this defect of light upon the formation
of the treaty generally, it becomes particularly so at this point,
where a stipulation new, delicate, and embarrassing, has been
unexpectedly introduced, and falls upon us as abruptly as if it fell
from the clouds. In the absence of all appropriate information from
the negotiators themselves, I am driven to glean among the scanty
paragraphs of the President's message, and in the answers of the
naval officers to the Secretary's inquiries. Though silent as to the
origin and progress of the proposition for this novel alliance, they
still show the important particular of the motives which caused it.
Passing from the political consequences of this
entanglement--consequences which no human foresight can reach--I
come to the immediate and practical effects which lie within our
view, and which display the enormous inexpediency of the measure.
First: the expense in money--an item which would seem to be entitled
to some regard in the present deplorable state of the treasury--in
the present cry for retrenchment--and in the present heavy taxation
upon the comforts and necessaries of life. This expense for 80
guns will be about $750,000 per annum, exclusive of repairs and
loss of lives. I speak of the whole expense, as part of the naval
establishment of the United States, and not of the mere expense
of working the ships after they have gone to sea. Nine thousand
dollars per gun is about the expense of the establishment; 80 guns
would be $720,000 per annum, which is $3,600,000 for five years.
But the squadron is not limited to a maximum of 80 guns; that is
the minimum limit: it is to be 80 guns "at the least." And if the
party which granted these 80 shall continue in power, Great Britain
may find it as easy to double the number, as it was to obtain the
first eighty. Nor is the time limited to five years; it is only
determinable after that period by giving notice; a notice not to be
expected from those who made the treaty. At the least, then, the
moneyed expense is to be $3,600,000; if the present party continues
in power, it may double or treble that amount; and this, besides the
cost of the ships. Such is the moneyed expense. In ships, the wear
and tear of vessels must be great. We are to prepare, equip, and
maintain in service, on a coast 4,000 miles from home, the adequate
number of vessels to carry these 80 guns. It is not sufficient
to send the number there; they must be kept up and maintained in
service there; and this will require constant expenses to repair
injuries, supply losses and cover casualties. In the employment of
men, and the waste of life and health, the expenditure must be
large. Ten men and two officers to the gun, is the smallest estimate
that can be admitted. This would require a complement of 960 men.
Including all the necessary equipage of the ship, and above 1,000
persons will be constantly required. These are to be employed at a
vast distance from home; on a savage coast; in a perilous service;
on both sides of the equator; and in a climate which is death to
the white race. This waste of men--this wear and tear of life and
constitution--should stand for something in a Christian land, and
in this age of roaming philanthropy; unless, indeed, in excessive
love for the blacks, it is deemed meritorious to destroy the whites.
The field of operations for this squadron is great; the term "coast
of Africa" having an immense application in the vocabulary of the
slave-trade. On the western coast of Africa, according to the
replies of the naval officers Bell and Paine, the trade is carried
on from Senegal to Cape Frio--a distance of 3,600 miles, following
its windings as the watching squadrons would have to go. But the
track of the slavers between Africa and America has to be watched,
as well as the immediate coast; and this embraces a space in the
ocean of 35 degrees on each side of the equator (say four thousand
miles), and covering the American coast from Cuba to Rio Janeiro;
so that the coast of Africa--the western coast alone--embraces a
diagram of the ocean of near 4,000 miles every way, having the
equator in the centre, and bounded east and west by the New and
the Old World. This is for the western coast only: the eastern is
nearly as large. The same naval officers say that a large trade
in negroes is carried on in the Mahometan countries bordering on
the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and in the Portuguese East India
colonies; and, what is worthy to be told, it is also carried on
in the British presidency of Bombay, and other British Asiatic
possessions. It is true, the officers say the American slavers are
not yet there; but go there they will, according to all the laws of
trading and hunting, the moment they are disturbed, or the trade
fails on the western coast. Wherever the trade exists, the combined
powers must follow it: for good is not to be done by halves, and
philanthropy is not to be circumscribed by coasts and latitudes.
Among all the strange features in the comedy of errors which has
ended in this treaty that of sending American ministers abroad, to
close the markets of the world against the slave-trade, is the most
striking. Not content with the expenses, loss of life, and political
entanglement of this alliance, we must electioneer for insults, and
send ministers abroad to receive, pocket, and bring them home.
In what circumstances do we undertake all this fine work? What
is our condition at home, while thus going abroad in search of
employment? We raise 1,000 men for foreign service, while reducing
our little army at home! We send ships to the coast of Africa, while
dismounting our dragoons on the frontiers of Missouri and Arkansas!
We protect Africa from slave-dealers, and abandon Florida to savage
butchery! We send cannon, shot, shells, powder, lead, bombs, and
balls, to Africa, while denying arms and ammunition to the young
men who go to Florida! We give food, clothes, pay, to the men who
go to Africa, and deny rations even to those who go to Florida! We
cry out for retrenchment, and scatter $3,600,000 at one broad cast
of the hand! We tax tea and coffee, and send the money to Africa!
We are borrowing and taxing, and striking paper money, and reducing
expenses at home, when engaging in this new and vast expense for the
defence of Africa! What madness and folly! Has Don Quixote come to
life, and placed himself at the head of our Government, and taken
the negroes of Africa, instead of the damsels of Spain, for the
objects of his chivalrous protection?
The slave-trade is diabolical and infamous; but Great Britain is not
the country to read us a lesson upon its atrocity, or to stimulate
our exertions to suppress it. The nation which, at the peace of
Utrecht, made the _asiento_--the slave contract--a condition of
peace, fighting on till she obtained it; the nation which entailed
African slavery upon us--which rejected our colonial statutes for
its suppression[4]--which has many, many ten millions, of white
subjects in Europe and in Asia in greater slavery of body and
mind, in more bodily misery and mental darkness, than any black
slaves in the United States;--such a nation has no right to cajole
or to dragoon us into alliances and expenses for the suppression
of slavery on the coast of Africa. We have done our part on that
subject. Considering the example and instruction we had from Great
Britain, we have done a wonderful part. The constitution of the
United States, mainly made by slaveholding States, authorized
Congress to put an end to the importation of slaves by a given day.
Anticipating the limited day by legislative action, the Congress
had the law ready to take effect on the day permitted by the
constitution. On the 1st day of January, 1808, Thomas Jefferson
being President of the United States, the importation of slaves
became unlawful and criminal. A subsequent act of Congress following
up the idea of Mr. Jefferson in his first draught of the Declaration
of Independence, qualified the crime as piratical, and delivered up
its pursuers to the sword of the law, and to the vengeance of the
world, as the enemies of the human race. Vessels of war cruising
on the coast of Africa, under our act of 1819, have been directed
to search our own vessels--to arrest the violators of the law,
and bring them in--the ships for confiscation, and the men for
punishment. This was doing enough--enough for a young country,
far remote in the New World, and whose policy is to avoid foreign
connections and entangling alliances. We did this voluntarily,
without instigation, and without supervision from abroad; and now
there can be no necessity for Great Britain to assume a superiority
over us in this particular, and bind us in treaty stipulations,
which destroy all the merit of a voluntary action. We have done
enough; and it is no part of our business to exalt still higher
the fanatical spirit of abolition, which is now become the
stalking-horse of nations and of political powers. Our country
contains many slaves, derived from Africa; and, while holding these,
it is neither politic nor decent to join the crusade of European
powers to put down the African slave-trade. From combinations of
powers against the present slave-takers, there is but a step to the
combination of the same powers against the present slaveholders;
and it is not for the United States to join in the first movement,
which leads to the second. "No entangling alliances" should be her
motto! And as for her part in preventing the foreign slave-trade,
it is sufficient that she prevents her own citizens, in her own
way, from engaging in it; and that she takes care to become neither
the instrument, nor the victim, of European combinations for its
suppression.
[4] He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating
its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a
distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them
into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in
their transportation thither. This piratical warfare--the opprobrium
of _infidel_ powers--is the warfare of the Christian king of Great
Britain, determined to keep open a market where _men_ should be
bought and sold. He has prostituted his negative for suppressing
every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable
commerce; and, that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact
of distinguished dye, he is now exciting the very people to rise
in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has
deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them;
thus paying off former crimes committed against the _liberties_
of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against
the _lives_ of another.--[_Original draught of the Declaration of
Independence, as drawn by Mr. Jefferson, and before it was altered
by the committee._]
The eighth and ninth articles of the treaty bind us to this naval
alliance with Great Britain. By these articles we stipulate to keep
a squadron of at least 80 guns on the coast of Africa for five
years for the suppression of this trade--with a further stipulation
to keep it up until one or the other party shall give notice of a
design to retire from it. This is the insidious way of getting an
onerous measure saddled upon the country. Short-sighted people are
fascinated with the idea of being able to get rid of the burden
when they please; but such burdens are always found to be the most
interminable. In this case Great Britain will never give the notice:
our government will not without a congressional recommendation, and
it will be found difficult to unite the two Houses in a request. The
stipulation may be considered permanent under the delusion of a five
years' limit, and an optional continuance.
The papers communicated do not show at whose instance these articles
were inserted; and the absence of all minutes of conferences leaves
us at a loss to trace their origin and progress in the hands of
the negotiators. The little that is seen would indicate its origin
to be wholly American; evidence _aliunde_ proves it to be wholly
British; and that our Secretary-negotiator was only doing the work
of the British minister in assuming the ostensible paternity of
the articles. In the papers communicated, there is not a syllable
upon the subject from Lord Ashburton. His finger is not seen in
the affair. Mr. Webster appears as sole mover and conductor of the
proposition. In his letter of the 30th of April to Captains Bell and
Paine of the United States navy, he first approaches the subject,
and opens it with a series of questions on the African slave-trade.
This draws forth the answers which I have already shown. This is
the commencement of the business. And here we are struck with the
curious fact, that this letter of inquiry, laying the foundation
for a novel and extraordinary article in the treaty, bears date
44 days before the first written communication from the British
to the American negotiator! and 47 days before the first written
communication from Mr. Webster to Lord Ashburton! It would seem that
much was done by word of mouth before pen was put to paper; and that
in this most essential part of the negotiations, pen was not put
to paper at all, from one negotiator to the other, throughout the
whole affair. Lord Ashburton's name is never found in connection
with the subject! Mr. Webster's only in the notes of inquiry to
the American naval officers. Even in these he does not mention the
treaty, nor allude to the negotiation, nor indicate the purpose
for which information was sought! So that this most extraordinary
article is without a clew to its history, and stands in the treaty
as if it had fallen from the clouds, and chanced to lodge there!
Even the President's message, which undertakes to account for the
article, and to justify it, is silent on the point, though laboring
through a mass of ambiguities and obscurities, evidently calculated
to raise the inference that it originated with us. From the papers
communicated, it is an American proposition, of which the British
negotiator knew nothing until he signed the treaty. That is the
first place where his name is seen in conjunction with it, or seen
in a place to authorize the belief that he knew of it. Yet, it is
certainly a British proposition; it is certainly a British article.
Since the year 1806 Great Britain has been endeavoring to get the
United States into some sort of arrangement for co-operation in the
suppression of the African slave-trade. It was slightly attempted in
Mr. Jefferson's time--again at Ghent; but the warning-voice of the
Father of his country--_no entangling alliances_--saved us on each
occasion. Now we are yoked--yoked in with the British on the coast
of Africa; and when we can get free from it, no mortal can foresee.