Transcriber’s Note: Italics are enclosed in _underscores_. Additional
notes will be found near the end of this ebook.
THE
SECOND ADMINISTRATION
OF
JAMES MADISON
1813–1817
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
BY
HENRY ADAMS.
VOLS. I. AND II.--THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF JEFFERSON.
1801–1805.
VOLS. III. AND IV.--THE SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF JEFFERSON.
1805–1809.
VOLS. V. AND VI.--THE FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF MADISON. 1809–1813.
VOLS. VII., VIII., AND IX.--THE SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF MADISON.
1813–1817. WITH AN INDEX TO THE ENTIRE WORK.
HISTORY
OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
DURING THE SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF
JAMES MADISON
BY HENRY ADAMS
VOL. I.
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1891
_Copyright, 1890_
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ENGLAND ANGRY 1
II. RUSSIAN MEDIATION 26
III. THE EXTRA SESSION OF 1813 48
IV. THE RIVER RAISIN 72
V. PROCTOR AND PERRY 99
VI. THE BATTLE OF THE THAMES 128
VII. DEARBORN’S CAMPAIGN 144
VIII. WILKINSON’S CAMPAIGN 172
IX. MOBILE AND FORT MIMS 206
X. CAMPAIGNS AMONG THE CREEKS 232
XI. THE BLOCKADE 262
XII. “CHESAPEAKE” AND “ARGUS” 285
XIII. PRIVATEERING 309
XIV. RUSSIA AND ENGLAND 339
XV. THE LAST EMBARGO 364
XVI. MONROE AND ARMSTRONG 391
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
CHAPTER I.
THE American declaration of war against England, July 18, 1812, annoyed
those European nations that were gathering their utmost resources for
resistance to Napoleon’s attack. Russia could not but regard it as an
unfriendly act, equally bad for political and commercial interests.
Spain and Portugal, whose armies were fed largely if not chiefly on
American grain imported by British money under British protection,
dreaded to see their supplies cut off. Germany, waiting only for
strength to recover her freedom, had to reckon against one more element
in Napoleon’s vast military resources. England needed to make greater
efforts in order to maintain the advantages she had gained in Russia
and Spain. Even in America, no one doubted the earnestness of England’s
wish for peace; and if Madison and Monroe insisted on her acquiescence
in their terms, they insisted because they believed that their military
position entitled them to expect it. The reconquest of Russia and
Spain by Napoleon, an event almost certain to happen, could hardly fail
to force from England the concessions, not in themselves unreasonable,
which the United States required.
This was, as Madison to the end of his life maintained, “a fair
calculation;”[1] but it was exasperating to England, who thought that
America ought to be equally interested with Europe in overthrowing
the military despotism of Napoleon, and should not conspire with him
for gain. At first the new war disconcerted the feeble Ministry that
remained in office on the death of Spencer Perceval: they counted on
preventing it, and did their utmost to stop it after it was begun.
The tone of arrogance which had so long characterized government and
press, disappeared for the moment. Obscure newspapers, like the London
“Evening Star,” still sneered at the idea that Great Britain was to be
“driven from the proud pre-eminence which the blood and treasure of her
sons have attained for her among the nations, by a piece of striped
bunting flying at the mastheads of a few fir-built frigates, manned by
a handful of bastards and outlaws,”--a phrase which had great success
in America,--but such defiances expressed a temper studiously held in
restraint previous to the moment when the war was seen to be inevitable.
Castlereagh did not abandon the hope of peace until Jonathan Russell,
August 24, reported to him the concessions which the President required
antecedent to negotiation, the stoppage of impressments, dismissal
of impressed seamen, indemnity for spoliations, and abandonment of
paper blockades. The British secretary intimated that he thought
these demands, as conditions precedent to an armistice, somewhat
insulting;[2] and in conversation he explained to Russell that such
concessions would merely cost the Ministry their places without result.
“You are not aware,” he said,[3] “of the great sensibility and jealousy
of the people of England on this subject; and no administration could
expect to remain in power that should consent to renounce the right
of impressment or to suspend the practice, without certainty of an
arrangement which should obviously be calculated to secure its object.”
Russell then proposed an informal understanding,--adding of his own
accord, without authority from his Government, a proposal, afterward
adopted by Congress, that the United States should naturalize no more
British seamen. Castlereagh made the obvious reply that an informal
understanding offered no more guaranty to England than a formal one;
that it had the additional disadvantage of bearing on its face a
character of disguise; that in any case the discussion of guaranties
must precede the understanding; and that Russell had on this subject
neither authority nor instructions.[4]
The correspondence closed September 19, and Russell left England; but
not until October 13, after learning that the President had refused to
ratify the armistice made by Prevost with Dearborn, did the British
government order general reprisals,--and even this order closed with
a proviso that nothing therein contained should affect the previous
authority given to Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren to arrange a
cessation of hostilities.
The realization that no escape could be found from an American war
was forced on the British public at a moment of much discouragement.
Almost simultaneously a series of misfortunes occurred which brought
the stoutest and most intelligent Englishmen to the verge of despair.
In Spain Wellington, after winning the battle of Salamanca in July,
occupied Madrid in August, and obliged Soult to evacuate Andalusia; but
his siege of Burgos failed, and as the French generals concentrated
their scattered forces, Wellington was obliged to abandon Madrid
once more. October 21, he was again in full retreat on Portugal.
The apparent failure of his campaign was almost simultaneous with
the apparent success of Napoleon’s; for the Emperor entered Moscow
September 14, and the news of this triumph, probably decisive of
Russian submission, reached England about October 3. Three days later
arrived intelligence of William Hull’s surrender at Detroit; but this
success was counterbalanced by simultaneous news of Isaac Hull’s
startling capture of the “Guerriere,” and the certainty of a prolonged
war.
In the desponding condition of the British people,--with a deficient
harvest, bad weather, wheat at nearly five dollars a bushel, and the
American supply likely to be cut off; consols at 57½, gold at thirty
per cent premium; a Ministry without credit or authority, and a general
consciousness of blunders, incompetence, and corruption,--every new
tale of disaster sank the hopes of England and called out wails of
despair. In that state of mind the loss of the “Guerriere” assumed
portentous dimensions. The “Times” was especially loud in lamenting the
capture:--
“We witnessed the gloom which that event cast over high and
honorable minds.... Never before in the history of the world did
an English frigate strike to an American; and though we cannot say
that Captain Dacres, under all circumstances, is punishable for
this act, yet we do say there are commanders in the English navy
who would a thousand times rather have gone down with their colors
flying, than have set their fellow sailors so fatal an example.”
No country newspaper in America, railing at Hull’s cowardice and
treachery, showed less knowledge or judgment than the London “Times,”
which had written of nothing but war since its name had been known
in England. Any American could have assured the English press that
British frigates before the “Guerriere” had struck to American;
and even in England men had not forgotten the name of the British
frigate “Serapis,” or that of the American captain Paul Jones. Yet
the “Times’s” ignorance was less unreasonable than its requirement
that Dacres should have gone down with his ship,--a cry of passion
the more unjust to Dacres because he fought his ship as long as she
could float. Such sensitiveness seemed extravagant in a society which
had been hardened by centuries of warfare; yet the “Times” reflected
fairly the feelings of Englishmen. George Canning, speaking in open
Parliament not long afterward,[5] said that the loss of the “Guerriere”
and the “Macedonian” produced a sensation in the country scarcely to
be equalled by the most violent convulsions of Nature. “Neither can I
agree with those who complain of the shock of consternation throughout
Great Britain as having been greater than the occasion required.... It
cannot be too deeply felt that the sacred spell of the invincibility of
the British navy was broken by those unfortunate captures.”
Of all spells that could be cast on a nation, that of believing itself
invincible was perhaps the one most profitably broken; but the process
of recovering its senses was agreeable to no nation, and to England, at
that moment of distress, it was as painful as Canning described. The
matter was not mended by the “Courier” and “Morning Post,” who, taking
their tone from the Admiralty, complained of the enormous superiority
of the American frigates, and called them “line-of-battle ships in
disguise.” Certainly the American forty-four was a much heavier ship
than the British thirty-eight, but the difference had been as well
known in the British navy before these actions as it was afterward; and
Captain Dacres himself, the Englishman who best knew the relative force
of the ships, told his court of inquiry a different story:[6] “I am so
well aware that the success of my opponent was owing to fortune, that
it is my earnest wish, and would be the happiest period of my life, to
be once more opposed to the ‘Constitution,’ with them [the old crew]
under my command, in a frigate of similar force with the ‘Guerriere.’”
After all had been said, the unpleasant result remained that in future
British frigates, like other frigates, could safely fight only their
inferiors in force. What applied to the “Guerriere” and “Macedonian”
against the “Constitution” and “United States,” where the British force
was inferior, applied equally to the “Frolic” against the “Wasp,” where
no inferiority could be shown. The British newspapers thenceforward
admitted what America wished to prove, that, ship for ship, British
were no more than the equals of Americans.
Society soon learned to take a more sensible view of the subject,
but as the first depression passed away a consciousness of personal
wrong took its place. The United States were supposed to have stabbed
England in the back at the moment when her hands were tied, when her
existence was in the most deadly peril and her anxieties were most
heavy. England never could forgive treason so base and cowardice so
vile. That Madison had been from the first a tool and accomplice of
Bonaparte was thenceforward so fixed an idea in British history that
time could not shake it. Indeed, so complicated and so historical had
the causes of war become that no one even in America could explain or
understand them, while Englishmen could see only that America required
England as the price of peace to destroy herself by abandoning her
naval power, and that England preferred to die fighting rather than to
die by her own hand. The American party in England was extinguished;
no further protest was heard against the war; and the British people
thought moodily of revenge.
This result was unfortunate for both parties, but was doubly
unfortunate for America, because her mode of making the issue told
in her enemy’s favor. The same impressions which silenced in England
open sympathy with America, stimulated in America acute sympathy with
England. Argument was useless against people in a passion, convinced
of their own injuries. Neither Englishmen nor Federalists were open to
reasoning. They found their action easy from the moment they classed
the United States as an ally of France, like Bavaria or Saxony; and
they had no scruples of conscience, for the practical alliance was
clear, and the fact proved sufficiently the intent.
This outbreak of feeling took place in the month of October, when the
hopes of England were lowest. While Wellington retreated from Madrid
and Burgos to Ciudad Rodrigo; while Napoleon was supposed to be still
victorious at Moscow, although his retreat began October 19, two days
before Wellington abandoned the siege of Burgos; and while, October 18,
the “Wasp” captured the “Frolic,” and October 25 the “United States”
captured the “Macedonian,”--in England public opinion broke into outcry
against the temporizing conduct of the government toward America, and
demanded vigorous prosecution of the war.
“In any other times than the present,” said the “Times” of October
30, “it would appear utterly incredible that men should adopt
so drivelling a line of conduct as to think of waging a war of
conciliation and forbearance, and that with enemies whom they
themselves represent as alike faithless and implacable.”
The Government hastened to pacify these complaints. Orders were given
to hurry an overwhelming force of ships-of-the-line and frigates to the
American coast. Almost immediately England recovered from her dismay;
for November 11 news arrived that the Russians were again masters of
Moscow, and that Napoleon was retreating. Day after day the posts
arrived from Russia, bringing accounts more and more encouraging, until
when Parliament met, November 24, the hope that Napoleon might never
escape from Russia had become strong.
Thus the new Ministry found themselves able to face opposition with
unexpected strength. Madison’s calculations, reasonable as they seemed
to be, were overthrown, and the glow of English delight over the
success of Russia made the burden of the American war seem easy to
bear. In Parliament hardly a voice was raised for peace. The Marquess
Wellesley in the debate on the King’s speech attacked ministers,
not because they had brought the country into war with America, but
because they had been unprepared for it; “they ought as statesmen to
have known that the American government had been long infected with
a deadly hatred toward this country, and, if he might be allowed
an unusual application of a word, with a deadly affection toward
France.”[7] America had been suffered to carry on hostilities without
danger to herself, and must be convinced of her folly and desperation.
Lord Grenville also asserted that the American government was always
hostile to England, but that only the conduct of ministers had enabled
it to pluck up courage to show its enmity.[8] Canning, in the Commons,
attacked still more sharply the forbearance of the Ministry and their
silence toward America:
“It never entered into my mind that the mighty naval power of
England would be allowed to sleep while our commerce was swept
from the surface of the Atlantic; and that at the end of six
months’ war it would be proclaimed in a speech from the throne that
the time was now at length come when the long-withheld thunder of
Britain must be launched against an implacable foe, and the fulness
of her power at length drawn out. It never entered into my mind
that we should send a fleet to take rest and shelter in our own
ports in North America, and that we should then attack the American
ports with a flag of truce.”[9]
From such criticisms Lord Castlereagh had no difficulty in defending
himself. Whitbread alone maintained that injustice had been done to
America, and that measures ought to be taken for peace.
This debate took place November 30, two days after the destruction of
Napoleon’s army in passing the Beresina. From that moment, and during
the next eighteen months, England had other matters to occupy her mind
than the disagreeable subject of the American war. Napoleon arrived in
Paris December 18, and set himself to the task of renewing the army of
half a million men which had been lost in Russia, and of strengthening
his hold on Germany, where a violent popular emotion threatened to
break into open alliance with the Russian Czar. December 30 the
Prussian corps of the Grand Army deserted to the Russians; and soon
afterward the French abandoned Poland and the province of old Prussia,
and with difficulty, no enemy attacking, held Berlin. The interest
of England turned to the negotiations and military movements of the
Continent, After January 1, 1813, Englishmen never willingly thought of
the American war, or gave attention to terms of peace. They regarded
the result in America as dependent on the result in Germany; and they
would have ignored the war altogether had not the American frigates and
privateers from time to time compelled their attention.
With the prospect of a great trade about to open with the continent
of Europe, as the French garrisons were driven out of Germany and
Spain, English manufacturers could afford to wait with patience for
better times; but although a nation so long accustomed to the chances
of war could adapt itself quickly to changes in the course of trade,
England felt more than it liked to admit the annoyance of American
hostilities on the ocean. During the first few months this annoyance
was the greater because it was thought to be the result of official
negligence. December 30, a merchant writing to the “Times” declared
that “the Americans have taken upward of two hundred sail of British
merchantmen and three or four packets from the West Indies. Recent
advices from the Windward Islands state that the Admiral is mortified
at the depredations of the American privateers, it not being in his
power to prevent them, most of the few cruisers under his orders having
been out so long from England that their copper is nearly off,--so that
the privateers remain unmolested, as they can sail round our ships
whenever they think proper; they are in consequence become so daring
as even to cut vessels out of harbors, though protected by batteries,
and to land and carry off cattle from plantations. The accounts from
Jamaica by the mail which arrived on Friday represent that island to be
literally blockaded by American privateers.”
When the press spoke at all of naval matters, it talked wildly about
the American frigates. “Such fearful odds,” said the “Morning Post” in
regard to the “Macedonian,” December 26, “would break the heart and
spirit of our sailors, and dissolve that charm, that spell, which has
made our navy invincible.” “The land-spell of the French is broken,
and so is our sea-spell,” said the “Times.” The American frigates were
exaggerated into ships-of-the-line, and were to be treated as such,
British frigates keeping out of their way. At first, the British naval
officers hesitated to accept this view of a subject which had never
before been suggested. Neither Captain Dacres nor his court-martial
attributed his defeat to this cause; but before long, nearly all
England agreed to rate the American frigates as seventy-fours, and
complained that the Americans, with their accustomed duplicity, should
have deceived the British navy by representing the “Constitution” and
“United States” to be frigates. The “Times” protested in vain against
this weakness:--
“Good God! that a few short months should have so altered the tone
of British sentiments! Is it true, or is it not, that our navy was
accustomed to hold the Americans in utter contempt? Is it true, or
is it not, that the ‘Guerriere’ sailed up and down the American
coast with her name painted in large characters on her sails, in
boyish defiance of Commodore Rodgers? Would any captain, however
young, have indulged such a foolish piece of vain-boasting if he
had not been carried forward by the almost unanimous feeling of his
associates?”[10]
To the charge that the British Admiralty had been taken unprepared by
the war, the Admiralty replied that its naval force on the American
station at the outbreak of hostilities exceeded the American in the
proportion of eighty-five to fourteen.
“We have since sent out more line-of-battle ships and heavier
frigates,” added the “Times,” January 4, 1813. “Surely we must now
mean to smother the American navy.... A very short time before the
capture of the ‘Guerriere’ an American frigate was an object of
ridicule to our honest tars. Now the prejudice is actually setting
the other way, and great pains seem to be taken by the friends of
ministers to prepare the public for the surrender of a British
seventy-four to an opponent lately so much contemned.”
The loss of two or three thirty-eight gun frigates on the ocean was a
matter of trifling consequence to the British government, which had a
force of four ships-of-the-line and six or eight frigates in Chesapeake
Bay alone, and which built every year dozens of ships-of-the-line
and frigates to replace those lost or worn out; but although the
American privateers wrought more injury to British interests than was
caused or could be caused by the American navy, the pride of England
cared little about mercantile losses, and cared immensely for its
fighting reputation. The theory that the American was a degenerate
Englishman,--a theory chiefly due to American teachings,--lay at
the bottom of British politics. Even the late British minister at
Washington, Foster, a man of average intelligence, thought it manifest
good taste and good sense to say of the Americans in his speech of
February 18, 1813, in Parliament, that “generally speaking, they were
not a people we should be proud to acknowledge as our relations.”[11]
Decatur and Hull were engaged in a social rather than in a political
contest, and were aware that the serious work on their hands had little
to do with England’s power, but much to do with her manners. The
mortification of England at the capture of her frigates was the measure
of her previous arrogance.
The process of acquiring knowledge in such light as was furnished by
the cannon of Hull, Decatur, and Bainbridge could not be rendered easy
or rapid. News of the American victories dropped in at intervals, as
though American captains intentionally prolonged the enjoyment of their
certain success, in order to keep England in constant ill temper.
News of the “Java” arrived about the middle of March, and once more
the press broke into a chorus of complaints. The “Times” renewed its
outcry; the “Courier” abused the “Times” for its “tone of whining
lamentation, of affected sensibility, and puerile grief,” but admitted
that the behavior of the American frigates seemed extraordinary; while
the “Pilot,” the chief naval authority, lamented in set periods the
incomprehensible event:--
“The public will learn, with sentiments which we shall not
presume to anticipate, that a third British frigate has struck
to an American. This is an occurrence that calls for serious
reflection,--this, and the fact stated in our paper of yesterday,
that Loyd’s list contains notices of upwards of five hundred
British vessels captured in seven months by the Americans. Five
hundred merchantmen and three frigates! Can these statements be
true; and can the English people hear them unmoved? Any one who
had predicted such a result of an American war this time last year
would have been treated as a madman or a traitor. He would have
been told, if his opponents had condescended to argue with him,
that long ere seven months had elapsed the American flag would be
swept from the seas, the contemptible navy of the United States
annihilated, and their maritime arsenals rendered a heap of ruins.
Yet down to this moment not a single American frigate has struck
her flag. They insult and laugh at our want of enterprise and
vigor. They leave their ports when they please, and return to them
when it suits their convenience; they traverse the Atlantic; they
beset the West India Islands; they advance to the very chops of the
Channel; they parade along the coasts of South America; nothing
chases, nothing intercepts, nothing engages them but to yield them
triumph.”
The immediate moral drawn from these complaints was the necessity of
punishing the United States; but no one could longer deny that the
necessary punishment was likely to prove tedious and costly. February
18 Parliament took up the subject of the American war, and both
Houses debated it. In the Lords, Bathurst made a temperate speech
devoted to showing that America in claiming immunity from impressments
claimed more than England could afford to yield,--“a right hitherto
exercised without dispute, and of the most essential importance to our
maritime superiority.” Lord Lansdowne replied with tact and judgment,
rather hinting than saying that the right was becoming too costly
for assertion. “Some time ago it was imagined on all hands that in
the event of a war with America, the first operation would be the
destruction of her navy. What the fact had turned out to be, he was
almost ashamed to mention. If any one were asked what had been the
success of our navy in this war, he would unfortunately find some
difficulty in giving an answer.”[12] Lord Liverpool, while defending
his administration from the charge of imbecility, tended to strengthen
the prevailing impression by the tone of his complaints against
America: “Although she might have had wrongs, although she might
have had grounds for complaint, although she might have had pressing
provocations, yet she ought to have looked to this country as the
guardian power to which she was indebted not only for her comforts,
not only for her rank in the scale of civilization, but for her very
existence.”[13] Perhaps these words offered as good an explanation as
the Prime Minister could give of the war itself, for apart from the
unconscious sarcasm they contained, they implied that England assumed
to act as guardian to the United States, and had hitherto denied to the
United States the right to act independently.
Both Lord Holland and Lord Erskine gently glanced at this assumption;
and Erskine went so far as to intimate that sooner or later England
must give way. “It has been said that this war, if the Americans
persist in their claims, must be eternal. If so, our prospects are
disheartening. America is a growing country,--increasing every day
in numbers, in strength, in resources of every kind. In a lengthened
contest all the advantages are on her side, and against this country.”
The warning lost none of its point from Lord Eldon, who, always ready
to meet any logical necessity by an equally logical absurdity, granted
that “unless America should think proper to alter her tone, he did not
see how the national differences could be settled.”
Such a debate was little likely to discourage America. Every country
must begin war by asserting that it will never give way, and of all
countries England, which had waged innumerable wars, knew best when
perseverance cost more than concession. Even at that early moment
Parliament was evidently perplexed, and would willingly have yielded
had it seen means of escape from its naval fetich, impressment.
Perhaps the perplexity was more evident in the Commons than in the
Lords, for Castlereagh, while defending his own course with elaborate
care, visibly stumbled over the right of impressment. Even while
claiming that its abandonment would have been “vitally dangerous if
not fatal” to England’s security, he added that he “would be the last
man in the world to underrate the inconvenience which the Americans
sustained in consequence of our assertion of the right of search.” The
embarrassment became still plainer when he narrowed the question to one
of statistics, and showed that the whole contest was waged over the
forcible retention of some eight hundred seamen among one hundred and
forty-five thousand employed in British service. Granting the number
were twice as great, he continued, “could the House believe that there
was any man so infatuated, or that the British empire was driven to
such straits, that for such a paltry consideration as seventeen hundred
sailors, his Majesty’s government would needlessly irritate the pride
of a neutral nation or violate that justice which was due to one
country from another?” If Liverpool’s argument explained the causes of
war, Castlereagh’s explained its inevitable result, for since the war
must cost England at least ten million pounds a year, could Parliament
be so infatuated as to pay ten thousand pounds a year for each American
sailor detained in service, when one tenth of the amount, if employed
in raising the wages of the British sailor, would bring any required
number of seamen back to their ships? The whole British navy in 1812
cost twenty million pounds; the pay-roll amounted to only three million
pounds; the common sailor was paid four pounds bounty and eighteen
pounds a year, which might have been trebled at half the cost of an
American war.
No one rose in the House to press this reasoning. Castlereagh completed
his argument, showing, with more temper than logic, that England was
wholly in the right and America altogether in the wrong; the American
government and people were infatuated; they had an inordinate and
insolent spirit of encroachment and unreasonable hostility; had
prostituted their character and showed an unexampled degeneracy of
feeling. “For America he confessed that he deeply lamented the injury
which her character had sustained by the conduct of her government; it
was conduct unworthy of any State calling itself civilized and free.”
Castlereagh’s invective had the merit of being as little serious as his
logic, and left as little sting; but what Castlereagh could say without
causing more than a smile, never failed to exasperate Americans like
drops of vitriol when it came from the lips of George Canning. Canning
had not hitherto succeeded better in winning the confidence of England
than in curbing the insolence of America; he was still in opposition,
while the man whom in 1807 he could hardly condescend to consider a
rival was Secretary for Foreign Affairs and leader of the House. Worst
of all, Canning could not escape the necessity of supporting him, for
Castlereagh’s position in regard to America was strong, while Canning’s
own position was weak and needed constant excuse. In the debate of
Feb. 18, 1813, he undertook the difficult task of appearing to attack
Castlereagh while defending himself.
Canning’s speech began by an argument so characteristic as to win the
praise of John Wilson Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty,--a man less
than most politicians prone to waste praise on opponents. Whitbread
had quoted, in excuse of the American practice of naturalization, two
Acts of Parliament,--one the 6th Anne, according to which any foreigner
who served two years in any British vessel, military or merchant,
without further condition or even oath, or more than the statement of
the fact of service, became entitled to every protection of a natural
subject of the realm. No words could be more emphatic than those of
the statutes. “Such foreign mariner,” said the 6th Anne, “shall to all
intents and purposes be deemed and taken to be a natural-born subject
of his Majesty’s kingdom of Great Britain, and have and enjoy all the
privileges, powers, rights, and capacities” which a native could enjoy.
Again, by the 13th George II. every foreign seaman who in time of war
served two years on board an English ship by virtue of the king’s
proclamation was _ipso facto_ naturalized. Other naturalization laws
existed, guaranteeing all the privileges of a natural-born subject to
foreigners under certain conditions; but the Acts of Anne and George
II. were most in point, as they referred to foreign sailors alone;
and with these laws on the statute-book Parliament seemed to stand in
an unfavorable position for disputing the right of America to adopt a
similar system. Canning’s argument on the meaning of these statutes was
interesting, not only as an example of his own mind, but as the only
legal justification of a long war which England fought against America
at prodigious expense,--a justification which she maintained for years
to be sound.
“My construction of the Acts of Anne was altogether different,”
said Canning in reply to these quotations. “I understood that by
it this country professed to give that only which it is competent
to bestow without interfering in any degree with the rights or
claims of other Powers; that it imparted to foreigners on certain
conditions certain municipal privileges, but leaves untouched and
unimpaired their native allegiance.... The enactments of this
statute are a testimony of national gratitude to brave men of
whatever country who may lend their aid in fighting the battles
of Great Britain, but not an invitation to them to abandon the
cause of their own country when it may want their aid; not an
encouragement to them to deny or to undervalue the sacred and
indestructible duty which they owe to their own sovereign and to
their native soil.”
Something peculiarly sacred must have inhered in the statute of Anne
which thus conferred naturalization on Dutch or Swedish seamen as “a
testimony of national gratitude” for “fighting the battles of Great
Britain” for two years in the British merchant service in time of
peace, and converted them into citizens enjoying “all the privileges,
powers, rights, and capacities” of natural-born subjects of Great
Britain, which consisted, according to Canning, only in “certain
municipal privileges” in England, subject to the will of a foreign
sovereign. Such a definition of the “privileges, powers, rights, and
capacities” of a natural-born subject of his Majesty’s kingdom of
Great Britain seemed new to American lawyers; but it was received with
applause by the House, and was further developed by Croker, who laid
down the principle, new to the popular view of England’s pride, that
the naturalized citizen, who was by the law required “to all intents
and purposes” to “be deemed and taken to be a natural-born subject,”
was in fact by the Admiralty “considered as having two countries,--the
voluntary service of the one being looked upon as unable to debar the
natural allegiance to the other.”
The rest of Canning’s speech consisted in defence of impressment
and of paper blockades, and in panegyric upon European republics
at the expense of “the hard features of transatlantic democracy.”
While assailing the British government because “the arm which should
have launched the thunderbolt was occupied in guiding the pen,” he
expressed his devout wish that the war might not be concluded until
England had smothered in victories the disasters to which she was
so little habituated. If an harangue of this character served in
any degree to guide or aid the councils of England, it served much
more effectually the war-party of America, where Canning was held in
singular antipathy, and where every admission he made in regard to “the
shock of consternation” caused by the American frigates gave pleasure
more acute than any pain his sarcastic phrases could thenceforward
inflict.
Alexander Baring spoke with his usual good sense, pointing out that
Castlereagh’s speech proved chiefly the greater interest of England
to call for and court negotiation on the subject of impressments.
Whitbread challenged public opinion by going to the verge of actual
sympathy with America. The debate ended in an unopposed vote for
a vigorous prosecution of the war, leaving the subject in truth
untouched, except that England had avowed an extreme desire to punish
America, and naturally felt an extreme irritation because America
showed ability to bear punishment.
The spring came, bringing no new prospects. England refused to make a
suggestion on which the governments could discuss terms of peace. She
refused even to think upon the problem, but massed a huge armament in
Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River to restore her naval invincibility.
Yet reflection seemed still to be silently at work, for, March 22,
the “Times” interrupted its outcry over the loss of the “Java” by
publishing a temperate article on the new Foreign Seamen Bill of
Congress,--an article in which the suggestion first appeared that peace
might after all be restored by simply omitting in the pacification any
mention of impressment. The idea found support nowhere; but while,
insufficient as it seemed, the human imagination could hardly conceive
of any other expedient, at the same moment the uselessness of trying
to obtain peace on any terms was made clear by the interference of the
Russian Czar.