neutral trade, the cabinet of Britain resorted at length to the sweeping
system of blockades, under the name of orders in council, which has
been molded and managed as might best suit its political views, its
commercial jealousies, or the avidity of British cruisers.
To our remonstrances against the complicated and transcendent injustice
of this innovation the first reply was that the orders were reluctantly
adopted by Great Britain as a necessary retaliation on decrees of her
enemy proclaiming a general blockade of the British Isles at a time when
the naval force of that enemy dared not issue from his own ports. She
was reminded without effect that her own prior blockades, unsupported by
an adequate naval force actually applied and continued, were a bar to
this plea; that executed edicts against millions of our property could
not be retaliation on edicts confessedly impossible to be executed; that
retaliation, to be just, should fall on the party setting the guilty
example, not on an innocent party which was not even chargeable with an
acquiescence in it.
When deprived of this flimsy veil for a prohibition of our trade with
her enemy by the repeal of his prohibition of our trade with Great
Britain, her cabinet, instead of a corresponding repeal or a practical
discontinuance of its orders, formally avowed a determination to persist
in them against the United States until the markets of her enemy should
be laid open to British products, thus asserting an obligation on a
neutral power to require one belligerent to encourage by its internal
regulations the trade of another belligerent, contradicting her own
practice toward all nations, in peace as well as in war, and betraying
the insincerity of those professions which inculcated a belief that,
having resorted to her orders with regret, she was anxious to find an
occasion for putting an end to them.
Abandoning still more all respect for the neutral rights of the United
States and for its own consistency, the British Government now demands
as prerequisites to a repeal of its orders as they relate to the United
States that a formality should be observed in the repeal of the French
decrees nowise necessary to their termination nor exemplified by British
usage, and that the French repeal, besides including that portion of the
decrees which operates within a territorial jurisdiction, as well as
that which operates on the high seas, against the commerce of the United
States should not be a single and special repeal in relation to the
United States, but should be extended to whatever other neutral nations
unconnected with them may be affected by those decrees. And as an
additional insult, they are called on for a formal disavowal of
conditions and pretensions advanced by the French Government for which
the United States are so far from having made themselves responsible
that, in official explanations which have been published to the world,
and in a correspondence of the American minister at London with the
British minister for foreign affairs such a responsibility was
explicitly and emphatically disclaimed.
It has become, indeed, sufficiently certain that the commerce of
the United States is to be sacrificed, not as interfering with the
belligerent rights of Great Britain; not as supplying the wants of
her enemies, which she herself supplies; but as interfering with the
monopoly which she covets for her own commerce and navigation. She
carries on a war against the lawful commerce of a friend that she may
the better carry on a commerce with an enemy--a commerce polluted by the
forgeries and perjuries which are for the most part the only passports
by which it can succeed.
Anxious to make every experiment short of the last resort of injured
nations, the United States have withheld from Great Britain, under
successive modifications, the benefits of a free intercourse with their
market, the loss of which could not but outweigh the profits accruing
from her restrictions of our commerce with other nations. And to entitle
these experiments to the more favorable consideration they were so
framed as to enable her to place her adversary under the exclusive
operation of them. To these appeals her Government has been equally
inflexible, as if willing to make sacrifices of every sort rather than
yield to the claims of justice or renounce the errors of a false pride.
Nay, so far were the attempts carried to overcome the attachment
of the British cabinet to its unjust edicts that it received every
encouragement within the competency of the executive branch of our
Government to expect that a repeal of them would be followed by a war
between the United States and France, unless the French edicts should
also be repealed. Even this communication, although silencing forever
the plea of a disposition in the United States to acquiesce in those
edicts originally the sole plea for them, received no attention.
If no other proof existed of a predetermination of the British
Government against a repeal of its orders, it might be found in the
correspondence of the minister plenipotentiary of the United States at
London and the British secretary for foreign affairs in 1810, on the
question whether the blockade of May, 1806, was considered as in force
or as not in force. It had been ascertained that the French Government,
which urged this blockade as the ground of its Berlin decree, was
willing in the event of its removal to repeal that decree, which, being
followed by alternate repeals of the other offensive edicts, might
abolish the whole system on both sides. This inviting opportunity for
accomplishing an object so important to the United States, and professed
so often to be the desire of both the belligerents, was made known
to the British Government. As that Government admits that an actual
application of an adequate force is necessary to the existence of a
legal blockade, and it was notorious that if such a force had ever been
applied its long discontinuance had annulled the blockade in question,
there could be no sufficient objection on the part of Great Britain to a
formal revocation of it, and no imaginable objection to a declaration of
the fact that the blockade did not exist. The declaration would have
been consistent with her avowed principles of blockade, and would have
enabled the United States to demand from France the pledged repeal of
her decrees, either with success, in which case the way would have
been opened for a general repeal of the belligerent edicts, or without
success, in which case the United States would have been justified
in turning their measures exclusively against France. The British
Government would, however, neither rescind the blockade nor declare its
nonexistence, nor permit its nonexistence to be inferred and affirmed
by the American plenipotentiary. On the contrary, by representing the
blockade to be comprehended in the orders in council, the United States
were compelled so to regard it in their subsequent proceedings.
There was a period when a favorable change in the policy of the
British cabinet was justly considered as established. The minister
plenipotentiary of His Britannic Majesty here proposed an adjustment of
the differences more immediately endangering the harmony of the two
countries. The proposition was accepted with the promptitude and
cordiality corresponding with the invariable professions of this
Government. A foundation appeared to be laid for a sincere and lasting
reconciliation. The prospect, however, quickly vanished. The whole
proceeding was disavowed by the British Government without any
explanations which could at that time repress the belief that the
disavowal proceeded from a spirit of hostility to the commercial rights
and prosperity of the United States; and it has since come into proof
that at the very moment when the public minister was holding the
language of friendship and inspiring confidence in the sincerity of the
negotiation with which he was charged a secret agent of his Government
was employed in intrigues having for their object a subversion of our
Government and a dismemberment of our happy union.
In reviewing the conduct of Great Britain toward the United States
our attention is necessarily drawn to the warfare just renewed by the
savages on one of our extensive frontiers--a warfare which is known to
spare neither age nor sex and to be distinguished by features peculiarly
shocking to humanity. It is difficult to account for the activity and
combinations which have for some time been developing themselves among
tribes in constant intercourse with British traders and garrisons
without connecting their hostility with that influence and without
recollecting the authenticated examples of such interpositions
heretofore furnished by the officers and agents of that Government.
Such is the spectacle of injuries and indignities which have been heaped
on our country, and such the crisis which its unexampled forbearance and
conciliatory efforts have not been able to avert. It might at least
have been expected that an enlightened nation, if less urged by moral
obligations or invited by friendly dispositions on the part of the
United States, would have found in its true interest alone a sufficient
motive to respect their rights and their tranquillity on the high
seas; that an enlarged policy would have favored that free and general
circulation of commerce in which the British nation is at all times
interested, and which in times of war is the best alleviation of its
calamities to herself as well as to other belligerents; and more
especially that the British cabinet would not, for the sake of a
precarious and surreptitious intercourse with hostile markets, have
persevered in a course of measures which necessarily put at hazard the
invaluable market of a great and growing country, disposed to cultivate
the mutual advantages of an active commerce.
Other counsels have prevailed. Our moderation and conciliation have
had no other effect than to encourage perseverance and to enlarge
pretensions. We behold our seafaring citizens still the daily victims of
lawless violence, committed on the great common and highway of nations,
even within sight of the country which owes them protection. We behold
our vessels, freighted with the products of our soil and industry, or
returning with the honest proceeds of them, wrested from their lawful
destinations, confiscated by prize courts no longer the organs of public
law but the instruments of arbitrary edicts, and their unfortunate crews
dispersed and lost, or forced or inveigled in British ports into British
fleets, whilst arguments are employed in support of these aggressions
which have no foundation but in a principle equally supporting a claim
to regulate our external commerce in all cases whatsoever.
We behold, in fine, on the side of Great Britain a state of war against
the United States, and on the side of the United States a state of peace
toward Great Britain.
Whether the United States shall continue passive under these progressive
usurpations and these accumulating wrongs, or, opposing force to force
in defense of their national rights, shall commit a just cause into
the hands of the Almighty Disposer of Events, avoiding all connections
which might entangle it in the contest or views of other powers,
and preserving a constant readiness to concur in an honorable
reestablishment of peace and friendship, is a solemn question which
the Constitution wisely confides to the legislative department of the
Government. In recommending it to their early deliberations I am happy
in the assurance that the decision will be worthy the enlightened and
patriotic councils of a virtuous, a free, and a powerful nation.
Having presented this view of the relations of the United States with
Great Britain and of the solemn alternative growing out of them, I
proceed to remark that the communications last made to Congress on the
subject of our relations with France will have shewn that since the
revocation of her decrees, as they violated the neutral rights of the
United States, her Government has authorized illegal captures by its
privateers and public ships, and that other outrages have been practiced
on our vessels and our citizens. It will have been seen also that no
indemnity had been provided or satisfactorily pledged for the extensive
spoliations committed under the violent and retrospective orders of the
French Government against the property of our citizens seized within the
jurisdiction of France. I abstain at this time from recommending to the
consideration of Congress definitive measures with respect to that
nation, in the expectation that the result of unclosed discussions
between our minister plenipotentiary at Paris and the French Government
will speedily enable Congress to decide with greater advantage on the
course due to the rights, the interests, and the honor of our country.
JAMES MADISON.
JUNE 30, 1812.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:
With a view the better to adapt to the public service the volunteer
force contemplated by the act passed on the 6th day of February, I
recommend to the consideration of Congress the expediency of making the
requisite provision for the officers thereof being commissioned by the
authority of the United States.
Considering the distribution of the military forces of the United States
required by the circumstances of our country, I recommend also to the
consideration of Congress the expediency of providing for the
appointment of an additional number of general officers, and of deputies
in the Adjutant's, Quartermaster's, Inspector's, and Paymaster's
departments of the Army, and for the employment in cases of emergency of
additional engineers.
JAMES MADISON.
JULY 1, 1812.
_To the House of Representatives of the United States_:
In compliance with the resolution of the House of Representatives of the
26th of June, I transmit the information contained in the documents
herewith enclosed.
JAMES MADISON.
_From the Secretary of State to General George Matthews and Colonel
John M'Kee_.
DEPARTMENT OF STATE, _January 26, 1811_.
The President of the United States having appointed you jointly and
severally commissioners for carrying into effect certain provisions of
an act of Congress (a copy of which is inclosed) relative to the portion
of the Floridas situated to the east of the river Perdido, you will
repair to that quarter with all possible expedition, concealing from
general observation the trust committed to you with that discretion
which the delicacy and importance of the undertaking require.
Should you find Governor Folk or the local authority existing there
inclined to surrender in an amicable manner the possession of the
remaining portion or portions of West Florida now held by him in the
name of the Spanish Monarchy, you are to accept in behalf of the United
States the abdication of his or of the other existing authority and the
jurisdiction of the country over which it extends. And should a
stipulation be insisted on for the redelivery of the country at a future
period, you may engage for such redelivery to the lawful sovereign.
The debts clearly due from the Spanish Government to the people of the
Territory surrendered may, if insisted on, be assumed within reasonable
limits and under specified descriptions to be settled hereafter as a
claim against Spain in an adjustment of our affairs with her. You may
also guarantee, in the name of the United States, the confirmation of
all such titles to land as are clearly sanctioned by Spanish laws, and
Spanish civil functionaries, where no special reasons may require
changes, are to be permitted to remain in office with the assurance of a
continuation of the prevailing laws, with such alterations only as may
be necessarily required in the new situation of the country.
If it should be required and be found necessary, you may agree to
advance, as above, a reasonable sum for the transportation of the
Spanish troops.
These directions are adapted to one of the contingencies specified in
the act of Congress, namely, the amicable surrender of the possession of
the Territory by the local ruling authority. But should the arrangement
contemplated by the statute not be made, and should there be room to
entertain a suspicion of an existing design in any foreign power to
occupy the country in question, you are to keep yourselves on the alert,
and on the first undoubted manifestation of the approach of a force for
that purpose you will exercise with promptness and vigor the powers with
which you are invested by the President to preoccupy by force the
Territory, to the entire exclusion of any armament that may be advancing
to take the possession of it. In this event you will exercise a sound
discretion in applying the powers given with respect to debts, titles to
lands, civil officers, and the continuation of the Spanish laws, taking
care to commit the Government on no point further than may be necessary;
and should any Spanish military force remain within the country after
the occupancy by the troops of the United States, you may in such case
aid in their removal from the same.
The universal toleration which the laws of the United States assure to
every religious persuasion will not escape you as an argument for
quieting the minds of uninformed individuals who may entertain fears on
that head.
The conduct you are to pursue in regard to East Florida must be
regulated by the dictates of your own judgments, on a close view and
accurate knowledge of the precise state of things there, and of the real
disposition of the Spanish Government always recurring to the present
instruction as the paramount rule of your proceedings. Should you
discover an inclination in the governor of East Florida, or in the
existing local authority, amicably to surrender that province into the
possession of the United States, you are to accept it on the same terms
that are prescribed by these instructions in relation to West Florida.
And in case of the actual appearance of any attempt to take possession
by a foreign power, you will pursue the same effective measures for the
occupation of the Territory and for the exclusion of the foreign force
as you are directed to pursue with respect to the country east of the
Perdido, forming at this time the extent of Governor Folk's
jurisdiction.
If you should, under these instructions, obtain possession of Mobile,
you will lose no time in informing Governor Claiborne thereof, with a
request that he will without delay take the necessary steps for the
occupation of the same.
All ordnance and military stores that may be found in the Territory must
be held as the property of the Spanish Government, to be accounted for
hereafter to the proper authority, and you will not fail to transmit an
inventory thereof to this Department.
If in the execution of any part of these instructions you should need
the aid of a military force, the same will be afforded you upon your
application to the commanding officer of the troops of the United States
on that station, or to the commanding officer of the nearest post, in
virtue of orders which have been issued from the War Department. And in
case you should, moreover, need naval assistance, you will receive the
same upon your application to the naval commander in pursuance of orders
from the Navy Department.
From the Treasury Department will be issued the necessary instructions
in relation to imposts and duties, and to the slave ships whose arrival
is apprehended.
The President, relying upon your discretion, authorizes you to draw upon
the collectors of Orleans and Savannah for such sums as may be necessary
to defray unavoidable expenses that may be incurred in the execution of
these instructions, not exceeding in your drafts on New Orleans $8,000
and in your drafts on Savannah $2,000, without further authority, of
which expenses you will hereafter exhibit a detailed account duly
supported by satisfactory vouchers.
POSTSCRIPT.--If Governor Folk should unexpectedly require and
pertinaciously insist that the stipulation for the redelivery of the
Territory should also include that portion of the country which is
situated west of the river Perdido, you are, in yielding to such demand,
only to use general words that may by implication comprehend that
portion of country; but at the same time you are expressly to provide
that such stipulation shall not in any way impair or affect the right or
title of the United States to the same.
_The Secretary of State to General Matthews_.
DEPARTMENT OF STATE, _April 4, 1812_.
General MATTHEWS, etc.
SIR: I have had the honor to receive your letter of the 14th of March,
and have now to communicate to you the sentiments of the President on
the very interesting subject to which it relates.
I am sorry to have to state that the measures which you appear to have
adopted for obtaining possession of Amelia Island and other parts of
Bast Florida are not authorized by the law of the United States or the
instructions founded on it under which you have acted.
You were authorized by the law, a copy of which was communicated to you,
and by your instructions, which are strictly conformable to it, to take
possession of East Florida only in case one of the following contingencies
should happen: Either that the governor or other existing local
authority should be disposed to place it amicably in the hands of the
United States, or that an attempt should be made to, take possession
of it by a foreign power. Should the first contingency happen it would
follow that the arrangement, being amicable, would require no force on
the part of the United States to carry it into effect. It was only in
case of an attempt to take it by a foreign power that force could be
necessary, in which event only were you authorized to avail yourself
of it.
In neither of these contingencies was it the policy of the law or
purpose of the Executive to wrest the Province forcibly from Spain,
but only to occupy it with a view to prevent its falling into the
hands of any foreign power, and to hold that pledge under the existing
peculiarity of the circumstances of the Spanish Monarchy for a just
result in an amicable negotiation with Spain.
Had the United States been disposed to proceed otherwise, that intention
would have been manifested by a change of the law and suitable measures
to carry it into effect; and as it was in their power to take possession
whenever they might think that circumstances authorized and required it,
it would be the more to be regretted if possession should be effected by
any means irregular in themselves and subjecting the Government of the
United States to unmerited censure.
The views of the Executive respecting East Florida are further
illustrated by your instructions as to West Florida. Although the United
States have thought that they had a good title to the latter Province,
they did not take possession until after the Spanish authority had been
subverted by a revolutionary proceeding, and the contingency of the
country being thrown into foreign hands had forced itself into view. Nor
did they then, nor have they since, dispossessed the Spanish troops of
the post which they occupied. If they did not think proper to take
possession by force of a province to which they thought they were justly
entitled, it could not be presumed that they should intend to act
differently in respect to one to which they had not such a claim.
I may add that although due sensibility has been always felt for the
injuries which were received from the Spanish Government in the last
war, the present situation of Spain has been a motive for a moderate and
pacific policy toward her.