an American warship accomplished what diplomats had failed to do. Of general interest for the period, but with a bearing only indirect on American diplomacy, was the New England journey of John Henry. While Rose was still at Washington, Henry, working in the interest of Sir James Craig, the Governor of Lower Canada, established contacts with leading secessionists in New England, and confirmed to his employer's satisfaction the disloyalty of that section. But his reports were so general in their terms that when they were eventually purchased by the United States Government, the "Henry Letters" yielded less incriminating evidence than had been anticipated.25 Even as in martial conflict, the diplomats make way for fighting men, so in the substitute for war that Jefferson imposed, diplomacy took second place to pressure of another sort. Armstrong remained at Paris; Pinkney at London. But the real turn of events rested with the fortunes of the Embargo. These depended not alone on the steadfastness of the American people, but on the shifting scene in Europe where incalculable forces shaped their destiny. Thus Jefferson, whose enforcement of his favorite measure revealed an unexpected grasp of executive detail, found himself in April, 1808, at the close of an exhausting session of Congress, confronting the great test of his career. The fortunes of America were transferred to Spain, the original source of difficulties, and on the outcome there depended the fate of the Embargo. In two respects Spain proved determinative. So long as Napoleon confronted only the decadent fortunes of her royal house, his insolence knew no check. But soon an uprising at Madrid unleashed the forces of rebellion. On July 29th his general, Dupont, surrendered 20,000 men. The fleet at Cadiz followed suit. On August 30th, Murat at Cintra evacuated Portugal. Dreams of dominion on the seas forever vanished. Patriot Spain had risen as a bulwark between Napoleon and Jefferson. 25 Adams, Henry, Op. Cit. IV, 243-248; 460-461. On the other hand, Spain, dependent on British aid, paid for it by opening her colonies to British trade. And in the spring of 1808, just when the Embargo most seriously threatened British coffers, the vision of a Spanish El Dorado nerved her on to fresh resistance to Napoleon, to fresh defiance of any interference which the law of nations thrust across her path.26 Amid such forces, the Bayonne Decree of April 17th, by which Napoleon in mockery of Jefferson undertook to help enforce the Embargo by seizing all American ships that came within his ports, was but an added pin prick. Jefferson was positively war-proof. No goad sufficed to drive him. Yet in the Embargo itself Napoleon recognized a commercial war on England. Circumstances being such, Turreau at Washington and Armstrong at Paris were equally powerless to modify them. The former contented himself with sharp descriptions of Jefferson and his court; the latter withdrew from Paris, convinced that his services did not count. If the fate of Spain and the ups and downs of Napoleon were reflected in the outcome of the Embargo, the Spanish colonies presented a question no less pertinent. In the breakup of the Spanish monarchy, the fate of its American possessions presented to the administration of Thomas Jefferson in 1808 much the same problem which the fear that European States might strive to reassemble them presented to Monroe in 1823. In either case the elements were present which later called forth the Monroe Doctrine. Jefferson's solution was much like that of his successor. Just as in 1823 when Mr. Canning interested himself in a South American policy designed to check the Holy Alliance and President Monroe intervened to snatch the fruits of South American championship for his own, so in 1808, when British rapprochement with Spanish nationalists threatened undue preponderance in South America, it was Jefferson who nipped the project. His declaration is properly considered a step in the evolution of the Monroe Doctrine. 26 Sears, Louis M. Op. Cit. 282-284. In Jefferson's case, natural sympathy for South America. was contending with diplomatic prudence, for the victory of the Revolutionists would imply the profit of their British allies. Yet no liberal could wish Republican defeat. With this in mind Jefferson wrote as follows: "If they [the Spanish patriots] succeed, we shall be well satisfied to see Cuba and Mexico remain in their present dependence; but very unwilling to see them in that of either France or England, politically or commercially. "We consider their interests and ours as the same, and that the object of both must be to exclude all the European influence from this hemisphere." 27 In 1808, Jefferson stood alone against Great Britain and the Continent alike. In 1823, Monroe acted with a knowledge that the hands of Great Britain, at least, were tied by her own desire to thwart the Holy Allies. For this anticipation by Jefferson of the Monroe Doctrine, the Embargo supplied the motive. Jefferson perceived that a commercial union between Great Britain and Spain would deprive the Embargo of its sting. America would thenceforth suffer with little power to injure. The closing Congress in Jefferson's administration met after the President had personally administered the Embargo through anxious months of disappointed hopes. Neither Britain nor France gave hint of weakening. America's own powers of endurance were giving way, and it was time to take a careful reckoning of the country's future course. Yet in the crisis, the thought of Jefferson seemed no more constructive than that of Louis XV in his "After us the deluge." The President virtually abdicated, declaring that it was not his function to make decisions tending to impose a course of action on his successor. His chief concern was to finish his term before the Embargo was removed. Disappointed in this, because Congress enacted its repeal on February 27, 1809, he left office in a mood of deep humiliation. The stage being set for Madison, the latter's policy, once 27 The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Federal Edition, XI, 55. the Embargo should be removed, became of prime importance to European powers. For in the event of war-and this appeared most probable-neither France nor Great Britain could quite ignore the American factor. Erskine, who still remained as British minister, and who opposed the rigors of the British policy and the misplaced ironies of Canning, kept steadily before that minister the likelihood of war, and urged conciliation to avert the damage. Madison, for his part, encouraged Erskine in these warlike warnings. But neither diplomat nor statesman could quite foresee the purposes of Congress. In his peaceful substitute for war, Thomas Jefferson had truly reflected American desire. With the President's passing into private life, Congress proposed, under other forms perhaps, to perpetuate the policy of peace. A CHAPTER VIII WAR ACCEPTS NO SUBSTITUTES MERICAN history as a whole shows for a democracy a surprising continuity of foreign policy, the main threads thereof surviving alternations of political party. Even as the violent overthrow of the Federalists in 1800 involved no sudden rupture with their friends the English, so the gentle transition from Jefferson to his heir in the Virginia dynasty would scarcely presuppose a shift in policy. Nor was a change contemplated. The new President carried to his office the love of peace which clothed his acts as Secretary. Peace remained the cardinal motive of his policy. Its details varied with the international scene, and its maintenance at last broke down, but its spirit was basically unchanged, and Madison, in spite of his, or rather Henry Clay's, War of 1812, belongs properly among our peace Presidents. For the conduct of a peace policy or indeed of any policy at all, the President was hampered by a Senate intrigue against his erstwhile colleague, Albert Gallatin, whose administration of the Treasury was the most brilliant chapter in Jefferson's second term. A group of powerful enemies made impossible the confirmation of Gallatin's name for the State Department, and the President so far bowed to party intrigue as to name for the position Robert Smith, of Maryland, who had made an acceptable Secretary of the Navy under Jefferson, but who did not win distinction at the State Department. Even in the act of appointing him, Madison appears to have resolved to be his own Secretary.1 In the diplomatic service, Pinkney remained at London, 1 The portrait of Robert Smith by Dr. Charles Callan Tansill, in the series on American Secretaries of State and their Diplomacy (Alfred Knopf, publishers) is more friendly to Smith than most former treat ments. |