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granted out of deference to a French necessity. But it was more than offset by a fresh hostility completing the sum of the Emperor's wrongs to his long-suffering victim. Under the Act of March 1, 1809, large numbers of American vessels made their way, not directly to France, of course, but to the ports of countries obedient to Napoleon's economic system. These Napoleon meant to confiscate. To insure the maximum of seizures, he wrote instructions to his vassal states to encourage trade in order to secure thereby the greater number of victims. Prussia, for example, was told that the sums secured by confiscation might be applied upon her debt to France.

The increasing rigor of Napoleon's system provoked his ministers to opposition. It seemed to them to portend a fatal crash and ultimate dissolution of the empire-the very thing that happened. But only one of them voiced his opposition with effectiveness. Fouché it was, the minister of police. His reward was a dismissal from the Emperor's service, a fate not unlike that awaiting the Emperor's own brother, Louis, King of Holland, who so far forgot his duty as to set his subjects' interests before those of his brother, and in an interview he granted Armstrong, denounced the whole imperial system.'

10

Meanwhile the American Congress was preparing for Napoleon fresh opportunities to abuse and deceive the American people, this time however, under pretense of friendship. Weary of embargo and non-intercourse alike, hopeless of military victory on either land or sea, the Congress finally hit upon a plan not unlike the tariff provisions. of more recent days, imposing a sliding scale of rates, one scale for countries not retaliating, a higher scale for those which do. In the Act of May 1, 1810, or Macon Bill Number Two as it was designated, Congress removed non-intercourse with either nation, France or England, which first rescinded its decrees, and at the same time it renewed nonintercourse as against the noncomplying nation."

Adams, Henry, Op. Cit. V, 224-225.

10 Ibid. V, 145-148.

11 Channing, Edward, Op. Cit. IV, 410-414.

With less intention than England of making any real concession, Napoleon seized the opportunity to embroil America further and caused his minister, Champagny, now become Duc de Cadore, to publish on August 5, 1810, a letter of the Emperor's own drafting polished by three days of careful thought, and reflecting the care demanded by the most important communication ever addressed by Napoleon to the American government. In this letter the Emperor revoked his decrees of Milan and Berlin to take effect as of November 1, 1810 "it being understood that in consequence of this declaration the English are to revoke their Orders in Council, and renounce the new principles of blockade which they have wished to establish; or that the United States, conformably to the Act you have just communicated, cause their rights to be respected by the English.” 12

With a bad taste of which he seemed unconscious, Napoleon coupled these apparent concessions with assertions of the love he bore America and the interest its commerce never failed to awaken in his bosom-apparently intended as bait for a very simple-minded victim, for the Americans could scarcely fail to remember previous illustrations of Napoleon's benevolence.

On the very day of Cadore's letter, the treachery of Napoleon found vent in an order for the confiscation of some fifty ships already "sequestered" in his ports. This decree was not published at the time and America deliberated in ignorance of a factor so vital for her correct decision. Some blame perhaps attaches to Armstrong, usually so well informed, for the failure of his government to learn in time the meditated wrong. But Armstrong had held for years a thankless post. He was on the point of returning to America. His eagerness to close his mission with a striking success excuses some reluctance to look the gift horse in the mouth. A genuine repeal of the Berlin and Milan Decrees would have been a triumph of the first order for Armstrong personally, and for American diplomacy. The failure of the minister to perceive or at any rate report its spuriousness belongs to the general weakness of human nature rather 12 Adams, Henry, Op. Cit. V, 255.

than to the limitations of an able diplomat. The decree which nullified the apparent concessions of the Emperor did not in fact actually come under American eyes until 1821, more than eleven years after the event.'

13

On this brilliant but tragic termination of the Armstrong mission hung the rank deception of the American people, and eventually their war with England. By it a train of events was set in motion by which America, goaded into war at last, chose the wrong antagonist. For with all her faults, England was the champion of freedom against the enemy of the human race.

When the wording of the Cadore letter was learned in America, Madison was at much pains to demonstrate that Napoleon had made the concessions prerequisite to our yielding him the advantages provided by Macon Bill Number Two. At best his promise was provisional. The continued sequestration of American ships boded ill. The well-known duplicity of the Emperor was an unpromising basis for good faith. In fine the government's decision was more arbitrary than reasonable. But it rested on substantial majorities in Congress, and the captiousness of Federalists like Josiah Quincy and free lances like John Randolph could safely be ignored.

If acceptance of Napoleon's overtures should mean, however, as it finally did come to mean, a breach with England, it was unfortunate to make our stand on a false issue. The blockade of 1806, the Decrees of 1807, the Chesapeake Affair, the insolence of Canning, even the new blockade of 1809, not to mention the time-worn question of impressments, each alone, or any combination of them, afforded grounds sufficient for a war, should America choose to avail herself thereof. And such a war, however ill it might comport with the sentiments of Federalists, would bear the imprint of sincerity. Whereas a war to justify American acceptance of a pledge proclaiming its obvious insincerity, reduced the likelihood of coöperation between the friends and the foes of the administration. Many men in New England

13 Its discovery by Albert Gallatin, when minister to Paris, is vividly described in the Diary of James Gallatin, his son. (New York, 1916.)

felt that hypocrisy at Washington was justification for disloyalty in Boston.14

The pretended friendship of Napoleon afforded an excuse for American action in Florida, desire for which originated these later troubles. Napoleon for the moment abandoned his objection to our seizure of West Florida. He believed that the Americans were coming into the sphere of his influence. Unwise, then, to harass them in ways not likely to enrich his treasury. Besides, in view of the patriot opposition of the Spanish Junta to French rule in the peninsula, Napoleon could view with equanimity disruption of the Spanish empire beyond the seas.'

15

The seizure of West Florida raised an issue as to previous sovereignty. Certain Americans occupied the district, declared it independent of Spain, and then at once applied for admission to the Union, hoping to be incorporated with Louisiana. To recognize their act was to admit that the district they had seized was not already in the Union. Madison could not well do this in view of the assertions of himself and Jefferson, repeated for the past eight years, that Louisiana as of right included Florida. He preferred to put it on the basis that America simply took advantage of disturbed conditions to seize what was her own. In abandoning the high ground of innocence and acting by the rule of might, America could surely plead instruction and example.

PINKNEY QUITS LONDON

Meanwhile in England the situation seemed at first to clear by the withdrawal in 1809 of Canning from the cabinet, and the accession to the foreign office of the Marquess Wellesley, a brother to the British commander in Spain, soon to become the hero of Waterloo. Lord Wellesley was a person of bland and stately manners, a happy contrast to the flippant Canning, and his advent in the cabinet premised a cessation of those gratuitous insults his predecessor so

14 The previous paragraph is written in the spirit of Henry Adams and fails to stress the active responsibility of Westerners for precipitating the War of 1812.

15 Adams, Henry, Op. Cit. V, 384.

delighted in. Pinkney was enchanted to discover one Briton subscribing to the rule of reason and his despatches home breathe a new hopefulness.16

Jackson was the subject of preliminary sparring. Pinkney explained with perfect courtesy American displeasure at his mission. The Marquess for his part assured the minister of His Majesty's determination to second in all things reasonable the wishes of the States with whom he dealt, but deprecated that in this case the action of the President was so precipitate. Jackson had been promised a full year's term. At its conclusion another envoy should be sent.

Turning next to the more fundamental issue of the restrictions on commerce, Pinkney inquired of Wellesley whether the Blockade of April, 1809, which admittedly superseded the Orders in Council of 1807, also nullified the 1806 blockade established by Charles James Fox. So amicable was the preliminary discussion on this subject that Pinkney had high hopes of satisfaction, but Wellesley, overborne apparently by opposition within the cabinet, resorted to a policy of delay, keeping the American waiting months for what should not have consumed a week.

The divided counsels symbolized by this delay were characteristic in this time of Britain's weakness. The King was just losing his mind. And in the cabinet benches, outside of Wellesley who seldom had his way, neither reason, justice, nor strength was much in evidence. Spencer Perceval, one of the dullest of mediocrities, was still prime minister. And no one, in or out of office, had intelligence to perceive that America, so patient under years of insult and abuse, was drifting rapidly into a condition of hysteria, where prejudice, not reason, would dictate her future course.

Yet even at the moment when American affairs approached their crisis, Great Britain was deluded by a move at Washington which promised friendlier relations. Robert Smith, who in reality was little more than a cipher in the cabinet of Madison, was regarded as the principal spokesman of French influence. While Monroe, the erstwhile 16 Adams, Henry, Op. Cit. V, 268-272.

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