From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (20 page)

The administration's actions in East Florida in 1812 represent an embarrassing episode in early national history, a failed attempt to take by force territory to which the United States had little claim. Fearing the collapse of Spanish rule, Madison in 1810 dispatched Georgia adventurer George Mathews to inform the residents of East Florida that if they were to separate from Spain they would be welcomed into the United States. The following year, he secured from Congress authorization to use force to prevent a foreign takeover of East Florida, instructing Mathews in such an eventuality to occupy the province or negotiate with the locals. Mathews subsequently sought authority to foment revolution there. The administration's non-response was interpreted by him—and has been seen by some historians—as tantamount to silent complicity in the scheme. Others persuasively argue that this was standard operating procedure and did not imply consent. Whatever the case, the overzealous Mathews organized a group of local "Patriots" who seized Amelia Island off the Georgia coast and laid siege to St. Augustine. Complaining that Mathews's "extravagance" had put the
administration in "the most distressing dilemma," Madison disavowed his reckless agent. On the verge of war with Britain, however, and more than ever concerned about the threat to East Florida, he authorized the Patriots to hold on to territory they had taken.
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Furious with his abandonment, Mathews started home to expose the administration's complicity. In a rare bit of good luck during his embattled presidency, Madison was spared further embarrassment when Mathews died en route.
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While consolidating his Louisiana prize and pressing Spain on the Floridas, Jefferson had taken the first steps toward an American empire on the Pacific. During the height of the Louisiana crisis, he instructed his aide Meriwether Lewis to explore what was then Spanish territory. To the Spanish, he justified the mission in scientific and "literary" terms; to Congress, he spoke of exploiting the lucrative fur trade, "civilizing" the Indians, and finding the fabled water route to the Pacific. By the time Lewis and William Clark got under way, Louisiana belonged to the United States and Jefferson's vision had expanded to acquiring all of the West. He instructed the explorers to bring the Indians into the U.S. orbit, wrest the fur trade from Britain, and lay claim to the Pacific Northwest.
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One of the great adventures of all times, Lewis and Clark's dramatic and arduous journey to the Columbia River and back covered more than seven thousand miles and took more than two years. Confident that Indians, in contrast to blacks, were "noble savages" who could be civilized, Jefferson contemplated keeping the West as a vast reservation where those already settled and tribes transplanted from the East could be civilized and in time assimilated. Using the combination of threats and bribes that had long stamped American Indian policy, Lewis and Clark parleyed with tribes along the way, urging them to accept U.S. sovereignty, make peace among themselves, and welcome American traders. This initial approach to the Plains Indians had mixed results for the United States and largely negative results for the Indians. Representatives of some tribes actually visited Washington; some trade ties were established. Lewis and Clark did not seek to befriend the hostile Sioux and Blackfeet, however, and they were unable to make peace among the other tribes. Most important for the long run, reports from the expedition excited trappers and eventually settlers to head West, in time re-creating there and with the same results the wars of extermination already under way to the east.
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The explorers discovered no water route to the Pacific—dashing longstanding geographical assumptions—and their reports underlined the formidable barriers to settling the trans-Mississippi West. The expedition did produce priceless geographical and scientific discoveries, however, and it greatly facilitated U.S. expansion to the Pacific. Encouraged by Jefferson's offer of "every reasonable [government] patronage," the New York merchant John Jacob Astor immediately set out to capture the fur trade by constructing a series of posts from the Missouri River to the Columbia. In 1811, he established a fort at the mouth of the Columbia, laying the first substantial American claim to the Oregon territory. During the War of 1812, Astor loaned a near bankrupt United States $2.5 million in return for promises to defend Astoria it could not keep. The advance to the Pacific was delayed by geography and war, but Jefferson's vision of continental empire was eagerly taken up by his successors.
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At best an armed truce, the Peace of Amiens broke down in 1803, and the European war entered an even more bitter phase, a desperate struggle for survival not to be resolved until Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815. During much of this time, the major combatants were locked in a standoff, France dominating the continent of Europe, Britain ruling the seas. Combining with devastating effectiveness his genius for battlefield maneuver and the new military concept of mass armies imbued with patriotic zeal, Napoleon routed Austria and Prussia and quickly brought Russia to terms. The master of Europe, he sought next to subdue that despised "nation of shopkeepers" through his Continental System, a network of blockades set forth in his Berlin and Milan decrees and designed to strangle the British economy. In the meantime, Lord Nelson in 1805 destroyed the French fleet at Trafalgar, giving Britain uncontested control of the sea and permitting it to position and support forces anywhere along the coast of Europe. Unable to get at each other through conventional means, the powers resorted to new and all-inclusive forms of economic warfare, blithely ignoring the screams of neutrals.
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As in the 1790s, the United States became entangled in the struggle, but this time it did not escape direct involvement. Unlike Hamilton and
Washington in 1794, Jefferson refused to sacrifice American commerce or acquiesce in the British maritime system. His visceral dislike for England made such steps unpalatable if not impossible. He persisted in trying to exploit European rivalries, and for a time hesitated to jeopardize his quest for the Floridas by antagonizing Napoleon. True to republican ideology, he continued to believe that economic weapons would compel the Europeans to accept his terms. Unfortunately for Jefferson, the conflict had reached a level of intensity where the major belligerents were no longer subject to manipulation and threats. Neither would appease America. As the European war had brought Jefferson the twin windfalls of prosperity and Louisiana in his first term, so also it was the source of his unremitting misfortune in the second. Caught between what he angrily called the "tyrant of the ocean" and the "scourge of the land," he and his successor, Madison, reeled from crisis to crisis between 1805 and 1812.
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Relations with France remained tense, but Britain's control of the seas impinged more directly on U.S. interests, provoking a sustained and particularly bitter dispute that eventually brought war.

The resumption of war in Europe brought to the forefront the volatile issue of the carrying trade. When France and Spain opened their colonies to American shipping in the 1790s, Britain had invoked the Rule of 1756, declaring that trade illegal in time of peace was also illegal in war. As part of the larger rapprochement following the Jay Treaty, the two nations had reached an unwritten compromise. American shippers had skirted British regulations by what was called the "broken voyage," picking up wares in French or Spanish colonies, returning to U.S. ports and observing normal customs procedures, then reexporting the cargoes to Europe. Eager to preserve U.S. friendship and certain that the awkwardness and expense of the procedure would limit the size of the trade, London had accepted the broken voyage. In the case of the ship
Polly
(1800), an admiralty court had even sanctioned its legality.
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When war resumed, Americans jumped back into the carrying trade with a vengeance, and as profits soared they became less and less scrupulous about observing the niceties of the broken voyage. Acts of Congress permitted merchants to recover much of the import duties on reexported items. Some shippers paid no duties at all. In many cases, they did not even bother to unload the cargoes. In a life-and-death situation, the carrying
trade threatened to deprive Britain of the presumed advantages of control of the seas. In the 1805
Essex
case, admiralty courts held that the final destination of the cargo determined the nature of the voyage, thus rendering the broken voyage illegal. Even before this, Britain had begun to seize American ships and confiscate cargoes. British measures jeopardized a trade that by 1805 exceeded $60 million, comprised nearly two-thirds of U.S. exports, and had become the basis of American prosperity. Some Americans conceded that this commerce was unnatural and temporary and therefore not worth the risk of war. But Jefferson viewed it as a way to make up an unfavorable balance of trade with Britain. He insisted that its loss would leave the United States vulnerable to British pressure and might force undesirable changes in the domestic economy. Many Americans denounced what seemed an obvious attempt to impoverish their country.

An even more difficult issue, the British practice of impressing sailors, allegedly deserters, from U.S. ships stemmed at least indirectly from proliferation of the carrying trade. Where impressment was concerned, the two nations took conflicting legal positions on the most basic of issues. Britain adhered to the doctrine of "indefeasible allegiance," the principle that a person born under its flag could not legally change citizenship. The United States permitted and even encouraged such changes by making naturalization easy and conferring full citizenship on those naturalized. Under the laws of each nation, therefore, an individual could be a citizen of both at the same time. The United States did not dispute Britain's right to search its merchant vessels for deserters in British ports. Britain did not claim the right to search men-of-war anywhere or U.S. merchant vessels in neutral ports. But the United States advanced the position—not then accepted by any other nation—that Britain could not search its merchant vessels on the high seas, a claim the British flatly rejected.

The issue touched vital interests and deep-seated emotions on both sides. Britain's survival depended on the Royal Navy, which, in turn, required an ample supply of seamen. Manpower was chronically short, a problem made worse by wholesale desertion to U.S. ships. As the carrying trade grew after 1803, the American merchant marine expanded enormously in size. Thousands of British sailors eagerly fled to ships where working conditions were far better and pay as much as five times higher. Some U.S. ship captains openly enticed sailors from the Royal Navy. The ease with which legal or forged citizenship papers could be acquired facilitated the practice. Albert Gallatin admitted that half of the sailors employed in the U.S. merchant marine were English—even according to
American definitions of citizenship. To the great annoyance of London, U.S. courts frequently refused to turn over deserters. Britain found this intolerable at a time of crisis and adamantly upheld its right to recover deserters.

Each side handled the issue in ways that exacerbated their differences. Had Britain exercised some discretion in implementing impressment, conflict might have been mitigated, but responsibility rested with officers of the Royal Navy, for whom restraint was not a desirable or even acceptable personality trait. Operating far from home and desperate for seamen, they cared little about American sensitivities. British ships hovered off the U.S. coastline, imposing a virtual blockade of many ports, a practice that galled an independent and insecure people. Ship captains often did not bother to investigate whether men taken were in fact deserters or even British citizens. Between three thousand and six thousand innocent Americans were pressed into British service from 1803 to 1812. On occasion, overzealous captains exceeded bounds recognized by both nations, stopping and searching U.S. naval vessels or merchant vessels in American waters. Americans thus viewed impressment as an affront to the dignity of a free nation and a gross assault on human rights. They also perceived that to surrender on the issue could wreck the merchant marine upon which their prosperity depended. The rigid position assumed by the United States left Britain no means to recover the thousands of sailors who deserted.

Attitudes and emotions on both sides of the Atlantic made already difficult conflicts of interest impossible to resolve. Engaged in a desperate struggle against Napoleonic tyranny, the British saw themselves defending the liberties of the "free world." They deeply resented U.S. interference with what they regarded as essential measures of war. They dismissed America's insistence on neutral rights as Francophilia in disguise or the product of a grasping desire to profit at the expense of a nation fighting for its life. Outraged Britons expressed open contempt for the Americans, "less popular and esteemed among us than the base and bigotted Portugeze, or the ferocious and ignorant Russians," a leading journal of opinion exclaimed. They minimized the threat of retaliation from "a nation three thousand miles off—scarcely held together by the weakest government in the world."
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