For Honour's Sake (48 page)

America's seizure of much of the Floridas and repeated invasions of Canada led Castlereagh to seek revision of the frontier boundaries between the United States and British North America. He did not, however, detail how those boundaries were to be configured. Rather, Castlereagh merely stated that the Treaty of 1783 determining the present boundaries had been “very hastily and improvidently framed in this respect.”

That same treaty regulated fishery rights between the two nations in an article consisting of two parts. The first clause had related to open-sea fishing and merely recognized rights of all nations to fish international waters. The second part, which allowed American fishing vessels to fish inside British waters and dry catch ashore, Castlereagh considered annulled by the war.

His final admonition was that the commissioners should determine what the Americans were empowered to negotiate and “the spirit in which they appear to you disposed to conduct the negotiation.” Castlereagh would then provide more detailed instructions to guide their forthcoming discussions.
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August 7, the morning after their arrival, Baker reported the commissioner.' arrival to the Americans. At Hôtel des Pays-Bas, he found only James Bayard's secretary, Col. George Milligan, who escorted Baker to the house on the Rue des Champs. Greeted by Bayard, Baker proposed meeting at one o'clock the next afternoon at the Hôtel Lion d'Or to exchange credentials and decide on the conduct of proceedings. Remaining noncommittal, Bayard promised an answer that evening.
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Having given up on waiting for the British and sick of “this dull hole” of a city, Jonathan Russell had gone to Dunkirk.
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In his absence, the other four commissioners met at noon to consider the British invitation. John Quincy Adams was incensed at this “offensive pretension to superiority.” When excited, he paced or flailed his arms about, sometimes pointing a blunt finger at the subject of his attention. He did all of this now, before grabbing from a shelf in his room the seventh and final volume of Hanoverian diplomat Georg Friedrich von Martens's
Recueil des traits
—the definitive collection of world treaties. Riffling to the summary section outlining international protocols, Adams cited chapter 4, section 3. According to this authoritative source, he declared, the British proposal cast them in
the role of ambassadors receiving diplomats of inferior rank. Not to be outdone, Bayard hauled out R. Ward's
An Enquiry into the Foundations and History of the Law of Nations in Europe
and cited a case from the 1600s when the British commissioners negotiating with Spain resisted the very “pretension now advanced by the English.” But Bayard and Albert Gallatin cautioned against clogging “the negotiation with any question of mere ceremony.” Henry Clay was little concerned. When you sat down to cards it was the game that mattered, not the locale. After two hours of heated discussion that frayed nerves, they adjourned for dinner. Over cigars and drinks, they finally agreed to send Christopher Hughes—the mission's senior secretary—to decline the British invitation and propose the Hôtel des Pays-Bas, which, with the Americans gone, could be considered neutral ground.

Now it was the British who needed time to consider. When Baker arrived, Bayard, “to sound and ascertain their feelings,” spontaneously proposed holding the meeting at the American residence and offered to show the secretary an excellent room for it. Baker declined to even look. It would be the Pays-Bas or start over.

At one o'clock the next afternoon, the Americans found the British already seated on one side of a long table in a room the hotelier had set aside. Gambier was as resplendent as a peacock in his admiral's uniform, Goulburn and Adams like dour starlings in dark suits on either side of him. Everyone stood. Hands were shaken, courteous bows exchanged, copies of credentials examined and appropriately added to the formal files each commission began to accumulate. Then the Americans sat across from the British.

Gambier opened, assuring the Americans of his government's “sincere and earnest desire that this negotiation might terminate in a successful issue, and the ardent hope of the British commissioners that we might all have the satisfaction of restoring the blessings of peace to our respective countries.”

As head of the American commission, Adams offered similar assurances “to bring to these discussions the disposition to meet every sentiment of candor and conciliation with the most cordial reciprocity, concurring, as
we did, with the utmost earnestness and sincerity, in the hope that we might eventually have the happiness of reconciling the two nations whose true interests could best be promoted by peace and amity with each other.”
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Goulburn then said “that his colleagues had devolved upon him the task of opening on their part.”
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It quickly became apparent that this intense, dark-haired young man, seeming irritated at times by every American response or proposal, was the key British player. Goulburn offered “the most explicit declaration that nothing that had occurred since the first proposal for this negotiation would have the slightest effect on the disposition of Great Britain with regard to the terms upon which the pacification might be concluded.” Not a man in the room could fail to heed this reminder that since Castlereagh's offer of negotiations the previous fall, peace had returned to Europe, the British army was free for North American service, the Royal Navy sailed the American coastline at will and blockaded the nation's ports. The dark spectre of defeat hung over the United States. Goulburn added that “it would be most conducive to … discard all retrospective considerations with regard to anything that had taken place.”
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Instead they should all look to the root causes of the war, and therein he was instructed to raise four points for discussion. After outlining these, Goulburn asked the Americans to advise whether they could discuss each point and to also raise any issues they wished negotiated.

Each of Castlereagh's four points was advanced and detailed. Goulburn made clear that impressment was included only because it was expected that the Americans would wish this discussed. There was no British desire to resolve this matter by treaty between the two nations. The treaty must include the Indians, and fixing boundaries for Indian territory was a
sine qua non
that must be “definitively marked out, as a permanent barrier between the dominions of Great Britain and the United States.”
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Britain also sought to revise the boundary line between America and British North America. Responding to a question from Bayard, Goulburn assured the Americans that Britain “did not contemplate an acquisition of territory.”
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As Castlereagh had provided no instructions, Goulburn did not define the proposed Indian boundary or Canadian border revision. In fact, Goulburn—more familiar with the
geography of North America and its current boundaries than the foreign secretary—pressed this issue more forcefully than Castlereagh's instructions had suggested.
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He was determined that any treaty stifle further imperialistic designs America might entertain. He did not, however, express this intention. Instead, he closed by adding that the previous “concession” to America permitting her citizens to “land and dry fish within the exclusive jurisdiction” of Britain would not be renewed.
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Remarking that he wished to ensure clear understanding of each point, Adams repeated them. He understood that impressment was a “point proper for discussion.” No, Goulburn interjected, the British “did not think it a point necessary to be discussed,” but thought it an American concern.
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When Adams said he needed to confer with his colleagues before providing comment on each point raised, Goulburn urged him to provide “an immediate answer” as to whether they had any instructions on the Indian boundary
sine qua non.
Adams refused to be drawn, and the meeting was set over to the next morning. Future meetings would alternate between respective residences. Gambier suggested the American house be first, as the British were still moving from their hotel to better accommodations.
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Gloomily, the Americans considered their response. There was little cause for optimism. Gallatin told his son, James, that the British had demanded that the “Indian tribes should have the whole of the North-Western Territory. This comprises the States of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois—four-fifths of Indiana and the third of Ohio. That an Indian sovereignty should be constituted under the guarantee of Great Britain: this is to protect Canada…. The other demands are of little importance. They consist of Sackett's Harbour and Fort Niagara, so as to have control of the lakes. But all this means the dismemberment of the United States.” Although Goulburn had not outlined the territory sought, Gallatin was certain that was the British intention.

The British commissioners did not impress Gallatin, according to his son. They were “men who have not made any mark and have no influence or weight. He attaches but little importance to them as they are but the puppets of Lord Castlereagh and Liverpool. Father feels he is quite capable of dealing with them.”
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Through the rest of the afternoon, over dinner, and into the evening, the Americans talked and argued. At issue were the Indians. Impressment could be let lie. Their instructions from Monroe had been explicit that the fishery could await a commercial treaty. Boundaries between America and Canada could be discussed. But they had no instructions on the Indians. Who could have conceived the need? Who could think that the British would make
sine qua non
that America should surrender vast amounts of its sovereign territory to the Indians? It was incomprehensible. Finally, with Gallatin acting as secretary, they drafted a response.

No sooner was this document complete than a package of dispatches and letters from America arrived, including two letters written by Monroe in late June. Gallatin, Adams, and Hughes spent several hours deciphering the simple number code only to find that the June 25 letter reaffirmed that the fisheries were not to be discussed. If the British insisted, the negotiations were to be terminated. The June 27 message confirmed that impressment could be omitted. It was one in the morning when the three men wearily took to their beds. They had decided that nothing in Monroe's letters affected their response.
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The British, Adams wrote Louisa, were “polite and conciliatory. Their professions both with regard to their government and themselves, liberal, and highly pacific. But they have not changed the opinion which I have constantly had of the result …. At present I do not think that the negotiation will be of long continuance.”
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After breakfast the three Englishman took their seats across from the Americans at a table set up in the room that Bayard had earlier offered to show Baker. Adams confirmed that they had instructions to negotiate the issue of impressment and allegiance, no instructions on Indian boundaries, instructions regarding British boundary claims, and nothing relating to fisheries. On the second point Adams said instructions could not have been expected as this “was never contemplated by them as being in dispute. No European power had ever considered the Indian nations as Great Britain appeared now to consider them.” He suggested the British government “so modify the instruction as to this point being a
sine qua non as not to preclude discussion on the other points in which there might be use.”

Goulburn replied that both powers had made treaties with the Indians and some of these nations were British allies, so it was not beyond contemplation that “Britain would stipulate for them in any treaty with the U.S.” It would be difficult to proceed without some assurance that the American commissioners could at least agree to a provisional article even if they had no specific instructions. The British government's view in this regard was clearly “to procure to her Allies a peace as permanent as that procured for themselves and to establish the Indian Nations as a sort of barrier between the two States to prevent their future collision.”

The same effect would be achieved, Bayard countered, if Britain and America entered into a peace treaty and then the United States independently negotiated peace agreements with the Indians. He understood that commissions for negotiations with the Indians had already been appointed and those agreements would “fix limits to their territories.”

It was certainly not lost on the British commissioners that the United States had historically broken one treaty after another with the Indians, but they refrained from any sharp rebuke. In a personal note to Lord Bathurst after the meeting, Goulburn said he and his colleagues “have been particularly careful to say nothing in these preliminary proceedings which could in any degree cause irritation on their part and have therefore rather let any observation of the Americans which gave an opening for a sharp answer to pass without observation than get into a squabble which could lead to no object.”

The tension, however, was palpable. Goulburn coolly stated that Britain wanted to assure “the permanence of the Peace made with the Indians.”

“Is it intended to restrain the Indians from alienating their own lands?” Bayard asked.

“The restraint need not be on the Indian right of alienation but on the right of the U.S. or Great Britain to acquire those lands by purchase or cession,” Dr. William Adams responded. They could still sell to a third party.

Clay snapped that he had “extreme difficulty” believing any article on this subject would be accepted by the American government.
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The discussion deadlocked, each side agreed to draft a protocol outlining the points that had been discussed over the first two days. These would be compared the next day and together the commissioners would write a final record of the proceedings to forward to their respective governments for consideration.