For Honour's Sake (49 page)

As the meeting ended John Quincy Adams told Gambier that he was impressed by the candour and conciliatory attitude the British commissioners had so far displayed. Clay agreed. In his letter to Bathurst, Goulburn expressed similar regard that the Americans had “conducted themselves with more candor and openness than I had expected …. I believe they are sincere in their wish to re-establish peace between the two Countries.” But he thought there was “little hope of their concluding anything [with regard to the Indian boundary] without the receipt of instructions from America.” As to whether the talks continued, he said, that “must depend upon your decision whether we shall proceed to discuss our other points of difference in the uncertainty in which the Americans are with respect to the Indian boundary or whether we shall suspend our proceedings.”
¹⁹

Protocols in hand on August 10, they immediately clashed. The British took offence at how the American protocol, meticulously worked up initially by Adams and then supplemented and corrected by the other three commissioners, contained explanatory notes regarding the reasons the American government had offered no instructions on the Indian boundaries and fisheries. Goulburn grumbled that all explanations should be removed and inserted into a dispatch to the respective government because if matters of “argument were admitted on one side it must also be admitted on the other, and must eventually contain everything said at the conferences.”

Bayard thought the British had not disclosed their full meaning the day before and “their proposition respecting the Indian boundary, as put by themselves, was not intelligible …. Did they mean to take a portion of our territory and assign it to the Indians? Did they mean, in a word, to alter the condition of the Indians in relation to the United States?”

“It could not be said there was a territory
assigned
to people which was already in their possession,” Dr. Adams replied.

In the British protocol the words
dominion
and
territory
had often been used in reference to the Indian nations, a fact Adams found rankling. Finally he remarked “that they must be aware the terms Dominions, Territories, and Possessions, as applied to Indians, were of very different import from the same terms as applied to civilized nations; that this difference was well known and understood … by all the European nations.”

One or the other of those words was necessary to make any sense, Goulburn replied. He preferred
territory.

The American draft concluded that the British commissioners declined further discussions unless it was agreed that a provisional article might be drawn up on the Indian question subject to ratification by the U.S. government. In the absence of this, the British proposed suspending talks until they consulted their government.

When the British asked that this statement be removed, the Americans replied that this was “a fact so material to the statement of what had actually taken place, that without it the protocol itself must be imperfect.”

Dr. Adams thought it “expressed rather too strongly, to say that they had
declined
entering into the discussion.”

Those were his exact words the day before, Clay reminded him. True, Adams confessed, but “those were remarks … thrown out rather in the manner of friendly discussion than intimating a fixed purpose to decline it in future.”
²⁰

The Americans agreed to excise the offending words. Essentially, when the final document was signed off, the protocol closely resembled the British original. But the Americans would forward their draft protocol to Washington in the expectation that it would clearly illustrate that the British commissioners had not come to Ghent intending to negotiate in good faith. Rather they had come with intent to use the dispute over Indian boundaries as pretense for breaking off discussions.

In a private letter, Bayard commented that the Indian boundary line issue “seems to me at present to offer serious difficulty to a pacification. The pretension … in my opinion is totally inadmissible and possibly has been selected as a designed insuperable obstacle to peace. When first disclosed
it was declared to be a sine qua non. One such pretension is as complete a barrier against peace as an hundred …. The conferences are in consequence suspended and they have written to their Government for further instructions. The state of things does not augur well.”
²¹

Adams was beside himself with anxiety that in the absence of a peace agreement, which he doubted was attainable, America must soon face a blow that would “lay us prostrate at the mercy of our foe. God forbid! But either that, or a latent energy must be brought forth, of which we have as yet manifested no sign.”
²²

While awaiting reply from London, the British commissioners moved to new lodgings in a former Carthusian monastery on the Fratersplein, about a mile north of the city centre. It was a large, drafty building with a six-storey belfry and a four-storey alcove that had been converted into apartments. The greater portion of the building had been transformed into a textile mill after monasteries and convents were abolished following annexation of the Netherlands by France in 1795. The factory was owned by Lieven Bauwens, who had managed to smuggle the plans for the cotton gin out of England in 1800—a feat that enabled Ghent to become a textile capital. By 1814, Ghent's population stood at about 60,000 people—many impoverished factory workers living in squalor and crammed into ancient buildings that lined narrow alleys running off from the wider boulevards that followed the course of the numerous canals connecting the two rivers running through it.

The elegant and lavishly furnished apartments perfectly suited the upper-class expectations of the three commissioners. But Goulburn's wife complained that the drafty rooms provided an unhealthy atmosphere for Harry, while she contracted a cold that proved impossible to shake. There was also the disappointment that Ghent society had largely decamped to the country for the summer and would not return until November. This meant there were few social or cultural events.
²³
Invited to lunch at a local dignitary's villa, the Goulburns were greeted at the door by what the extremely short-sighted Jane took to be a butler. Treating the man in the manner appropriate to a servant, she was embarrassed to
discover this was in fact their host. That a gentleman would not employ a butler horrified them both, and they were equally dismayed by the villa's stark and sparse furnishings. Leaving as soon as was polite, they vowed to never “make a longer visit to a house where comfort appears to be so ill understood.”
²⁴
That Goulburn expected their stay in Ghent to be short undoubtedly reassured his wife.

The Americans held a dinner for all their compatriots living in the city and ended seating twenty-two at the table.
²⁵
On the 13th, the British commissioners came to dine. Goulburn declined, claiming to be unwell with a burst blood vessel in his throat that rendered him incapable of speech, but Gambier and Dr. Adams attended. Gambier happily recounted boyhood days spent in Boston while his uncle was in command of the naval station, and allowed how he had participated in the blockade of New York during the Revolution. As a vice-president of the English Bible Society, he often still corresponded with the Bible Society of Boston, of which Adams was a member. When Bayard edged the conversation gently toward business, Gambier laughed politely. “We won't talk about that now,” he said.
²⁶

When not entertaining, the Americans dined at four and usually spent two hours over the meal. “We then disperse to our several amusements and avocations,” Adams wrote Louisa. “Mine is a solitary walk of two or three hours—solitary, because I find none of the other gentlemen disposed to join me in it, particularly at that hour. They frequent the coffee houses, the Reading Rooms, and the billiard tables. Between eight and nine I return from my walk and immediately betake myself to bed. I rise usually about five in the morning, and from that time until dinner am closely engaged in writing or other business.” He longed to return to her in St. Petersburg, lamented the shortening days that hinted at the approach of autumn and forced him to abridge the duration of his walks. “I hope we shall have no winter evenings to dispose of….”
²⁷

On August 19, the British commissioners requested a three o'clock conference at their house. London had finally replied, but the Americans were surprised to learn that the courier bringing the instructions had been none other than Viscount Castlereagh.

The foreign secretary arrived late at the monastery on the Thursday night of August 18 the same day that the British fleet entered Chesapeake
Bay. His instructions were stuffed in a red dispatch box, one of many swelling the vast amount of luggage he was taking to Vienna, where a congress was to convene in September that would redraw the map of Europe. Also in tow was the full retinue that was accompanying him to Vienna, including his wife, her sister, and a gaggle of secretaries, consultants, and servants. Despite the lateness of the hour, Castlereagh summoned the three commissioners, while arrangements were made to accommodate this large party at hotels throughout the city.

It was clear to Castlereagh that the two matters the Americans claimed to have no instructions on posed the greatest barrier to continuing negotiations. Regarding the fishery, he wanted to determine whether they would acknowledge that the “right of fishing and drying within the British jurisdiction does not thereby of right revive” if they were to sign a treaty of peace that dealt with the other issues. Goulburn and the others must get this clarified.

As for the Indian questions, he could understand that they might not have anticipated that Britain would want to establish secure boundaries for the Indians. But, Castlereagh said, “it appears unaccountable … that the American Government should have left the negotiators without instructions, inasmuch as they could have had no reason to suppose that the British Government would for a moment listen to a separate peace, to the exclusion of the Indians, who have acted with them as allies during the war.”

He agreed with Goulburn that the whole future of the negotiation turned on the point of “whether the Commissioners will or will not take upon themselves to sign a Provisional Agreement upon the points on which they have no instructions. If they decline this, the British Government sees no advantage in prosecuting the discussion further, until the American negotiators shall have received instructions upon these points.” If they agreed that they could enter into provisional agreements, he believed the negotiation could continue and the treaty be sent after British ratification to the United States for that government to either confirm or not.

As to the additional American points, Castlereagh rejected any need to discuss blockades and advised the commissioners they could not “be
too peremptory in discouraging, at the outset, the smallest expectation of any restitution of captures made under the Orders in Council.” On the desire for a commercial treaty, the foreign secretary said the government was willing to enter into one after conclusion of the peace.

On the issue of Canada's boundaries, Castlereagh offered some clarification of the British position, which was to be understood as “strictly defensive.” The Great Lakes from Lake Ontario to Lake Superior were to form the “natural military frontier” of the Canadas, and as “the weaker power on the North American continent, the least capable of acting offensively, and the most exposed to sudden invasion, Great Britain considers itself entitled to claim the use of the lakes as a military barrier.” If both powers claimed a right to put ships onto the lakes, Castlereagh foresaw a “perpetual contest for naval ascendancy, in peace as well as war,” that would only guarantee future conflict. Control of the lakes should be given to Britain and with that went “military command of both shores … with a suitable frontier.”

But the foreign secretary declared such a conclusion would mean that Britain gained territory from America, and that was not intended. Therefore he proposed that the United States retain control of the southern shores and carry on using the lakes for commercial traffic if it agreed to destroy existing forts, construct no new ones, and withdraw naval vessels from the lakes and rivers that emptied into them. While not wanting territorial concessions from the Americans, the British did want the southern border of Lower Canada adjusted in order to “establish a direct [line] of communication between Quebec and Halifax.” The British would also have the right to free navigation of the Mississippi, and the northwestern boundary between Lake Superior and that river must be negotiated.

Castlereagh reiterated that inclusion of the Indians in the peace remained a
sine qua non
and suggested that the Treaty of Greenville imposed by William Henry Harrison, wherein Indians had surrendered the Ohio Valley to America, could serve as the basis for negotiation. The boundaries once agreed were not to be open to acquisition through purchase by either side.

An added instruction was the admonition that the commissioners must take great care “to remove all doubt as to the islands in
Passamaquoddy Bay being considered as falling within the British boundary there.”
²⁸

Reflecting on the instructions, Goulburn found them overall “more agreeable to my own feelings than the one with which we were provided on leaving London as I confess I did not then understand that it was contemplated to make America disarm on the Lakes and the shores of them.” This made sense to him. That said, however, Goulburn was perplexed that Castlereagh had worded the prohibition on either power gaining Indian territory so that it denied acquisition only by purchase. During the first negotiating round, Goulburn had explained that this prohibition would mean that neither party could acquire territory inside the Indian boundaries by purchase “or
otherwise.”