For Honour's Sake (55 page)

October 1 dawned cold and wet. Rain spattered the windows of Adams's room. This fall was proving Belgium's wettest on record, a fact that made all the commissioners more miserable. Clay, Russell, and Hughes were
sightseeing in Brussels. The house seemed hollow, bitterly cold before the servants lit the fires. Adams found it too chill and damp to rise before dawn to see to his writing. The journal entries shortened, dashed off in the midst of the day's other duties. Midday, he ventured out on a walk and upon returning was met by a much-distressed Gallatin. Washington taken, the man reported, the navy yard and public buildings burned on August 25. The word was unofficial, delivered by a passing American who had read of it in a British newspaper.
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Gallatin raged that burning the Capitol and presidential residence was purely “an act of vandalism” with no compare in the twenty-year European war. Paris had been spared by the Russians, Naples by Napoleon. The British had acted out of petty envy because, except for a few cathedrals, they had no public buildings to compare with the grandeur of those in Washington.
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This is “only the beginning of sorrows; the lightest of a succession of calamities through which our country must pass, and by which all the infirmities and all the energies of its character will be brought to light,” Adams wrote Louisa. “In itself the misfortune of Washington is a trifle.” The British success, he predicted, would result in their commissioners finally breaking up this “idle and hopeless farce of … negotiation. There can be no possible advantage to us in continuing it any longer.”
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Perhaps because Clay had always espoused America's military prowess more than the others, Goulburn took it upon himself to forward to him in Brussels a packet of newspapers detailing Washington's destruction. “If you find Brussels as little interesting as I have done you will not be sorry to have the occupation of reading the latest Newspapers which I have received,” his covering note observed.
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Having only just received the news themselves, the British were uncertain how best to exploit it. Bathurst, who like Goulburn preferred a tough stance, instructed the commissioners to put the Indian nation proposal back on the table with the old statement of willingness to accept a provisional agreement subject to U.S. government approval. If the Americans claimed lack of authority, Bathurst was ready to “suggest that the talks shall be suspended” until they received instructions.
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In a private letter to Goulburn, he urged his young protégé “to put on a face
of compress'd joy … in communicating the news to the American ministers.”
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Except for forwarding newspapers to Clay, Goulburn restrained his elation. The British commissioners instead did nothing until receiving instructions from London.

This was just as well, because Bathurst's position was unsupported by either Liverpool or Castlereagh. While the prime minister considered the destruction of Washington “very satisfactory,” he assured the foreign secretary and the Duke of Wellington—the latter serving as ambassador to the restored Bourbon court in Paris—that it made “no difference in our anxious desire to put an end to the war if it can be done consistently with our honour.” The terms being offered the Americans, Liverpool believed, were so conciliatory that were they accepted it was inevitable the government would face censure domestically. “But I feel too strongly the inconvenience of a continuance of the war not to make me desirous of concluding it at the expense of some popularity; and it is a satisfaction to reflect that our military success will at least divest the peace of anything which could affect our national character.” Whether peace was possible remained to be seen, however, as Liverpool thought the American “tone in the negotiation very different from what their situation appears to warrant.”
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Yet his October 1 instruction to Bathurst advocated a less conciliatory tone. The response, he advised, should condemn the “spirit of acquisition and aggrandizement” demonstrated by America's seizure of parts of the Floridas. It should also make clear that whatever the commissioners and their government claimed, Britain knew the war was motivated by desire to conquer Canada. If the Americans refused serious negotiation “we might as well suspend or break off the negotiations at Ghent, and settle our instructions to Sir G. Prevost in the course of the next week.”
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The British viewed the forthcoming exchange as the make-or-break point. On October 5, Bathurst appended a note to the draft reply that instructed the commissioners to feel free to alter it if doing so would render it more palatable to the Americans. But the proposed Indian article was not to be modified or expanded upon, as its substance was too important. If the Americans refused to accept this, he said curtly, “you will return home.”
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In substance, the British note was moderately less combative but ran to a tedious fifteen pages. Much legal precedence was trotted out to
justify the British claims to a right to negotiate on behalf of the Indians. No longer, however, was there any mention of creating an Indian nation. Rather, it alleged that the United States considered all Indians living within lands claimed by it as American subjects and so when these peoples sided with the British in the current war they were exposed to retribution “as rebels, or disaffected persons.” The Americans, then, could dispossess them of their lands at will. Such pretensions “Great Britain CAN NEVER RECOGNIZE: however reluctant his Royal Highness, the Prince Regent may be to continue the war, that evil must be preferred, if peace can only be obtained on such conditions.”

The British proposed that, immediately upon entering into a treaty, both countries be bound to end all hostilities with Indian tribes they were at war with and “restore to such tribes or nations, respectively, all the possessions, rights, and privileges, which they may have enjoyed or been entitled to in 1811, previous to such hostilities; provided always, that such tribes or nations shall agree to desist from all hostilities” upon being notified of the treaty agreement.

“Whatever may be the result of the proposition thus offered,” this was “their ultimatum.” They awaited a response “with anxiety” because on this “their continuance in this place will depend.”
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A gauntlet had been dropped.

The Americans received the British note while having dinner on the evening of October 8. Everyone was in a foul mood. They had spent the day arguing over the protocol by which a report on the negotiations should be sent to Tsar Alexander I. Adams, Russell, and Clay ended up shouting at each other about which of their secretaries should carry the report to the emperor in Vienna. Although the issue was insignificant, their display of temper worried them all. Until now strained harmony had been maintained between these five men of very different temperaments. But the stress of months together and the likelihood of failure was wearing them down. Tempers simmering, they agreed to not discuss the proposal until the next afternoon.

At first blush, the Americans found the note “domineering and insulting” as ever. The ultimatum forced them into a corner. Even though
it was couched in relatively moderate language and signified a substantial retreat on earlier demands relative to the Indians, rejecting it would be politically damning. When the record of the negotiations was made public, which would certainly happen, President Madison's government would face the outrage of New England and probably other parts of the nation for turning its back on peace by rejecting such a seemingly moderate proposal. As for the five commissioners, they would be saddled with full blame for mishandling the negotiations. If they could not reject the article, though, how were they to accept it without appearing to have meekly given in?

Bayard suggested a face-to-face conference where they would demand to see a draft of the entire proposed treaty. It was unreasonable of the British to present them with just one article with an attached ultimatum. But if the British refused his request, Bayard still opposed ending the negotiation. Clay favoured accepting the article, but insisted they must reject any demand that America disarm on the lakes. The two things taken together, he said, “would deliver the whole western country up to the mercy of the Indians.” Trouble was, they had no idea of knowing whether the British continued to want disarmament or not. They were being forced to accept one article blind to what other treaty terms would then be presented.

For days they argued. Clearly they had no choice but to accept the article, but how? Clay and Gallatin favoured a short response of no more than four pages. Adams wanted to match the British word for word. Gallatin proposed usurping the article as representing precisely the view the Americans had expressed on the Indian subject. Taking entirely the opposite tack, Adams was for representing “it as a very great concession, made for the sake of securing the peace.” He wanted to include a paragraph arguing for the cession of Canada to the United States as being in the interest of all. The others rejected that notion out of hand, as they did his concession idea. Finally it fell to Clay to merge both men's drafts into something everyone could accept.

Clay's response, much edited by the group, followed Gallatin's idea of portraying the article as essentially being what the Americans had always proposed. It would place “these tribes PRECISELY and in EVERY RESPECT, in the same situation as that in which they stood BEFORE the commencement of hostilities.”

In accepting the article, they then requested that the British provide the
projet
of a treaty “embracing
ALL
the points deemed material by Great Britain” to which they would then present “a
counter projet
with respect to
all
the articles, to which they may not agree and on subjects deemed material by the United States, and which may be admitted in the British
projet.”
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On the 14th the response was finally ready, Hughes busy writing it up in final form, when the British commissioners delivered copies of more London papers. The Americans read about Passamaquoddy Bay being taken, the frigate
Adams
burned, British successes on Lake Huron and in the northern Mississippi. Plattsburgh, too, was reported captured.

It was a defeated five who signed their response at noon for delivery. Adams disliked the response “very much in all its parts,” but had little luck in any of his proposed amendments. Clay, who had always predicted the war would carry no public losses for America, railed “at commerce and the people of Massachusetts, and [told] what wonders the people of Kentucky would do if they should be attacked.”
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The note was delivered that afternoon with the expectation that it would be at least ten days before the British responded. In the ensuing days Russell confronted Adams. He was dissatisfied with the note sent to the British. Adams concurred and asked why Russell had not supported him in opposition. Because, Russell answered, he had thought Clay “would have been the most stubborn … upon the point relative to the Indians, and, finding him give way, and being himself the youngest member of the mission, and being from a State that cared nothing about Indian affairs, he had not thought it was his business to be more stiff about it than others.” Bayard, Adams pointed out, had argued against the article. If three of them had upheld this view, Gallatin and Clay would have been forced to come around. Russell sniffed off this conjecture. “Bayard always talked about keeping a high tone,” he said, “but when it came to the point he was always on the conceding side.”
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Two days before the American commissioners agreed to the Indian article, their report on the negotiations and record of dispatches up to the date of George Dallas's sailing home aboard
John Adams
came under scrutiny during a secret session of the House of Representatives in Washington.
Dallas had hand-delivered the materials to James Monroe on October 6. Meeting in the study of Octagon House—the unusual three-storey, octagonal brick building that had been given up by the French minister to provide a suitable residence for the president—James Madison's administration found the packet's contents a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the excessive British demands might help galvanize the nation behind the war effort. Opposed to that was the probability that the negotiations had by now collapsed.

The immediate question was how to exploit the material to advantage. Madison solved that problem by providing its entire contents to the recently reconvened Thirteenth Congress. Three days of secret deliberations resulted in passage of a motion ordering the printing of 10,000 copies of the dispatches and their public distribution. This propaganda ploy proved moderately successful. While Republicans could be expected to decry the British demands as unacceptable, some Federalist newspapers and politicians also condemned them as tantamount to requiring the nation to surrender its freedom.

Privately Madison believed there was no further prospect of a negotiated peace unless the British cabinet was drastically reconstituted so that moderate politicians became ascendant. This he realized was improbable despite young Dallas's assurances that some, including Lord Chancellor David Erskine, who had once been Britain's minister to America, opposed the war. Dallas reported a conversation in which Erskine allegedly declared, “America is right and we are wrong in this war.” To this Attorney General Richard Rush commented: “I am not without a hope that the events of Baltimore, Plattsburgh, and Champlain, with the drubbing that my Lord Wellington's heroes have received on the Niagara, will induce many people in England to Lord Erskine's way of thinking.”
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Monroe, meanwhile, drafted further instructions for the commissioners in Ghent in the faintest hope that the talks might not yet have irreparably ruptured. He authorized them to drop all previous demands if the
“status quo ante bellum”
could be restored. They were empowered to follow their own judgment in agreeing to treaty articles, subject, of course, to ratification by the government.
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