1805-6. SPANISH RELATIONS. 99 as a preface to the more specific and confidential statement of our difficulties with Spain and Great Britain. Special messages were sent in accordingly relative to both countries. The Spanish message, which Congress received first, Dec. 6. with accompanying documents, broached, somewhat guardedly, the scheme of purchasing the disputed territory, and more than this, the two Floridas, under the auspices of France. It appears that General Armstrong, a brother-inlaw and the successor of Livingston at France, who had resigned in 1804, had declared the project feasible at this time, though Livingston before had favored the short cut as to West Florida without committing France.* A secret appropriation of $2,000,000 for so desirable a purpose was expected under cover of public resolutions toning the national sense of wrong. Spain was to be pushed, not into war, but a bargain. The President drafted skilfully the needful papers for this purpose with his usual promptitude, and it remained for the proper House committee to make report. But here an unexpected outbreak appeared. Johu Randolph had been reappointed by Macon chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, and to this committee was confided the subject of belligerent troubles. On the 7th of December the Spanish matter was put into the hands of Nicholson, the second member of the committee in influence. The same day Randolph called on the President, and an interview was arranged for the next morning. At this interview Jefferson explained to him frankly the views of the administration upon the purchase of Florida; to which, if we may credit Randolph's account of the conversation, the latter responded with equal frankness that he would never agree to such a measure, because the money had not been pointedly asked for in the message, and because the step was disgraceful after the total failure of every attempt at negotiation.† Dec. 8. With their own chairman, the recognized leader of the House, averse to the desired appropriation, the Ways and Means acted directly counter to the wishes of the President. Nichol * Monroe Correspondence, 1804. † Decius, in Richmond Inquirer, August, 1805. son, an intimate friend of Randolph, was unwilling to break from him on this issue, while other members who were ready to do so had not the requisite influence for carrying their point. After long delays upon one pretext or another, Randolph reported to the House in secret session, not the provision for purchasing the Floridas which the President had Jan. 3, 1806. drafted, but a headlong resolve instead, that troops. should be raised for the purpose of protecting our Southern frontiers from Spanish inroads and chastising the invaders. But upon perceiving Randolph's defection, the President had meantime communicated his wishes to Bidwell and Varnum, of Massachusetts; and Bidwell, a member of the committee, now arose and offered as a substitute, the $2,000,000 appropriation" for extraordinary expenses of foreign intercourse.' The President's message does not ask for money," said Randolph, tartly. "I am aware it does not," responded Bidwell; "but I have reason to know that this is the President's secret wish." Bewildered at first, but soon conceiving the true situation, the House, without hesitation, laid aside the Randolph resolve and voted for Bidwell's substitute. An appropriation bill prepared accordingly passed both Houses secretly, and received the President's signature.* Jan. 3-16. 66 Another unexpected obstacle to the President's new effort at a friendly settlement with Spain was encountered in the Senate. James Bowdoin, son and namesake of the famous Massachusetts governor, had lately been appointed minister to Spain in place of Charles Pinckney, a negotiator of indifferent merit, whose private affairs called him home. He was now at Paris with General Armstrong; hence the two were nominated joint commissioners for the Spanish business. But Armstrong's course regarding a private claim against France so stirred up our merchants and underwriters against him that his nomi * Act February 13th, 1806; Annals of Congress; 5 Hildreth; Adams's Gallatin. The Randolph resolve was voted down in the House by 72 to 58. The appropriation bill passed by 76 to 54. "A very misjudged opinion," says Madison. esteemed the indignation against Armstrong unjust. And Jefferson Works of Madi 1805-6. GRIEVANCES AGAINST GREAT BRITAIN. 101 nation was violently opposed; indeed the result was a tie vote. The President had thought at one time of adding his friend. Wilson C. Nicholas, who had retired from public life, as a third commissioner; but Nicholas declined the honor. Armstrong being still minister to France, the President confided the purchase to him and Bowdoin. As soon as the Spanish appropriation had been provided in the House, the President brought the case of Great Britain forward by means of another special message, likewise in confidence. Two points of grievance were herein noticed on the part of the United States: (1), rules infringing upon the rights of a neutral commerce; and (2), the impressment of American seamen. Jan. 17. (1.) A detailed report from the State Department, which was sent into Congress a few days after, illustrated Jan. 25. the first point quite clearly. The inference was natural that, by paying for spoliations under the Jay treaty, Great Britain had conceded to neutrals the general right of commercial intercourse with a belligerent's dominions except as to blockaded ports and the conveyance of contraband articles. But the principle to which Great Britain and her prize courts now tended was, that a trade opened to neutrals by a nation at war on account of the war was unlawful, and that any relaxation was matter of favor. (2.) Impressment, a second grievance against Great Britain, was touched upon more lightly in Madison's report, for statistics were incomplete.* Since the fresh outbreak of European hostilities, the forcible seizure of American citizens to serve on board of British war vessels had alarmingly increased. Probably, as Crowninshield represented in the course of a desultory debate in the House on this subject, from 2500 to 3000 of our best seamen were already thus detained. Fathers, veterans of '76, whose sons had been torn January. son and Jefferson, March, 1806. This claim had been allowed by a commission under the Louisiana treaty, but Armstrong resisted its pay ment. * The President's message, December 5th, 1803, showed forty-three recent impressments of seamen, of whom twelve had protection papers. from them and set to fighting our ancient ally in behalf of the foe once conquered, lodged their indignant complaints with Congress. "I lost an estate," said one, " by lending money to carry on the Revolutionary War, and suffered everything but death by being confined as a prisoner among the British at Canada. Though a full captain, I was for fifteen months in close confinement; and if this is all the liberty I have gained, to be bereaved of my children in that form, and they made slaves, I had rather be without it.' To render the situation of our impressed citizens doubly deplorable, the French Admiral Villeneuve had lately announced that every foreigner found on board an enemy's vessel should be treated absolutely as a prisoner of war outside the protection of his own nation. And thus the life of an American sailor, forced on board a British man-of-war against his will, hung by a slender thread. Impressment, which now became the standing grievance against Great Britain, was an indiguity to which no selfrespecting nation could submit. Loss of property will long be borne, but the unatoned outrage upon the person of a citizen provokes instant retaliation and war. Nevertheless the United States had shown great forbearance on this subject, and ever since 1790 had sought by fruitless negotiation to rectify the mischief. The fundamental right England claimed was that of using her own citizens to fight her maritime battles; and once a citizen always a citizen. At first her pretension of reclaiming citizens, once in allegiance, appears to have been confined to British seamen who had deserted from some ship and entered the American service. Gradually, however, it extended farther, all British subjects being claimed and seized whether deserters or otherwise. And yet, in face of *David Rumsey's letter to the Speaker; Annals of Congress. "The vexations of our seamen and their sufferings, under the pressgangs of England, have become so serious as to oblige our government to take serious notice of it. The particular case has been selected where the insult to the United States has been the most barefaced, the most deliberately intentional, and the proof the most complete." The case here selected, that of Purdie, who had been impressed, scourged, and kept in irons, was urged upon the British Minister for Foreign Affairs while Jefferson was Secretary of State under President Washington. Jefferson's Works, December 23d, 1790. 1805-6. BRITISH IMPRESSMENTS. 103 their own principles, the British ministry would refuse to discharge an American seaman settled or married in England, or one who had voluntarily entered the British service. By right of the American Revolution our citizens, formerly British, had acquired doubtless an independent American allegi ance. But it was not the real or pretended right to impress, so much as the means of enforcing that right, to which the United States took chief exception. So far as this government was concerned, arrangements would not have been difficult for the mutual surrender of deserters upon a reciprocal obligation to observe good faith. But Great Britain consented to no such arrangement. She made no demand for her deserting seamen. On the contrary, she used force, and exercised a discretion of her own, which, utterly ignoring the co-sovereignty of the parties, led of necessity to the greatest abuse. British naval officers would stop and overhaul an American merchantman, muster its passengers aud sailors on deck, and carry off forcibly all whom it might suit their convenience to claim as British subjects. This was done not in British ports alone, but in those of neutrals and upon the high seas. The interested party and the stronger one was judge of his own cause. Sailors were wanted, and the British press-gang laid the universe under contribution. Hence did the abuse of the impressment principle far outrun the principle itself. Thousands of American natives were taken in the pretended exercise of a British right of search; foreigners, too, whose language and personal appearance showed distinctly that they were not Britons. Meantime the remedy, in case of mistaken seizure, was slow and by no means adequate, nor was recompense afforded for it. The commerce of the United States was injured by the actual loss of seamen and the dread which kept others from exposing themselves to the peril of capture for bloody work upon an English frigate. Harboring British deserters within American jurisdiction was the only complaint England could possibly make against the United States for her own justification. During the administration of John Adams, in 1800, an offer was made to Liston, the British minister, of a reciprocal 1800. |