CHAPTER IV

RIGHT OF SEARCH AND EMBARGO

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, at any rate from the time that France and Great Britain engaged in hostilities on February 9, 1793, the United States might almost be said to be within the European States-system. This close connection with European politics remained unbroken until the Presidency of James Monroe. It was not the fact of the British being in Canada that brought the United States into European affairs; after the separation of 1783, the British Government never made any attempt to use Canada as a basis for an American Continental policy. But the ownership of Louisiana (after 1800) by the powerful and ambitious French Revolutionary Government, and of Florida by the declining Spanish power, made the United States sensitive to every important movement in European politics. Further, the existence of a state of war in Europe, a war which, owing to the world-wide possessions of the combatants, was itself a world-wide struggle, reacted powerfully upon the Americans through their carrying-trade.

The idea used to be currently accepted on both sides of the Atlantic that during the French wars the United States adopted a uniformly unfavourable attitude to Great Britain. Such an idea is quite erroneous: the Americans resented the pressure exercised by France upon their trade quite as much as they resented the pressure of Great Britain, and on the whole, throughout the period of the wars, their Government seems to have been more ready to fight the French than the English. As a matter of fact maritime hostilities between France and the United States did take place in 1799, although no legal declaration of war was made by either side.1 In the end, the only war on a grand scale which the United States fought during the whole period (1793-1815) was the War of 1812; but almost precisely the same sort of grievances which brought 1 S. E. Morison, Maritime History of Massachusetts, p. 175.

about war with Great Britain nearly brought on war with France, and it was only bad luck and some political blundering which decided that the strength of America should be directed against England instead of being cast on England's side.

The United States and France were bound together by the Treaty of Alliance, February 6, 1778, under which the French had engaged in the War of Independence. President Washington decided that this and the other treaties of 1778 with France were not abrogated by the Revolution which destroyed the French Monarchy. On the other hand he took the view that the United States' guarantee of France's American possessions, under article 11 of the Alliance of 1778, did not necessitate his declaring war upon Great Britain after 1793: for the United States could not, by any manner of means, stop the British Navy from taking the French West Indian Islands. So he issued his famous Proclamation of Neutrality, April 22, 1793.1

When Great Britain and America signed the Jay Treaty in 1794, opinion in France became really incensed. Hitherto the Americans had been popular in Paris. The republican James Monroe, who succeeded the courtly Gouverneur Morris as Minister from May, 1794, to August, 1796, had openly sympathised with the French. Morris, however, carried back with him to Philadelphia a bad impression of the French guillotinings; and he and the other Federalists, like Alexander Hamilton, aristocratic and British in sympathy, advised Washington to recall Monroe. Washington agreed, and sent Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, of South Carolina, to Paris. C. C. Pinckney was a brother of Thomas Pinckney, Minister of the United States to London, and, like his brother, had been educated at Westminster School. He was one of the best examples of the Southern slave-holding aristocracy," 2 and therefore not precisely the sort of man to suit the taste of the French Directory. Before he arrived, the exact terms of the Jay Treaty had been for long known in Paris, and the Directory, in anger, had terminated the Alliance of 1778 (July 2, 1796). When Pinckney came on the scene, December, 1796, the Directory refused to receive him. Of the two last successive French ministers to Philadelphia, one, Genêt, had been recalled on the demand of George Washington, on account of his illegal and warlike activities; the other, Adet, 1 American State Papers, Foreign Relations, I, 140. 2 Channing, IV, 178.

had been withdrawn by the Directors on their own initiative. Shortly after this Washington's second Presidency came to an end, and John Adams took his place (March, 1797). In his magnificent Farewell Address, the Father of his Country had counselled the United States to take advantage of its "detached and distant situation," so as to remain free from European embroilments.

Why forgo the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humour, or caprice? 1

Adams was strongly peaceful, but he was none the less a determined man. He declared that he would never send a minister to France without assurances that he would be "received, respected and honoured as the representative of a great, free, powerful and independent nation." However, willing to smooth over the irritation if possible, he sent three unofficial commissioners to Paris in the summer of 1797: these were C. C. Pinckney (the rejected minister to France), John Marshall, the great lawyer, and Elbridge Gerry. Their dealings with the Directory are described by Pinckney to the Secretary of State in a dispatch that reads like a chapter from some sensational novel. The meetings began on October 18, 1797. First a Monsieur X. called upon the Commissioners, and opened the subject of Anglo-French relations, finally saying that everything could be arranged if twelve hundred thousand livres (about £50,000) were given as a douceur to the Directors. Two days later a Monsieur Y. called. The gist of his communications was similar to those of his friend X.'s, except that (he stated) in addition to the douceur, a loan of thirty-two million Dutch florins was required by the French Government from the United States. Finally, about a week later, a Monsieur Z., "a French gentleman of respectable character," came to the Commissioners' hotel, and conducted one of them to Talleyrand, the Ministre des Relations extérieures. Talleyrand discussed Franco-American relations with his usual finesse, but concluded with a more direct observation than he was wont to use, namely: "that this matter about the money must be settled directly." The American Commissioners, however, did not commit themselves. No money changed hands, and no adjustment of relations resulted from the mission. The object of Talleyrand

1 American State Papers, vol. I (Foreign Relations, vol. I), p. 37.

in these obscure negotiations was not to bring the United States into the war on the French side, for thus France would lose the advantage of neutral American commerce. What he really wanted was to temporize with the United States until his negotiations with Spain for the cession of Louisiana to France were concluded.1 Meanwhile American ships were being captured by French privateers, and preparations for a naval war were being made by the U.S. Navy Department. It was this war-crisis which brought the American Navy (which had practically died away since the War of Independence) into new life, a life that has gone on increasingly until to-day. In June, 1798, President Adams revoked the exequaturs of the French consuls in the United States and sent them home. On July 7, 1798, Congress denounced the Treaty of Alliance. In 1799 all United States merchant ships were ordered to resist French assaults by force, and privateers were commissioned. A number of fights took place; French ships were captured and condemned in American prize courts. The Directory had enough on their heads without having to undertake war on the grand scale with the United States. So before matters had gone too far, Talleyrand reopened negotiations. Napoleon Bonaparte overturned the Directory, but kept Talleyrand at the Ministry of Exterior Relations. The negotiations went on and issued in the Convention of Mortefontaine, signed by Joseph Bonaparte and Ellsworth, Vans Murray and Davie, on September 30, 1800. This was not a treaty of alliance, but only a convention of Peace, Commerce and Navigation. Talleyrand had not expected to make an alliance he was content to detach the United States from commercial interest with Great Britain, and so to diminish British commerce with America. This was regarded in French official circles as a success of greater consequence than the most fortunate

After the Convention of Mortefontaine the relations of France and the United States became for a time very easy, all the more so when Napoleon suddenly and surprisingly offered to sell Louisiana.

Louisiana, one of the oldest colonies of France, had been ceded to Spain in 1763. On October 1, 1800, by the Treaty of San Ildefonso, Spain retroceded the province to France. However, with the British

1 Morison, Harrison Gray Otis, I, 82-83. The "X Y Z Dispatches' American State Papers, Foreign Relations, vol II, 157 ff.

"

are in

* See Instructions of Talleyrand, in Mowat, Diplomacy of Napoleon, p. 89.

Navy commanding the sea, Bonaparte could not take delivery of the ceded territory; and the Spanish authorities were not in any hurry to hand it over. Meanwhile Jefferson (who had succeeded Adams as President in March, 1801) had got wind of the cession. It was one thing to have the moribund empire of Spain for a neighbour; it would be quite another thing to have France at the mouth of the Mississippi. The question of Louisiana excited strong interest in the American Press, and contradictory rumours were flying about the country.1 Rather than have France on the Mississippi, Jefferson decided that the United States would have to fight. But first he sent James Monroe on a special mission to Paris, to see if he could purchase a piece of Louisiana-New Orleans and its district-just enough to enable the United States to keep the Mississippi open to commerce. Before Monroe arrived, Edward Livingston, the regular American Minister at Paris, had opened the subject with the First Consul, and had found out that Bonaparte (whose colonial designs had come to grief) was willing to sell not merely part but the whole. Between them Monroe and Livingston completed the negotiations in about a fortnight; and by the Treaty of Cession, April 30, 1803, Louisiana was to change hands for sixty million francs. Spain, being now fast bound to the chariot wheels of France, had to accede to the treaty. On November 30, the Spanish authorities gave over the administration of Louisiana to a French prefect, who in turn handed it over, on December 20 (1803), to American Commissioners.2

Thus by the end of the year 1803 American diplomacy had decidedly shown its capacity to deal with the circumstances of the Great War. It had solved a war-crisis with Great Britain, by the Jay Treaty of 1794; it had prevented a small, semi-official war with France from becoming a great war, by the Convention of Mortefontaine in 1800; and it had acquired by the Louisiana Purchase a province of unknown extent and incalculable economic and political significance, on the lower Mississippi. But the next decade was to show troubles which were met with less skill, and ended with a terrible British war.

Somehow or other British relations with the United States were not very smooth, even after the Jay Treaty was made. It must be sadly confessed that a traditional feeling of hostility was being

1 See The Columbian Centinel, for June 26, 1802.

See J. A. Robertson, Louisiana under the Rule of Spain, France and the United States (1911), vol. II. Mowat, Diplomacy of Napoleon, 140–2.

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