American History Lecture 5 Foreign Policy: The First Four Decades (1781-1825) KEY THEMES: * Isolationism vs. foreign involvement. * The battle of interests: America's commercial empire vs. America's land empire. * The drive for expansion by purchase, by right of discovery, or by plunder. THE STATUS QUO IN 1781: Population (1780): * @ 3,000,000 (no census was conducted until 1790) Alliances and Treaties: * France and Spain had engaged in a wartime alliance with the United States. The French and the USA had signed two treaties in 1778. * The commercial "Treaty of Amity and Commerce" gave the United States special trade privileges, and guaranteed that France would be granted a primitive version of what is now called "most favoured nation" status in all future trade relations of the USA. Article II of the treaty reads as follows: The most Christian King [of France], and the United States, engage mutually not to grant any particular Favour to other Nations in respect of Commerce and Navigation, which shall not immediately become common to the other Party, who shall enjoy the same Favour . . . . * The military "Treaty of Alliance" was meant to be a permanent alliance. It provided that neither party would seek a separate peace. Articles V to VII divided the spoils of war between the participants: America would get Canada and Bermuda, France would get the British sugar islands in the Caribbean. The victory over Britain was a good deal too limited to permit this territorial expansion to take place, so the most important provision of the treaty from the perspective of 1781 was Article VIII: Neither of the two Parties shall conclude either Truce or Peace with Great Britain, without the formal consent of the other first obtain'd; and they mutually engage not to lay down their arms, until the Independence of the united states shall have been formally or tacitly ensured by the Treaty or Treaties that shall terminate the War. . . . Military: * Britain was still technically at war with the American colonists, but following the Battle of Yorktown it was willing to recognize the independence of the United States. Negotiations began in Paris. * America and its French and Spanish allies had been victorious along the eastern seaboard of North America * The situation elsewhere favoured the British. 1. In Canada, Britain had successfully repulsed an American invasion in 1775. 2. In the Caribbean, Britain gained the upper hand over France and Spain in early 1782. 3. On the western frontier, Britain's Indian alliance remained relatively intact. 4. In India, Britain's supremacy over France had been clearly established, thereby laying the groundwork for what is known as the "second British empire," replacing the one that had been lost in America. 5. In combat, Britain had faced down not only France and Spain, but also the Netherlands. And she had neutralized the hostile "League of Armed Neutrality," including Sweden, Denmark and Russia, which had been prepared to join in the fight against Britain. * France was greatly weakened and had been driven to the point of bankruptcy by the war. Despite the British defeat in the American colonies, it was clear that Britain retained its hegemony over France in the struggle to be the world's dominant power, and in particular its dominance over the seas. * A final note: the war had again demonstrated Spain's weakness and its terminal decline as a world power. By the end of the war, Spain had failed to retake Gibraltar, and had generally been humiliated in battle with the British. BUILDING DOMESTIC SECURITY AS A SMALL STATE (1781-1803) The Treaty of Paris: In 1782, the representatives of the four combatants met in Paris. Benjamin Franklin represented the United States. He quickly proved himself to be (on top of all his other remarkable qualities) a brilliant negotiator. In July, he made a series of proposals, known as the "Four Points," that would serve as the basis for an agreement between Britain and America: 1. British recognition of the independence of the United States, with the consequential withdrawal of all British troops from United States soil (at this point the British still controlled much of the territory west of the Alleghenies, and the Royal Navy had remained in control of New York City after the end of hostilities). 2. British agreement as to the definition of all the boundaries of the United States---not just the boundaries between British territory and American territory. 3. American recognition of continued British ownership over Canada, with one of two possible borders in the disputed area west of the intersection of the St. Lawrence River and the 45th parallel: a) The border could continue along the 45th parallel west to the Mississippi. b) The border could follow the St. Lawrence River in a south-westerly direction, then pass through the middle of each of the Great Lakes before heading west to connect with the headwaters of the Mississippi at Lake of the Woods. (The British preferred the latter option) 4. Continued American access to the fishery off Newfoundland. In return, Britain obtained from the United States the right to free navigation of the Mississippi River---a right which in the end was never exercised. This arrangement was accepted by the British, despite the fact that it involved a much larger territorial concessions in the Ohio Valley than anybody would have guessed that Britain would be willing to make. The main reason for Britain's willingness to go along with these conditions was that they had the effect of terminating the American alliance with France. America became a neutral nation, and it did so on terms guaranteed to sour relations with France---by violating Article VIII of the Franco-American Treaty of Alliance. The Treaty of Paris also reveals two very important patterns in Anglo-American relations, which would remain in effect throughout the period during which Britain remained an imperial power with a presence in North America (in other words, until after 1898, when this course ends). 1. Britain was the world's dominant power throughout this period, and unlike the other powers that at various times would engage in territorial disputes with the United States (France, Spain, Mexico and a host of minor powers like Haiti and Hawaii), Britain always negotiated from a position of strength. 2. Britain found America to be a useful de facto military ally, although no formal alliance would exist between the two powers until 1917. For this reason, it was willing to make territorial concessions beyond what could have been obtained, had Britain been willing to exercise its full military might. In return, it used America as an instrument of its foreign policy. At any rate, Britain not only conceded the territory in the Ohio Valley and in Michigan to the Americans (point 3 in the list above), which represented a genuine concession, but it also gladly agreed to respect the American claim to all territory east of the Mississippi River and north of Florida, since this put the United States into a position of conflict with Spain, which also claimed much of this territory. To help this process along, Britain then ceded Florida back to Spain, which immediately rejected Britain's agreement to limit West Florida's northern border to the 31st parallel. France was a natural ally of Spain and more or less had to support Spain's claims, so this put America in a position of conflict with France. In short, point 2 in Franklin's "Four Points" was no concession at all, from the British point of view. The other thing to be kept in mind is that all too frequently, treaties regarding territorial cessions are honoured only in the breach. In American history, this is most extravagantly true in regard of the various oft-violated treaties with the Indians, but Britain turned out to be pretty cavalier in its method of dealing with the part of the Treaty of Paris that required the evacuation of the Ohio Valley. The reason for failing to evacuate the forts in the Ohio was twofold: 1. America was failing to honour its promise to repay the prewar debts of its citizens to British creditors. 2. The Indians in the Ohio were appalled that their British allies had sold out their interests and threatened to wage waron both Britain and the United States. Britain's fur merchants, located in Montreal, depended upon the free and safe navigation of the rivers flowing out of the region in order to carry on the trade in furs from the centre of the continent. America's Response to the French Revolution / Jay's Treaty. In July 1789, revolution erupted in France. Initially, French moderates attempted to establish a constitutional monarchy. Americans initially reacted enthusiastically to the revolution, which seemed to bear some similarity to their own. As an example of this early enthusiasm, visitors to Mount Vernon can see a stone taken from the wall of the Bastille and carved into a miniature likeness of the prison from which it had come, which was sent to George Washington as a gift from the people of France. He accepted it gladly and gave it to his step-grandchildren to use as a plaything. However, in January 1793 the king was executed and Britain and Spain joined Austria in its war to overthrow the French republic. In America, Hamilton, Adams and the Federalists supported the British. Jefferson and the Republicans continued to support France. All of this might have remained academic, had not the French dispatched an ambassador, Edmond Genˆt, to America with instructions to do the following: 1. To ensure that America complied with its obligation under the 1778 Treaty of Alliance to defend the French Caribbean against British attack in the event that metropolitan France was invaded. 2. To ensure that American ports accept prizes captured by French warships and privateers, as provided under the 1778 treaty. 3. To organized American privateers to raid British shipping. 4. To organize American expeditions to raid Spanish territory in Louisiana and Florida. The Kentuckians, who were angry at Spain for its continued occupation of Natchez, were happy to respond favourably to this proposal. Genˆt didn't bother going to Philadelphia to present his credentials to President Washington, but set to work organizing privateers in South Carolina, where his ship had put in. This won him no friends in the American government, and he was ordered to halt his mission, but not before he had commissioned several privateers in Charleston and arranged for some American adventurers from Kentucky to float down the Mississippi and attack New Orleans. When told to stop, he simply ignored this instruction and actually managed to get one ship converted into a French privateer in an American port and to set sail. This was too much for Washington and even for Jefferson, and they decided to demand that the French government recall him. Meanwhile, France had suffered another coup d'‚tat and it became necessary for Genˆt to plead with the President not to send him back, where he might have been guillotined. Washington conceded, and Genˆt married the daughter of the governor of New York and settled down in there, where he spent the next forty years. Meanwhile, Washington decided to violate the Treaty of Alliance. In April 1793 he issued a proclamation of neutrality. Although Jefferson had argued against abandoning the treaty with France, it was he who summarized the American attitude of neutralism and isolationism that was starting to develop at this time, and that would be one of the guiding principles of American foreign policy right up to the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941: "[W]ar is full of chances, which may relieve us from the necessity of interfering; and if necessary, still the later we interfere, the better we shall be prepared." 1 This principle led America to stay out of WW I until 1917, and out of WW II until 1941. In fact, America was doing rather well out of the war between Britain and France. As usual, American merchants were happily trading with all sides. France had been forced, early in the conflict, to abandon its monopoly on the shipping to and from its Caribbean sugar islands, and Americans had eagerly stepped into the void. But in November 1793, the British decided to terminate this trade, which was helping to support the war effort of its enemy. Therefore it declared that all shipping to and from the French colonies would be subject to seizure. Within a year, 300 American vessels had been seized by the Royal Navy. If they were carrying produce to or from a French port, the ships would be declared to be "war prizes," and would be forfeited. Sailors aboard the ships might be impressed into service in the Royal Navy. Worse yet, the British now incited the Indians in the Northwest Territory to harass the American settlers in the region. The Republicans forced a bill through Congress, establishing an embargo on trade with Britain. The embargo fell apart almost at once, revealing the nation to be deeply divided. War between Britain and America now seemed imminent. To forestall this, Washington now dispatched Chief Justice John Jay to London to negotiate a treaty with Britain. Jay was in a relatively strong position, since the British needed the Americans as de facto allies, as much as they had ten years earlier when negotiating the Treaty of Paris. Therefore it seemed likely that he would be able to achieve his objectives, which were: 1. To convince the British to abandon their forts in the Northwest Territory. 2. To get Britain to pay for the American ships that it had seized. 3. To gain British consent for respect of America's position as a neutral power. However, Hamilton messed this up when, in a moment of weakness, he revealed his bottom-line bargaining position to the British ambassador. The ambassador reported back to London what he had been told, which was that America would not go to war with England under any circumstances. The result was that the Treaty of London (known as Jay's Treaty in America), which was completed in November 1794, was a bad deal for the U.S. Its key provisions were: 1. Britain would comply with the Treaty of Paris in finally abandoning its posts in the Northwest Territory (this time it complied, pulling out by 1796). 2. Britain would henceforth be able to carry on the fur trade on American territory, which meant in practice that it could maintain its ties with the Indians. This would haunt the United States during the War of 1812, when the Indians would again become formidable opponents. 3. Britain would agree to set up a joint commission to review the question of payment for American ships that it had seized. In other words, it would be able to delay. 4. Britain refused to respect America's position as a neutral, and so American ships continued to be boarded and American sailors continued to be pressed into service on Royal Navy vessels. 5. In practice, Britain would now be as favoured as France in U.S. trade relations. The treaty was wildly unpopular, and one provision, which would have allowed British ships access to American ports but would have blocked American ships out of much of the trade from the British sugar islands, was thrown out before the Senate ratified the treaty in June 1795. By comparison, it was relatively easy for the American envoy in Spain to negotiate a treaty settling the Florida boundary question. Spain had abandoned her alliance with Britain, and now sought to distance the United States from the British as well. Therefore she offered to make two concessions, which were written into the Treaty of San Lorenzo (which the Americans called Pinckney's Treaty): 1. To abandon her occupation of Natchez and her claims to any part of the eastern bank of the Mississippi north of the 31st parallel, which had been the boundary agreed to by Britain in the Treaty of Paris. As a practical matter, this ensured that Spain would control the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico, and America would control the interior. 2. To guarantee American navigation of the entire length of the Mississippi. This was an important concession, because it could be revoked at any time, as long as Spain controlled both sides of the river at its mouth, and therefore the threat of closure could be used to guarantee good behaviour on the part of the Americans. As it turned out, Spain gave Louisiana to France eight years later, so this threat was never put to use. But the Americans were painfully aware of its existence. Pinckney's Treaty was a spectacular contrast to Jay's Treaty, and it was on the strength of the popularity that it had won for its negotiator that Hamilton decided to make Thomas Pinckney the vice-presidential candidate for the Federalist Party in 1796 and again in 1800, hoping to bump out Adams and install his own man as President (see the lecture four notes for details on these machinations). A Small but Important Side-Note: The Annexation of Vermont Just as Jay's Treaty secured the northwest border, the annexation of the Republic of Vermont in 1791 secured the northeast. The story of the republic is a good example of the confusion and complexity of the revolution. In 1775, in the early stages of the revolution, a group of settlers in raw frontier area in the mountains to the east of the Hudson River and Lake Champlain, on land claimed by both New York and New Hampshire, armed themselves under the name "The Green Mountain Boys." They were rebelling not so much against the British as they were against the landlords of New York---the "Yorkers", as they called them. In this respect, the Green Mountain boys were very similar to the "Regulators" of the Carolinas. However, unlike the Regulators, the Green Mountain Boys chose to ally themselves with the Patriots, not the Tories, and hence they were able to avoid invasion and expulsion when the Patriots won the war. As it turns out, the leaders of the Green Mountain Boys, the brothers Ethan and Ira Allen, were both skilled diplomats and military leaders. In 1775 they seized Fort Ticonderoga in the Hudson Valley from the British. This was a vital victory that cleared the way for the American invasion of Canada later that year, and it was cannon from Ticonderoga that served as Washington's artillery when he began his siege of Boston in 1776. In 1777, at the Battle of Bennington, the Vermonters were able to damage British supply lines, slowing down an invasion from the north along the Hudson Valley and setting the stage for the great Patriot victory at Saratoga. 1777 was also the year that the Vermonters declared themselves to be an independent republic. The Americans did not formally accept Vermont's independence, since it was regarded as belonging to New York and / or New Hampshire, but the fact that the two states could not agree, coupled with the fact that the Vermonters were a demonstrably effective military power, ensured that their independence was respected in practice following the end of the war. As independent actors, grudgingly accepted both by the British and the Americans, but formally recognized by neither, they emerged as a thorn in everybody's side. At one point Ira Allen proposed that Vermont be annexed by the British as a sort of protectorate. On another occasion, during the French Revolution, he sailed to France to gain arms with which he hoped to foment revolution among the French Canadians. His ship, the Olive Branch, was boarded in the English Channel by the Royal Navy, and 20,000 muskets were discovered in the hold. 2 The annexation of Vermont was achieved when the Federal government was able to secure the recognition of Vermont's independent existence from its real enemy---New York State---as part of the package of territorial surrenders that New York, Virginia and other states were making in the 1780s and 1790s. This recognition was conditional upon Vermont joining the United States. This event took place in 1791, and Vermont became the 14th state. The military significance of winning over Vermont should not be under-estimated. Had Britain managed to secure the republic as an ally or protectorate, it would have been in possession of a territorial dagger pointed directly into the heart of New England. Had Britain been able to march its troops in security down Vermont soil on the east side of Lake Champlain in the War of 1812, instead of down hostile soil on the west side, or if it had been able to build its lake flotilla at the south end of the lake instead of the north, it is conceivable that it might successfully have captured the Hudson River valley, split New England from the rest of the Union, and successfully have broken the United States into two separate federations, which could then be prevented from becoming a world power. Washington's Parting Words: In 1796, George Washington made it clear that he would not stand for re-election. He had conducted the country's foreign affairs as well as anyone could, given its small size and military weakness, and in his farewell address, he dealt with a number of subjects, including the proper foreign policy for his country. He is often imagined to have advised against "entangling alliances," but these words are actually Jefferson's. What Washington advised was the following: The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have them with as little political connection as possible . . . . It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world . . . . Taking care always to keep ourselves . . . on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies. 3 This was the first statement of American isolationism, and has become the classic text of those who urge this policy for the United States. The XYZ Affair and Near-War with France France was of course displeased with Jay's Treaty, which had the effect of partially moving America out of her own trading empire and back into that of the British. It was also a near-violation of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce of 1778. America had already violated and then repudiated the Alliance of 1778, so now France decided to retaliate by treating American ships in the same manner as the British. After all, America was willing to suffer this abuse from Britain without going to war. Surely she would also suffer it from France? American ships were boarded, American sailors on British ships were treated as pirates, and American ships bound for England that had entered French harbours were impounded. Moreover, the American minister to France (Thomas Pinckney's brother, Charles) was shunned. Adams chose to resolve the crisis by sending Madison to negotiate with France. Cabinet refused to accept him, so a three-man team consisting of Charles Pinckney, future Chief Justice John Marshall, and future Vice President Elbridge Gerry were sent to negotiate a settlement. At the same time, Congress voted to increase coastal defences, arm merchant vessels, and complete three frigates. One of these, the USS Constitution, is still on the registry of the US Navy, 201 years after being commissioned. Mind you, it hasn't seen combat since the War of 1812. The envoys arrived in Paris and were treated with contempt. The French Foreign Minister, Talleyrand, refused to even meet with them, and sent three emissaries, known by the code names X, Y and Z, to meet with them and inform them that France would only sign a treaty ending its abuse of American shipping if it were paid several million dollars in tribute. But before any of this could happen, a bribe of $250,000 would have to be paid to Talleyrand personally. The American commissioners stormed out, declaring that they would pay "Not a sixpence. Millions for defence but not one cent for tribute." A report was sent to President Adams, who reported to Congress and demanded retaliatory action. Congress authorized the following measures: 1. The formal repudiation of the treaties of 1778. 2. The suspension of trade with France. 3. Authorization for American ships to seize armed French vessels. Domestically, preparations were made for war. In fact, something amounting to an undeclared war was taking place on the high seas. So a new department of the Navy was created. However, Hamilton's machinations at home prevented an effective defence from being prepared. Hamilton and his supporters began to build up the army---which was not needed, given the absence of a land border with France. However, Hamilton was an experienced artillery officer, and he was able to arrange it so that Washington would be named nominal head of the army, and he would become its second-in-command. Besides, the Navy Department was the one seat in Cabinet over which Hamilton had no control. Meanwhile, his British friends could take care of America's naval defence. Adams disagreed, and could see that he was being shunted to one side by Hamilton. So when Elbridge Gerry---who had ignored orders to return home from Paris and had continued to negotiate with the French---now returned and reported that America's hard stand had had an impact and that the French were willing to end the undeclared war and consider the terms that the United States had offered two years earlier. Meanwhile, the British were still violating American shipping in precisely the same manner as they always had done. Based on this information, Adams terminated the Hamiltonian members of his cabinet, and the informal war with France came to an end. . . . to the Shores of Tripoli: War with the Pasha, 1801-1805 When Jefferson became president, he immediately downsized the army from 4,000 men to 2,500 men. He also put on hold any plans to expand the navy. However, he had become a convert to Adams' policy of refusing to give in to demands for tribute. Throughout the 1790s, the pashas of a series of North African states on the so-called Barbary Coast (Morocco, Tunis, Algiers and Tripoli) had been raiding European shipping in the Mediterranean and demanding tribute in order to end the attacks, and return captured American sailors. There were many anguished letters from American sailors threatening from their north African cells to "take up the turban" if they were not soon ransomed. Having faced down a great power like France over this very issue, Jefferson was unwilling to copy the European states and pay the tribute. Instead, he dispatched the navy, including the United States Marine Corps (marines at this time were normally understood to be sailors who boarded enemy ships when they sailed sufficiently close in combat). For four years the navy and the marines battled the pirates of Tripoli, until the pasha agreed to a truce. However, this did not end the problem of the other Barbary states, and tribute continued to be paid to them until 1816. In the 1830s France ended this problem permanently by conquering north Africa. The Louisiana Purchase: Jefferson continued to worry about the danger that Spain might close off the mouth of the Mississippi, despite its promise to leave it permanently open to American commerce. This fear was heightened when it was learned that in 1800, a secret treaty had transferred Louisiana back to France. France might not consider itself bound by Pinckney's Treaty, and besides, unlike Spain it was a vigorous power (under Napoleon, who had been placed in charge in 1799, it became, for a while, the leading world power). Worse yet, in 1802 the French governor revoked the American right of deposit at New Orleans. This seemed like a warning that the mouth of the river could soon be closed. Jefferson was worried. He was a great lover of France, but he believed that [There exists] on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market. . . . France placing herself in that door, assumes to us the attitude of defiance. The day that France take s possession of New Orleans . . . [we will have to] marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation. Jefferson therefore sent future president James Monroe to Paris to negotiate for New Orleans. Possession of the city would give the United States the entire eastern bank of the river, except for a small strip held by Spain near what is now Baton Rouge. By the time Monroe arrived in Paris, Talleyrand (yes, the same Talleyrand. . . ) had spoken to the American ambassador to France, Robert Livingston and offered to sell the entire Louisiana territory to the United States for $15,000,000. Monroe and Livingston accepted with a minimum of hesitation, and Congress ratified the deal. Napoleon's reasons for initiating this sale should be considered: 1. His wars of conquest were expensive, and he could use $15,000,000. 2. His generals had failed to put down a slave revolt in Haiti, and it became clear that running a New World empire in addition to the one he was building in Europe was going to prove beyond his means. 3. It seemed likely that New Orleans, which was vulnerable from the sea, would fall to the Royal Navy in the event of another war with Britain, and war was imminent. Once New Orleans fell, Louisiana would be lost (a situation that would not have been true for Spain, or for Britain or the United States, all of which possessed long land boundaries with Louisiana). It was better for America to have this territory rather than Britain. 4. By selling Louisiana to the United States, he would forestall the Anglo-British alliance that Jefferson had warned of. Jefferson capitalized on the Louisiana purchase by authorizing the expeditions of Zebulon Pike and of Lewis and Clark. Not only did these expeditions explore the vast new purchase, but in the case of Lewis and Clark, they helped to secure the basis for a future American claim to the previously unexplored, and currently utterly unoccupied territory which lay to the north of Spanish California and to the south of Russian Alaska, and which would soon come to be known as the Oregon Country. The War of 1812: Unfortunately, while the problem of French boardings of American ships had been resolved (temporarily) by President Adams, and the problem of Barbary boardings had been resolved (partly) by President Jefferson, the most important problem of all---British boardings---had been solved by no-one. Following the turn of the century, this problem began to get much worse. From 1803 onwards, Britain and France were engaged in a life-and-death struggle---the first "total" war in the modern sense, in which every aspect of life, including commerce, was drawn into the war between the nations---that would continue until Napoleon's defeat in 1814. Each side imposed a trade embargo on all international commerce destined for the other, and proved itself willing to seize any neutral shipping bound for the others' ports. By 1807, Britain had seized over one thousand American ships, and the French about half that. From the American point of view, the worst part of the business was the British practice of searching American vessels for British deserters and then forcing them to return, at once, to British service. Sometimes American sailors who had never been in the Royal Navy now found themselves impressed into His Majesty's service, under conditions of work that may, without any exaggeration, be described as suboptimal. The worst incident occurred off the coast of Virginia when, within American territorial waters, a British frigate, the HMS Leopard, engaged the American frigate USS Chesapeake and forced it to strike its colours. The Chesapeake was then boarded and searched for deserters. Four men were seized and one was hanged from the yardarm of the British ship. A series of laws were now passed by Congress in order to respond to this incident and others like it: 1. The Non-Importation Act (April 1806) banned most goods from Britain and placed an embargo on all foreign shipping. 2. The Embargo Act (December 1807) forbade U.S. ships to leave foreign ports. This was a disaster, as it allowed the British to take over the American trade, gave Napoleon an excuse to seize $10 million in American cargoes in French ports, and aroused the anger of the New England merchants, whose ships were being left idle while the bills still had to be paid. This event had the effect of giving increased ammunition to those New England Federalists who had been muttering vaguely since the time of the Essex Junto (1804) about the possibility of secession. 3. The Nonintercourse Act (1809) involved a partial backing-away from the extreme actions of the Embargo Act, but still maintained a partial trade embargo. At the end of all this, just as the Nonintercourse Act was going into effect, Jefferson left office with a sigh of relief and James Madison took over as President. He did very little in terms of active diplomacy to resolve the ongoing crisis on the seas, and finally in 1812 he consented to go to war with Britain. Tragically, the decision to engage in a war was taken just as the British government made the decision to suspend its Orders in Council, which were the legal justification for its actions on the high seas. But there was no way of knowing this in America, and so war began. The British actions on the high seas were not the only factor, it should be mentioned, that led to the war. Many in the South were of the opinion that Canada would be easily conquered, and would make an attractive addition to the growing American territorial empire. Already, Madison had achieved some success in detaching territory from foreign empires. In 1810, some American settlers at Baton Rouge, in the part of Spanish Florida that touched upon the eastern bank of the Mississippi, had announced that they were being oppressed, declared themselves to be independent, and promptly appealed for the protection of the United States. Having successfully completed their farcical reenactment of the Declaration of Independence, they were annexed at once. American settlers had gradually been moving into Upper Canada, so a similar situation seemed to be possible. The expectation that Canada would fall easily was a critical error, for the following reasons: 1. The Americans had only a very primitive standing army, and the state militias proved to be brilliant in fighting defensive actions, and hopeless in fighting offensive battles on foreign soil. In fact, many militiamen refused to fight. 2. Moreover, the American settlers in Upper and Lower Canada were either loyalists who had fled the revolution and hated the United States, or later settlers who just wanted to stay neutral. The French-speaking elite in Lower Canada, meanwhile, had been won over entirely by the British, and one of its members, Charles-Michel d'Irumberry de Salaberry, even led a French-Canadian army which defeated the Americans at the Battle of Chateauguay. 3. The British had a particularly effective Indian ally in the form of Tecumseh, a chief who successfully banded together an Indian alliance stretching all the way from Florida to Canada. 4. Worst of all, the New England states, which had been opposed to war all along, now decided to become the de facto allies of the British, refusing to engage their militias in the war and supplying beef to the British Army (Johnson states that New York and New England supplied 2/3 of all British army beef by the end of the war). So instead of being a glorious little war, it developed into a long, bitter struggle which threatened national unity. The war can be divided geographically into three sections: 1. The war in Canada, which went much worse than expected, and eventually produced a draw. 2. The war in the south, which was a smashing success. 3. The war at sea, which produced America's most surprising victories and its worst humiliation. The war in Canada involved many battles, most of which took place very close to the frontier. The American militias were unable to penetrate very far into the interior of Canada without suffering desertions, and the British were unable to penetrate very far into the United States without encountering determined opposition from these very same militias, which really were very effective in defensive encounters on their home soil. However, the war in the north can be summarized simply: It was a stalemate. At the time that hostilities ceased, the Americans had won a splendid naval victory at the Battle of Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie, thereby controlling that lake. The Royal Navy controlled Lake Ontario (the other Great Lakes were in the wilderness and therefore unimportant). To the east, the American fleet controlled Lake Champlain and hence had blocked the natural invasion route southwards along the Hudson River into New York. But an invasion northwards to Montreal along the Richelieu River had been repulsed by Salaberry, revealing that neither side had a strategic advantage. In the south, Andrew Jackson won a series of smashing victories over Tecumseh's "Red Stick" (or Baton Rouge) allies, and the United States rewarded itself in 1813 by seizing another slice of West Florida from Spain (the United States was not at war with Spain, but this seems not to have been a consideration). Jackson's crowning victory was won in January 1815, at the Battle of New Orleans, against an experienced British army led by incompetent generals. Jackson's final victory, incidentally, came after a peace treaty had already been signed, leading one American encyclopedia to describe the conflict as the "war of faulty communications." Finally, the British mastery of the sea was unexpectedly challenged in the course of the war. The British continued their practice of raiding American shipping in American waters, but the Americans were now able to raid British shipping (sometimes in British coastal waters). Johnson cites one report that indicates that 800 British ships had been seized in the course of two years of warfare. Moreover, the Americans were able to produce frigates (the main type of warship of the day) that were vastly superior to those of the British. The USS Constitution, which I mentioned earlier, was the most successful of these ships. Built of plentiful American oak, these frigates had enormously strong hulls. British cannonballs, which would have penetrated the hull of almost any other ship, bounced uselessly off the sides of the Constitution, causing her crew to cry out, "Huzzah, her sides are iron!" Thus the ship earned the nickname, "old Ironsides." As well, the American ships were manned by volunteer crews with good pay and high morale. In the end, the American frigates were such a menace that the Royal Navy was forced to instruct its commanders not to engage them in single combat. Only the enormous size of the Royal Navy ensured the continued British domination of the Atlantic. However, the British were still sufficiently in control of the sea to launch a humiliating raid on the American capital. In August 1814 a British army of 5,000 men landed on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, and marched virtually unopposed into Washington D.C. The White House and Congress were both burned to the ground, and the President was forced to flee. It is an indication of how decentralized the country was, that this in no way had any impact on the American conduct of the war effort. Things might have been very different, had the British ignored Washington and attacked Baltimore (just downstream and the fourth-largest city in the country at the time). But the attack on Washington did produce one positive result. A captured American, confined to a British ship while the assault was underway, penned the words to "The Star Spangled Banner", which were later set to music and became the country's national anthem. This helps explain, for those of you who are wondering, why the American national anthem has such a bizarre set of lyrics, starting with the distinctly uninspiring query, "Oh say, can you see. . ." and including references to such Saturnalian special effects as "the rockets' red glare." By the end of 1814, all sides were glad to see the conflict, which never should have happened in the first place, come to an end. The Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war, took six months to negotiate and in the end simply stated that all would return to its prewar condition. Neither side would gain any territory---Spain's losses were simply ignored. Johnson regards the Treaty of Ghent very highly. He writes, More by accident than design, the Treaty of Ghent proved one of history's great acts of statesmanship. After the signing, [John Quincy] Adams remarked to one of the English delegates, `I hope this will be the last treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States.' It was. The very fact that both sides withdrew to their prewar positions, that neither could describe the war as a success or a defeat, and that the terms could not be presented, then or later, as a triumph or a robbery---all worked for permanency and helped to erase from the national memory of both countries a struggle which had been bitter enough at the time. And the absence of crowing or recrimination meant that the treaty could serve as a plinth on which to build a friendly, common-sense relationship between the two great English-speaking peoples. 4 John Bartlet Brebner, who in 1945 wrote an entire book about this relationship, is less impressed by the treaty. He describes is as a curiously empty document which had to be implemented by several Anglo-American agreements during the next few years. For instance, it made no mention whatever of the dangerous issues in the area of `neutral rights' which had been the principle causes of the war, indeed many of those problems remained still unresolved to plague Anglo-American relations a hundred years later. 5 Still, the agreement did have the effect of putting off the settling of disputes to a later point in time when tempers were more settled, and the war itself had confirmed the lesson of the War of Independence: Neither the British nor the Americans were powerful enough to obtain absolute dominance over North America, and were therefore better off trying to settle their differences by peaceful means. An important footnote to the War of 1812 was the boundary settlement of 1818. By now it was clear that the signatories of the Treaty of Paris had erred in assuming that the Lake of the Woods was the headwaters of the Mississippi. To prevent any further such errors, and to avoid having a long undefined boundary on the not-terribly high or easily defined "height of the land" between the Mississippi watershed and the Hudson's Bay watershed, a line was drawn due westward from the south shore of the Lake of the Woods along the 49th parallel to the crest of the Rocky mountains. By now companies chartered in both Britain and the United States were engaged in the fur trade in the vast and formerly unexplored region lying west of this point, which was known as "the Oregon country." But neither was attempting to settle the area, and both sides were anxious to keep out the Russians, who by this time had set up forts as far south as California, and the Spanish, who had, shortly before the turn of the century, sent a fleet as far north as British Columbia. So,as the best method of pre-empting these other powers they agreed to a jointoccupation for the time being, and the fur traders for both sides went about their business in peace. Relations with Spain: With the single exception of the War of 1812, American relations with Britain in the Nineteenth Century were always characterized by an awareness of Britain's ability to defend its territories on the North American continent. Relations with Spain were characterized by a growing awareness of the opposite fact. Spain was in virtual collapse as a world power, and it became a de facto principle of American foreign policy to steal as much territory from Spain as possible, and to purchase it when outright theft would not work. This applies right up to the Spanish-American War of 1898, with which we will end this course. Only Pinckney's Treaty, signed in 1795, involved Spanish negotiation from a position of strength. I've already described how, in 1810 and again in 1813, the United States sliced off bits of West Florida and illegally annexed them. In 1812, President Madison authorized a further effort to seize East Florida (West Florida was the north coast of the Gulf of Mexico; East Florida was the peninsula that today constitutes the state of Florida). Georgia settlers were encouraged to move just across the border, where they announced that they were being oppressed, declared themselves to be the independent republic of East Florida, and immediately requested annexation to the United States. The American military commander on hand graciously agreed to this request. From here on in, however, everything went wrong. The American troops present in Florida were under instructions not to fire on the Spanish, since America and Spain were not at war. But the Spanish governor set about arming mercenaries (mainly Indians and escaped slaves from Georgia, who both had a strong incentive to keep out the Americans), and they began a series of guerrilla attacks on the Americans, who were forced to withdraw following the death of their commanding officer, when outraged Federalists in New England began to threaten secession if America went to war with Spain. The distaste of New England for expansion should be clear by now. Expansion by conquest involved perpetual conflict with the European powers, and this was bad for the commercial empire that they were building in their overseas trade. By contrast, the agricultural South was desperate for expansion. Canada had seemed like a tasty morsel more for sentimental reasons than any other, but there were good practical reasons why the South was anxious to expand into Louisiana and Florida, and later on into Mexico: 1. Florida was a haven for escaped slaves, some of whom became high officials in the semi-feudal structure of the agrarian Indian society there. The South was desperately afraid of slave revolts, and cannot have been pleased at the prospect of armed blacks on its borders. 2. The produce of the South needed to be shipped down the rivers to reach its markets, and all the rivers flowing into the Gulf of Mexico terminated on Spanish soil. This was most famously true of the Mississippi, but also of the Mobile and other lesser streams, which helps explain the salami-slice progressive annexation of West Florida. 3. Slavery needed to continually expand geographically in order to survive, or at least this was the belief of most slave owners. Later on, this would be one of the primary causes of the Civil War, as the North and South bickered over whether to permit slavery to expand into places like Kansas and New Mexico. For the moment, Florida, the Indian territories in Alabama and Mississippi that General Jackson secured for the United States, and the southern parts of the Mississippi River valley were all tempting targets for an economy where land speculation and development was the surest way to grow rich. In March 1818, another invasion was launched. This time the formidable Andrew Jackson was at the head of a competent army. President Monroe had not authorized the invasion, but he was powerless to stop General Jackson, who was a national hero in pursuit of a popular cause against a dispirited enemy. In some respects, this invasion resembles the unauthorized territorial grabs of British generals in Africa, Russian generals in central Asia, or of Queenslanders in New Guinea, all of whom were conveniently just out of range to be in contact with their respective capital cities. The Spanish by now had concluded that Florida was a lost cause. Spain's entire New World empire was by now in rebellion against the mother country, and Spain could ill afford to have the United States as an enemy. So under the Adams-Onis treaty, signed in 1819, Spain ceded Florida to the United States, and agreed to a clearly-defined boundary line between its Mexican territories and those of the United States. America abandoned some of its wilder claims, including a claim to a strip of what is now Texas, but the real coup in the Adams-Onis treaty was Spain's agreement to draw the northern border of Mexico along the line that today defines the northern border of California. By this action, America's claim to the Oregon country was greatly enhanced. In return for all this, America agreed to help pay off some of Spain's debts. This would be the final cession of Spanish territory to the United States for eighty years. Three years later, Mexico and the Spanish territories in central and South America had driven out their colonial masters, and Spain was left with only Cuba and Puerto Rico, from what had once been the largest empire in the world. The Monroe Doctrine: Spain's collapse had been a long time coming, but the final blow had been Napoleon's invasion in the first decade of the Nineteenth Century. With Spain under French occupation and the supply lines with the mother country largely cut, the Spanish colonies rebelled. To some degree Spanish loyalists were able to put down the rebellions in the 1810s, but they broke out again soon afterwards, and by the early 1820s it was apparent that a number of new independent states were going to emerge. Spain was no longer to be a major player, but other European powers---Britain and France in particular---looked at the new states with great interest. Britain was in the process of shedding her own mercantilist policies of the past in favour of free trade with the entire world, and thus could see the advantage of the existence of a large number of free-trading independent states, all of which would do business with the world's largest trading power (herself). France was interested in conquering or controlling Spain again (Britain had successfully helped Spain to drive out Napoleon, but it looked like France might once more be able to gain control of her southern neighbour). If this happened, and France was then able to aid Spain in re-establishing colonial control, the old mercantilist walls would be erected once more, and all of this trade would be lost. In America, there was tremendous sympathy for the revolutionaries of Latin America, who were felt to occupy a moral position not much different from that of the Americans themselves, forty years earlier. As well, Americans as much as the British could see the benefits of free trade with the former Spanish empire. For this reason, a resolution was introduced by Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, giving immediate de facto recognition to the rebel governments. Secretary of State Adams and President Monroe were not happy with this move, which they feared might cause a rupture in American relations with Spain and hence disrupt the negotiations for the purchase of Florida. This ceased to be a factor, however, once the Adams-Onis treaty of 1819 had been signed, this objection disappeared. In 1823, the British Foreign Secretary, George Canning, approached the American minister in London, Richard Rush (who had helped negotiate the 1818 border settlement) and proposed that both countries announce a joint policy of protecting the independence of the Latin American states. By October this proposal was in front of President Monroe, who discussed it at length with his cabinet and with his mentors, Jefferson and Madison. They agreed on the merit of the British suggestion, but they disliked the idea of a joint declaration, which would give the impression that Britain was calling the shots and that America was her pawn. Therefore it was decided to make an independent declaration, which would give the impression of bold unilateral action, but which in practice would reflect the unstated understanding with the British. In December, President Monroe issued what has come to be known as the "Monroe Doctrine." This doctrine contained three elements: 1. America has no interest in or desire to interfere with the affairs and wars of the European powers, to the extent that they relate purely to themselves. 2. The United States would respect the right of European powers to continue holding their colonies in the Western Hemisphere. 3. America would respect the independence of the Latin American states. 4. The key point: "The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers." All of this, of course, would be enforced not by the United States, but by the Royal Navy. The Monroe Doctrine thus brings home the great importance of America's isolated geographical position and also the advantage of her special relationship with the world's greatest maritime power, as the well-known historian C. Vann Woodward observes: Throughout most of its history the United States has enjoyed a remarkable degree of military security, physical security from hostile attack and invasion. This security was not only remarkably effective, but it was relatively free. Free security was based on nature's gift of three vast bodies of water interposed between this country and any other power that might constitute a serious menace to its safety. There was not only the Atlantic to the east and the Pacific to the west, but a third body of water, considered so impenetrable as to make us virtually unaware of its importance, the Arctic Ocean and its great ice cap to the north . . . . The costly navy that policed and defended the Atlantic was manned and paid for by British subjects for more than a century, while Americans enjoyed the added security afforded without added cost to themselves . . . . Between the [War of 1812] and the Second World War, the United States was blessed with a security so complete and so free that it was able virtually to do without an army and for the greater part of the period without a navy as well. 6 -------------------------------------------------------------References Related Readings: - Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997, pp. 214-232. - Aaron, Daniel, Richard Hofstadter, and William Miller, The United States. Third edition. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1972. (pp. 141-143, 172-176, 177-179, 192-194, 195-208). - Alexander, Joseph. "Swamp Ambush in East Florida," in Military History, March 1998, pp. 38-44. - Brebner, John Bartlet. North Atlantic Triangle: the interplay of Canada, the United States and Great Britain. New York: Columbia University Press, 1958. - Merrill, Dennis and Thomas Paterson, Problems in American Foreign Policy. Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath, 1995. - Commager, Henry Steele (ed.). Documents of American History, vol. I. New York: Appleton Century Crofts. (The following original documents are of interest: #96 (Washington's Declaration of Neutrality, 1793), 98 & 99 (Jay's Treaty and Pinckney's Treaty), 100 (Washington's Farewell Address), 107 (Jefferson's speech on the importance of New Orleans, 1802), 108 (the cession of Louisiana, 1803), 112 (various statutes and decrees of all sides relating to the commercial warfare that preceded the War of 1812), 114 (Madison's war message of June 1812), 117 (the Rush-Bagot Agreement, 1818), 120 (the Adams-Onis Treaty, 1819). Original documents from the period. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- References: 1). Quoted in John Bartlet Brebner, North Atlantic Triangle: The Interplay of Canada, the United States and Great Britain. New York: Columbia University Press, 1958, p. 71. 2). Mason Wade, The French Canadians 1760-1967. Volume I. Toronto: Macmillan, 1968, p. 99. 3). Washington, "Farewell Address," September 17, 1796. 4). Johnson, A History of the American People, p. 231. 5). Brebner, North Atlantic Triangle, p. 88. 6). C. Vann Woodward, "The Age of Reinterpretation," American Historical Review, vol. LXVI (October 1960), p. 2. |