For Honour's Sake (29 page)

Considering all these factors, Madison was anxious to end the war as expediently as possible. The president informed Daschkoff that he would send other envoys to join Adams in St. Petersburg without first waiting to see if Britain accepted the emperor's offer.
¹²
To demonstrate the mission's importance, Madison wanted to send one of his senior cabinet members—Albert Gallatin—even though this would cost him the administration's most able financial manager. Gallatin, Madison recognized, was his most diplomatic minister. He retained the sophisticated European mannerisms and would be comfortable dealing with the tsar and whomever the British assigned to the negotiation. On March 14, when asked by the president if he would serve, Gallatin immediately agreed. To his sixteen-year-old son, James, Gallatin explained he did so out of duty. “Father rarely talks to anybody now, his mind seems fully occupied with the grave situation. I think I am the only person he confides in,” James recorded in his diary. When his father decided to take him along as his private secretary, the young man jumped at the opportunity to see the world. Three days after Gallatin accepted the president's request, Madison told him “that there was nobody compared to him as a negotiator.” To James, Gallatin admitted the compliment “pleased him greatly.”
¹³

But the president would not send Gallatin alone. He was reviled by too large a segment of Americans. Even having John Quincy Adams at the table would fail to silence the critics. In a gesture intended to rob the thunder from those who would seize any opportunity to rail against the administration, Madison approached the Federalist senator from Delaware James Bayard. By this sleight of hand, Madison was able to demonstrate that his administration's policies were not driven to further narrow party ambitions.
¹⁴
For the good of the country he would send one of the nation's most respected opposition politicians to Russia and the man who was the rock upon which the foundation of his presidency rested.

Gallatin thought the treasury would be able to operate for the rest of the year without his supervision. He fervently wanted to end this mad adventure, which he believed beyond America's capacity to win. “I have made up my mind,” he wrote his brother-in-law, “that I could in no other manner be more usefully employed for the present than on the negotiation of a peace. Peace is at all times desirable. England must be desirous at this critical moment to have it in her power to apply her whole force on the continent of Europe, and the mediation of Russia saves her pride.”
¹⁵
Gallatin acknowledged that the Russian mediation would also allow the United States to retain its pride.

“Provided we can obtain security with respect to impressment,” he explained to Madison, “peace will give us everything we want. Taught by experience, we will apply a part of our resources to such naval preparations and organizations of the public force as will within less than five years, place us in a commanding situation.”
¹⁶
Gallatin sought peace, but he also wanted America to never again be so defenceless that it could not protect its merchant mariners. There would be a standing, viable navy, and a regular army capable of defending the country's borders. Gallatin had come to a crossroads and departed from his normally fiscally conservative, anti-federal spending course. He was willing to venture down the road of expanding the role of the federal government in the affairs of Americans.

But he was quite happy to leave the difficult battle to win approval for permanent taxation to be fought by others. Gallatin admitted to being “well aware that my going to Russia will probably terminate in the appointment of another Secretary of the Treasury and in my returning to private life.”
¹⁷
That was a small personal price to pay for peace. The long years in the administration, the constant heckling and bitter attacks on his reputation, the fact that he distrusted and disliked the newly appointed Armstrong had disenchanted Gallatin with political life. Being an arbiter of peace would serve as a fitting finale to his public career.

Monroe extended the invitation to Bayard on April 5. Bayard received the note at his Wilmington home two days later. His response was immediate. “The proposition … was entirely unexpected,” he wrote. “I do not allow myself however to hesitate in my determination on the subject.

“If the President considers that it is within the means of my abilities to render any service to our common country, it is for him to command the full exertion of them. The occasion is of that nature that I do not allow myself to enquire what is my private interest or convenience.

“I beg you Sir to make known to the President that I am highly flattered by this mark of his confidence which certainly shall be met by a correspondent fidelity and I will also beg you at the same time to assure Him that I can promise every thing which belongs to an unbiased devotion to the interests of the Country.”
¹⁸

The announcement that Bayard and Gallatin were to be the envoys brought immediate response in the press. The anti-war newspapers saw a conspiracy by Madison to pretend to desire peace and engage in negotiations that the administration would then ensure failed so as to create new impetus for banging the drum of war. On the other hand the War Hawk lobby noted that both Gallatin and Bayard opposed the war. Did their joint appointment not suggest that the administration sought peace too eagerly and would agree to any conditions that the British might insist upon? Not surprisingly Bayard faced some sharp rebukes from Federalist colleagues for deigning to serve as an agent of Madison's administration. Killiam K. Van Rensselaer, Solomon Van Rensselaer's uncle and a veteran New York State senator, expressed the fear that Madison was “disposed to sacrifice you in the apparent attempt to make a peace, when no one here has the least idea that the Administration is sincere.”
¹⁹

Bayard refused to credit claims that the mission was some kind of administration plot to build American support for the war. “If any Sinister views be entertained,” he replied, “they are unknown to me, but if that be the case I should think it very wonderful, that they should select a political adversary to trust with the Secret. I can well imagine without the exercise of either confidence or charity that peace may be sincerely desired by the Administration.”

That the Americans going to St. Petersburg were to eagerly seek peace at any cost was an equally ridiculous charge. Monroe's April 15 instructions to Bayard and Gallatin jeopardized the likelihood of a successful negotiation from the outset. If Great Britain gave “satisfactory
assurance that she would abandon her claim with respect to impressment of seamen and ‘illegal blockades.' ” warfare on the part of the United States would cease.
²⁰
Also the article contained in
Jay's
Treaty of 1794 that allowed British traders from Canada to trade with Indians within the boundaries of the United States was not to be renewed. “The pernicious effects of this privilege have been most sensibly felt in the present war, by the influence which it gave to the traders over the Indians, whose whole force has been wielded by means thereof against the inhabitants of our Western States and Territories.” There would also be no restrictions on America's right to deploy any size navy it wished on the Great Lakes and to use that navy to exclude British traders from navigating the lakes and rivers exclusively under American jurisdiction. Both Britain and the U.S. must return any territory seized during the war.
²¹

If these conditions were not enough to scuttle things, Monroe added another on April 27. Britain must understand that the Floridas were irrevocably going to come under American control. West Florida had been legally ceded to the United States by France, and Congress had authorized the president to seize East Florida if any foreign power attempted its occupation. The message was to be made clear that Britain must not consider establishing a presence there.
²²

Gallatin and Bayard were both in Philadelphia preparing to embark for Russia when the Florida letter reached them on May 2. Each man thought bringing Florida up at all a bad idea. In a letter to Monroe, Gallatin confided that this idea had prompted Bayard to express “his apprehensions that we would fail, and his regret that we had not more discretion on the subject of impressments.” Bayard wanted to enter into an informal understanding with the British rather than forcing them to sign “a solemn article.” This approach, he believed, would succeed because it saved “the pride of Great Britain.”
²³

Monroe's reply was quick. On May 5, he left to their discretion how the treaty was worded regarding the end of impressment, but that “leaving it in silence and trusting to a mere understanding liable to doubts and different explanations, would not be that security which the United States have a right to expect.” The next day he wrote again, setting out a long list of grievances against Britain and defending raising
Florida in the negotiations. Possession of both East and West Florida, he argued, “would facilitate your negotiations in favour of impressment and every other object, especially if it was distinctly seen by the British ministers or minister that, instead of yielding them or any part of either, we would push our fortunes in that direction and in Canada if they do not hasten to accommodate. Satisfied I am that the more we endeavor to tranquilize their fears and to conciliate their esteem by any species of concession … which may be imputed to timidity or a desire to get out of the war, by the tone assumed in the negotiation, the more certain its failure, and the longer will be the continuance of the war afterwards.”
²⁴

Gallatin starkly warned Monroe on May 8 against recklessly proceeding with outright occupation of East Florida and investing the heavily fortified West Florida town of Mobile, which remained a Spanish island in the American sea there. Such action, he believed, would cause a war with Spain that would “disgust every man north of Washington” because it was motivated purely by southern desire for more land. Gallatin reassured Monroe that he agreed that no informal arrangement regarding impressment would be acceptable. There would have to be a
sine qua non
treaty clause.
²⁵

The next day Gallatin and Bayard boarded the 300-ton
Neptune
at Newcastle and sailed down the Delaware River to gain the Atlantic. James Gallatin was also aboard, as was Madison's twenty-one-year-old stepson, John Payne Todd. He and George Dallas, the twenty-year-old son of Philadelphia senator and stout Madison supporter Alexander J. Dallas, had been assigned by the president to serve as Gallatin's secretaries—a chance for the two young men to gain diplomatic experience that would help prepare them for political careers. Bayard's secretary was Col. George B. Milligan.

As it was customary for those attending the Russian court to wear uniforms, Todd, Dallas, and James Gallatin had been commissioned as third lieutenants of cavalry without pay so that they could be appropriately turned out. Colonel Milligan had packed his standard utility and dress uniforms, while Gallatin and Bayard were provided with individually tailored uniforms not associated with any military rank or service.
Monroe had expressed particular pleasure with Gallatin's uniform, an embroidered “blue coat, lined with buff, with a buff waistcoat and small cloaths, yellow buttons.” The secretary of state thought it “a handsome uniform, national and economical.”
²⁶

Because of the British blockades
Neptune
could not avoid interception, so the Russians had formally requested a pass for the envoys from Admiral John Warren in Halifax. As Warren issued the necessary documents, he asked the Russian consular officer if the United States might be disposed to an immediate armistice to remain in effect until negotiations were concluded. Madison refused, unless the British first removed their blockades and withdrew all troops from American territory—something he knew they would not do.
²⁷

Whether the pass would be honoured was of great concern. Just after dawn on May 11, Bayard stood on the main deck looking toward the capes that flanked the mouth of the Delaware and noted that square in the middle of the river stood a British ship that
Neptune's
captain, Lloyd Jones, identified as the 38-gun frigate
Spartan.
There was virtually no wind,
Neptune
drifting on the ebb tide at a painfully slow pace toward the river's mouth. It took four hours for the ship to come alongside
Spartan.
When the British captain, Edward Brenton, was advised of the ship's mission and the identity of the two envoys, he invited Gallatin and Bayard aboard his ship. The two men declined the invitation, sending Jones and secretaries Dallas and Milligan instead. “They were at first received coldly,” Bayard noted in his diary, because Brenton believed the ship a merchant vessel and was bent on searching it for contraband goods. Jones quickly produced papers certifying
Neptune
as a U.S. naval ship and the guarantee of safe passage provided by Admiral Warren. Brenton's “manners … changed and he behaved with marked civility.” When Jones and the secretaries returned to
Neptune,
the ship was “allowed to drift to sea with the tide.”
²⁸
The American commissioners were on their way to Europe.