For Honour's Sake (54 page)

Goulburn and Clay had an almost civil conversation during which the Kentuckian explained that even if America acceded to the Indian boundary proposition and the eastern states and Great Britain tried to enforce such an agreement, they would not be able to “restrain that part
of the American population which is to the Westward of the Alleghany, from encroaching upon the Indian Territory and gradually expelling the aboriginal inhabitants.” Goulburn, as usual, listened and said little. But he then wrote Bathurst that under “these circumstances I do not deem it possible to conclude a
good peace
now—as I cannot consider that a good peace … leaves the Indians to a dependence on the
liberal policy
of the United States.”
²³

But even as Goulburn wrote his mentor in London, the foundation of this position was weakening, indeed crumbling to dust, as, independent of the other, Lord Liverpool and Viscount Castlereagh each succumbed to second thoughts.

Moving slowly from one seat of European power to another on a winding path that would end in Vienna, the foreign secretary found the American war ever less important. The puzzle of reconstructing the stability of the continental European empires was a heady, demanding challenge, one that perforce required his full attention. Yet this unnecessary and costly war across the Atlantic continued to impinge upon his time. He fretted that the commissioners had taken too hard a line and that, when the record of the discussions was disclosed, the opposition in the House of Commons would hold the government accountable for failing to negotiate a treaty. Perhaps the British position should be softened some way to conciliate the Americans.

Liverpool reached the same conclusion for similar reasons. “I quite agree with you,” he wrote Bathurst on the 11th, “in the
Absolute Necessity,
of including the Indians in the Treaty of Peace …. but I would not make a sine qua non of more.” He thought that the Great Lakes demands could be modified. Perhaps Sackets Harbor could be left to the Americans.
²⁴
Four days later he complained to Bathurst that the commissioners “evidently do not feel the inconveniences of the war. I feel it strongly, but I feel it is nothing now compared with what it may be a twelve-month hence, and I am particularly anxious therefore, that we should avoid anything … which may increase our difficulties concluding it.”
²⁵
Thus, a chink in the British armour now opened.

H
enry Goulburn registered the softening British stance with dismay. The earnest undersecretary for war and the colonies detected a weakening resolve to decide the issue on the battlefield. He was disappointed by the haphazard campaign arrangements for the attack on New Orleans.
¹
As originally conceived, 15,000 Peninsular veterans were to sail from southern France on this mission. The British had long realized the city's strategic importance. Whoever held it controlled the mouth of the Mississippi River and could effectively cork the most essential line of communication for every American west of the Appalachians, for it was down this waterway their exports flowed. Until the victory over France, there had never been enough soldiers to undertake this operation.

But no sooner was the decision made to assemble the great invasion force than Lord Liverpool's cabinet cancelled its creation. Mild strains between Russia and Great Britain over dominance in Europe posed sufficient concern to warrant maintaining a sizable army on the continent. Only 2,600 would be sent to North America, where they would unite with 3,400 men under Maj. Gen. Robert Ross. When these instructions were issued on September 6, Ross was already a week dead at Baltimore.

Lord Bathurst believed the British in North America were everywhere triumphant—or hoped that was the case. Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane had certainly expressed only optimism for the summer operations. It was mainly his assurance that New Orleans and Louisiana could be easily won that led cabinet to scrap the large-scale operation. A couple
of thousand men could do the job, he had written. The Admiralty tripled that number for insurance and delayed the operation until December because of the harsh tropical Gulf of Mexico climate. Command the mouth of the Mississippi and seize some important possession that could be used as a bargaining chip in the negotiations, Bathurst instructed Cochrane and the dead Ross. Whether that chip was New Orleans or some chunk of Georgia, where it was believed friendly Indians waited to greet the British with open arms, was left to the two officers on the scene.
²

Goulburn considered the scheme fatally flawed, doomed by the ravages of malaria and cholera as much as possible enemy action. “Though a small force might gain possession of the point which they are destined to occupy,” he advised, “yet it will be difficult … to retain it under the disadvantages of an unhealthy climate and a constant reduction of numbers incident to its defence against the Enemy.”
³

But Goulburn was in Ghent, his absence from No. 14 Downing Street denying him influence over the war's prosecution. And Bathurst was not a man to second-guess the military men. If Cochrane thought 2,000 sufficient, surely 6,000 would ensure success.

Too little, Goulburn reiterated, but then that was also true of the efforts made by Governor Sir George Prevost in Canada. That he could not gain supremacy on the Great Lakes was incomprehensible, his “indisposition to attempt any thing” almost treasonable. “It appears to me as it has always done that the ascendancy on the lakes must be attained by military operations against the land side of the Enemy's harbours. It is impossible for us to outbuild the Americans whatever exertions we might make for the purpose of increasing our fleets and unless Prevost will attempt something of this kind while the Enemy's troops are raw and their ports not completely fortified Canada will always be kept in a state of anxiety.”
⁴

Goulburn saw the initiative in North America being surrendered through Prevost's incompetence. A burdensome sense of futility weighed on his slight shoulders as he witnessed the cabinet soften its stance at the negotiating table. He had sought to win the battle for the lakeshore that Prevost refused to fight. Looking at the new instructions from London, Goulburn sensed the Indians might be completely abandoned. Gone was insistence on a distinct Indian nation with guaranteed boundaries based
on the Treaty of Greenville. In its stead the Indians should be included in the treaty and “restored to all the rights, privileges, and territories which they enjoyed in the year 1811 previous to the commencement of the war.” Boundaries were open to discussion and a reciprocal agreement proposed that neither side purchase lands lying within these “lines of demarcation.” No longer did the word
otherwise
appear; nor did the phrase
sine qua non.
Further, the boundaries could be revised on agreement. As for the Great Lakes and other territorial alignments between the United States and Canada, those could be set aside in order to concentrate on the Indian question. These essential points were buried at the end of a document that contained a long, tortuous preamble setting out the reasons Britain had to fear America's expansionist tendencies, given a long history of past conduct that was meticulously, often inaccurately, outlined.
⁵

Receiving the note on September 20, the Americans quickly recognized the shift it represented. But that little lifted their spirits. John Quincy Adams noticed that when each note arrived its immediate effect was “to deject us all. We so fondly cling to the vain hope of peace, that every new proof of its impossibility operates upon us as a disappointment.” Albert Gallatin and James Bayard were openly despondent, a fact that increased Adams's irritability. Bayard no longer rose to the bait when Adams scolded them like some schoolmaster disappointed in his students, while Gallatin playfully brushed these displays of temper aside with a well-delivered joke. Clay and Russell grimly kept to the business at hand, carefully reading the British note and expressing their thoughts on how it should be received.

Despite the significant movement, Gallatin cautioned that Washington would still never agree to include any articles regarding the Indians. However, it would be “a bad point for us to break off the negotiations upon; that the difficulty of carrying on the war might compel us to admit the principle at least, for now the British had so committed themselves with regard to the Indians that it was impossible for them to further retreat.”

Bayard concurred. If the negotiation was to end, best to find a point that would unite Americans in support of the war. Everyone agreed, but Adams counselled them to not let this knowledge lead them into complying with British claims. That the
sine qua non
had been discarded should not preclude the British later abandoning their new position. And surely if the
Indian question would not serve to rally America behind the war, its entire pursuit was “hopeless.”

Earnestly, Gallatin repeated that breaking off over the Indians was a bad idea.

Pointing a blunt finger at him, Adams snapped, “Then it is a good point to admit the British as the sovereigns and protectors of our Indians.”

Gallatin shook his head and said with a smile, “That's a non sequitur.” No, it's a sequitur, Adams laughed, and the mood lifted noticeably. As previously, Gallatin analyzed the note to frame the basis for their draft response.

At 4:30 the following morning Adams was at his desk writing proposals for consideration. It was the autumnal equinox and he noted that for the next half-year it would be necessary “to rise by the light of the morning stars.”
⁶
With each British note, it seemed the need to respond by committee dragged out the time needed. Six days this time, the arguments intense and far ranging. Gallatin typically desired to respond only to the proposals offered, which he then did in great detail. Equally to type, Adams dealt with the proposals tersely and then waded into a polemical reply to all the allegations raised in the long British preamble. In the midst of their discussions a packet of English newspapers was delivered that contained an account of the American defeat at Lundy's Lane in July. The mood grew increasingly sombre, Adams confiding to his diary that this was likely the first of “a long and heavy series before us.”

Adams noticed a distasteful trend. Should Gallatin disagree with any suggestion Adams made for revision of the proposal, inevitably the other three commissioners would back him. The simple fact was that Gallatin, rather than Adams, to whom the position had been given by the president, had emerged as the commission's leader. And Adams feared this worldly European-turned-American was overly inclined toward compromise to achieve peace.

Goulburn, too, seemed to entertain this possibility. After the American note was delivered, he visited Gallatin alone. Dropping his normal brusque and superior manner, Goulburn was unusually gracious during their conversation. “I rely on your tact and good sense,” the young man confided. “You're a man I can treat with. In fact, you're not the least like an American.” Gallatin's son was unable to read whether
his father was pleased by this or not. With a bemused smile Gallatin told James that the “only Americans are the Red Indians.”
⁷

Goulburn's reading of Gallatin might have been different had he realized that most of the current reply emanated from his hand. It contained no concessions. The Americans rigidly held their ground, recasting the previous long arguments into slightly more strident language that circled with much repetition back upon itself. Several times within adjoining paragraphs they hammered home the point that America would always treat the Indians fairly but that the nation must be free, “in proportion as their growing population may require, to reclaim from a state of nature, and to bring into cultivation” territory as needed. Yet in doing so “they will not violate any dictate of justice or humanity; for they will not only give to the few thousand savages, scattered over that territory, an ample equivalent for any right they may surrender, but will always leave them the possession of lands more than they can cultivate, and more than adequate to their subsistence, comfort, and enjoyment by cultivation.”

As far as the Americans were concerned, “peace would long since have been concluded, had not an INSUPERABLE BAR against it been raised by the NEW and unprecedented demands of the British government.”
⁸
That said, they delivered their note on September 26 and tried to calmly await a response.

All was not going well in the house dubbed Bachelor.' Hall. Russell was increasingly unhappy with lodging among men whose company he did not enjoy. Although he idolized Clay, his attitude toward the others was completely different. Every suggestion he offered regarding the replies to the British was, in his estimation, ignored. Not given to outbursts like Adams, or gifted with Bayard's oratorical skill, or possessed of the certitude of America's position evinced by Clay, or blessed with Gallatin's keen intelligence, Russell monitored proceedings in sulky silence. At month's end, he moved back to the Hôtel des Pays-Bas. None of the others objected. Indeed, they barely noted his departure.
⁹