For Honour's Sake (56 page)

Madison remained dubious that peace was possible, but took consolation in the hope that, “if the English force us to continue the war, they will make us do in ten years what we perhaps would not do in half a century.” The struggle of arms, the president believed, would hasten the country's political and economic development, ultimately uniting its disparate peoples and interest groups in a common national purpose that would be sustained after war's end.
²⁵

Unity of purpose was more easily forecast than achieved in the present. In New England illicit trade with Canada thrived, as did the refusals of financiers to issue war loans to the federal government and of the states to fill militia requests. The government in October skated perilously along the knife-edge of bankruptcy, with the navy unable to meet its payroll. Secretary of the Navy William Jones, near ruin from spiralling personal debts occasioned by bad investments in questionable Asian merchandise, pleaded for Madison to accept his resignation. Treasury Secretary George Campbell's health was broken. After tabling a report that forthcoming federal expenses would run to $24.8 million while revenues delivered barely $13 million, he resigned. Alexander Dallas, father of young George, stepped into his shoes.
²⁶
He could offer no solution to cover the gap other than the dreaded political deathtrap of direct taxation. The House and the Senate would have none of it. The treasury must lurch along as before. So, too, the army. Conscription was jettisoned in favour of greater bounties and call-ups of phantom militias who might or might not make an appearance in the moment of necessity.

Fluctuating between resolution and despair, Madison soldiered on with tempered patience. New England was the problem, he quietly told friends, and its lack of patriotic fervour served to encourage Britain's continuing hostilities. Madison hoped for a turn in fortune, but braced for the worst. “In the meantime,” he wrote, “the course to be taken by the Government is full of delicacy and perplexity, and the more so under the pinch which exists in our fiscal affairs, and the lamentable tardiness of the Legislature in applying some relief.”
²⁷

In the absence of action, Congress turned to prayer. A day of “Public Humiliation, and Fasting, and of Praying to Almighty God, for the
safety and welfare of these states” was proclaimed. Opposed to religious proclamations on principle, Madison kept his personal opinion quiet, and, on November 16, signed the bill to set aside January 12, 1815, as a national fast and prayer day.
²⁸

British resolve rather than divine intervention was more at work on America's behalf in the autumn of 1814. Mid-October brought to London official reports of the string of misfortunes on the North American battlefields. Lord Liverpool summed up the cabinet's feelings in an October 21 letter to Castlereagh. The news was “chequered.” While the failed raid on Baltimore could be considered somewhat successful in its having “done them as much mischief as the capture of Washington,” it had come at the price of Maj. Gen. Robert Ross's death. That left the Gulf of Mexico expedition without a commander until Maj. Gen. Sir Edward Pakenham, Wellington's brother-in-law, could cross the ocean to replace him. That was one setback, but not in itself critical. The truly devastating news was the complete failure of Prevost's offensive at Lake Champlain. “He has … managed the campaign in that quarter as ill as possible, and if he cannot redeem himself by some brilliant success … must be recalled at the end of the campaign.” Liverpool regretted sending the majority of reinforcements to Canada. Had they been given to Ross, who knew what might have been achieved? “We thought, however, we were acting for the best, and so we were if we had had a competent officer in the command in Canada.”

However, Liverpool took heart in the news gleaned from American papers that showed the populace failing to rally around Madison's government despite Washington's having been burned. Having Madison remain president, he felt, was “the best thing for us …. His government must be a weak one, and feeling that it has not the confidence of a great part of the nation, will perhaps be ready to make peace for the purpose of getting out of its difficulties.”

As for the negotiations, he reported that the Americans had accepted the Indian article and so the talks continued “with more prospect of success than has hitherto existed.” The negotiations should come to a head in ten days, after which it would be clear whether a treaty could be agreed upon.
²⁹

Goulburn warned Bathurst that Prevost's defeat at Plattsburgh seriously handicapped Britain's ability to negotiate from strength. “Even our brilliant success at Baltimore as it did not terminate in the capture of the town will be considered by the Americans as a victory…. We owed the acceptance of our article respecting the Indians to the capture of Washington and if we had either burnt Baltimore or held Platsburg I believe we should have had peace on the terms which you have sent to us in a month at latest. As things appear to be going on in America the result of our negotiation may be very different.” Only New England's lack of support for the war kept him from “despair.”
³⁰

Goulburn was responding to a covering letter from Bathurst that contained the next set of instructions for the British commissioners, received on the 21st. Duly informed, they presented another note to the Americans the following day. Adams thought it presented “the same dilatory and insidious character as their preceding notes,” but appreciated its being shorter.
³¹
While not containing the requested
projet
of a treaty, it did outline what Britain considered should and should not be included. Forcible seizure of mariners was an issue that could be let lie to some other time; same with the fisheries. Regarding boundaries, it seemed the northwest boundary could be agreed as running from Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi, and the others could be negotiated.

Over the ensuing week the American and British commissioners exchanged several terse notes that inched the negotiations slowly toward the next step—which side would table a draft treaty. On the 31st, the British played a trump card that decided the issue. The article concerning the Indians accepted, and everything Britain desired having been outlined in their note of October 21, they had “no further demands to make, no other stipulations on which they are instructed to insist, and they are empowered to sign a treaty of peace forthwith in conformity with those stated in their former note.” They urged the Americans to “no longer hesitate to bring forward, in the form of articles or otherwise … those specific propositions, upon which they are empowered to sign a treaty of peace between the two countries.”
³²
If America truly wanted peace, her commissioners were going to have to frame a treaty that could secure it.

N
ot surprisingly, preparing the
projet
fell to Albert Gallatin and John Quincy Adams, the two men working independently according to their own designs. Each day some of the commissioners gathered to discuss the work so far completed. James Bayard assumed a moderating role, counselling compromises that would advance matters. Henry Clay attended sporadically, Jonathan Russell rarely. The latter, increasingly complaining that his opinions were ignored, his presence unwanted, spent most of his time shut away at his hotel.

When Gallatin presented clauses that restored the rights of Americans to fish and dry catch in British waters in exchange for navigational rights on the Mississippi, Clay went into a rage. Say nothing about the “trifling” fisheries, he said. Who cared if that right was lost? Clay wanted no Englishmen plying the Mississippi.
¹

No attempt by Adams to explain the fishery issue's importance to New England could reach the Kentuckian. He disagreed, as if on principle, with anything Adams advocated. Clay was routinely “losing his temper and growing peevish and fractious.” A gulf was developing between the two men that extended beyond clashes of ideas. Each man sharing as he did quarters that adjoined the other, lifestyles created equal friction. Clay, the gambler, cigar smoker, heavy wine drinker, almost nightly saw his guests off as Adams was rising between five and six in the morning. “I light my candle and my fire immediately on rising,” Adams wrote, “and now read and write about an hour by candle-light every morning.” The
first book opened was the Bible. He breakfasted at nine, maintained his nightly walk regimen whenever the rains relented. Tuesdays and Fridays he wrote to Louisa. Evenings were longer than customary, as he tended to partake of the theatre once a week and did not take his walk until after dark because the hours before were spent writing or in meetings. But the rains discouraged venturing out for long. “My chief fault now is a great relaxation of my customary exercise. This must be corrected,” he confided to his diary.
²

Occasionally, the Americans dined with their British counterparts, but the atmosphere was increasingly strained. Etiquette prevented discussion of either treaty or war, but after months together most polite, general topics were exhausted. The Americans found the British dull, while their counterparts scorned these colonials'lack of refinement. “As an instance of their vulgarity what think you of their turning up their coat sleeves at the commencement of dinner as if they intended to act the part of the cooks rather than guests?” Henry Goulburn asked.
³
The British were bored, stuck in Ghent until the Americans presented a draft treaty.

From London notes urgently enquired when the treaty would be ready for consideration. Goulburn could offer no prediction. Lord Liverpool knew the negotiation would determine whether the war effort must be escalated or terminated. Lord Bathurst urged the recall of Sir George Prevost, but who was to replace him? One choice, obviously the best, was Wellington—the fabled Iron Duke whose star had so risen he could dictate whatever terms of service to the country suited his personal ambition. Wellington's influence was such that he could be ordered nowhere, so Liverpool extended an invitation.

To Viscount Castlereagh, Liverpool wrote, “I feel most anxious, under all circumstances, that he should accept the command in America. There is no other person we can send there really equal to the situation …. The Duke of Wellington would restore confidence to the army, place the military operations on a proper footing, and give us the best chance of peace. I know he is very anxious for the restoration of peace with America if it can be made upon terms at all honourable. It is a material consideration, likewise, that if we shall be disposed for the sake of peace
to give up something of our just pretensions, we can do this more creditably through him than through any other person.”
⁴

Wellington replied on November 9. “I have already told you and Lord Bathurst that I feel no objection to going to America, though I don't promise … much success there. I believe there are troops enough there for the defence of Canada for ever.” Even limited offensive action seemed possible. He dismissed the American army as incapable of beating Peninsular veterans, “if common precautions and care were taken.”

The problem, he said, was not command incompetence but lack of “naval superiority on the Lakes. Till that superiority is acquired, it is impossible … to keep the enemy out of the whole frontier, much less to make any conquest from the enemy…. The question is, whether we can acquire this naval superiority on the Lakes. If we can't I shall do you but little good in America; and I shall go there only to prove the truth of Prevost's defence, and to sign a peace which might as well be signed now.”

Wellington told Liverpool, “You have no right from the state of the war to demand any concession of territory from America.” Having failed to carry the war effectively onto American soil, the cabinet could not “on any principle of equality in negotiation, claim a cession of territory excepting in exchange for other advantages which you have in your power.”

Wellington dismissed any notion that the British could maintain the occupation between Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Bay if attacked by a determined American force. Only if significant ground was captured at New Orleans could cession of land be demanded.

The day after Wellington's scathing analysis of Britain's military prospects in America and their ramifications for the negotiation, the American draft treaty was delivered to the monastery. Coming to agreement on the articles and their wording had fractured the previously united front that the Americans had maintained by treating each other with careful consideration. Most stubborn and angrily outspoken, Clay almost deadlocked the undertaking by opposing the clauses retaining the fishery rights in exchange for Mississippi navigation rights.