FOREIGN
RELATIONS / BRITAIN AND FRANCE AT WAR
The world, as you justly observe, is truly in
an awful state. Two nations of overgrown power are endeavoring to
establish, the one an universal dominion by sea, the other by land.
We naturally fear that which comes into immediate contact with us,
leaving remoter dangers to the chapter of accidents. We are now in
hourly expectation of hearing from our ministers in London, by the
return of the Revenge. Whether she will bring us war or peace, or
the middle state of non-intercourse, seems suspended in equal
balance. With every wish for peace, permitted by the circumstances
forced upon us, we look to war as equally probable. ...
The present aspect of our foreign relations has encouraged here a
general spirit of encouragement to domestic manufacture. The Merino
breed of sheep is well established with us, and fine samples of
cloth are sent on from the north. Considerable manufactures of
cotton are also commencing. Philadelphia, particularly, is becoming
more manufacturing than commercial. |
James
Maury
21 Nov 1807 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / BRITAIN / WAR / THREAT OF
I enclose you copies of two letters sent by
express from Cap tam Decatur. By these you will perceive that the
British commanders have their foot on the threshold of war. They
have begun the blockade of Norfolk; have sounded the passage to the
town, which appears practicable for three of their vessels, and
menace an attack on the Chesapeake and Cybele. These, with four
gun-boats, form the present defence, and there are four more
gun-boats in Norfolk nearly ready. The four gun-boats at Hampton ate
hauled up, and in danger, four in Mopjack bay are on the stocks.
Blows may be hourly possible. |
Henry
Dearborn
(Secretary of War)
7 Jul 1807 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / BRITAIN / WAR
I have little to add to my letter of June. We
have entered Upper Canada, and I think there can be no doubt of our
soon having in our possession the whole of the St. Lawrence except
Quebec. We have at this moment about two hundred privateers on the
ocean, and numbers more going out daily. It is believed we shall fit
out about a thousand in the whole. Their success has been already
great, and I have no doubt they will cut up more of the commerce of
England than all the navies of Europe could do, could those navies
venture to sea at all. You will find that every sea on the globe
where England has any commerce, and where any port can be found to
sell prizes, will be filled with our privateers. |
Thaddeus
Kosciusko (General)
6 Aug 1812 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / BRITAIN / WAR
Our two countries are to be at war, but not you
and I. And why should our two countries be at war, when by peace we
can be so much more useful to one another? Surely the world will
acquit our government from having sought it.
The English newspapers suppose me the personal enemy of their
nation. I am not so. I am an enemy to its injuries, as I am to those
of France. Had I been personally hostile to England, and biased in
favor of either the character or views of her great antagonist, the
affair of the Chesapeake put war into my hand. I had only to open it
and let havoc loose. But if ever I was gratified with the possession
of power, and of the confidence of those who had entrusted me with
it, it was on that occasion when I was enabled to use both for the
prevention of war, towards which the torrent of passion here was
directed almost irresistibly, and when not another person in the
United States, less supported by authority and favor, could have
resisted it. |
James
Maury
25 Apr 1812 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / BRITAIN / WAR
I learn from the newspapers that the vandalism
of our enemy has triumphed at Washington over science as well as the
arts, by the destruction of the public library with the noble
edifice in which it was deposited. Of this transaction, as of that
of Copenhagen,: the world will entertain but one sentiment. They
will see a nation suddenly withdrawn from a great war, full armed
and full handed, taking advantage of another whom they had recently
forced into it, unarmed, and unprepared, to indulge themselves in
acts of barbarism which do not belong to a civilized age. When Van
Ghent destroyed their shipping at Chatham, and De Ruyter rode
triumphantly up the Thames, he might in like manner, by the
acknowledgment of their own historians, have forced all their ships
up to London bridge, and there have burnt them, the tower, and city,
had these examples been then set. London, when thus menaced, was
near a thousand years old, Washington is but in its teens.
|
Samuel
Harrison Smith
21 Sep 1814 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / BRITAIN / PEACE
It is long since we have exchanged a letter,
and yet what volumes might have been written on the occurrences even
of the last three months. In the first place, peace, God bless it!
has returned to put us all again into a course of lawful and
laudable pursuits; a new trial of the Bourbons has proved to the
world their incompetence to the functions of the station they have
occupied. |
John
Adams
10 Jun 1815 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / CUBA
… Do we wish to acquire to our own
confederacy any one or more of the Spanish provinces? I candidly
confess, that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting
addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The
control which, with Florida Point, this island would give us over
the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it,
as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the
measure of our political well-being. Yet, as I am sensible that this
can never be obtained, even with her own consent, but by war; and
its independence, which is our second interest, (and especially its
independence of England,) can be secured without it, I have no
hesitation in abandoning my first wish to future chances, and
accepting its independence, with peace and the friendship of
England, rather than its association, at the expense of war and her
enmity. |
James
Monroe
24 Oct 1823 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / EMBARGO
Complaints multiply upon us of evasions of the
embargo laws, by fraud and force. These come from Newport, Portland,
Machias, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, etc., etc. As I do consider
the severe enforcement of the embargo to be of an importance, not to
be measured by money, for our future government as well as present
objects, I think it will be advisable that during this summer all
the gunboats, actually manned and in commission, should be
distributed through as many ports and bays as may be necessary to
assist the embargo. |
Jacob
Crowninshield
(Secretary of the Navy)
16 Jul 1808 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / EMBARGO
...The embargo keeping at home our vessels,
cargoes and seamen, saves us the necessity of making their capture
the cause of immediate war; for, if going to England, France had
determined to take them, if to any other place, England was to take
them. Till they return to some sense of moral duty, therefore, we
keep within ourselves. This gives time. Time may produce peace in
Europe; peace in Europe removes all causes of difference, till
another European war; and by that time our debt may be paid, our
revenues clear, and our strength increased. |
John
Taylor
6 Jan 1808 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / EMBARGO
Congress seems as yet to have been able to make
up no opinion. Some are for taking off the embargo before they
separate; others not till their meeting next autumn; but both with a
view to substitute war, if no change takes place with the powers of
Europe. A middle opinion is to have an extra session in May, to come
then to a final decision. I have thought it right to take no part
myself in proposing measures, the execution of which will devolve on
my successor. I am therefore chiefly an unmeddling listener to what
others say. |
George
Logan
27 Dec 1808 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / EUROPEAN WAR
You have understood that the revolutionary
movements in Europe had, by industry and artifice, been wrought into
objects of terror even to this country, and had really involved a
great portion of our well-meaning citizens in a panic which was
perfectly unaccountable, and during the prevalence of which they
were led to support measures the most insane. They are now pretty
thoroughly recovered from it, and sensible of the mischief which was
done, and preparing to be done, had their minds continued a little
longer under that derangement. The recovery bids fair to me
complete, and to obliterate entirely the line of party division
which had been so strongly drawn. Not that their late leaders have
come over, or ever can come over. But they stand, at present, almost
without followers. The principal of them have retreated into the
judiciary as a stronghold, the tenure of which renders it difficult
to dislodge them. |
Joe
Barlow
14 Mar 1801 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / FRANCE
Your letters give a comfortable view of French
affairs, and later events seem to confirm it. Over the foreign
powers I am convinced they will triumph completely, and I cannot but
hope that that triumph, and the consequent disgrace of the invading
tyrants, is destined, in the order of events, to kindle the wrath of
the people of Europe against those who have dared to embroil them in
such wickedness, and to bring at length, kings, nobles, and priests
to the scaffolds which they have been so long deluging with human
blood. I am still warm whenever I think of these scoundrels, though
I do it as seldom as I can, preferring infinitely to contemplate the
tranquil growth of my lucerne and potatoes. I have so completely
withdrawn myself from these spectacles of usurpation and misrule,
that I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month; and I
feel myself infinitely the happier for it. |
Tench
Coxe
1 May 1794 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / FRANCE
Doctor Logan, about a fortnight ago, sailed for
Hamburg. Though for a twelvemonth past he had been intending to go
to Europe as soon as he could get money enough to carry him there,
yet when he had accomplished this, and fixed a time for going, he
very unwisely made a mystery of it: so that his disappearance
without notice excited conversation. This was seized by the war
hawks, and given out as a secret mission from the Jacobins here to
solicit an army from France, instruct them as to their landing, etc.
This extravagance produced a real panic among the citizens; and
happening just when Bache published Talleyrand's letter, Harper, on
the 18th, gravely announced to the House of Representatives, that
there existed a traitorous correspondence between the Jacobins here
and the French Directory; that he had got hold of some threads and
clues of it, and would soon be able to develop the whole. This
increased the alarm; their libelists immediately set to work,
directly and indirectly to implicate whom they pleased. Porcupine
gave me a principal share in it, as I am told, for I never read his
papers. This state of things added to my reasons for not departing
at the time I intended. These follies seem to have died away in some
degree already. Perhaps I may renew my purpose by the 25th. Their
system is, professedly, to keep up an alarm. Tracy, at the meeting
of the joint committee for adjournment, declared it necessary for
Congress to stay together to keep up the inflammation of the public
mind. |
James
Madison
21 Jun 1798 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / FRANCE
Here I discontinue my relation of the French
Revolution. The minuteness with which I have so far given its
details, is disproportioned to the general scale of my narrative.
But I have thought it justified by the interest which the whole
world must take in this Revolution. As yet, we are but in the first
chapter of its history. The appeal to the tights of man, which had
been made in the United States, was taken up by France, first of the
European nations. From her, the spirit has spread over those of the
South. The tyrants of the North have allied indeed against it; but
it is irresistible. Their opposition will only multiply its millions
of human victims; their own satellites will catch it, and the
condition of man through the civilized world, will be finally and
greatly ameliorated. This is a wonderful instance of great events
from small causes. So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and
consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly
imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all
its inhabitants. I have been more minute in relating the early
transactions of this regeneration, because I was in circumstances
peculiarly favorable for a knowledge of the truth. Possessing the
confidence and intimacy of the leading Patriots, and more than all,
of the Marquis Fayette, their head and Atlas, who had no secrets
from me, I learned with correctness the views and proceedings of
that party; while my intercourse with the diplomatic missionaries of
Europe at Paris, all of them with the court, and eager in prying
into its councils and proceedings, gave me a knowledge of these
also. My information was always, and immediately committed to
writing, in letters to Mr. Jay, and often to my friends, and a
recurrence to these letters now insures me against errors of memory.
|
Notes
for an Autobiography
6 Jan 1821 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / FRANCE AND HAITI
The bill for continuing the suspension of
intercourse with France and her dependencies, is still before the
Senate, but will pass by a very great vote. An attack is made on
what is called the Toussaint's clause, the object of which, as is
charged by the one party and admitted by the other, is to
facilitate the separation of the island from France. The clause will
pass, however, by about nineteen to eight, or perhaps eighteen to
nine. Rigaud, at the head of the people of color, maintains his
allegiance. But they are only twenty-five thousand souls, against
five hundred thousand, the number of the blacks. The treaty made
with them by Maitland is (if they are to be separated from France)
the best thing for us. They must get their provisions from us. It
will indeed be in English bottoms, so that we shall lose the
carriage. But the English will probably forbid them the ocean,
confine them to their island, and thus prevent their becoming an
American Algiers. It must be admitted too, that they may play them
off on us when they please. Against this there is no remedy but
timely measures on our part, to clear ourselves, by degrees, of the
matter on which that lever can work. |
James
Madison
5 Feb 1799 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / MISSISSIPPI RIVER TERRITORIAL DISPUTE
While we were preparing such modifications of
the propositions of your letter of October the 4th as we could
assent to, an event happened which obliged us to adopt measures of
urgency. The suspension of the right of deposit at New Orleans,
ceded to us by our treaty with Spain … showed the necessity of
making effectual arrangements to secure the peace of the two
countries against the indiscreet acts of subordinate agents. For the
occlusion of the Mississippi is a state of things in which we cannot
exist. …Our circumstances are so imperious as to admit of no
delay as to our course; and the use of the Mississippi so
indispensable, that we cannot hesitate one moment to hazard our
existence for its maintenance. If we fail in this effort to put it
beyond the reach of accident, we see the destinies we have to run,
and prepare at once for them. Not but that we shall still endeavor
to go on in peace and friendship with our neighbors as long as we
can, if our rights of navigation and deposit are respected;
but as we foresee that the caprices of the local officers, and the
abuse of those rights by our boatmen and navigators, which neither
government can prevent, will keep up a state of irritation which
cannot long be kept inactive, we should be criminally improvident
not to take at once eventual measures for strengthening ourselves
for the contest. It may be said, if this object be so all-important
to us, why do we not offer such a sum so as to insure its purchase?
The answer is simple. We are an agricultural people, poor in money,
and owing great debts. These will be falling due by instalments for
fifteen years to come, and require from us the practice of a
rigorous economy to accomplish their payment; and it is our
principle to pay to a moment whatever we have engaged, and never to
engage what we cannot, and mean not faithfully to pay. We have
calculated our resources, and find the sum to be moderate which they
would enable us to pay, and we know from late trials that little can
be added to it by borrowing. The country, too, which we wish to
purchase, except the portion already granted, and which must be
confirmed to the private holders, is a barren sand, six hundred
miles from east to west, and from thirty to forty and fifty miles
from north to south, formed by deposition of the sands by the Gulf
Stream in its circular course round the Mexican Gulf, and which
being spent after performing a semicircle, has made from its last
depositions the sand bank of East Florida. In West Florida, indeed,
there are on the borders of the rivers some rich bottoms, formed by
the mud brought from the upper country. These bottoms are all
possessed by individuals. But the spaces between river and river are
mere banks of sand; and in East Florida there are neither rivers,
nor consequently any bottoms. We cannot then make anything by a sale
of the lands to individuals. So that it is peace alone which makes
it an object with us, and which ought to make the cession of it
desirable to France. |
Pierre
Samuel Dupont de Nemours
1 Feb 1803 |
FOREIGN
RELATIONS / MONROE DOCTRINE
The question presented by the letters you have
sent me, is the most momentous which has ever been offered to my
contemplation since that of Independence. That made us a nation,
this sets our compass and points the course which we are to steer
through the ocean of time opening on us. And never could we embark
on it under circumstances more auspicious. Our first and fundamental
maxim should be, never to entangle ourselves in the broils of
Europe. Our second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with
cis-Atlantic affairs. America, North and South, has a set of
interests distinct from those of Europe, and peculiarly her own. She
should therefore have a system of her own, separate and apart from
that of Europe. While the last is laboring to become the domicile of
despotism, our endeavor should surely be, to make our hemisphere
that of freedom. One nation, most of all, could disturb us in this
pursuit; she now offers to lead, aid, and accompany us in it. By
acceding to her proposition, we detach her from the bands, bring her
mighty weight into the scale of free government, and emancipate a
continent at one stroke, which might otherwise linger long in doubt
and difficulty. Great Britain is the nation which can do us the most
harm of any one, or all on earth; and with her on our side we need
not fear the whole world. With her then, we should most sedulously
cherish a cordial friendship; and nothing would tend more to knit
our affections than to be fighting once more, side by side, in the
same cause. Not that I would purchase even her amity at the price of
taking part in her wars. But the war in which the present
proposition might engage us, should that be its consequence, is not
her war, but ours. Its object is to introduce and establish the
American system, of keeping out of our land all foreign powers, of
never permitting those of Europe to intermeddle with the affairs of
our nations. It is to maintain our own principle, not to depart from
it. And if, to facilitate this, we can effect a division in the body
of the European powers, and draw over to our side its most powerful
member, surely we should do it. But I am clearly of Mr. Canning's
opinion, that it will prevent instead of provoking war. With Great
Britain withdrawn from their scale and shifted into that of our two
continents, all Europe combined would not undertake such a war. For
how would they propose to get at either enemy without superi9r
fleets? Nor is the occasion to be slighted which this proposition
offers, of declaring our protest against the atrocious violations of
the rights of nations, by the interference of any one in the
internal affairs of another, so flagitiously begun by Bonaparte, and
now continued by the equally lawless Alliance, calling itself Holy.
But we have first to ask ourselves a question. Do we wish to
acquire to our own confederacy any one or more of the Spanish
provinces? I candidly confess, that I have ever looked on Cuba as
the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system
of States. The control which, with Florida Point, this island would
give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus
bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it,
would fill up the measure of our political well-being. Yet, as I am
sensible that this can never be obtained, even with her own consent,
but by war; and its independence, which is our second interest, (and
especially its independence of England,) can be secured without it,
I have no hesitation in abandoning my first wish to future chances,
and accepting its independence, with peace and the friendship of
England, rather than its association, at the expense of war and her
enmity.
I could honestly, therefore, join in the declaration proposed, that
we aim not at the acquisition of any of those possessions, that we
will not stand in the way of any amicable arrangement between them
and the Mother country; but that we will oppose, with all our means,
the forcible interposition of any other power, as auxiliary,
stipendiary, or under any other form or pretext, and most
especially, their transfer to any power by conquest, cession, or
acquisition in any other way. I should think it, therefore,
advisable, that the Executive should encourage the British
government to a continuance in the dispositions expressed in these
letters, by an assurance of his concurrence with them as far as his
authority goes; and that as it may lead to war, the declaration of
which requires an act of Congress, the case shall be laid before
them for consideration at their first meeting, and under the
reasonable aspect in which it is seen by himself. |
James
Monroe
24 Oct 1823 |
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