For Honour's Sake (5 page)

The embargo also sharply reduced British exports because America had become one of its primary trade partners. In 1806 more than half of cotton and wool products—$41 million worth—had been shipped to the United States. Almost a quarter of all British exports were to America. Loss of this market threatened the country with an economic depression.
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France also faced shortages because of the embargo, particularly of tobacco and cotton, but with all Europe under its heel and Russia opting for continental trade rather than backing Britain—its traditional ally—imports and exports remained relatively strong. And with each passing month Napoleon added more territory to the empire's reach. That Napoleon's continental system might prove a viable economic strategy seemed increasingly likely.

Although Napoleon's decrees equally threatened U.S. trade and freedom of the seas, politicians, the newspapers, and most Americans railed against Britain's orders-in-council and seldom seemed aware of the French role. Many was the Republican, particularly those from the new western states, who believed against all logic that the emperor somehow still embodied the revolutionary spirit of France and was the “agent chosen to spread its great benefits and reforms to Europe's oppressed peoples.” Among these true believers was Henry Clay, who thought
Napoleon a healthy foil to Britain and “rejoiced at the continued blows he struck” at the Crown.
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Not all Americans held Bonaparte in such regard. Jefferson considered him a tyrant who had hijacked a revolution that had promised to sow liberty in Europe. But even the best-informed Republican thought a war between France and Britain would be advantageous to the United States. Like most Republicans, Jefferson and Madison believed that, were it not for the European war that absorbed Britain's attention and military might, the Union would be in jeopardy. While not wanting to see France conquer Britain, Jefferson would happily see her humbled at Napoleon's hands. Federalists, on the other hand, generally looked fondly on Britain, thinking her the “world's last hope” and fearing that if France prevailed then it would not be long before America was added to her conquests. Though they would welcome Napoleon's downfall, most feared the consequences to the balance of power in Europe and the world that might come from a complete French defeat.
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Balance of power was something that the president, his administration, the Senate, and the House of Representatives all gave much thought to and generally agreed upon. So long as France and Britain remained equal—the Royal Navy mastering the sea, the Grande Armée the soil of Europe—America was unlikely to be directly threatened by either and would be free to prosper by trading with both great empires. Only a few cranks on either side of the political spectrum advocated the United State.' aligning itself with either Britain or France; the prevailing view was that America should instead keep isolated from European affairs. Since Independence, isolationism had dominated the country's approach to foreign policy and affairs. Jefferson summed up American feeling when he wrote that the country was “kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradation of the others; possessing a chosen country.”
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Most Americans considered it an inarguable fact that the United States was a country chosen by God and hence morally superior to all others. Why else had the Union managed to prevail during the revolution against a vastly more powerful foe? That moral purity remained possible only so long as the country maintained a strictly neutral stance. “The
moment we enlist ourselves by sliding even imperceptibly into European politics, intrigue and warfare, we must abandon our peaceful, commercial, and hitherto prosperous system,” warned the General Republican Committee of the City and County of New York in the midst of the embargo crisis.
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Pure isolationism, of course, was impossible. No matter how much it might want to, America could not simply withdraw into itself and ignore the outside world, because of a need for imported manufactured goods and an inability to sell all of its own production entirely within the United States. This made it necessary to foray out into the dangerous world across the sea to engage in the international commerce essential to ensuring prosperity. And with the implementation of Britain's orders-in-council and Napoleon's various decrees, those seas had become very dangerous indeed for American merchantmen.

Until Napoleon's attack on neutrals trading with Britain and the introduction of the orders-in-council, American traders had developed a system that enabled them to profit hugely from France's lack of either a powerful navy or a significant merchant fleet. By importing large quantities of such products as coffee, cotton, and sugar from the colonies of France and Spain to the United States, American traders were then able to re-export to ports in continental Europe without Britain being able to claim that the ships carried products that originated directly from the colonies of its enemies. By this means, in 1806 alone U.S. merchants moved 146 million pounds of sugar, 47 million pounds of coffee, and 2 million pounds of cotton into the country and out again to France. Effectively the American merchantmen were using their neutrality to provide supplies that France desperately needed and could acquire by no other means.

The U.S. government not only condoned this circumvention of the Royal Navy's efforts to cut off the flow of goods from the colonies of its enemies but actively encouraged the practice. Both the government and the merchants prospered mightily from the war. Between 1802 and 1810 the American maritime service grew from 558,000 tons to 981,000. Before the war, imported and exported goods were never worth more than $30 million in a single year. At the high-water mark, in 1807, exports totalled $108 million and imports $138.5 million. While Britain's
military spending ballooned its national debt, Jefferson and Madison were steadily able to reduce America's indebtedness—which, in 1801, had stood at $82 million.
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While France and Britain had been at war, Secretary Treasurer Albert Gallatin had steadily paid down this debt with intent to eliminate it entirely over sixteen years. In 1808, for example, he was able to apply $8 million to debt reduction. The source of funds for this aggressive assault on the public debt was largely customs duties, about $9.5 million a year before the invocation of the embargo.
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Well aware of what the Americans were doing, the British government repeatedly accused the U.S. government and its merchants and ship owners of being allied with Napoleon. For his part, Napoleon was happy to receive trade goods from his colonies by means of American ships, but he did not consider those exports vital to the maintenance of France's economy and he had only scant interest in sustaining the overseas colonies. What he wanted was to ruin Britain's economy, and to that end he sought to force America to cease all trade with her.

No sooner were his decrees issued than France struck hard at American shipping. Despite Napoleon's meagre navy, he was able to seize a great number of U.S. ships, mostly by detaining those that entered French ports unaware that these were no longer safe havens. Between 1807 and 1812, a report prepared by Secretary of State James Monroe disclosed, France and her allies seized 479 American ships compared with 389 detained by Britain.
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Yet the anti-British sentiment prevailing in the popular press and on the House floor was so implacable that French seizures went largely unmentioned. Instead, most Americans, particularly the likes of Henry Clay, singled out Britain for condemnation, for Britain's seizures of shipping were inextricably linked with another, graver marine depredation that the British lion imposed upon the American eagle.

W
hen Henry Clay rose in the United States Senate on February 22, 1810, to denounce the depredations visited upon America by Britain, it was not the orders-in-council that fired his righteous indignation into hot fury.

While conceding that France and Britain were each guilty “of mercantile spoliations, inflicted and menaced” that provided “just cause of war with both,” Clay believed that if “we are forced into a selection of our enemy, then am I for war with Britain; because I believe her prior in aggression, and her injuries and insults to us were atrocious in character.

“Britain,” he declared, “stands pre-eminent, in her outrage on us, by her violation of the sacred personal rights of American freemen, in the arbitrary and lawless impressment of our seamen.”
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The Royal Navy's impressment practice had been authorized during every war fought over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Despite her mastery of the seas, when not at war Britain mothballed most of her fleet and discharged the bulk of her sailors. This saved vast sums of money, but also ensured that with each new war Britain must scramble to refloat the powerful navy vital to defence of an island nation dependent on a global empire. First, a bounty was offered for volunteers. Naval service being a grim duty frequented by death, maiming, or debilitating sickness, the volunteer call inevitably fell short of requirement. The Admiralty then authorized a “hot press.” Press gangs comprising trusted naval ratings roamed port-town streets to round up merchant sailors and fishermen as they stumbled out of bars or appeared
on the quays and docks to rejoin their vessels. Without recourse to formal protest or complaint, the men suddenly found themselves serving before the mast—a fate that had likely befallen many during earlier wars. Land-based press gangs were common, but the majority operated from boats that lurked off the entrances to the empire's harbours to scoop crews off merchant and fishing vessels entering port.
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Although hugely unpopular with those Britons who made a living by going down to the sea, impressment was enshrined in legal precedent. A 1743 court ruling upheld subsequently by repeated courts declared the “right of impressing mariners for the public service … a prerogative inherent in the crown, founded upon common law and recognized by many acts of Parliament.”
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Until the first Franco-British war, in 1793, impressment had met the Royal Navy's wartime needs. But this time it was soon clear that the mariner pool available for impressment was too small to meet the navy's insatiable appetite while also keeping Britain's merchant and fishing fleets at sea. In 1795 the government voted to bolster the naval ranks to 100,000 men, but where were such numbers to be found?

Beggars, pickpockets, thieves, and other criminals, known or suspected, were dragooned, prisoners-of-war were forced into service against their homeland, and foreign mariners were rounded up. No longer was impressment limited to British ports. Press gangs rowed ashore from ships anchored in foreign ports to troll dockyards and streets for potential victims. When the frigate HMS
Macedonian
put into Lisbon it sent ashore a “press-gang … made up of [the] most loyal men armed to the teeth.” They captured several deserters who had fled other Royal Navy ships in the harbour, yanked in some crewmen from British merchantmen conducting trade ashore, and detained any foreign sailors who had the misfortune to cross their path. “Among them were a few Americans,” noted one of
Macedonian's
crew. “They were taken without respect to their protections, which were often taken from them and destroyed. Some were released through the influence of the American consul: others, less fortunate, were carried to sea to their no small chagrin. To prevent recovery of these men by their consul, the press-gang usually went ashore in the night previous
to our going to sea so that, before they were missed, they
were
beyond his protection.”
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The U.S. government denounced impressment of Americans to no effect. Britain argued that there was no cause for complaint because merchant shipping was not sovereign territory. Therefore it could be boarded, searched, and any British subjects aboard impressed. Not so, countered the Americans, who consented only to the Royal Navy's having a right of search during wartime for contraband trade and “persons … in the military service of the enemy.”
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Accordingly, French sailors aboard an American ship could be removed, but no Britons or Americans.

But who was a legitimate American and how was one to tell? America held to a doctrine of voluntary expatriation, whereby a man could freely apply for American citizenship and renounce loyalty or obligation to the land of his birth, but this practice had no basis in international law. Great Britain considered all Britons subjects of the Crown and bound by “indelible allegiance.” They could not, without consent of the state, change nationality or escape the obligations of subjects to the state. There was no middle ground between these two views of the rights of man relative to the rights of the state.