Pierre Berton's War of 1812 (121 page)

Third, a revision of the border between Canada and the United States.

Fourth, no renewal of a former agreement allowing the Americans certain fishing privileges on Canadian waters and shores “without an equivalent.”

From this and from the two days of discussion that follow, two things become clear:

First, neither side is much interested in discussing impressment. The issue, which has inflamed American public opinion since the
Chesapeake
crisis of 1807, which perhaps more than anything else brought on the war and on which both sides have refused to budge an inch, is now dead. The need has passed; the war in Europe is over. In the bitter exchanges that follow, nobody will bother to mention the forcible seizure of British deserters from American ships. Yet thousands have died or been maimed or rendered homeless because of the emotion it engendered.

Second, the British are determined to stick on the question of Indian rights. It is, they insist, a
sine qua non
—an indispensable condition. Without it there can be no peace. Behind their determined stand lie years of promises to the native peoples on both sides of the border: the cultivation of Tecumseh and his federation, the pledges of Brock, Elliott, Dickson, and others that the Great White Father will never forsake his tribal allies.

At this first meeting, the British intentions toward the Indians are so vague that in the days that follow the Americans press for more details. The request seems to irritate Goulburn and his colleagues, but finally they blurt it out: Great Britain wants an Indian buffer state separating the United States from Canada, an area in which neither Canadians nor Americans can purchase land. Though the British decline to go into more detail—they have said too much already—the Americans wake up to the fact that they are being asked to cede a great chunk of their country to people who have been massacring and scalping their soldiers. To this they cannot agree. And, since the British trio in Ghent are mere messenger-boys for a more formidable trio of peers in London—Liverpool, Castlereagh, and Bathurst—negotiations cease until London is heard from.

Nine days pass. During the hiatus, Lord Gambier and Dr. Adams attend a cosy little dinner party given by the Americans; Goulburn stays away, pleading laryngitis. It is August 13, the eve of Drummond’s costly attack on Fort Erie, but there is no talk of war. Innocuous
pleasantries are batted about the table like shuttlecocks. Gambier tells of meeting Adams’s distinguished father and discusses the British Bible Society. Dr. Adams and his namesake discuss their common heritage and conclude they are not cousins.

An entire week from the eleventh to the eighteenth is taken up preparing a report of the negotiations for the American Secretary of State, James Monroe, each of the five taking it upon himself to revise and amend the phraseology of the others. The following day the British announce that they have heard at last from their government. At a meeting that afternoon, they spell out their new demands:

First, the Indian buffer state must extend to the line settled upon at the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. That means that most of Ohio and the future states of Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan will become Indian territory. Unless the Americans immediately sign a provisional article, subject to ratification by their government, the conference will be suspended.

Second, since the United States has clearly intended to conquer Canada and since Canada is the weaker of the two nations, the British—but not the Americans—must be allowed to keep naval vessels on the Great Lakes and to build forts along their shores for their security.

Third, in order to link her Atlantic colonies with Canada, Britain requires a corner of the state of Maine for a connecting road.

In addition, she wants to perpetuate her right to navigate the Mississippi, as agreed upon in an earlier treaty. This, it develops, is in exchange for American fishing rights in Canadian territory.

The Americans are stunned. Gallatin, in his courteous way, asks what is to be done with the hundred thousand white settlers who now occupy the proposed Indian buffer state. Why, replies the Admiralty lawyer Dr. Adams, they must shift for themselves.

In John Quincy Adams’s opinion, the tone of the British is peremptory, their language even more overbearing than before. A confirmed pessimist, he is convinced that the talks are at an end, an opinion shared by the others except Clay. They ask that the British proposals be put in writing and, on August 21, sit down to
respond. That takes four days. Adams’s first draft is considered too offensive by Gallatin, too flowery by Clay, too ungrammatical by Russell. At eleven o’clock on the evening of the twenty-fourth—two hours past Adams’s bedtime—they are still at it, altering, erasing, patching, until no more than a fifth of Adams’s original document remains. Finally, on the twenty-fifth—the night of the burning of Washington—the note to the British is signed. Simply put, it rejects the idea of an Indian state and of British military sovereignty over the Great Lakes.

Each side now expects the other to break off negotiations and go home, yet neither wants to be blamed for shattering the hopes of peace. The Americans are convinced that the British tactics are to delay negotiations in the hope of strengthening their hand with victories on the other side of the Atlantic. But they cannot believe the British will back down in the face of this latest rejection.

The days drag by with no official word from the British, although there is a good deal of unofficial socializing, much of it tight-lipped, in which each side tries to sound out the other. On September 1, John Quincy Adams drops in on Henry Goulburn and is convinced from the conversation that the British are holding up an answer to the American note only “to give a greater appearance of deliberation and solemnity to the rupture.” It appears to Adams that Goulburn is inflexible, that behind the bland mask of diplomacy there smoulders an abiding hatred of everything American.

Goulburn talks continually of the need to secure Canada from the threat of American annexation. This is the real reason for the Indian buffer state.

“The Indians are but a secondary object,” he declares, in a moment of callous candour. “As the Allies of Great Britain she must include them in the peace.… But when the boundary is once defined it is immaterial whether the Indians are upon it or not. Let it be a desert. But we shall know that you cannot come upon us to attack us without crossing it.”

So much, then, for the moral commitment to Britain’s native supporters. The security of Canada has been substituted. But the great
and real object, Adams is convinced, is “a profound and rankling jealousy at the rapid increase of population and of settlements in the United States, an impotent longing to thwart their progress and to stunt their growth.”

Goulburn is equally convinced that the United States does not want peace and is negotiating only to find some means of reconciling the American public to a continuation of the war. He believes they will find that excuse in the Indian boundary question. He is certain that negotiations are at an end, and that does not entirely displease him. Like so many of his class he still regards the Americans as colonial upstarts—vulgar republicans who must be taught a lesson.

On September 5, the British negotiators bounce the ball back to the Americans. With only a slight modification (a suggestion to discuss any counter-proposal or modification to the Indian question), the note, though longer, does not depart from the original British stand. It is up to the Americans, the British say, to decide whether to continue the peace talks, to refer to Washington for instructions, or to “take upon themselves the responsibility of breaking off the negotiation altogether.”

Four of the American commissioners—all but Henry Clay—are convinced that this is the end, and Clay is half convinced. But Clay is a consummate card player and knows the value of a poker face. He has a gut feeling that if the Americans stand firm, the British may back off. He is partial to a game called Brag, in which both sides attempt to out-bluff one another. On September 5, Clay decides to out-Brag the British. He writes to Henry Goulburn, asks him to arrange for his passport: he plans, he says, to return home immediately. Goulburn himself may not be averse to this, but there are others more senior in Whitehall who, faced with the mounting war costs and the growing war weariness, may take a different view.

WALMER CASTLE, KENT, ENGLAND, SEPTEMBER 11, 1814

In the murky confines of Henry VIII’s grotesque, turreted fortress—as sombre and heavy as its occupant—the second Earl of Liverpool
is harbouring some gloomy second thoughts about the depth of his country’s moral commitment to her Indian allies.

The question of the Indians, the Prime Minister tells his colonial secretary, Lord Bathurst, is “one of growing embarrassment.” Of course, they must be included in the peace treaty.
But
 … (one can almost see the cold eyes narrow, the heavy jaw grow firmer), is it really necessary to insist on the
sine qua non
of an Indian buffer state, a kind of sylvan Utopia between the Ohio and the Great Lakes where the natives can gambol, knocking off deer and wild turkey, and cultivating their fields of maize? The Prime Minister hardly thinks so, in fact has never really believed the
sine qua non
would stick. Of course, if a
specific
promise has been made, then honour requires it be kept. But has it been made? Clearly, Lord Liverpool believes that nothing specific has ever been promised the Indians beyond the vague pledge that their Father across the water would never desert them. Now their Father proposes to desert them by watering down British demands, once declared irrevocable, to a simple stipulation that the Indians shall be restored to all the rights and privileges they enjoyed before the war—a promise subject to many interpretations.

Liverpool wants to set the Indian question aside in order to get on to more important matters. He is perfectly prepared to yield on the exclusive military occupation of the Great Lakes. What he really wants is to hold what the British have gained by conquest, specifically, Michilimackinac and Fort Niagara. If he can get these, and Sackets Harbor into the bargain, then he will waive all claims to a chunk of Maine. If the Americans stick on Sackets Harbor because the British do not occupy it, he proposes to delay negotiations in the hope that Sir George Prevost will seize it, as well as Plattsburgh, or some other piece of American territory. The American suspicions are well founded: it has long been British strategy to stretch out negotiations until further military successes in North America strengthen their hand. Wellington’s troops have been pouring into Canada since July. If only Prevost would move! Gazing over the misty headland toward the Strait of Dover, Liverpool, the titular
Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, cannot know that Prevost
is
moving—but backwards, toward Chazy and the border.

Henry Clay is right. The last thing the British prime minister wants is a sudden break at Ghent. He blames his commissioners for taking “a very erroneous view of our policy,” and has taken steps to make sure that Goulburn, now quite baffled by the twists and turns of British manoeuvring, understands it. If the peace talks founder on the absurd question of an Indian state and British control of the lakes, Liverpool is certain that the war will become very popular in America.

The British press is howling for revenge, crying that the Americans must be chastised for daring to make war on the world’s most powerful nation. But the Prime Minister is a realist. The ten-year struggle with Napoleon has imposed a crushing financial burden on his country. The powerful English landowners are aroused over the increase in the property tax, which must be continued if the war in North America goes on. The commercial and maritime interests want to return to business as usual. Liverpool must rid himself of this nuisance war as soon as practicable—but on the best possible terms.

In Ghent, Goulburn has reported, a little gleefully, that the American government does not want peace, but Lord Liverpool believes otherwise. He is well aware that the United States is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy; that it is having difficulty obtaining further loans to finance the war; and that if the war does continue for another year, financial disaster will certainly result. He also recognizes that there is danger in this, for “the war would then be rendered a war of despair, in which all private rights and interests would be sacrificed to the public cause.”

Goulburn must be made to understand this. Next morning, Lord Bathurst undertakes to do just that. Four days later, the chagrined young diplomat receives Bathurst’s instructions and, in his dismay, pens a sarcastic answer:

I … cannot sufficiently thank you for so clearly explaining what are the views and objects of the government with respect to
negotiations with America. Before I received it, I confess that I was impressed with the idea that the government did not wish negotiation to be protracted unless there was a prospect of a successful issue.…

“I do not deem it possible to conclude a
good peace
now,” Goulburn adds, a little bitterly, “as I cannot consider that a good peace which would leave the Indians to a dependence on the
liberal policy
of the United States.”

Goulburn is not seduced by the proposed new clause in the treaty. High-flown phrases about restoring the natives to their pre-war privileges cannot obscure the fact that the Great White Father
is
abandoning his children to an uncertain future. The whole history of the United States has been one of merciless exploitation of the Indians. Can the tribes south of the border expect anything different from the established policy of grabbing their lands and moving them farther and farther beyond the frontier? Later in the month, Goulburn raises a second, more practical objection to the new British policy. Will not post-war America attempt to exclude the British from “that trade which we carried on previous to the war with those Indians as independent nations?” The Americans have already made that clear.