The treaty of Ghent; an address delivered before the New York Historical Society on its one hundred and tenth anniversary, Tuesday, November 17, 1914

TREATY OF GHENT

AN ADDRESS

DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL

SOCIETY ON ITS ONE HUNDRED AND

TENTH ANNIVERSARY

Tuesday, November 17, 1914

BY

WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE, LL.D.

NEW YORK

PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY

1914

THE TREATY OF GHENT

AN ADDRESS

DELIVERED BEFORE THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL

SOCIETY ON ITS ONE HUNDRED AND

TENTH ANNIVERSARY

Tuesday, November 17, 1914

BY

WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE, LL.D.

NEW YORK

PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY

1914

^ ^C> 6

3

OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY

PRESIDENT,

JOHN ABEEL WEEKES.

FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT,

WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE.

SECOND VICE-PRESIDENT,

WALTER LISPENARD SUYDAM.

THIRD VICE-PRESIDENT,

GERARD BEEKMAN.

FOURTH VICE-PRESIDENT,

FRANCIS ROBERT SCHELL.

FOREIGN CORRESPONDING SECRETARY,

ARCHER MILTON HUNTINGTON.

DOMESTIC CORRESPONDING SECRETARY,

JAMES BENEDICT.

RECORDING SECRETARY,

FANCHER NICOLE.

TREASURER,

CLARENCE STORM.

LIBRARIAN,

ROBERT HENDRE KELBY.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

FIRST CLASS — FOR ONE YEAR, ENDING I915.

CHARLES EUSTIS ORVIS, J. ARCHIBALD MURRAY,
BENJAMIN \V. B. BROWN.

SECOND CLASS — FOR TWO YEARS, ENDING I916.

ACOSTA NICHOLS, STANLEY W. DEXTER.

THIRD CLASS — FOR THREE YEARS, ENDING I917.

FREDERIC DELANO WEEKES, PAUL R. TOWNE,
R. HORACE GALLATIN.

FOURTH CLASS — ^FOR FOUR YEARS, ENDING I918.

DANIEL PARISH, JR., JAMES BENEDICT,

ARCHER M. HUNTINGTON.

DANIEL PARISH, Jr., Chairman.

ROBERT H. KELBY, Secretary.

[The President, Vice-Presidents, Recording Secretary,
Treasurer, and Librarian are members of the Executive
Committee.]

PROCEEDINGS

At a meeting of The New York Historical Society,
held in its Hall on Tuesday evening, November 17th,
19 14, to celebrate the One Hundred and Tenth An-
niversary of the Founding of the Society.

The proceedings were opened with prayer by the
Rev. William Montague Geer, S.T.D., Vicar of St.
Paul's Chapel, New York.

The President addressed the Society on the history,
progress and needs of the Institution.

The Anniversary Address, entitled: "The Treaty
of Ghent," was delivered by William Milligan Sloane,
LL.D., First Vice-President of the Society.

Upon the conclusion of the address Mr. Frederic
Delano Weekes, with remarks, submitted the following
resolution, which was adopted unanimously:

Resolved, That a vote of thanks be expressed to
our distinguished First Vice-President, William Milligan
Sloane, LL.D., for his most able and interesting
address entitled: "The Treaty of Ghent," that has
so happily commemorated to our mutual advantage
and pleasure the One Hundred and Tenth Anniversary
of the Founding of this Society, and that Dr. Sloane be
requested to furnish the Society with a copy for pub-
lication.

The Society then adjourned.

Extract from the Minutes.
Fancher Nicoll,
Recording Secretary.

THE TREATY OF GHENT

^ LIO is a stately Muse; but not destitute of humor.
^^ Infernal as are the many scenes through which
she has, alas, too often to guide her steps, there are
intervales of verdant pastures across which she strolls
beside quiet waters, meditating the hidden meanings
of circumstances and events. The obstinate inertia of
social and political systems arouses the primitive pas-
sion for battle; what peaceful agitation cannot accom-
plish, war, grim and terrible, has so far in the record
of history either granted or denied. This in peaceful
perspective the historian is forced to admit. But what
the gains and losses, and what the credit or debit
balance is, has to be calculated in the council chamber,
where treaties are made. The reckoning is not easy,
for the ambition of the statesman and his ruses are
comparable to those of the warrior, while personality
tells far more in debate than in battle. The strate-
gist works alone, the negotiator in contact with his
antagonist. Without, the warfare has not ceased and
every turn of fortune re-arranges on one day the con-
ditions of the day before. In warfare there is a central
power, in conference the dominance is fortuitous. The
former rarely sees a fight without result; in the latter

8 THE TREATY OF GHENT

the closing hour of a weary day marks neither retreat
nor advance. There are feints and armistices in both,
but the plenipotentiary never unmasks. The document
which has given us a century of peace with Great
Britain is as perfect an example of diplomatic contest
as the patient Clio has ever perused, both as a riddle
to be read and a conjuncture of facts and persons flung
together at haphazard to compose trouble, and write a
public charter.

Among the pygmies who dominated Europe in the
decline of Napoleon, the Czar Alexander was the
showiest. By education a liberal, his sorry experiences
had perverted him into a bigoted legitimist. His pseudo-
piety rested on the temperament of a dreamer. The
tortures of humiliating defeats in war and diplomacy
rendered him as gloomy in disaster as he proved to be
pompous and presumptuous in the hour of victory.
The alliance into which he entered at Tilsit to bolster
his own and Napoleon's absolutism was working badly
and had proved unholy; his Egeria, Frau von Krudener,
was a religious mystic; the sanction of his policies was
any convenient distortion of Scripture. For the work-
ing of Metternich's system — intervention, suppression,
reaction — a system of which Russia might become at
once a stay and a strut, it was desirable that Napo-
leon's aggressions should end and that Great Britain

THE TREATY OF GHENT 9

should be able, unhampered, to co-operate. But Great
Britain was very much absorbed in an exasperating
Spanish peninsular war. Her naval supremacy was in
no jeopardy as yet, but her military prestige was mount-
ing and falling in Spain like the gauge in a leaky boiler.
She was engaged, moreover, in a transoceanic war with
us, a struggle for the ruin of our neutral commerce and
the retention of supremacy in North America. This
conflict was only in its initial stages but the stake was
enormous and prognostics were far from favorable.

As for Alexander's own situation nothing could have
appeared more desperate. We had declared war on
June i8, 1812. Napoleon was invading Russia, winning
battle after battle, and striking at her very heart on his
way to Moscow, which he entered on September seventh.
Alexander had denounced the French alliance just six
months earlier and these were the consequences ! Never
was the necessity for concentrated British attention
more imperative. During the same six months our
military disasters were unbroken but our career of
naval victory had begun. The ship duels were already
eclipsing in blind terror the gains which armies were
winning for England. It was at this juncture that
Alexander proposed mediation between us and Great
Britain, an action which so many Americans have
regarded as inaugurating an international friendship
between the most backward and the most advanced of
the gigantic modern states. When Clio muses she must

10 THE TREATY OF GHENT

see the humorous side to the gratitude of a great, free
people, for a tyrant's last resource to maintain himself.

Whatever her thoughts, we have to note the fact as
an effort, futile indeed but an effort to compose the strife
between us and Great Britain. Our minister at St.
Petersburg, that excellent pedant John Quincy Adams,
thought the offer a new indication of Russia's friend-
ship; but had England been consulted? Yes, although
as yet there was no response: it would certainly however
be favorable, as was Adams' reply. The Czar's proposal
was therefore fonvarded post haste (five months was
then post haste) to Washington where about March 9,
181 3, it was accepted by iVlonroewith unseemly precipi-
tancy in a state paper abounding in fulsome flattery to
Alexander. Statesmen dearly loved a junket then as
now and a commission to negotiate, as motley as a
patch-work quilt, got itself appointed; Bayard and
Gallatin, federalist and republican, sailed down the
Delaware on May ninth. They were off for St. Peters-
burg to assist Adams in his work: three cooks to spoil
the broth which one could have made palatable, pro-
vided always that he were ever to have the chance.

A musing Clio once again: Great Britain had im-
periously refused Alexander's offer and when our cross
match team, able, willing, kind but unbroken to their
new harness (or any other diplomatic discipline), when
Bayard and Gallatin arrived at Gothenburg in Sweden
they found themselves suspended in mid air. Lord

THE TREATY OF GHENT II

Castlereagh, quickly informed of their arrival, instantly
told the British ambassador in Russia, Lord Cathcart,
firmly to pray the Czar for inaction. But the Czar was
in Bohemia, well nigh a thousand miles oflf, and when
the dispatch was put into his hands. Napoleon's fall
seemed imminent. Alexander's affection for America
was forgotten and he expressed entire contentment
with England's stand. Learning then of our legate's
arrival he veered and renewed the offer. Meantime
Castlereagh had also veered, several points; expressing
in a second dispatch to Cathcart, willingness to treat
with the American envoys but not under the Czar's
good offices. The meeting might be at Gothenburg or
London; it could not be at St. Petersburg; British
public opinion was already exasperated; intervention
in that or any other form of condescension would set
fire to the thatch.

Meantime the allies had been defeated by Napoleon,
whose fall now appeared less imminent, and the Czar
had fled to Toplitz. At this place Russia was served
with fine words and compliments, but notified that the
American commissioners, by this time in Russia, must
come to Gothenburg or London if they desired to follow
the only possible course: to treat directly and without
mediation with British commissioners. And so our
grand but selfish Alexander disappears from the com-
bination of circumstances which ultimately produced
the prodigy known as the Treaty of Ghent. Early in

12 THE TREATY OF GHENT

November the British ultimatum reached Washington
and was hurriedly accepted by Madison's administra-
tion, perplexed and bewildered by the chaotic public
opinion of the hour about everything. From its two
travelling negotiators it had no single dispatch or mes-
sage; the President and his advisers were in total dark-
ness as to the fact that the rather exasperated commis-
sion had departed from St. Petersburg; Gallatin indeed
had failed of confirmation by the Senate. Madison,
now assured however of co-operation from congress,
addressed them both at the Russian capital, giving
new instructions, announcing new commissions, and
assuring strong support.

On January 25, 1814, the two migrating diplomats,
acting on their knowledge and judgment, had left
Russia, had travelled leisurely across northern Europe,
and crossing from Amsterdam had reached London on
the morrow of Napoleon's abdiction and banishment
to Elba. City and country were aflame with vain-
glory. Europe saved and pacified, the American blot
on the British scutcheon could now be totally erased
and the despised, rebellious offspring beyond the seas
brought to the feet of a haughty parent for correction.
Three bodies of Wellington's peninsular veterans were
dispatched to strengthen the British land forces: part
to Canada, part to Washington, but the main force to
seize New Orleans as a pawn for use in the tradings
of an eventual peace negotiation. Another campaign

THE TREATY OF GHENT I 3

more vigorous than the preceding must first be fought
and then terms on the general basis of the status ante
helium would probably be the very best we could hope
for. In this grim prospect there was nothing humor-
ous; St. Petersburg, Gothenburg, the many splendid
cities of the north, the entertainments of Amsterdam,
the delights, the hardships and the chagrin of these
travels at the public expense paled before the stern
reality of an imperative but perplexing duty.

Meantime the commission had been enlarged and
another junket organized: to the names of Bayard,
Gallatin and Adams were added those of Henry Clay, a
homespun, representative republican still, and Jona-
than Russell, the new minister to Sweden. These
with their retinue of secretaries, paid and volunteer,
reached Gothenburg in time to learn that they were
to proceed thence to Ghent, chosen finally, it ap-
peared, as the seat of negotiations. This was another
sign of Great Britain's humor, not to say temper, but
suppliants could not command and by the last week
in June, 1814, the American commission was assembled
in the ancient, torpid city, lodged in a decent and
commodious house still standing on the corner of two
streets known (in Belgian French) as those of the
Fields and the Fullers.

Suppliants, we felt ourselves to be; were we really
that? By British severities we had been stung into a
challenge for the consequences of which we were utter-

14 THE TREATY OF GHENT

ly unprepared and what with political generals, what
with financial embarrassment, what with the disaffec-
tion and half-heartedness of the North and Northeast
we were in a sorry plight when Bayard and Gallatin
left home. By the time the commission reached Ghent
matters had improved somewhat; there was discipline
in our army and our many successful ship duels had
done much to restore the national self-respect, while
our privateers had become the terror of the seas; our
victories on the lakes had been brilliant. Nevertheless
we had suffered defeat and outrage, and taken as a
whole our people were sullen and dispirited. The At-
lantic seaboard was harassed by blockaders and land-
ing parties, while a British fleet with five thousand
troops was about to sail for the Potomac, the expedi-
tion which even before the peace-commissioners fore-
gathered had destroyed our national capital and put
our government to an ignominious flight. Yes, out-
wardly and apparently we were suppliants, and humble
ones at that. Our envoys were treated as such, for they
were left to cool their heels and pass the time in idle
distractions as best they could for about two months
before the British commission arrived in the silent,
dreary, half forsaken, little town, a place of departed
glories.

And what a contemptuous commission was the
British, when it did arrive. Contemptible we might,
in comparison with our own and from the stand-

THE TREATY OF GHENT 15

point of the present, be tempted to say. Bayard was
a person of the highest distinction for statesman-
ship and breeding; as a Federalist he had opposed
the war and was a masterly compromiser. Clay,
the frontier radical and Republican, had hotly sup-
ported the war. Better known at the moment as a
politician than as a statesman, he had the habits of
his home, being careless in manner and a passionate
gamester. Gallatin, another Republican, was the ablest
negotiator of them all, thoroughly equipped by the
education of books and of life for the leading part he
played; a shrewd, daring, inscrutible man. When we
say Adams, the sound connotes a power which for
generations has passed in the stock; John Quincy pos-
sessed it, intellectually pedantic, cock-sure and prosy
as he was. Like two of his colleagues he was a patri-
cian, with manners and character. Russell too was
dignified and an experienced public servant. In the
rather humorous suite of secretaries and onhangers
each of the principals found companionship to his liking,
and sympathy as well, with one or more members
throughout the weary weeks of idling, bickering, card
playing, tippUng, consulting and deciding. Though
the individual commissioners were unsympathetic and
jealous of each other, yet for the United States of 1814
the commission was alike important and representa-
tive.

The British commission, with its cool, imperti-

l6 THE TREATY OF GHENT

nent assurance, dawdling for weeks before appearing
on the scene, was quite otherwise from any point of
view. The head of the trio was Gambier, an aging
nonentity of fine presence, ennobled for his share in
the nefarious bombardment of Copenhagen, twenty
years earlier, and since then a placeman of no emi-
nence. The second was Goulburn, a youngish and
little-known scholar, whose unquestioned abilities had
been recognized in the appointment he had received
as virtual leader. The third was a certain William
Adams, somebody's protegee, who though a learned
doctor of civil law had so far been a nobody, and who
remained a nobody at Ghent and thereafter. All three
had the contemptuous, well-bred, exasperating air of
their class, challenging nothing, revealing nothing,
exacting nothing; but urging the letter of their bond.
At the distance of a century the imagination could
fashion and represent nothing more humorous than
this dual group, in which our men actually were bored
to extinction by delay and uneasiness, while the others
wore the mask of boredom with mere formalities, need-
lessly elaborate and dealing with far-off, indifferent
trifles. Behind the British mask there was also, how-
ever, the deepest anxiety, for they knew they were
only pawns of a cabinet, distracted by vacillation,
alarmed by the terrible uncertainties of the continen-
tal questions pressing for settlement, and menaced by
domestic upheaval in regard to taxation, radicalism,

THE TREATY OF GHENT I7

and a dumb social fury with the galling inhibitions on
personal liberty impatiently endured for weary years
only because of the Napoleonic menace. The day of
reckoning with Tory tyranny and military restraints
was already dawning. Blustering and preening as
were the upper classes over the fall of Paris and their
early successes in America, national common sense was
temporarily obscured; but those for whom power was
an end in itself were not fooled for a moment, and such
exactly were the keen adventurers at the helm of State.
^ Throughout July and well into August the American
commissioners amused themselves as best they could
in their hired house, where they lodged and boarded
and had their oifices. Furious at the prolonged dela;^
and humiliated by the amused condescension of all
observers their daily intercourse was far from harmoni-
ous. In particular the all-night card parties of Clay, his
inelegant table manners, and his undisguised defiance of
Adams' petulance went far to create a breach in the
American ranks. On Saturday, August seventh, the
British arrived, and took lodgings at the Golden Lion;
after the manner of ambassadors dealing with ministers
of inferior rank they at once notified our representatives
of their readiness to receive them. This insult restored
harmony in the American home. The experienced
Adams showed the bitterest resentment and the others,
except the calm Gallatin, were prepared for any ex-
treme. 1 1 was the latter who conceived the clever retort

iS THE TREATY OF GHENT

eventually sent: that the Americans would meet the
British at any time and at any place mutually con-
venient, preferably the Netherlands Hotel.

It was a master stroke, our diplomacy won the first
point; and when our envoys arrived next day at the
appointed time and place the others were on hand to
receive them with courtesy, though not with grace.
Gambier was a religious precisian but an ecclesiastical
gentleman; Goulburn, destined to end his great career
as Chancellor of the Exchequer, attained distinction in
spite of his rude ways; while Adams, an admirable
lawyer with no experience in international affairs, over-
played his role and was rather too brusque and glum.
Without delay the British terms, based presumably
on their successes of the previous year, and the pre-
sumptive success of the current summer, were coldly
presented. As two conditions antecedent were the in-
clusion as parties to the negotiation, or rather the
final, general pacification, of the Indians allied with
Great Britain and the creation of a broad mark or
neutral zone between their and our possessions. They
were willing furthermore to treat of impressment; but
only on the basis of once a subject always a subject,
at least, if native born; they would treat likewise of
boundary revision without acquisition of new territory
and of the fisheries.

It required several formal meetings to secure fur-
ther definition. The barrier between Canada and the

THE TREATY OF GHENT I9

United States was to be the zone of Indian defense;
in other words all that is now Michigan, Wisconsin,
Illinois, most of Indiana and part of Ohio was to be
delivered over to the Indians. To Gallatin's question
it was replied that the white settlers must be left to
the tender mercies of their foes and spared, if at all, by
their own enterprise. As to boundary revision, parts
of Maine and New Hampshire were to be Canadian,
the forts at Niagara and Sackett's Harbor were to be
dismantled, and the United States might never have
an armed force on the Great Lakes or their tributaries
as, on the other hand, Great Britain could and would.
These points constituting an ultimatum, Adams drafted
a lengthy refusal to treat: Gallatin stripped it of fury,
Clay of rhetoric. Bayard of redundancy, while Russell
edited spelling and punctuation. The original author
could not recognize his own work; but it was sent as
edited and preparations for departure were somewhat
ostentatiously begun. Clay, the inveterate gambler,
was convinced, and he alone, that the British would
not call the bluff. The others believed honestly that
all was over.

On August fourteenth, Castlereagh, with a retinue
requiring twenty carriages for transportation, passed
through the town on the way to the congress at Vienna.
What he said to his commissioners does not appear but it
somewhat changed their bearing. Adams' "patch-
work," as he styled it, was speedily forwarded to Lon-

20 THE TREATY OF GHENT

don, and at the end of ten days the British admitted
that the Indian zone was no longer a condition ante-
cedent. Still our Americans stood firm; perhaps Clay
was determined to force the British hand. Indeed,
our envoys appear to have been full of the gambling
spirit, and played of nights to pass the time. Adams
ruefully records his losses to Clay; one session lasted
the whole night. Again the British commission con-
sulted "home" for instructions and had shamefacedly
to admit that neither zone nor lake supremacy were
indispensable, though the Indians must be made a
party in the result of the negotiations.

Here was a tremendous concession, and that too in
the face of continued military successes, well known to
the exultant Britons and the depressed Americans alike.
Yet our envoys kept right on with their card parties
and discarded even these terms. The ponderous and
voluminous Adams was excused from penning the re-
joinder and Gallatin, indifferent to the puppets at
Ghent, composed one for the consideration of the prin-
cipals in the matter, the cabinet at London. Again
there was the now usual intermission of negotiations.
The dwellers on the corner of Fields and Fullers Streets
grew nervous and touchy even for them: Clay and
Adams came to an open explosive rupture and Russell
hied him to a hotel for peace. But the solemn news
that Washington had been captured and burned pre-
vented utter dissolution. The fourth note of the Brit-

THE TREATY OF GHENT 21

ish was then delivered, and while our distracted, dis-
jointed commission got together once more for busi-
ness there was such serious friction that they are re-
ported to have well nigh overlooked the further con-
cession from England, contained in a polite suggestion
that Messrs. Gambier, Goulburn and Adams must have
overlooked or misunderstood the letter of their full
power; what was wanted in the Indian matter was
merely amnesty. This our bickering embassy refused
to accept, and formally at that, in writing.

Adams had been led into temptation, but as he
ruefully admits in his diary had not been delivered
from evil. In spite of copious and assiduous Bible
reading, five chapters in the New Testament every
morning, he nevertheless haunted to excess, as he felt,
theatrical shows and the gaming table. In his aleatory
exercises he had lost much of his balance and at this
juncture far outran the colder Clay in calling the ad-
versary's hand. The rejoinder desired should be as-
signed to himself to write, dignified and long, with a
convincing argument for the cession of all Canada!
The brains of his colleagues literally reeled, but they
managed to restrain his foolhardiness and commit the
writing of a brief acceptance to Clay. Of course the
Puritan patrician took exactly such liberties with this
draft which he disliked in all its parts, as were regu-
larly taken with his own. The result was a breach
and considerable railing, the interchange of most un-

22 THE TREATY OF GHENT

complimentary language about Massachusetts and
Kentucky respectively.

There was leisure to nurse grievances in the now
customary long pause before return news from Lon-
don. This time there came an imperative demand
for a treaty on the basis of uti possedetis; reten-
tion, that is, of the territory each occupies when ne-
gotiation closes. The British held the Maine coast
as far as the Penobscot and were encouraged by
the skirmishes on the line of the Niagara river,
and by the still dubious situation in the southwest.
Our commissioners were exasperated by the new
attitude, drew together, composed a defiant retort,
and threatened a final rupture of negotiation. When
their answer reached London it was laid before Well-
ington with the offer of supreme command in America.
The duke would obey, of course, but like our commis-
sioners he considered the British gains to be only
temporary and thought the demand of his government
excessive. It was accordingly withdrawn and the fact
was known at Ghent on October thirty-first.

Meantime the American envoys had renewed their
quarrels; Clay's pride was wounded by social neglect
or oversight and Russell's by studied insult from the
British and the Belgians, both being treated as if they
were mere secretaries of Bayard, Adams and Gallatin.
They withdrew from the American embassy, at least
so far as to eat and lodge elsewhere. But there was

THE TREATY OF GHENT 23

a rejoinder to be written of course, and not only that,
the British requested the draft of such a treaty as
would be acceptable. Adams undertook the task, and
with a statesman's skill and foresight proposed a peace
on the basis of the status quo ante, restitution of terri-
tory and property, postponement of all disputes for
later and peaceful negotiation. This would leave to
the British their treaty right of navigating the Missis-
sippi which Clay insisted should be unconditionally
surrendered; it would also leave to the New England
fishermen the right under the same treaty to fish on
the banks as before, which with Adams was equally
incontestable.

For a fortnight the American council table was
a battle ground between the two: alike in personal
and political hostility. But at the expiration of that
term definite instructions embodying Adams' exact
idea arrived from Washington, a staggering blow to
Clay, who could no longer refuse his signature to the
draft. There was not a syllable in the paper about
the specific grievances we had regarded as a sufficient
"casus belli": commercial oppression, blockades or im-
pressment. It was on November twenty-sixth that the
British envoys presented the reply from London; in it
there was not a word about the fisheries. The British
placed their own interpretation on our treaty rights
in that respect, to wit: that war had ended the treaty
of 1783 and we had no other. But there was a definite

24 THE TREATY OF GHENT

Stipulation for the navigation of the Mississippi. This
was more than Clay could endure; the great river did
not rise in Canada as had been supposed in 1783, we
now held not one but both banks, we owned the mouth
and the great fertile valley was being settled by con-
siderable numbers of Americans. Our contention was
that the treaty of 1783, recognizing independence with-
in certain definite boundaries, was permanent in all its
parts, including both the fisheries and the Mississippi
matter. But Clay believed his political future to be
dependent on liberating the west and southwest from
every remnant of British interference, and right or
wrong, consistent or inconsistent, remained obdurate
in his demand for their exclusion from use of the river.
Gallatin stood for the permanence of the existing
treat of 1783 and wrote an article for the new one
containing renewal both of British rights on the Mis-
sissippi and American rights in the fisheries. It was
five days ere Clay could be brought by Gallatin to yield
in any degree; while Adams, wounded again by the
ruthless mutilation of his project and utterly outraged
by Clay's demands, seemed incapable of controlling
his temper to the extent of even arguing or consulting.
The claim is made that Gallatin was the real framer
of the treaty, and in some measure it has been gener-
ously admitted by Adams' descendants. Certainly
Gallatin's tact, firmness, and reasonableness rendered
him at this point the umpire of the embittered struggle.

THE TREATY OF GHENT 2<j

Clay's repute as an able compromiser is well known and
the decision reached was his own. Gallatin's article
was omitted from the project of the treaty, this Clay
secured; but appended was a note explaining that in
view of the permanence of existing treaty obligations it
had not been thought necessary to mention the fisheries.
In this he lost for it was really a proposed exchange
of navigation for fishery rights. The Kentuckian
thought the treaty a very bad one and said so in pic-
turesque language.

Two weeks later the project was returned from
London with many marginal annotations and an article
securing to British subjects the river navigation. But,
most significantly, there was blank silence about the
fisheries. Adams was glad but Clay was mad, as never
before. Again Gallatin resumed the role of mediator
and played it superbly as before. On December first our
commission made the formal tender of the barter which
had previously been merely suggested. The reply was
an offer to leave both questions open by formal agree-
ment. Our rejoinder was to make mention of neither
and this was accepted with a promptness expressing
Great Britain's eagerness for peace. The treaty was
signed on December 24, 1814.

The winter of that year was not a pleasant one in
Europe and least of all in England. British merchants
were clamorous for a complete renewal of trade after
the long weary break, and their ships were a prey to

26 THE TREATY OF GHENT

our cruisers and privateers. Macdonough's victory on
the lake had checked one body of WelHngton's veterans
at Plattsburg, another had sailed away disheartened
from Baltimore, and the coming defeat of the third at
New Orleans (January 8, 1815) was to restore American
self-respect. But peace in America was desired by
England chiefly because of the European congress at
Vienna, where the most momentous decisions regarding
Europe's immediate future were to be reached. Great
Britain's radicals with their secret societies and inflam-
matory propaganda put Tory rule in jeopardy: and,
while it was Waterloo which gave it a new lease of
life, her statesmen were full of dark foreboding. Such
energies as they had were liberated by the Treaty of
Ghent, and it was with a sigh of immense relief that
the country, unhampered from behind, could gird itself
for the eastward strife in the Austrian capital. But
there was no extraordinary jubilation ; Great Britain was
way worn and still had no vision of her journey's end.
Upon receipt of the news in America there was
momentarily a frenzy of delight: the war was over,
there was a peace. But the perusal of the treaty,
article by article, reduced the blaze to smouldering
embers and covered the land with a gray mist of smoke
and vapor. The conflict was ended and there were not
only no gains, but losses: unless exhausted quiet be a
gain. There was still a treaty of commerce to be made
and there was to be no payment of our spoliation claims:

THE TREATY OF GHENT 27

the fixing of our frontiers was to be entrusted to joint
commissions meeting on British soil; we established no
right whatever to the islands in the Bay of Fundy and
no natural right to the fisheries in British waters.
Where were the Free Trade and Sailors' Rights for
which we went to war? No concession, no mention
even of them. The West Indian trade was ours no
more. Thus the Federalists in full cry, for political
purposes; and the Republicans were silenced. It seems
to have been felt that the initial demands of Great
Britain were a preposterous bluff not to be reckoned
at all in the balance sheet and it was not emphasized,
indeed the public did not even notice, that she had
secured no acknowledgment of any right to search our
ships, impress our seamen or declare paper blockades;
that in all likelihood the union had been saved from
disruption — Massachusetts and Connecticut commis-
sioners were in Washington when the news from Ghent
arrived to demand a share of Federal taxes and the
right to raise State armies: everybody forgot that at
least some degree of commercial freedom, possibly
absolute liberty and independence had been secured.

Many Americans harbor strange delusions about
treaties. That of Ghent is lightly esteemed by the
manufacturers of school books, as too is the previous
one known as Jay's: simply because there is no bun-
combe in either. As late as the writer's boyhood we
still used "readers" and "histories" made in New

28 THE TREATY OF GHENT

England: and indignantly bleated about search, im-
pressment and blockades in our dialogues on the school
rostrums. The truth is that there is permanence and
binding validity in treaties in so far only and only in
so far as there is in them the expression of a political
and social permanence. The admirable principles of
international relations, even that of neutrality, have
always been forgotten and always will be by nations
when maddened by the lust of conquest or the desperate
struggle for self-preservation. So too when peace and
reciprocal advantage make relations easy a minimum
of treaty sanction is the best in controlling international
intercourse. For this last reason the Treaty of Ghent
is a great landmark, and for this reason only did it
give us in the end all and more than we had contended
for; arbitration has in the lapse of a century settled all
those old disputes and others surcharged with even
greater explosive force.

Perhaps our bickering negotiators in the dreary
little Belgian town had prophetic vision, and perhaps
John Quincy Adams, in spite of his lapses of temper
and morals, was the clear-sighted lookout on the ship
of state; let us permit them all to share not only in
the manifest credit due to Gallatin and to Adams,
but even in the supreme meed of honor as prophets
in their own country. We cannot prove their de-
serts but we can admit them. The course of events
has been on the side of Anglo-Saxon peace, a course

THE TREATY OF GHENT 29

laid and kept by pilots quite as wise, and look-
outs quite as clear visioned as even Gallatin and
Adams. These later statesmen braved for us the storms
of British passion during our civil war, of Canadian
resentment about the Alaska boundary and the fisheries
question: their deserts in the development of mutual
good will and understanding parallel those of the men
who laid the footing stones and foundations. There is
not and cannot be love between any two nations:
nations have but one loadstar: self-interest, immediate
or ultimate. The politician who discerns that star and
steers discreetly for it is a statesman. There is not the
slightest analogy between a man and a state. Men may
practice the virtues of the decalogue, unselfishness and
the love of neighbor; organized society doubtless will in
the millennium but not before. Meantime the path-
finders who patiently wait and leave the lapse of time
to allay passion or clarify the mind are the true heroes
of history. The council table requires a cool moral
courage and an adroitness of demeanor which at least
equal the cunning of the strategist or the swift decision
of the general.

We think now, as we said at the beginning, that Clio
does well to smile as she muses over the Treaty of
Ghent. The whole course of the negotiation was a
merry round. The concourse of its negotiators was
amusing, their walk and conduct was as absurd at
times as the flouncing of boarding-school boys. In the

30 THE TREATY OF GHENT

grav world of politics we have a right to enjoy the far-
cical interludes. But, masked as were the principals
and their agents, behind their acting and frisking was
heaviness of heart. What they achieved, however, was
good and even great. That two great peoples should
be celebrating the centennial of a treaty is a fact unique
in history. The provisions of the treaty of Ghent
have been stronger than alliances or ententes or under-
standings; they were intended to keep us apart, they
have resulted in a hundred years of peace between the
two branches of one of the great race-stocks of mankind.

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