66

clusion was reached by a vote of seven states against two. Massachusetts and Rhode Island voted no"; New York was divided.1 "I have entertained many doubts," wrote King to Gerry, "relative to the policy of this measure considering the situation of Massachusetts and the condition of the confederacy. Our State voted agt. the measure, but we were almost singular." 2

The "condition of the confederacy" might well lead members to oppose the resolutions. Crises like the Shays Rebellion might occur in other states than Massachusetts, and men might again look to the federal army as a possible bulwark against anarchy. But the history of the recent enlistments proved that with such questions the existing federal government had neither the power nor the capacity to deal. The trouble was not that Congress had been indifferent. On the contrary, Congress had seen the danger clearly and had striven to meet it. But it could find no adequate material resources, and its secret method prevented it from exerting any moral influence. Shays and Lincoln went their ways without the least regard for Congress and its recruits. Rebellion completed the proof that a real national government must be established. It was reserved for the Whisky Insurrection of 1794 to show how a real national government would treat rebellion. So low, moreover, had the prestige of Congress sunk, that in abandoning the enlistments it seemed to be letting slip almost its last hold on actual power. William Pynchon wrote in his journal on April 19: "News that the Federal troops are discharged; that this is one of the last struggles of Congress. All grow uneasy, disaffected.”3 Unless some new cement could be found, would not the rope of sand fall utterly to pieces?

There had been raised in all about three hundred recruits in Massachusetts and one hundred and fifty in Connecticut. Virginia. had completed her cavalry troop of sixty men. New Hampshire and Rhode Island had voted to raise their quotas and had appointed officers, but no money was appropriated, and nothing further was done. Maryland made no response whatever. The two Massachusetts companies of artillery, numbering seventy-three men each, were marched to Springfield during May and June. One of them was soon afterwards ordered to West Point. All the other recruits

Journals of Congress, XII. 28-29. The money requisition of October 21, 1786, was repealed on May 3. Provision was made for crediting the states on their federal accounts for all expenses which they had incurred (ibid., 41).

Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, I. 218. King mentions to Gerry another motive for his opposition. "I am extremely mortified", he says, with the Disappointments which this arrangement will produce with the worthy Gentlemen who have laid aside other concerns and engaged as Officers in this corps". 3 Journal of William Pynchon, 275-276.

AM. HIST. REV., VOL. XI.-5.

were quickly disbanded.

They were paid off with orders on the re

ceivers of Continental taxes.1

One question remains to be answered. What of the Indian hostilities? Why was there no appeal to them-so far as is recorded— as a reason for continuing the enlistments? This question has always been ignored, no doubt because of the assumption that, from the first, Congress had not taken the Indian question seriously. The real explanation, while not quite so easy as this, is still not difficult to find. It is simply that the Indian troubles had ceased for a time to be an insistent issue. George Rogers Clark's expedition to Vincennes in September, 1786, drew off the attention of the Shawnees and their allies from their intended attack on the surveyors and the settlements near the Ohio. Clark's raid has generally been called a failure, because many of his men mutinied, and he struck no decisive blow. It seems clear, however, that he contributed much, at a critical moment, towards averting an Indian war. Equally important, perhaps, was an attack upon the Shawnees made in October by several hundred Kentucky militia under Colonel Benjamin Logan. The Indian warriors had gone to meet Clark. Logan therefore swept through the country almost unopposed, burned seven of the Shawnee villages and all of their corn, took scalps and prisoners, and seems quite to have broken the spirit of the tribe. As a result of these expeditions and of disagreements among the tribes, the Indians made no concerted attack that year. In December Brant gathered a great council of the Iroquois and the western tribes near the mouth of the Detroit river. He labored to carry in this assembly a declaration of war against the Americans. Failing in this, he secured a united demand for peace, on the terms of the Ohio boundary and a common treaty between the whole Indian confederacy

3

1 Reports of Knox to Congress, May 2, July 14, September 26, 1787 (Papers of the Old Congress, No. 150, II. 321-324, 327-329, 413-414). Virginia, Connecticut, and Rhode Island voted their quotas in October, 1786; New Hampshire on December 26. Hening, Statutes . . . of Virginia, XII. 255; At the General Assembly... of . . . Rhode Island begun on the last Monday in October, etc., Providence, printed by John Carter, pp. 7-8; A. S. Batchellor, editor, Early State Papers of New Hampshire, XX. 723, 760; Humphreys to Washington, November 1, 1786, in Sparks, Correspondence of the Revolution, IV. 147–149.

2 Harmar to Knox, November 15, 1786; Richard Butler (Superintendent of Indian Affairs) to Knox, December 13, 1786 (Papers of the Old Congress, No. 150, II. 115-118, 163-166); Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, III. 83-84; Winsor, The Westward Movement, 275, 345.

• Harmar's letter of November 15 gives a good account of Logan's raid.

4 Butler to Knox, January 3, 1787 (Papers of the Old Congress, No. 150, II. 257-258).

5 Butler and Harmar both wrote that the Wyandots and Delawares opposed the warlike counsels of the Shawnees.

and the United States. The message from this council to Congress was a high-spirited manifesto backed by great power. Nevertheless, it made possible for a time the substitution of diplomacy for war, and it was during the breathing space thus gained that the question of terminating the enlistments came up in Congress. It was true that small bands of frontiersmen and Indians continued their mutual depredations, and the Kentuckians still panted for war. Nevertheless, General Butler could truthfully write on March 28: "Our prospects of peace with the Indian nations are much brighter than they have been, and I hope they will daily increase." This letter was laid before Congress on the very day on which the disbandment was voted. It thus came about that both of the reasons for increasing the federal army had lost most of their original force. Congress therefore needed little persuasion to reverse its policy. To General Knox, however, it was a great sorrow to lose the troops which he had so laboriously obtained. He felt sure, as he had a year before, that not less than fifteen hundred men were constantly needed on the frontier. Still, he admitted that the government had no resources with which to maintain so large a force.*

JOSEPH PARKER WARREN,

1"Extracts from the indian speeches at the Western council" (Papers of the Old Congress, No. 150, II. 267-277); Butler to Knox, March 28, 1787 (ibid., 287– 298); letter from the Indian council at the mouth of the Detroit river to Congress (ibid., 381-387).

Harmar to Knox, May 14; Knox to Congress, July 10; John Cleves Symmes to the President of Congress, Louisville, Kentucky, May 3, 1787 (ibid., 359–365; No. 151, 259-270; No. 56, 197-200, 205-207).

3 Ibid., No. 150, II. 287-299.

Knox to Congress, July 10, 1787 (ibid., No. 151, 259-270).

THE NEGOTIATIONS AT GHENT IN 1814

THE government of the United States had been honestly loath to declare war in 1812, and had signalized its reluctance by immediate advances looking to a restoration of peace. These were made through Jonathan Russell, the chargé d'affaires in London when hostilities began. To use the expression of Monroe, then Secretary of State, "At the moment of the declaration of war, the President, regretting the necessity which produced it, looked to its termination, and provided for it." The two concessions required as indispensable, in the overture thus referred to, dated June 26, 1812, were the revocation of the Orders in Council, and the abandonment of the practice of impressing from American merchant ships. Should these preliminary conditions be obtained, Russell was authorized to stipulate an armistice, during which the two countries should enter upon negotiations, to be conducted either at Washington or in London, for the settlement of all points of difference.

Russell made this communication to Castlereagh August 24, 1812. Before this date Admiral Warren had sailed from England for the American command, carrying with him the propositions of the British government for a suspension of hostilities, consequent upon the repeal of the Orders in Council. In view of Warren's mission, and of the fact that Russell had no powers to negotiate, but merely to conclude an arrangement upon terms which he could not alter, and which his government had laid down in ignorance of the revocation of the Orders, Castlereagh declined to discuss with him. the American requirements. "I cannot, however," he wrote, “refrain on one single point from expressing my surprise, namely, that as a condition preliminary even to a suspension of hostilities, the Government of the United States should have thought fit to demand that the British Government should desist from its ancient and accustomed practice of impressing British seamen from the merchant ships of a foreign state, simply on the assurance that a law shall hereafter be passed to prohibit the employment of British seamen in the public or commercial service of that state."2 The Government 1 Monroe to Russell, August 21, 1812. American State Papers, Foreign Relations, III. 587.

2 Ibid., 590.

could not consent to suspend the exercise of a right upon which the naval strength of the empire mainly depends," until fully convinced that the object would be assured by other means. To a subsequent modification of the American propositions, in form, though not in tenor, the British minister replied in the same spirit, throwing the weight of his objections upon the question of impressment, which indeed remained alone of the two causes of rupture.'

Commendable as was its desire for peace, the American government had made the mistake of being unwilling to insure it by due and timely preparation for war. In these advances, therefore, its adversary naturally saw not magnanimity, but apprehension. Russell, in reporting his final interview, wrote, "Lord Castlereagh once observed somewhat loftily, that if the American Government was so anxious to get rid of the war, it would have an opportunity of doing so on learning the revocation of the Orders in Council." The American representative rejoined with proper spirit; but the remark betrayed the impression produced by this speedy offer, joined to the notorious military unreadiness of the United States. Such things. do not make for peace. The British ministry, like a large part of the American people, saw in the declaration of war a mere variation upon the intermittent policy of commercial restrictions of the past five years; an attempt to frighten by bluster. In such spirit Monroe, in this very letter of June 26 to Russell, had dwelt upon the many advantages to be derived from peace with the United States, adding, "not to mention the injuries which cannot fail to result from a prosecution of the war." In transcribing his instructions, Russell discreetly omitted the latter phase; but the omission, like the words themselves, betrays consciousness that the administration was faithful to the tradition of its party, dealing in threats rather than in deeds. Through great part of the final negotiations the impression thus made remained with the British ministers.

On September 20, 1812, the chancellor of the Russian Empire requested a visit from the American minister resident at St. Petersburg, Mr. John Quincy Adams. In the consequent interview, the next evening, the chancellor said that the Czar, having recently made peace and re-established commercial intercourse with Great Britain, was much concerned that war should have arisen almost immediately between her and the United States. Hostilities between the two nations, which together nearly monopolized the carrying trade of the world, would prevent the economical benefits to Russia expected

1 Correspondence between Russell and Castlereagh, September 12-18, 1812; and Russell to Monroe, September 17. Ibid., 591-595.

2 Russell's italics.