Chapter 14
AGGRESSIVE FOREIGN POLICY
Shortly after midnight on Monday, October 25, 1841, an American merchant brig, the Creole, slipped out of port at Hampton Roads, Virginia, en route to New Orleans. On board were ten crew members, seven passengers, several hogsheads of tobacco, and 135 slaves.
Voyages like this traveled down the Atlantic coast all the time. In fact, the Virginia–New Orleans water route had become a nexus of the interstate slave trade, bringing bondsmen and women who had been sold from the Upper South to the Gulf South. The trip typically took nineteen days. Though the duration of the journey could try the patience and will of the crew and passengers, to say nothing of what the enslaved people themselves had to endure, nobody on board the Creole had any reason to believe anything out of the ordinary was in the offing.
What happened on November 7, however, made it clear that the ship’s voyage would be anything but ordinary. Shortly after nine o’clock that night, a slave named Madison Washington led an insurrection that resulted in the stabbing death of a passenger, one of the slaveholders. Four crewmembers were wounded in the fracas. The rebellious slaves—nineteen in all—commandeered the ship and forced a white sailor to navigate toward the Bahamas, a British possession. The Creole arrived at the port of Nassau on the morning of the ninth.1
Washington and the other slaves had chosen the Bahamas as their destination because they believed they would be freed per the British Emancipation Act of 1833. British officials in the Bahamas obliged them by emancipating the slaves who had not taken part in the mutiny and refusing to extradite those who had participated to the United States, where they would stand trial for mutiny and murder.2
The report of the incident tempered the happiness Tyler had felt upon learning of Alexander McLeod’s acquittal in mid-October 1841. McLeod, the Canadian who stood trial for murder in New York State and who had allegedly been involved in the destruction of the American ship Caroline, had faced possible execution if found guilty. The jury’s verdict had relieved some of the strain in US-British relations. Outrage in the United States over the Creole, however, reignited the tension. Southerners demanded compensation for the owners of the newly freed slaves and argued that British actions in the wake of the mutiny affronted American honor. Many pointed to the recently concluded Amistad case to bolster their argument. In that instance, rebelling slaves had been freed without compensation because their Spanish captors had illegally detained them in violation of Spain’s 1820 statute outlawing the African slave trade. The illegality of the Amistad’s voyage meant that the slaveowners were not entitled to compensation. The Creole, on the other hand, had been legally engaged in America’s domestic, or interstate, slave trade, so most southerners believed that the slaveholders who lost their property in Nassau were entitled to compensation from the British government.
This was part of the argument that Secretary of State Webster—and thus the Tyler administration—made to the British government, which was relayed through the US minister to London, Edward Everett. The “comity of Nations,” Webster argued, should have prompted the British to help the Creole’s crew regain control of the ship so it could continue its voyage to New Orleans. Moreover, the nineteen rebellious slaves should have been detained on board the vessel for extradition to the United States to face trial for their crimes. No slave should have been freed. British actions in the case threatened peace, according to the Americans.3
The British, of course, saw matters differently. Newly installed in London, the Conservative (or Tory) ministry of Prime Minister Robert Peel and his Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, backed their officials in the Bahamas and made it clear they would not surrender the nineteen mutineers to the United States. The ministry argued correctly that international law did not compel them to do so. British leaders also rejected Webster’s argument for comity because they realized public opinion in England tilted strongly in favor of the Creole slaves’ freedom, no matter what crimes had been committed on board the ship. Recognizing their poor bargaining position, President Tyler and Secretary Webster never made a formal demand for extradition. In London, Everett gamely continued to press Britain for reparations. Nothing came of that.4
While the Creole affair was an international dispute, it also led to a political firestorm in the United States. American abolitionists galvanized around the issue of compensation, proclaiming that the British were morally and legally correct in their position that reparations should not be paid to southerners whose slaves had been freed as a result of the mutiny. Southern opinion was just as adamant—and just as loud—that reparations were indeed called for. All of this occurred against the backdrop of recently heightened tension between North and South in Congress over slavery. The “gag rule”—whereby southern congressmen refused to allow abolitionist petitions to be read on the floor of the House—had been in effect since 1837 and had poisoned debate. John Quincy Adams had made it a personal mission to expose the southern leadership in the House for its unconstitutional assault on the First Amendment. Southerners were just as eager to paint Adams as a radical who deliberately stoked the fires of sectional conflict. The last thing American politics, or President Tyler, needed at this point, then, was the Creole affair.
At this time the president also found himself personally at the center of another, quite different, controversy over slavery. The abolitionist editor Joshua Leavitt published an article in the antislavery newspaper Emancipator that alleged Tyler had fathered children with one of his slaves. The source of the allegations was apparently a northern Baptist minister, “a man,” Leavitt solemnly intoned, “of the highest integrity and scrupulousness of conscience.” Some years earlier, the minister had visited the Richmond home of a slave mistress and met one of the woman’s servants, a “genteel, slender-built, light complexioned young slave” who claimed to be the son of President Tyler, born on his plantation. Named John Tyler, the young mulatto referred to his father as “Governor Tyler,” which obviously reflected the time period in which he had been born, probably sometime in the late 1820s. He also claimed that the president had other children by his mother and that they all had likely been sold.
Leavitt found the claims irresistible and mocked the president in the article. “Now,” he declared sarcastically, “we would not express the slightest belief that the man who is now the acting President of the United States ever had children by his slaves, or ever sold his own children; although, from what is known of his pecuniary circumstances, and from the general practice among the slaveholders in lower Virginia, it is altogether probable he has supported his family by selling the increase of his slave stock.” Leavitt maintained that he had the “fullest confidence, the certainty,” that the conversation the minister related had actually occurred. Whether the slave John Tyler “told the truth or not, Gov. Tyler knows; we do not, and therefore tell the story as it was told to us, for what it is worth.”
With this summation, Leavitt betrayed the animosity he felt for President Tyler, apart from what he must have felt upon hearing the minister’s story. For one thing, he referred to Tyler as the “acting” president, no doubt relishing an opportunity to rub a sore spot. He also alluded to Tyler’s often precarious financial situation, both as a way to embarrass him and to offer a plausible reason for why the president may have sold his slaves. Finally, in reminding his readers that it was the “general practice” of slaveholders in lower Virginia to sell their slaves and break up slave families, Leavitt was expressing his disdain for the entire planter class, a common undertaking for abolitionists. Obviously, he was no unbiased journalist.
We do not know if any of the claims are true. Leavitt did not provide the name of the Baptist minister whose account he relied on for the allegations, so there is no way to find evidence related to that source that could possibly corroborate his story. For that matter, the minister may not have existed at all, though it seems doubtful that Leavitt would have made up the entire story out of whole cloth. It is possible the conversation cited in the article occurred exactly as it was portrayed. The young slave the minister claimed to have spoken to may have indeed believed he was the son of John Tyler—and, in fact, may very well have been—but there is no way to verify his story. Local historians in Charles City County have been working for years to track down leads that may finally settle the question of whether Tyler fathered children with slaves. Indeed, their research has yielded fairly convincing evidence that he did.5
Tyler himself never offered a public response to Leavitt’s allegations. Nor, as best can be determined, is there anything in his private letters that may offer more insight, either in how he felt about the claims or whether they may have been true. We can imagine that the allegations angered Tyler, for he considered himself a man of upright character who valued personal honor above nearly everything else, and Leavitt had clearly called his honor into question. We might also assume that the charges reminded the president of the allegations James Callender had made about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings many years ago. Whatever the case, Tyler remained silent. Instead, the Madisonian spoke for him, denouncing Leavitt’s allegations as “Gross Slander” and “wretched fabrications.” The paper declined to address the specific charges, deeming them beneath the dignity of the president and not worthy of further comment. And with that, the matter shortly faded from view.6
The Creole affair, however, did not fade so easily. What happened in the Bahamas threatened to derail negotiations between the United States and Britain over the Maine boundary dispute. Webster had made informal inquiries on that issue during the summer and fall of 1841, but little headway had been made in resolving the border.
That problem had festered for years and had been a longstanding source of contention between the two nations. The Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the American Revolutionary War, had failed to delineate a feasible boundary between the United States and New Brunswick in Canada. Both Britain and the United States claimed some twelve thousand square miles of disputed territory. Nearly eight thousand miles of it was located in Massachusetts and later, after it became a state in 1820, Maine. This land boasted some of the richest timber in the region, and the coastline provided access to plentiful fisheries and a path to the Atlantic Ocean.
The end of the War of 1812 resurrected the boundary issue, as British and American negotiators tried in vain to come to an agreement on the disputed territory. The Treaty of Ghent stipulated that the King of the Netherlands, William I, would arbitrate a settlement between the two nations. In 1831, frustrated by an inability to locate the “highlands,” the king gave up and proposed a compromise: the United States would receive almost eight thousand square miles of the disputed territory, while the British would retain territory necessary for the construction of a military road between Halifax and Quebec. Britain looked past the fact that the king had abdicated his responsibility to decide for either Britain or the United States and expressed a willingness to work out a settlement that followed the “Netherlands award.” As a US senator in 1831, Tyler had supported the award, as did his friend and colleague Littleton Tazewell. The majority of the Senate and the state of Maine, however, rejected William’s judgment. President Jackson refused to weigh in publicly on what had transpired.7
There matters stood eleven years later, with tensions having increased in the meantime. Fights over territory between Maine militia and Canadian lumbermen from New Brunswick had broken out in 1839 along the Aroostook River. Cooler heads in the United States and Britain arranged a truce before any loss of life, but both nations worried the so-called Aroostook War would spread. Moreover, the McLeod trial had highlighted the precarious nature of the relationship between the two countries. Both sides now seemed eager to work harder to arrive at a settlement over the Maine boundary, the Creole case notwithstanding. The Peel ministry signaled its intentions in March 1842 by sending a special mission to the United States. The head of the mission was Lord Ashburton, and his appointment pleased Tyler and Secretary of State Webster immensely.
Alexander Baring, Lord Ashburton, was the sixty-seven-year-old retired head of the British banking firm Baring Brothers and Company. He had received his peerage in 1835. Tall, nearly bald, and exhibiting the stoutness common to men his age, Ashburton was dignified and stuffy, commanding instant respect among those who met him. He enjoyed the utmost confidence of Prime Minister Peel, Foreign Secretary Lord Aberdeen, and Queen Victoria herself. He was a most credible emissary, and the British government turned to him rather than the cranky British minister in America, Henry Fox, to negotiate an acceptable settlement with the United States. Ashburton’s very appointment thus bypassed the normal diplomatic channels.8
Besides enjoying the confidence of the ministry, Ashburton had ties to the United States. In 1795 he purchased more than one million acres of land in Maine (which was then part of Massachusetts) from Federalist senator William Bingham and Revolutionary War hero Henry Knox. None of this land was part of the territory in dispute in 1841, by which time Ashburton had sold most of it anyway. Ashburton married Bingham’s daughter, Ann Louisa, with whom he had nine children. In 1803 Baring Brothers helped finance the Louisiana Purchase, with Baring playing a pivotal role in the negotiations. The firm had also aided the Bank of the United States in the 1820s and 1830s. More recently, Baring Brothers had served as banker to the US Navy, a relationship that clearly could not continue if the United States and Britain went to war. Finally, Lord Ashburton enjoyed a warm friendship with Webster.9
Financial considerations also played a role in the Peel ministry’s decision to send Ashburton to America. The Panic of 1837 had poisoned the financial relationship between the United States and Britain. Many states had borrowed heavily from Baring Brothers—and other European firms—to finance internal-improvement projects that otherwise would have entailed raising taxes. By the time Ashburton accepted his mission, eight states and one territory had defaulted on loans, part of the exorbitant $200 million total debt states owed to creditors mentioned by Tyler in his first annual message. Early in Tyler’s presidency, Baring Brothers lobbied the administration to pressure these states to resume making interest payments. The state-debt crisis, while not directly related to the issues Ashburton had been selected to solve, nonetheless added an additional layer to the negotiations. And while Baring Brothers did not hold all of the paper from the state bonds, the firm held enough to make it advantageous to have Ashburton in the United States at work on stabilizing relations between the two countries.10
From the perspective of the Tyler administration, Ashburton’s clout brought another potential advantage. In October 1841 Webster had asked if the Baring firm would be willing to manage the $12 million loan, or bond issue, Congress had approved during the special session; the American market had proved too weak, evident by how little of the bond had been subscribed by that time. The head of American trade at Barings Bank in London, Joshua Bates, notified the secretary of state that his firm would manage the loan if and when Ashburton’s mission met with success.11
Unknown to the Peel ministry, President Tyler and his secretary of state had been taking steps to ensure the success of the negotiations long before Ashburton arrived in the United States. A man named Francis O. J. Smith had approached Webster in May 1841 offering his help in selling the people of Maine on the benefits of reaching an agreement with the British on the boundary dispute. A newspaper editor, successful businessman, former politician, and all-around shady character, Smith had dozens of influential contacts throughout Maine. He maintained that the people of his home state had so zealously resisted settlement of the dispute because they could not abide giving up any territory to British Canada. Honor and pride had dictated they hold fast, and up to this point, the federal government had not seized the initiative and asserted its authority so that the dispute could be settled. Smith, in fact, had similarly offered his services to President Van Buren, but he had been rebuffed.
Smith’s scheme amounted to a propaganda campaign in Maine. Enlisting the aid of influential politicians—outside of normal political channels—and feeding editorials that supported compromise to the newspapers would gradually sway public opinion. If carried off with nuance, the citizens might even come to believe that they had shaped the compromise themselves.
It was a brilliant plan that Smith had pitched perfectly. Webster loved the idea. But would President Tyler find it appealing? Would he vacillate and delay making up his mind? Would he balk at interfering in the affairs of a sovereign state? There was also the question of how Smith would be paid for his services. While claiming to be “solicitous for the honor” of the Tyler administration, such high-minded idealism by itself would not be enough for Smith to make his plan operational. He wanted money. Ever the enterprising capitalist, he was explicit in detailing what he thought the opportunity was worth. “My own compensation I should expect to be definitively fixed at the rate of $3500 per annum—and my necessary traveling expenses, postage & incidental expenses (all subject to your revision and approval) paid by the government.” Moreover, if the United States and Britain negotiated a settlement of the boundary dispute, Smith believed he should receive a “liberal commission” for his efforts. “Success,” he emphasized, “would warrant almost any expenditure.”12
When presented with the details of Smith’s proposal, Tyler was intrigued. But he had doubts about the propriety of having the federal government attempt to shape events in one of its states, which seemed all the more questionable because it would be done covertly. Webster, however, reminded the president that the United States stood dangerously close to war with Britain. As the nation’s chief executive, he had the responsibility to ensure that the country avoided war if at all possible. Tyler agreed. He put aside his states’ rights misgivings, convinced that the greater good of the country required him to act in opposition to longstanding personal principles. Finally, there was probably something in the clandestine nature of Smith’s proposal that appealed to Tyler. Webster’s enthusiasm for intrigue likely helped get the president on board. In the summer of 1841, Tyler agreed to allow Smith to undertake the propaganda campaign.
Once the decision had been made to let Smith conduct his operation, Tyler and Webster debated over how to compensate him. Because the campaign required secrecy, going to Congress for an appropriation with which to fund it was not an option. It was doubtful that lawmakers, who had been looking for ways to cut costs, would have approved such a measure anyway. The president therefore agreed to use the “secret service” fund to pay Smith and his agents. The evidence does not tell us which man—Tyler or Webster—broached the idea of using the fund. They were in agreement, however, that since the citizens of Maine had obstructed settlement on the boundary issue, waging a propaganda campaign in the state constituted an essential element in negotiations with the British. It was a loose interpretation of the law, much like the one employed to justify paying the secret operative sent to Rhode Island to infiltrate the Dorr camp, but it allowed Webster to hire Smith and others as confidential agents of the State Department. “I placed at his [Webster’s] disposal,” Tyler said later, “from time to time, ample funds to enable him to employ agents who would be most likely to acquire for the government full and satisfactory information, and aid it in its efforts to secure and advance the general good.”13
Webster provided Smith with the framework of the boundary settlement the Tyler administration wanted and asked him to publish it in a Maine newspaper. He also drew up some basic conditions he wished the state’s citizens to agree to and instructed Smith to make them the basis for the argument of his editorials. Sensitive to the administration’s concerns that the call for a settlement should not come from the editorial pages of a partisan newspaper, Smith used the Portland Christian Mirror, a politically neutral but widely read weekly, as his vehicle for spreading the propaganda. He published three editorials in the paper in late 1841 and early 1842 under the pseudonym “Agricola” (Farmer) that made the case for compromise. Several other newspapers nationwide reprinted these editorials, which guaranteed that people outside of Maine would be privy to the arguments. Webster himself wrote anonymous editorials for the Washington National Intelligencer arguing for the need to settle the dispute. He also asked former Maine senator Peleg Sprague and Maine congressman Albert Smith to make discreet inquiries throughout the state about where the politicians stood on the issue. It was a remarkably well-coordinated and effective campaign and successfully laid the groundwork for the negotiations the administration began with Lord Ashburton in the spring of 1842.14
Ashburton—traveling without his wife but with three young aides in tow—arrived in Annapolis aboard the frigate HMS Warspite on April 2. He reached Washington two days later. Tyler’s cabinet greeted his arrival with optimism and high hopes. Ashburton, on the other hand, was not so enthusiastic about the situation he found in America. It did not take long for him to fully understand just how toxic the political atmosphere in Washington was at the time. President Tyler himself appeared “weak and conceited” and out of his depth. Ashburton, never overly fond of what he felt was the capricious nature of American democracy, marveled at the “singular state of parties” in the United States and worried that both the president and Webster might be “powerless” to accomplish anything. He derided America as a “mass of ungovernable & unmanageable anarchy” and wondered whether the republic would survive another year under the Tyler administration. Yet Ashburton cautioned Aberdeen “not to mistake or undervalue the power of this Country.” War had to be avoided at all costs. Despite his negative characterization of the United States, Ashburton believed his mission stood a good chance of accomplishing this goal.15
Webster composed a checklist of the issues he wished to address with his British counterpart. Foremost on the agenda, of course, was the boundary dispute between Maine and New Brunswick. He also sought British acquiescence to American claims in the area between Lake Superior and the Lake of the Woods in the Old Northwest; an apology for the loss of the Caroline (the American ship Alexander McLeod had allegedly helped destroy); indemnity to the slaveholders who had lost slaves in the Creole incident; American sovereignty over the Oregon Territory, which had been under joint occupation with the British since 1818; and discussion of the right of search and seizure of ships on the high seas, a particularly nettlesome problem that many Americans believed was a threat to their country’s honor.16
For its part, the Peel ministry was willing to discuss the Caroline affair and the right of visit and search on the high seas, but it recognized that the boundary dispute would occupy much of Ashburton’s time while he was in the United States. Lord Aberdeen wanted to maintain British control of the St. John River because the waterway aided the Canadian timber trade. He also believed that the Madawaska settlements along the St. John, which were already under Canadian civil jurisdiction, should be formally granted to the British. Beyond these stipulations, he gave Ashburton no specific orders.17
While his emissary was making his way across the Atlantic, however, Aberdeen decided to alter his instructions. He had consulted with Britain’s military leadership, which believed the Maine boundary dispute should be settled with an eye toward safeguarding territory for a military road between Halifax and Quebec, a component of the previous Netherlands award. Aberdeen thus instructed Ashburton to negotiate for significantly more territory running northeastward from the St. John River than he had originally planned.
This was easier said than done. Ashburton worried that such a demand would imperil the negotiations entirely. He found still more reason for worry when he and Webster sat down for preliminary discussions soon after he arrived. The secretary of state informed him that on April 11, he had sent letters to the governors of Maine and Massachusetts—John Fairfield and John Davis, respectively—asking them to convene special sessions of their legislatures so that commissioners could be appointed who would come to Washington to consult with the Tyler administration during the negotiations. Webster had promised the governors that no settlement of the boundary would take place unless the commissioners granted their unanimous approval; obviously, he wanted it to appear that the Tyler administration was acting with the concurrence of the states. Taken aback, Ashburton agreed to allow the commissioners to participate but was not happy about it. He thought introducing more actors into the process of negotiation would entail confusion and needless delay, and they might scotch any agreement he and Webster worked out. Ashburton grumpily insisted that the state commissioners deal only with Webster; he wanted no contact with them. The American agreed to this condition but did not share his counterpart’s misgivings about allowing state commissioners to play a role in the negotiations. He had already let Governor Fairfield know through backchannels that there was a historical map in the French national archives in Paris, as well as another located in the State Department collections, that supported the British claim to territory in Maine. Providing Fairfield with such evidence of the validity of the British position essentially scared him into submission and served to lower expectations in Maine, which would give the Tyler administration political cover for a final settlement. Moreover, Francis Smith’s propaganda campaign through the newspapers was well underway. Webster was confident the commissioners would not dare scuttle the negotiations.18
Historian Frederick Merk, a famed scholar of American antebellum politics and diplomacy who made the 1840s his obsession, cautioned against crediting the propaganda campaign waged in Maine with too much influence in pushing residents of the state toward acceptance of a settlement of the boundary dispute. As Merk put it, “Changes in the climate of public opinion are the work ordinarily of basic forces, and this was true in the case of Maine.” For example, he points out that the Whig sweep of the state in the 1840 elections had brought to power men who were philosophically more amenable to a compromise with Great Britain that would settle the boundary dispute. Moreover, the long-term economic malaise brought about by the Panic of 1837 stimulated a desire for peace with Britain, which many believed would restore confidence in the transatlantic markets. Merk further argues that the “service of Smith was to turn such forces in Maine towards acceptance of an untried mode of removing an old source of disorder and danger.”19 He is correct in all of this. The fact remains, however, that by the middle of June 1842, as Webster and Ashburton began a concentrated period of negotiation, the Tyler administration found itself in an advantageous position in no small part because of the secret machinations at work in Maine. The Portland Eastern Argus, the state’s Democratic bellwether and a highly influential paper outside the state, changed its stance from opposing a boundary settlement to offering full support for whatever the administration could accomplish in Maine’s behalf.20 This turn of events, as well as Governor Fairfield’s conversion and the legislature’s eventual willingness to appoint commissioners to Washington, cannot be explained merely by “basic forces.” Rather, it was Webster’s agency, complemented by the approval and oversight of President Tyler, that ensured the necessary preconditions for a successful outcome of the negotiations. Shaving the rough edges from his ideology, Tyler had engaged in a bit of realpolitik.
Once negotiations began in earnest, President Tyler displayed remarkable agency himself. In fact, he played a more decisive role in the completion of the treaty that resulted from the negotiations with Ashburton than anyone at the time realized. While Secretary of State Webster received most of the accolades for the treaty, both at the time and historically, Tyler’s involvement in every phase of the process charted a new course. His efforts marked a departure from the way diplomacy had been conducted previously in the early republic and represented an attempt to enlarge the authority of the presidency. Yet at the same time he conformed to the role the Constitution prescribes to the chief executive.
Tyler played an active role in the talks with Ashburton. This did not mean he was always in the room with the two men; in fact, he usually was not. But the president offered suggestions to his secretary of state and pored over the correspondence and notes of the proceedings every night so that he could direct the course of the give and take the next day. For example, the president detailed to Webster the changes he wanted made to the record of the negotiations that addressed the Creole incident. “The substitution of a few words in some places and addition in others will make it entirely acceptable,” he wrote, after reading Lord Ashburton’s draft on the matter late in the process.21
The evidence clearly shows that the president directed—or micromanaged—the negotiations. As Tyler’s second wife put it four years later, Webster “acted under the counsel or after the direction of the P[resident].” Tyler “was the direct and Webster only the passive agent in every act and every line of correspondence relating” to the resulting treaty. Mrs. Tyler’s account no doubt rests too heavily on the pride she felt for her husband. But letters from Webster, both in the immediate aftermath of the negotiations and years later, indicate that Tyler had played a significant role in the process. Once the treaty had been ratified, a grateful and gracious Webster assured Tyler: “I shall never speak of this negotiation, my dear Sir, which I believe is destined to make some figure in the history of the county, without doing you justice. Your steady support and confidence, your anxious and intelligent attention to what was in progress, and your exceedingly and obliging and pleasant intercourse, both with the British minister [Lord Ashburton] and the commissioners of the States, has given every possible facility to my agency in this important transaction.”22
Part of that “exceedingly and obliging and pleasant intercourse” could be found during a party Priscilla Tyler planned in honor of Lord Ashburton as well as smaller gatherings at the White House. An often overlooked aspect of the Webster-Ashburton negotiations is how these events soothed the elderly British envoy and calmed the frayed nerves of everyone involved as the hot summer of 1842 dragged on. “I contrive to crawl about in these heats by day & pass my nights in a sleepless fever,” Ashburton grumbled at one point. “In short,” he told Webster, “I shall positively not outlive this affair if it is to be much prolonged.” Luckily, Ashburton’s White House host knew how to entertain. Priscilla did her part to move the negotiations along; the party honoring Ashburton was a success, much like the one for Charles Dickens had been some months before.23
President Tyler also employed his famed southern charm. At one point Ashburton’s patience with the talks ran out. Irritated by the demands of the commissioners from Maine and Massachusetts, whose nitpicking made them a bit more troublesome than Webster had anticipated, he threatened to pack up and sail home to Britain, leaving every issue between the two countries unresolved. “I had hoped that these Gentlemen from the North East would be equally averse to this roasting,” Ashburton groused as he suffered through yet another sweltering day in Washington. “Could you not press them to come to the point,” he implored Webster, “and say whether we can or can not agree? I do not see why I should be kept waiting while Maine & Massachusetts settle their accounts with the General Government.” For a moment, Webster’s optimism escaped him. He looked to the president.24
“My Lord,” Tyler addressed Ashburton as the two men sat down together one morning. “I cannot suppose that a man of your lordship’s age and personal position, retired into the bosom of your family after a long and successful life, would have crossed the Atlantic on so arduous a mission, unless you had truly come with the most painful desire to close the unhappy controversies that now threaten the peace of the two countries.” Eyeing the president intently, Ashburton nodded. “Your lordship could have felt none of the ordinary diplomatic temptations,” Tyler said, “and if you cannot settle them, what man in England can?” Tyler’s skill in dealing with people—start with a compliment—was on full display. The flattery continued for a moment or two more, with the president again stressing how important the mission was to the relationship between Britain and the United States. Ashburton had come all this way and should not let the oppressive Washington heat or the churlish state commissioners distract him from the matter at hand. Tyler had won him over. “Well! Well! Mr. President, we must try again,” Ashburton exclaimed, willing if not necessarily eager to resume negotiations.25
This exchange between the president and Lord Ashburton demonstrates Tyler’s facility in negotiation. His agency in the process was not confined to behind-the-scenes wrestling with the treaty’s wording, though this he did with vigor. Nor did it involve merely making his wishes known to Webster and placing upon him the responsibility of working out the details, though this occurred as well. Anticipating the actions of several twentieth-century presidents—Franklin Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan come to mind—Tyler became a diplomat himself and demonstrated a remarkable ability to know just what was called for at the appropriate moment in the negotiations. He was insistent when he needed to be, understated and willing to let Webster take the lead when he believed that course of action was in the best interests of his administration, and perfectly adept at stoking Ashburton’s ego when circumstances called for it. No detail was overlooked.
Tyler also recognized that these negotiations required a delicate balancing act. “The President has felt the deepest anxiety for an amicable settlement of the question,” Webster explained to the Maine commissioners, “and such as should preserve the rights and interests of the States concerned.” Tyler had “sedulously endeavored to pursue a course the most respectful towards the States, and the most useful to their interests, as well as the most becoming to the character and dignity of the Government.” He made sure that Webster repeatedly made clear to the state commissioners that the administration sought to defend their interests. But he also wanted these men to know that their interests could not trump the welfare of the entire United States.26
Tyler did all of this, of course, amid tremendous political and personal stress. “The President has again vetoed the Tariff this morning,” Ashburton informed Lord Aberdeen on August 9, “and parties are in great commotion.” The British envoy could also report that the weather had become more “temperate” by this time, but there was nothing temperate about the way the Whigs assailed the president over this latest veto. Trying mightily to compartmentalize and keep domestic politics from intruding on the negotiations with Ashburton, Tyler faced a losing battle. Webster wrote to Everett earlier in the summer that the Whigs in Congress sparked “resentment” in the president and made him irritable. Making matters worse, rumors flew throughout the summer that removals or resignations of cabinet members were imminent. Tyler found little solace in the living quarters of the White House either as Letitia’s health worsened. The president could not escape the stress, which was even greater during the summer of 1842 than it had been one year earlier.27
Thankfully, by the end of July, the details of a treaty had been hammered out. The United States received more than seven thousand of the twelve thousand square miles of territory in dispute. Webster secured title to southern Madawaska, free navigation of the St. John River, and a boundary line that gave the westernmost land south of the St. John to the United States. The agreement granted American ownership of an area called Rouse’s Point, which protected more than two hundred miles of frontage in New York and Vermont along Lake Champlain. Secretary of War Spencer expressed particular pleasure in this part of the treaty, for control of Rouse’s Point allowed the United States to retain the most important invasion route into Canada, should it ever be needed. Finally, Webster and Ashburton worked out a settlement of the boundary between the United States and Canada that ran from Lake Superior to the Lake of the Woods. Unknown to either of the two principal negotiators, the 6,500 square miles of territory granted to the United States contained some of the richest iron ore in North America. Indeed, the Vermilion and Mesabi ranges in what became the state of Minnesota proved a boon to the United States in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.28
The British may have conceded more territory to the United States in the treaty, but Ashburton and the Peel ministry believed they had won important concessions as well. They had acquired a buffer zone of territory of some 5,000 square miles between Canada and the United States, out of which they could build their military road connecting Halifax to Quebec. Moreover, while the Netherlands award of 1831 had placed the border of the United States within thirty miles of Quebec, through the treaty, the border was now set at fifty miles from the province. Finally, the British gained valuable timberland along the northern tributaries of the St. John River. In sum, both nations benefited from the pact. It had been a true compromise.29
The boundary issue was, of course, the most important point of contention between the Tyler administration and the Peel ministry, but there were other components of the treaty.30 Webster had other items on his “checklist” that he wanted to resolve. The easiest to settle concerned the lingering American resentment over the Caroline incident. It galled Americans that the British had sanctioned the destruction of the vessel. Ashburton offered an informal apology for what had happened.
Less easily resolved were the issues related to British policy toward American ships on the high seas. Both Tyler and Webster had entered into negotiations with Ashburton determined to win formal British disavowal of the impressment of American sailors. “Would it be possible,” Tyler asked his secretary of state, “to induce G. B. to abandon the claim to impress seamen in time of war from American ships[?]” The practice, which violated freedom of the seas and had contributed to the War of 1812, had been curtailed since the Treaty of Ghent in 1815, largely because the British had found it impractical to continue it. Nevertheless, the British government would not officially renounce it. Ashburton called impressment “the most serious cause of animosity and ill will” and worried it would hamper negotiations and prevent settlement of the boundary issue. If it had been up to him, he would have offered the United States the concession Tyler wanted. In the end he agreed to end impressment in a series of diplomatic notes, but not in the formal treaty.31
Lastly, and more significant than impressment, was another issue that concerned action on the high seas, the final item on Webster’s agenda: the right of “search and visit.” Since 1807, when it abolished its own slave trade, Britain had sought to suppress the international trade in enslaved Africans. Beginning in the 1820s, ideas had been floated in both Britain and the United States calling for joint cruising missions that would patrol the waters off the West African coast and prevent ships from carrying slaves to destinations in the Americas. Nothing had come of these ideas. By the late 1830s, Britain had finalized treaties with every maritime nation except the United States that granted the Royal Navy the right to search ships sailing under the flags of those nations on the high seas that they suspected of carrying slaves.
Conceding the right of search would have been tantamount to allowing the Royal Navy to regulate US maritime commerce. Unfortunately, American refusal to allow that right had yielded a particularly repugnant consequence. Slave traders from other nations began flying the US flag to prevent British patrols from boarding their ships. The practice was illegal, but it worked: an estimated 16,000 Africans, in fact, had been brought to the Americas under the Stars and Stripes in 1841 alone.32
The British government took a bold step late in 1841 to end this practice and prevent interference with the Royal Navy’s efforts to suppress the international slave trade. The Peel ministry organized the London Convention and signed an agreement with four other European powers—Austria, France, Prussia, and Russia—called the Quintuple Treaty. This pact formally renounced the slave trade as piracy and allowed each signatory the mutual right to search their counterparts’ ships on the high seas to determine if enslaved Africans were on board. Britain hoped the treaty would pressure other nations—especially the United States—to join the five signatories and allow the right of search.
The implications of the Quintuple Treaty were enormous and potentially troubling for the United States. For one thing, the treaty revised international law. It had long been precedent that no nation could have its ships searched by those of another nation except in times of war (the main reason why impressment so riled Americans) unless a bilateral treaty allowing for the right of search had been signed. Most nations refused to allow a “search” of their vessels as they sailed, though many did recognize a peacetime right of “visit”—a less formal process—that ensured all ships would know the true nationality of the others they encountered. With the Quintuple Treaty, however, Britain aimed to institute a peacetime right of “search,” or what it alternatively called “examination,” in an effort to stop ships from carrying slaves across the Atlantic Ocean. The treaty stipulated that any ship suspected of involvement in the international slave trade would lose the protection of its flag and would be subject to search. Moreover, the burden of proof of a ship’s nationality, which under international law had fallen on the captain and crew of the ship conducting the search, now fell to the captain and crew of the ship being searched. President Tyler grasped the significance of the treaty and did not like it.33
Just as troubling, the Quintuple Treaty established an immense area from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic coast of the United States and the Gulf of Mexico as the zone of search. The coastlines of Georgia and Florida, in addition to those states along the Gulf, were included in the zone, meaning that part of the water route for America’s domestic slave trade was subject to the terms of the treaty. It appeared the British government was encroaching on American slavery.34 Why?
The answer, largely, was economics. For all of its antislavery rhetoric and moral leadership in the worldwide effort to promote abolition, by 1842, leaders in Britain had come to see that they had a distinct financial incentive for weakening the international slave trade and undermining slavery wherever it existed, particularly in Cuba and Brazil but in the American South as well. When Britain abolished slavery throughout its empire in 1833, its colonies in the West Indies converted to an economy based on free labor. Policymakers in London believed at that time that the free-labor system in their colonies might not come close to replicating the profits they had enjoyed under slavery. For this reason, they called abolition in the West Indies the “Great Experiment.” By the time John Tyler became president, British leaders realized that the experiment had failed; free labor could not compete economically with slave labor. Their only option, then, was to make the world safe for free labor by undertaking a concerted effort to abolish slavery everywhere. The British would portray their efforts to do so in humanitarian terms and would use the international abolitionist movement as a cover of sorts to further their fundamental economic goal.35
Duff Green, traveling in England as an unofficial—that is to say, self-appointed—agent of the Tyler administration, had begun to dissect Britain’s true intentions in January 1842. In letters to both Senator Calhoun and President Tyler, he argued that England’s “war on slavery and the slave-trade is intended to increase the cost of producing the raw material [cotton or sugar] in the United States, Brazil, and Cuba, that she can sell to other rival manufacturing, continental powers, the product of her East India possessions cheaper than they can purchase from us.” Green also maintained that there was “much more than a work of benevolence in the suppression of the slave-trade.” He even went so far as to warn that the United States should be prepared for war with Great Britain.36
The Peel ministry, of course, wished to avoid war and hoped the United States could be induced to join the signatories of the Quintuple Treaty. In fact, Lord Ashburton’s mission to America had been conceived with that very goal in mind, and he had been given wide latitude to negotiate the boundary issue on terms highly favorable to the United States with the hopes that such generosity would bring the Tyler administration into the international fold. The failure of France to ratify the Quintuple Treaty, however, foreclosed this possibility, and Lord Aberdeen instructed Ashburton to avoid even mentioning the treaty. He was also not to initiate discussions on the right of search or the right of visit. So he was pleasantly surprised when Webster broached the subject of suppression of the African slave trade and volunteered American ships to cooperate with the Royal Navy in a joint-cruising scheme along the West African coast. Again, this idea was not new. Webster was surely aware of the past efforts to bring such a plan to fruition.37
The joint-cruising agreement—embodied in Article VIII of the final treaty—committed the United States to sailing an African squadron to quell the slave trade on the high seas. That force would match the British effort. The United States would also join Great Britain in formally denouncing nations that engaged in the trade. Ashburton was elated. “If this arrangement can be brought to execution by Treaty,” he wrote Aberdeen, “I shall consider it to be the very best fruit of this mission.”38 Tyler agreed—to a point. When submitting the treaty to the Senate for ratification, he noted that “the treaty obligations subsisting between the two countries for the suppression of the African slave-trade . . . could not but form a delicate and highly important part of the negotiations which have now been held.” His view of the success of this particular part of the negotiations, of course, was much different than Ashburton’s. The president further added that the treaty “propose[d] no alteration, mitigation, or modification of the rules of the law of nations.” In short, the pact upheld the maritime law of freedom of the seas, neutralized the British right of search, effectively killed the Quintuple Treaty, and allowed the United States to take credit for working to eliminate the African slave trade. The administration had pulled off a remarkable maneuver. Tyler himself had seen to the final wording of Article VIII.39
The administration also won a concession from Ashburton relating to the Creole incident, though officially this particular settlement did not become part of the treaty itself. While Britain would not surrender the vessel’s mutineers to the United States, the Peel ministry would see to it that American ships would receive no “officious interference” should they be diverted into the ports of British colonies “by accident or violence” in the future. Tyler worried about how “officious interference” would be interpreted, belaboring the point in a note to Webster. The secretary of state relayed the president’s concerns to Ashburton and told him that Tyler believed it “to be for the interest of both countries that the recurrence of similar cases in future should be prevented as far as possible.” Ashburton agreed but thought that Tyler was nitpicking. Calling the president’s note “querulous and foolish,” he reported to Lord Aberdeen that the “settlement on this point was at last but sulkily received by him [Tyler].”40
The actual legal settlement of the Creole case did not occur until 1853, some eight years after Tyler left office. Ashburton had agreed to submit the matter to arbitration during negotiations, and an Anglo-American claims commission awarded a sum of $110,330 to indemnify the slaveholders who had lost their bondsmen in the mutiny.
William Cabell Rives, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and still an ally of Tyler, shepherded the Treaty of Washington (it would not be referred to as the Webster-Ashburton Treaty until 1871, when the Grant administration negotiated another Treaty of Washington with the British) through the Senate. The pact was ratified on Saturday, August 20, 1842. The vote of 39 to 9 was 7 votes more than the constitutionally required two-thirds threshold. After the intense turmoil of the past sixteen months, John Tyler finally had a significant accomplishment to his credit. Both nations preserved their honor, and war had been averted.41
Abel Upshur wrote that the treaty promised to remove “every possible cause of dispute with England for years to come.” His view was shared by many in the capital, and he was largely correct in his prediction. Some Democrats, however, with Senator Benton (of course) leading the charge, found fault with the administration’s efforts. Benton gave a longwinded speech in the Senate blasting Tyler and Webster for committing the United States to an “entanglement” with Britain, for not receiving explicit renunciation of impressment, and for capitulating on the right of search and visit. The president was appalled. “He [Benton] stood by with his arms folded during Jackson’s and Van Buren’s administrations,” Tyler angrily wrote to Webster, “and permitted almost a surrender of the principle involved in the Creole, and now shows wonderful zeal.” Some things never changed.42
The criticism did not end with Benton. Lewis Cass, US minister to France, resigned his post in protest of the treaty because it did not specifically renounce in all cases the right of the British to board American vessels on the high seas. While Tyler knew that Cass was playing politics and had been in the process of engineering his resignation so that he could return to the United States and seek the Democratic nomination for president in 1844, the criticism still stung. Tyler sought to address the subject in his second annual message to Congress in December 1842, when he made clear his position that Britain’s new so-called right of visit “was regarded as the right of search presented only in a new form and expressed in different words.” Furthermore, he maintained that “all pretense is removed for interference with our commerce for any purpose whatever by a foreign government.” That statement muted criticism at home but had the effect of angering the British, who read this part of the treaty differently from the president; they maintained the treaty allowed them to retain the right of visit. Tyler and Webster spent the next two months assuring the Peel ministry that nothing had changed since the treaty had been signed. Tyler stood firm, however, on his contention that he had yielded no ground. Many years later, facing renewed criticism from southerners who sought to reopen the African slave trade and who argued that the Tyler administration had bargained away American rights, he vigorously challenged the contention that he had made any concession to the British government.43
Looking more closely, it becomes apparent that Tyler was not absolutely correct in his characterization of Article VIII. Perhaps more accurately, the wording of Article VIII lent itself to both his interpretation and the one the British claimed. The ambiguous passage in the text reads “as exigencies may arise, for the attainment of the true object of this article”—that is, for the suppression of the African slave trade.44 Read broadly, one can see that there actually was a scenario in which the British might board an American ship, if only inadvertently: for example, if the Royal Navy suspected another nation’s vessel of flying the US flag illegally. In that case—in that “exigency”—British sailors might very well demand access to a ship that was, in fact, American. Tyler could not publicly concede the point, however, or he would lose face. The portion of his December 1842 message to Congress in which he defended his administration on the right of search very deliberately turns on one word, “commerce.” Tyler carefully claimed that there would be no interference with American commerce from any nation on the high seas. This would, of course, be literally true, though this particular phrase in the message artfully sidestepped the issue of whether the British could ever search or visit an American ship—certainly a wise political move given the temper of the times. Moreover, by asserting that no nation would interfere with US commerce, Tyler had played to the American people’s fear and indignation over what the British had done in the past with impressment. Perhaps he hoped this clever dodge would be enough and that the public would infer or assume that he meant the British had no right to ever search an American ship.
Controversy aside, Tyler had carved out a new role for the president in the treaty-making process, one that previous chief executives had largely delegated to other men. He read the clause of Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution that gave the president the power to “make treaties” literally, which of course comported with his longstanding affinity for strict construction. His agency in the process was unmistakable. Webster acknowledged that “the negotiations proceeded from step to step and from day to day under the President’s own immediate supervision and direction.” Tyler “took upon himself,” he wrote, “the responsibility for what the treaty contained and what it omitted.”45
Also vitally important to the successful conclusion of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty—and important to understanding Tyler’s agency in the process—was his use of the secret-service fund. Congress had appropriated the money for the president’s use expressly “for the contingent expenses of intercourse between the United States and foreign nations.” Critics of Tyler in the 1840s, as well as some historians, have charged that the president’s disbursal of the money from the fund in this instance was illegal. They argue that because the fund was used to influence sentiment in Maine and not for matters of foreign relations, per se, it should have remained in the federal coffers. One scholar has even gone so far as to declare that Tyler “engage[d] in one of the most blatant abuses of presidential covert authority in American history.”46
Such criticism is unwarranted, though it must be pointed out that with his use of the fund, Tyler interpreted the law broadly and thus moved away from his longstanding belief in strict construction. Moreover, he had willfully exercised federal authority in the affairs of a state, albeit secretly. He pointed out later that his goal was to “induce Maine to unite with the government in an effort to settle the questions in dispute.” The position that local politicians had taken—to give no quarter to the British and relinquish no territory—had hardened by 1841, so much so that Tyler could not contemplate beginning serious negotiations with the British over the boundary issue (or anything else, for that matter) unless and until he had laid the groundwork Francis Smith promised when he volunteered his services. Thus, the nature of the “intercourse” between the United States and Britain would have been drastically altered had Tyler not used the secret-service fund in the manner in which he did. Tyler’s creative use of the fund, and his willingness to allow Webster to take care of the specific details as to how it would be used, were important to removing the most significant obstacle to successful negotiations with Lord Ashburton. Tyler had thought broadly and used all the tools at his disposal to play a leading role in the treaty-making process.
Nearly four years after the ratification of this treaty, Congress investigated Secretary of State Webster for alleged malfeasance in his use of the secret-service fund. Tyler traveled to Washington in June 1846 to appear before two select committees responsible for the investigation, in part to defend Webster of the charges, in part to defend his administration’s conduct in the months preceding the Webster-Ashburton negotiations, and in part to justify his use of the fund. The appearance of an ex-president during the proceedings of a congressional hearing was in itself unprecedented. In fact, it marked the first time an incumbent or former president had received a congressional subpoena. Unfazed by the hostility and tension he faced, Tyler calmly and methodically answered the charges. His testimony succeeded in exonerating Webster and quashing further investigation of his administration. The House gave him no more trouble on the use of the fund.47
Tyler’s testimony affirmed in his mind the correctness of his course during the Webster-Ashburton negotiations. “By night and by day I dreamed and thought only of a fair and honorable adjustment of our difficulties,” Tyler wrote later, as he reflected on his role in the treaty, “and contributed all in my power to bring about a happy termination to the negotiation.” The treaty eased most of the tension that existed between the United States and Britain until the unresolved Oregon question—the one item on Webster’s checklist that did not get addressed—later became an issue. Tyler mentioned Oregon in his second annual message and made clear his position that “every effort should be resorted to by the two Governments to settle their respective claims” there.
Perhaps the only downside to the treaty for the United States was the refusal of Barings to finance the American loan. But Tyler did not dwell on this disappointment. By any measure, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty represented a significant achievement. “So far the administration has been conducted amid earthquake and tornado,” Tyler recounted to his friend Tazewell in October 1842, “and yet if it had nothing else to point to but the English treaty as the result of the last eighteen months, I think it would be entitled to some small share of praise.”48
In the wake of the successful negotiations, President Tyler took steps to further assert himself in the realm of foreign policy. Hawaii’s king, Kamehameha III, dispatched emissaries to the United States to press the administration for formal American recognition of Hawaiian sovereignty and independence. More broadly, the king hoped that securing such recognition from the United States would force Great Britain and France to adopt the same policy toward the islands.
On December 30, 1842, Tyler sent a special message to both houses of Congress spelling out what would soon be called the Tyler Doctrine. He asserted America’s interest in preserving Hawaii’s independence and warned world powers that the United States would not tolerate colonization efforts in the islands. With his brief message, and with Secretary of State Webster’s concurrence and aid (Webster had probably written the message), President Tyler had extended the Monroe Doctrine to the Pacific and established an American sphere of influence in Hawaii that guided US policy there until annexation of the islands in 1898. He had also done so with very little financial commitment, recommending that Congress provide funds only for a consulate in Hawaii rather than a full diplomatic contingent.49
In the same message that announced his administration’s policy toward Hawaii, President Tyler articulated the first US policy toward China in the nation’s history. He noted that the recently concluded Opium War between China and Britain terminated with the Treaty of Nanking, which naturally favored the victorious British: among other provisions, including the cession of Hong Kong, China had been forced to open four new ports to English trade. Before the treaty, other nations—including the United States—only had access to Canton. Tyler wanted to ensure an expanded American access to Chinese ports and urged Congress to appropriate money to fund a mission to China. On March 3, 1843, Congress did so. Tyler’s friend Caleb Cushing accepted the appointment to head the mission.50
The resulting Treaty of Wangxia—ratified by the US Senate—added to the list of Tyler’s foreign-policy accomplishments. The administration had proved naysayers in Congress wrong and had added substance to the goal of developing formal American policy in East Asia. Tyler had laid the groundwork for future American interests in China and had oriented the direction of future US foreign policy toward the Pacific. Even better, the United States had muscled its way to parity with the British in China and jumped to the head of the pack in establishing a western presence in the Pacific, which played well with the American people. The opening with China—as well as the policy toward Hawaii—was, in the words of one historian, the “godfather” of Secretary of State John Hay’s Open-Door Notes of 1899–1900. The administration’s efforts also led directly to Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s successful expeditions to Japan in 1853–54. Tyler was proud of his triumphs and predicted in the last months of his presidency that “the influence of our political system is destined to be as actively and as beneficially felt on the distant shores of the Pacific as it is now on those of the Atlantic Ocean.” John Tyler was far more successful in the realm of foreign policy than he would ever be in domestic politics.51