Читать книгу The American Consul: A History of the United States Consular Service 1776–1924. Revised Second Edition - Charles Stuart Kennedy - Страница 6

One of the immediate beneficiaries of the new American constitutional form of government was the consular service. The Congress of the Confederation had refused to do more than make a few token appointments of consuls and consular agents. But in 1789, with the creation of an executive branch of government, there were now a President and a Secretary of State able to take the initiative in dealing with foreign affairs and commerce. Although it was not much noted at the time, the President and his Secretary of State presided over the start of an impressive expansion of one small branch of the new federal government, the consular service.

During Washington’s administration the American army was kept at shadow strength, the navy was literally nonexistent, and the diplomatic service was limited to a few capitals. The consular service, however, spread itself throughout Europe, the West Indies, and North Africa and maintained its representation in China. .

Two factors caused this remarkable growth. The first was the appointment of Thomas Jefferson to the new position of Secretary of State, the ideal person to preside over the inauguration of the consular service. He was a man of great intellect and diverse interests with a practical experience in consular matters that no other figure in the formative years of the Republic had. Jefferson had served in France for five years and knew the value of consuls. Jefferson had successfully negotiated the first American consular convention with a foreign power; thus he understood both the domestic and foreign concerns that consular operations raised. As a congressman he had learned what was possible from that deliberative body and – more important – what was not possible. As a tobacco planter and former governor of Virginia, Jefferson was attuned to the dynamics of American trade abroad and knew how consuls could help that vital export trade. All this knowledge and experience were put to use as Jefferson shepherded the consular service through its early years.

The other reason for the growth of consular appointments in the first decade of the United States under the Constitution was that the service expanded without cost to the government. There were no attempts by Washington, Jefferson, or Congress to make the consular service into a professional body with salaries, rotation in posts, or promotion upward. It was agreed that the United States could have an adequate distribution of consuls abroad by using those who would serve for whatever compensation they might personally extract from their positions as consuls. It cost money to maintain an army or navy, but the American flag could be flying from consuls’ offices throughout the world with little expense except that of the ink and paper to print their commissions. The only drawback to this favorable fiscal situation was that the men appointed were often not experienced or trained for their new positions.

The prodigious growth of the American consular service after the adoption of the Constitution is revealed in the listing of consular posts (in order of creation) in the first ten years of the new Republic (1790–99), showing the remarkable dispersion of these offices throughout the world of commerce. All positions given had the rank of consul unless otherwise noted. Approximately half of them were originally staffed by non-Americans.

Canton, (Shaw reappointed), Island of Madeira, Liverpool, Dublin, Bordeaux, Nantes, Rouen, Island of Hispaniola, Martinique, Bilbao, Cowes (vice consul), Marseille (vice consul), Hamburg (vice consul), Le Havre (vice consul), London, Fayal (Azores) (vice consul), Surinam, Poole (vice consul), Island of St. Croix, Tangier, Copenhagen, Bristol, Lisbon, Algiers, Calcutta. Cadiz, Alicante, Curaçao, St. Eustatius (Netherlands Antilles), Demerara (Georgetown), Malaga, Amsterdam, Bremen, Franconia (Duchy of Franconia), Tenerife (Canary Islands), Isle de France (Mauritius), Gibraltar, Falmouth, St. Petersburg, Dunkirk, Morlaix, Leghorn, Tunis, Tripoli, Hull, Naples, Belfast, Cap François, Brest, Genoa, Trieste, Gothenburg, Aux Cayes, New Orleans, St. Bartholomew, Rome, Rotterdam, Venice, Cork, Santo Domingo, Barcelona, Madrid, Stettin, Santiago de Cuba, Edinburgh, Cape Town, Port-au-Prince, Santander, La Guaira.1

This list of America’s first consular posts not only demonstrates the early growth of the service but also shows where American trading and shipping interests lay in the 1790s. In contrast to the consular net cast by Thomas Jefferson and his immediate successors, by 1800 the United States had diplomats only in Paris, Berlin, The Hague, Lisbon, Madrid, and London. The French Foreign Ministry must have been amused when it received reports of the spread of the consular service that Thomas Jefferson had inaugurated, the same man who had noted “the absolute inutility of Consuls” when negotiating for the Franco-American consular convention.2

Not all consular posts were filled immediately. It took time for the men appointed to sail to their posts; some had second thoughts and did not go, leaving a post unfilled, sometimes for several years. But by the end of ten years the United States was well represented abroad by part-time consuls. It is worth noting that no American consuls were sent to the British possessions in Canada or to British islands, such as Jamaica, Bermuda, or the Bahamas. The British prohibited American trade with their colonies in the West Indies. There were, however, consulates in Cape Town and Calcutta. The Spanish to the south were also cool to American consular penetration of their colonial empire, limiting representation to Cuba and one post on the coast of Venezuela, La Guaira, while allowing the United States to have as many consuls as wanted in Spain. The rest of the Latin American continent, including the Portuguese possession of Brazil, was closed to American consuls. All the Middle East was terra incognita to the American consul. The United States had to deal with the Barbary powers but made little effort at this early stage to establish links to the rest of the Ottoman Empire. In the Far East Japan was barred to all but the Dutch.

The new Senate and House of Representatives took some time to enact the necessary legislation to guide consuls. Secretary of State Jefferson, becoming impatient, sent his consuls and vice consuls a message on 26 August 1790: “I expected ere this, to have been able to send you an act of Congress, prescribing some special duties and regulations for the exercise of the consular offices of the United States; but Congress not having been able to mature the act sufficiently, it lies over to their next session.”3 He asked the consuls to send him a report every six months on the number of American vessels entering their respective ports, giving a full description of the ships and cargoes. Consuls were to report on military preparations and indications of war. The consuls were to warn American ships of dangerous situations so that “they may be duly on their guard.”4 The consuls were asked to report political and commercial intelligence that would be of interest to the United States. Jefferson gave the consuls permission, without encouraging them, to wear the navy uniform: a deep-blue coat with red facings, lining, and slashed cuffs, a red waistcoat, blue breeches, yellow buttons with a fouled anchor, a black cockade, and a small sword.

Jefferson then gave some sound advice to his subordinates. “It will be best not to fatigue the government in which you reside, or those in authority under it, with applications in unimportant cases. Husband their good dispositions for occasions of some moment, and let all representations to them be couched in the most temperate and friendly terms, never indulging in any case whatever, a single expression which may irritate.”5

In his second annual address to Congress, 8 December 1790, Washington tried to nudge that body into legislation concerning the consular service. “The patronage of our commerce, of our merchants and seamen, has called for the appointment of consuls in foreign countries. It seems expedient, to regulate by law, the exercise of that jurisdiction, and those functions which are permitted them, either by express convention, or by a friendly indulgence, in the places of their residence.”6

Despite Jefferson’s impatience, Washington’s pleas, and the fact that a score of consuls were already at their posts waiting for legal status, Congress procrastinated, not enacting the necessary legislation until 14 April 1792. The 1792 act was to remain the basic legislation for the consular service for the next century. Some provisions of this act derived from the 1788 consular convention with France that put French consuls stationed in the United States on a legal basis.

The body of the 1792 act spelled out the duties of American consuls. These officials were to:

A.receive protests or declarations regarding American shipping matters;

B.take provisional possession of the estates of American citizens dying abroad if there were no legal representative present, and notify the Secretary of State of the death;

C.take charge of stranded American ships and endeavor to save them and their cargoes until the owners could take charge; and

D.collect certain fees for taking statements and holding and inventorying estates.

Section 5 of the act provided for salaries for consuls assigned to the Barbary States, not to exceed $2,000 per person. Congress, it seemed, at last realized that consuls to Morocco, Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers would be fully occupied, with neither the time nor the opportunity to act as traders in those difficult posts.

Sections 7 and 8 of the 1792 act clearly detailed the duties of consuls assisting American seamen in cases of sickness, shipwreck, or captivity, all common occurrences in those days. They were to provide for the care of such men stranded in their districts at a rate not to exceed twelve cents per day, which the U.S. government would provide. Consuls might require the masters of American ships to take on stranded seamen for transport back to the United States if they were bound in that direction. They were given sanction to fine those masters who refused. Consuls were to supervise the sale of any American ship in their districts to assure that the seller be provided enough money from the sale to send the crew home.7

From the beginning American consuls were set apart from American diplomats in that they had judicial duties prescribed by law regarding notarial acts and estates and what amounted to police functions over American shipowners and their masters. American diplomats did not have these responsibilities. If there was a conflict between a minister and a consul over a legal matter involving consular duties, the judgment of the consul was to supersede, a fact that did not always please an aggressive minister. For the most part, however, American ministers (and later ambassadors) and their secretaries were only too happy to concern themselves with court life and leave estates, shipping, and other such business to their consuls.

The Consular Act of 1792 contains nothing about assisting distressed American civilians abroad, but the care of seamen was spelled out in detail. Even in the laissez-faire time of the early Republic it was recognized that sailors needed special care and treatment, almost as wards of the government. On board a ship the master and his mates were absolute rulers; there was no challenge to this right by Congress. But the American government and other seafaring nations had to be concerned when their seamen were stranded without money on an alien shore. Foreign governments were wary of penniless alien sailors in their port cities, for these restless men often wound up in jail. Sailors were always vulnerable because they had to depend upon captains who were often irresponsible in paying them and seeing that they got home. Sailors were well known for squandering their money at the first port of call and then depending on someone to help them out, usually the consul.

The period from 1790 to 1815 was a time when the services of consuls abroad were most needed to help American seamen and shipping. For most of that time France and Britain were waging a battle for naval supremacy over the shipping lanes of the world. In such battles neutral ships were often the prime victims. Good money was to be made by merchants who could slip a ship through a blockade. Even if only one of several ships sent off made it to a belligerent port, the profit would be such as to make the enterprise worthwhile. The real loser in this game of “break the blockade” often was the ordinary seaman of a neutral country.

The rules of blockade were that a neutral ship could be stopped at sea by belligerent naval vessels or privateers, its papers and cargo could be examined, and if it were found that the ship was going to or from an enemy port or carrying a cargo that was contraband or of enemy origin, the ship could be taken as a prize. Prizes were taken to friendly ports where a prize court would determine if the ship had indeed been a legitimate prize; if so, ship and cargo were confiscated, and the cargo was sold to the highest bidder, with some of the prize money going to the crew of the capturing vessel. Prizes were lucrative, and captains were not overly scrupulous in selecting ships to be taken. Crews of seized ships were thrown upon the shore destitute.

American consuls in Britain, France, and other European countries and in the West Indies spent much of their time representing American shipping interests at prize courts and helping the crews of confiscated ships return to the United States, where they usually signed on another vessel to try again. Because of shifting alliances and varying periods of peace and war, the consul was important to the master of an American vessel. The consul could explain the existing situation to a master who might have been months at sea, a vital service for a man who had to decide whether or not to sail for certain ports. Consuls could give informed estimates of where the naval forces and privateers of belligerents might be active and hence of areas to be avoided.

The newly appointed American consuls arrived on the international scene at a time of great turbulence in shipping and commerce due to the French-English hostilities, and they also had to deal with unrest or even war within their consular districts. One of the first consuls to find himself in a difficult post was Fulwar Skipwith. Only twenty-five, a scion of one of the old Virginia families, Skipwith was better prepared for consular duties than many of his older colleagues, for at twenty-one he had been busy in the tobacco trade both in Richmond and London, where he acted for Virginian tobacco merchants.8 After a fire had destroyed his trading company and left him in strained financial circumstances, Skipwith spent some time in Paris. He needed a position to help him regain his financial standing after the disastrous fire and seized upon the new consular service as the answer. By the time he applied for a consular appointment, Skipwith was fluent in French and well acquainted with the European scene. He wrote Jefferson, describing his present position as “a gloomy one, & leads me to seek for favours which I had hoped to have lived without.”9 He asked for a consular appointment to Lisbon, Bordeaux, Cadiz, or Marseille, but received instead a commission as consul to the island of Martinique in the French West Indies.

In no position to refuse, Skipwith sailed for Martinique in 1790, arriving just in time to experience the turmoil there that had rippled out from Paris starting from the fall of the Bastille the year before. The new American consul was more or less dumped on the unfriendly shores of Martinique with no official status because the colonial French governor would not recognize Skipwith as consul, not having received instructions from the Foreign Ministry in Paris, which was otherwise occupied. But Skipwith was expected by the Secretary of State to report on the effects of the French Revolution both on the island and on the other nearby French possessions. He was also to record the claims of Americans losing property or goods because of the upheaval on the islands and to generate goodwill toward the United States.10 Moreover, he was warned not to take sides in the fighting between the forces of the French government and wealthy planters and those of the revolutionaries or “patriotic party.”11

Skipwith had hoped that as consul he would be salaried, but Secretary of State Jefferson disabused him of that idea.12 The American consul was expected to support himself by acting as an agent for American firms dealing with Martinique; but, with what amounted to a civil war going on in the French West Indies, prudent merchants were reluctant to risk their ships and cargoes. Skipwith’s case was a clear example of the difficulty of using part-time, unpaid consuls. The more dangerous the situation, the more American interests needed consular support; yet as political situations got worse, there were fewer opportunities for a consul to earn a living.

Jefferson was unsympathetic to the pleas of consuls for pay. He wrote the U.S. consul in Santo Domingo: “Those appointments are given to gentlemen who are satisfied to perform their duties in consideration of the respect and accidental advantages they may derive from them. When the consideration ceases to be sufficient, the government cannot insist on a continuance of service because this would found claims which it does not mean to authorize.”13

Skipwith took care of what business he had, but unable to make a living, he left Martinique in 1794 while the government and patriotic forces were still fighting. A British privateer captured the American ship on which he was bound for the United States and seized his private papers. Using his experience as a consular officer, Skipwith managed to help the stranded American crew return home.14 Not discouraged by the dangers he had faced or the lack of pay, Skipwith set off for Paris a year later as the new American consul general, where he was to remain for fourteen years of revolution and reaction.

By 1793, when France declared war on England and Holland, the European situation had become dangerous for American seamen. The belligerents seized neutral ships dealing with their enemies. Joseph Fenwick, the American consul in Bordeaux, did what he could to help stranded American seamen off ships taken by French privateers, or those who were held by the French government. He was able to get the American brig Sally released after its capture by a privateer. This was unusual, for there seldom was a reprieve for seized American ships.15

Consular business in Bordeaux involved distressed seamen and the problems of privateers, but the consul also had to attend to more mundane tasks such as making inventories of the effects of deceased Americans, a tedious task; in one case Fenwick listed “five flowerpots and forty two snuff boxes.”16 He was also chairman of an inquest on the death by beating of a ship’s cook by his captain, with other American merchant captains idled in Bordeaux at the time sitting on the inquest panel. The panel’s decision was to send the murderer back to the United States under arrest.17

Fenwick, feigning optimism, wrote that the problems with the French might have resulted from the “new organization rather than the want of good will.”18 The attitude of the French did not improve toward neutrals, especially the United States, which was considered a fat goose that could be plucked with impunity by French officials and French privateers. This would eventually push the United States and France into their quasi-war of 1798–1800.

The new consular service quickly proved its worth to the United States. American shipping firms and captains were able to get accurate information regarding foreign markets, regulations, and the dangers of war and piracy, as well as legal support, from their consuls in major ports. The secretary of state received reports on local political conditions and trading opportunities and advice on foreign policy matters from experienced men in the field at a time when the European scene was in a dangerous state of flux. The U.S. consular service was given little time to settle into the routine of new work before some of its officers became active participants in the naval war with France (1798–1800) and then the Barbary Wars (1800–1805).

Frustrated by their inability to challenge the British fleet directly, the French unleashed swarms of privateers and exercised little control over their actions, especially those that working out of the French West Indies. American ships were the easy targets of those privateers, as they rarely traveled in convoys and there was no protective American navy.

Indicative of the bad situation, from July 1796 to June 1797 some 316 American ships were seized by the French.19 Although British privateers were also taking American ships; the French were far more effective and dangerous. Sometimes American consuls could help, but not often. The consul in Marseille, a French citizen, reported that he had secured the release of the American ship Flora of Gloucester, which had been taken by a French privateer owned by Lucien Bonaparte,”a brother of the great General Buonoparte [sic]”.20 In doing his duty, this Frenchman acting for American interests against those of the powerful Corsican family was taking an obvious political risk.

Although President John Adams tried to settle American difficulties with the French by diplomacy, French Foreign Minister Talleyrand demanded a bribe from the special envoys Adams had sent in 1797. This incident, dubbed the XYZ affair, caused considerable outrage in the United States when it became public, strengthening the hands of those who wanted to re-create the United States Navy, which had been dormant since the Revolution. The first positive result was that a number of frigates were commissioned.

The young United States Navy and the consular service were often involved in mutual activity that fostered a strong alliance. In times of peace the American consul in a port was surely heartened to see a warship enter the harbor flying the Stars and Stripes. The round of official calls between the naval vessel and the local authorities helped the standing of the American consul. For many foreign officials and civil leaders in Europe and elsewhere the United States was as yet a little-known country. A well-turned-out warship represented a country to be reckoned with. The American consul became more important in their eyes. American naval officers benefited from the consul’s services. He helped them resupply their ships, introduced them to the social delights of the port city after perhaps months at sea, and could get their crews out of the hands of the local authorities if they overindulged in celebrating their shore leave.

In time of unrest or war the close proximity of a frigate might relieve a consul’s mind and make his work easier as the protector of American interests. Mobs had far more respect for cannon than for consular credentials. Local authorities understood the threat a hostile ship presented to the city’s commerce. If a situation came to the worst, the American naval ship could pluck the consul and his family out of danger.

For the captain of an American naval ship, a consul available in a trouble spot was a godsend. Naval commanders out of touch with their superiors for months at a time and often politically unskilled might find almost insurmountable difficulties upon arriving in a foreign port where there was tension, civil unrest, or war. As a commander, the captain was expected to show initiative in protecting American interests, usually shipping. The ability to consult with the consul on the scene eased his burden and his responsibility.

During the time of the American difficulties with the French, the island of Santo Domingo (then called St. Dominique) was of major importance to the United States because of its sugar trade and its controlling position in the Caribbean. As the United States flexed its new naval muscles to put down the French privateers and any regular French naval vessels that might intervene, it was the obvious policy to deny those privateers haven in Caribbean harbors as well as to catch them at sea.

In 1791 there had been a bloody insurrection against the French colonial planters in the part of Santo Domingo that now comprises Haiti. After some ineffectual efforts to put the European overseers back in control, the French in Paris, inspired by their new motto “liberté, egalité, et fraternité,” had made the African inhabitants of the island full citizens. They had been led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, who steered an independent course but never declared independence from French colonial rule.

At this time the United States had moved closer to the British as the French privateers had become more ferocious. Nowhere was the cooperation between the two former enemies more in evidence than in the West Indies, especially in dealing with Toussaint. The new American consul to Santo Domingo, Dr. Edward Stevens of Pennsylvania, arriving in 1799 under instructions from the Secretary of State, proceeded to give Toussaint support to preserve his virtual independence from France.21

Stevens consulted often with the British general in command in the West Indies, and by agreement with the local British naval commander the American consul was allowed to grant passes to ships going through the British blockade.22 France, uneasy with the independence of Toussaint, supported an uprising against him. The leader Riguard, had encouraged French privateers, while Toussaint had kept the ports he controlled clear of these semi-pirates. The United States took the side of Toussaint, as did the British.

Stevens was in a sensitive political situation. He must further American interests without interfering with British, French, Haitian, or even American naval activities. Toussaint needed to have supplies come to his island. The French merchants were concerned that the American navy was scaring away neutral trading ships. Stevens worked closely with the United States Navy, including the captain of the Constitution, to “quiet the Apprehensions of the People here, and prevent any interruptions of Harmony between this Colony and the U. States.”23

Fortunately, Stevens got on well with Toussaint, finding the black leader “so candid - so prudent & liberal that we will do everything that can contribute to supporting the Dignity & Interest of the U. States. It is a happy circumstance for me to have a man of his Character to cooperate with.”24 Cooperation between the United States and Toussaint became increasingly close, with Stevens lending a small American ship under his control to take Toussaint to his army on the coast. Later the American frigate General Greene actually helped force the surrender of Riguard’s troops by bombarding the forts at the town of Jacmel in February 1800.25 Secretary of State Pickering recognized Consul Stevens’s difficult role and wrote him that his work on the troubled island was “distinguished by that intelligence and attention to the interests of the United States which were expected when you accepted your appointment.”26

By the end of 1800 the situation in Santo Domingo had calmed down for a while with Toussaint in full control. The quasi-war with France also began to wind down after Napoleon became first consul in France and was in all but name the new French monarch. The new first consul saw no point in needlessly antagonizing a major neutral, at least at that time.