Читать книгу The American Consul: A History of the United States Consular Service 1776–1924. Revised Second Edition - Charles Stuart Kennedy - Страница 8

In the first decade of the nineteenth century the United States had a sizeable consular service covering sixty-two cities, mainly in Europe and the West Indies. There were ten American consular posts in Great Britain and its dominions, including Malta and Gibraltar; in French territories there were thirteen, including Mauritius in the Indian Ocean and French Guiana in South America. In the period 1800–15 American consuls on French territory were not called consuls but commercial agents, apparently because when Napoleon seized power and called himself first consul, the United States wanted to avoid the confusion of having a consul general in Paris when the French head of state was first consul. But in practice everyone involved, including French officials, called the commercial agents consuls.

Portugal had four American consular posts, one on the mainland, one in the Azores, another on the island of Madeira, and another in San Salvador, Brazil. Spain had nine posts, but none on the mainland of South America. Other posts were in Denmark and its possessions in the West Indies. Prussia, Sweden, and Russia had one post each. Ten American consuls were scattered throughout the German and Italian states.

There were the four Barbary consulates established with such difficulty. In China a post was created in Canton, and the first post in the Middle East was in Smyrna, in the Ottoman Empire. It is noteworthy that there was no American consul in Halifax to the north, or in Mexico, or other parts of the Spanish domain in South America. Despite this consular expansion American diplomatic missions were still limited to the major courts of Europe.

American consular officers’ main responsibilities remained looking out for their seamen and shipping, precisely the two areas directly challenged during the long series of wars between England and France. With these two powers dominating the rights of neutral shipping, the U.S. consuls could do little in the greater problem of securing immunity for ships and seamen under the American flag. That was up to their diplomatic colleagues, who were equally impotent. Consuls could only report to the secretary of state the latest outrages against American neutral rights and try to protect their charges as best they could within their consular districts. Each consul was left to struggle with the twin evils of impressment and the seizure of American ships.

The British were by far the greater offenders in impressment. The French sometimes imprisoned crews of American ships seized by their navy or privateers for alleged blockade violations. The honors were fairly even between the two powers for taking ships and confiscating their cargoes.1

Caught between two devils, Americans had to pick their enemies carefully or try to avoid them completely. In the quasi-war with France (1798–1800), whose privateers were the main source of provocation, American consuls in the Caribbean cooperated with the British military commanders to put down French privateering in that sea. Following the turn of the century came a period of attempts to navigate between the two conflicting European powers (1800–1807) while ship seizures and impressment waxed and waned, depending on the military situation and whims of the English and French. President Jefferson then tried the “plague on both your houses” policy at the end of 1807 by having Congress declare an embargo, which virtually prohibited the export of goods from the United States.

The embargo was designed both to keep American ships and seamen out of the reach of the French and British, and to place economic pressure on those warring states to respect neutral rights. An embargo has often been a favorite tool of American Presidents. Wherever there was a situation abroad about which the United States could do little without actually fighting, placing an embargo gave the appearance of retaliation, without the costly side effect of warfare.

The embargo of 1807 was as ineffective as most of its successors.2 The main losers were the American merchant marine and the farmers who raised the principal exports of the United States. The embargo also had a disastrous effect on American consuls abroad, who received no salaries but depended upon commissions earned in assisting and documenting trade with the United States. While earnings were drastically cut due to the curtailment of trade, the consuls’ work was not, since there were still seamen stranded abroad, as they signed on and off ships of other nations, including those of France and Britain. Sailors had to make a living, embargo or not.

The embargo lasted little more than a year. Congress repealed the act in March 1809 and substituted it with one that forbade trade only with ports under British or French control, but this also was unsuccessful.3 There were profits to be made, American seamen needed jobs, and shipping interests did not take direction from their government supinely.

Through all the twists and turns of America’s policy toward the belligerent powers, the consuls’ work changed little. The major problem was what to do about seamen left destitute in a foreign port, put into a French prison, or impressed into the British navy. That many American sailors ended up on the beach with no money was not always the fault of the belligerent powers. American ships were well built; sometimes a captain found it profitable to sell both cargo and vessel when he docked in a European port. Even if he paid off his crew and gave them money for passage home, which was not always the case, sailors and their wages were often quickly separated in the taverns and brothels of a port city. American crews were well paid; unscrupulous ship masters, once in European ports, found excuses to leave some of their men behind and sign on less expensive French, British, Dutch, Portuguese, or Scandinavian seamen.

Desertion compounded the difficulties of consuls. Although Americans expected high wages because they were known as good and healthy seamen (scarce in wartime Europe), they were sought after not only by British press gangs but by both French and British recruiters for privateers.

The consuls had the power to call on the local authorities to assist them in catching and holding deserters from American ships. William Lee, consul in Bordeaux, in reply to a charge that he had arrested Americans who refused to serve on his own ships (he was in the shipping business), reported that “the principal reason for the arrestation of so many of our seamen in this port is desertion. The privateers of those who are fitting out French bottoms offer any price for American seamen who will quit their vessels they engaged on board of the U. States. I have always from fifteen to twenty of these deserters to lock up. This very morning I have dispatched a party of soldiers after seventeen sailors who have left their vessels, shipped on board a privateer.”4 Surprisingly, Lee obtained the help of the French military to arrest the deserters when they were going on a French privateer. The French were seldom so obliging to American requests. Lee must have been both diligent and persuasive.

Congress and the executive branch quite early did what they could to help the plight of seamen. On 28 May 1796 an Act for the Relief and Protection of American Seamen was passed, which provided for two agents to reside overseas “to inquire into the situation of such American citizens, or others sailing under the protection of the American flag, as have been impressed or may hereafter be impressed or detained by a foreign Power; to endeavor by all legal means to obtain the release of such American citizens or others and to render an account of all impressments and detentions.”5 One agent for seamen was to work in Great Britain and the other elsewhere, at the discretion of the President. Because of the volume of shipping in the Caribbean and the impressment activities of the British navy there, the second agent was posted in Kingston, Jamaica, a British colony in the West Indies. These agents were, in effect, specialized consuls paid for their work to allow them to devote full time to the serious business of helping American seamen. Consuls in other ports were not absolved from their duty toward the distressed sailors in their districts; agents and consuls worked together on the problem, but with only moderate success.

Impressment was the problem that would not go away in events that led to the War of 1812. The confiscation of cargoes and ships by the belligerent powers was provoking, but American shippers could balance their ledgers if only some of their ships were able to slip into a European port; the profit from even a few would offset the losses. Protection of shipping interests was not a cause to die for. The impressment of seamen was a graver matter. Native-born Americans dragged off ships flying the Stars and Stripes by boarding parties led by zealous junior officers of the British navy were forced to serve in those ships in virtual slavery. There was often little difference between being the slave of a Barbary ruler or a seaman in the British navy.

The issue of impressment was not always clear-cut. Many deserters from the British navy served on American ships; pay and working conditions were far better on the Yankee vessels, and American shipmasters were not particular about whom they signed on board.6 Also, many of the seamen were naturalized Americans, having been born British subjects, and the British at that time adhered to the rule “once an Englishman, always an Englishman.” The British were fighting a long, hard war for survival against Napoleonic France and desperately needed men for their navy. For the most part the captain of a British warship was the final judge as to who might be a British subject. There was little love lost between the British officer class and American merchant mariners; neither the boarding officer nor his captain was scrupulous in seeing that only true British subjects were taken.7 The British Admiralty usually backed up its officers’ arbitrary decisions and refused to discipline even gross cases of wrongful impressment.

The first agent for seamen in Kingston was Silas Talbot, who had been an officer in the Continental navy. During his service (1796–98) Talbot had some success in using his powers of persuasion with British governors, admirals, and captains on the West Indies station to effect the release of some seamen whom he could verify as Americans.8 He was able to use the colonial courts to obtain writs of habeas corpus, but the British commander in chief in the West Indies, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, put a stop to that by ordering his officers not to obey writs issued by British civilian courts. Depending on the admiral in charge and on the naval manpower situation, the agents who followed had varying degrees of success but were unable to change the basic situation, and Americans continued to be impressed off their merchant ships.

David Lenox, a former comptroller of the United States Treasury, was the first agent for seamen sent to London. He spent five years (1797–1802) in that demanding post. Initially he succeeded in persuading the Admiralty to release those Americans whose citizenship could be proved without dispute. Such documentation in that era was difficult, especially for men whose background was uncertain because of their itinerant lives as seamen. A market flourished for false citizenship documents, making it easier for press gangs to dismiss any piece of paper shown to them by an able-bodied seaman.9

One agent for seamen in London, George W. Erving, reported: “American captains expelled American seamen who had regular certificates, either to avoid payment of their wages, or to secure other seamen for lower wages.” He accused the British of having invented methods of their own to discredit American certificates, a notable example being a “game” in which they would find an American seaman whom they could bribe to make affidavit that he was in fact a British subject and had obtained his certificate by direct purchase or by some other fraudulent method. Another practice of the British “was that of enlisting American seamen whom they had impressed under false names so that applications for their release would be of no avail.”10 Despite the work of agents and consuls, impressment of Americans continued and was to lessen only when the British navy had enough men for its ships during periods of peace or when Napoleon was no longer able to challenge British dominance of the seas.

Bordeaux was the most active American consular post in France, being comfortably removed from the main naval bases of the British blockaders. Despite the importance of Bordeaux, the State Department did not deem it necessary to keep in touch. The consul, Cox Barnet, complained in 1801 that he had not heard from the department for twenty-one months.11 Bordeaux was a magnet for out-of-work American sailors because it was active in trade with the United States. Consuls in other cities in France and Spain sent their charges there. The Bordeaux consul reported in 1802 that he had 20 seamen in hospitals and 150 on the streets in distress. The French police were complaining, and the consul was trying to put as many men on American ships as their masters would accept.12

In 1807 the British initiated a licensing system allowing some trade with France under the supervision of the Board of Trade, but this easing of the blockade did not really help American-carried trade. As one historian described the situation: “Theoretically American ships were not discriminated against in the issue of licenses. In actual practice the Board of Trade found European flags far more useful and more amenable to control. Since no trade to the French Empire could be safely carried on without them, licenses were extremely valuable, worth sometimes as much as ₤15,000 on the open market, where they were freely traded.”13 The French had their own system of controls and were ruthless in enforcing them, not only in France but in other ports of Europe where Napoleon held sway. The U.S. consul in Bremen reported that the French authorities controlling that German port were seizing American ships, which had certificates of origin of their cargoes that the French did not consider in order.14

American consuls were in a potentially profitable position with the imposition of various licenses, certificates of origin, and other controls working to their advantage, together with the excellent money to be made from having the proper papers to permit loading or unloading of cargo to and from the United States. But a consul’s position could also arouse animosity among American shipping firms if their ships were seized by one of the belligerents, but those of the consuls were not.

Although the contempt of France for the rights of neutrals, especially those of Americans, was a grave concern, the outrages committed by the British on American seamen and British support of hostile Indians along the Canadian border aroused greater animosity in the American people. A British-American war might even offer the opportunity to capture Canada. For a variety of reasons and motives, the United States declared war on Britain in June 1812. Even war with France was considered by both the President and Congress, but common sense prevailed, and the young United States took on only the nation with the greatest navy and not the one with the greatest army.

As the news of war reached the American consulates in the British Isles and its dominions, consuls who were American citizens packed up and left, as did the British consuls in the United States. In London the American consul and agent for seamen, Reuben Beasley, was permitted to stay on by the British authorities in the capacity of “United States agent for prisoners of war” to help with exchanges of prisoners. When the war was over he reverted to being the consul.15

Robert Ware Fox, U.S. consul at Falmouth, did not leave Britain. He was a British subject appointed to the post in 1793 by George Washington. When the war came, Consul Fox took down the American coat of arms, stored away the American flag, and waited for the war to run its course. At its conclusion, up went the coat of arms and the American flag, and Mr. Fox resumed his duties. A prominent Quaker, Fox may have had the distinction of being the only consul to use the familiar “thou” in his dispatches to the Secretary of State. The consular position in Falmouth was passed down from generation to generation in the Fox family, with only a short break, until 1908, when the post was closed.

The declaration of war by the United States on Great Britain caught the American merchant fleet in European waters by surprise, and the British navy had easy plucking. Levitt Harris, the American consul in St. Petersburg, Russia, reported that thirty American ships were part of a convoy being protected by the British navy as they sailed through the Baltic from Russia to England. When the convoy commander heard that America was now at war with his country, he informed the Yankee skippers that their protectors were now their captors.16

Seventeen American merchant ships that had not joined the ill-fated convoy were trapped in St. Petersburg during the war. Consul Harris later wrote the Secretary of State that there were seventy seamen off the American ships with no employment and that “in order to preserve the morals and maintain good conduct among so great a number of idle people for so long a time, I promoted the establishment of a school at Cronstadt, the project for which it must be mentioned to the honor of the seamen, originated with themselves. At this school between forty and fifty American sailors are occupied during ten hours in the day in learning to read and cypher.”17

Although the United States was at war with Great Britain, its relations with France remained strained. Normally in wartime the code of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” prevails, but FrancoAmerican relations did not improve. In October 1812, that fateful year for Napoleon, Consul William Lee in Bordeaux wrote that French officials were still detaining American vessels in port for three to six months because of questions over their ships’ papers. Lee hoped that the American minister to France, Joel Barlow, former consul general in Algiers, would set matters right. Barlow set off for Russia to see Napoleon, who was on his way to what appeared to be a certain victory over the tsar.18 Things did not happen as Lee had predicted. Napoleon’s army was destroyed, and Barlow died of a fever in Poland before being able to discuss shipping matters with the French emperor.

In June 1813 Commodore William Rodgers, cruising in the Atlantic on the U.S. frigate President, captured the British brig Maria laden with a cargo of codfish. Putting a prize crew on board, he directed them to take the Maria to the port of Bordeaux where the cargo could be sold. The Maria arrived in late June, and Consul Lee took charge to arrange the sale of both ship and cargo. This was the normal practice, as a United States Navy vessel had captured the brig and the consul was the U.S. representative on hand.

Both the crew of the President and Lee stood to make some profit from the sale. Lee immediately wrote the director of customs in Bordeaux asking for permission to sell the codfish, which he noted he had stored in a warehouse “adjoining my house.”19 When the director did not reply, Lee wrote again stating that it was essential to have the sale soon, “viewing the perishable nature of the cargo, particularly at this season.”20 It was then mid-July; Lee, in his residence next to the codfish, must have been very much aware of the urgency. The director of customs finally informed Lee that the sale of prizes and their cargoes was delegated to some French merchants, not to the American consul.21 Lee then received a sharp reprimand from the French minister of commerce in Paris that he, Lee, had acted improperly and that David Warden, the American consul general in Paris, was in charge of all prizes and had ordered French merchants to take care of the prize sale.22

William Lee was not a man to take a rebuke lightly, especially when it concerned his dignity as a consul and his ability to turn a profit. With some heat, Lee wrote William H. Crawford, the American minister in Paris: “Mr. Warden has not only stated to the Minister that he is consul general and special agent for all prizes! but has made it appear that I have acted improperly and without authority in the case of the Maria. This is to carry personal animosity so far as to merit the severe animadversion of all good men. I will confess to your Excellency that as a native American educated in my country, descending from one of the oldest and most respected families [he was of the Massachusetts Lees], and with more connections than perhaps any other man, to be thus calumniated by an adventurer who was obliged to fly from his own Country, and has not lived long enough in mine to be legally naturalized is insupportable.”23

David Bailie Warden, born in Ireland, had at an early age ardently espoused the Irish cause. The British authorities, aware of Warden’s activities, gave him the choice of arrest or departure to another country. He left in 1799 for the United States and accepted a teaching position at the Kingston Academy in Ulster County, New York. In 1804 he became a citizen and almost immediately joined General John Armstrong as private secretary when Armstrong went to Paris as the American minister. On Armstrong’s departure in 1810 Warden was appointed consul in Paris and agent for prize cases, which apparently meant that he was to adjudicate disputes over prizes rather than to take charge of all prize cases in France.24

Minister Crawford, Armstrong’s successor, unhappy over the consular discord, wrote Lee that the matter had given him

great pain. The acrimony of the style [of correspondence] is of itself highly objectionable, but the charges of falsehood and of crime on one side, and of ignorance and arrogance on the other, are extremely reprehensible. It is probable that this correspondence has been submitted to the Minister of Commerce. What opinion must he entertain on the character of persons whom the United States thought proper to clothe with a portion of their confidence and of their power? If Officers of the United States in France cannot think better of each other I hope they will cease to publish their opinions and that in their communications to me they will not indulge that asperity of language which I feel much reason to reprehend in this present case.25

Despite his rebuke to Lee, Crawford found that in the case of the Maria the conduct of the consul in Bordeaux had been correct. He noted that Warden was not the consul general in Paris. Warden was removed from his consular position under a cloud for claiming more authority than was rightfully his, but he stayed on in Paris. Later Warden performed a valuable service to the consular establishment by writing a book on the origin and history of consuls. For his part, Lee was almost successful in a plot with some French naval officers to spirit Napoleon to America after Waterloo and the emperor’s flight from the British.

During the War of 1812 other consuls had more important matters than squabbling over the sale of rotting codfish. American privateers used neutral ports to sell their prizes or refit their own ships. As noted earlier, the consuls in Tunis and Tripoli were unable to prevent the British navy from sailing into these supposedly neutral harbors and, with the cooperation of the Barbary rulers, retaking ships that American privateers had sent there as prizes. Consuls’ protests were in vain since the United States Navy had been driven from the Mediterranean.

When the war ended in 1815, American consuls returned to England and other ports they had been forced to leave in 1812. The war in Europe also ended after Waterloo; the systems of licenses and blockades were mercifully stopped so that trade could resume its normal pattern. Even the Barbary corsairs were no longer the menace they had been for centuries, and the Mediterranean was open for merchant ships of all nations.

American consuls returned to their more ordinary activities of promoting trade, reporting on both the quick recovery of the American merchant marine after its devastation during the war years and the growth of commerce between the United States and Europe. Sailors were still being stranded; they ran out of money and raised hell in the port bars and brothels, but these were now comparatively easy matters for consuls to settle with the local police, and there were plenty of American ships to take their wayward charges home.

The long period of the French-British wars, American involvement first with the French and then with the British, and the Barbary problems proved the value of having consuls throughout the trading world. American consuls themselves had shown their own worth at a difficult time. The link between U.S. consuls and their navy was stoutly forged, each dependent on the other when situations became tense abroad, one serving as the eyes and the other as the arms of the growing American influence beyond its territorial waters. The American merchant fleet was also dependent on its consuls for protecting its sailors and helping in trading activities. Considering that the U.S. government paid only the four Barbary consuls and the two agents for seamen in London and the West Indies, while all the other consuls worked for what fees they could derive from their office, the American people got a bargain.