APPENDIX TO THE HISTORY OF THE TWELFTH CONGRESS. [FIRST SESSION.] COMPRISING THE MOST IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS ORIGINATING DURING THAT CONGRESS, AND THE PUBLIC ACTS PASSED BY IT. Communicated to Congress by the Messages of November 5, and 14, 1811; January 16, 17, March 16, June 1, 4, 8, 11, 15, 16, and 22, 1812; and November 4, 1812. To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: I communicate to Congress certain documents, being a continuation of those heretofore laid before them, on the subject of our affairs with Great Britain. Without going back beyond the renewal, in 1803, of the war in which Great Britain is enI communicate to Congress copies of a correspond-gaged, and omitting unrepaired wrongs of infeence between the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister rior magnitude, the conduct of her Government Plenipotentiary of Great Britain and the Secretary of State, relative to the aggression committed by a Brit- presents a series of acts hostile to the United ish ship of war on the United States' frigate Chesa-States as an independent and neutral nation. peake; by which it will be seen that that subject of difference between the two countries is terminated by an offer of reparation, which has been acceded to. JAMES MADISON. NOVEMBER 13, 1811. To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: I communicate to Congress a letter from the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Great Britain to the Secretary of State, with the answer of the latter. JAMES MADISON. British cruisers have been in the continued practice of violating the American flag on the great highway of nations, and of seizing and carrying off persons sailing under it, not in the exercise of a belligerent right, founded on the law of nations against an enemy, but of a municipal prerogative over British subjects. British jurisdiction is thus extended to neutral vessels, in a situation where no laws can operate but the law of nations, and the laws of the country to which the vessels belong; and a self-redress is assumed, which, if British subjects were wrongfully de The continued evidence afforded in this correspond-tained and alone concerned, is that substitution of ence, of the hostile policy of the British Government force for a resort to the responsible sovereign, Could against our national rights, strengthens the considera- which falls within the definition of war. tions recommending and urging the preparation of the seizure of British subjects, in such cases, be regarded as within the exercise of a belligerent adequate means for maintaining them. right, the acknowledged laws of war, which forbid an article of captured property to be adjudged, without a regular investigation before a competent tribunal, would imperiously demand the fairest trial, where the sacred rights of persons were at issue. In place of such a trial, these rights are subjected to the will of every petty commander. JANUARY 16, 1812. To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: I lay before Congress a letter from the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Great Britain to the Secretary of State, with the answer of JAMES MADISON. the latter. The practice, hence, is so far from affecting British subjects alone, that, under the pretext of searching for these, thousands of American citizens, under the safeguard of public law and of their national flag, have been torn from their country, and from everything dear to them; have been dragged on board ships of war of a foreign nation; and exposed, under the severities of their discipline, to be exiled to the most distant and Relations with Great Britain. deadly climes, to risk their lives in the battles of without effect, that her own prior blockades, untheir oppressors, and to be the melancholy instru- supported by an adequate naval force actually ments of taking away those of their own brethren. applied and continued, were a bar to this plea: Against this crying enormity, which Great that executed edicts against millions of our proBritain would be so prompt to avenge if commit-perty could not be retaliation on edicts confessted against herself, the United States have in vain edly impossible to be executed; that retaliation, exhausted remonstrances and expostulations. And to be just, should fall on the party setting the that no proof might be wanting of their concilia-guilty example, not on an innocent party, which tory dispositions, and no pretext left for a contin- was not even chargeable with an acquiescence uance of the practice, the British Government in it. was formally assured of the readiness of the United States to enter into arrangements, such as could not be rejected if the recovery of British subjects were the real and the sole object. The communication passed without effect. When deprived of this flimsy veil, for a prohibition of our trade with her enemy, by the repeal of his prohibition of our trade with Great Britain, her Cabinet, instead of a corresponding repeal, or a practical discontinuance of its orders, British cruisers have been in the practice also formally avowed a determination to persist in of violating the rights and the peace of our coasts. them against the United States, until the marThey hover over and harass our entering and de-kets of her enemy should be laid open to British parting commerce. To the most insulting pre-products; thus asserting an obligation on a neutensions they have added the most lawless pro-iral Power to require one belligerent to encourceedings in our very harbors, and have wantonly spilt American blood within the sanctuary of our territorial jurisdiction. The principles and rules enforced by that nation, when a neutral nation, against armed vessels of belligerents hovering near her coasts, and disturbing her commerce, are well known. When called on, nevertheless, by the United States, to punish the greater offences committed by her own vessels, her Government has bestowed on their commanders additional marks of honor and confidence. age, by its internal regulations, the trade of another belligerent; contradicting her own practice towards all nations, in peace as well as in war; and betraying the insincerity of those professions which inculcated a belief that, having resorted to her orders with regret, she was anxious to find an occasion for putting an end to them. Abandoning still more all respect for the neutral rights of the United States, and for its own consistency, the British Government now demands, as prerequisites to a repeal of its orders, as Under pretended blockades, without the pres- they relate to the United States, that a formality ence of an adequate force, and sometimes with- should be observed on the repeal of the French out the practicability of applying one, our com- decrees, nowise necessary to their termination, merce has been plundered in every sea; the great nor exemplified by British usage; and that the staples of our country have been cut off from their French repeal, besides including that portion of legitimate markets; and a destructive blow aimed the decrees which operate within a territorial at our agricultural and maritime interests. In jurisdiction, as well as that which operates on aggravation of these predatory measures, they the high seas, against the commerce of the Unihave been considered as in force from the dates ted States, should not be a single and special reof their notification; a retrospective effect being peal in relation to the United States, but should thus added, as has been done in other important be extended to whatever other neutral nations, cases, to the unlawfulness of the course pursued. unconnected with them, may be affected by those And to render the outrage the more signal, these decrees. And, as an additional insult, they are mock blockades have been reiterated and enforced called on for a formal disavowal of conditions in the face of official communications from the and pretensions advanced by the French GovBritish Government, declaring, as the true defini-ernment, for which the United States are so far tion of a legal blockade, "that particular ports from having made themselves responsible, that must be actually invested, and previous warning in official explanations, which have been pubgiven to vessels bound to them not to enter." lished to the world, and in a correspondence of the American Minister at London with the British Minister for Foreign Affairs, such a responsibil ity was explicitly and emphatically disclaimed. Not content with the occasional expedients for laying waste our neutral trade, the Cabinet of Great Britain resorted, at length, to the sweeping system of blockades, under the name of Orders in Council, which has been moulded and managed as might best suit its political views, its commercial jealousies, or the avidity of British cruisers. It has become, indeed, sufficiently certain, that the commerce of the United States is to he sacrificed, not as interfering with the belligerent rights of Great Britain, not as supplying the wants of her enemies, which she herself supplies, To our remonstrances against the complicated but as interfering with the monopoly which she and transcendent injustice of this innovation, the covets for her own commerce and navigation. first reply was, that the orders were reluctantly She carries on a war against the lawful comadopted by Great Britain, as a necessary retalia-merce of a friend, that she may the better carry tion on decrees of her enemy, proclaiming a on a commerce with an enemy; a commerce polgeneral blockade of the British isles, at a time luted by the forgeries and perjuries which are, when the naval force of that enemy dared not to for the most part, the only passports by which it issue from his own ports. She was reminded, can succeed. Relations with Great Britain. Anxious to make every experiment short of the last resort of injured nations, the United States have withheld from Great Britain, under successive modifications, the benefits of a free intercourse with their market; the loss of which could not but outweigh the profits accruing from her restrictions of our commerce with other nations. And to entitle these experiments to the more favorable consideration, they were so framed as to enable her to place her adversary under the exclusive operation of them. To these appeals her Government has been equally inflexible, as if willing to make sacrifices of every sort rather than yield to the claim of justice, or renounce the errors of a false pride. Nay, so far were the attempts carried to overcome the attachment of the British Cabinet to its unjust edicts, that it received every encouragement, within the competency of the Executive branch of our Government, to expect that a repeal of them would be followed by a war between the United States and France, unless the French edicts should also be repealed. Even this communication, although silencing forever the plea of a disposition in the United Siates to acquiesce in those edicts, originally the sole plea for them, received no attention. If no other proof existed of a predetermination of the British Government against a repeal of its orders, it might be found in the correspondence of the Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States at London, and the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in 1810, on the question whether the blockade of May, 1806, was considered as in force, or as not in force. It had been ascertained that the French Government, which urged this blockade as the ground of its Berlin decree, was willing, on the event of its removal, to repeal that decree, which being followed by alternate repeals of the other offensive edicts, might abolish the whole system on both sides. This inviting opportunity for accomplishing an object so important to the United States, and professed so often to be the desire of both the belligerents, was made known to the British Government. As that Government admits that an actual application of an adequate force is necessary to the existence of a legal blockade, and it was notorious that if such a force had ever been applied, its long discontinuance had annulled the blockade in question, there could be no sufficient objection on the part of Great Britain to a formal revocation of it; and no imaginable objection to a declaration of the fact, that the blockade did not exist. The declaration would have been consistent with her avowed principles of blockade, and would have enabled the United States to demand from France the pledged repeal of her decree, either with success, in which case the way would have been opened for a general repeal of the belligerent edicts; or without success, in which case the United States would have been justified in turning their measures exclusively against France. The British Government would, however, neither rescind the blockade, nor declare its non-existence to be inferred and affirmed by the American Plenipotentiary. On the contrary, by representing the block ade to be comprehended in the Orders in Council, the United States were compelled so to regard it, in their subsequent proceedings. There was a period when a favorable change in the policy of the British Cabinet was justly considered as established. The Minister Plenipotentiary of His Britannic Majesty here proposed an adjustment of the differences more imme diately endangering the harmony of the two countries. The proposition was accepted with the promptitude and cordiality corresponding with the invariable professions of this Government. A foundation appeared to be laid for a sincere and lasting reconciliation. The prospect, however, quickly vanished. The whole proceeding was disavowed by the British Government, without any explanations which could, at that time, repress the belief that the disavowal proceeded from a spirit of hostility to the commercial rights and prosperity of the United States. And it has since come into proof, that at the very moment when the public Minister was holding the language of friendship, and inspiring confidence in the sincerity of the negotiation with which he was charged, a secret agent of his Government was employed in intrigues, having for their object a subversion of our Government, and a dismemberment of our happy Union. In reviewing the conduct of Great Britain towards the United States, our attention is necessarily drawn to the warfare just renewed by the savages, on one of our extensive frontiers; a warfare which is known to spare neither age nor sex, and to be distinguished by features peculiarly shocking to humanity. It is difficut to account for the activity and combinations which have for some time been developing themselves among tribes in constant intercourse with British traders and garrisons, without connecting their hostility with that influence, and without recollecting the authenticated examples of such interpositions heretofore furnished by the officers and agents of that Government. Such is the spectacle of injuries and indignities which have been heaped on our country, and such the crisis which its unexampled forbearance and conciliatory efforts have not been able to avert. It might at least have been expected that an enlightened nation, if less urged by moral obligations, or invited by friendly dispositions on the part of the United States, would have found, in its true interest alone, a sufficient motive to respect their rights and their tranquillity on the high seas; that an enlarged policy would have favored that free and general circulation of commerce, in which the British nation is at all times interested, and which, in times of war, is the best alleviation of its calamities to herself, as well as to other belligerents; and more especially that the British Cabinet would not, for the sake of a precarious and surreptitious intercourse with hostile markets, have persevered in a course of measures, which necessarily put at hazard the invaluable market of a great and growing country, disposed to cultivate the mutual advantages of an active commerce. Relations with Great Britain. Representatives of the United States: I transmit, for the information of Congress, copies of a correspondence of the Minister Plenipotentiary of Great Britain, with the Secretary of State. JAMES MADISON. JUNE 4, 1812. Other councils have prevailed. Our modera- To the Senate and House of tion and conciliation have had no other effect than to encourage perseverance, and to enlarge pretensions. We behold our seafaring citizens still the daily victims of lawless violence, committed on the great common and highway of nations, even within sight of the country which owes them protection. We behold our vessels freighted with the products of our soil and industry, or returning with the honest proceeds of them, wrested from their lawful destinations, confiscated by prize courts, no longer the organs of public law, but the instruments of arbitrary edicts; and their unfortunate crews dispersed and lost, or forced or inveigled in British ports into British fleets; whilst arguments are employed in support of these aggressions, which have no foundation, but in a principle equally supporting a claim to regulate our external commerce in all cases whatsoever. We behold, in fine, on the side of Great Britain, a state of war against the United States; and on the side of the United States, a state of peace towards Great Britain. To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: I lay before Congress copies of letters which have passed between the Secretary of State and the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Great Britain. JUNE 8, 1812. JAMES MADISON. To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: JUNE 11, 1812. To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: JUNE 15, 1812. Representatives of the United States: I transmit, for the information of Congress, copies of a letter to the Secretary of State from the Chargé des Affaires of the United States at London, accompanied by a letter from the latter to the British Minister of Foreign Affairs. I transmit, for the information of Congress, copies of letters which have passed between the Secretary of State and the Envoy ExtraordinaWhether the United States shall continue pas-ry and Minister Plenipotentiary of Great Britain. sive under these progressive usurpations, and JAMES MADISON. these accumulating wrongs, or, opposing force to force in defence of their national rights, shall commit a just cause into the hands of the Almighty Disposer of events, avoiding all connex. ions which might entangle it in the contests or I transmit, for the information of Congress, views of other Powers, and preserving a constant copies of letters which have passed between the readiness to concur in an honorable re-establish- Secretary of State and the Envoy Extraordinament of peace and friendship, is a solemn ques-ry and Minister Plenipotentiary of Great Britain. tion, which the Constitution wisely confides to JAMES MADISON. the Legislative Department of the Government. In recommending it to their early deliberations, I am happy in the assurance that the decision will To the Senate and House of be worthy the enlightened and patriotic councils of a virtuous, a free, and a powerful nation. Having presented this view of the relations of the United States with Great Britain, and of the solemn alternative growing out of them, I proceed to remark, that the communication last made to Congress, on the subject of our relations with France, will have shown, that since the revocation of her decrees, as they violated the neutral rights of the United States, her Government has authorized illegal captures by its privateers and public ships; and that other outrages have been practised on our vessels and our citizens. It will have been seen, also, that no indemnity had been provided, or satisfactorily pledged, for the extensive spoliations committed under the violent and retrospective orders of the French Government against the property of our citizens seized within the jurisdiction of France. I abstain, at this time, from recommending to the consideration of Congress definitive measures with respect to that nation, in the expectation that the result of unclosed discussions between our Minister Plenipotentiary at Paris and the French Government will speedily enable Congress to decide, with greater advantage, on the course due to the rights, the interests, and the honor of our country. JUNE 1. 1812. JAMES MADISON. JUNE 16, 1812. JAMES MADISON. To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States: I communicate to Congress copies of a letter to the Secretary of State from the Chargé des Affaires of the United States at London, and of a note to him from the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs. JUNE 22, 1812. JAMES MADISON. I.-Correspondence between the Minister or Chargé d'Affaires of the United States at London and the Secretary of State. Mr. Pinkney to the Secretary of State. LONDON, January 17, 1811. SIR: I had the honor to receive, on the 5th instant, while I was confined by a severe illness, your letter of the 15th of November, and, as Relations with Great Britain. soon as I was able, prepared a note to Lord Wellesley in conformity with it. On the 3d instant, I had received a letter from Lord Wellesley, bearing date the 29th ultimo, on the subjects of the Orders in Council and the British blockades, to which I was anxious to reply, at the same time that I obeyed the orders of the President signified in your letter above mentioned. I prepared an answer accordingly, and sent it in with the other note, and a note of the 15th, respecting two American schooners lately captured on their way to Bordeaux, for a breach of the Orders in Council. Copies of all these papers are enclosed. revoke their Orders in Council, and renounce the new principles of blockade which they have attempted to establish." The purport of this declaration appeared to be that the repeal of the decrees of Berlin and Milan would take effect from the 1st of November, provided that Great Britain, antecedently to that day, and in consequence of this declaration, should revoke the Orders in Council, and should renounce those principles of blockade which the French Government alleged to be new. A separate condition relating to America seemed also to be contained in this declaration, by which America might understand that the decrees of My answer to Lord Wellesley's letter was Berlin and Milan would be actually repealed on written under the pressure of indisposition, and the 1st of November, 1810, provided that Amerthe influence of more indignation than could ica should resent any refusal of the British Govwell be suppressed. His letter proves, what ernment to renounce the new principles of blockscarcely required proof, that if the present Gov-ade, and to revoke the Orders in Council. ernment continue, we cannot be friends with England. I need not analyze it to you. I am still so weak as to find it convenient to make this letter a short one, and will therefore only add that I have derived great satisfaction from your instructions of the 15th of November, and have determined to return to the United States in the Essex. She will go to L'Orient for Mr. Grayson, and then come to Cowes for me and my family. I calculate on sailing about the last of February. The choice of a Chargé d'Affaires embarrasses me exceedingly, but I will do the best I can. The despatches by the Essex were delivered to me by Lieutenant Rodgers on Sunday. I have the honor to be, &c. ROBERT SMITH, Esq., &c. WM. PINKNEY. By your explanation it appears that the American Government understands the letter of the French Minister as announcing an absolute repeal on the 1st of November, 1810, of the French decrees of Berlin and Milan, which repeal, however, is not to continue in force unless the British Government, within a reasonable time after the first of November, 1810, shall fulfil the two conditions stated distinctly in the letter of the French Minister. Under this explanation, if nothing more had been required from Great Britain for the purpose of securing the continuance of the repeal of the French decrees than the repeal of our Orders in Council, I should not have hesitated to declare the perfect readiness of this Government to fulfil that condition. On these terms the British Government has always been sincerely dis [Referred to in Mr. Pinkney's letter of January 17.] posed to repeal the Orders in Council. It ap Lord Wellesley to Mr. Pinkney. FOREIGN OFFICE, December 29, 1810. SIR: In acknowledging the receipt of your letter of the 10th instant, I must express my regret that you should have thought it necessary to introduce into that letter any topics which might tend to interrupt the conciliatory spirit in which it is the sincere disposition of His Majesty's Government to conduct every negotiation with the Government of the United States. From an anxious desire to avoid all discussions of that tendency, I shall proceed without any further observation to communicate to you the view which His Majesty's Government has taken of the principal question which formed the object of my inquiry during our conference on the 5th instant. The letter of the French Minister for Foreign Affairs to the American Minister at Paris of the 9th of August, 1810, did not appear to His Majesty's Government to contain such a notification of the repeal of the French decreess of Berlin and Milan as could justify His Majesty's Government in repealing the British Orders in Council. The letter states "that the decrees of Berlin and Milan are revoked, and that from the first of November, 1810, they will cease to be in force; it being understood that in consequence of this declaration the English shall pears, however, not only by the letter of the French Minister, but by your explanation, that the repeal of the Orders in Council will not satisfy either the French or the American Government. The British Government is further required by the letter of the French Minister to renounce those principles of blockade which the French Government alleges to be new. A reference to the terms of the Berlin decree will serve to explain the extent of this requisition. The Berlin decree states that Great Britain extends the right of blockade to commercial unfortified towns, and to ports, harbors, and mouths of rivers, which, according to the principles and practice of all civilized nations, is only applicable to fortified places." On the part of the American Government, I understand you to require that Great Britain should revoke her order of blockade of May, 1806. Combining your requisition with that of the French Minister, I must conclude that America demands the revocation of that order of blockade as a practical instance of our renunciation of those principles of blockade which are condemned by the French Government. Those principles of blockade Great Britain has asserted to be ancient, and established by the laws of maritime war, acknowledged by all civilized nations, and on which depend the most valuable rights and interests of this nation. If |