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IV. Anthony Merry and the Anglo-American Dispute about Impressment, 1803–6*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

Anthony Steel
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Extract

It is a traditional view among historians that nothing so be-devilled Anglo-American relations in their early days as the British wartime practice of impressing seamen. True, the British never asserted any right to impress persons who were not British subjects, but on the other hand such persons often claimed to be American citizens, and it was frequently very difficult to determine whether they really were so or not. Moreover, alleged British subjects were pursued by the Royal Navy on to neutral ships, not only in British ports and waters but also on the high seas, as well as on to British merchant ships and privateers, even when these were lying in neutral harbours. Finally, American naturalization papers were not respected by the British before 1870; until then the rule was, ‘once a British subject always a British subject’. The result was that, according to American official estimates, at least 2410 genuine Americans were impressed by the British between 1792 and 1802, and a further 6057 between 1802 and the beginning of 1812. The latter figure is probably an underestimate, and the grand total of impressed men for whom some colour of American citizenship existed may perhaps reach 10,000. Very many contemporary Americans believed it to be five or six times as much—with no shadow of doubt about the citizenship—but most American historians would now admit that such beliefs were ill-founded.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , 1949 , pp. 331 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1949

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Footnotes

*

Paper read to the Cambridge Historical Society, 2 Nov. 1948.

References

1 Oddly enough, this doctrine of ‘indefeasible’ nationality does not seem to have been openly contested by the United States before 1848, when Buchanan was Secretary of State.

2 [Zimmerman, J. F.], Impressment [of American Seamen], pp. 260, 267.Google Scholar But cf. Channing, E., History of the United States, iv, 481–2Google Scholar, who thinks these figures greatly exaggerated.

3 Annals of Congress, 12th Congr., 2nd Sess., pp. 933-7.

4 The earliest known incident took place in connexion with the Spanish war scare of May 1790 over Nootka Sound; Bemis, S. F., Jay's Treaty, p. 55nGoogle Scholar.

6 Zimmerman, , Impressment, p. 72Google Scholar.

6 Brebner, J. B., North Atlantic Triangle, pp. 72–3Google Scholar.

7 Except perhaps in the actual title of his book, Impressment of American Seamen (New York, 1925)Google Scholar, which begs the whole question as to how many of these unfortunate men were really Americans or not.

8 There is also a single MS. volume of Papers Relating to Impressment, while a certain amount of additional material can be found in the recently printed Instructions [to British Ministers to the United States, 1791-1812], ed. B. Mayo.

9 Patterson, J., in ‘Latin-American reactions to the Panama Revolt of 1903’, Hispanic-American Review, XXIV (1944), 342–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 American State Papers, Foreign Relations, II, 503-4. This should be read in conjunction with the relevant correspondence of May 1803, to be found in [Public Record Office] F.O. 5/40. St Vincent also stipulated that the opinion of the Admiralty judge Sir William Scott (the future Lord Stowell) should be obtained, and that certain minor alterations of his own in Rufus King's draft convention should be accepted. That these alterations did not at first refer to the Narrow Seas, and that King made no difficulty about accepting them, is shown in a letter of 18 May which King wrote to Hammond, the British Under-Secretary and former minister to the U.S. This letter begins, ‘I have just come from Lord St Vincent he consents with Sir William Scott's Approbation to omit in the first article of the proposed Convention, the words “beyond the narrow seas”…’. This was the day before King left London to take ship for America from Cowes, and it was actually that very night that St Vincent changed his mind for the last time and King ‘concluded to abandon the negotiation’.

11 F.O. 5/38, Thornton (British charge d'affaires) to Hawkesbury, 1 Nov. 1803. Thornton goes on to say that in his own view it would be wiser tacitly to abandon the practice rather than openly give up the principle of impressment, as otherwise desertions, already formidable, ‘would increase to an alarming extent’. He evidently thinks that Hawkesbury's offer was dangerously generous, and agrees with Gallatin that the Americans were foolish to reject it. Cf. St Vincent's initial reaction to the proposal (F.O. 5/40, 9 May 1803)—‘to enter into the agreement proposed by Mr King, would deprive this country of all her Seamen’.

12 F.O. 5/41, Merry to Hawkesbury, 31 Dec. 1803, enclosing printed copies of the President's annual messages to Congress and accompanying papers, from which these details are taken.

13 See the sketch in Dictionary of] N[ational] B[iography]. The son of a Yorkshireman who kept a London inn, he became a Sizar, and later Fellow, of Pembroke College, Cambridge.

14 Mrs Merry, in a letter to Thomas Moore, 1804; Letters and Papers of Thomas Moore, ed. Russell, Lord John, VIII, 50–2Google Scholar.

15 E.g. the violently anti-British Aurora of Philadelphia, which paid tribute to his ‘decorum ‘during the twelve years he had been in the country and expressed the hope that the new minister might do equally well (F.O. 5/41, 25 Nov. 1803).

16 This view had already been elaborated by the equally experienced British consul at Philadelphia, Phineas Bond, in a letter to Hawkesbury of 2 May 1803 (F.O. 5/39). Bond describes how British seamen, on arrival in this port, were ‘beset by those who keep public Houses for their Resort’, and enticed by the ‘aggravated Rates of Wages’ to obtain protections as alleged American citizens, on the bare word of themselves or their acquaintances, from the Customs Houses or the public notaries. He suggests that only those protections authenticated by a British consul or by ‘known British merchants’ should be accepted in the future, and explains in a later letter to Hawkesbury of 6 Sept. 1803 (Ibid.), that the cases of impressment which had come to his knowledge hitherto were ‘avowedly, of Men, who were not in Possession, even of the Protections, granted… exceptionable as they are…’.

17 There was probably much, truth in this observation as far as the Federalist opposition was concerned. Cf. Samuel Mitchill nearly two years later (Feb. 1805): ‘I have no doubt that ninteen [sic] out of twenty whom they have taken were in fact British subjects—and according to the laws of that country were lawfully impressed’; William Plumer's Memorandum of Proceedings in the U.S. Senate, pp. 277-8.

18 Another case occurring about this time which was much resented in the U.S. was the impressment on 22 Aug. 1803 of one David Kitchell from the American sloop Hiland, while on passage from Philadelphia to Alexandria, Va., into H.M.S. Leander, Captain Cain. Kitchell, though without a protection, was subsequently released.

18 Mayo, B., Instructions, pp. 197–201Google Scholar.

20 This particular despatch was lost at sea, but it had been preceded by others which had certainly reached their destination. Yet it was not until Merry went wrong that he received any guidance on the subject!

21 Even the fact that Merry does not appear in the D.N.B. has been cited by Mayo as evidence against him; Instructions, p. 197n.; cf. pp. 186, 195nn. His career is certainly difficult to reconstruct, but I have been able, to add one or two small points (included in my text) to the short account by Mayo and the equally brief record in British Diplomatic Representatives, 1789-1852, Camden, 3rd ser. L (1934), 41, 43-4, 48, 140, 151, 185. The consuls’ reports for Spain (F.O. 72/3, 5 Oct. 1784; F.O. 72/10, 2 Jan. 1787; F.O. 72/16, 1790 passim; F.O. 72/45, 1797-8 passim) provide the brief references to his early career; for the end of the American mission, F.O. 5/49 (especially 1 June 1806, Merry to Fox, private) is much more illuminating. The fullest and most sympathetic account in print is that of Beckles Willson in Friendly Relations, 1791-1930, pp. 38-54, from which I have taken certain details in my text, but even this is not exhaustive. Research in the Library of the Foreign Office and in Somerset House (in addition to the Public Record Office) failed to yield any further evidence; if Willson is right in thinking (he does not quote his authority) that Merry died somewhere in the west of England about 1811 his will may have been among those destroyed by enemy action at Exeter during the war of 1939-45.

22 Most of it has been printed-by Willson (Friendly Relations, p. 48), where, however, the date is wrongly given as 30 Jan. 1804.

23 This statement should be qualified by Thornton's earlier observation to Hawkesbury that the Federalists were inclined to use impressment merely as a stick with which to beat the government: F.O. 5/38, no. 41, Thornton to Hawkesbury, 26 Aug. 1803.

24 It must be noted, however, that at least one recent American historian has suggested that Madison was deliberately ‘playing up’ impressment at this date. See Abbot Smith, ‘Mr Madison's war: an unsuccessful experiment in the conduct of national policy’; Political Science Quarterly, LVII (1942), 229–46Google Scholar.

26 It can hardly be denied that the prospect of acquiring one, and ultimately both, of the Floridas dominated United States foreign policy at this time and for fifteen years to come; it even played an important part in the apparently unrelated war of 1812-14. See Pratt's, J. W. well-known monograph, Expansionists of 1812, passimGoogle Scholar.

26 F.O. 5/104: ‘Principles and Positions applying to the American Question.’ Undated, but probably produced by the Chesapeake incident, as most of that part of the paper which is not quoted here deals with ‘pressing from Ships of War’, and is bound up between papers of 1806 and 1807.

27 F.O. 5/104; in answer to a ‘Question submitted… by Lords Holland and Auckland—Nov. 1st 1806’.

28 See the long report by George W. Erving, American consul in London and agent for American seamen, dated 5 Nov. 1803 and transmitted by Monroe to Hawkesbury that month, and again to his successor, Harrowby, in Sept. 1804 (F.O. 5/44). An anonymous reply to the detailed complaints made in this document may be found at the beginning of F.O. 5/47; it is headed ‘Grounds of Complaint’ and endorsed ‘Paper transmitted by Admiralty and after-wards sent to Sir William Scott’; it is also marked (in pencil) ‘Sent Copy to Mr Merry Nov. 7 1803. Send Duplicate to Do. Dec. 5—America’. On the whole the arguments employed by the unknown author in answering Erving are convincing, and such was the opinion of Sir William Scott himself (F.O. 5/104, Scott to Harrowby, 20 Sept. 1804).

29 See F.O. 5/42, 18 June 1804 and the next few days, for what follows. F.O. 5/43, 27 and 30 June, adds some details which I have also used.

30 This touch is added by Phineas Bond, H.M.'s consul at Philadelphia, in a letter to George Hammond of 30 June 1804 (F.O. 5/43).

31 Probably because Bradley had reported (12 July 1804) ‘that the Men pressed, except Eleven, have been restored, and that I have given up several People it having appeared that they were Citizens of the United States…’. In a letter to Madison dated 15 Aug. Merry adds that ‘the Persons taken from th e Ship Pitt, instead of complaining, entered immediately as Volunteers for His Majesty's Service’. Copies of both these documents were enclosed in Merry's no. 45 to Harrowby, F.O. 5/42, 4 Sept. 1804.

32 F.O. 5/42, 15 Aug. 1804, enclosed in Merry's no. 45 to Harrowby, 4 Sept. 1804. Cf. F.O. 5/43, Bond to Hammond, 30 June 1804, where Bond says he understands that the same sort of thing was done by British naval commanders ‘most particularly at Lisbon… without the least objection’; Merry's reference is, of course, to Malaga.

33 F.O. 5/43, Barclay to Hammond, 27 Jun e 1804.

34 H.M.'s consuls, it seems, could report to the Secretary of State through the Under-secretary, if they preferred, instead of through the British minister at Washington. They did one or the other at this date, more or less indifferently.

35 F.O. 5/44, Barrow to Hammond, 16 Aug. 1804. Incidentally, when this was forwarded to Barclay for his information it caused him considerable distress, and in another letter to Hammond (F.O. 5/43, 9 Nov. 1804) he pleads that Captain Bradley's services in general had really been extremely valuable; that his own letter of 27 June had been meant for information only and ‘was not intended by any means as a complaint’; and that Bradley had been guilty of at most an error of judgement. The Admiralty found their own means of putting the matter right when they later appointed Bradley to command a ship of the line. See F.O. 5/45, Merry to Mulgrave, 30 June 1805, for the annoyance this gave to the Americans.

36 F.O. 5/104, Nicholl to Harrowby, 14 Nov. 1804.

37 Ibid. 3 Nov. 1806—answer to ‘Question submitted… by Lords Holland and Auckland—Nov. 1st 1806’. My italics.

38 F.O. 5/43, Barclay to Hammond, 23-Aug. 1804: ‘many complaints have been presented… but all of them unfounded, save that of the 17th of June, respecting the Ship Pitt.…’

39 The incident is described in a newspaper cutting (not identifiable, but dated New York, 22 Oct. 1804), which Merry forwarded in his no. 56 to Harrowby, F.O. 5/42, 24 Oct. 1804. According to this source of information, the Fortuna pressed twenty-six men from the two American ships on the day after the original encounter, and also collected $1500 damages. Yet the writer admits that the British captain's conduct was ‘very gentlemanly considering the irritation of the circumstance’. (This American Leander must, of course, be carefully distinguished from H.M. frigate of the same name.)

40 He had been privately reported by Bond to be overworked and ‘in a very critical State of Health ‘some months before (F.O. 5/43, Bond to Hammond, 6 Aug. 1804), but this may have been a different complaint. Incidentally, in this letter Bond goes out of his way to add ‘he appears to be a most worthy Man’.

41 History of the United States, 1801-17, II, 431-2. The delays referred to in this passage are, attributed by Harrowby to Monroe himself in his second despatch to Merry of 7 Nov. 1804, though his editor, Mayo, Instructions, pp. 211-12, seems to agree with Henry Adams.

42 F.O. 5/44, Marsden to Hammond, 20 Nov. 1804 (my italics).

43 This is the ‘Grounds for Complaint’ in F.O. 5/47 already quoted above. It is undated but placed between other documents of 18 and 22 May 1805, though from the date of Sir William Scott's comment on it (so Sept. 1804) it must obviously be earlier.

44 F.O. 5/104, Scott to Harrowby, 20 Sept. 1804.

45 F.O. 5/45, Merry's no. 4 to Harrowby, 14 Feb. 1805.

46 History of the United States, 1801-17, II, 397.

47 F.O. 5/45, Merry's no. 4 to Harrowby, 14 Feb. 1805.

48 F.O. 5/45, Madison to Merry, 28 Mar. 1805, enclosed in Merry's no. 17 to Harrowby, 30 Mar. 1805.

49 Mayo, , Instructions, p. 213nGoogle Scholar.

50 Cresson, W. P., James Monroe, p. 215Google Scholar.

51 F.O. 5/45, Merry's no. 40 to Mulgrave, 30 Sept. 1805. Much new light has been thrown upon the Essex case, which had been dragging on under appeal since 1800, by a hitherto un-published paper, ‘The Legend of the Essex’, read before the Cambridge University Historical Society by Mr C. J. B. Gaskoin as long ago as 1928. Mr Gaskoin has kindly let me see both the typescript of his paper and the transcripts of the numerous documents in the Public Record Office and elsewhere on which he relies. He shows conclusively, to my mind, that the whole trend of previous decisions in the British Admiralty Courts and Court of Appeal for many years past had been leading up to this decision; that it did not violate the Jay Treaty, as has sometimes been urged, and was emphatically good law; and that, in spite of persistent calumnies from that day to this, no political pressure was brought to bear on the judges to reach this decision on the part of the British government. There was therefore prima facie no reason why the final condemnation of the Essex, and the seizures which followed it, should have caused such violent feeling in America, but Mr Gaskoin admits that American merchants may well have been misled by a formal opinion in the contrary sense about the broken voyage, given by Sir John Nicholl, the King's Advocate, in the shape of a report to the Foreign Office (1801). This opinion, though incredibly careless and inaccurate and based upon a complete misreading of Scott's judgement in the Polly case, was none the less ‘unequivocally adopted by His Majesty's Government and communicated as an act to be respected and confided in to the Government of the United States… their citizens… and Europe’. It was not, of course, binding on the Lords of Appeal, as both Nicholl himself and even Monroe recognized, but it must have contributed powerfully towards that lulling of American doubts about the broken voyage into the relative calm so rudely shattered in the summer of 1805. Mr Gaskoin is therefore inclined to accept my view that the final decision in the Essex case really did mark a water-shed in Anglo-American relations, as has always been believed, but he corrects the ‘legend’ on so many other points, beside those which I have mentioned here, that it is greatly to be hoped his valuable paper will eventually be published.

52 F.O. 5/45, Merry's no. 44 to Mulgrave, 3 Nov. 1805.

53 F.O. 5/46, Bond's no. 20 to Mulgrave, 3 Dec. 1805. Cf. the numerous references in Zimmerman, , Impressment, pp. 104–6, 113Google Scholar, confirming this combination of grievances: he, however, follows the American tradition of emphasizing impressment.

54 F.O. 5/48, Merry's no. 1 to Mulgrave, 3 Jan. 1806.

55 F.O. 5/49, enclosed in Merry's no. 41 to Fox, 31 Aug. 1806.

56 Some additional light is thrown on the important part played by impressment in their well-known negotiation by the numerous papers in F.O. 5/51, and the whole episode might benefit from a separate re-examination from this point of view. This has already been attempted by Zimmerman, , Impressment, ch. v. pp. 116–34Google Scholar; but he did not use the P.R.O. material. The subject is important enough to demand an article to itself, which I hope to write one day.

57 Mayo, , Instructions, p. 320 nGoogle Scholar.

58 Ibid. p. 224 n.

59 F.O. 5/49, Merry to Fox, Private, 1 June 1806. This letter is in marked contrast with the correctness of Merry's official acceptance of his recall, also dated 1 June 1806, which immediately precedes it in the file.