Slaves and the Treaty of Paris

The treaty that brought the War of the American Revolution to an end left much unresolved. One of the most refractory of the unsettled issues was the disposition of slaves who had come into British lines during the war. Article 7 of the 1783 Treaty of Paris provides that the British should withdraw forces from the United States “without causing any Destruction, or carrying away any Negroes or other Property of the American Inhabitants.” The clause was added at Laurens’s suggestion.¹ During the course of the war, the British had “carried away” large numbers of slaves who had escaped to their lines. The Americans wanted them returned, or, at the very least, their erstwhile owners compensated. Laurens had not been alone in his solicitude for the interests of the American slaveholder. Oswald remembered Franklin threatening to sell off German prisoners of war—allies of the British in the fight against the patriots—unless the slaves carried away by the British were either “restored or paid for.”² Laurens’s clause seemed to the American commissioners to require the return of slaves currently in British hands. But the British, it turned out, saw it quite differently. There followed one of the most significant diplomatic conflicts in early Anglo-American relations.

This antagonism over the status of slaves taken by the British began early on. Britons were well aware of both their own need for troops and of the southern colonists’ need for labor to maintain the wartime economy. In April 1775 the royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, threatened to emancipate the slaves in that colony. Then, months before the colonists declared their independence, Dunmore struck an early, jarring blow in the battle over the status of American slaves. On November 7, 1775, he issued his well-known proclamation regarding patriot-held slaves. On board HMS Fowey off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, he declared “all indentured servants, negroes, or others, (appertaining to rebels,) free, that are able and willing to bear arms, they joining his Majesty’s troops, as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this Colony to a proper sense of their duty to his Majesty’s crown and dignity.”³ Slaves “appertaining to rebels” who managed to escape to British lines, and who then served in the British military, were to be accorded their freedom. Those belonging to loyalists were not granted this option.

The proclamation caused grave concern among the patriots in the southern colonies. A committee appointed by the Virginia General Assembly prepared its own declaration in response to Dunmore’s proclamation. Approved by the assembly on December 13, 1775, it denounced the “unlawful and wicked step” taken by slaves who had run to the British lines, and offered a pardon to those who would surrender to a commander of Virginia’s forces.⁴ Two days later, George Washington described Dunmore as “that arch-traitor to the rights of humanity,” who needed to be “instantly crushed.” This step was “indispensably necessary” due to “the negroes; for, if he gets formidable, numbers of them will be tempted to join who will be afraid to do it without.”⁵ Washington’s aide-de-camp, Alexander Hamilton, went so far as to advocate that the patriots themselves arm slaves and “give them their freedom with their muskets.” He worried that “if we don’t make use of them in this way, the enemy probably will.”⁶

On the last day of June 1779, the British commander in chief, General Henry Clinton, issued an emancipation proclamation of his own, freeing patriot-owned slaves who escaped to British lines, even if they did not take up arms for the king.⁷ Thus women, children, and the elderly could also expect freedom if they managed to escape to the redcoats. A large number of slaves took advantage of the British offers of manumission. Over the course of the war, as much as 5 percent of slaves in the southern colonies escaped to the British, including several belonging to George Washington himself.⁸ Given the number of slaves who had escaped to freedom, it comes as no surprise that the Americans wanted them returned at war’s end.

On May 6, 1783, Washington met with the commander in chief of British forces in North America, Sir Guy Carleton, in Orangetown, New York. Among other matters, the two soldiers discussed the “delivery of all Negroes and other Property of the Inhabitants of these States in the Possession of the Forces or Subjects of or adherents to his Britannic Majesty.”⁹ In addressing the British preparations for the rapid evacuation of American territory, Carleton noted that he “considered as included in the Preparations for the final Departure of the British troops the previously sending off of those Persons who supposed that from the part they had taken in the present War it would be most eligible for them to leave this Country.” Among these were, he added, “a Number of Negroes.” Washington “thereupon expressed his Surprise” at what he took to be a British action that contravened the Treaty of Paris. Carleton replied that “by Property in the Treaty might only be intended Property at the time the Negroes were sent off,” contending that “it could not have been the intention of the British Government by the Treaty of Peace to reduce themselves to the Necessity of violating their Faith to the Negroes who came into the British Lines” under Dunmore’s proclamation. To return them to their masters would be to deliver them up “some possibly to Execution and others to severe Punishment which in [Carleton’s] Opinion would be a dishonorable Violation of the public Faith pledged to the Negroes.” He raised the possibility of compensation for the slaves carried away if this should, in the future, “be declared an Infraction of the Treaty.” To this end, Carleton had directed that a register be kept of all slaves removed by his forces.¹⁰

Washington responded by reiterating his conviction that the actions taken by the British with regard to the slaves were “a Departure from both the Letter and the Spirit of the Articles of Peace.” He was further concerned about the difficulties raised by the issue of compensation for slaves carried away. In part, his objection concerned assessing the value of a slave, and additionally in ascertaining a slave’s identity. The register could not record a slave’s worth, since this consisted “chiefly in his Industry and Sobriety,” and any slave could give a false name or the “wrong Name of his former Master.” Carleton’s response was that a former slave, once guaranteed his freedom, would “have no inducement to conceal his true Name or that of his Master.” As he saw it, the matter of compensation “must be adjudged by Commissioners to be hereafter appointed by the two nations.”¹¹ Neither of the generals had given an inch on the matter, and Washington was obviously not satisfied with the exchange. Additionally, Carleton’s standpoint “quickly became the official British response to repeated American demands for restitution or compensation.”¹²

The British had objections of their own to America’s failures to live up to the Treaty of Paris. A fruitless diplomatic back-and-forth failed to resolve the question of which nation had been the first to violate the pact. Delegated by Congress to respond to British accusations, Secretary of Foreign Affairs John Jay wrote a lengthy report, which he submitted in October 1786.¹³ According to Jay, there was “no doubt but that Britain has violated the 7th Article” of the treaty. He spoke of three classes of slaves, the first being those “as in the course of the War were captured and disposed of as booty by the Enemy.” Such slaves were legitimately the property of the British. In words that could not have given solace to the slaveholding members of the Continental Congress, Jay opined, “By the laws of war all goods and Chattels captured and made booty flagrante Bello become the property of their Captors. Whether men can be so degraded as under any circumstances to be with propriety denominated Goods and Chattels, and under that idea capable of being booty, is a question on which opinions are unfortunately various, even in Countries professing Christianity and respect for the rights of mankind. Certain it is that our Laws assert, and Britain by this Article as well as by her practice admits, that Man may have property in Man.” Jay thus concluded—against his will, it appeared—that “it is fair reasoning that this like other moveable property is capable of changing Owners by capture in War.” The secretary was unable to devise a “construction of the Article” that would deny the right to such property to the British.¹⁴

When it came to the other two classes of slaves, however, matters were very different. The second set of slaves were those who “belonged to and remained with American Inhabitants within the british [sic] lines,” and they “seem clearly to be within the design and meaning of [article 7].” But it was the final class that had caused by far the most difficulty between the two nations. These were the slaves who, “confiding in proclamations and promises of freedom and protection, fled from their Masters without, and were received and protected within, british Camp and lines.” Jay concluded that these slaves also fell under the provisions of article 7, since they “still remained as much as ever the property of their Masters. They could not by merely flying or eloping extinguish the right or title of their Masters; nor was that title destroyed by their coming into the enemy’s possession, for they were received, not taken by the enemy; they were received not as Slaves but as friends and freemen; by no Act, therefore, either of their own or their friends, was the right of their Masters taken away.” Thus, carrying them away was an “infraction” of article 7.¹⁵ Jay’s argument was worthy of one of the most prominent legal minds that the new nation had to offer: war booty must be taken as property. Yet since the British received the runaway slaves not as chattels but as free human beings, they did not fit into the first class of slaves. As such, their owners’ titles to them remained intact, and carrying them away was a violation of the treaty. The secretary’s reasoning was so far, so good for American slaveholders.

Had Jay left it at that, few American slaveholders could have found fault with his reasoning. Yet he went on, and in a manner that could only be disconcerting to American slave owners. The secretary could also understand the situation of this third class of slaves in a different light, one “less unfavorable to Britain than it appears to his Countrymen in general.” Jay was indeed aware that he was “about to say unpopular things; but higher motives than personal considerations press [me] to proceed.”¹⁶ A slaveholder himself, and one of the cofounders of the New York Manumission Society in 1785, Jay had opinions on slavery that would indeed be “unpopular” in certain circles.¹⁷ He began his disquisition with a hypothetical case: what if, he asked, France and Algiers should go to war, and France then invited American slaves in that Barbary state to flee to the French lines, under the promise of freedom and protection? And what would Congress, “and indeed the world,” think and say if France, in concluding a peace with Algiers, should return those American slaves to their masters? The answer seemed to Jay so clear that he did not even state it. He then went on to ask if there was “any other difference between the two cases than this, Viz. that the American Slaves at Algiers are white people, whereas the African slaves at New York were black people?”¹⁸ The answer was obvious to the secretary in this matter as well.

Following this line of reasoning, Jay then wondered how far “an obligation to do wrong may, consistent with morality, be so modified in execution as to avoid doing injury, yet do essential justice,” with “essential justice” clearly meaning not returning freed human beings, regardless of skin color, to bondage. He then dilated on the matter of justice for the slaves versus injury to their owners: “By this agreement Britain bound herself to do great wrong to these Slaves; and yet by not executing it she would do great wrong to their Masters.” This put London in a dilemma, “for as on the one hand, she had tempted and assisted these Slaves to escape from their Masters, and on escaping had received and protected them,” and it would then be “cruelly perfidious” to return them to their former bondage. Yet it would, on the other hand, be an act of bad faith to conclude a treaty obliging them to do just this and then not follow through. All was not lost, however. Jay saw a way for Britain to “extricate herself from these embarrassments.” The British could “do substantial justice” to the slaveholders by “paying them the value of those Slaves. In this way, neither could have cause to complain; for although no price can compensate a Man for bondage for life, yet every Master may be compensated for a runaway slave.”¹⁹ Jay’s fellow slaveholders could not have been expected to warm to this analysis. Yet on the final point, it was difficult to fault the secretary’s reasoning: the British were simply not going to return thousands of freedmen to slavery. Restitution for violations of article 7 would come either by financial compensation or not at all.

Yet southerners, “scandalized” by Jay’s words in his October 1786 report, were concerned when, in 1794, President Washington chose Jay to negotiate with Britain over the issues still bedeviling Anglo-American relations. The British proved to be “immovable on the subject” of compensation for slaves carried away.²⁰ Thus, the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, commonly known as Jay’s Treaty, was concluded without resolution of, or even reference to, this issue. In an exchange of letters with the secretary of state, Virginian and slaveholder Edmund Randolph, Jay explained and defended his actions in London. Regarding the question that “naturally” arose concerning which side had violated the peace treaty first, the two nations found themselves at loggerheads. The American position was, of course, that the carrying away of slaves who came to the British lines constituted the first violation. But, as Jay wrote Randolph on September 13, 1794, the British had a very different interpretation. From the British perspective, slaves “who came into the possession of the British army, became, by the laws and rights of war, British property; and, therefore, ceasing to be American property, the exportation thereof was not inhibited by the stipulation in question.” To extend the stipulation to slaves who “under the faith of proclamations” had fled to the British army was “unnecessarily” to give it “a construction which, being odious, could not be supported by the known and established rules for construing treaties.” Jay reported that he had responded with “the several remarks and considerations” that he had presented in his report to Congress, though he did not clarify which remarks, some of which would seem to validate the British interpretation of the clause in question. He concluded laconically that “on this point we could not agree” and moved on to other matters. There would be no settlement of the issue, and it thus “became advisable to quit those topics” that were insoluble in the current negotiations.²¹

Randolph was less than convinced by the envoy’s logic. Writing Jay on December 3, the secretary remarked that he was “extremely afraid that the reasoning about the negroes will not be satisfactory. Indeed, I own that I cannot myself yield to its force.” He then added his concern that, if the matter of the slaves were to be left out of the treaty entirely, “will not some quarters of the Union suppose themselves neglected?”²² Randolph’s objections went, however, beyond the matter of the sensibilities of the southern states. His argument hinged on an interpretation of the relevant section of article 7, by which, he asserted, Britain had surrendered its rights to the slaves as booty of war:

It will not be denied that rights, even in moveables acquired in war, may, by the treaty of peace, be renounced. In this instance, there was a great reason for such a renunciation. Negroes were not, like moveables in general, difficult to be distinguished. They carried an infallible mark. British debts were stipulated to be paid, and the States in which the mass of them lay, depended for their payment, principally, on the culture of their soil, and for the culture of their soil, on this species of labor. As property, the British Government could not have been tenacious of negroes; and it may, therefore, be supposed that, in this view, they were so indifferent as to be the more easily given up.

Randolph followed this with a close textual analysis of the article 7 “carrying away” clause before opining that liberty given in war may be lost in a peace treaty.²³ This reasoning led him to the conclusion that article 7 “called for the reenslaving of some of those he conceded had been legitimately freed by the war.”²⁴ In response to such arguments, Jay could only repeat that the Americans and British “could not agree about the negroes. Was that a good reason for breaking up the negotiations?”²⁵

It was a fair question. Yet, as Randolph foresaw, southerners did not react well to the exclusion of the slave issue from Jay’s Treaty. The attacks on the treaty were highly partisan, with Republicans sensing an opportunity to score political points by attacking an unpopular pact advocated by their Federalist rivals. Additionally, the faultfinding was broad based and extensive, with slavery as only one of many factors raised in opposition to the treaty. Yet, as Randolph had told Jay, the “anxiety of many parts of the United States, upon this subject” were worth consideration.²⁶ Indeed, the exclusion of the slave issue from the treaty proved to be a bounteous well from which Republicans—especially from slave states—could draw abuse of Federalist diplomacy. In the spring of 1796 the gloves came off in the House of Representatives, as Republican members sought to deny the funding necessary to implement the treaty with Britain.²⁷

Republican John Nicholas of Virginia called for a discussion of the “merits of the Treaty” on April 16, 1796. In his opening remarks he conceded that some concessions had to be made in treaty negotiations, and that “sacrifice of private interest becomes sometimes unavoidable.” Yet the claim to the return of American-owned slaves went beyond such interests, since it went to the heart of whether the United States had violated the Paris Treaty. It was not the most significant issue on its face, but Jay’s Treaty offered such a “uniform surrender of the interests of the United States as to compel a calculation.” On the question of which nation was first to violate the treaty, Nicholas had no doubt: Britain had done so with regard to the slaves carried away by their forces. Even before the treaty had come into force, “Britain, by carrying away the negroes, put it out of her power to execute the contract which she had made.”²⁸ Breaking a treaty’s provisions before it was even binding would thus have to rank as a first violation.

William Branch Giles, another Virginia Republican, added that the British themselves had “acquiesced” in the American interpretation of the clause in question “until the negotiation of the present Treaty.” Among the evidence that Giles adduced was the fact that American commissioners were permitted at war’s end to “make a list of the negroes in the possession of the British,” as well as the fact “that there were resolutions of Congress claiming compensation for the property carried away in contravention of the Article in the Treaty of Peace, perhaps without even the intimation of a doubt as to the construction.”²⁹ Thus, both the Americans and the British had understood article 7 to require, if not return of the slaves taken by the British during the war, then at least compensation of their masters. What had changed now was Jay’s Treaty, which had failed to formally establish this interpretation.

But Federalists called into question the existence of the interpretive consensus so confidently asserted by Giles. Connecticut’s Zephaniah Swift was “surprised that any person could ever have entertained an opinion that they were entitled to compensation” for the slaves in question. Article 7 served only to prevent the British “carrying away any negroes and property that should be taken in the future, and could have no reference to those captured during the war and before the Treaty, the property of which had vested in the captors.”³⁰ Yet the most extensive, and formidable, defense of the treaty by a Federalist came from outside Congress. The following summer, a series of essays on the Jay’s Treaty debate appeared under the pen name Camillus, which belonged to the leader of the Federalist faction—Jay’s fellow New Yorker, Alexander Hamilton. The essays had their roots in remarks in defense of the treaty drafted for Washington in early July. In the third of his essays, Hamilton forcefully addressed the case made against the treaty by its opponents. In his view, the “opposers of the Treaty seem to have put invention on the rack, to accumulate charges against it in a great number of cases, without regard even to plausibility.”³¹ This tortured reasoning, he thus implied, pertained to the Republican case with regard to article 7.

Rejecting the Republican assertion that everyone agreed on what the article meant until Jay arrived in London, Hamilton asserted, “As to the negroes, the true sense of the article in the treaty of peace, which respects them, is disputed.” The plain fact was that the terms of article 7 “admit of two constructions.” One could assert that

no negroes or other articles which had been American property should be carried away, the other, that the evacuations were to be made without depredation, consequently that no new destruction was to be committed, and that negroes or other articles, which at the time of the cessation of hostilities, continued to be the property of American inhabitants, unchanged by the operations of war, should be foreborne to be carried away.

The latter interpretation—which was London’s understanding—was based on the laws of war that allowed war booty to be “vested in the captors the moment they acquire a firm possession.” Like other property, except ships, slaves “were liable to become booty—and belonged to the enemy as soon as they came into his hands.” Once in the enemy’s possession, a slaveholder was “free either to apply them to his own use, or to set them at liberty,” and “if he did the latter, the grant was irrevocable, restitution was impossible.” Once liberty was “granted to a human being,” nothing in international, or even British, law would authorize the return of that person to the state of slavery.³²

Hamilton continued his defense of the British interpretation. Given the language of the treaty stipulation in question, which related to “negroes or other property of the American inhabitants,” the slaves in question, no longer being property of Americans, “were therefore not within the stipulation.” No one would, he asserted, demand the return of a captured horse, ox, or piece of furniture after seven years of war, and, “consequently the reasoning which proves that one is not included, excludes the other”—namely, the Black person taken as booty.³³

Hamilton’s most powerfully argued point followed: “In the interpretation of treaties, things odious or immoral are not to be presumed,” and retuning to slavery a human being to whom one had solemnly promised liberty was “as odious and immoral a thing as can be conceived.” Thus, the “general interests of humanity conspire with the obligation which Great Britain had contracted toward the negroes, to repel this [i.e., the American] construction of the treaty, if another can be found.” As to arguments regarding the intent of the American negotiators, it was “not enough for us to be persuaded, that some of the negociators [sic], who made the peace, intended the article in our sense.” Rather, the sense of the treaty’s words must be found in the treaty itself. If there was ambiguity in the treaty, then “the odiousness of the effect” would “incline the scale against us.” Unlike the treaty’s article 7, Hamilton’s words did not lend themselves to different interpretations. Returning a freed person to a state of slavery violated a fundamental moral principle, and the treaty could not have been meant to require it.³⁴ Hamilton had thus, “in print, declared that the British had no power to reenslave anyone.” This was especially problematic, since the treaty, as Hamilton noted, made no mention of compensation.³⁵ The Senate had ratified Jay’s Treaty, but with not a single vote to spare. Hamilton had thus won the day, if only narrowly. The owners of the slaves carried away by the British were not as lucky: they never received compensation. Perhaps fittingly for these men, the loss of slaves proved to be the price of their own liberty.

In the Wake of 1812

That was not, however, the end of this issue. In fact, “the years between 1815 and 1828 witnessed an almost eerie replay of the debates” that followed the American Revolutionary War.³⁶ The War of 1812 would revive the issue of slaves escaping to British lines, and then removed from the United States. As before, the two nations would be unequal to the task of finding a mutually acceptable solution to the issues that this “carrying off” raised. In the end, only an agreement to arbitrate brought the matter to a conclusion. It was thus the Russian emperor, working from a French text, who decided a matter of English grammar that had bedeviled the two Anglophone nations. It was not a glorious page in diplomatic history.

The role of slaves and slavery in the War of 1812 has increasingly intrigued historians. The desire to protect American slavery has been suggested as a potential contributing cause of the war; Jasper M. Trautsch wonders if “the escape of American slaves to British ships prior to the war [made] some Southern Congressmen opt for open conflict to protect their slaving interests.”³⁷ There is no question that, when the war came, it raised significant issues about slavery for slaves and masters alike.³⁸ Slaves once again chose to risk escape to British lines and the freedom that awaited them there. Again, the issue posed a seemingly insoluble irritant in postwar Anglo-American relations. The peace commissioners meeting at Ghent did no better than those at Paris had in clarifying the issue of slaves who had fled to the British. As article 1 of the Treaty of Ghent explained, “All territory, places, and possessions whatsoever taken by either party from the other during the war, or which may be taken after the signing of this Treaty … shall be restored without delay and without causing any destruction or carrying away any of the Artillery or other public property originally captured in the said forts or places, and which shall remain therein upon the Exchange of the Ratifications of this Treaty, or any Slaves or other private property.” This language in the Treaty of Ghent was “surprisingly similar to the much-debated wording of Article 7 in the Treaty of Paris.”³⁹ Indeed, it proved equally open to different and debatable constructions. There thus followed another unavailing attempt to solve the dispute though bilateral diplomacy.

John Quincy Adams took the lead in pressing the American case. America’s minister to the Court of St. James’s, Adams was neither a slaveholder nor a defender of the institution of bonded labor. But he was a determined advocate for his country’s policies and interests. He thus pressed the British indefatigably on the issue of compensation for refugee slaves. Secretary of State James Monroe informed Adams of the difficulty arising with Britain over the interpretation of article 1, and the actions taken by Britain subsequent to this interpretation: “I’m sorry to have to state that the British naval commanders have construed the stipulation in the treaty not to carry off with their forces the slaves whom they had taken from our citizens differently from this government.” From Monroe’s perspective, the difference of interpretation of article 1 appeared to be “so decidedly in favor of the United States, that it has excited surprise that it should have existed.” He informed London’s chargé d’affaires in Washington, DC, Anthony Baker, that the British were contending that no slaves “ought to be restored except such as were, at the time of the exchange of the ratification of the treaty, in the forts and places where they were originally taken.” This interpretation would limit their number indeed, since none of the escaped slaves seemed to fall under this definition.

Monroe was having none of it, and told Adams, “The United States have a right either to the restitution of all these slaves, or to compensation for the loss.” He followed this with instructions to Adams to seek the return of the slaves or else redress for their owners.⁴⁰ It is worth noting that the Americans were willing from the start of the negotiations to accept compensation for the slaves taken by the British. Perhaps they had learned from previous experience that the erstwhile masters were never going to get them back.

If Baker’s words were any indication, they were correct in this assumption. He now raised the issue of the intentions of his nation’s treaty negotiators. His “belief” was that article 1 meant that “the prohibition against carrying away slaves and private property should be taken in connection with the restoration of territory, places, and possessions.” If King George III’s negotiators at Ghent had thought that “the words were susceptible of the construction now given to them [by the Americans], and that a claim would be founded upon them” for the return of the slaves who had found refuge on British ships, then the insertion of such words “would have been decidedly objected to, and others proposed.” Lacking instructions from his government on the matter, however, Baker promised to forward the letter to London and to the relevant British naval commander.⁴¹ With this exchange a lengthy diplomatic impasse between the two countries had begun. The British military was willing to discuss some facets of the issue with the three American commissioners who had been delegated to acquire “an account of all slaves and other private property of citizens of the United States, which may have been removed from the Chesapeake, or any of the shores or islands thereof, since the date of the ratification of the treaty.” Absent British willingness to return the slaves, the commissioners were clearly seeking to gain a list of the slaves that could be used to ascertain a fair price for compensation.⁴² On April 13, 1815, one of the commissioners, Virginian Thomas M. Bayly, wrote to John Clavelle, the captain of HMS Orlando, who was responsible for the British ships harboring the escaped slaves from the Chesapeake Bay region. Aware that the captain was soon to depart with his ships, he sought to discover Clavelle’s “determination respecting the restoration of the slaves and other property, public and private, which were captured from the United States and citizens thereof, during the war,” and which were now in the possession of the British in the Chesapeake. The Briton’s response was firm: “I beg to state that my determination is not to restore any slaves, private or public property, captured before the exchange of ratifications of the treaty of peace,” in line with instructions he had received from Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn, his commanding officer.⁴³ It did not look good for the return of the “slaves or other property”: once they had departed the Chesapeake for British possessions, it would be exceptionally difficult to reclaim them, regardless of the final diplomatic disposition of the question.

In fact, it was nearly impossible. In May 1815 commissioner Thomas Spalding was sent to Bermuda as the agent appointed by President James Madison to demand “the restoration of all public or private property, and particularly all slaves,” taken in contravention of the American interpretation of article 1. His May 22 interview with Bermuda’s governor, Admiral Cockburn, did not go at all well. Spalding reported to Monroe that Cockburn “would not permit me to proceed to detail any of the reasons for my mission, though very ready, as he said he was bound in candor to do, to declare against the American interpretation of the first article of the treaty; and vehemently added, that he would rather Bermuda, and every man, woman, and child in it, were sunk under the sea, than surrender one slave that had sought protection under the flag of England.”⁴⁴ This would have been an extreme solution to the problem. But it also provided an indication to the Americans of how set the British were in their refusal to return freed Blacks.

Spalding was nonetheless tireless in advocating for the American interpretation of article 1. On the same day as his unsatisfying meeting with Cockburn, he penned a lengthy letter to British rear admiral Edward Griffith, then the naval commander for North America. In his missive he hit on one of the central aspects of the American interpretation of the article in question—namely, whether or not it applied to private property. It was the American position that the wording of the clause referring to property “which shall remain therein after the exchange of the ratifications of this treaty” clearly related only to public property. The stipulation regarding slaves thus stood on its own, and was not governed by the prior clause’s reference to time and location. In fact, Spalding asserted, the words could not be applied to private property, except by “a strange perversion of language, and, by being so applied, the whole quality of the article becomes changed; and instead of being liberal and friendly, becomes limited, illiberal, and unfriendly.” The US government was thus “greatly surprised” to discover that British officers had “adopted the extraordinary principle, that if either public or private property, or slaves, were removed a single mile from the place of capture, they were not restorable, though still within the limits of the United States.”⁴⁵

Griffith, then also in Bermuda, responded the following day. He was blunt. The matter was one to be settled by the governments of the two nations, and not by officials at lower levels. “I consider it,” the admiral added, “entirely out of my province to enter into negotiation or discussion with you” on the matter of the freed slaves. He concluded his response with a bit of advice for Spalding: it would be “a loss of your time waiting here … or visiting any other British islands or settlements for the purposes set forth in your said letter; for I can venture to assure you that there is not any authority at either competent to deliver up persons who, during the late war, placed themselves under the protection of the British flag.”⁴⁶ Given Cockburn’s and Griffith’s dismissals, this line of diplomacy was plainly at a dead end.

This did not mean that American attempts to gain compensation for the lost slaves were over. Rather, they moved to another level. If Griffith could do nothing about the issue, British foreign secretary Lord Castlereagh most assuredly could. On August 9 Adams addressed a rather lawyerly letter to Castlereagh. He proposed that the British minister in Washington be authorized to negotiate either the “restitution of the slaves conformably to the treaty” or payment of compensation, “which, in the event of their not being restored, I am instructed by my Government to claim.” In large part Adams rested his claims on the intentions of the American peace commissioners at Ghent. Looking at the conference protocol, Adams asserted that the American plenipotentiaries “did not assent to” the application of the disputed phrase—“originally captured in said forts or places, and which shall remain therein upon the exchange of the ratification of this treaty”—with regard to slaves and private property. By a fair reading of the clause, Adams asserted, the British forces “were bound not to carry away any slaves, or other private property of the citizens of the United States, which had been taken on [American] shores.”⁴⁷

Adams was a highly gifted advocate. Yet Castlereagh remained unconvinced by his line of reasoning. The British secretary and the American minister met that August, discussing, among other matters, Adams’s letter of August 9. As reported by Adams in a lengthy note to Monroe, Castlereagh responded to the American case by stating that the British interpreted the stipulations of article 1 regarding slaves “very differently.” From the British perspective, the wording “applied only to the slaves in the forts and places which, having been taken during the war, were to be restored at the peace.” Adams replied that the American negotiators had assented to this reading of the clause with regard to “artillery and public property … but not with regard to slaves, which we thought should, at all events, be restored, because they ought never to have been taken.” The secretary was unimpressed by Adams’s line of argument, however, premised as it was on the intentions of those who negotiated the treaty. As Castlereagh saw it, the “ultimate construction must be upon the words of the treaty as they stood.” Having said that, he could not resist adding his own comments on the negotiators’ intentions: the British commissioners would never have agreed to a stipulation that slaves, “who, from whatever motives, had taken refuge under the protection of the British forces, should be delivered up to those who, to say the least, must feel unkindly towards them, and might treat them harshly.” Were this in fact the meaning of the disputed wording, the British negotiators would have proposed something else, though he did not know what.⁴⁸ It appeared that a plea based on intentions cut both ways. Nothing fruitful could come from this line of argument.

Nor was much to be expected from Adams’s assertion that slaves, being private property, were “by the usages of war among civilized nations” and not to be carried away. As Castlereagh observed, a slave was not the same as a table or a chair, and “a living human being was entitled to other considerations.” Seeing where the discussion was going—that is, nowhere—the American shifted ground. If Britain felt itself bound to “make good the promises of her offices to the slaves,” then it might at least “be willing to do an act of justice, by compensating the owners of the slaves for the property which had been irregularly taken from them.” As Adams reported it, Castlereagh “manifested no dissatisfaction at these remarks.” Perhaps there was a way out of this conundrum after all. It was becoming obvious that London would under no circumstances return even one freed slave to a state of bondage, but maybe the British would agree to fair compensation for their loss.⁴⁹ In early September, Adams sent Castlereagh a list of 702 slaves carried away from Georgia by British forces. He thus proposed that the two nations make arrangements for compensation of their masters, “if it should be deemed expedient rather to make this compensation than to restore the slaves to their owners.” The approach appeared to suggest that the United States was willing to be reasonable about all this. But three weeks later, Adams found himself writing Monroe that the foreign secretary had still not responded.⁵⁰ Perhaps extracting funds from London was not going to be much easier than obtaining the return of the slaves themselves.

The secretary of state, nevertheless, remained optimistic. “It cannot be doubted,” he wrote Adams in mid-November 1815, “that the British Government will make a just indemnity to the owners for the slaves who were carried from the United States by the British officers, in violation of the treaty of peace.” It is difficult to see how he could be so sanguine, however, given that the British had never admitted to violating the Treaty of Ghent. But he was apparently feeling domestic pressure from the affected slaveholders to gain them some fair compensation, informing Adams that a “vigorous effort on our part to obtain justice is claimed, and expected by them.”⁵¹ The Virginian kept up the diplomatic drumbeat. Only four days later he wrote Adams that it was “important that the principle be first established that the British will pay for the slaves carried off in violation of the treaty. The manner of liquidating the claims is the next point to be arranged.” Monroe opined that the “appointment of a board of commissioners, with full power to investigate every case, is thought to be most eligible—indeed, the only one that could do justice to the parties.”⁵² One might say, charitably, that the secretary of state was “thinking ahead,” since London was far from having conceded that Britain had committed any treaty violation at all in removing the slaves in question.

Adams, on the front lines of Anglo-American diplomacy, was more pessimistic than was his superior in Washington. Meeting again with Castlereagh early in 1816, he referenced a letter he had received from the secretary for war and the colonies, Lord Bathurst, the previous October. Bathurst had engaged in a rather thorough examination of the American interpretation of article 1 and found it to be lacking. Britain would thus persist in its own reading of the treaty’s provisions. Adams told Castlereagh of his concern that Bathurst’s letter “seemed to intimate that the Government had taken its final determination of the matter; that I hoped it was not so; I hoped they would give it further consideration; it had been the cause of so much anxiety to my Government; it was urged so constantly and earnestly in my instructions.” Castlereagh responded evasively, though perhaps accurately, that he had not seen Bathurst’s letter, but that he would have it located, and would “examine” it.⁵³ Thus, once again, two of the most practiced diplomats of their time could make no progress on resolving this major matter of dispute in their countries’ bilateral relations. The question, then, was whether anyone could.

After much back-and-forth that led nowhere, Washington decided that the time had come to take a new approach to resolving the issue. Thus, in May 1816 Monroe wrote to Adams, informing him that Madison was “willing to refer the question to the decision of some friendly power; which you will propose [to the British].” The issue was, the secretary emphasized, “too important to be neglected. It is impossible that the opinion of the British Government can be more decided than that of The United States.” Adams delayed approaching Castlereagh on the matter until the end of the summer. At the time of Monroe’s letter to Adams, the British foreign secretary was deeply involved in parliamentary politics that “absorbed his strength as well as his time.” It must have made an impression on the American minister when, on April 9, he arrived for an 11:30 a.m. meeting with the foreign minister, only to find that he was still asleep. Perhaps it is for this reason that Adams held off approaching him regarding arbitration. In mid-September, Adams finally informed Castlereagh of the American proposal, adding that, given the differences between the two nations, “no better mode can be adopted for settling them in a satisfactory manner.”⁵⁴ The foreign minister responded promptly and apologetically: private business in Ireland would take him away for a time, and the seasonal absence of a number of British ministers from London would preclude a timely response to Washington’s proposal. But once the government was reassembled in London, he would take it up with the ministers. Despite this foreseen delay, Castlereagh’s reply was far better than an outright rejection of the American initiative and potentially boded well for an end to the protracted impasse.⁵⁵

It would, however, take two years to come to an agreement in favor of arbitration. London and Washington had other irons in the diplomatic fire, the most significant of which was the dispute over the Canadian-US border. The simmering discord would be alleviated by the Anglo-American Convention of 1818, which set the border west to the Oregon Territory. Largely forgotten now, article 5 of the convention stipulated that the two nations would submit the dispute over article 1 of the Treaty of Ghent to “some friendly sovereign or state to be named for that purpose.” No arbiter was specified, since no one had yet agreed to serve. But the Russian, Alexander I, was acceptable to both parties.⁵⁶

It was more of a challenge to find an American minister to help conduct the negotiations. In 1820 Monroe, now president, made the decision to appoint a southerner, someone who “would be especially vigilant regarding the slave-owners’ interests.” A number of names were mentioned. Secretary of War John C. Calhoun recommended former South Carolina governor Henry Middleton, a wealthy slave owner who spoke French. Monroe—though preferring a different candidate, South Carolina’s Joel Poinsett—decided on Middleton.⁵⁷ Now, with a minister selected and Adams at the State Department, the Americans were ready to press their case in St. Petersburg.

Acutely aware of the arbitration’s significance, Secretary of State Adams drafted extensive instructions for Middleton.⁵⁸ The process occupied approximately two weeks of the his time in June and early July 1820, and the instructions were thus not completed until after Middleton had departed for Europe. As a result, Adams had two of Middleton’s sons who had stayed behind deliver them to their father when the family reconvened in London.⁵⁹ In his general instructions to the minister, Adams summarized the American and British positions on the issue of slaves carried away and gave Middleton precise direction on how to respond to the London government’s arguments. When the British, for example, objected that “it could not be supposed they would agree to an Article which would oblige them to deliver up slaves who during the War had taken refuge under their protection,” the American reply was “that if that had been an objection to their agreeing to the Article it should have been made before the signing of the Article.”⁶⁰

This was a fundamental difference between the Americans and the British, and did not come down to the matter of the correct parsing of a sentence. “The substance of this argument of the British side,” noted Adams, “is that they could not fulfill their promise to the United States and the owners of the Slaves, without violating prior engagements to the Slaves themselves.” To this line of argument Adams responded that it was “obvious … that our rights cannot be affected by any engagement of Great Britain to the Slaves, as her officers did carry them away, thereby fulfilling all their engagements to them. She is bound by the engagement of the Treaty with us, to indemnify all the owners of slaves, for the property of which they have thus been deprived by her act.” Adams wanted to avoid bringing this issue to the tsar. It was “desirable,” instead, “that the question submitted to the decision of the Emperor of Russia should be simply whether by the terms of the first Article of the Treaty of Ghent, the British forces were bound to evacuate all captured Forts, Places, and Possessions within the United States, without carrying away any slaves or other private property.”⁶¹ The American goal was thus to keep the issue before the tsar limited to the correct reading of article 1. Any other issue was a distraction, and Adams was convinced that the United States had the stronger case on this central point of difference.

The secretary was, in addition, operating on the presumption that London would want to keep Alexander’s purview limited in the matter of compensation should he decide in America’s favor. Thus the British would seek, as would Washington, “to narrow down as much as possible the subject to be referred to the Emperor.” The final indemnity should thus be decided not by the tsar but by a three-person commission, with commissioners appointed, respectively, by the president, the king, and the tsar. This commission would “sit in the United States” and would “determine definitively upon all claims” brought before it.⁶² Regarding those matters that were brought to the tsar for decision, Adams called for careful and thorough consideration: “In whatever form the decision of the Emperor shall be made and communicated, the parties have agreed to consider it final and conclusive on all the matters referred.—You will therefore take special care, that the matters referred shall be so comprehensive, that the decision shall have nothing unsettled for after controversy—The President relies upon your zeal and intelligence that nothing will be omitted for doing justice to this interest.”⁶³ Lest the South Carolina slave owner forget, Adams reminded Middleton that his diplomatic mission in St. Petersburg was “an affair of particular delicacy” and “a subject involving deep interests of property of many of our citizens.” Thus there was “an earnest solicitude that every justice due to them may be done as well in the zeal as in the assiduity with which it will be pursued.”⁶⁴ Once again, domestic political considerations had to be taken into account in the conduct of international relations.

In a November 4, 1820 letter, Adams augmented his instructions to Middleton. According to the secretary, “we give full credence to the declaration of Lord Castlereagh, that his personal disposition would be to carry into immediate execution the determination if it should be in our favor and that he would afford any felicity depending upon him for that purpose.” Should disagreement arise, however, over “the means of execution,” the United States wished to retain the right to have the case settled by the arbitrator. Adams proceeded immediately to ridicule British attempts to gain the high ground in the Anglo-American dispute over the freed slaves. The British claimed the right to emancipate privately owned slaves as a right of war. But this was deemed “utterly incomprehensible on the part of a nation whose subjects hold slaves by the millions, and who in this very treaty recognize them as private property. No such right is acknowledged as a Law of War by writers who admit any limitation.” For this reason, Adams expected that the tsar would not “recognize the right of emancipation as legitimate warfare.”⁶⁵

For his part, the American minister agreed with Adams’s assessment of Castlereagh. Stopping in London on his journey to Russia, Middleton had met with the foreign secretary in August. Afterward, he wrote glowingly of Castlereagh’s congenial attitude. The two discussed several matters related to the subject of the coming negotiations in Russia, “in all of which his Lordship’s ideas appeared to co-incide entirely with mine.”⁶⁶ Yet well before receiving Adams’s letter of November 1820, Middleton had independently come to the conclusion that the British and the Americans might “differ on the necessary means of giving effect” to America’s rights in the dispute. Fortunately, Castlereagh continued in his congeniality, raising no objection to Middleton’s suggestion that irresolvable disagreements over execution of the final arbitral decision should also go before Tsar Alexander.⁶⁷

More difficult to reach was agreement on a joint statement (projet) to be presented to the tsar. But Middleton reported to Adams in mid-September that he and the US minister to London, Richard Rush, had “come to an understanding with his Lordship upon the substance of a joint note” to be addressed to the Russian sovereign. Castlereagh thus agreed with the American desire to submit the question regarding right of compensation for the slaves to the tsar “unencumbered by any other matter.” He also assented to the American proposal that, should Alexander rule in favor of the United States, a commission would meet in Washington to address claims for compensation. This British concession could not, however, be open ended: the foreign secretary insisted that “before any Commission shall actually sit to take cognizance of such claims, that their precise extent and nature should be ascertained by the American government.” When disagreement arose between the English-speaking powers as to the best method of adjusting the American claims, Castlereagh agreed that they should be submitted to the tsar for his “consideration and arbitration.”⁶⁸ This all was progress, and it seemed to bode well for the US cause should the tsar rule in the Americans’ favor. Working against American interests, however, was the low cost of bonded labor in Russia: since no “average value” had yet been set for the slaves carried away by the British, the issue might be referred to the tsar. If so, Tsar Alexander’s perception of their value could be “highly disadvantageous to the U.S.”⁶⁹ This was, of course, not within the power of London to control, and thus Middleton and Rush had achieved most of the Monroe administration’s goals for the London phase of the negotiations.

The final disposition of the arbitration had, however, to wait several months due to the tsar’s lengthy absence from St. Petersburg to attend the Congress of Laibach. Alexander finally returned to the Russian capital on May 26, 1821. On that very day, Count Nesselrode sent a circular to the foreign diplomatic corps, informing them that he had taken over direction of the Russian Foreign Office, a position he had shared with Ionnis Kapodistrias since 1816.⁷⁰ It was he who now would lead the Russian side in the negotiations over compensation for the slaves. Middleton addressed a note to the foreign minister on June 21, reassuring him that the United States would view “the decision of this friendly power as final and conclusive.” He added that the tsar was empowered to authorize “all steps necessary to give effect to the decision which may occur as a result of the good offices [qui pourra avoir lieu par suite des bons offices] of his Imperial Majesty.”⁷¹ London and Washington had agreed on this last point when drafting the Anglo-American projet, which was then transmitted to the Russians.

Tsar Alexander issued his decision on July 12, 1822, but both parties to the dispute had received word of its contents in the months leading up to its formal proclamation. Middleton told Adams in early May that the tsar was preoccupied with more pressing problems than the Anglo-American dispute over slaves. Thus, the announcement was delayed until midsummer.⁷² The tsar decided as follows:

That the United States of America are entitled to claim from Great Britain a just indemnification for all private property, which the British Forces may have carried away from the Places and Territories of which the Treaty stipulates the Restitution, in quitting the same Places and Territories.

That The United States are entitled to consider as having been so carried away, all such Slaves as may have been transferred from the above mentioned Territories to British Vessels within the Waters of the said Territories, and who, for this reason, may not have been restored.

But that, if there should be any American Slaves who were carried away from Territories of which the 1st Article on the Treaty of Ghent has not stipulated the Restitution to The United States, The United States are not entitled to claim an indemnification for the said Slaves.⁷³

When the text of the decision was finally issued, both sides could find positive and negative elements. Perhaps this was a predictable result, since Moscow hoped to maintain good relations with both of the Anglophone maritime nations. Harold Edward Bergquist, for his part, asserts that Alexander was seeking to “exacerbate relations between England and the United States as well as earn American gratitude for his government.” Overall, he was successful in the latter goal according to Russian historian Nikolai N. Bolkhovitinov, who concludes that Russian-American relations benefited from the ruling.⁷⁴ The tsar was at least reasonably successful in the former, since his ruling guaranteed both an Anglo-American dispute over its meaning, as well as several years of contentious negotiations before the two nations could agree on the amount of compensation the British would pay.

As to which side came out better from the ruling, there is no consensus. The unanimous ratification of the agreement by the Senate in January 1823 certainly indicates a high level of American satisfaction with the award.⁷⁵ Charles Webster, furthermore, concludes that the tsar’s decision, “based on an interpretation of the text of the Treaty and not the principle involved, was given in favour of the United States.” More recently, James Oakes has asserted that the tsar “resoundingly” endorsed the British interpretation of the Treaty of Ghent. As a result, “the British read the czar’s decision as a vindication,” though the Americans “acted as though the emperor had ruled in their favor.”⁷⁶ According to Bergquist, the award “at first appears to be highly advantageous to the United States.” But he then goes on to quote Adams on the rather confusing nature of the decision’s wording, which “is expressed in language needing explanation more than the paragraph of the article which was in question.”⁷⁷ In fact, the ambiguity of the Russian ruling is its most significant feature, since this meant that Britain and the United States would have to work out the details of the settlement themselves. Britain owed the United States something as a result of the arbitration. What this meant, however, was yet to be determined. Again, this vagueness allowed St. Petersburg to avoid a breach with either party, which was almost certainly the goal.

The ambiguous result of the arbitration also led, predictably, to Anglo-American diplomatic discord. The amount of the award was, by bilateral agreement, to be set by a commission that was to convene after the ruling was made known. Yet the American and British commissioners were unsuccessful on agreeing on specifics, including the American demand for interest payments on the value of the slaves carried away. Thus, “the entire commission process broke down.”⁷⁸ Finally, separate negotiations in London—conducted on the American side by former Treasury secretary Albert Gallatin—resulted in an agreement that the British would pay a lump sum for the 3,601 slaves that the Americans claimed to have unjustly lost. The amount was set at a quarter of a million pounds, or $1,204,960 at the going exchange rate. The negotiators signed the agreement on November 13, 1826, thus bringing to a conclusion a diplomatic vexation, concerning one article of a single treaty, that had aggravated relations between London and Washington for almost a dozen years.⁷⁹

For the British the agreement cleared away what must have seemed more an annoyance than anything like a major foreign policy crisis. Foreign Secretary George Canning, who succeeded Castlereagh after the latter’s tragic suicide in 1822, certainly had bigger things to worry about: with the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence, Istanbul had to be more of a concern than Washington. It was well to be done with the matter. For the Americans, on the other hand, this was a significant foreign policy achievement. The United States had finally gained a measure of satisfaction from London on an issue that had been simmering since 1775. It had done so, moreover, by asserting the right of Americans to “property in man.” Despite the reference to “Negroes or other property” in the Paris Treaty, it is impossible to imagine a decades-long American diplomatic effort to gain restitution for any other form of misappropriated property—for, say, horses or furniture. Washington had asserted, on the world stage, the significance of bonded labor for the new nation and its citizens. It had also asserted that American foreign policy would be directed, when necessary, to securing the interests of slaveholders—a category to which many of America’s early diplomats belonged.

Yet even Pennsylvanian Benjamin Franklin demanded the return of American slaves, while Massachusetts’s Adams—no friend of slavery—was indefatigable in his pursuit of compensation for the evacuated slaves. Both American ideas of justice and the new nation’s international stature depended on compelling Britain to compensate slaveholders for their lost property; to abide by the American interpretation of the Paris and Ghent treaties. This policy imperative did not, however, place the republic on the side of the angels. The eminent diplomatic historian Samuel Flagg Bemis ends his treatment of the post-Ghent diplomacy in quite an interesting way, writing of “this whole affair of securing ‘justice’ for the slave-owners injured by loss of their human property.”⁸⁰ The quotation marks around “justice” are instructive. Perhaps the settlement was “just” in the sense that a treaty was, for practical purposes, interpreted according to American lights. But Hamilton, as Camillus, had a point about the odiousness of the whole business.

Spanish Florida and Negro Fort

American concern regarding escaped slaves was not, however, confined to the realm of US relations with Great Britain. Escaped slaves, and the threat that they posed, also played a significant role in Washington’s policy toward Spanish East Florida in the wake of the War of 1812.⁸¹ This was most starkly demonstrated by the destruction of the so-called Negro Fort at Prospect Bluff on the Apalachicola River. The fort had been evacuated by the British in 1815. But prior to departure, the British commander had provided the Black and Native American residents in the area with weapons with which to defend the fort. General Edward Nicolls was a convinced abolitionist who wanted to prevent American expansion into the Floridas. But the arming and provisioning of runaway slaves, maroons, and Choctaw so close to Georgia in fact proved an invitation to Americans, hungry for land and terrified of armed ex-slaves in the years after the Haitian Revolution.⁸²

Washington’s concern regarding escaped slaves is amply demonstrated by the documentary evidence. On March 15, 1816, Secretary of War William H. Crawford instructed Major General Andrew Jackson to bring this issue to the attention of the Spanish authorities in Pensacola. “Secret practices to inveigle negroes from the frontiers of Georgia, as well as from the Cherokee and Creek nations,” the secretary informed the general, “are still continued by the negroes and hostile Creeks. This is a state of things which cannot fail to produce much injury to the neighboring settlements, and excite irritations which may ultimately endanger the peace of the nation.… The principles of good neighbourhood, require the interference of the Spanish authority, to put an end to an evil of so serious a nature.” If the Spanish governor of Florida were to fail to take appropriate action, then “it will be incumbent on the executive to determine what course shall be adopted in relation to this banditti.” If the Madison administration determined “that the destruction of the fort does not require the sanction of the legislature, measures will promptly be taken for its reduction.”⁸³ American resolve to eradicate the threat posed by Negro Fort was not to be doubted. Jackson passed the word on to the Spanish governor in April, asserting that, among the Blacks at Prospect Bluff, there were “many” who had been “enticed away from their masters, citizens of the United States.” Spain was obliged “to destroy or remove from [America’s] frontier the banditti; put an end to an event of so serious a nature, and return to our citizens, and the friendly Indians inhabiting our territory, those negroes now in the said fort, and which have been stolen and enticed from them.” This was not a matter merely of the return of property but of national security. The American government, thus, would not allow the threat on its southern border to persist. The situation, Jackson noted, “will not be tolerated by our government, and if not put down by Spanish authority, will compel us in self-defense to destroy” the inhabitants of Negro Fort.⁸⁴

Jackson was even more vigorous in his instruction to Major General Edmund P. Gaines, who was tasked with leading the force that would attack the fort. Jackson wrote that he was convinced “that this fort has been established by some villains for the purpose of murder, rapine, and plunder, and that it ought to be blown up regardless of the ground it stands on,” Spanish sovereignty over Florida apparently being irrelevant in this case. If Gaines agreed with this assessment of Negro Fort, then he should “destroy it, and restore the stolen negroes and property to their rightful owners.”⁸⁵ Gaines must have agreed, since the destruction of the fort proceeded on July 27, 1816. During the Battle of Negro Fort, the overwhelming majority of the fort’s defenders were killed when hot shot from a US Navy gunboat set off an explosion in the fort’s magazine, creating a massive explosion. Captain Daniel Todd Patterson exalted to the secretary of the navy that the “service rendered by the destruction of this fort, and the band of negroes who held it, and the country in its vicinity, is of great and manifest importance to the United States” and especially to the bordering states. Now that Negro Fort was destroyed, slaves had “no longer a place to fly to, and will not be so liable to abscond.”⁸⁶ This “threat” to American security by the fort was no more.

Yet Florida nevertheless remained an asylum for fugitive slaves. The victory over Negro Fort had not changed this fact.⁸⁷ What would do so was—American hoped—the successful negotiation of the Adams-Onís, or Transcontinental, Treaty of 1819, by which Spain ceded the Floridas to the United States.⁸⁸ The Americans had multiple motivations for wanting to acquire the peninsula, one of which was to prevent the flight of fugitive slaves across an international border. As for Spain, “antagonizing the Anglo plantation society to the north was no longer a viable defensive strategy but rather a dangerous provocation of an awakening regional power.”⁸⁹ Adams was as committed to this issue as to that of recovering slaves with whom Britain had absconded; as Matthew J. Clavin notes, “to defend an emerging slave-expansion-at-all-costs policy, Adams applauded both the destruction of Negro Fort and the death of hundreds of its defenders.”⁹⁰ Whatever his later qualms about the institution of slavery, even the eminent New Englander was eager to serve its interests at this time.

Conclusion: Policy in the Interest of Slavery

These episodes demonstrate that American foreign policy had been, in a question involving slavery, oriented toward the interests of that institution and of those who profited from it. This would not be the last time. But it was not always easy for Americans to shape policies that served those interests. At least as regards the matter of compensation, it was clear from the time of the American Revolution that the goal was to gain satisfaction from London. The next in the wave of Atlantic revolutions would present the Americans with no such clarity. When slaves rose up in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, US policymakers were certain that the uprising posed a threat to the institution of bonded labor in America. They were equally certain that American foreign policy would, once again, need to be directed toward the protection of American slavery. But the issues surrounding this earthshaking event in their neighborhood were so complex that it was exceptionally difficult to determine how to accomplish this goal.