States Take the Lead

The Maryland State Colonization Society chose in 1833 to act independently of the national society and moved forward with the foundation of Maryland in Africa at Cape Palmas. It was soon followed by the colonization societies in New York and Pennsylvania. In the Deep South, Mississippi took the lead, and Louisiana soon followed suit.² The legislature of Maryland in fact resolved to remove all free Blacks from the state, and sheriffs were authorized to do so forcibly in the case of African Americans who refused to leave voluntarily.³ This went against the voluntary expatriation policy of the American Colonization Society (ACS). But in the aftermath of the slave rebellion in neighboring Virginia, the Marylanders were determined to act. Maryland in Africa was generally a success, and would merge with Liberia in April 1857.⁴ New York and Pennsylvania would jointly contribute the settlement at Bassa Cove, while Mississippi in Africa was established at Greenville.⁵ Eventually these settlements would also be absorbed into the expanding Liberia.

The growth of Liberia raised further issues for America’s foreign relations. As the colony expanded, so, too, did the potential for conflict with European imperial powers. The House Committee on Commerce released a significant report on February 28, 1843, that addressed this possibility (commonly known as the Kennedy Report). “It is vitally important,” the Committee asserted, “that the territory of the colonies should be enlarged, and that their jurisdiction should become clear and incontestable over the whole line between Cape Mount and Cape Palmas, a distance of about three hundred miles; and that, in case of hostilities between this and any European country, their rights as neutrals should be recognized and respected.” British merchants, the reports continued, were “claiming rights, independent of the Government of Liberia and Maryland, within their territorial limits.” The Royal Navy had been called upon by merchants to shield them from the revenue laws of Liberia, while the French had “sought to obtain a cession of lands within the limits of Liberia … and to which the people of that colony have a pre-emptive right.” This was all quite problematic; to the committee’s knowledge, “neither Great Britain nor any European Government has … claimed political jurisdiction from Cape Mount to Cape Palmas.” Since, furthermore, a “republican commonwealth” now inhabited that territory, “it is essential that they be not disturbed in the exercise of rights already acquired, or from extending their authority over the entire line of the coast … generally known as Liberia.”⁶

The committee had come to the conclusion that the subject of African colonization had “become sufficiently important to attract the attention of the people, in its connexion [sic] with the question of the political relations which these colonies are to hold with our Government.” In a striking line, the Kennedy Report asserted that it was the duty of the United States, “before an occasion of conflicting interest may arise, to take such steps toward the recognition of our appropriate relations to these communities as may hereafter secure them the protection of this Government, and to our citizens the advantages of commercial intercourse with them.”⁷ The implication of an extension of American protection to Liberia was obvious: it would be tantamount to declaring that Liberia was, in fact, an American colony.

As the committee saw it, this was not a problem. “The idea of an American colony is a new one,” the report granted. But it “is manifestly worthy of the highest consideration. The committee sees nothing in our Constitution to forbid it.” A colony in Africa would be analogous to the relationship that Washington had with various Native American tribes, the major difference being that Liberia “would require much less exercise of political jurisdiction, much less territorial supervision, than is presented in the case of these tribes.” Liberia would, instead, “require aid towards the enlargement of territory, occasional visitation and protection by our naval armaments, a guarantee, perhaps, to be secured to them by the influence of our Government, of the right of neutrality in the wars that may arise between European or American States.” With this said, the committee resolved that the secretary of state should submit a report to the next Congress on the “political relations proper to be adopted and maintained between this Government” and current and future African colonies.⁸

Such opinions emanating from official Washington proved confusing, and concerning, to other nations, which were left unclear as to the Tyler administration’s position on the relationship between Liberia and the United States. In August 1843 the British government inquired, through its minister in Washington, about this matter. His government, Sir Henry Fox told Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur, had “for some time past, been desirous of ascertaining, authentically, the nature and extent of the connexion [sic] subsisting between the American colony of Liberia, on the coast of Africa, and the Government of the United States.” “Differences” that arose between British merchants and the authorities of Liberia “render it very necessary, in order to avert for the future serious trouble and contention in that quarter, that her Majesty’s Government should be accurately informed what degree of official patronage and protection, if any, the United States Government extend to the colony of Liberia, how far, if at all, the United States Government recognize the colony of Liberia, as a national establishment; and consequently, how far, if at all, the United States Government hold themselves responsible toward foreign countries for the acts of the authorities of Liberia.”⁹ With numerous merchants on the West African coast and a colony at Sierra Leone, London needed to know the nature of the relationship between Liberia and the United States.

Upshur responded with an extended narrative of the founding and early years of the colony, emphasizing the philanthropic nature of the project. The upshot of this disquisition was that the United States did not claim Liberia as its colony. He then added that America, for its part, did not “undertake to settle and adjust differences which have arisen between British subjects and the authorities of Liberia.” Since the Liberians were “nearly powerless, they must rely, for the protection of their own rights, on the justice and sympathy of other powers.” This might have served as an answer to Fox’s inquiry. Yet Upshur continued, adding that the US government regarded Liberia “as occupying a peculiar position, and as possessing peculiar claims to the friendly consideration of all christian [sic] powers; that this Government will be, at all times, prepared to interpose its good offices to prevent any encroachment by the colony upon any just right of any nation; and that it would be very unwilling to see it despoiled of its territory rightfully acquired, or improperly restrained in the exercise of its necessary rights and powers as an independent settlement.”¹⁰ In this last paragraph, Upshur had managed to be both paternalistic and vague. He seemed, at the same time, to be claiming an American responsibility for oversight of Liberia’s external policy and for the policy of other nations toward Liberia. But the nature of this responsibility was left unclear. His note, nevertheless, appears to have answered British concerns, since London sent no request for clarification.

If Upshur’s note had been meant to quell conflict between the British and Liberians, however, it failed. The secretary’s wording had been too equivocal, it appears, to warn off London, which continued to disregard Liberian assertions of sovereignty over trade with territories claimed by Monrovia. In this context, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs sought again to clarify the responsibilities of Washington with regard to the Liberians. Their conclusions were more restrictive than Upshur’s had been: “The General Government, implicated by no legitimate State authority has nothing to do with [Liberia]; nor does the duty of protection, which the Government of the United States owes to its citizens everywhere, at all apply to the inhabitants of Liberia. They are not citizens of the United States; they exist and live under a government regularly organized, with all the powers and attributes of sovereignty, bearing politically the same relation to the United States as to Britain, and independent of both.”¹¹ The US government had created a diplomatic difficulty for itself, with which, in the 1840s, it was now wrestling. It wanted to disavow the responsibility of the colonial power. Yet because Liberia was a nation of former slaves, domestic political concerns prevented successive administrations from recognizing Liberia as an independent nation. It thus held an anomalous position in America’s foreign policy: founded by Americans, it was not an American colony; possessing all the rights of sovereignty, it was not a sovereign nation. It is little wonder that the British had sought clarification.

Advocates of colonization also sought clarity on the question of Liberia’s status. The ACS requested that the board of the Massachusetts Colonization Society provide their opinion on the sovereignty of Liberia. On January 9, 1845, the Massachusetts society responded that Liberia was, in fact, a sovereign state, with the power to enact necessary laws “and to perform all other acts implied in sovereignty.” The “dependence of a feeble state on foreign aid and counsel” was in no way “incompatible with its sovereignty.” Given this, the board resolved “that the Government of the United States should be requested as a powerful and friendly nation, and from a regard for the general interest of humanity to interpose its good offices for averting any such danger which may at any time threaten the Commonwealth of Liberia.”¹²

It was, however, an inopportune time to call for greater American commitment in Africa. President James K. Polk was most concerned with matters relating to the Western Hemisphere. Thus, in articulating the little-remembered Polk Corollary of 1845, he reemphasized the Monroe Doctrine, with its assertion that the United States had no interest in colonization outside its hemisphere, in regions of interest to European powers.¹³ This policy would seem to limit the scope of American involvement on the west coast of Africa. American ability to project power in that region was, in fact, reduced at this time with the withdrawal of ships from the Africa Squadron during the Mexican-American War. Furthermore, this came at a time when the British government formally informed Washington of its contempt for claims of Liberian sovereignty: it “could not accept the slightest assumption of any sovereign powers being present in a commercial experiment of a philanthropic society.”¹⁴ American policymakers could not, it would appear, have it both ways. Either Liberia was a sovereign entity or it was not.

Liberian Independence

Under these circumstances, the ACS decided that the time had come for Liberia to draft a constitution and to declare itself an independent nation. The United States “chose a temporizing course, and by declining to invest the colony of Liberia with the sovereignty of the United States, impelled it to assume a sovereignty of its own.”¹⁵ On July 5, 1847, a constitutional convention met in Monrovia, and drafted both a constitution and a declaration of independence. The new nation now found itself under significant pressure from Britain and then France to grant commercial concessions in exchange for recognition.¹⁶ Independence thus failed to solve Liberia’s international affairs dilemmas.

Chief among these dilemmas was now the failure of the United States to recognize the nascent republic. Slavery was, as with the failure to recognize Haiti, the determining factor in Washington’s decision. With slavery taking center stage in the American political debate after the Mexican-American War, it was impossible to imagine southerners establishing normal diplomatic relations with a nation governed by free Black emigrants and former slaves.¹⁷ The degree to which the successful functioning of such a state would undercut the narrative of Black inferiority was too much to contemplate. As with Haiti, recognition would have to wait until the Lincoln administration. In 1850, Ralph R. Gurley, the ACS secretary, submitted to the secretary of state a report on the state of Liberian-US relations. In it he argued strongly for American recognition of Liberia as an independent nation.¹⁸ But the Whig administration of Millard Fillmore proved no more receptive than had the Polk administration.

It was not until 1862 that the US government would extend diplomatic recognition to Liberia. By then the president was Abraham Lincoln, who had a record of supporting the cause of colonization. A controversial policy in the new Republican Party, colonization found a “public spokesman” in Lincoln by 1858. In that year Lincoln advocated for colonization in the first of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. “For many white Americans,” Eric Foner notes, “including Lincoln, colonization was part of a plan for ending slavery that represented a middle ground between abolitionist radicalism and the prospect of a United States existing forever half-slave and half-free.” Colonization was, Foner asserts, an option that might put slavery on the path to its “ultimate extinction,” of which Lincoln “had spoken but without any real explanation of how it would take place.”¹⁹ Lincoln’s interest in exploring the possibility of exporting America’s freed slaves nevertheless extended into his presidency, thus inducing the United States to engage in further engagement with the Atlantic world.

Continued Tensions over the Slave Trade

Meanwhile, the issue of slave trade suppression continued to bedevil the Anglophone maritime powers. The British government, though discouraged by the lack of progress with the Americans, was determined to continue with its efforts at eradicating the trade. Increasingly, its cousin across the Atlantic began to question its motives in doing so. John Quincy Adams had told Stratford Canning that a major objection to the right of search in time of peace was the proclivity of such a policy to bring “other changes” that might lead to “the dominion of the Sea, which may eventually … confound all distinction of time and circumstance, of Peace and War, and of Rights applicable to each State.”²⁰ The idea of British maritime domination of the Atlantic was a nightmare to Americans, who frequently asked themselves if London’s motivations in the anti-slave-trade crusade had more to do with commercial and imperial advantage than with a desire to deliver Africans from evil. Scholars have debated the same issue. Some historians have tended to conclude that economic reasons cannot explain Britain’s decision in the early 1800s to seek abolition of the trade. According to Kenneth Morgan, the argument that “Britain abolished its slave trade primarily for economic reasons cannot be sustained on the evidence available.” The British political class was, rather, “willing to make the economic sacrifice of abolishing the slave trade.”²¹

But if antislavery was not motivated primarily by a desire to expand market share and impose handicaps on potential competitors, it was not disconnected from questions of empire. In this the Americans had a point. As Richard Huzzey has perceptively noted, “foreign and colonial anti-slavery policies were part of a global assertion of imperial power, with British policies flexible, responsive and opportunistic with different peoples in different circumstances.” Huzzey thus concludes that “it is useful to see a British world system of anti-slavery, its ‘gravitational field’ fluctuating in power depending on the terrain, atmosphere, and individuals involved.”²² American policy toward slave trade suppression can thus be usefully viewed as an attempt to remain outside of this gravitational field to the greatest extent possible while doing what could be done to suppress the trade with this imperative in the forefront. John Quincy Adams had once spoken of the American desire not to “come in as a cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war.” While he said this in a different context, the principle remained the same: the United States could not allow itself to be sucked into the British foreign policy and imperial system, and thus to take a subservient role in determining policies that were in Britain’s interest. James Monroe was, Adams wrote, “averse to any course which should have the appearance of taking a position subordinate to that of Great Britain.”²³ This aversion continued after the Monroe presidency, as did American perceptions that American subordination was indeed part of the British plan.

Thus Washington’s policy of maximum independence continued. This presented the problem that the British had, in fact, hit upon the only scheme that was likely to successfully end the trade, but they needed American cooperation to make it work. Yet “despite the fact that only the consent of the United States was necessary to complete the international cordon around the slave trade, American opinion persisted in attributing British efforts to ulterior motives.”²⁴ Anglo-American diplomacy on the suppression of the trade went into the doldrums after the failure of the slave trade convention, and the British continued with their attempt to construct a system of treaties that would allow for more effective suppression. But without American participation—defined as accepting the right of mutual search—the “cordon” could not be completed. In 1831 Mercer tried again to move the American administration, now headed by President Andrew Jackson, to negotiate with the maritime powers of the Atlantic for the suppression of the trade. He introduced a resolution calling on the president to begin such negotiations as “he may deem expedient for the effectual Abolition of the African Slave-trade, and its ultimate denunciation as Piracy under the Law of Nations, by consent of the civilized world.” In part, the timing of the resolution’s introduction was determined by the perception that France might be thereby influenced to pursue “measures more effectual than those which they have hitherto been disposed to adopt for the accomplishment of that object.” Yet Charles R. Vaughn, the British minister to Washington, saw no great hope for the resumption of Anglo-American discussions on the topic, noting, “I have not perceived the slightest inclination, in 2 successive Administrations, to renew the Negotiations.”²⁵

Yet the British minister would, in fact, try again in two years. The impetus this time was significant progress in anti-slave-trade diplomacy with France. In November 1831 and March 1833, London and Paris concluded conventions on trade suppression by which, among other matters, the two powers granted to each other the right of search. Both now sought to gain American accession to the conventions by means of a joint appeal to Washington. In August 1833, therefore, Vaughn approached Secretary of State Louis McLane with a proposal that the Jackson administration join in the Anglo-French arrangement. McLane put Vaughn off, saying that he would need to sound out Congress on its opinions. The delay continued, and Vaughn and his French counterpart, Louis Barbe Charles Sérurier, decided in December that the time had come to enjoin a response from the administration. “I think it is time to press this Government to a decision,” Vaughn wrote Lord Palmerston in December.²⁶

The time was hardly ripe. Southern objections to British anti-slave-trade crusading were growing. In fact, Southerners “were highly sensitive to the repercussions of any attack, no matter how remote, on slavery; and a new factor had entered into the consideration of American diplomacy.” The opposition to granting the right of search continued, but “the hostility of the South now constituted a more intractable factor.” Southerners could not help but see in British attacks on the trade the hidden goal of abolition of slavery itself. Hugh G. Soulsby cites historian of the South William A. Dunning, who noted the “feeling in the South that the war on the slave trade was too closely associated with abolitionism to be wholly free from peril to the institutions of the section.”²⁷

McLane, a native of the border state Delaware, expressed precisely this problem in a conversation with Vaughn, telling him “of the apprehension of aggravating the excited feelings of the Southern States, and that, at this time, the endeavours to get up Anti-Slavery Societies have roused the jealousy of all the Slave-holders throughout the Union, about the General Government touching in any shape the question of the Slave Trade, notwithstanding the accession to the Conventions has nothing to do with Slavery, as it exists in the States.”

Vaughn warned McLane “that a subserviency of the Government to the feelings of their Slave-holders, by refusing to accede to the Conventions, will do infinite mischief to their national character in Europe.”²⁸ Vaughn thus wrote McLane in December to ask for an answer on American accession to the conventions. He expressed the “confident expectation” that, if the United States should join the Anglo-French arrangement, the other maritime states would also accede. In appealing to the secretary of state, Vaughn reminded him of the congressional resolutions of 1821 and 1822, thus recalling a time when the American legislature acknowledged that only the right of search could end the trade for good.²⁹

McLane’s polite but firm response reflected the Jackson administration’s resolve to continue Washington’s unilateralist policy toward suppression. “In the opinion of the President,” he wrote Vaughn, “these Conventions are substantially liable to the objections which, on former occasions, have been deemed insuperable.” And if that was not sufficient, the added provision that the right of search should be extended to America’s coasts “would have led him, under any circumstances, altogether to decline it.”³⁰ Palmerston was, however, “unwilling to abandon hope” in the face of McLane’s note. After all, even absent the right of search off the coasts of the United States, a joint agreement was worth having. The British could still police the coast of Africa and the West Indies, thus forcing would-be slavers to “run the gauntlet through the cruizers of almost all the Naval Powers of Christendom, over some thousand miles of sea, unprotected by any Flag by which they might attempt to cover their iniquity.” The last point was key: the enemies of the trade needed an agreement with the United States in order to deny the slavers the protection of the American flag. Palmerston thus instructed Vaughn once again to propose accession to the Jackson administration, this time “omitting the stipulation for the extension of the right of search to the Coasts of the United States.”³¹ With this uncharacteristic show of flexibility, Palmerston hoped to seal the deal.

He was to be disappointed yet again. The new US secretary of state, Georgia’s John Forsyth, responded to Vaughn on October 4. It appeared, he said, that neither the British nor the French government had “comprehended the full force and effect of the Note of Mr. McLane.” McLane’s answer was meant to express the president’s determination “not to accede to any Convention liable to the objections brought into view.” He now raised the matter of the tribunals. The geography of these was simply impossible, according to Forsyth: “Beyond this Continent, The United States neither have, nor expect, nor desire to have, territory or jurisdiction.” Thus, Americans accused of slaving would, when captured, have to be sent all the way back to the United States for trial. This was untenable: “Acquitted individuals might be compensated, yet the commercial enterprise of their Country be obstructed or paralyzed while the tribunals were deciding their innocence or guilt.” Now that Palmerston had compromised on one issue, the Americans raised another. Forsyth could not have been clearer that this was, from the US perspective, the end of the discussion. “The Undersigned,” he added, “does not intend to invite a discussion of the subject.” The conversation was over, since the Jackson administration had “definitively” decided “not to make The United States a party to any Convention on the subject of the Slave Trade.”³²

The Cuban Slave Trade

The discussion was over, but the problem was not resolved. The slave trade to Cuba was picking up considerably, and “American influence, in particular, helped in the continual slave trade” to that island.³³ Cuba had been a problem for British suppression efforts, even without American involvement. London had sought to bring Spain—as well as Portugal—into its Atlantic network of slave suppression treaties. Madrid, unlike the recalcitrant Lisbon, signed a suppression treaty with Britain in 1817, but “tried to placate British demands while it procrastinated as long as possible.” The loss of most of its American empire made Spain even more dependent upon the Cuban sugar industry for funds coming into its coffers. Hence, Madrid was “loath to abandon the slave trade. It was thus able to play a constant game of duplicity, which enabled it to maintain the trade until the late 1860s.”³⁴ For their part, Spaniards detected a like hypocrisy on the part of London. The British, as Bishop Don Félix Varela noted, were the major slave traders for much of the history of the odious commerce in Africans. Yet now, with so much blood on its hands, Britain preached “leniency, with the smoking sword in its hand, and bloodstained clothing; Englishmen, the word philanthropy loses its value on your lips … you are poor apostles of humanity.”³⁵

This distrust was further exacerbated, and Spanish anxieties were increased, when Palmerston named David Turnbull as the new British consul in Havana. Turnbull, a committed abolitionist, arrived in Cuba in early November 1840. His antislavery writings may in fact have resulted in his appointment.³⁶ Such was the concern in Cuba that Captain General Miguel Tacón wrote his government to say that Turnbull should be declared persona non grata. Palmerston “brusquely rejected” the call for a different candidate when it was forwarded by Madrid’s minister in London, and the consul made his arrival. Tacón, however, refused to recognize Turnbull.³⁷ Turnbull’s crusade against slavery in Cuba attracted the attention of American southerners, who “raised an outcry for United States action” against him and the new captain general, Gerónimo Valdéz—the latter having taken the unexpected step of actually seeking to enforce the anti-slave-trade agreements.³⁸

Not all southerners were equally panicked about the British attempt to end slavery in Cuba. The American consul in Havana, South Carolinian Robert Blair Campbell, “was less impressed by the threat to Cuba’s slaveholders,” and thought that the Spanish Army could deal with any slave revolt.³⁹ Spaniards in Cuba were, however, less certain of this capacity. The ayuntamiento, or town council, of Havana argued in 1841 that if Madrid negotiated an agreement with Britain allowing the latter to “decide the status of illegally imported slaves, then rebellion would be likely and the island would be irretrievably lost to the mother country.”⁴⁰ The aggressive British attempt to end the slave trade, and indeed slavery, in Cuba also led Spaniards to note that London was not taking the same approach to the United States, which also was a slaveholding nation.⁴¹

Yet efforts to get the Americans out of the slave trade were, in fact, a British priority—and especially, in the 1830s and 1840s, the slave trade with Cuba. Palmerston was particularly, and vocally, concerned with the use of US-flagged ships in the trade to the island. In December 1836 Palmerston was already writing to the US consul in London, Andrew Stevenson, to complain of “alleged employment of vessels under the Flag of the Union to assist Spanish subjects in carrying on the Slave Trade.” Stevenson promptly and properly replied that he would pass this note on to the American government, which would “omit nothing which may be proper to be done” to prevent such use of the nation’s flag.⁴² The issue was not, however, to be so easily resolved. The American consul in Havana was Virginian Nicholas P. Trist, a man “lukewarm in his opposition to the slave trade” who “nursed a deep resentment of British power in general and British abolitionism in particular.” Trist arrived in Havana in 1833 and proved to be a constant thorn in the side of the British, who accused him of issuing papers to slavers so that they could sail under the American flag. Trist also served for over a year as consul for Portugal, and, “in that capacity, it was said, cleared many slave ships for the African coast.”⁴³

This was all too much for Palmerston, who wrote to the British minister in Washington, Sir Henry Fox, in April 1839 to ask him to make the secretary of state aware of Trist’s actions. As Palmerston put it inimitably to Fox, “You will suggest for the consideration of that minister, whether some inconvenience may not arise from the circumstance that The United States’ Consul in a port which is a great slave-mart, is also Consul for the Power, whose flag is most notoriously and extensively employed to protect Slave Trade undertakings.”⁴⁴ Trist, however, continued in his position. In July, Palmerston was complaining to Fox that “the American Consul at the Havana appears … to have lent his seal and signature to attest untruths, and to sanction irregularities, intended to cover undertakings in Slave Trade.” Once again, the prime minister called on Fox to bring this to Forsyth’s attention, so that, in atypical understatement, “the American Consul at the Havana may be directed to take more care in the future not to attest documents which may be meant to cover the traffic in slaves.”⁴⁵ But despite complaints from both Britons and Americans, as well as a thorough investigation of his dealings by the administration of President Martin Van Buren, Trist was able to remain in place until removed in 1841 with the change of parties in Washington.⁴⁶

Search and “Visit”

Nor, unsurprisingly, was there progress to be made on the issue of the right of search. Fox raised the issue for reconsideration with Secretary of State Forsyth in late October 1839. Given, he said, the “regular, rapid, and frightful” expansion of the trade under the American flag since the matter had last been discussed, the British government thought the time was right to look at this issue again. If the Americans were still unwilling to accede, then they were asked “to devise some other effectual method” for ending the “guilty and sinful traffic.”⁴⁷ The American response to British requests to reopen discussion of the right of search could not have been more categorical. Stevenson wrote Palmerston in February 1840 that the United States could “never acquiesce” on this subject, adding “that her flag is to be the safeguard of all who sail under it, either in peace or in war.” Washington would make no exception for the suppression of the slave trade, nor for the fulfillment of treaties to which it was not a party.⁴⁸ No further negotiation on this matter was called for. Forsyth reemphasized this point in a lengthy letter to Fox on February 12, noting that President Van Buren “sees with regret … that Her Britannic Majesty’s Government continues to think important, that The United States should become a party to a Convention yielding the mutual right of search to the armed vessels of each other” in the pursuit of slavers.⁴⁹

American noncompliance with the British system of slave trade suppression continued to clash with London’s—and especially Palmerston’s—determination to wipe out the trade by means of interlocking right of search conventions. The British thus introduced an innovation that they hoped would obviate the need for a right of search agreement with the United States. The idea was that of the “right of visit,” by which the British claimed the right to “visit,” rather than “search,” a ship in order to check its papers and determine if it was truly an American vessel. The Americans utterly rejected the distinction, and hence any steps taken by Britain to visit US-flagged ships were bound to cause controversy between the two nations. It was indeed “unfortunate that the dispute over the right of visit should have become acute at a time when the relations between the two countries were strained almost to the breaking point.” Issues relating to the Maine boundary, the Oregon Territory, and Texas “now threatened to produce war.”⁵⁰

In this context, cases of British “visits” of American ships only served to exacerbate relations. In November 1840 Stevenson was instructed to lodge a protest with Palmerston concerning British “unwarrantable search, detention, and ill-usage of an American vessel and her crew, on the coast of Africa.” In the course of the complaint, the minister expressed “the painful regret which the Government of The United States feels” at the fact that previous remonstrances on the issue “should have proved unavailing in preventing the repetition of such abuses, as those which have so repeatedly been made the subject of complaint against Her Majesty’s naval officers.” Such wrongs “cannot longer be permitted by the Government of the United States.” And although Palmerston responded that the British were investigating the incident in question, the issue would continue to rankle.⁵¹ This dynamic of British actions and American reactions could not continue indefinitely.

The basis of a solution had been attempted in March 1840 by two naval officers—one American, one British—on station in Africa. Commander William Tucker of HMS Wolverine at that time reached an agreement with Lieutenant John S. Paine of USS Grampus regarding the right of search. The Tucker-Paine Agreement provided that ships of either country could “detain all vessels under American colours, found to be fully equipped for, and engaged in, the Slave Trade; that, if proved to be American property, they shall be handed over to the U.S. Schooner Grampus, or any other American cruiser, and that, if proved to be Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian or English property, to any of Her Britannic Majesty’s cruisers employed in the West Coast of Africa for the suppression of the Slave Trade.” Upon learning of the Tucker-Paine Agreement, the Van Buren administration declared it void and beyond Paine’s authority (ultra vires) even to negotiate.⁵² The agreement would return to the table under the following administration, to help ease the logjam. But first, issues came to a head between London and Washington.

The five major powers of Europe agreed to a suppression treaty in December 1841. The terms of the agreement stated that the slave trade would be treated as a form of piracy and that the contracting parties would be granted a mutual right of search. The treaty was, in a sense, superfluous: Britain and France had already negotiated a suppression treaty, while Austria, Prussia, and Russia were not involved in the trade or its suppression. The point of the five-power treaty thus seems to have had “only an emblematic purpose—except, perhaps, as the first step in a larger project.”⁵³ And this “larger project” was precisely what concerned the Americans, since it could only mean that the British were seeking to establish an alliance of nations that would put diplomatic pressure on the United States to join the system that London led. Unwilling to get roped into such a multilateral agreement—and totally opposed to granting the right of search in peacetime—the Americans might find themselves in a difficult position.

One American who was determined to avoid such a diplomatic trap was Lewis Cass, America’s minister in Paris since 1836. Cass was a veteran of the War of 1812 and former territorial governor of Michigan. He was also a devout Anglophobe who was “readier to tolerate the abuse of the American flag in the slave trade than to concede anything to Great Britain,” convinced as he was that “British activity against the slave trade was … merely a screen for the advancement of maritime power.”⁵⁴ Cass took it upon himself to use his diplomatic post as a war room in his struggle against the Quintuple Treaty and, thus, against the extension of the right of search. Not content to press official Paris to reject the treaty, he put pen to paper and authored a lengthy pamphlet on the subject under the pseudonym An American. Published in Paris in January 1842, his pamphlet advanced little that was new, but much that was hostile to London. Denying that the connection of the right of search to the slave trade was more than “incidental,” he declared of Britain, “Naval superiority she has acquired and naval supremacy she seeks.” Granting the right of search would give the British flag “virtual supremacy of the seas.” Echoing John Quincy Adams, Cass asserted that “it is not African slavery, the United-States wish to encourage. It is … American slavery, the slavery of American sailors, they seek to prevent.” British ships stationed off the African coast, and armed with the right of search, would “seriously interrupt the trade of other nations.” Thus dismissing the proclaimed reason for which the British were seeking the right to search ships of other nations, Cass added a disquisition on the sad history of impressment to round out the case. He concluded that the United States, “tho she may be crushed … will not be dishonored.” The fact that the pamphlet was reprinted in the United States under Cass’s name left no doubt that its author was, indeed, the American minister in Paris.⁵⁵

The British response came in the form of a small book, written under the pseudonym An Englishman. The Englishman in question, Sir William Gore Ouseley, was unimpressed with Cass’s vehement argumentation. Hoping to “calm his evidently morbid nationality,” Ouseley made the case that it was unlikely indeed that impressment would ever be used again, “even in time of war.” After all, the right of search had been in place for years with the French and Germans, and yet not one sailor had been taken by the nefarious practice. He thus concluded that there could be no reason to oppose the mutual right of search “unless the covert reason be the opposition of the slave-holding interests.”⁵⁶

Here Ouseley had a point. Southerners began at this point to seriously impugn the motives behind the British antislavery crusade. Most notable among these was the “self-important Kentuckian” Duff Green. Green arrived in Europe in 1841 as President John Tyler’s “personal agent,” and quickly began to give support to Cass in his efforts. Green published numerous pieces in the French newspapers, and maintained, as well, a correspondence on the issue. His case, as Matthew Karp summarizes, was that Britain was using the anti-slave-trade cause as a screen behind which to develop a dominant position in the world economy: “British antislavery was, in a real sense, British imperialism.” Karp in fact concludes that Green’s argument came to “dominate proslavery political discourse.”⁵⁷ Britain had ulterior motives behind its abolitionist moralism, and its actions threatened American interests.

While modern-day scholars do not share Green’s desire to defend the institution of slavery, they do grant that British antislavery efforts were linked with imperial and commercial ambitions. It was not just slaveholding Americans who perceived this. The French, as Keith Hamilton and Farida Shaikh observe, were increasingly convinced by the 1840s that “the British were resorting to measures aimed at suppression to advance their colonial and commercial interests.” Andrew Lambert adds that “the states that resisted British demands did so for powerful reasons. All nations believed that behind the smokescreen of moral fervor and righteous indignation the British were serving their own commercial ends.”⁵⁸ It could come as no surprise, then, that the Americans were unwilling to join in a British-led international system for suppression that would have—to the extent that it was successful—the result of increasing British power in the Atlantic world.

Given this complex of motivations, however, London remained determined to stamp out the trade. And thus a crisis was brewing with the United States. The Royal Navy continued to stop and “visit” American-flagged ships after the repeated failure to get American accession to a right of search agreement. In September 1841 Stevenson wrote from London to Secretary of State Daniel Webster, “Having failed in getting the American Government to unite in yielding the qualified right of Search, this Government are now disposed to exercise it under another, and more offensive form.” The British government’s actions seemed, to Stevenson, to be “influenced in a great measure no doubt, by the abolitionist feeling which is deep and strong here, and the mistaken opinions so generally entertained by the British public, as to the extent and influence of the same feelings, in the United States.”⁵⁹

The Webster-Ashburton Treaty and the Africa Squadron

Resolving the outstanding issues between Great Britain and the United States had become imperative. The British foreign secretary, Lord Aberdeen, sent his special emissary, Lord Ashburton, to Washington to try his hand at gaining a diplomatic solution to the set of problems, including the matter of the slave trade. Arriving in the United States in early April 1842, Ashburton began negotiations with Webster on the vexatious issues that divided the two. Ashburton knew that “any efficient right of search would, however, with difficulty be conceded.” He therefore asked his American interlocutors what they would suggest “and whether America could remain in the position of refusing all remedy against crimes which they had been the most vehement to denounce, and of the existence of which they could not doubt.” Webster’s solution to the problem was based on the previously abjured Tucker-Paine Agreement. It was decided that the United States would deploy a force of eighty guns on the African coast and that, to the extent practicable, Royal Navy and US Navy ships would hunt in pairs. This would deny the cover of the American flag to slavers. Thus, article 8 of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty (officially the Treaty of Washington) did not address the two most troublesome issues—to wit, America’s unwillingness to grant the right of search and Britain’s refusal to renounce impressment. But in the agreement on joint cruising, both sides found an acceptable, and potentially workable, solution to these issues that had confounded previous diplomacy. Ashburton was led to conclude that “if this arrangement can be brought into execution by treaty, I shall consider it to be the very best fruit of this mission.” He added with satisfaction that Paine was to be brought in to consult on the best means of execution of the plan.⁶⁰

The Webster-Ashburton Treaty was signed on August 10, 1842. Despite significant opposition in the Senate by James Buchanan of Pennsylvania and Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, the treaty was ratified on August 20. Benton, for his part, could see no point in sending an American naval squadron to the dangerous and miasmic coast of Africa “unless indeed, in excessive love of the blacks, it is deemed meritorious to destroy the whites.”⁶¹ Cass had, by this time, reappeared on the scene. His ambition for the presidency led the minister in Paris to engage in what came to be known as a war of words with Webster. Writing the secretary of state in October, Cass expressed, at some length, regret that British renunciation of the right of search had not preceded the treaty. He went on to critique the Treaty of Washington largely on these grounds, for “the mutual rights of the parties are … wholly untouched; their pretentions exist in full force; and what they could do prior to this arrangement they may now do.” Webster’s response to Cass’s claims was forceful: “Inasmuch as the treaty gives no color or pretext whatever to any right of searching our ships, a declaration against such a right would have been no more suitable to this treaty than a declaration against the right of sacking our towns in time of peace, or any other outrage.”⁶² Cass’s letters to the secretary read like “scare-mongering, electioneering broadsides.”⁶³ Yet Webster certainly got the better of the argument. In fact, Britain did not seek to exercise the right of visit on American ships in the first decade and a half after the coming into force of the Treaty of Washington.⁶⁴

This is not to say that the contracting parties achieved the objective of article 8 after 1842. The literature on the US Africa Squadron in the 1840s and 1850s is replete with examples of the failure of the squadron to execute its prescribed charge. Donald L. Canney concludes pithily that “the squadron was not a success,” and finds “inexcusable” the fact that the naval force averaged one capture every six months over the course of its cruises.⁶⁵ By the summer of 1844, the British minister in Washington, Richard Pakenham, was providing to Secretary of State John Calhoun documentation on the participation of American vessels in the Brazilian slave trade. The British government at this time expressed the hope that “the Government of The United States will be disposed to adopt decided measures to put a stop to the abuses which have thus been brought to their knowledge, and which tend so materially to defeat the combined efforts of the 2 Governments for the prevention of the trade in slaves.”⁶⁶ Having negotiated with the British a system for the more effective suppression of the trade, the Americans seemed in no great rush to implement it.

Looking at the evidence, it would be incorrect to blame the officers of the Africa Squadron themselves for the unit’s shortcomings. Despite rumors to the contrary, southern officers were at least as efficient in making captures as their northern counterparts. The blame for the lackluster performance of the US Navy in suppressing the trade thus must “fall higher up than the squadron commanders.”⁶⁷ From early on in its history, the squadron was hampered by a lack of zeal for suppression at the top ranks of the federal government. Abel P. Upshur, the navy secretary at the time article 8 of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty was to be implemented, was a “proslavery radical of the Calhoun stamp.” Soon to be Webster’s replacement at the Department of State, Upshur made it clear to the Africa Squadron’s commander that suppression was only a secondary duty and that protection of American commerce was to be its primary function. Even for this function, the flotilla assembled by Upshur was meager, amounting to only four ships to police the extensive West African littoral. As Don E. Fehrenbacher forthrightly puts it, the American policy on slave trade suppression was, at this time, “essentially gestural, aimed primarily at screening American commerce from British interference.”⁶⁸

Brazil and Cuba

At a time when the Brazilian slave trade was booming, the British were understandably frustrated with American participation in the commerce, as well as with the less-than-eager policy direction emanating from Washington. In May 1847 Palmerston—back in the foreign office since the previous July—was calling the attention of the administration of President James K. Polk to the flourishing Brazilian trade in slaves. British estimates had forty-two thousand slaves entering the Empire of Brazil in 1846 alone. As Palmerston observed, the trade was “openly carried on without any attempt at hindrance on the part of the authorities.” Soon the foreign secretary was to speak even more bluntly on the matter of American participation in slaving. In June he drew Pakenham’s attention to “the extensive use which is made of The United States’ flag, and to the frequent employment of United States’ vessels, for purposes connected with the Slave Trade.” Palmerston found no blame in the American naval officers, but, as has been noted, placed the blame for this situation squarely on the administration, since it was “clear that the evil complained of can only be remedied by some more active measures of prevention on the part of The United States’ Government.” He thus instructed Pakenham, yet again, to call the matter to the attention of the Polk administration.⁶⁹

The administration was hardly opposed to fighting the trade to Brazil. Despite the strong proslavery predilections of the American minister to Brazil, Henry A. Wise, he proved an exceptionally vigorous campaigner against the slave trade of that nation. The Virginian in fact “distinguished himself for his tireless battle against the ongoing Atlantic slave trade and, even more, his outrage at American participation in the illegal traffic.” Karp finds no contradiction in this behavior, seeing instead an ideological consistency. The desire to maintain the institution of slavery in Brazil meant working against British abolitionist intervention. This, in turn, required an end to the Brazilian slave trade, which was found to be so provocative in London: “To protect African slavery inside Brazil, the African slave trade had to be eliminated.” By extension, preservation of the institution in Brazil made America’s “peculiar institution” safer in the minds of its southern defenders, because it lessened the chances of British use of the trade as a wedge into abolition of slavery itself in the Western Hemisphere. As Karp observes, “The slave trade had to die, Wise insisted, so that domestic slavery could live.”⁷⁰ It is no surprise that his efforts, as he perceived it, made him a pariah to Brazilian officials; or, as he put it, “obnoxious to this Govt.”⁷¹

Still, Wise’s record of action against the slave trade was not to be questioned. In June 1847 Secretary of State Buchanan told the secretary of the British mission in Washington that “it was quite impossible that any one could have carried out the spirit of [Buchanan’s] instruction with greater zeal and perseverance than Mr. Wise had done; his remonstrances with the Brazilian Government had been unceasing; and that, with regard to the employment of American shipping in the conveyance of slaves to Brazil, Mr. Wise had gone to the very verge of what ‘the laws of The United States would sanction, in his endeavours to prevent such employment, and to defeat the various subterfuges resorted to in order to secure it by the slave-dealers in Brazil.’ ”⁷² Wise was unsuccessful in ending American participation in the trade, which continued in Brazil. But Brazil’s domestic slave system would, in fact, outlast that of the United States by more than two decades. Wise and those who sent him could at least take solace in this.

The British would continue to protest to the Polk administration—and to the subsequent administrations of Presidents Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore—about the abuse of the American flag in the trade to Brazil. But this was a waning issue. The Brazilian government began to enforce anti-slave-trade laws once the nation, by the end of the 1840s, had imported as many slaves as its economy required. Now Brazilian policy shifted “from connivance to vigorous enforcement.” The result was that anti-slave-trade efforts came, from this point on, to focus once again on Cuba.⁷³ In May 1851 the British ambassador in Madrid was able—presumably with some degree of optimism—to tell the Spanish government that Britain hoped that the Brazilian example “may be followed and with corresponding success in regulating the slave trade in Cuba and Puerto Rico.”⁷⁴ It was not to be. In fact, the slave trade to Cuba underwent a resurgence in the 1850s.⁷⁵

At the same time as the trade to Cuba was increasing, proslavery forces in the United States were making a play to acquire the island, by one means or another. The confluence of these two developments put London in a quandary. Maintaining the status quo in the Caribbean meant coming to the aid of Spain. Yet the government had no choice but to continue the pressure on Spain to live up to its treaty obligations with regard to suppression. Fortunately for successive governments in London, the Spaniards were also feeling the American pressure. Both nations were “moved to make concessions, and … the conciliating factor was a mutual fear of the United States.” The Spanish government thus hit upon a “bold new course of action calculated to please allies and confound enemies.” The plan included a slave registry, and the liberation of all slaves not on the registry by a set date. Thus, without abolishing slavery, Spain could “put an end to future purchases of contraband slaves.” Britain would be placated, and its incentive for intervention in Cuba would, at the same time, be removed.⁷⁶

While Anglo-Spanish relations were entering a period of rapprochement, the same cannot be said of Anglo-American diplomacy. The British expressed considerable frustration with the continued use of the American flag to cover the slave trade. London now found itself in quite the predicament: As Soulsby observes, “The position of the British government was indeed embarrassing, for while its cruisers succeeded in capturing many slavers whose right to American colors and papers was proved to be groundless, every mistake made provided an occasion for recrimination on the part of the United States.”⁷⁷ Yet again, the British found themselves protesting the lack of American diligence in ensuring the honor of their own flag. The Earl of Clarendon, foreign secretary from February 1853 to February 1858, wrote, clearly in frustration, of the American flag being “used with impunity to cover the nefarious transactions of the slave-traders.”⁷⁸ The British minister to Washington, Lord Napier, repeatedly brought the matter to the attention of Secretary of State Cass. “The demand for slaves in the Cuban market,” he informed the secretary in December 1857, “is supplied by vessels constructed, purchased, and often possessed and fitted out in the ports of The United States.” The number of such ships, he added, was “considerable and increasing.”⁷⁹

Cass’s defense of the Buchanan administration’s actions in this regard was unconvincing. As seen earlier, Cass’s responses to the British could be “lengthy and disputatious” without ever addressing the situation “as frequently presented to him by the British Ministers.”⁸⁰ In a long letter to the American minister in London written in February 1859, Cass laid out his position on the issue. From his perspective, the slave trade could be “annihilated” through the closure of the Cuban market. And Spanish power on the island was sufficient to achieve this end, “if seriously desired by the Spanish Government.” As to Napier’s request that the US government apply diplomatic pressure on Madrid by making the “necessary representations and remonstrances to the Government of Spain,” Cass had no objection. The administration would do so, however, “whenever there may be reason to believe that the expression of their views by The United States would produce any favourable effect upon the action of the Spanish Government.” But the British held more leverage with Madrid than did the Americans. Thus, their intervention would have “much more probability of success than could be anticipated from the representations of The United States.” Once again, Cass rejected any right of search that did not emanate from belligerent claims. In any event, the value of right of visit “has been greatly overrated.” Granting that all “civilized” nations had an obligation “to provide for the suppression of crimes within their jurisdiction,” he nevertheless added that “a nation fully meets its responsibility when it fairly adapts its measures to the circumstances in which it is placed, and of these it must necessarily be the judge.” The United States would “sternly reject” surrendering its police power to another maritime nation, even if this meant “being accused of refusing to co-operate in the effort to annihilate” the trade. Lest any of this insight be lost, Minister George M. Dallas was instructed to read the dispatch to the foreign secretary.⁸¹ In all of Cass’s verbiage, there was precious little that London could take as constructively addressing the question of how to suppress slave trade in the future.

Yet the Buchanan administration’s policy toward suppression was not all obstructionism, even if it continued to be unilateralist. In fact, Buchanan “authorized a naval effort that proved to be the strongest attack on the slave trade ever launched by any administration.” Fehrenbacher attributes this change to a desire to “vindicate American motives in the face of British criticism,” and also, possibly, to the growing domestic troubles in the United States: the president was seeking to distance himself from proslavery extremists.⁸² By the end of April 1859 the British minister to the United States, Lord Lyons, was reporting to the foreign secretary that Cass had promised two naval steamships for the Africa Squadron and three to Cuban waters. The vessels were dispatched none too early, from the perspective of the new foreign minister, Lord John Russell, who wished Lyons to make Cass aware of the extent of the problem: “No representations made to the Spanish Government are of any avail to check the corruption and venality which prevail among their magistrates and agents, high and low, in Cuba.”⁸³

The British were made privy to the instructions issued by Secretary of the Navy Isaac Toucey to Africa Squadron commander William Inman. From these the British government learned that American naval ships were to “as far as possible, cruize in company” with British vessels “so that each might be in a condition to prevent abuse of the flag of its own country.” But this step in the right direction came with a caveat, for although the administration sincerely desired an end to the African slave trade, “they do not regard the success of their efforts as their paramount interest nor as their particular duty. They are not prepared to sacrifice to it any of their rights as an independent nation, nor will the object in view justify the exposure of their own people to the injurious and vexatious interruptions in the prosecution of their lawful pursuits. Great caution is to be observed on this point.”⁸⁴ Despite the reservations, the Buchanan offensive against the trade had significant success. Seizures of slavers rose dramatically by the end of Buchanan’s term, from one a year on average to fifteen in 1860.⁸⁵

Buchanan’s willingness to work multilaterally to end the trade was, nevertheless, severely limited, as Russell found when he proposed that the Americans join with the British and other powers in London for discussions “to consider what measures should be taken to check the increase of the Slave Trade.”⁸⁶ In April 1860 Cass issued a firm rejection of Russell’s proposal. As he wrote Lyons, “Under any circumstances, I cannot perceive that any practical advantage would result from the proposed assemblage in London of the Diplomatic Representatives of the Powers enumerated. Besides, it is the policy of The United States to avoid participation in councils or conferences of this nature, and the President thinks it would be inexpedient upon the present occasion to depart from this policy.”⁸⁷ Despite making a serious effort to interdict slavers, the Americans would continue to seek unilateral solutions to what was, in fact, an international problem.

The End of American Unilateralism

It would be left to the Republican administration of Abraham Lincoln to finally seek a solution to the problem in its multilateral context. On March 22, 1862, Secretary of State William H. Seward informed Lyons of his perceptions regarding the “inefficiency” of the American and British and patrols of the African coast, and added that this was only exacerbated by the Union’s need to withdraw “a considerable part of our own naval force from that coast to suppress a domestic insurrection.” Seward sounded out Lyons on the matter: Would he be interested in negotiating on the matter of suppressing the trade? If so, Seward would submit “a Convention, upon which, if acceptable to your Government, the President would ask the advice and consent of the Senate of The United States.” It would appear that the British minister was more than eager. He responded on the very same day that his government would “be prompt to agree to any stipulations giving increased efficacy to [Anglo-American] co-operation.” He added that he had “no hesitation in declaring that I am ready to enter at once upon the negotiation which you do me the honour to propose to me.”⁸⁸

Matters moved quickly. By March 28, Lyons was able to send to Russell a draft treaty written by Seward. Lyons’s only objection was to the limited duration of the agreement, which was set to expire in ten years. But this was a small point for the Briton, since “the Treaty proposed by Mr. Seward corresponds in every other particular to the views of Her Majesty’s Government.”⁸⁹ Russell soon indicated that he “entirely approve[d]” of the treaty and instructed Lyons to “sign the Treaty forthwith.” By April 24, the Senate had approved the Lyons-Seward Treaty, including a limited mutual right of search, and had done so unanimously.⁹⁰ The entire matter was completed in just over a month.

The Lincoln administration had ample motive for its actions in reversing the decades-old policy of opposing the right of search. The Union was, by this time, exercising the belligerent’s right to search vessels to enforce its blockade of the Confederacy. Washington thus “had good reason to soft-pedal their traditional concern about freedom of the seas.” Additionally, Lincoln and Seward sought, by showing flexibility on an issue so important to the British, to decrease the likelihood of British intervention on the side of the South. If they were also motivated by a sincere desire to end the trade—as is probable—then they could hardly have taken a more salutary step: “all other remedies had been tried in vain … and the reciprocal right of search remained as the only possible solution of the problem.”⁹¹ That solution had finally been adopted.

The consequences of Lincoln and Seward’s concession were not what Americans had feared for decades. Granting the Royal Navy the right to search American ships on the Atlantic did not, in fact, result in a new wave of impressment of American sailors. Nor was American sea power and commerce driven from the ocean by an expansionist British Empire. On the other hand, the final step required in the war against the trade had been taken; as Reginald Coupland observes, “Deprived … of the only flag which had protected it for thirty years, [the slave trade] was more at the mercy of British sea-power than it had ever been.”⁹² The Seward-Lyons Treaty was the death warrant for the Atlantic slave trade, which could not survive long in an era of Anglo-American cooperation in a move toward its extinction.

It is, however, evidence of the seriousness with which American policymakers viewed these threats from Britain that it took the most wrenching crisis in the nation’s history to bring about a policy reversal. The successful suppression of the slave trade had always required international cooperation. Lincoln was able to recognize this at a time when isolating the United States from a more existential form of foreign entanglement became the dominant task of American foreign policy: he needed to do what was necessary to prevent European intervention in the American Civil War. In part, this meant giving Britain what it had long required from Washington in order to achieve one of its own most significant foreign policy goals. The successes of the Royal Navy in its suppression efforts after 1862 indicated the extent to which American policy had held the key. At long last, the goal that Americans had claimed to seek since the time of Jefferson could be accomplished. The inhuman traffic in humans across the Atlantic was now doomed.

Conclusion: Hesitant Multilateralism

Successive American administrations sought to keep US involvement in the international relations of the Atlantic world strictly limited when dealing with the suppression of the slave trade. Above all, they sought to avoid allowing the United States to get pulled into the British system of slave-trade suppression. Yet the Atlantic slave trade was inherently an international problem, encompassing as it did four continents. Washington was, thus, faced with the dilemma of conducting policy that limited the capacity of international efforts to end the trade if America wanted to maintain its unilateral stance. The slave trade therefore continued for some time, due to American reluctance to address the issue in its international context. The United States was, however, not able permanently to retain its freedom of action.