CHAPTER CVI. BRITISH TREATY; AFRICAN SQUADRON FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF THE SLAVE TRADE; MR. BENTON'S SPEECH; EXTRACT.
The suppression of the African slave-trade is the second subject included in the treaty; and here the regret renews itself at the absence of all the customary lights upon the origin and progress of treaty stipulations. No minutes of conference; no protocols; no draughts or counterdraughts; no diplomatic notes; not a word of any kind from one negotiator to the other. Nothing in relation to the subject, in the shape of negotiation, is communicated to us. Even the section of the correspondence entitled "Suppression of the slave-trade"—even this section professedly devoted to the subject, contains not a syllable upon it from the negotiators to each other, or to their Governments; but opens and closes with communications from American naval officers, evidently extracted from them by the American negotiator, to justify the forthcoming of preconceived and foregone conclusions. Never since the art of writing was invented could there have been a treaty of such magnitude negotiated with such total absence of necessary light upon the history of its formation. Lamentable as is this defect of light upon the formation of the treaty generally, it becomes particularly so at this point, where a stipulation new, delicate, and embarrassing, has been unexpectedly introduced, and falls upon us as abruptly as if it fell from the clouds. In the absence of all appropriate information from the negotiators themselves, I am driven to glean among the scanty paragraphs of the President's message, and in the answers of the naval officers to the Secretary's inquiries. Though silent as to the origin and progress of the proposition for this novel alliance, they still show the important particular of the motives which caused it.
Passing from the political consequences of this entanglement—consequences which no human foresight can reach—I come to the immediate and practical effects which lie within our view, and which display the enormous inexpediency of the measure. First: the expense in money—an item which would seem to be entitled to some regard in the present deplorable state of the treasury—in the present cry for retrenchment—and in the present heavy taxation upon the comforts and necessaries of life. This expense for 80 guns will be about $750,000 per annum, exclusive of repairs and loss of lives. I speak of the whole expense, as part of the naval establishment of the United States, and not of the mere expense of working the ships after they have gone to sea. Nine thousand dollars per gun is about the expense of the establishment; 80 guns would be $720,000 per annum, which is $3,600,000 for five years. But the squadron is not limited to a maximum of 80 guns; that is the minimum limit: it is to be 80 guns "at the least." And if the party which granted these 80 shall continue in power, Great Britain may find it as easy to double the number, as it was to obtain the first eighty. Nor is the time limited to five years; it is only determinable after that period by giving notice; a notice not to be expected from those who made the treaty. At the least, then, the moneyed expense is to be $3,600,000; if the present party continues in power, it may double or treble that amount; and this, besides the cost of the ships. Such is the moneyed expense. In ships, the wear and tear of vessels must be great. We are to prepare, equip, and maintain in service, on a coast 4,000 miles from home, the adequate number of vessels to carry these 80 guns. It is not sufficient to send the number there; they must be kept up and maintained in service there; and this will require constant expenses to repair injuries, supply losses and cover casualties. In the employment of men, and the waste of life and health, the expenditure must be large. Ten men and two officers to the gun, is the smallest estimate that can be admitted. This would require a complement of 960 men. Including all the necessary equipage of the ship, and above 1,000 persons will be constantly required. These are to be employed at a vast distance from home; on a savage coast; in a perilous service; on both sides of the equator; and in a climate which is death to the white race. This waste of men—this wear and tear of life and constitution—should stand for something in a Christian land, and in this age of roaming philanthropy; unless, indeed, in excessive love for the blacks, it is deemed meritorious to destroy the whites. The field of operations for this squadron is great; the term "coast of Africa" having an immense application in the vocabulary of the slave-trade. On the western coast of Africa, according to the replies of the naval officers Bell and Paine, the trade is carried on from Senegal to Cape Frio—a distance of 3,600 miles, following its windings as the watching squadrons would have to go. But the track of the slavers between Africa and America has to be watched, as well as the immediate coast; and this embraces a space in the ocean of 35 degrees on each side of the equator (say four thousand miles), and covering the American coast from Cuba to Rio Janeiro; so that the coast of Africa—the western coast alone—embraces a diagram of the ocean of near 4,000 miles every way, having the equator in the centre, and bounded east and west by the New and the Old World. This is for the western coast only: the eastern is nearly as large. The same naval officers say that a large trade in negroes is carried on in the Mahometan countries bordering on the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and in the Portuguese East India colonies; and, what is worthy to be told, it is also carried on in the British presidency of Bombay, and other British Asiatic possessions. It is true, the officers say the American slavers are not yet there; but go there they will, according to all the laws of trading and hunting, the moment they are disturbed, or the trade fails on the western coast. Wherever the trade exists, the combined powers must follow it: for good is not to be done by halves, and philanthropy is not to be circumscribed by coasts and latitudes. Among all the strange features in the comedy of errors which has ended in this treaty that of sending American ministers abroad, to close the markets of the world against the slave-trade, is the most striking. Not content with the expenses, loss of life, and political entanglement of this alliance, we must electioneer for insults, and send ministers abroad to receive, pocket, and bring them home.
In what circumstances do we undertake all this fine work? What is our condition at home, while thus going abroad in search of employment? We raise 1,000 men for foreign service, while reducing our little army at home! We send ships to the coast of Africa, while dismounting our dragoons on the frontiers of Missouri and Arkansas! We protect Africa from slave-dealers, and abandon Florida to savage butchery! We send cannon, shot, shells, powder, lead, bombs, and balls, to Africa, while denying arms and ammunition to the young men who go to Florida! We give food, clothes, pay, to the men who go to Africa, and deny rations even to those who go to Florida! We cry out for retrenchment, and scatter $3,600,000 at one broad cast of the hand! We tax tea and coffee, and send the money to Africa! We are borrowing and taxing, and striking paper money, and reducing expenses at home, when engaging in this new and vast expense for the defence of Africa! What madness and folly! Has Don Quixote come to life, and placed himself at the head of our Government, and taken the negroes of Africa, instead of the damsels of Spain, for the objects of his chivalrous protection?
The slave-trade is diabolical and infamous; but Great Britain is not the country to read us a lesson upon its atrocity, or to stimulate our exertions to suppress it. The nation which, at the peace of Utrecht, made the asiento—the slave contract—a condition of peace, fighting on till she obtained it; the nation which entailed African slavery upon us—which rejected our colonial statutes for its suppression[4]—which has many, many ten millions, of white subjects in Europe and in Asia in greater slavery of body and mind, in more bodily misery and mental darkness, than any black slaves in the United States;—such a nation has no right to cajole or to dragoon us into alliances and expenses for the suppression of slavery on the coast of Africa. We have done our part on that subject. Considering the example and instruction we had from Great Britain, we have done a wonderful part. The constitution of the United States, mainly made by slaveholding States, authorized Congress to put an end to the importation of slaves by a given day. Anticipating the limited day by legislative action, the Congress had the law ready to take effect on the day permitted by the constitution. On the 1st day of January, 1808, Thomas Jefferson being President of the United States, the importation of slaves became unlawful and criminal. A subsequent act of Congress following up the idea of Mr. Jefferson in his first draught of the Declaration of Independence, qualified the crime as piratical, and delivered up its pursuers to the sword of the law, and to the vengeance of the world, as the enemies of the human race. Vessels of war cruising on the coast of Africa, under our act of 1819, have been directed to search our own vessels—to arrest the violators of the law, and bring them in—the ships for confiscation, and the men for punishment. This was doing enough—enough for a young country, far remote in the New World, and whose policy is to avoid foreign connections and entangling alliances. We did this voluntarily, without instigation, and without supervision from abroad; and now there can be no necessity for Great Britain to assume a superiority over us in this particular, and bind us in treaty stipulations, which destroy all the merit of a voluntary action. We have done enough; and it is no part of our business to exalt still higher the fanatical spirit of abolition, which is now become the stalking-horse of nations and of political powers. Our country contains many slaves, derived from Africa; and, while holding these, it is neither politic nor decent to join the crusade of European powers to put down the African slave-trade. From combinations of powers against the present slave-takers, there is but a step to the combination of the same powers against the present slaveholders; and it is not for the United States to join in the first movement, which leads to the second. "No entangling alliances" should be her motto! And as for her part in preventing the foreign slave-trade, it is sufficient that she prevents her own citizens, in her own way, from engaging in it; and that she takes care to become neither the instrument, nor the victim, of European combinations for its suppression.
The eighth and ninth articles of the treaty bind us to this naval alliance with Great Britain. By these articles we stipulate to keep a squadron of at least 80 guns on the coast of Africa for five years for the suppression of this trade—with a further stipulation to keep it up until one or the other party shall give notice of a design to retire from it. This is the insidious way of getting an onerous measure saddled upon the country. Short-sighted people are fascinated with the idea of being able to get rid of the burden when they please; but such burdens are always found to be the most interminable. In this case Great Britain will never give the notice: our government will not without a congressional recommendation, and it will be found difficult to unite the two Houses in a request. The stipulation may be considered permanent under the delusion of a five years' limit, and an optional continuance.
The papers communicated do not show at whose instance these articles were inserted; and the absence of all minutes of conferences leaves us at a loss to trace their origin and progress in the hands of the negotiators. The little that is seen would indicate its origin to be wholly American; evidence aliunde proves it to be wholly British; and that our Secretary-negotiator was only doing the work of the British minister in assuming the ostensible paternity of the articles. In the papers communicated, there is not a syllable upon the subject from Lord Ashburton. His finger is not seen in the affair. Mr. Webster appears as sole mover and conductor of the proposition. In his letter of the 30th of April to Captains Bell and Paine of the United States navy, he first approaches the subject, and opens it with a series of questions on the African slave-trade. This draws forth the answers which I have already shown. This is the commencement of the business. And here we are struck with the curious fact, that this letter of inquiry, laying the foundation for a novel and extraordinary article in the treaty, bears date 44 days before the first written communication from the British to the American negotiator! and 47 days before the first written communication from Mr. Webster to Lord Ashburton! It would seem that much was done by word of mouth before pen was put to paper; and that in this most essential part of the negotiations, pen was not put to paper at all, from one negotiator to the other, throughout the whole affair. Lord Ashburton's name is never found in connection with the subject! Mr. Webster's only in the notes of inquiry to the American naval officers. Even in these he does not mention the treaty, nor allude to the negotiation, nor indicate the purpose for which information was sought! So that this most extraordinary article is without a clew to its history, and stands in the treaty as if it had fallen from the clouds, and chanced to lodge there! Even the President's message, which undertakes to account for the article, and to justify it, is silent on the point, though laboring through a mass of ambiguities and obscurities, evidently calculated to raise the inference that it originated with us. From the papers communicated, it is an American proposition, of which the British negotiator knew nothing until he signed the treaty. That is the first place where his name is seen in conjunction with it, or seen in a place to authorize the belief that he knew of it. Yet, it is certainly a British proposition; it is certainly a British article. Since the year 1806 Great Britain has been endeavoring to get the United States into some sort of arrangement for co-operation in the suppression of the African slave-trade. It was slightly attempted in Mr. Jefferson's time—again at Ghent; but the warning-voice of the Father of his country—no entangling alliances—saved us on each occasion. Now we are yoked—yoked in with the British on the coast of Africa; and when we can get free from it, no mortal can foresee.
