The American Consul: A History of the United States Consular Service 1776â1924. Revised Second Edition. Charles Stuart Kennedy
piece of paper shown to them by an able-bodied seaman.9
One agent for seamen in London, George W. Erving, reported: “American captains expelled American seamen who had regular certificates, either to avoid payment of their wages, or to secure other seamen for lower wages.” He accused the British of having invented methods of their own to discredit American certificates, a notable example being a “game” in which they would find an American seaman whom they could bribe to make affidavit that he was in fact a British subject and had obtained his certificate by direct purchase or by some other fraudulent method. Another practice of the British “was that of enlisting American seamen whom they had impressed under false names so that applications for their release would be of no avail.”10 Despite the work of agents and consuls, impressment of Americans continued and was to lessen only when the British navy had enough men for its ships during periods of peace or when Napoleon was no longer able to challenge British dominance of the seas.
Bordeaux was the most active American consular post in France, being comfortably removed from the main naval bases of the British blockaders. Despite the importance of Bordeaux, the State Department did not deem it necessary to keep in touch. The consul, Cox Barnet, complained in 1801 that he had not heard from the department for twenty-one months.11 Bordeaux was a magnet for out-of-work American sailors because it was active in trade with the United States. Consuls in other cities in France and Spain sent their charges there. The Bordeaux consul reported in 1802 that he had 20 seamen in hospitals and 150 on the streets in distress. The French police were complaining, and the consul was trying to put as many men on American ships as their masters would accept.12
In 1807 the British initiated a licensing system allowing some trade with France under the supervision of the Board of Trade, but this easing of the blockade did not really help American-carried trade. As one historian described the situation: “Theoretically American ships were not discriminated against in the issue of licenses. In actual practice the Board of Trade found European flags far more useful and more amenable to control. Since no trade to the French Empire could be safely carried on without them, licenses were extremely valuable, worth sometimes as much as ₤15,000 on the open market, where they were freely traded.”13 The French had their own system of controls and were ruthless in enforcing them, not only in France but in other ports of Europe where Napoleon held sway. The U.S. consul in Bremen reported that the French authorities controlling that German port were seizing American ships, which had certificates of origin of their cargoes that the French did not consider in order.14
American consuls were in a potentially profitable position with the imposition of various licenses, certificates of origin, and other controls working to their advantage, together with the excellent money to be made from having the proper papers to permit loading or unloading of cargo to and from the United States. But a consul’s position could also arouse animosity among American shipping firms if their ships were seized by one of the belligerents, but those of the consuls were not.
Although the contempt of France for the rights of neutrals, especially those of Americans, was a grave concern, the outrages committed by the British on American seamen and British support of hostile Indians along the Canadian border aroused greater animosity in the American people. A British-American war might even offer the opportunity to capture Canada. For a variety of reasons and motives, the United States declared war on Britain in June 1812. Even war with France was considered by both the President and Congress, but common sense prevailed, and the young United States took on only the nation with the greatest navy and not the one with the greatest army.
As the news of war reached the American consulates in the British Isles and its dominions, consuls who were American citizens packed up and left, as did the British consuls in the United States. In London the American consul and agent for seamen, Reuben Beasley, was permitted to stay on by the British authorities in the capacity of “United States agent for prisoners of war” to help with exchanges of prisoners. When the war was over he reverted to being the consul.15
Robert Ware Fox, U.S. consul at Falmouth, did not leave Britain. He was a British subject appointed to the post in 1793 by George Washington. When the war came, Consul Fox took down the American coat of arms, stored away the American flag, and waited for the war to run its course. At its conclusion, up went the coat of arms and the American flag, and Mr. Fox resumed his duties. A prominent Quaker, Fox may have had the distinction of being the only consul to use the familiar “thou” in his dispatches to the Secretary of State. The consular position in Falmouth was passed down from generation to generation in the Fox family, with only a short break, until 1908, when the post was closed.
The declaration of war by the United States on Great Britain caught the American merchant fleet in European waters by surprise, and the British navy had easy plucking. Levitt Harris, the American consul in St. Petersburg, Russia, reported that thirty American ships were part of a convoy being protected by the British navy as they sailed through the Baltic from Russia to England. When the convoy commander heard that America was now at war with his country, he informed the Yankee skippers that their protectors were now their captors.16
Seventeen American merchant ships that had not joined the ill-fated convoy were trapped in St. Petersburg during the war. Consul Harris later wrote the Secretary of State that there were seventy seamen off the American ships with no employment and that “in order to preserve the morals and maintain good conduct among so great a number of idle people for so long a time, I promoted the establishment of a school at Cronstadt, the project for which it must be mentioned to the honor of the seamen, originated with themselves. At this school between forty and fifty American sailors are occupied during ten hours in the day in learning to read and cypher.”17
Although the United States was at war with Great Britain, its relations with France remained strained. Normally in wartime the code of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” prevails, but FrancoAmerican relations did not improve. In October 1812, that fateful year for Napoleon, Consul William Lee in Bordeaux wrote that French officials were still detaining American vessels in port for three to six months because of questions over their ships’ papers. Lee hoped that the American minister to France, Joel Barlow, former consul general in Algiers, would set matters right. Barlow set off for Russia to see Napoleon, who was on his way to what appeared to be a certain victory over the tsar.18 Things did not happen as Lee had predicted. Napoleon’s army was destroyed, and Barlow died of a fever in Poland before being able to discuss shipping matters with the French emperor.
In June 1813 Commodore William Rodgers, cruising in the Atlantic on the U.S. frigate President, captured the British brig Maria laden with a cargo of codfish. Putting a prize crew on board, he directed them to take the Maria to the port of Bordeaux where the cargo could be sold. The Maria arrived in late June, and Consul Lee took charge to arrange the sale of both ship and cargo. This was the normal practice, as a United States Navy vessel had captured the brig and the consul was the U.S. representative on hand.
Both the crew of the President and Lee stood to make some profit from the sale. Lee immediately wrote the director of customs in Bordeaux asking for permission to sell the codfish, which he noted he had stored in a warehouse “adjoining my house.”19 When the director did not reply, Lee wrote again stating that it was essential to have the sale soon, “viewing the perishable nature of the cargo, particularly at this season.”20 It was then mid-July; Lee, in his residence next to the codfish, must have been very much aware of the urgency. The director of customs finally informed Lee that the sale of prizes and their cargoes was delegated to some French merchants, not to the American consul.21 Lee then received a sharp reprimand from the French minister of commerce in Paris that he, Lee, had acted improperly and that David Warden, the American consul general in Paris, was in charge of all prizes and had ordered French merchants to take care of the prize sale.22
William Lee was not a man to take a rebuke lightly, especially when it concerned his dignity as a consul and his ability to turn a profit. With some heat, Lee wrote William H. Crawford, the American minister in Paris: “Mr. Warden has not only stated to the Minister that he is consul general and special agent for all prizes! but has made it appear that I have acted improperly and without authority in the case of the Maria. This is to carry personal animosity so far as to merit the severe animadversion of all good men. I will confess to your Excellency that as a native American