The American Consul: A History of the United States Consular Service 1776â1924. Revised Second Edition. Charles Stuart Kennedy
the confidence and esteem of the United States.”
The only other significant appointment the Continental Congress made to help American trade abroad was that of Oliver Pollock to replace Robert Smith as the commercial agent in Havana, which was the center of Spanish colonial rule in the Caribbean. Smith, a resident in Havana and recommended to Congress by Robert Morris,27 had been appointed to the position during the Revolution in 1781. When Smith died two years later, Congress replaced him with Pollock, carefully stipulating that “no commercial agent of the United States in foreign ports shall be entitled to a salary, unless such salary is expressed in the resolution appointing the agent.”28 Congress did not so express.
Pollock had been a major figure in the Revolutionary War, purchasing ammunition from the Spanish for American troops. He had also been an advisor to Bernado De Gálvez, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, who had attacked the British once Spain entered the war. Pollock, acting as a purchasing agent for Congress, had extended his own credit to get crucial supplies and owed some $140,000, an immense sum for the time. Pollock had depended on Congress to repay him, but Congress was not responsive to his expectations. The appointment as commercial agent to Havana was considered to be a form of unpaid recompense to help Pollock make some money. The scheme did not work out. The Spanish, never enthusiastic about the upstart Americans, clamped down on their trade in Cuba and Louisiana, even throwing some American merchants into the Havana dungeon to discourage compromise. Congress protested and retaliated by passing in 1784 a resolution terminating the commercial agent’s appointment to Havana. Pollock was shortly thereafter put in Spanish debtors’ prison in New Orleans for eighteen months. Eventually Congress helped him pay his debts, and he became a successful trader in the West Indies.
Congress operated on the principle of avoiding problems whenever possible. Dealing with the rulers of the Barbary states ranked high on the list of problems to be avoided. There were really only three approaches for a government trying to protect its citizens from these scoundrels: pay a hefty tribute, maintain a strong naval presence off the North African coast, or keep one’s citizens away from the area. In the first years of the Republic, Congress had little choice but to hope that American ships would not venture into the Mediterranean.
From the beginning of the Revolutionary War in 1776 the British took away the Mediterranean passes that had been issued to British and colonial ships to provide immunity from attack by Barbary corsairs. These passes were the result of a mix of British naval might and substantial “gifts” to the Barbary rulers by British consuls. Due to the Revolution American trade to the Mediterranean dwindled away. Because this trade recovered slowly after the war, there was a temporary easing of the pressure on Congress to deal with the Barbary problem. Nothing, however, inhibited the Yankee trader. American ships began to test out Mediterranean markets in Spain, France, and Italy. The British consul general in New York wrote John Jay in 1786 to warn him that many American ships were sailing with British passes counterfeited in Philadelphia, and that he could “but lament the misery that such of your mariners will probably meet with, should they, with such counterfeit passes, fall into the hands of the Barbary corsairs.”29
The British consul general’s insincere lament was a good example of the duplicity that permitted the Barbary pirates to ply their vocation for so long. The British were delighted to see their former colonial charges in difficulty because the protection of His Majesty King George III had been withdrawn. The harm dealt to the Americans was good for British trade. “What is bad for you is good for me.” The result of this policy was that a growing number of American seamen were falling into the hands of Algerian, Tripolitan, and Moroccan masters. The Yankees were held for ransom and worked as slaves until ransom arrived or they died.
Congress asked its diplomatic agents abroad to see whether friendly countries could help the United States in dealing with the Barbary states. France and Spain initiated some contacts between American representatives and Barbary agents, but for the most part it was up to each country to make its own arrangements with each Barbary ruler, always to the ruler’s advantage.30
The United States was fortunate in securing a favorable treaty with Morocco at a reasonable cost. For some reason the emperor of Morocco had shown particular friendship toward the new country across the Atlantic and as early as 1778 had forbidden his corsairs to attack American ships.31 After the Revolution, in 1783, the emperor attempted to open negotiations for a treaty with the United States, but Congress was so slow in responding that Morocco seized an American ship, the Betsey, and held it to encourage Congress to get on with the treaty process.
At last, in 1785 Congress authorized its representatives in Europe, Adams and Jefferson, to negotiate treaties with all the Barbary states, appropriating $80,000 for this purpose. Adams and Jefferson sent Thomas Barclay, the American consul in France, to deal with the emperor of Morocco. Barclay’s treaty of 1786 with the ruler of Morocco reflected the goodwill of that potentate toward the United States. While these negotiations used up $25,000 of the money allocated for all the Barbary states, Barclay’s success was evidently worth the cost: no annual tribute was demanded, American ships were given safe passage by Moroccan corsairs, and American consuls had certain extraterritorial powers in Morocco.32
Congress commended Barclay for having done an excellent job as a negotiator. Since no American consul was sent to Morocco during the remaining years of the Confederation, Barclay appointed two members of the Chiappi family, Italians settled in Morocco, to serve as deputy consular agents in Mogador and Tangiers. Each of the Chiappis was already a consul in his respective district, one for Genoa and one for Venice. As an ad hoc arrangement the United States at least had experienced men to represent its interests.
Despite the high favor shown Barclay by Congress, soon after he returned to France from Morocco, he was arrested for debt. While acting as a consul and diplomatic agent, Barclay had continued his personal activities as a businessman. Creditors from his business endeavors had instigated the arrest. He was shortly released and returned to America. John Jay, writing from his Office of Foreign Affairs, confirmed that no American “Consuls should be exempt from Suits and Arrests for their own proper Debts,” but he acknowledged that such arrest and imprisonment “must hurt the Feelings of the United States and in some degree would injure their Dignity.”33 Jay urged Barclay to settle his affairs so that he could return to France. Apparently the debts were discharged, since Barclay was later active again in Europe.
With the Moroccan treaty made, Congress hoped that similar treaties with Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis would be forthcoming, but American diplomatic agents had no success. The cruel reality was that none of the other Barbary states had any interest in helping the United States; they only wanted as much tribute as they could extract. Congress under the Confederation simply could not raise the money necessary for tribute and ransom, nor was there money to try the “iron fist” approach, for there was no American navy to speak of. Because of this helpless situation Americans were falling into the rapacious hands of the Barbary rulers. Mediterranean trade under the Stars and Stripes was badly stunted, and there were no consuls in the respective quasi-hostile states to help their countrymen.
In looking back on the six years of the peacetime Confederation (1783–89) with regard to consular developments, one finds that they were sparse years indeed: one consul assigned to France (but he was either negotiating elsewhere or trying to stay out of debtors’ jail), a consul and vice consul in Canton, a few commercial agents, one consular convention that was not even finally ratified until after the Confederation ended, and some foreign consuls operating on an interim arrangement in the United States.
Although there were but few concrete steps during this time toward developing an American consular service, the Confederation period was one of intense debate by Congress and its diplomatic agents abroad over the structure and role of consuls. Four of the major founding fathers, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, and Jay, were especially concerned with laying the groundwork for the consular service, a foundation that was to last almost unchanged for over a century. Unfortunately, despite the talent concentrated upon the role and structure of the future consular service, the consular corps that emerged was defective by being nonprofessional and wide open to patronage and corruption. That despite its flaws it would work relatively well was due to the individual talents, dedication, and courage of most of the men selected to serve as American consuls abroad.