The American Consul: A History of the United States Consular Service 1776â1924. Revised Second Edition. Charles Stuart Kennedy
Birth of the Consular Service (1789–1800)
One of the immediate beneficiaries of the new American constitutional form of government was the consular service. The Congress of the Confederation had refused to do more than make a few token appointments of consuls and consular agents. But in 1789, with the creation of an executive branch of government, there were now a President and a Secretary of State able to take the initiative in dealing with foreign affairs and commerce. Although it was not much noted at the time, the President and his Secretary of State presided over the start of an impressive expansion of one small branch of the new federal government, the consular service.
During Washington’s administration the American army was kept at shadow strength, the navy was literally nonexistent, and the diplomatic service was limited to a few capitals. The consular service, however, spread itself throughout Europe, the West Indies, and North Africa and maintained its representation in China. .
Two factors caused this remarkable growth. The first was the appointment of Thomas Jefferson to the new position of Secretary of State, the ideal person to preside over the inauguration of the consular service. He was a man of great intellect and diverse interests with a practical experience in consular matters that no other figure in the formative years of the Republic had. Jefferson had served in France for five years and knew the value of consuls. Jefferson had successfully negotiated the first American consular convention with a foreign power; thus he understood both the domestic and foreign concerns that consular operations raised. As a congressman he had learned what was possible from that deliberative body and – more important – what was not possible. As a tobacco planter and former governor of Virginia, Jefferson was attuned to the dynamics of American trade abroad and knew how consuls could help that vital export trade. All this knowledge and experience were put to use as Jefferson shepherded the consular service through its early years.
The other reason for the growth of consular appointments in the first decade of the United States under the Constitution was that the service expanded without cost to the government. There were no attempts by Washington, Jefferson, or Congress to make the consular service into a professional body with salaries, rotation in posts, or promotion upward. It was agreed that the United States could have an adequate distribution of consuls abroad by using those who would serve for whatever compensation they might personally extract from their positions as consuls. It cost money to maintain an army or navy, but the American flag could be flying from consuls’ offices throughout the world with little expense except that of the ink and paper to print their commissions. The only drawback to this favorable fiscal situation was that the men appointed were often not experienced or trained for their new positions.
The prodigious growth of the American consular service after the adoption of the Constitution is revealed in the listing of consular posts (in order of creation) in the first ten years of the new Republic (1790–99), showing the remarkable dispersion of these offices throughout the world of commerce. All positions given had the rank of consul unless otherwise noted. Approximately half of them were originally staffed by non-Americans.
Canton, (Shaw reappointed), Island of Madeira, Liverpool, Dublin, Bordeaux, Nantes, Rouen, Island of Hispaniola, Martinique, Bilbao, Cowes (vice consul), Marseille (vice consul), Hamburg (vice consul), Le Havre (vice consul), London, Fayal (Azores) (vice consul), Surinam, Poole (vice consul), Island of St. Croix, Tangier, Copenhagen, Bristol, Lisbon, Algiers, Calcutta. Cadiz, Alicante, Curaçao, St. Eustatius (Netherlands Antilles), Demerara (Georgetown), Malaga, Amsterdam, Bremen, Franconia (Duchy of Franconia), Tenerife (Canary Islands), Isle de France (Mauritius), Gibraltar, Falmouth, St. Petersburg, Dunkirk, Morlaix, Leghorn, Tunis, Tripoli, Hull, Naples, Belfast, Cap François, Brest, Genoa, Trieste, Gothenburg, Aux Cayes, New Orleans, St. Bartholomew, Rome, Rotterdam, Venice, Cork, Santo Domingo, Barcelona, Madrid, Stettin, Santiago de Cuba, Edinburgh, Cape Town, Port-au-Prince, Santander, La Guaira.1
This list of America’s first consular posts not only demonstrates the early growth of the service but also shows where American trading and shipping interests lay in the 1790s. In contrast to the consular net cast by Thomas Jefferson and his immediate successors, by 1800 the United States had diplomats only in Paris, Berlin, The Hague, Lisbon, Madrid, and London. The French Foreign Ministry must have been amused when it received reports of the spread of the consular service that Thomas Jefferson had inaugurated, the same man who had noted “the absolute inutility of Consuls” when negotiating for the Franco-American consular convention.2
Not all consular posts were filled immediately. It took time for the men appointed to sail to their posts; some had second thoughts and did not go, leaving a post unfilled, sometimes for several years. But by the end of ten years the United States was well represented abroad by part-time consuls. It is worth noting that no American consuls were sent to the British possessions in Canada or to British islands, such as Jamaica, Bermuda, or the Bahamas. The British prohibited American trade with their colonies in the West Indies. There were, however, consulates in Cape Town and Calcutta. The Spanish to the south were also cool to American consular penetration of their colonial empire, limiting representation to Cuba and one post on the coast of Venezuela, La Guaira, while allowing the United States to have as many consuls as wanted in Spain. The rest of the Latin American continent, including the Portuguese possession of Brazil, was closed to American consuls. All the Middle East was terra incognita to the American consul. The United States had to deal with the Barbary powers but made little effort at this early stage to establish links to the rest of the Ottoman Empire. In the Far East Japan was barred to all but the Dutch.
The new Senate and House of Representatives took some time to enact the necessary legislation to guide consuls. Secretary of State Jefferson, becoming impatient, sent his consuls and vice consuls a message on 26 August 1790: “I expected ere this, to have been able to send you an act of Congress, prescribing some special duties and regulations for the exercise of the consular offices of the United States; but Congress not having been able to mature the act sufficiently, it lies over to their next session.”3 He asked the consuls to send him a report every six months on the number of American vessels entering their respective ports, giving a full description of the ships and cargoes. Consuls were to report on military preparations and indications of war. The consuls were to warn American ships of dangerous situations so that “they may be duly on their guard.”4 The consuls were asked to report political and commercial intelligence that would be of interest to the United States. Jefferson gave the consuls permission, without encouraging them, to wear the navy uniform: a deep-blue coat with red facings, lining, and slashed cuffs, a red waistcoat, blue breeches, yellow buttons with a fouled anchor, a black cockade, and a small sword.
Jefferson then gave some sound advice to his subordinates. “It will be best not to fatigue the government in which you reside, or those in authority under it, with applications in unimportant cases. Husband their good dispositions for occasions of some moment, and let all representations to them be couched in the most temperate and friendly terms, never indulging in any case whatever, a single expression which may irritate.”5
In his second annual address to Congress, 8 December 1790, Washington tried to nudge that body into legislation concerning the consular service. “The patronage of our commerce, of our merchants and seamen, has called for the appointment of consuls in foreign countries. It seems expedient, to regulate by law, the exercise of that jurisdiction, and those functions which are permitted them, either by express convention, or by a friendly indulgence, in the places of their residence.”6
Despite Jefferson’s impatience, Washington’s pleas, and the fact that a score of consuls were already at their posts waiting for legal status, Congress procrastinated, not enacting the necessary legislation until 14 April 1792. The 1792 act was to remain the basic legislation for the consular service for the next century. Some provisions of this act derived from the 1788 consular convention with France that put French consuls stationed in the United States on a legal basis.
The body of the 1792 act spelled out the duties of American consuls. These officials were to:
A.receive protests or declarations regarding American shipping matters;
B.take provisional possession of the estates of American citizens dying abroad if there were no legal representative present,