From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (8 page)

One area of progress was in the administration of foreign affairs. Livingston had repeatedly complained of inadequate authority and congressional interference. He resigned before the peace treaty was ratified. Congress responded by strengthening the position of the secretary for foreign affairs. John Jay assumed the office in December 1784 and held it until a new government took power in 1789, providing needed continuity. An able administrator, he insisted that his office have full responsibility for the nation's diplomacy. Remarkably, he also conditioned his acceptance on
Congress settling in New York.
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Assisted by four clerks and several part-time translators, he worked out of two rooms in a tavern near Congress's meeting place. He did not achieve his major foreign policy goals, but he managed his department efficiently. Interestingly, a secret act of Congress authorized him to open and examine any letters going through the post office that might contain information endangering the "safety or interest of the United States." He appears not to have used this authority.
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Americans and Europeans confronted each other across a sizeable divide, the product of experience and ideology clearly reflected in diplomatic protocol. Upon arriving as U.S. envoy in England, John Adams quickly wearied of affairs at the Court of St. James's. Good republican—and New Englander—that he was, he complained to Jay after an audience with George III that the "essence of things are lost in Ceremony in every Court of Europe." But he responded pragmatically. The United States must "submit to what we cannot alter," he added resignedly. "Patience is the only Remedy."
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Troubled by the meddling of French diplomats in the United States during the Revolution, Francis Dana, minister to Russia in 1785, urged that the United States abandon diplomacy altogether, warning that "our interests will be more injured by the residence of foreign Ministers among us, than they can be promoted by our Ministers abroad."
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Americans were much too worldly and practical to go that far, but they did incorporate their republicanism into their protocol and sought to shield themselves from foreign influence. Foreign diplomats were required to make the first visit to newly arriving members of Congress, a sharp departure from European practice. Congressmen made sure never to meet with the envoys by themselves. The "discretion and reserve" with which Americans treated representatives of other countries, a French diplomat complained, "appears to be copied from the Senators of Venice." The "outrageous circumspection" with which Congressmen behaved "renders them sad and silent." Like Adams, the Frenchman saw no choice but to adapt. "Congress insists on the new etiquette," French diplomat Louis Guillaume Otto sighed, "and the foreign Ministers will be obliged to submit to it or to renounce all connection with Members of Congress."
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The most pressing issue facing the United States during the Confederation period was commerce. Americans took pride in their independence,
but they recognized that economically they remained part of a larger trading community. "The fortune of every citizen is interested in the fate of commerce," a congressional committee reported in 1784, "for it is the constant source of industry and wealth; and the value of our produce and our land must ever rise or fall in proportion to the prosperous or adverse state of our trade."
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In a world of empires, the republic had to find ways to survive. Americans had often protested the burdens imposed by the Navigation Acts, but they had also benefited from membership in the British Empire. They hoped to retain the advantages without suffering the drawbacks. They assumed that their trade was so important that other nations would accept their terms. In fact, the Europeans and especially Britain set the conditions. And the competition among regions, states, and individuals prevented Congress from agreeing on a unified trade policy.
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Shelburne's fall from power brought a dramatic shift in British commercial policy. The change toward a hard line reflected persisting anger with the colonies' rebellion, their victory in the war, and what many Britons believed were overly generous peace terms. Despite Adam Smith's fervent advocacy of free trade, the Navigation Acts remained central to British economic thinking. British shipping interests especially feared American postwar competition. The influential Sheffield insisted that since the Americans had left the empire they must be treated as foreigners. This "tribune of shipbuilders and shipowners" argued that America's dependence on British credit and its passion for British manufactures would force trade back into traditional channels. London could fix the terms. On July 2, 1783, ironically the seventh anniversary of Congress's initial resolution for independence, Parliament issued an order in council excluding U.S. ships from the West Indies trade. British policymakers hoped that the rest of the empire could replace the Americans in established trade channels. That did not happen, but the 1783 order devastated New England's fishing and shipping industries. Britain also exploited U.S. removal of wartime trade restrictions and Congress's inability to agree on a tariff to flood the U.S. market with manufactured goods. It restricted the export of any items that would help Americans create their own manufactures. Britain's harsh measures contributed significantly to the depression that caused ruin across the nation.
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John Adams assumed the position of minister to England in June 1785 with instructions to press for the elimination of trade restrictions and secure an equitable commercial treaty. Adams sought to hit the British where it hurt, repeatedly warning that the effect of their trade restrictions was to "incapacitate our Merchants to make Remittances to theirs." He carried on a "Sprightly Dialogue" with Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger on trade and other matters and attributed British commercial restrictions to jealousy.
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After six months, he admitted that he was a "cypher" and that the British were determined to reduce the United States to economic bondage.
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Minister to France Thomas Jefferson, who joined Adams in London in 1786, flatly labeled the British "our enemies," complaining that they were "more bitterly hostile to us at present than at any point of the late war." British officials responded to American appeals, he added, by "harping a little on the old String, the insufficiency of the powers of Congress to treat and to compel Compliance with the Treaties."
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Adams occasionally threatened a Navigation Act discriminating against British imports, but he knew, as did Jay, that such a measure could not be enacted or enforced by a government operating under a constitution that left powers over commerce to the states.

The United States fared little better with other major European powers. Americans hoped that the enticement of their bounteous trade, long circumscribed by British regulations, would lure Spain and France into generous commercial treaties. Spain did open some ports to the United States. Spanish products entered American ports on a de facto most-favored-nation basis. But Spain refused a commercial treaty without U.S. concessions in other areas. More important, once the war ended, Spain closed the ports of Havana and New Orleans to U.S. products and denied Americans access to the Mississippi River.

Of all the European nations, France was the most open to U.S. trade, but this channel failed to meet expectations. Jefferson succeeded the estimable Franklin as minister to France in 1784, "an excellent school of humility," he later mused, and ardently promoted expanded trade with France.
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The Virginian's cosmopolitan tastes, catholic interests, and aristocratic manners made him a worthy successor and also a hit at court. He believed that if the United States shifted its trade to the French West Indies and opened its ports to French products, British dominance of U.S. commerce could be
broken. With his customary attention to detail, Jefferson studied possible items of exchange, urging the French to convert to American whale oil for their lamps and American rice farmers to grow varieties the French preferred. French officials, Vergennes included, went to some lengths to encourage trade, dispatching consuls to most American states and opening four ports to U.S. products. Responding to domestic and colonial interest groups, the French also closed off the French West Indies to major U.S. exports such as sugar and cotton and imposed tariffs on imports of American tobacco. Jefferson pushed for concessions. "If France wishes us to drink her wine," he insisted, "she must let her Islanders eat our bread."
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But the barriers to trade were greater than the concessions on each side. The French lacked the capital to provide the credits American merchants needed to import their products. France refused to adapt products to American tastes and could not produce others in quantities needed to satisfy American demands. Despite strong efforts from both countries, the trade remained limited to small quantities of luxury goods, wine, and brandy.

The so-called Barbary pirates posed another impediment to commerce. For years, the North African states of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli had earned a lucrative take by plundering European ships, ransoming or enslaving captive sailors, and extorting from seafaring nations handsome annual fees for safe passage through the Mediterranean. It "was written in their Koran," a Tripolitan diplomat instructed Adams and Jefferson, "that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and that every [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to paradise."
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The Europeans generally found it cheaper to pay than to subdue the pirates by force. As part of the empire, Americans had British protection, and they earned significant profits selling flour, fish, and timber to Mediterranean ports. Jay sought unsuccessfully to get protection for American ships and seamen written into the peace treaty. Once independent, the Americans had to fend for themselves, and the trade was hampered by attacks from the Barbary States. In late 1783, Morocco and Algiers seized three ships and held the crews for ransom. "Our sufferings are beyond our expressing or your conception," an enslaved captive reported to Jefferson.
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Congress put up $80,000 to free the captives and buy a
treaty, a princely sum given the state of the U.S. treasury but not nearly enough to satisfy the captors. Like the Europeans, Adams believed it cheaper to pay than to fight. Jefferson became "obsessed" with the pirates, preferring to cut "to pieces piecemeal" this "pettifogging nest of robbers."
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In truth, Congress had neither the money nor will to do either. It appealed to the states for funds with no results. Diplomat Thomas Barclay managed to negotiate without tribute a treaty with the emperor of Morocco, mainly because that ruler disliked the British. Otherwise, problems with the Mediterranean trade were left for another day.

The new nation enjoyed some successes during the Confederation period. The small concessions made by some European states were quite extraordinary in terms of eighteenth-century commercial policies.
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The United States negotiated agreements with Sweden and Prussia based on the liberal principles of the 1776 Model Treaty. Enterprising merchants actively sought out new markets. In August 1784, after a voyage of six months, the
Empress of China
became the first American ship to reach the port of Canton, where it exchanged with Chinese merchants pelts and "green gold," the fabled root ginseng believed to restore the virility of old men, for tea, spices, porcelain, and silk. The voyage earned a profit of 25 percent, and the ship's return to New York in May 1785 excited for the first time what would become perennial hopes among U.S. merchants of capturing the presumably rich China market. At first unable to distinguish Americans from the British, Chinese merchants were also enthused by the prospect of trade with these "
New People
" upon seeing from a map the size of this new country.
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American shippers continued to perfect the fine art of evading European trade restrictions. Especially in the West Indies, they employed various clever schemes to get around the British orders in council, developing a flourishing illicit traffic that even the brilliant young naval officer Horatio Nelson could not stop. Commerce increased steadily during these years, and the United States eased out of the depression, but trade never attained the heights Americans had hoped. To many leaders, the answer was a stronger federal government with authority to regulate commerce and retaliate against those nations who discriminated against the United States.

A second major postwar problem was the windfall the nation acquired from England in the 1783 treaty, the millions of acres of sparsely settled land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. This
bounty made the United States an instant great power, but taking control of it and administering it posed enormous challenges. Many of the states held conflicting titles to western lands; Congress's authority was at best uncertain. Already forced westward by the advance of colonial settlements, Native Americans also claimed land in the trans-Appalachian West and were determined to fight for it. They gained support from the British, who hung on to forts granted the United States in the 1783 treaty, and from the Spanish in the Southwest. The problem was complicated when Americans after independence poured westward. The population of Kentucky, according to one estimate, totaled but 150 men in 1775. Fifteen years later, it exceeded 73,000 people. The "seeds of a great people are daily planting beyond the mountains," Jay observed in 1785.
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Among the major accomplishments of the Confederation government were the establishment of federal authority over these lands and creation of mechanisms for settling and governing the new territory. The issue of federal versus state control was resolved during the war when the states ceded their land claims to the national government as a condition for adoption of the Articles of Confederation. Virginia had proposed in 1780 that the lands acquired by the national government should be "formed into distinct republican states, which shall become members of the federal union, and have the same rights of sovereignty, freedom, and independence, as the other states."
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Fearful of the proliferation of thinly populated and weak states with loose bonds to the Confederation, Congress in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, its most important achievement, put settlement and economic development before statehood. The ordinance did not permit immediate admission to the Union but placed the new settlements under what Virginian James Monroe admitted were "Colonial principles." It did guarantee for those in the territories the fundamental rights and liberties of American citizens and eventual acceptance into the United States on an equal basis with the other states. It became the means by which territory beyond the Mississippi would be incorporated into the Union.
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