Near the end of January, the Royal Mail Steamer reached the United States carrying English newspapers. The Times of London printed the announcement of the appointment of Lord Ashburton as special minister to the United States, charged with resolving all bilateral issues. The Times opined that his appointment was wise, because any further delay “might render an amicable adjustment unattainable, and involve both countries in all the horrors of war.”[12] American newspapers reported that his appointment was favorably received in American commercial circles, because of his property holdings in the United States, his American wife, and his knowledge of the American Constitution.
On January 29, 1842, Secretary of State Webster sent the promised lengthy dispatch to his friend Minister Everett, who had been at his post in London less than two months. The dispatch laid out the American position with respect to British actions in Nassau. Webster began by characterizing the matter as “a very serious occurrence . . . one calling loudly for redress . . . [and] a clear case for indemnification.”
Webster explained that the ship had been on a perfectly lawful voyage with slaves, which are “recognized as property by the Constitution of the United States in those States where slavery exists.” The Creole’s arrival in Nassau was not voluntary, and it was the “plain and obvious duty of the authorities at Nassau” to assist the American consul to enable the vessel to resume its voyage and to take the murderers to the United States to answer for their crimes. But, on the contrary, not only did the local authorities fail to assist, they actually interfered to free the slaves. In political terms, Webster noted that this situation “cannot but cause deep feelings” in the United States. Webster knew already that Lord Ashburton was planning to come to the United States for negotiations, and perhaps Ashburton’s authority would include this subject, but he urged Minister Everett to “lose no time” in bringing it to Lord Aberdeen’s attention. Lord Aberdeen was the Peel government’s foreign secretary, to whom Lord Ashburton reported.
As an extremely prominent lawyer, Webster could not resist arguing the American case. He questioned the right of the Nassau authorities to even inquire about the cargo, since there was no intention to import anything into the Bahamas. Perhaps to give the British a hint that the face-saving way out of the problem was to blame the local authorities in Nassau for exceeding their writ, Webster commented that the local authorities in Nassau had put London in “a very awkward position” with respect to the nineteen slaves being held in jail. Even if they were eventually sent to the United States for trial, the witnesses might be “scattered over half the globe,” and so it is likely that they would end up “altogether unpunished.” Moving into hypotheticals, Webster proposed that, if the British law provided that all blacks were slaves, and a free American black was forced by weather into Nassau, would the authorities in Nassau be authorized to enslave that man? Or, if the United States considered opium as poison, but opium was legal in London, would the United States be justified in destroying a cargo of opium on an English vessel that was forced into a US port?
Finally, Webster addressed the central issue: this problem has “dangerous importance to the peace between the two countries.” He claimed that the United States and the United Kingdom were the two greatest commercial nations in the world. The fundamental international doctrine of noninterference in the domestic concerns of others was essential for peace to be maintained. The Bahamas lie almost directly on the track of the American coastal traffic, and it has seas full of reefs and sandbars and other dangers to navigation. Wrecks are not unlikely. Therefore, it is “quite essential” that we have full and clear knowledge of how such vessels, their crew, and their “cargo” are to be treated. In short, this problem has gotten worse over the years, and we really have to fix it, and set a peaceful course for the future, or “the peace of the world will always be in danger.”
The secretary’s message to Everett was reprinted widely in American newspapers.[13] A few days after Webster’s dispatch to London, the legislature of Louisiana adopted a Resolution, forwarded to Congress, complaining of “repeated outrages” by Britain against American property arising out of coastal shipping and looking to the federal government for “vindication of the national honor.” Over the next two months, the legislatures of Virginia and Mississippi adopted similar Resolutions. The Mississippi Resolution charged that without monetary restitution and the return of the slaves to their owners, “the slaveholding States would have most just cause to apprehend that the American flag is powerless to protect American property” and that their rights are in “imminent danger.” The Virginia General Assembly resolved:
That the Government of the U.S. owes the parties interested, whether as owners or insurers, indemnity through the British Government for all loss which has been or may be sustained in the consequence of the liberation by the authorities of Nassau of the slaves which were a part of the cargo of the Creole. [and further]
Resolved, That this General Assembly has full confidence that the Government of the U.S. is keenly alive to the aggression committed on our rights, and appreciates the obligation to vindicate our honor as well as to protect the prosperity of our citizens.[14]
Many Americans believed that war was likely. The voice of an outspoken and ill-tempered slaveholder and states’ righter could be heard when a former South Carolina congressman, James Henry Hammond, wrote that the nation was ready for war, with “such a stupid imbecile as Tyler at the head of Affairs, and such an unprincipled and cowardly Sect of State as Webster,” the situation could hardly be worse. Hammond then charged that Webster was “in the pay of the great English Bankers, the Barings.”[15] (At the end of 1842, Hammond became the governor of South Carolina, and in 1857, he became a US senator.)
In Congress
In the House of Representatives, the issue of slavery, as reflected in the controversy over the “gag rule,” continued to hurtle toward a conclusion. In December 1841, Adams’s attempt to repeal the “permanent Gag Rule” failed again, but this time by only three votes. The rule had endured since May 1836, despite Adams’s crusade to rescind it. Yet public opinion was turning against it, and support for the gag by Northern congressmen steadily ebbed. Even Adams’s enemies respected his intellectual and oratorical powers. Congressman Henry Wise of Virginia described him as the “acutest, the astutest, the archest enemy of Southern slavery that ever existed.”[16] The inevitable collision over the gag rule—a direct attack on Adams—took place in January 1842 at the opening session of Congress.
Perhaps Adams expected that his Supreme Court victory in the Amistad case would provide some protection.[17] On January 21, 1842, Adams introduced new slavery petitions, just as he had for the previous six years, and all of them were tabled without being officially received, since the rule had been extended once again.[18] One of the petitions called for censuring the conduct of the American consul at Nassau “in relation to the mutineers of the Creole, and requesting his recall.”[19] Undeterred, Adams began reading a petition from the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society stating that a US war with England to uphold slavery would be more unjust than England’s war in 1776 to keep America in bondage. The Speaker declared Adams out of order, but Adams continued. The next day, the Speaker again pronounced Adams out of order and instructed him to take his seat. Finally, on January 24, Adams presented a petition from the citizens of Haverhill, Massachusetts, calling for the dissolution of the Union, because of sectional favoritism. That night, Southern Whigs drafted a resolution of censure, to stop Adams from splitting the party along sectional lines.[20]
The visitors’ galleries were full on January 25, when the Resolution of Censure was presented. Congressman Henry A. Wise, a Whig of Virginia, asserted that Adams was acting in concert with a sinister English plot, whose aim was to overthrow the US government, to free its slaves, and to establish a monarchy that would turn white Americans into virtual slaves. At the very least, Wise claimed, Adams had fallen under the sway of British abolitionists. Ohio’s Congres
sman Joshua Giddings and others came to Adams’s defense. The debate was fiery and continued for days, with Adams on the attack. Finally, on February 7, John Botts, another Virginia Whig, moved to lay the censure resolution on the table (i.e., to not discuss it). The motion carried, 106–93. The House then voted to table the Massachusetts “dissolve the union” petition that Adams originally tried to introduce, 166–40. The battle was over. The attack on Adams, the former president and son of a president, had ended. Adams had won.
But the Whig leadership found another target, a newer and much easier target: Representative Joshua Reed Giddings, one of Adams’s most dedicated lieutenants. Giddings had been a member of the House only for three years. On March 21, 1842, Giddings focused on the Creole affair and introduced nine Resolutions upholding the right of the slaves to go free. The first three Resolutions were so well supported that all parties (abolitionist and slave owner) could accept them. Southern leaders always repeated that slavery was an issue exclusively within the jurisdiction of the states, and, cleverly, Giddings’s opening resolutions accepted their position:
(1) prior to the Constitution, the states had full jurisdiction over slavery within their territory;
(2) by adopting the Constitution, none of those powers were delegated to the federal government, but were reserved by the states;
(3) the Constitution (Article I, Section 8 [“The Congress shall have Power To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States”]) provides that the states surrendered jurisdiction over commerce and navigation on the high seas;
The fourth Resolution began to slip into territory that slaveholders might find offensive, although it reflected the approach that English and American courts had taken since the 1772 decision of Lord Mansfield, the chief justice of the King’s Bench, in Somerset v. Stewart:
(4) slavery, being an abridgement of the natural rights of man, can exist only by force of positive municipal law;
By the time Southern congressmen read Giddings’s fifth Resolution, they could see where he was heading, and they could not have been pleased:
(5) when a ship belonging to citizens of a state leaves the territory and waters of that state, and enters upon the high seas, the persons on board cease to be subject to the slave laws of that state, and are governed by the law of the United States;
From a Southern perspective, this Resolution was a disaster, since it would effectively end the interstate coastal transport of slaves from the east coast to the large plantations of the Mississippi region. With his sixth Resolution, Giddings sought to apply these principles to the specific situation of the Creole:
(6) when the Creole left the territorial jurisdiction of Virginia, the slave laws of Virginia ceased to have jurisdiction over the persons on board, and they became amenable only to the laws of the United States;
Having laid out these six principles, Giddings then related them to the actions of Madison Washington and his fellow mutineers. Not surprisingly, he absolved them:
(7) the persons on board the Creole, in resuming their natural rights of personal liberty, violated no law of the United States, incurred no legal responsibility, and are justly liable to no punishment;
Since Giddings’s seventh Resolution held the rebellious slaves innocent of any wrongdoing, and since they were only obtaining their “natural rights of personal liberty,” it would follow naturally that the United States was honor-bound not to attempt to return them to a condition of slavery. Thus, US consul in Nassau should step back from any pressure on the Bahamian authorities, and Secretary of State Webster should stop pushing the British government over this incident.
(8) all attempts to re-enslave those persons are unauthorized by the Constitution, and are incompatible with our national honor; and
Giddings put these first eight Resolutions into the broadest possible setting, well beyond the specific case of the Creole, and took the sharpest aim at his ultimate target: the coastal interstate trade in slaves:
(9) all attempts to exert our national influence in favor of the coastwise slave trade, or to place the nation in the attitude of maintaining a “commerce in human beings” are subversive of the rights and injurious to the feelings of the free states, are unauthorized by the Constitution, and are prejudicial to our national character.
In this fashion, the politician-lawyer from Ashtabula, Ohio, laid out a brilliant brief supporting the proposition that there was no legal basis for the coastwise slave trade, and that efforts by the slave states to continue that practice “hurt the feelings” of the northern states and diminished Americans’ national standing. Specifically, he argued that Virginia’s slave law governed the slaves on board the Creole, but only until the vessel left Virginia’s territorial waters; once in the Atlantic Ocean on the high seas, there was no law enslaving them, and so they were free.
Giddings’s legal position was virtually identical to that of the British authorities, except for the domestic US constitutional issues. Angry Southerners, together with many Northern Democrats, tabled the Giddings Resolutions, which they termed “incendiary.” Southerners were angry over the slavery issue, and northern Whigs were angry at Giddings’s actions, because they threatened to cut the threads holding together the Northern and Southern wings of the party.[21] The House refused to vote on the resolutions. Instead, Congressman John M. Botts, a Whig from Virginia, moved instantly to introduce a resolution to censure Giddings. Botts’s accusation was that Giddings had justified mutiny and murder, and that Giddings was creating “excitement, dissatisfaction, and division”[22] among the people at a time when the United Kingdom and United States were in negotiations on that subject that might result in war.[23] Importantly, and in contrast to the prior attack on Adams, Giddings’s opponents refused to give Giddings any chance to defend himself. This time, their aim was on target: the vote, on March 22, 1842, to censure Giddings was 125 to 69.
Congressman Joshua Reed Giddings of Ohio (1838–1859). This image was made about fifteen years after the Creole affair.
“Censure” is a formal vote by a majority of the members present disapproving of a member’s conduct.[24] There were then—and still are—no House rules laying out consequences after a member has been censured, but the political ignominy of being formally and publicly admonished by one’s colleagues usually leads to resignation. Giddings was the second member of the House ever to be censured; there have been only twenty other members censured in the 172 years since then.[25] Giddings promptly walked over to the stunned Adams and shook his hand. Giddings, always a gentleman, then took leave of the House with a formal farewell to the Speaker and officers, and with a formal bow, left the chamber. He left Washington that same evening. His formal letter of resignation from the House was dated March 22.[26] But that was not the end of the Giddings story.
On April 2, 1842, the Ashtabula Sentinel carried this article:
The Hon. J. Giddings late member of Congress from this District, having been censured by the House of Representatives, for presenting to that body resolutions expressive of his views in relation to the case of the Creole, resolutions which were constitutional, and honorable to the head and heart of an American legislator, and which will be so considered by the better portion of the citizens of this country, and the world, is again in the midst of his constituents. He arrived at his residence in Jefferson on Thursday last.[27]
On May 5, 1842, Giddings’s northeastern Ohio constituents reelected him overwhelmingly (7,469 to 393) to the congressional seat he had just vacated. By late May, Giddings was back at his desk in the House of Representatives. Southern members were far from pleased that Giddings was back, and they tried unsuccessfully to prevent him from regaining his chairmanship of the committee on claims. At that time, it was common for slaveholders to bring claims for slaves that were lost. Shortly after Giddings’s return, such a claim was brought concerning slaves lost during the Florida war with the Seminoles. Giddings gave an Adams-like speech on the floor opposing the slave claim,
but the claim prevailed.
The Mississippi legislature adopted a Resolution relating to the Creole, and on May 10, 1842, the Resolution was referred to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives. It provided in Section 3:
Resolved, That the Legislature of the State, in view of the late murderous insurrection of the slaves on board the Creole, their reception in a British port, the absolute connivance at their crimes, manifest in the protection extended to them by the British authorities, most solemnly declare their firm conviction that, if the conduct of those authorities be submitted to . . . or atoned for in any mode except by the surrender of the actual criminals to the Federal Government . . . the slaveholding States would have just cause to apprehend that the American flag is powerless to protect American property.”[28]
This was strong stuff, but it reflected the political pressure on Webster and Tyler by the Southern states to defend their interests. And that was while the British authorities in Nassau were still holding the slaves who had participated in the “murderous insurrection” on board the Creole. However, by early May 1842, word reached Washington that the British authorities in Nassau had released the remaining seventeen American slaves who had been held in custody since the previous November. Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina—the former vice president, under Jackson—was so furious at the release of the slaves that he said it was “the most atrocious outrage ever perpetrated on the American people.”[29]
At the time Giddings returned to Washington, Congress was considering a resolution to reduce the size of the army. Those members opposed to the resolution argued that the Creole issue was a matter of national honor, and the defense of that honor might unfold into a war with Great Britain, and so this was exactly not the time to reduce the army’s strength. Cleverly, Giddings saw this topic as an opportunity. On June 4, 1842, Giddings rose in the Committee of the Whole and asserted:
The Creole Affair Page 15