Treaty of Ghent

Treaty of Ghent
Signing of the Treaty of Ghent. The leading British delegate Baron Gambier is shaking hands with the American leader John Quincy Adams. The British Undersecretary of State for War and the Colonies, Henry Goulburn, is carrying a red folder.
Type Bilateral peace treaty
Signed 24 December 1814 (1814-12-24)
Location Ghent, United Netherlands
Original
signatories
United Kingdom
United States

The Treaty of Ghent (8 Stat. 218) was the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812 between the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Both sides signed it on December 24, 1814, in the city of Ghent, United Netherlands. The treaty restored relations between the two nations to status quo ante bellum, restoring the borders of the two countries to the lines before the war started in June 1812.[note 1][1] The treaty was approved by the UK parliament and signed into law by the Prince Regent (the future King George IV) on December 30, 1814. It took a month for news of the peace treaty to reach the United States, and in the meantime American forces under Andrew Jackson won the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815. The Treaty of Ghent was not fully in effect until it was ratified by the U.S. Senate unanimously on February 17, 1815. It began two centuries and more of peaceful relations between the U.S. and Britain, although there were a few tense moments such as the Trent Affair in 1861.

Background

After the abdication of Napoleon in April 1814 British public opinion demanded major gains in the war against the United States. The senior American representative in London told Secretary of State James Monroe:

There are so many who delight in War that I have less hope than ever of our being able to make peace. You will perceive by the newspapers that a very great force is to be sent from Bordeaux to the United States; and the order of the day is division of the States and conquest. The more moderate think that when our Seaboard is laid waste and we are made to agree to a line which shall exclude us from the lake; to give up a part of our claim on Louisiana and the privilege of fishing on the banks, etc. peace may be made with us.:[2]

However, the Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, aware of growing opposition to wartime taxation and the demands of Liverpudlian and Bristolian merchants to reopen trade with America, realized Britain had little to gain and much to lose from prolonged warfare.[3][4]

After rejecting Russian proposals to broker peace negotiations, Britain reversed course in 1814. With the defeat of Napoleon the main British goals of stopping American trade with France and impressment of sailors from American ships were dead letters. The treaty was forward-looking, and did not pay attention to matters that were no longer live issues. Negotiations were held in Ghent, United Netherlands, starting in August 1814. The Americans sent five commissioners: John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, James A. Bayard, Sr., Jonathan Russell, and Albert Gallatin. Except for Russell, all were very senior political leaders; Adams was in charge. The British sent minor officials who kept in close touch with their (much closer) superiors in London.[5][6]

Negotiations

Plaque at a building in Veldstraat, Ghent, where the American diplomats stayed and one of the locations where the treaty was negotiated. It was located at the retail "Esprit" store on Veldstraat 47. Placed by the United States Daughters of 1812. The room where the treaty was signed is now part of a Ghentian psychiatric hospital.

At last in August 1814, peace discussions began in the neutral city of Ghent. As the peace talks opened American diplomats decided not to present President Madison's demands for the end of impressment and suggestion that Britain turn Canada over to the U.S.[7] They were quiet and instead the British opened with their demands, chief of which was the creation of an Indian barrier state in the American Northwest Territory (the area from Ohio to Wisconsin). It was understood the British would sponsor this Indian state. The British strategy for decades had been to create a buffer state to block American expansion. The Americans refused to consider a buffer state and the proposal was dropped.[8] Article IX of the treaty included provisions to restore to Natives "...all possessions, rights and privileges which they may have enjoyed, or been entitled to in 1811"—but the provisions were unenforceable. In any case, the British soon lost interest in the idea of creating an Indian buffer state and stopped supporting or encouraging tribes in American territory.[9]

The British, assuming their planned invasion of New York state would go well, also demanded that Americans not have any naval forces on the Great Lakes and that the British get certain transit rights to the Mississippi River in exchange for continuation of American fishing rights off Newfoundland. The U.S. rejected the demands and there was an impasse.[10][11] American public opinion was so outraged when Madison published the demands that even the Federalists were willing to fight on.[12]

During the negotiations the British had four invasions underway. One force carried out a burning of Washington, but the main mission failed in its goal of capturing Baltimore. The British fleet sailed away when the army commander was killed. A small force invaded the District of Maine from New Brunswick, capturing parts of northeastern Maine and several smuggling towns on the seacoast. Much more important were two major invasions. In northern New York State, 10,000 British troops marched south to cut off New England until a decisive defeat at the Battle of Plattsburgh forced them back to Canada. The defeat was a humiliation that called for a court martial of the commander.[13] Nothing was known at the time of the fate of the other major invasion force that had been sent to capture New Orleans and control the Mississippi River.

The British Prime Minister wanted the Duke of Wellington to go to command in Canada with the assignment of winning the War. Wellington replied that he would go to America, but he believed that he was needed in Europe.[14] He also stated:

I think you have no right, from the state of war, to demand any concession of territory from America... You have not been able to carry it into the enemy's territory, notwithstanding your military success, and now undoubted military superiority, and have not even cleared your own territory on the point of attack. You cannot on any principle of equality in negotiation claim a cession of territory except in exchange for other advantages which you have in your power... Then if this reasoning be true, why stipulate for the uti possidetis? You can get no territory: indeed, the state of your military operations, however creditable, does not entitle you to demand any.[15]

The government had no choice but to agree with Wellington. Prime Minister Liverpool informed Foreign Secretary Castlereagh, who was at Vienna: "I think we have determined, if all other points can be satisfactorily settled, not to continue the war for the purpose of obtaining, or securing any acquisition of territory." Liverpool cited several reasons, especially the unsatisfactory negotiations underway at Vienna, the alarming reports from France that it might resume the war, and the weak financial condition of the government. He did not need to tell Castlereagh that the war was very unpopular; Britons wanted peace and a return to normal trade. The war with America had ruined many reputations and promised no gain.[16][17]

After months of negotiations, against the background of changing military victories, defeats and losses, the parties finally realized that their nations wanted peace and there was no real reason to continue the war. Each side was tired of the war. Export trade was all but paralyzed, and after the fall of Napoleon in 1814, France was no longer an enemy of Britain, so the Royal Navy no longer needed to stop American shipments to France and no longer needed more seamen. The British were preoccupied in rebuilding Europe after the apparent final defeat of Napoleon. Lord Liverpool told British negotiators to offer a status quo, which the British government had desired since the beginning of the war. British diplomats immediately offered this to the US negotiators, who dropped demands for an end to British maritime practices and Canadian territory (ignoring their war aims) and agreed. The sides would exchange prisoners, and Britain would return or pay for slaves captured from the United States.[18]

Agreement

On December 24, 1814, the members of the British and American negotiating teams signed and affixed their individual seals to the document. This did not itself end the war: that required formal ratification by their governments, which came in February 1815.[19]

The treaty released all prisoners and restored all captured lands and ships. Returned to the United States were approximately 10,000,000 acres (4,000,000 ha; 40,000 km2) of territory, near Lakes Superior and Michigan, and in Maine.[20] American-held areas of Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) were returned to British control, and the American-held territory in Spanish Florida taken from Britain and officially uninvolved Spain were returned to Spanish control. The treaty thus made no changes to the pre-war boundaries.[21]

Britain promised to return the freed black slaves that they had taken. In actuality, a few years later, in 1826, Britain instead paid the United States US$1,204,960 (equivalent to $26,062,576 in 2017) for them.[22] Both nations also promised to work towards an ending of the international slave trade.[21]

Pierre Berton wrote of the treaty:

"It was as if no war had been fought, or to put it more bluntly, as if the war that was fought was fought for no good reason. For nothing has changed; everything is as it was in the beginning save for the graves of those who, it now appears, have fought for a trifle:...Lake Erie and Fort McHenry will go into the American history books, Queenston Heights and Crysler's Farm into the Canadian, but without the gore, the stench, the disease, the terror, the conniving, and the imbecilities that march with every army."[23]

Aftermath

The Treaty of Ghent failed to secure British acknowledgment of American maritime rights, which allowed Britain to maintain its command of the oceans (critical to maintenance of its overseas empire). Nevertheless, the defeat of Napoleon in 1814 meant that much of the British fleet was put in "ordinary", meaning Britain no longer needed to impress foreign seamen to man their fleet. In the century of peace among the naval powers from 1815 until World War I, American rights were never seriously violated.

The course of the war resolved and ended the other major original issue. The Native Americans had been defeated, allowing the United States to continue its expansion westward. To many Americans, enough victories had been scored against Britain (which had just proven to be the dominant world power by leading the defeat of Napoleon) to buttress a sense of honor and full independence from Britain.[24] Canadians also gained pride and honor in that they had successfully repelled the American invasion.

James Carr argues that Britain negotiated the Treaty of Ghent with the goal of ending the war, even though it knew a major British expedition had been ordered to seize New Orleans. Carr says that Britain had no intention of repudiating the treaty and continuing the war had victory been theirs at the Battle of New Orleans.[25]

News of the treaty finally reached the United States after the major American victory in the Battle of New Orleans; it won immediate wide approval from all sides.[26]

The U.S. Senate unanimously approved the treaty on February 16, 1815, and President James Madison exchanged ratification papers with a British diplomat in Washington on February 17; the treaty was proclaimed on February 18.

Memorials

The Peace Bridge between New York and Ontario

The Peace Arch, dedicated in September 1921, stands 20.5 metres (67 ft) tall at the Douglas/Blaine border crossing between the province of British Columbia and the state of Washington. The monument represents a perpetually open gate across the Canada–U.S. boundary.[27] In 1922, the Fountain of Time was dedicated in Washington Park, Chicago, commemorating 110 years of peace between the United States and Britain.[28] The Peace Bridge between Buffalo, New York, and Fort Erie, Ontario, opened in 1927 to commemorate more than a century of peace between the United States and Canada.[29]

See also

Notes

  1. The United States gained some territory (the Mobile area) from the Spanish Empire, but that was not mentioned in the Treaty.

References

  1. Gene A. Smith, "'Our Flag was display'd within their Works': The Treaty of Ghent and the Conquest of Mobile." Alabama Review 52 (1999): 3-20.
  2. Wood, Bryce (1940). "Reuben Beasley to Monroe, May 9, 1814". Peaceful Change and the Colonial Problem. Studies in History, Economics and Public Law. 464. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 503. OCLC 3103125.
  3. Latimer, Jon (2007). 1812: War With America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap. pp. 389–91. ISBN 9780674025844.
  4. Gash, Norman (1984). Lord Liverpool: The Life and Political Career of Robert Banks Jenkinson, Second Earl of Liverpool, 1770–1828. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 111–9. ISBN 9780674539105.
  5. Remini, Robert V. (1993). Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (rev. ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Co. pp. 103–22. ISBN 9780393310887.
  6. Bemis, Samuel Flagg (1949). John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy. New York: A. A. Knopf. pp. 196–220. OCLC 424693.
  7. Henry Adams, History of the United States of America during the Administration of James Madison (1890; Library of America edition, 1986) 2: 1192
  8. Remini 1993, p. 117 in 1991 ed. ISBN 9780393030044.
  9. Mahan, AT (October 1905). "The negotiations at Ghent in 1814". The American Historical Review. 11 (1): 68-87 (esp. 73-78). doi:10.2307/1832365.
  10. Tucker, Spencer C. (2011). The Encyclopedia of North American Indian Wars, 1607–1890: A Political, Social, and Military History. ABC-CLIO. p. 1097. ISBN 9781851096039.
  11. Gates, CM (March 1940). "The West in American Diplomacy, 1812–1815". Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 26 (4): 499–510. JSTOR 1896318.
  12. Daughan, George C. (2011). 1812: The Navy's War. Basic Books. p. 365. ISBN 9780465028085.
  13. Latimer 2007, pp. 331, 359, 365.
  14. Perkins, Bradford (1964). Castlereagh and Adams: England and the United States, 1812–1823. Perkins: England and the United States. 3. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 108–9. OCLC 615454220.
  15. Mills, D (1921). "The Duke of Wellington and the peace negotiations at Ghent in 1814". Canadian Historical Review. 2 (1): 19–32 (quote at p. 22). doi:10.3138/CHR-02-01-02.
  16. Bickham, Troy (2012). The Weight of Vengeance: The United States, the British Empire, and the War of 1812. Oxford University Press. pp. 258–9. ISBN 9780195391787.
  17. Johnson, Allen (1921). "Part 3". Jefferson and His Colleagues, A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty via fullbooks.com.
  18. Henry Adams, History of the United States of America during the Administration of James Madison (1890; Library of America edition, 1986) 2:115-19
  19. Engelman, Fred L. (December 1960). "The peace of Christmas Eve". American Heritage. 12 (1).
  20. Dean, William G.; Heidenreich, Conrad; McIlwraith, Thomas F.; et al., eds. (1998). Concise Historical Atlas of Canada. University of Toronto Press. plate 38. ISBN 9780802042033.
  21. 1 2 "British-American Diplomacy: Treaty of Ghent; 1814". avalon.law.yale.edu (transcribed full text of treaty). Avalon Project: Lillian Goldman Law Library: Yale Law School: Yale University.
  22. Lindsay, AG (1920). "Diplomatic relations between the United States and Great Britain bearing on the return of negro slaves, 1783–1828". Journal of Negro History. 5 (4): 391–419. JSTOR 2713676.
  23. Berton, Pierre (1981). "Ch. 13: Ghent, August—December, 1814". Flames Across the Border: 1813–1814. McClelland & Stewart. pp. 418–9. ISBN 9780771012440.
  24. Hickey 2006, p. 297.
  25. Carr, James (1979). "The Battle of New Orleans and the Treaty of Ghent".
  26. Updyke, Frank A. (1913). "The Treaty of Ghent--A Centenary Estimate". Proceedings of the American Political Science Association. The American Political Science Association, 1913. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/3038419.
  27. "History of a Peace Park". peacearchpark.org. United States Canada Peace Anniversary Association. Archived from the original on 2014-03-02.
  28. MobileReference (2007). Travel Chicago: City Guide and Maps. Mobi Travel Series. MobileReference.com. p. 287. ISBN 9781605010533.
  29. Eisenstadt, Peter R.; Moss, Laura-Eve, eds. (2005). The Encyclopedia Of New York State. Syracuse University Press. p. 240. ISBN 9780815608080.

Further reading

  • Adams, Henry. History of the United States of America during the Administration of James Madison (1890; Library of America edition, 1986) 2: 1185–1219
  • Bemis, Samuel Flagg (1949). John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy. New York: A. A. Knopf. pp. 196–220. OCLC 424693. ; Pulitzer Prize.
  • Burt, Alfred Leroy (1940). The United States, Great Britain and British North America from the Revolution to the Establishment of Peace after the War of 1812. The Relations of Canada and the United States. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. OCLC 752759076 via Questia Online Library. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Engelman, Fred L. The Peace of Christmas Eve (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962), popular narrative
  • Hickey, Donald R. (2012) [1988]. "Ch. 11: The Treaty of Ghent" (PDF). The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Bicentennial ed.). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. pp. 281–98. ISBN 9780252093739 via Project MUSE. (Subscription required (help)).
  • Mahan, A.T. (October 1905). "The negotiations at Ghent in 1814". The American Historical Review. 11 (1): 68–87. doi:10.2307/1832365. JSTOR 1832365.
  • Perkins, Bradford. Castlereagh and Adams: England and the United States, 1812·1823 (1964) excerpt; online review
  • Remini, Robert V. Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (1991) pp 94–122.
    • a version of this chapter appears (in English) in Remini, R. V. "The Treaty of Ghent. The American perspective." Handelingen der Maatschappij voor Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde te Gent 44.1 (1990). online
  • Updyke, Frank A. The diplomacy of the War of 1812 (1915) online free
  • Ward, Adolphus William; Gooch, George Peabody, eds. (1922). "Ch. 5: The American War and the Treaty of Ghent, 1814". The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, 1783–1919: Volume I: 1783–1815. Cambridge University Press. OCLC 489666642.

Primary sources

  • "Letters relating to the Negotiations at Ghent, 1812–1814". The American Historical Review. 20 (1): 108–29. 1914. doi:10.1086/540632. JSTOR 1836119.
  • "Treaty of Ghent". www.loc.gov (digital reference guide). Web Guides: Primary Documents in American History. Library of Congress. 10 April 2014
  • "A Guide to the War of 1812". www.loc.gov (digital reference guide). Web Guides. Compiled by Kenneth Drexler. Library of Congress. 25 June 2014
  • "War of 1812 Timeline of Major Events". pbs.org. PBS. 2011
  • Chowder, Ken (10 October 2011), produced by WNED-TV and Florentine Films/Hott Productions Inc., "The Treaty of Ghent", The War of 1812 (television program), PBS External link in |work= (help)
  • "Association Treaty of Ghent". www.treatyofghent.org (a registered nonprofit organization)
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