Impressment.
In 1707 the British Parliament, by act, forbade the impressment of seamen in American ports and waters for privateering service, unless of such sailors as had previously deserted from ships-of-war.
The custom had been a source of annoyance and complaint for several years, and was continued despite the action of Parliament.
In November, 1747,
Commodore Knowles, while in
Boston Harbor, finding himself short of men, sent a press-gang into the town one morning, which seized and carried to the vessels several of the citizens.
This violence aroused the populace.
Several of the naval officers on shore were seized by a mob and held as hostages for their kidnapped countrymen.
They also surrounded the town house, where the legislature was in session, and demanded the release of the impressed men. The governor called out the militia, who reluctantly obeyed.
Then, alarmed, he withdrew to the castle.
Knowles offered a company of marines to sustain his authority, and threatened to bombard the town if his officers were not released.
The populace declared that the governor's flight was abdication.
Matters became so serious that the influential citizens, who had favored the populace, tried to suppress the tumult.
The Assembly ordered the release of the officers, and
Knowles sent back most of the impressed men. The authorities attributed the outbreak to “negroes and persons of vile condition.”
This was the first of a series of impressments of American citizens by British officers which finally led to the
War of 1812-15.
Proofs of the sufferings of American seamen from the operations of the
British impress system were continually received, and so frequent and flagrant were these outrages, towards the close of 1805, that Congress took action on the subject.
It was felt that a crisis was reached when the independence of the
United States must be vindicated, or the national honor would be imperilled.
There was ample cause not only for retaliatory measures against
Great Britain, but even for war. A non-importation act was passed.
It was resolved to try negotiations once more.
William Pinkney, of
Maryland, was appointed (May, 1806) minister extraordinary to
England, to become associated with
Monroe, the resident minister, in negotiating a treaty that should settle all disputes between the two governments.
He sailed for
England, and negotiations were commenced Aug. 7.
As the
American commissioners were instructed to make no treaty which did not secure the vessels of their countrymen on the high
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seas against press-gangs, that topic received the earliest attention.
The
Americans contended that the right of impressment, existing by municipal law, could not be exercised out of the jurisdiction of
Great Britain, and, consequently, upon the high seas.
The
British replied that no subject of the
King could expatriate himself— “once an Englishman, always an Englishman” —and argued that to give up that right would make every American vessel an asylum for British seamen wishing to evade their country's service.
Finally, the
British commissioners stated in writing that it was not intended by their government to exercise this claimed right on board any American vessel, unless it was known it contained British deserters.
In that shape this portion of a treaty then concluded remained, and was unsatisfactory because it was based upon contingencies and provisions, and not upon positive treaty stipulations.
The American commissioners then, on their own responsibility, proceeded to treat upon other points in dispute, and an agreement was made, based principally upon
Jay's treaty of 1794.
The
British made some concessions as to the rights of neutrals.
The treaty was more favorable to the
Americans, on the whole, than
Jay's, and, for the reasons which induced him, the
American commissioners signed it. It was satisfactory to the merchants and most of the people; yet the
President, consulting only his
Secretary of State, and without referring it to the Senate, rejected it.
A cause of War.
The British government claimed the right for commanders of British ships-of-war to make up any deficiency in their crews by pressing into their service British-born seamen found anywhere not within the immediate jurisdiction of some foreign state.
As many British seamen were employed on board of American merchant-vessels, the exercise of this claimed right might (and often did) seriously cripple American vessels at sea. To distinguish between British and American seamen was not an easy matter, and many British captains, eager to fill up their crews, frequently impressed native-born
Americans.
These were sometimes dragged by violence from on board their own vessels and condemned to a life of slavery as seamen in British ships-ofwar.
When
Jonathan Russell, minister at the British Court, attempted to negotiate with that government (August, 1812) for a settlement of disputes between the
Americans and
British, and proposed the withdrawal of the claims of the latter to the right of impressment and the release of impressed seamen, Lord Castlereagh, the
British minister for foreign affairs, refused to listen to such a proposition.
He even expressed surprise that, “as a condition preliminary even to a suspension of hostilities, the government of the
United States should have thought fit to demand that the
British government should desist from its ancient and accustomed practice of impressing British seamen from the merchant-ships of a foreign state, simply on the assurance that a law was hereafter to be passed to prohibit the employment of British seamen in the public or commercial service of that state.”
The
United States had proposed to pass a law making such a prohibition in case the
British government should relinquish the practice of impressment and release all impressed seamen.
Castlereagh acknowledged that there might have been, at the beginning of the year 1811, 1,600
bona fide American citizens serving by compulsion in the
British navy.
Several hundreds of them had been discharged, and all would be, Castlereagh said, upon proof made of their American birth; but the
British government, he continued, could not consent “to suspend the exercise of a right upon which the naval strength of the empire mainly depended, unless assured that the object might be attained in some other way.”
There were then upward of 6,000 cases of alleged impressment of American seamen recorded in the Department of State, and it was estimated that at least as many more might have occurred, of which no information had been received.
Castlereagh had admitted on the floor of the House of Commons that an official inquiry had revealed the fact that there were, in 1811, 3,500 men claiming to be American citizens.
Whatever may have been the various causes combined which produced the war between the
United States and
Great Britain in 1812-15, when it was declared, the capital question,
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and that around which gathered in agreement a larger portion of the people of the republic, was that of impressment The contest was, by this consideration, resolved into a noble struggle of a free people against insolence and oppression, undertaken on behalf of the poor, the helpless, and the stranger.
It was this conception of the essential nature of the conflict that gave vigor to every below of the
American soldier and seamen, and the watch-words “Free trade and sailors' rights” prevailed on land as well as on the sea. See
Madison, James.
