The Liberator (newspaper)/September 18, 1857/Letter from ex-President Tyler

From the Richmond Enquirer of Sept. 4.

Letter from ex-President Tyler.

Messrs. Editors: Although I have observed profound silence in regard to all public political discussions since the close of my official residence at Washington, yet it seems to me to be not only proper, but in some measure required of me, to vindicate an act of my administration, for which posterity will hold me accountable, against a public attack made upon it. Such an occasion has occurred in the published debates of the recent Commercial Convention at Knoxville, wherein a member is stated to have declared the provision in the treaty of Washington, stipulating on the part of the United States for the maintenance of a fleet of eighty guns for the suppression of the slave trade under the American flag, was an act of discourtesy and insult to the South, as a reason for its abrogation. The declaration thus made seems to have met with the countenance of a large majority of the convention, in the final vote upon the subject.

I propose to do no more, Messrs. Editors, than revive with the public a recollection of the incidents which led to the incorporation of that provision in the treaty; and having done so, I shall be content to leave the matter to the arbitrament of the proper tribunal.

I shall, however, be permitted to observe, that the remarks reported to have fallen from members of the convention, in debating the main subject, are so entirely variant from the popular sentiment entertained throughout the Southern States, as I believe, in 1842, as to occasion me no little surprise. Who, in 1842, even dreamed that there would be, as early as 1857, a proposition seriously made to revive the slave trade? I certainly entertained no such idea; nor did, I am quite sure, any one of the able and patriotic statesmen who were my constitutional advisers. I really thought, and often declared, that the Southern States were more opposed to the slave trade than any other portion of our people. They had voted with singular unanimity for the act of Congress which declared that all citizens of the United States engaged in that trade should be regarded, and if convicted punished, as pirates. How it happens, then, that a provision introduced into a treaty to enforce a law for which the South had voted can be rightfully regarded as an insult to the South, I must say passes my comprehension. Certainly, such an idea never entered into my head or heart.

My principal desire, however, is to call the attention of the country, in brief, to the facts as they existed immediately antecedent to the treaty of Washington. The British government had insisted upon the right, in virtue of various treaties with other nations, to visit ships on the coast of Africa sailing under the American flag, for the purpose of ascertaining the true nationality of the ships. England had even ventured to put their claim into practice. This called forth strong remonstrances from Mr. Stevenson, who was then our minister at London, and a most able argument in pamphlet form appeared soon after, from the pen of Gen. Cass, who was our minister at Paris. The conduct of our representatives at London and Paris, in this particular, was fully approved by the administration, and, in my annual message to Congress, I took decided ground against the claim preferred by Great Britain, and made the occasion to say, that as the United States government was the first to declare the slave trade to be piracy, so far as the citizens of the United States were concerned, so it was fully able to enforce its own laws, without the aid of British cruisers.

Thus the two governments remained for a time antagonized on the question. Great Britain urged that she meant no insults to the American flag, but that it was impossible, without a visit to the ship, to ascertain whether she belonged to the nation whose flag she bore, or had assumed that flag merely to deceive, thus seeking immunity under the American flag, when the vessel, officers and crew might be French, Portuguese or Spanish, or some other nation, intent on the slave trade, whose treaty stipulations had given to Great Britain the right of visit and search. Great Britain also urged on our government, as a consideration for quiescence on our part in the matter, that if the vessel visited should turn out to be truly American, bound on a peaceful mercantile voyage, she would indemnify all loss and every damage sustained, as had been honorably done in all preceding cases. Lord Ashburton was possessed of full power to negotiate on this as on other subjects, and upon conference, I reiterated my declaration, made in my annual message, that the United States government was able to enforce its own laws, and that I should see to their enforcement, treaty or no treaty, under the obligations of paramount duty. I then suggested, by way of discharging this duty on my part, that we should keep upon the African coast a naval armament sufficiently great to visit all ships that might hoist the United States flag and fall under suspicion, but that we could not permit another nation to do so. Upon this basis, the stipulation in the treaty has, in my mind, always rested. Certain it is, that for the after-time of my service, no visit, much less search, of an American vessel, occurred on the part of a British cruiser. What has taken place since, I will not undertake to say.

I have nothing to do with what the government of this country may deem it proper to do in regard to that stipulation; but this I will venture to say, that, repeal when it pleases that provision of the treaty, it will still find it necessary, for the enforcement of the laws of the United States, as well as for the protection of the traffic of merchant vessels on that coast—a traffic every year increasing in value, and destined in the end to be of vast magnitude—to maintain a fleet of at least eighty guns on the coast of Africa. It might be worthy of consideration by the next Commercial Convention whether, before they advise the cancelling of the provision in question, and denounce it as an insult to the South, they should not first repeal the law relative to piracy in regard to the slave trade.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,