Trials and Tribulations, 1780-1785

Nations allied to each other in wartime necessarily share more than the strictly military task of defeating the enemy. When one nation is longestablished, rich, and powerful, and the other is newborn, cash-poor, and lacking in most of the means to pursue military objectives successfully, the alliance requires the investment of considerable military aid and money on the former's part. Such, of course, was the nature of the Franco-American alliance.

The need for money was never far from contemplation by any diplomatic representative of the United States prior to 1789. Silas Deane,' Arthur Lee, and Benjamin Franklin' worked constantly to obtain funds with which to meet the needs of Congress in 1777. A decade later, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson' busied themselves with arrangements for another Dutch loan shortly before Adams' final departure from Europe.

During the war, financial difficulties could be assuaged by French subsidies, loans, and loan guarantees, and later by loans from Dutch bankers. The continuance of these difficulties in peacetime resulted from one of the fundamental shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation Congress had no power to tax, only the right to seek state contributions to meet national needs. There was no reliable source of funds to maintain an army or a navy, or to redeem foreign obligations. Efforts to amend the Articles to allow Congress to collect an import duty failed to achieve ratification. In the absence of such a funding mechanism, when state contributions failed to meet its needs, Congress was compelled to have its diplomats in Europe again resort to the Dutch bankers.

Collection of import duties would have remedied another inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation, at least in part. But Congress had no authority to control the country's domestic or foreign commerce. Each state had the power to impose import restrictions on goods entering its territory from a foreign country or another state. In the period immediately following the peace treaty, several states, among them Massachusetts and New Hampshire, endeavored to penalize Great Britain for the restrictions placed on U.S. trade with the British colonies by adopting heavy import

duties. This action naturally aroused the ire of French merchants operating in those states, who regarded the indiscriminate imposition of such duties as a violation of the most-favored-nation provisions in the FrancoAmerican treaty of amity and commerce. A similar development, in which Virginia gave France preferential treatment in the importation of brandies, caused the Dutch to protest a violation of the same provisions in their treaty of amity and commerce with the United States.

State imposition of import duties highlighted a third major shortcoming of the Articles of Confederation. Congress had the power to enter into treaties with foreign powers, but not the power to enforce compliance with such treaties on the part of the states. While this state of affairs had serious implications for foreign trade, its most profound reverberations came from the failure to comply with certain articles of the peace treaty.

Article Four of the Treaty of Paris of 1783 specified that creditors should meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of all bona fide debts. Article Five required Congress to "earnestly recommend" to the states the restitution of all rights and properties taken from loyalists in the course of the war. In conjunction with ratification of the treaty, Congress complied with Article Five, and state courts in theory stood ready to enforce Article Four. But Congress could not compel the states to restore confiscated loyalist property or to redress violations of loyalists' rights, nor could the signing of a treaty expunge from state legal codes all obstacles to the payment of debts owed to British creditors.

The British in turn failed to comply with Article Seven, which specified the evacuation of all occupied territory. They had withdrawn from Savannah and Charleston long before the signing of the definitive peace treaty. Sir Guy Carleton' removed the last British troops from New York on November 25, 1783, and from Penobscot on January 15, 1784.

However, the British did not evacuate the frontier posts of Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, and Michilimackinac as the treaty required. The initial reason given for this lack of compliance was fear of an Indian war, but the argument was soon advanced that failure of the United States to live up to Articles Four and Five of the treaty justified continued retention of the frontier posts. (That the fur trade with the interior of the continent thereby remained in British hands was probably more of a bonus than a major factor in determining this policy.) This situation remained unresolved until the 1790s, when the United States took possession of the posts.

The Articles of Confederation thus embodied deficiencies that seriously diminished the capacity of the United States to comport itself as a full

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member of the family of nations. To this must be added the perceived hostility of the rejected mother country. Most prominent Americans of this period were convinced that Great Britain orchestrated its postwar restrictions on trade with the United States in such a manner as to stifle the American merchant marine and to limit the development of American foreign commerce. However, the fact that Great Britain's national interests lay in maximizing the number of British seamen upon which it could draw to man the Royal Navy in wartime, and in maintaining its own foreign trade and manufactures at optimum levels, does not necessarily mean that animosity towards the United States was absent from the thinking of British political figures, particularly of American loyalists who held positions in the British government.

British national interests and loyalist sympathies may also have been factors in the early stages of the northeast boundary dispute. The map which the peace negotiators had used to define the boundary was inaccurate with regard to the St. Croix River, which was formed from three tributaries only a short distance above Passamaquoddy Bay. Massachusetts relied upon the testimony of local Indians in setting the easternmost tributary as the boundary. Nova Scotia viewed the middle tributary as its western boundary, and laid out colonization sites on the land between the two rivers. These were occupied by loyalist refugees evacuated from Penobscot in late 1783 and early 1784. Although efforts were made to resolve the ensuing boundary dispute, no settlement was reached until 1842.

In contrast to Great Britain, France pursued a generally benevolent posture towards its ally in the immediate postwar era, although it was naturally interested in the prompt repayment of loans made to the American government and of debts owed to French subjects. While it did restrict U.S. trade with its sugar islands, the French government made some efforts to improve Franco-American commerce, including the establishment of certain free ports for American merchant vessels. However, French commercial practices were sufficiently different from those followed in the United States to prevent a significant change in the flow of American commerce. Accordingly, American merchants who traded in France experienced considerable frustration with the archaic economic regulations that hobbled French foreign and domestic commerce. When British goods began to appear again in the United States in 1783, they rapidly replaced French imports, except for certain luxury items.

Although Spain feared the impact of the American Revolution on its American colonies, its attitude toward the American republic was generally straightforward and businesslike. With the conclusion of the definitive peace treaty, Spain resumed its policy of prohibiting foreign trade with its American colonies. With West Florida in Spanish hands, the American right to free navigation of the Mississippi set forth in the Anglo-American peace treaty lost its validity, at least on those parts of the river where Spain claimed both banks. In addition, Spain controlled the North American coastline from St. Augustine to the Yucatan Peninsula, which made the Caribbean a Spanish lake. In theory, Spain should have been able to deal with the United States from a position of strength.

However, the Spanish-American relationship was not without its difficulties. American merchants had conducted a flourishing contraband trade with Spain's American colonies before the Revolution. Indeed, those colonies were a prime source of specie for the Americans, who had trouble maintaining a supply of hard money with which to meet their obligations to European creditors. Notwithstanding these facts, for many Americans Spain was a traditional enemy which had fought as the ally of an ally, and had held the United States at arm's length at a time when the young nation had offered friendship sweetened with important concessions. It was not surprising therefore that most American leaders saw no reason to yield anything to Spain after the return of peace. The situation was further complicated by the movement of a growing populace. Before, during, and after the war, American settlers continued to fill up the back country west of the Appalachians. These residents of what would become Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Tennessee viewed the Mississippi as a highway on which to take their goods to market. Other settlers were moving into the Illinois country, into the areas south of Tennessee, even west of the Mississippi. All things considered, Spain had every reason to be concerned about the navigation of the Mississippi by U.S. citizens, and about the impact of such a development on Louisiana and West Florida.

Of course, the westward migration of the settlers had its greatest impact upon the native Americans with whom they came into contact. Four of the Six Nations had fought for the British during the Revolutionary War, as had the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw in the South, and the Shawnee, Miami, Wyandot, and Ottawa north of the Ohio. The United States appointed commissioners to treat with the Six Nations and the western Indians after the war, and treaties were made which defined areas open to settlement. But with rare exceptions, native Americans fell victim

to the machinations of land speculators as settlers continued to stream westward.

While investment in western lands appealed particularly to those from agricultural regions, such as the central and southern States, in New England and the port cities of the central States, individuals with surplus funds often chose to invest in ventures of a maritime nature. In May 1785, Captain John Green' and Samuel Shaw completed the first substantial American trading voyage to the Far East in the Empress of China. Their venture opened the door for many other American vessels to make the long journey that would reap much profit for owners, captains, merchants, and crews.

American mariners figured in another type of profitable venture where the Barbary Powers were concerned. Always at war with one or more of the Christian nations, the four North African city-states derived most of their revenues from the capture and sale of merchant vessels, the ransoming or enslavement of their crews, and the tribute paid in return for peace. Morocco captured one American vessel, then released the ship and crew; its ruler primarily wanted a treaty of peace and friendship with the United States, which was concluded in 1786. The crews of two vessels seized by the Regency of Algiers were not so fortunate; they remained in captivity until 1796.

To address the above issues and to meet the need for closer coordination of foreign ties, Congress had established the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1781, with Robert R. Livingston' as its Secretary. Livingston resigned in June 1783, and the post remained vacant until John Jay10 returned from Europe in July 1784 to find that Congress had named him Secretary on May 7. The intrepid Jay did not take over his duties until December 21, but once in office he became, in effect, a prime minister, for he provided stability and continuity of policy to a Congress that often lacked a quorum, and to that assembly's presidents, often deficient in experience. Over and above the peacemaking process, the period from 1780 through 1785 presented American leaders with an intriguing array of problems as they sought to define the position of the emerging nation within the world community.

Deane, Silas (1737-1789). American diplomat and member from Connecticut of the First and Second Continental Congresses. In 1778, along with Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee, negotiated a commercial and amity agreement with France. Due to disagreements over accounts and what he perceived to be a lack of gratitude for his public