The Manuscript Division recently acquired thirteen letters addressed to American diplomat William Harris Crawford (1772-1834). Ten of these are from diplomat and statesman Henry Clay (1777-1852), one is from diplomat Jonathan Russell (1771-1832), and another is from diplomat and Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1761-1849). Twelve letters date from 1814 to 1815, when Crawford was the United States minister to France, and Clay, Russell, and Gallatin, along with James A. Bayard and John Quincy Adams, were the American commissioners negotiating the Treaty of Ghent. This treaty, signed on December 24, 1814 , ended the War of 1812, but without much satisfaction for either side, since the negotiators agreed to return to the status quo ante. The letters also cover the subsequent negotiations in London by Adams, Clay, and Gallatin for a commercial treaty with Britain, which was ratified by the U.S. Senate in December 1815. Except for the thirteenth letter, from 1829, from Crawford to Clay, they document the group’s work and the distracting context of the turmoil in Europe created by the Napoleonic wars. Six of these letters are unpublished.
Henry Clay’s period as a diplomat was short compared with his long career representing Kentucky in the United States House and Senate. He is probably best known as the powerful, longtime House speaker who transformed the office into the authoritative position it remains today. Clay was also a serial, unsuccessful presidential candidate, representing the Whig party. As Speaker of the House and a “War Hawk,” he supported the War of 1812, whose conclusion he helped to bring about at Ghent. Clay’s extensive papers are in the Manuscript Division.
William Crawford of Georgia was, like Henry Clay, a diplomat and a statesman who made several unsuccessful tries at the presidency. After he returned home from France he served in the cabinets of James Madison and James Monroe as secretary of war and secretary of the treasury, respectively. Clay and Crawford were friends and colleagues in the U.S. Senate, and while Clay was in Europe, he kept in close touch with Crawford, relaying news he received from the United States, updating him on the commissioners’ progress, and reporting on what he saw around him in Europe. The Manuscript Division has a small collection of Crawford’s papers. These include photostats, made in 1913, of eight of these letters.
In October 1814, Clay learned about the burning of Washington two months earlier. He wrote Crawford: “What does wound me to the very soul, is, that a set of pirates and incendiaries should have been permitted to pollute our soil, conflagrate our Capital, and return unpunished to their ships!” He also reported to Clay about the American commissioners’ meetings with their British counterparts, who demanded rights to impress American sailors, navigate on the Mississippi River, and reserve land for their American Indian allies.
As the commissioners worked on an end to the War of 1812, the events of the Napoleonic wars swirled around them. On July 2, 1814, Clay speculated on the possibility that Britain would soon occupy the “low countries,” which included Belgium, where they were meeting. “What think you of our being surrounded by a British garrison?” he asked Crawford. The situation would become even more dangerous in a way that, as Clay reported to Crawford on March 23, 1815, “the mind is not sufficiently tranquilized to speculate on.” He was referring to the return to power of Napoleon.
After the American and British negotiators signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, Henry Clay left for Paris. Then, in late February 1815, Napoleon escaped from his exile on Elba, gathered an army, and began marching toward Paris. Clay was there to witness Napoleon’s arrival in the city just before he left for London to work on the commercial treaty. He describes his feelings about this event in two letters to Crawford, written from London. In one of these, an unpublished letter dated March 30, 1815, he exclaims: “What a wonderful man the Emperor is! How he mocks all human calculations and arrangements!” He worried about the prospects for peace in Europe, writing; “I confess I do not see how the Emperor is to keep out of war. His military must be employed, and he must do something to justify the high expectations of national pride and vanity.”
The 1829 letter, which is unpublished, is from February 7, when Clay was secretary of state and Andrew Jackson, his political enemy, had just been elected president but had not yet taken office (inaugurations took place in March in the nineteenth century). Writing again to Crawford he speculates gloomily on the consequences of Jackson’s election “upon the present generation and posterity” and describes how it has filled him “with awful apprehensions.”
One of the unpublished letters is missing its first, and possibly other pages. It has no date, but it is signed by William H. Crawford and a note on the last page shows that it was addressed to Henry Clay. Since it originally belonged, like the rest of this group of letters, to Crawford’s descendants, it is probably a draft, rather than the version Crawford sent to Clay—if he sent it. Internal evidence shows that it probably dates from June 1815, when Adams, Clay, and Gallatin were finishing the commercial treaty and preparing to come home. During this period Bayard was sick (he would die later that year) and on board ship, waiting to leave. Crawford writes: “He has been immured in the ship, without the probability of his leaving it, until he is landed in the United States. If it was improper that the vessel should be detained longer than the 1st of May for his convenience, surely it ought not now to be detained to his annoyance and at the risque of his ultimate recovery. To these considerations ought to be added, the influence that his political sentiments have had upon his conduct, which I am sure you will readily comprehend.” Crawford names Bayard on the last page, making clear that he is the sick man on the ship. Crawford outlines the delays in finishing the treaty, and the arrangements for his and Clay’s departure for the United States, about which both were anxious.
These letters, which will be added to the Manuscript Division’s Crawford papers, are a valuable source of information about the diplomats that negotiated the end of the war of 1812, the career of Henry Clay, and the age of Napoleon.
Do you want more stories like this? Then subscribe to Unfolding History – it’s free!
“…unpublished.“ The unpublished letters are: Henry Clay to William H. Crawford, October 25, 1814, November 24, 1814; March 30, 1815; February 7, 1829, and an incomplete, undated later from Crawford to Clay. These are not in The Papers of Henry Clay, edited by James F. Hopkins (University of Kentucky Press, 1959-1992) or “Letters Relating to the Negotiations at Ghent, 1812-1814,” American Historical Review 20 (October 1914):108-129. Also unpublished is Albert Gallatin to William H. Crawford, October 19, 1814, which is not in The Writings of Albert Gallatin, edited by Henry Adams (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1879), or in The Papers of Albert Gallatin (Philadelphia: Historic Publications, 1969), a microfilm edition of Gallatin papers in various repositories. Jonathan Russell’s letter to William H. Crawford, October 17, 1814, is published in “Letters Relating to the Negotiations.” For the work of the commissioners at Ghent and London see: Robert Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991) and James Traub, John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit (New York: Basic Books, 2016).
“photostats…“ The eight photostats are part of a larger group of photostats in the Crawford papers. When the photostats were made in 1913 the originals belonged to Crawford’s descendants. The Crawford papers also contain his journal from 1813, which describes his trip to Europe and his meeting with Napoleon on November 14, 1813. The journal has been published as a separate volume, “The Journal of William H. Crawford,” edited by Daniel Chauncey Knowlton, Smith College Studies in History 11 (October 1925).
“He wrote Crawford…“ Henry Clay to William H. Crawford, Ghent, October 17, 1814.
“two letters…“ March 23 and 30, 1815. For Clay’s presence in Paris as Napoleon arrived see Remini, Henry Clay, 126. Another witness to Napoleon’s march was Louisa Catherine Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams, with whom she reunited in Paris after traveling there alone from Russia. During her journey she encountered Napoleon’s troops. See Michael O’Brien, Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021).