Disunion Among Ourselves by Eli Merritt

Author:Eli Merritt [Merritt, Eli]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780826274861
Publisher: University of Missouri Press

From March until early August, the Lee-Adams coalition’s major accomplishment was to halt the forward-moving wheels of a peace treaty that dishonored and disunited the thirteen states by forfeiting either of its strong legs. Then, serendipity intervened to rescue the Continental Congress from its monthslong paralysis on the Mississippi and fisheries. In the second week of August, a ship ascended the Delaware River with news that quickly relieved tension and rewrote the equation of American foreign policy. Newspapers and letters rang out with the announcement: Great Britain had rejected the Spanish mediation and, consequently, Spain would at long last join the war. As New Hampshire delegate Nathaniel Peabody expressed this fortuitous development to the governor of his state, “This moment I am inform’d from good authority, Great Britain has actually refused the mediation of Spain, that His Catholic Majesty has declar’d he will no longer be an idle spectator in the present contest—that he has actually join’d in alliance with France and these United States.”17

Even though American delegates wrongly interpreted events in Europe to mean that Spain was heading rapidly toward an alliance with the United States, this was thrilling news. Not only did it proclaim to the world that Britain now faced three formidable foes, the United States, France, and Spain—because King Charles III had in fact declared war on Britain in June as an ally of France—but it also freed the American Congress from the vice grip of the Spanish mediation. The United States no longer had to devise terms of peace in full deference to Spain, for fear that both France and Spain might abandon the cause of independence if the Congress caused grave offense. Spain was formally in the war, allowing the Congress to assume its full authority and dignity as an independent belligerent.

Even though the Spanish mediation had unraveled, the prospects for peace had not. With Spain in the war, a peace treaty was, in fact, more probable now than ever. So the Congress immediately went to work completing its long-sought terms for that treaty as well as those for a treaty of alliance with Spain. After this, it appointed American ministers to sail to France and Spain in their defense. Regarding the fisheries, the Lee-Adams coalition was at long last persuaded by the other delegates in Congress that an ultimatum in the peace treaty itself overtly breached the Franco-American alliance. Therefore, the instructions, as approved in August, required that under no circumstances could a peace treaty be signed forfeiting that right. The document must either stipulate a positive American right granting access to the fisheries or say nothing at all, allowing Americans to fish and dry as freely as before the war by the purposeful omission of a prohibition.18

This was the first security to the New England interest. There were three more—and a final one hoped for. Second, the United States would engage in no trade at all with England until a positive right to the fisheries was formally granted in a commercial treaty.

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