B IBLIOTECA DE PROBLEMAS

The U.S. Navy, Haiti, and the Birth of American Interventionism, 1798–1800

ANDREW J. FORNEY

D

uring the summer of 1798, President John Adams received his mail at his personal residence in Quincy, Massachusetts. Summering at Quincy both allowed him and his family the opportunity to escape the miasmal season in Philadelphia and provided a restful retreat for his sick wife, Abigail. A vast amount of his correspondence dealt with the undeclared naval war, known as the Quasi-War, that the Adams administration had inaugurated the preceding May.

Accounts of “depredations” had filled the air since before Adams’s presidency. The administration, feeling political pressure from its own Federalist party, had autho-rized a response to the seizure of American merchantmen by French privateers at the end of May; the president had forwarded instructions to his new Department of the Navy to “seize take and bring into any port of the United States . . . any armed vessel sailing under the Authority or Pretence of Authority from the Repub-lic of France, which shall have committed, or which shall be found hovering on the Coasts of the United States, for the purpose of committing Depredations on the Vessels belonging to the citizens thereof.”¹ In response, Congress passed several acts that focused on defending American merchant vessels and expanding the Navy to take the offensive against piracy and privateering, a task to be overseen by the new Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Stoddert.²

Writing to Adams directly during late July, Secretary Stoddert now pled for a strategic shift in the ongoing hostilities; as the heat of deep summer enveloped Philadelphia, he had become restive. After assuming the role of secretary, Stod-dert had fully backed the administration’s policies and had mobilized the still-small Navy to protect the coastline of the republic. Now, in July, he theorized that the impending hurricane season would drive French privateers back into the protec-tion of West Indian harbors. This reprieve from attacks on the naprotec-tion’s coast would allow the Navy the opportunity to reshape the course of the conflict. Stoddert pre-ferred fighting French privateers in French colonial waters, not within range of American cities. “By keeping up incessant attacks upon the French Cruisers on their own ground,” Stoddert believed, “they will in a degree be prevented from coming on ours.”³

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This idea not only served a strategic end but also spoke to another facet of the conflict, one that had been slowly emerging among men with prominent ties to the administration. Henry Knox, Revolutionary War hero and Secretary of War under Washington, had a month before Stoddert’s request penned a notable letter to Adams, obviously agitated about the situation with France. Knox opined that

“posterity will be astonished, at the constant perseverance of the different succes-sion of French Rulers rising upon the ruins of each other, and yet holding steadily the same unjust conduct towards us.” The citizenry of the United States would fol-low the president’s lead, rallying around him during this time of potential strife and providing the virtuous fortitude to end the depredations of the anarchic French Directory.⁴

For all of his bombast, however, Knox voiced caution. Rather than solely advo-cating naval expansion to protect American merchantmen and attack rapacious French privateers, he also outlined the steps necessary to protect the nation from invasion. Knox concerned himself most with the southern states, which he believed were “vulnerable . . . to an alarming degree.” He acknowledged that currently only the wooden walls of the British navy kept the wily Jacobins from launching a force of “blacks and people of color” onto the shores of the slave South. “Under such circumstances,” Knox warned, “the slaves would instantly join them, and greatly encrease their force.” Fearing that he would sound alarmist, Knox reminded the president that “the event [black/mulatto invasion of the South] is possible, and whatever is possible the enemy will have the enterprise to attempt.”⁵

These two disparate ideas—a desire to shift the area of battle to the West Indies and a fear of Jacobin invasion—animated Stoddert’s recommendation to President Adams, as well as the plans he enacted in the next month to execute his strategy. In the process of this transition, the Adams administration completely reconfigured the Quasi-War with France and recast the foreign policy of the United States. The Navy became the primary tool to execute this policy, and it acted far beyond the stated goals of stopping French depredations. By 1799 all but one ship in the Navy had orders to sail south and assume station somewhere in the Caribbean. After the spring of 1798, the American coastline never again faced the scourge of privateer-ing and depredations it had before, and commerce rebounded handily in the year leading to the end of the century.

This paper will argue that the Navy became an extension of a national policy that sought to eradicate instability in the West Indies during the Quasi-War, dally-ing in imperial politics along the way. American actions toward Saint-Domdally-ingue and Toussaint L’Ouverture’s government during the conflict provide the prime ex-ample of this new interventionist predilection. As opposed to simply executing an antiprivateering campaign in the Caribbean, the Adams administration quickly moved to support L’Ouverture in his bid to consolidate power in the French colony,

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providing both diplomatic and military support to him and his forces. Secretary of State Timothy Pickering led the move to unite Atlantic diplomacy with naval might; his primacy in the cabinet not only animated the legislative actions taken to support L’Ouverture but helped shape naval operations. Harking back to earlier fears of popular unrest and slave revolts, the Federalists quickly transitioned the Quasi-War with France to a West Indian war for antirevolutionary stability.

The French Caribbean appeared to be the nexus of revolutionary fervor dur-ing the 1790s. The Washdur-ington administration handled the Haitian Revolution un-evenly, and understandably so. It grew increasingly difficult to determine which side represented the light of liberty on the island.⁶ During 1793, free blacks and mulattoes, swept up by the Jacobin fury of the revolution in the home country, unseated the white, planter aristocracy that had governed the colony. As the fight-ing between the two factions slowly moved toward a stalemate, the revolt created a schism in the social hierarchy that helped to inaugurate a slave rebellion that in turn quickly spread throughout the colony. Outsiders perceived the formation of a race war in the now-floundering colony, but a war that still maintained vestiges of revolutionary idealism and unity with the wider cause of liberty. A British invasion and the subsequent arming and support of General in Chief Toussaint L’Ouverture, the leader of the ascendant slave faction on the island, further muddied the water.⁷

During early November 1798, L’Ouverture petitioned Adams directly for the re-sumption of American trade. Pickering immediately divined the import of this out-reach. The British still maintained a series of forts on the island’s western shore, but little else, and L’Ouverture’s resistance to declaring independence from France had slowly soured their relationship with him.⁸ All Saint-Dominguan ports had been blockaded from French vessels by the British navy, and the United States joined in an active antiprivateering campaign with its British pseudo-allies in the waters around the colony.

L’Ouverture’s letter to President Adams evinced a policy shift for the ex-slave general. The “War of the Knives” against André Rigaud, the mulatto general op-posed to L’Ouverture, continued to grind on in the southern portions of the colony.

The French agents sent to represent imperial control contributed nothing to the war effort; in conjunction with his request to the American president, L’Ouverture expelled the remaining ones from the island, hoping that this exhibition of renun-ciation of France would have the necessary effect on the Adams administration.

Secretary Pickering took notice; in a letter to the consul at Cap François dated 30 November 1798 he drew the distinction that the last Congress had passed legisla-tion prohibiting trade “with places under the acknowledged power of France.” Logi-cally, “if the inhabitants of St. Domingo have ceased to acknowledge this power, there will not, as I conceive, be any bar to the prompt and extensive renewal of trade between the United States and the ports of that Island.” This is the first recorded

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outline of a new policy to Jacob Mayer, the consul in Cap François, but Picker-ing had obviously brought this idea up with others, most likely fellow merchants from New England (Pickering was from Massachusetts and had briefly been a mer-chant). He noted later on in his dispatch, “our merchants . . . are already preparing to renew that commerce.”⁹

Mayer must have forwarded this information to L’Ouverture quickly, for the general dispatched Joseph Brunel, a close comrade and personal representative, before the end of 1798 to present his views in person to President Adams. While Pickering fought to secure the votes to amend the prohibitive legislation then in ef-fect, Adams intended to display his regard for L’Ouverture and his cause. Secretary Stoddert, in letters to Capts. John Barry and Thomas Truxtun, requested that they modify their ships’ routes to include time on station off Cap François, for “General L’Ouverture has a great desire to see some of our Ships of War” off his coast—and, the secretary added for emphasis, “the President has a desire that he [L’Ouverture]

should be satisfied.” Stoddert recommended to the two captains that they ingratiate themselves with the general, telling Truxtun, “Should you see the General, it would be well to cultivate a good understanding with him.”¹⁰ Stoddert, either wooed by Pickering’s ideas or feeling the weight of Adams’s intentions, believed it important that his captains begin building working relationships with General L’Ouverture.

President Adams signed an act that legislated this policy transition on 9 Febru-ary 1799. The act was aptly titled “Toussaint’s Clause,” and its genesis had been a few months before its signing. Secretary Pickering had led the international and national negotiations that brought the act to fruition, and he cherished the idea of a more ex-pansive role for U.S. power in the Caribbean. As the vessels of the U.S. Navy prepared to determine the function of the new “Santo Domingo Station,” Congress designed a series of benchmarks that offered French colonies a way to reintroduce American merchantmen into their ports, a process emphasizing the necessity of suppressing the privateering enterprises in the respective islands’ waters. Pickering nominated Dr. Edward Stevens, a close friend of Alexander Hamilton and an avowed Federal-ist, to the new position of “consul general” to Saint-Domingue upon the passage of the act. Stevens’s primary task upon arriving on the island involved communicating the provisions of the act to L’Ouverture. They obliged the Saint-Dominguan leader to allow all U.S. vessels, including ships of war, to enter Saint-Dominguan ports for “victuals, water, and refit”—common practice for merchantmen, but Pickering was changing the game by including military vessels.¹¹ By making the resumption of commerce contingent on allowing the Navy to refit in L’Ouverture’s ports, Pickering had turned a French possession into a supply depot for the U.S. Navy, allowing Stod-dert to increase the range and time at sea of his fleet.

Pickering did not believe that such a stricture was too much to request, par-ticularly given his recent battle in the cabinet to wed more closely the policies of

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the United States with L’Ouverture’s designs in Saint-Domingue. Brunel, at his meeting with Adams, forwarded an appeal from L’Ouverture for supplies and pro-visions. The British blockade and the inability of the French to break it had left L’Ouverture’s army lacking common goods, particularly uniforms, food, and parts needed to mend weapons. Agreeing to this request would pull the United States directly into the conflict in Saint-Domingue, and not as an impartial observer. For-warding supplies to L’Ouverture would provide him the means necessary to end the vicious stalemate in the French colony. In the complicated context of the Quasi-War Caribbean, the United States would actually be arming an ex-slave general who still proclaimed ties (albeit loose ones) to the French Republic, in return for a promise to halt future depredations of privateers ostensibly under his control.

Adams considered the question before forwarding it to his cabinet for review.

Attorney General Charles Lee, from Virginia, dissented from the remainder of the cabinet. He believed that for the United States to send provisions to L’Ouverture was “neither lawful or expedient,” although he conceded that a private merchant might forward the articles to L’Ouverture for a price. Such a maneuver also opened the executive department to criticism from the public over perceptions of “interests in adventures.” Lee closed by roundly declaring, “I have no more confidence in the black Frenchmen than the white, and am willing they should suffer in St. Domingo till they actually refrain from depredations on our commerce.”¹²

Pickering wrote the majority decision for Adams, as well as a gruff reply to Lee.

“Having been more than any other gentlemen in the way of receiving information of the real situation of Toussaint,” Pickering wrote Lee, he was convinced that not to supply L’Ouverture’s army “endangers [L’Ouverture’s] authority and the peace of the island of St. Domingo.” As he stated in this letter, the secretary equated supporting L’Ouverture with the eventual stabilization of the internal affairs of the island. More than that, however, Pickering believed that such an immediate measure would soothe the aggressive nature of the “blacks.” Harking back to the fears of Jacobin or ex-slave invasion of the South that Knox had described to Adams less than a year before, Pickering declared that “to delay relief . . . might render the blacks impatient and unbelieving, especially as L’Ouverture himself for some time past have [sic]

been feeding them with promises.”¹³ An expansion of privateering seemed a more likely response to delaying the shipping of supplies, Pickering admitted, but his description of the restive nature of L’Ouverture’s undersupplied “black” army left unsaid an undercurrent of concern for the spread of Jacobin, and emancipatory, revolutionary fervor. President Adams approved the supplies.¹⁴

In early 1800, in execution of Adams’s request to provide naval assistance to L’Ouverture, Commodore Silas Talbot, captain of Constellation and commander of the naval forces around Saint-Domingue, ordered Capt. Christopher Raymond Perry to sail his vessel General Greene around the island of Hispaniola, “paying

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more particular attention to the South side of the island.” Hispaniola, particularly the hotly contested southern portion of Saint-Domingue, continued to roil with pirates and privateers. Some of their vessels belonged to L’Ouverture; the general in chief had scrounged together some barges to break Rigaud’s grip on the southern portion of the island. Rigaud depended on privateering for supplies, which were much needed, particularly since L’Ouverture could soon expect to receive a trickle of goods from the United States. Rigaud had retreated to the port of Jacmel in an effort to keep his supply lines open and maintain access to his privateering fleet as it continued to prey on American and English merchants in the Caribbean. Under no circumstances, Talbot ordered, should Perry “capture any Vessels (except those from Rigaud[’]s Ports) within one league of any part of the Island under General Tou[s]sa[i]nt[’]s Command, or do any one thing, that may Justly give cause to dis-turb the Harmony between him, and the People of the United States.”¹⁵ General Greene arrived in the waters off Jacmel during the last week of February and quick-ly began to interdict Rigaud’s privateers, capturing a “French armed schooner” with a crew of fifty, “mostly white,” on 11 March.¹⁶

L’Ouverture repeatedly singled out Captain Perry in his correspondence. “Noth-ing could equal his kindness, his activity, his watchfulness and his zeal in protect“Noth-ing me, in unhappy circumstances,” he avowed, adding, “he has contributed not a little to the success by his cruise, every effort being made by him to aid me in the taking of Jacmel, also in seeing order restored in this colony.”¹⁷ Such words betray an active partnership between L’Ouverture and Perry, more than the simple antiprivateering duty that Perry’s orders to the Santo Domingo Station stipulated. In fact, Perry’s ship’s log indicates that L’Ouverture’s aides arrived early after the frigate’s arrival, after which they made several trips to confer with Captain Perry. Accounts of these discussions either never existed or have been lost, but future actions taken by Cap-tain Perry and General Greene hint at what might have been agreed on. A letter from an officer on board General Greene, later reprinted in a stateside newspaper, acknowledged the standing order from Talbot to sail around the entirety of Hispan-iola but admitted that the cruise took longer than planned, delayed “for the purpose of aiding Gen. Toussaint in the capture of Jacmel.” As the officer recounted, “we en-gaged three of Rigaud’s forts warmly for 30 or 40 minutes; in which time we obliged the enemy to evacuate the town and two of the forts.” Perry even prepared a board-ing party of Marines and sailors to “take possession of the place,” stoppboard-ing only when a potentially enemy ship came into view and he decided to forgo the ground assault in the hope of capturing a French prize. Rigaud suffered “several men killed and wounded” and, shortly after the bombardment, fled his fortifications.¹⁸

Far from simply attempting to capture or destroy privateers in accordance with a collection of legal sanctions passed by Congress in an attempt to regulate the ongoing Quasi-War with France, Captain Perry had attacked militants engaged in

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a civil war alongside forces loosely affiliated with republican France and had been prepared to seize terrain and place it under the flag of the United States. Such ac-tions barely resembled the context in which the Adams administration inaugurated the Quasi-War in 1798, let alone Perry’s own orders published in January 1800.

While one could claim that Captain Perry carried out his Jacmel assault of his own volition, being more a loose cannon than a by-the-book Navy man, a court of in-quiry was to tell a different story.

After returning from Hispaniola Perry faced an official inquiry into his actions, the court formally convening in the beginning of October 1800. In the listing of official charges brought against him, however, no mention was made of the bom-barding of Jacmel or the transgression of orders that such cannonading involved.

After returning from Hispaniola Perry faced an official inquiry into his actions, the court formally convening in the beginning of October 1800. In the listing of official charges brought against him, however, no mention was made of the bom-barding of Jacmel or the transgression of orders that such cannonading involved.

In document INVESTIGACIÓN OPERATIVA (página 38-53)