Date: 1812-06-01
President: James Madison

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:I communicate to Congress certain documents, being a continuation of those   heretofore laid before them on the subject of our affairs with Great   Britain.Without going back beyond the renewal in 1803 of the war in which Great   Britain is engaged, and omitting unrepaired wrongs of inferior magnitude,   the conduct of her government presents a series of acts hostile to the   United States as an independent and neutral nation.British cruisers have been in the continued practice of violating the   American flag on the great highway of nations, and of seizing and carrying   off persons sailing under it, not in the exercise of a belligerent right   founded on the law of nations against an enemy, but of a municipal   prerogative over British subjects. British jurisdiction is thus extended to   neutral vessels in a situation where no laws can operate but the law of   nations and the laws of the country to which the vessels belong, and a self-redress is assumed which, if British subjects were wrongfully detained and   alone concerned, is that substitution of force for a resort to the   responsible sovereign which falls within the definition of war. Could the   seizure of British subjects in such cases be regarded as within the exercise   of a belligerent right, the acknowledged laws of war, which forbid an   article of captured property to be adjudged without a regular investigation   before a competent tribunal, would imperiously demand the fairest trial   where the sacred rights of persons were at issue. In place of such a trial   these rights are subjected to the will of every petty commander.The practice, hence, is so far from affecting British subjects alone that,   under the pretext of searching for these, thousands of American citizens,   under the safeguard of public law and of their national flag, have been torn   from their country and from everything dear to them; have been dragged on   board ships of war of a foreign nation and exposed, under the severities of   their discipline, to be exiled to the most distant and deadly climes, to   risk their lives in the battles of their oppressors, and to be the   melancholy instruments of taking away those of their own brethren.Against this crying enormity, which Great Britain would be so prompt to   avenge if committed against herself, the United States have in vain   exhausted remonstrances and expostulations, and that no proof might be   wanting of their conciliatory dispositions, and no pretext left for a   continuance of the practice, the British government was formally assured of   the readiness of the United States to enter into arrangements such as could   not be rejected if the recovery of British subjects were the real and the   sole object. The communication passed without effect.British cruisers have been in the practice also of violating the rights and   the peace of our coasts. They hover over and harass our entering and   departing commerce. To the most insulting pretensions they have added the   most lawless proceedings in our very harbors, and have wantonly spilt   American blood within the sanctuary of our territorial jurisdiction. The   principles and rules enforced by that nation, when a neutral nation, against   armed vessels of belligerents hovering near her coasts and disturbing her   commerce are well known. When called on, nevertheless, by the United States   to punish the greater offenses committed by her own vessels, her government   has bestowed on their commanders additional marks of honor and confidence.Under pretended blockades, without the presence of an adequate force and   sometimes without the practicability of applying one, our commerce has been   plundered in every sea, the great staples of our country have been cut off   from their legitimate markets, and a destructive blow aimed at our   agricultural and maritime interests. In aggravation of these predatory   measures they have been considered as in force from the dates of their   notification, a retrospective effect being thus added, as has been done in   other important cases, to the unlawfulness of the course pursued. And to   render the outrage the more signal these mock blockades have been reiterated   and enforced in the face of official communications from the British government declaring as the true definition of a legal blockade "that   particular ports must be actually invested and previous warning given to   vessels bound to them not to enter."Not content with these occasional expedients for laying waste our neutral   trade, the cabinet of Britain resorted at length to the sweeping system of   blockades, under the name of orders in council, which has been molded and   managed as might best suit its political views, its commercial jealousies,   or the avidity of British cruisers.To our remonstrances against the complicated and transcendent injustice of   this innovation the first reply was that the orders were reluctantly adopted   by Great Britain as a necessary retaliation on decrees of her enemy   proclaiming a general blockade of the British Isles at a time when the naval   force of that enemy dared not issue from his own ports. She was reminded   without effect that her own prior blockades, unsupported by an adequate   naval force actually applied and continued, were a bar to this plea; that   executed edicts against millions of our property could not be retaliation on   edicts confessedly impossible to be executed; that retaliation, to be just,   should fall on the party setting the guilty example, not on an innocent   party which was not even chargeable with an acquiescence in it.When deprived of this flimsy veil for a prohibition of our trade with her   enemy by the repeal of his prohibition of our trade with Great Britain, her   cabinet, instead of a corresponding repeal or a practical discontinuance of   its orders, formally avowed a determination to persist in them against the   United States until the markets of her enemy should be laid open to British   products, thus asserting an obligation on a neutral power to require one   belligerent to encourage by its internal regulations the trade of another   belligerent, contradicting her own practice toward all nations, in peace as   well as in war, and betraying the insincerity of those professions which   inculcated a belief that, having resorted to her orders with regret, she was   anxious to find an occasion for putting an end to them.Abandoning still more all respect for the neutral rights of the United   States and for its own consistency, the British government now demands as   prerequisites to a repeal of its orders as they relate to the United States   that a formality should be observed in the repeal of the French decrees   nowise necessary to their termination nor exemplified by British usage, and   that the French repeal, besides including that portion of the decrees which   operates within a territorial jurisdiction, as well as that which operates   on the high seas, against the commerce of the United States should not be a   single and special repeal in relation to the United States, but should be   extended to whatever other neutral nations unconnected with them may be   affected by those decrees. And as an additional insult, they are called on   for a formal disavowal of conditions and pretensions advanced by the French government for which the United States are so far from having made   themselves responsible that, in official explanations which have been   published to the world, and in a correspondence of the American minister at   London with the British minister for foreign affairs such a responsibility   was explicitly and emphatically disclaimed.It has become, indeed, sufficiently certain that the commerce of the United   States is to be sacrificed, not as interfering with the belligerent rights   of Great Britain; not as supplying the wants of her enemies, which she   herself supplies; but as interfering with the monopoly which she covets for   her own commerce and navigation. She carries on a war against the lawful   commerce of a friend that she may the better carry on a commerce with an   enemy ? a commerce polluted by the forgeries and perjuries which are for the   most part the only passports by which it can succeed.Anxious to make every experiment short of the last resort of injured   nations, the United States have withheld from Great Britain, under   successive modifications, the benefits of a free intercourse with their   market, the loss of which could not but outweigh the profits accruing from   her restrictions of our commerce with other nations. And to entitle these   experiments to the more favorable consideration they were so framed as to   enable her to place her adversary under the exclusive operation of them. To   these appeals her government has been equally inflexible, as if willing to   make sacrifices of every sort rather than yield to the claims of justice or   renounce the errors of a false pride. Nay, so far were the attempts carried   to overcome the attachment of the British cabinet to its unjust edicts that   it received every encouragement within the competency of the executive   branch of our government to expect that a repeal of them would be followed   by a war between the United States and France, unless the French edicts   should also be repealed. Even this communication, although silencing forever   the plea of a disposition in the United States to acquiesce in those edicts   originally the sole plea for them, received no attention.If no other proof existed of a predetermination of the British government   against a repeal of its orders, it might be found in the correspondence of   the minister plenipotentiary of the United States at London and the British   secretary for foreign affairs in 1810, on the question whether the blockade   of May, 1806, was considered as in force or as not in force. It had been   ascertained that the French government, which urged this blockade as the   ground of its Berlin decree, was willing in the event of its removal, to   repeal that decree, which, being followed by alternate repeals of the other   offensive edicts, might abolish the whole system on both sides. This   inviting opportunity for accomplishing an object so important to the United   States, and professed so often to be the desire of both the belligerents,   was made known to the British government. As that government admits that an   actual application of an adequate force is necessary to the existence of a   legal blockade, and it was notorious that if such a force had ever been   applied its long discontinuance had annulled the blockade in question, there   could be no sufficient objection on the part of Great Britain to a formal   revocation of it, and no imaginable objection to a declaration of the fact   that the blockade did not exist. The declaration would have been consistent   with her avowed principles of blockade, and would have enabled the United   States to demand from France the pledged repeal of her decrees, either with   success, in which case the way would have been opened for a general repeal   of the belligerent edicts, or without success, in which case the United   States would have been justified in turning their measures exclusively   against France. The British government would, however, neither rescind the   blockade nor declare its nonexistence, nor permit its non-existence to be   inferred and affirmed by the American plenipotentiary. On the contrary, by   representing the blockade to be comprehended in the orders in council, the   United States were compelled so to regard it in their subsequent   proceedings.There was a period when a favorable change in the policy of the British   cabinet was justly considered as established. The minister plenipotentiary   of His Britannic Majesty here proposed an adjustment of the differences more   immediately endangering the harmony of the two countries. The proposition   was accepted with the promptitude and cordiality corresponding with the   invariable professions of this government. A foundation appeared to be laid   for a sincere and lasting reconciliation. The prospect, however, quickly   vanished. The whole proceeding was disavowed by the British government   without any explanations which could at that time repress the belief that   the disavowal proceeded from a spirit of hostility to the commercial rights   and prosperity of the United States; and it has since come into proof that   at the very moment when the public minister was holding the language of   friendship and inspiring confidence in the sincerity of the negotiation with   which he was charged a secret agent of his government was employed in   intrigues having for their object a subversion of our government and a   dismemberment of our happy union.In reviewing the conduct of Great Britain toward the United States our   attention is necessarily drawn to the warfare just renewed by the savages on   one of our extensive frontiers ? a warfare which is known to spare neither   age nor sex and to be distinguished by features peculiarly shocking to   humanity. It is difficult to account for the activity and combinations which   have for some time been developing themselves among tribes in constant   intercourse with British traders and garrisons without connecting their   hostility with that influence and without recollecting the authenticated   examples of such interpositions heretofore furnished by the officers and   agents of that government.Such is the spectacle of injuries and indignities which have been heaped on   our country, and such the crisis which its unexampled forbearance and   conciliatory efforts have not been able to avert. It might at least have   been expected that an enlightened nation, if less urged by moral obligations   or invited by friendly dispositions on the part of the United States, would   have found its true interest alone a sufficient motive to respect their   rights and their tranquillity on the high seas; that an enlarged policy   would have favored that free and general circulation of commerce in which   the British nation is at all times interested, and which in times of war is   the best alleviation of its calamities to herself as well as to other   belligerents; and more especially that the British cabinet would not, for   the sake of a precarious and surreptitious intercourse with hostile markets,   have persevered in a course of measures which necessarily put at hazard the   invaluable market of a great and growing country, disposed to cultivate the   mutual advantages of an active commerce.Other counsels have prevailed. Our moderation and conciliation have had no   other effect than to encourage perseverance and to enlarge pretensions. We   behold our seafaring citizens still the daily victims of lawless violence,   committed on the great common and highway of nations, even within sight of   the country which owes them protection. We behold our vessels, freighted   with the products of our soil and industry, or returning with the honest   proceeds of them, wrested from their lawful destinations, confiscated by   prize courts no longer the organs of public law but the instruments of   arbitrary edicts, and their unfortunate crews dispersed and lost, or forced   or inveigled in British ports into British fleets, whilst arguments are   employed in support of these aggressions which have no foundation but in a   principle equally supporting a claim to regulate our external commerce in   all cases whatsoever.We behold, in fine, on the side of Great Britain, a state of war against the   United States, and on the side of the United States a state of peace toward   Great Britain.Whether the United States shall continue passive under these progressive   usurpations and these accumulating wrongs, or, opposing force to force in   defense of their national rights, shall commit a just cause into the hands   of the Almighty Disposer of Events, avoiding all connections which might   entangle it in the contest or views of other powers, and preserving a   constant readiness to concur in an honorable re-establishment of peace and   friendship, is a solemn question which the Constitution wisely confides to   the legislative department of the government. In recommending it to their   early deliberations I am happy in the assurance that the decision will be   worthy the enlightened and patriotic councils of a virtuous, a free, and a   powerful nation.Having presented this view of the relations of the United States with Great   Britain and of the solemn alternative grow mg out of them, I proceed to   remark that the communica tions last made to Congress on the subject of our   relations with France will have shewn that since the revocation of her   decrees, as they violated the neutral rights of the United States, her government has authorized illegal captures by its privateers and public   ships, and that other outrages have been practised on our vessels and our   citizens It will have been seen also that no indemnity had been provided or   satisfacto rily pledged for the extensive spoliations committed under the   violent and retrospective orders of the French government against the   property of our citizens seized within the jurisdic tion of France I abstain   at this time from recommending to the consideration of Congress definitive   measures with re spect to that nation, in the expectation that the result of   un closed discussions between our minister plenipotentiary at Paris and the   French government will speedily enable Congress to decide with greater   advantage on the course due to the rights, the interests, and the honor of   our country. 