To James Madison from Tench Coxe, 20 June 1806
From Tench Coxe
Philadelphia June 20. 1806
Dear Sir
The subject on which I have lately expressed my sentiments to you is so important in itself and so influential in its consequences, that I am led to continue some attention to it.1 In Poulson’s Amern. daily advertiser of this city of the 17th. inst. there is a proclamation of the Russian Adml. Henry Bailey, in which confiscation is held up as the consequence of infractions of the general Blockade of the ports and coasts of the Adriatic, even tho in part neutral.2 It is a matter of just jealousy that the English general Blockade plan is not accompanied with any promise to pay for Cargoes as in the provision case of 17943—and there is reason to apprehend that a turn of fortune, either desperate or favorable in the extreme, would induce confiscations of the vessels they may carry in: It may even be said, that as they set up the Blockade principle, the confiscation for Breaches follows.
This subject is worthy of an historical review. In the year 1798 I published about eight papers in eight Numbers of “the American Merchant” which are pretty correctly reprinted in Careys American Museum for 1798.4 I sent the volume to the President, to yourself or to the Legislative Library some years ago.5 These papers begin with the first detentions of Neutral vessels in the Autumn of 1792, and proceed (with some political mixture) to the date of midsummer 1798. I respectfully recommend a perusal of them, which will not take more than three hours. I believe I can rely upon the correctness of the quotations, references and facts, my principal sources being our own and Debret’s state papers.6 My object in wishing you to make this review is to satisfy yourself of the manner in which Great Britain acted, treated, induced and coerced; and that you may see how clearly many of the excesses of France of which we justly complained, were brought on by the necessities and passions in France, which these acts of G. B. excited and created. It is very much my apprehension that similar conduct now in England will involve us in similar relations to the excesses of France. I am perfectly sensible of the faults on the F. side, but so far as I am informed they are not of a nature considering our distance &c. to bear so inconveniently on us. At all events the present naval views & conduct of England, if persevered in will deeply injure her and us.
I do not trouble you further having already been more free than can be justified by any thing but temperate and just public views. I have the honor to be, Sir yr. respectf. h. Servant
T. Coxe
RC (DLC). Docketed by JM.
1. See Coxe to JM, 8 and 12 June 1806.
2. Bailey’s 30 Mar. 1806 proclamation announced “that all the coasts and harbors, both on the right and the left of the Adriatic Gulf belonging to the French, or to Neutral States, and possessed by the French, are from this day strictly blockaded” by the Russian fleet, and “that no vessel belonging to the said powers shall attempt to convey warlike stores, provisions, or other supplies to any of the blockaded places, under the penalty of confiscation of ship and cargo” (Philadelphia Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, 17 June 1806). Henry Bailey (d. 1826), thought to be Irish by birth, entered the Russian navy as a midshipman in 1783, subsequently serving with distinction in the Black Sea and Mediterranean. He received the Russian Order of Saint Anne in 1798, and was promoted to rear admiral in early 1806 (Anthony Cross, By the Banks of the Neva: Chapters from the Lives and Careers of the British in Eighteenth-Century Russia [Cambridge, 1997], 209).
3. Coxe probably referred to article 18 of the Jay treaty, which stipulated that in cases where provisions or other types of cargo “not generally contraband” might nevertheless be seized as such, they would be paid for (, 2:258–59).
4. Coxe’s nine essays, entitled “Neutral Spoliations,” appeared under the signature of “An American Merchant” in the Philadelphia Aurora General Advertiser on 6 and 7 Feb. and 7, 8, 9, 10, 26, 27, and 28 Mar. 1798. Five of the pieces were also published in the Philadelphia Gazette & Daily Advertiser on 3, 5, and 16 Feb. and 8 and 12 Mar. 1798, and some of them appeared in the Philadelphia Carey’s United States’ Recorder on 8 and 10 Mar. and 3 Apr. 1798. Mathew Carey also reprinted them in his American Museum: or, Annual Register of Fugitive Pieces, Ancient and Modern, for the year 1798 (Philadelphia, 1799), 226–60.
5. For Coxe’s presentation of the book to JM and its eventual placement in Thomas Jefferson’s library, see Coxe to Jefferson, 5 Apr. 1801, , 33:539, 540 n.
6. Coxe referred to John Debrett’s Collection of State Papers, Relative to the War against France Now Carrying on by Great-Britain and the Several Other European Powers […] (11 vols.; London, 1794–1802).