Passports and the Cessation of Hostilities Editorial Note
Passports and the Cessation of Hostilities
On 20 January, while Jay was travelling in Normandy, Vergennes unexpectedly summoned Franklin and the other American peace commissioners to witness the signing of preliminary treaties and an armistice by the French, British, and Spanish. Franklin and Adams represented the United States at this occasion. After the three European powers had completed their peacemaking, the British-American preliminary became operative, and Franklin and Adams exchanged declarations of armistice with Alleyn Fitzherbert, Britain’s minister plenipotentiary at the French court.1
Fitzherbert notified the American commissioners that his powers to negotiate with France also gave him full-power to treat with other princes and powers (“aliorum principum et statnum”), and suggested they might begin to consider suspension of arms and other issues flowing from the peace settlement. Franklin met Fitzherbert on 24 January and advised him that the two nations ought to agree to repeal all laws in force that prohibited reciprocal intercourse between them. Fitzherbert agreed and in his report on the conference to Grantham noted that failure to act on this immediately would allow merchants of other nations to supply the American market with European goods before the ports were open to British trade.2
Fitzherbert called again on Franklin to inform him that, if the Americans would reciprocate, Britain was willing to issue passports to protect American vessels trading with Britain until the treaty became effective.3 The passport text Fitzherbert presented was broadly construed. It offered protection to any American vessel sailing to and from any American port unless it carried prohibited or contraband merchandise.4 Franklin agreed to the proposal, but the passport text he drafted under his own signature as minister plenipotentiary to France carried a much more sweeping exception designed to highlight the fact that Britain had not yet repealed the prohibitory acts. It stipulated that British ships sailing from any British port would be protected unless bound to the United States.5
On 1 February Fitzherbert visited Jay to discuss the matter with him. Jay did not detail the substance of their discussion in his letter to Adams of this same date, below, but he indicated that he agreed with Fitzherbert that the passports should be issued, not by Franklin as minister to France, but by the American peace commissioners as a group. This was enough to prompt Adams to invite Franklin to meet with himself and Jay on 3 February to consider the exchange of passports with the British and signing the definitive peace treaty.6
At that meeting, the commissioners significantly revised Franklin’s draft of the American passport. The version adopted was issued under the names of the three American commissioners present at the meeting. By specifying the protection in terms of latitudes where the suspension of hostilities was not yet in effect rather than of ports of call, Jay and Adams circumvented Franklin’s determination to use the passport issue as leverage to insure speedy repeal of the prohibitory acts and left open the question as to whether and on what terms American ports would be open to British trade.7 At the same meeting Adams showed Franklin and Jay his “First Sketch of a Definitive Treaty, made Feb. 1 1783.”8
By 9 February French, Spanish, and American passports had been printed. Fitzherbert forwarded them to England, with the understanding that none would be used until a similar number of British passports had been dispatched to Paris. The issue was nearly resolved when Fitzherbert received 100 British passports on 18 February and conveyed them to the American commissioners along with a British declaration announcing the cessation of hostilities. At this same time he informed them that the king had proclaimed the cessation of hostilities among all belligerents on 14 February. The American Peace Commissioners reciprocated with their own proclamation on 20 February 1783.9
In transmitting the American commissioners’ letter of this same date to Grantham, Shelburne’s secretary of state for the foreign department, Fitzherbert noted that many American merchants and shipowners then in Paris wanted to know whether their ships, loaded with American produce, would be able to enter British ports, and if so, whether as aliens or not. He indicated that he had offered his opinion that it was likely that the answers to these questions would be satisfactory if the British could be assured that British vessels entering American ports would be given reciprocal treatment.10
Congress received unofficial news of the general peace on 24 March. It immediately ordered Robert Morris, agent of marine, to recall all American armed vessels and notified Carleton and Digby, British commanders in New York, that it had done so. The British commanders, however, refused to order an end to hostilities until they had received official notice of the peace, and advised Congress to keep American vessels in port. Official news of the peace reached the British in New York on 5 April, and Congress on 10 April. At this time Congress also received letters from Franklin and Adams and the declaration of 20 February detailing when hostilities should cease between Britain and the United States.11
1. On JJ’s absence and the signing of the European preliminaries, see JJ to SLJ, 18 Jan. 1783, above; and , 14: 200–203. Townshend had recalled Oswald on 8 Jan. to brief Parliament on negotiations for the American preliminary. He departed for England about 15 Jan. The Dutch, who trusted the French to represent their interests vis-à-vis Britain, realized none of their peace objectives, and did not participate in the signing of the treaties.
2. Fitzherbert to Grantham, 25 Jan. 1783, in , 1: 759–60. As soon as it was known that the European preliminary treaties had been signed, BF received a number of requests for passports for American vessels about to sail. See , 39: 59–61, 95–96, 120–22, 128–29, 135. For passports previously issued by BF, see The Passports printed by Benjamin Franklin at His Passy Press (Ann Arbor, 1925).
3. A precedent for issuing passports to cover vessels that sailed after peace preliminaries were signed but before the peace was operative had been established in 1763. See , 39: 63.
4. In his letter to Grantham of 22 Feb. 1783, Fitzherbert reported on discussions he had had with American merchants and shipowners who had “started an objection” that, he concluded, had “originated” with BF, “whereby contraband goods are excepted from the number of those allowed to be carried by the said vessels, saying, that by the actual laws of England, all American commodities were ipso facto included in that description.” Fitzherbert informed them that only those commodities ties that could not be imported even by English subjects were intended and noted that they were satisfied with the explanation. See , 2: 70.
5. The Boston Port Act of 1774 and the Prohibitory Act of 1775. BF expected that it might be a year until the prohibitory acts could be repealed by both sides, and believed that there could be no trade until a commercial agreement had been concluded. BF’s draft passport was dated 1 Feb. For the text of both passports, and on BF’s views, see , 39: 95–96, and 120–22.
6. JA to BF, 2 Feb. 1783, , 39: 123–24.
7. Fitzherbert reported that BF had been overruled by his “Colleagues without any Instance from me.” See his letter to Grantham of 9 Feb. 1783 in , 1: 765–66. The British resolved the issue with regard to the prohibitory acts by expressly repealing them. See the American Peace Commissioners to Alleyne Fitzherbert, 20 Feb. 1783, note 2, below.
8. MHi: Adams, reel 360; and , 39: 128–29.
9. See the American Peace Commissioners to Fitzherbert, 20 Feb., below; and , 14: 280–81. Armistices were to go into effect according to when the respective ratifications were agreed to. The British initially provided 100 passports, a number later increased to 200, at a charge of £23, which BF considered a “shameful Imposition” and evidence of the “Avidity of Officers in old corrupt Governments.” BF reported that they had requests for only a quarter of that number, which they issued “gratis.” See , 39: 182, 209, 306; and Fitzherbert to Grantham, 9 Feb., cited above, and 20 Feb. 1783, ALS, UkLPR: FO 27/ 5: 415–16.
10. See , 2: 70–71.
11. See Fitzherbert to the American Commissioners, 18 Feb. 1783, , 14: 277; their reply of 20 Feb. 1783, below; , 6: 382, 445–46, 447, 450–52; and , 7: 622, 635–36.