‘A sufficient and adequate squadron’: The navy,the transatlantic slave trade,and the American commercial empire

In October 1841, a brig – the Creole – sailed from Hampton Roads, Virginia, bound for New Orleans. The ship carried eight crew, six white passengers, a cargo of tobacco and 135 enslaved African Americans. The Creole skirted American and British laws that forbade the international slave trade. After all, the Creole was in transit between American ports. Eleven days into the voyage, 19 of the enslaved voyagers rose in mutiny, took control of the ship, and made a course for Nassau. Initially, the British authorities were unsure what to do with the black mutineers, but ultimately decided that since they had landed in the Bahamas, where slavery was abolished nearly a decade before, they should be freed. ¹

Americans, especially southerners, were outraged when news reached the United States that Great Britain had freed the Creole's passengers. Across the South, newspapers condemned British actions as an illegal intervention in American maritime matters. State legislatures in Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia passed resolutions that demanded restitution for what they saw as a violation of American property rights. ²

Britain's decision to free the enslaved people of the Creole was troubling for many Americans. But it only confirmed what they already believed – that Great Britain was driven by abolitionist zeal to end servitude the world over. ³ The fact that the principal power in the Atlantic seemed bent on destroying theeconomic, and for some, social, foundation of the United States was enough to cause concern. However, what elicited the most visceral response from Americans north and south was how Britain was going about the task. The lesson of the Creole incident was that Great Britain was still all too willing to usurp American sovereignty at sea in order to accomplish other goals. The feeling that Britain had little regard for American sovereignty was palpable in the aftermath of the Creole incident. Opting for pacification, British diplomat Alexander Baring, Lord Ashburton, travelled to Washington in the summer of 1842 to meet with Secretary of State Daniel Webster to quell budding rancour.

The resulting treaty was a curious document. It did much to avert a crisis in Anglo-American relations by reaffirming the United States' northern border, but completely elided the Creole incident, even as Americans demanded restitution for their enslaved property. ⁴ Americans groused about heavy-handed British action when it came to slavery, the sea and American sovereignty, but with the Webster-Ashburton Treaty a unified front was presented by Anglo-American diplomats in condemning the transatlantic slave trade and, for the first time, committed the United States to concrete measures for its suppression. Each nation, the treaty directed, ‘shall prepare, equip, and maintain in service, on the coast of Africa, a sufficient and adequate squadron, or naval force of vessels … to carry in all not less than eighty guns, to enforce …. the suppression of the Slave Trade’. ⁵

Congress outlawed the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, but did little to stem the illegal flow of humans to North America, despite the near-universal revulsion for the practice. ⁶ With the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, responsibility now fell to the U.S. Navy and the Africa Squadron to patrol the west coast of Africa to apprehend slavers. While initially created in 1819, the Africa Squadron was largely dormant during the 1820s and 1830s. With its revival in 1842, however, the Africa Squadron's primary task was to serve other foreign policy goals, namely to extend American commerce and to defend American sovereignty.

While historians have paid close attention to the Atlantic slave trade, fewer have focused on the role of the navy itself in the creation, construction and purpose of the Africa Squadron. This literature largely concludes that the Africa Squadron received little attention from Washington, and when it did it was subject to domestic political wrangling while mostly ignoring the squadron's ostensible purpose of suppressing the slave trade. Another important trend in the historiography connects the Africa Squadron to the expansion of American commercial access in West Africa. ⁷ These interpretations lend great insight into the operation of the squadron, but overlook the role of the navy as an institution in shaping the Africa Squadron from its inception. By directing the Africa Squadron to fulfil the commercial mission and defend the nation's sovereignty abroad, the navy staked its place at the forefront of antebellum American foreign relations. Historians have uncovered the role played by merchants, sailors and consuls in the conduct of early American foreign relations, but the navy, its civilian administrators and officers alike, were equally important. ⁸ The Africa Squadron, then, is a case study in the key elements of antebellum American foreign relations.

By the mid-nineteenth century, the navy had played this kind of role for decades. While in times of crisis the young navy rose to the occasion to counter the nation's foreign foes during the War for Independence, the Quasi War, the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812, the peacetime mission of the navy was remarkably consistent. Once international turmoil subsided at the end of the Napoleonic Era, the navy was largely committed to defending American commerce and finding new markets abroad. The expansion of the American commercial empire during the 1820s and 1830s depended on the navy's ability to garner respect for the nation and its commercial agents abroad. As maritime historian John H. Schroeder notes, from independence ‘the creation of a commercial empire had been a primary objective of American foreign policy’, while the U.S. Navy constituted ‘a positive and aggressive arm’ of that policy. ⁹ From the creation of more sophisticated nautical charts, to showing the flag in ports across the globe, and the activities of the U.S. Exploration Expedition under the command of Charles Wilkes, the navy bolstered the reputation of the nation internationally. At times resorting to violence, the navy helped shape international relations in a way more amenable to American interests. The navy's activities were undertaken with the aim of supporting American commerce, a goal shared by the Africa Squadron. On the coast of Africa, as at Kuala Batu, the port of Canton and Yokohama, the navy was an important tool of antebellum diplomats in garnering international respect and building a commercial empire. ¹⁰

Schroeder characterizes the navy's role in the expansion of the commercial empire as an organic response to events on the ground. Such a description resonates with a perhaps out-dated understanding of antebellum foreign relations that sees American diplomacy as a result of individual actions and not the planning and vision of diplomats, politicians and military officers. ¹¹ Yet, the record of the antebellum navy shows that this peacetime mission was envisioned by and directed from leaders in Washington. The Africa Squadron was part of a much larger and sustained policy programme – one focused on expanding American commerce – that put the navy at the forefront of the nation's foreign relations. In carrying out this mission, Britain emerged as the nation's – and the navy's – greatest obstacle.

The year 1842 was, of course, not the first time the federal government or the navy turned its attention to the transatlantic slave trade. The federal Constitution of 1787 stipulated that Congress could not make any law respecting the trade for two decades. Those 20 years saw a significant increase in the number of bound Africans landed in American ports. But as soon as constitutionally possible, Congress abolished the trade on 1 January 1808. It was not until 1819 that the navy stationed its first squadron on the west coast of Africa. This first Africa Squadron was entirely ineffective in stopping the illegal flow of enslaved humans across the Atlantic. Plagued by poor leadership, indifference from Washington, and earning a reputation among sailors as an arduous and disease-ridden assignment, the navy's first attempt to police the slave trade was an abysmal failure. All the while, though, Britain was creating an Atlantic-wide system to stifle this inhuman traffic – a system Americans refused to join. ¹²

Britain's decision to abolish the transatlantic slave trade nearly coincided with that of the United States. But unlike the United States, Britain followed up on that decision with concrete efforts to enforce the ban on the high seas. By the 1830s, Britain would go so far as to abolish slavery across its empire and thus secured its position as the undisputed leader of the international abolition movement. ¹³ While abolition would come to define Britons' conception of their own empire as a benevolent one, when Parliament made the transatlantic slave trade illegal morality was not the only motivation. As Eric Williams argues, Britain's decision to ban the trade was made in the context of the Napoleonic Wars and can thus be understood as a cudgel in its imperial struggle against France. ¹⁴

Compared to its rivals, the Royal Navy policed the transatlantic slave trade with greater enthusiasm, yet the mission remained a relatively low priority for the Admiralty. As was the case within the American ranks, the assignment was an unpopular one among British sailors. Britain's West African Squadron earned a reputation as a dangerous and disease-ridden duty at a time when naval service anywhere was typified by peril and discomfort. In the words of historian Christopher Lloyd, ‘there were no medals and little glory to be won in this type of service, which involved weary years of patrolling the fever-stricken coasts of Central Africa’. While individual commanders may have shown dedication and zeal for the assignment, the Royal Navy was not wholly committed to ending the slave trade. Britain's foreign policy priorities lay in Europe and Asia for much of the nineteenth century. At its peak, the West African Squadron accounted for less than five per cent of the Royal Navy's warships, comprising a flotilla that was unfit and inadequate given the vast area under patrol. Summing up the Royal Navy's effort to suppress the transatlantic slave trade, Lloyd calls the efforts ‘half-hearted and unsuccessful’. ¹⁵

At first, Britain endeavoured to enforce the ban on the transatlantic trade unilaterally as a wartime measure. During the Napoleonic Wars, Britain insisted the Royal Navy had the right to search all ships on the high seas in order to determine whether they were either under an enemy flag or in violation of neutrality by conveying contraband. Britain's insistence on this right played no small role in the advent of war with the United States in 1812. After 1807, the right of search became a key part of Britain's efforts to suppress the slave trade as it gave the navy the justification to stop, search and possibly seize any ships suspected of carrying a human cargo. As the Napoleonic Wars came to end Britain was forced to change tactics. There was little legal basis for the right of search in peacetime and Britain's heavy-handedness threatened to strain relations with nearly every Atlantic power. ¹⁶

Given its power and ability to influence international relations at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Britain, through bilateral and multilateral treaties, forced or persuaded the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal to ban the slave trade. These prohibitions included the recognition of Britain's right of search and the creation of courts of mixed commission that would rule on cases involving ships caught in the act. France resisted Britain's overtures for decades, but in the 1830s agreed to the mutual right of search. By 1841, Britain and France were joined by Prussia, Russia and Austria in ratifying the Quintuple Treaty in which each nation declared that the slave trade was piracy and granted the right of search to the others. The United States was conspicuously absent from this system throughout the antebellum era. But as each nation joined Britain in this international crusade, pressure on Washington grew. Those in the United States who harboured an almost preternatural suspicion of Britain grew increasingly alarmed that a weak-willed administration in Washington may give in and sacrifice American sovereignty. ¹⁷

Despite the British navy's overall ineffectiveness in suppressing the transatlantic slave trade, many Americans did not hesitate to overstate the British threat. Exaggerating Britain's dedication to abolishing the slave trade and slavery itself became a core element of the rhetoric emanating from America's slave-holding class during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. For Britain, slaveholders' suspicion ran deep. As we will see, American politicians and navalists weaponized this fear of Britain's abolitionist aims. As historian Matthew Karp observes: ‘The British menace served as both a goad and a license for the navalists.’ ¹⁸

This suspicion would take on a regional guise as southerners were particularly fearful of British power. Britain became the bête noir for slave-owning Americans when it abolished slavery in its Atlantic empire in 1833. Britain, these Americans feared, was now driven by a fanatical zeal to eliminate bound labour throughout the Americas. For Secretary of State, and slave-owning southerner, Abel Upshur, British foreign policy and abolitionism were synonymous, representing the gravest threat to slavery in the American South. Upshur considered the British threat in a letter to the American minister to Britain, Edward Everett, in which Upshur recognized the antislavery character of British action:

The movements of Great Britain, with respect to African slavery have at length assumed a character which demands the serious attention of this government. So long as we were permitted to believe that the effort to abolish slavery was confined to private individuals, actuated by a sense of justice or a feeling of philanthropy, we were content to leave the issue to the calm reason of our own people, and the guaranty of our Constitution and laws.

But no longer was this the case. In fact, Upshur remarked, ‘there are many and strong reasons for believing that the abolition of domestic slavery throughout the continent and islands of America is a leading object in the present policy of England’. It was incumbent upon American statesmen to oppose this movement to protect ‘not only … our interests, but … our independence and dignity’. Quite plainly Upshur opposed Britain's perceived plot to abolish slavery by declaring that ‘no foreign Government can be permitted to interfere, directly or indirectly, with the established institutions of the United States or of any of the separate States of our Union’. ¹⁹

To oppose British abolitionism and unchecked British power, American slave-owners, as Karp expertly shows, turned to the most powerful tool at their disposal: the nation's foreign policy and military apparatus. Of particular importance in this struggle was the U.S. Navy – the very navy that by 1842 was tasked with effecting the end of the transatlantic slave trade. ²⁰

Before assuming his position as secretary of state, Abel Upshur helmed the Department of the Navy. Under Upshur's tenure in the early 1840s, the navy underwent a period of dramatic change. Reorganizing its bureaucracy, reforming its officer corps and revolutionizing its fleet, Upshur left a significant impression on the navy. But modernization for its own sake was not the goal. Upshur understood the navy as the frontline defence against Britain's abolitionist foreign policy, the force of which the naval secretary no doubt overestimated to further his modernizing agenda. Britain's fanaticism was all the more alarming given the vulnerability of the southern United States. In his annual report of 1841, Upshur noted how technological innovations in ship design and propulsion adopted by the British navy made the United States, and especially the South, more vulnerable. Invasion by shallow-draft steamships ‘would be terrible everywhere, but in the southern portion of our country they might, and probably would, be disastrous in the extreme’. ²¹ The leading naval theorist of the day – and Upshur's fellow Virginian Matthew Fontaine Maury – elaborated on the threats facing the South. Maury noted that ‘of all the section of the Union, the States on the Gulf and South Atlantic are most open to aggression and liable to attack’. ²² Furthermore, Maury noted that ‘our coast is defenseless – our nakedness is exposed to the world’, and that given ‘the unprotected state of our Southern coast, and the condition of our Navy at present’, war made upon the South would be truly devastating. ²³

Such a war, as Upshur imagined it, would have been one to destroy slavery. To justify a dramatic expansion of the navy, necessary for national defence, Upshur expounded upon the consequences of hostilities. ‘A war between the United States and any considerable maritime Power,’ by which Upshur was no doubt referring to Britain, ‘would not be conducted at this day as it would have been even twenty years ago. It would be a war of incursions, aiming at revolution. The first blow would be struck at us through our own institutions.’ ²⁴ For southerners, this raised the spectre of British forces arraying black against white in a servile war. The key, however, to averting such a calamity, and safeguarding southern slavery, lay in creating a robust navy. ²⁵

Yet, as Upshur guided the Navy Department toward the defence of southern slavery, the John Tyler administration was committing an unprecedented degree of naval support to the suppression, and eventual abolition, of the transatlantic slave trade – or so the Webster-Ashburton Treaty promised. Even as it seemed as though the navy was being pulled in two different directions – the defence of slavery at home and the destruction of the slave trade abroad – these policies speak to the same, if overlooked, ends. In both cases, the navy was used to further American foreign policy goals.

As Webster prepared to meet Lord Ashburton, he consulted American naval officers about the conditions the navy faced on the west coast of Africa. Career naval officers Charles H. Bell and John S. Paine, both of whom had served in previous iterations of the Africa Squadron, briefed the secretary of state on what would be necessary to effectively patrol the expansive coastline. After describing the 3,600-mile coastline and the routes frequented by slavers, Bell and Paine enumerated the ships necessary to carry out the mission. In addition to a ‘first class sloop of war’ and nearly a dozen schooners, the naval officers were emphatic that a steamer would be ‘essentially necessary’ for the squadron. Given that the ‘part of the coast of Africa from which slaves are exported, is subject to light winds and calms’, a steamer was vital for success, as such a vessel ‘could easily overtake the fastest sailing vessels, and would be a great auxiliary in ascending rivers and towing boats, in order to attack slave stations’. ²⁶ This demand came while steam power was still in its infancy in the U.S. Navy. Many officers within the ranks resisted such innovations, thus hampering the work of naval reformers at mid-century. ²⁷ As the Africa Squadron was reformed to comply with treaty stipulations, naval administrators in Washington, in direct contradiction to the advice of Bell and Paine, refused to assign a steamer to the squadron. The initial force would be composed of the 36-gun frigate Macedonian, the 22-gun sloop-of-war Saratoga, the 16-gun sloop Decatur, and the 10-gun brig Porpoise. ²⁸ Requests that the steamer Union be assigned to the squadron were denied, suggesting Washington was more interested in fulfilling treaty obligations to placate the British than in actually suppressing the slave trade.

The relationship between the United States and Britain also drew the attention of Bell and Paine in their recommendations to Webster. Noting that ‘the field of operations to carry on the slave trade is so extensive, the profits so great, and the obstacles in the path so many, so various, so difficult’, the naval officers urged that ‘every means should be used by civilized nations … to effect the object’. Topping this list was the necessity of the United States and Great Britain – from diplomats to seamen – working together to end the slave trade. As Bell and Paine concluded, ‘we do not believe that any material good can result without an earnest and cordial co-operation’. ²⁹ Yet, the treaty that would govern American efforts to suppress the slave trade was written in such a way as to forestall that possibility. American independence on the high seas, even if detrimental to the mission, was preferred over actually ending the slave trade.

In the view of Washington, the slave trade issue had less to do with the illegal trade in humans than with the operation of British power. The maritime context is necessary to understand American anxieties. What Britain wanted from the United States, if not from the rest of the world, was the right to search, or harass as Americans would have understood it, any ship, under any flag, anywhere in the world. This situation reminded American policymakers of the first couple decades of the nineteenth century, when the British navy stopped American ships at will in what amounted to a tacit refusal to recognize American sovereignty on the high seas and perhaps American independence at all. But beyond this, Americans feared that if unchecked Britain's sea power would threaten the freedom of the seas, a tenet of American foreign relations during the nineteenth century. ³⁰

While Webster and Ashburton wrangled over how the United States would actively carry out its anti-slave trade mission, the orders that would eventually trickle down to the naval officers in charge of the Africa Squadron relegated this humanitarian mission to the back burner. The squadron's primary duty would be commercial in scope. American policymakers would conceive of a naval squadron created for the explicit purpose of suppressing the slave trade as a tool of commercial expansion. Ending the transatlantic trade was, again, subordinated to other foreign policy priorities.

Commercial advantage was paramount for mid-century naval thinkers. Upshur's annual report of 1841 positioned the expansion of American commerce under the guise of naval protection as beneficial to every sector of the nation's economy. Among those dependent on the success of American trade, Upshur counted ‘the farmer, the planter, the mechanic, the manufacturer, and even the day laborer’. In all, Upshur concluded, ‘commerce may be regarded as our principal interest, because, to a great extent, it includes within it every other interest’. ³¹ Given the ubiquity of the commercial impulse, the Africa Squadron openly embraced this logic. Even before the treaty was in place the navy was keenly aware of its commercial role on the African coast. Upon the dispatch of the USS Dolphin to Liberia, the Daily Picayune of New Orleans observed that ‘the recent impudent seizures of American merchant vessels by British cruisers are not to be borne any longer’. The Dolphin sped eastward ‘with fresh instructions to protect our commerce from further insult and aggression in that quarter’. ³²

Upshur tapped Matthew C. Perry – a member of the prominent naval family and brother of the hero of Lake Erie, Oliver Hazard Perry – as the first commander of the squadron. In his initial instructions to the naval officer, Upshur made clear the connection between commerce and the Africa Squadron: ‘you are charged with the protection of American commerce’. Noting that American trade with ‘the Western Coast of Africa, is rapidly increasing, and becoming every day, more and more valuable’, Upshur elaborated on the need to address the ‘many circumstances of disadvantage in consequence of the unprotected condition in which it has been left’. With those words, the Africa Squadron became the safeguard of American trade in the region. As was the case with much rhetoric concerning American geopolitics, Britain was a silent spectre, giving the secretary's premonitions added urgency. ‘The rights of our citizens,’ Upshur noted, ‘engaged in lawful commerce are under the protection of our flag, and it is the chief purpose, as well as the chief duty of our naval power, to see that these rights are not improperly abridged or invaded.’ ³³

The expansion of commerce in the Atlantic and across the world was perhaps the greatest tool nineteenth-century navalists had in calling for the expansion of the nation's fleet – including along the west coast of Africa. For reformers like Maury, there was a glaring disparity between the condition of the navy and the demands placed upon it. By 1840, the navy, as Maury noted, was ‘insufficient … to protect from vexations the widely spread commerce of our merchants, or even to secure the American flag from prostitution’. The United States, simply enough, needed a larger naval force since ‘now, with a commerce full-fledged, spreading her wings on every sea and sailing before every breeze on the ocean, a larger Navy … is loudly called for’. ³⁴

This call, though made loud by expansionists like Upshur and Maury, perhaps outstripped the need, at least in West Africa. Even after the creation of the Africa Squadron, American commerce on the west coast of Africa was, simply put, insignificant. Britain dominated the market and little was left for American merchants to exploit. Perry recognized this lamentable fact, noting that the dearth of American commercial activity in the region was quite anomalous. ‘My object at this time,’ Perry observed, ‘is to invite the attention of the Government to the singular fact, that this trade, which is one almost exclusively of barter, the English have monopolized at least two-thirds of the whole business, while the Americans, contrary to the results of their usual enterprise, enjoy but a share of what is left.’ ³⁵

To explain the gulf separating American and British fortunes in the region, American leaders pointed to the nation's respective naval presence. British commerce flourished behind the imposing presence of the British navy, while the American navy allowed commerce to wither. Upshur noted this disadvantage, even admitting the United States lagged behind not only the British but most foreign nations with interests in Africa. ‘Every nation,’ Upshur noted, ‘engaged in foreign commerce to any valuable extent provides, as part of its established policy, an adequate military marine. Our own country is far behind all the considerable nations of the world in this respect.’ Perry summed up the difference between British and American efforts in the region by noting: ‘The cause of the advantages possessed by the English are imputed to the protection which trading vessels of England have invariably received from her ships of war, while the American trader has, until very recently been left to protect himself, as best he could, against the treachery of the natives, and the indiscretion of not unfrequent [sic] insolences of the British naval officer.’ ³⁶

Threats to American commerce and American citizens seemed omnipresent. James Lawrence Day, an agent appointed at Monrovia with the ostensible duty of receiving enslaved Africans seized from slavers found in violation of the slave-trade ban, soon found himself in charge of consular duties. In the spring of 1842, Day wrote to Secretary of State Webster looking for guidance in responding to violence committed by Africans on American merchants. Day described how ‘natives’ persuaded an American trader from Plymouth, Massachusetts, to leave his vessel ‘to come on shore to see some camwood which they proposed to sell him’. The American was then ‘treacherously seized, tied to a tree, pelted with stones, beaten with pestles and clubs and otherwise brutally tortured … While the scene was enacted on shore, the schooner was boarded by part of the tribe and her entire crew murdered.’ The message was forwarded to Secretary of the Navy Upshur, under whose purview this kind of incident now fell. ³⁷ Perry also made note of the precarious state of what commerce American nationals had in the region. In October 1844, Perry noted that ‘a considerable amount of American property, left by several masters and supercargoes of American vessels in the hands of European and native settlers, residents of the town, for purposes of barter, was in danger of falling into the hands of the attacking party’. Then, in November, Perry noted the ‘American property to be in danger at Bissao’. ³⁸

But despite such a state of affairs, navalists were surprisingly sanguine about the future prospects of American trade. Perry, perhaps the man most familiar with the state of American efforts in the region, remarked that ‘American trade, it is limited extent on this coast is prosperous; it is, I think susceptible of much increase’. By the beginning of 1844, Perry felt as though the United States was now ready to operate in the region as an equal partner, observing that ‘under all the advantages which are now held out to our commerce upon this coast, it is to be hoped that it will rapidly increase. It is only necessary for the American trade to enjoy equal advantages with others, and he will soon place himself at least on a footing with his competitor.’ ³⁹

The endgame, as Upshur and his cohort of naval expansionists saw it, was not commercial expansion solely for the sake of commercial expansion; instead, it was part of the larger, international competition with Britain. The commercial empire was, after all, still an empire. The Africa Squadron was an integral tool in this imperial rivalry as American policymakers were keen to penetrate new markets along the coast of Africa in order to upset British dominance in the region. American commercial competition would obviously not go uncontested and Washington was preparing to meet those challenges. Should the Africa Squadron fail in its mission to protect and perpetuate American commerce in the region, friction between the transatlantic rivals had the potential to turn to conflict. ‘Wars,’ Upshur remarked, ‘often arise from rivalry in trade, and from the conflicts of interests which belong to it.’ The only way to avert such rivalry, the kind brewing on the western coast of Africa, was through ‘the presence of an adequate naval force, to protect commerce, by promptly redressing the injuries which are done it’. ⁴⁰ This rivalry was intimately connected to the two most important elements of American statecraft for policymakers at mid-century – the maintenance of bound labour across the hemisphere and the preservation of national sovereignty abroad. ⁴¹ While the Africa Squadron's role in American slavery was incidental, the squadron's role in defending American sovereignty was central.

As important as the commercial imperative was for the antebellum navy, the maritime realm was a fraught place for the idea of American sovereignty. Maritime spaces ranging from the North Atlantic to the South Seas provided the context in which debates about American statecraft and nationalism played out in highest relief. ⁴² After all, it was upon the waves that Americans most often came into contact with other peoples and other political regimes. ⁴³ And for antebellum Americans these encounters provided the opportunity to assert their nation's independence and sovereignty. As slavers across the Atlantic sought protection under the American flag, Britain, American policymakers feared, was ready to root out that illegal traffic through a full-scale subversion of American sovereignty at sea.

In his initial instructions to Perry, Upshur recognized that policing the use of the American flag on the high seas would constitute a central objective of the Africa Squadron. ‘The United States,’ Upshur informed Perry, ‘certainly do not claim that the mere hoisting of their flag shall give immunity to those who have no right to wear it.’ As the United States remained independent of international efforts to suppress the slave trade, slavers increasingly flocked to the protection offered by use of the stars and stripes. If illegal use of the flag was left unchecked, Upshur noted that such action ‘would subject their flag to degradation and dishonor, because it would make it a cover for piracy and other crimes of similar atrocity’. ⁴⁴

The recognition that it was imperative that the United States act to curtail the illegal use of its flag in order to salvage its standing throughout the Atlantic was not confined to the naval elite. Such instructions filtered through the ranks of the navy. Mirroring his instructions from Upshur, Perry notified his subordinates that it was the duty of the nation's navy to ‘prevent the desecration of the American flag to the vile purposes of the foreign slave trader’. Perry likewise hoped transgressors would be brought to justice, and those ‘if found guilty’ should be ‘signally punished and disgraced’, in order to ‘possibly deter others from embarking on speculations of gain so disgraceful to themselves and the flag’. ⁴⁵

The rhetoric surrounding the relationship between the federal government and the slave trade was no doubt aimed at Britain in an effort to undercut any pretence on Britain's part for intervening in American affairs. Upshur's initial instructions addressed this very matter. ‘In stipulating to keep a squadron of not fewer than eighty guns on the coast of Africa,’ the secretary of the navy declared, the United States ‘meant to give to England and all the world an assurance of her determination and ability to protect her own flag against abuse, and thus remove all pretext for any interference with it by other nations’. ⁴⁶

Later, President John Tyler would parrot this language in a message to the Senate. For American policymakers, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty and the subsequent creation of the Africa Squadron precluded British intervention in American affairs, including the illegal use of the nation's flag as a cover for the slave trade. Tyler declared that that treaty removed ‘all possible pretext, on the ground of necessity, [for the Royal Navy] to visit and detain our ships upon the African coast because of any alleged abuse of our flag by slave traders or other nations’. Instead, the United States has assumed ‘the burden of preventing any such abuse, by stipulating to furnish an armed force regarded by both the high contracting parties as sufficient to accomplish that object’. American policymakers showed Britain that the republic could handle its own affairs without interference. ⁴⁷

The squadron was used to assert American maritime rights in the face of the British onslaught. As vexing as the illegal use of the American flag was, far more disconcerting was the continuation of Britain's lack of regard for the rights of the United States as a free and equal nation. The Africa Squadron was a bulwark for the nation's independence and sovereignty by screening American vessels from Britain's insistence on the right of search in pursuing the abolition of the slave trade. Guiding this policy was a suspicion of Britain's intentions and a desire to assert the nation's maritime rights.

American policymakers unanimously denied Britain's right to visit or search ships under the American flag. Upshur's order to Perry explicitly outlined the nation's official stance on Britain's claim to visitation. Quite simply, Upshur asserted that ‘this government does not acknowledge a right in any other nation to visit and detain the vessels of American citizens engaged in commerce’. The maintenance of American independence and assertion of the nation's right was paramount. Under no circumstances should any representative of the United States surrender any rights in the pursuit of other goals, instead the United States was ‘not prepared to sacrifice … any of [its] rights as an independent nation’. ⁴⁸

In his orders to all American naval commanders attached to the Africa Squadron, Perry imitated Upshur's unwavering tone. ‘Under no circumstances,’ Perry thundered, ‘are you to permit, without resistance to the extent of your means, any foreign vessel of war, of whatever force or nation, in the exercise of any assumed right of search or visitation, to board in your presence … any vessel having the American flag displayed.’ The Africa Squadron was on notice: American honour and rights went before all else. After such a resolute command, Perry assured Upshur no American would dare yield to any British demand. If ‘British cruisers … make an attempt to enforce their imperious claim to the right of visiting and detaining … vessels wearing the American flag’, Perry had faith that ‘no vessel under my command … will do discredit to the service to which she belongs’. ⁴⁹

The ramifications of the Africa Squadron's conduct would determine the fate of American diplomatic and commercial enterprises in the region. If the squadron succeeded in defending American nationals and their property, the United States could finally gain access to the potentially lucrative African market. If, however, the squadron allowed Britain to continue to run roughshod over American rights, not only would its commercial expansion be checked, but the nation would lose face on the international stage and once again be reminded of its precarious and subordinate position in the Atlantic system.

Maury, the nation's foremost thinker on maritime issues, ruminated on those consequences publicly in the pages of the Southern Literary Messenger. Writing under the pseudonym ‘Harry Bluff’, Maury considered Britain's claim to the rights of search in its prosecution of those engaged in the slave trade. Maury asserted that Britain's claim to a right of search was unlawful and without any precedent in all the annals of human history. ‘This is the first occasion,’ Maury noted, ‘in the eventful history of the maritime code, that the right to search the vessels of friends in times of profound peace, has ever been set up by any nation, people or tongue’, and is quite simply ‘at variance with the uniform practice of every civilized and Christian nation in the round world’. ⁵⁰

Maury predicted ruin if the nation did not stand up to the outrageous demands of Britain. The strain of visitation would strangle the nation's expanding commerce: ‘With it [visitation], American commerce will be vexed beyond endurance; our vessels will be detained and searched upon the most vague suspicions, and our sailors be impressed and carried away into a worse than African bondage.’ Such a turn of events would stunt the nation's growth and forever subordinate the American polity to its former colonial master. Without a resolute stand against Britain, Maury predicted that the British ‘foot is forever upon the neck of this young giant’. ⁵¹

Such prospects were so alarming because many Americans understood British actions during the 1840s as but a continuation of the same policy instituted earlier in the century – the same policy that had once led to war. Maury made this connection explicit in asserting that ‘in the exercise of this right of search she [Great Britain] had trampled our flag under foot, aggrieved our people, and driven us to war’. The Africa Squadron, and the U.S. Navy generally, stood as the first and best line of defence against such British designs. ⁵²

Over its two-decade existence the Africa Squadron compiled a dismal record on the slave trade, capturing, on average, fewer than two slavers per year. ⁵³ It had a nearly impossible task: patrolling 5,000 miles of coastline with a fleet poorly suited to the job. The squadron's primary supply depot was at Porto Praya in Cape Verde, more than 1,000 miles from the centre of the Slave Coast. Some captains complained that ships spent more time traveling to and from Porto Praya than actually patrolling the coast. But that was not the only task at hand. Owing to the lack of diplomatic and consular presences in the region, naval officers were forced into the role of ambassador and consul in addition to supplying aid to Monrovia and surveying the coast. ⁵⁴

While the squadron's performance can be defended, or at least explained, as a result of federal indifference, ineffective strategy or the personalities of the individual naval officers involved, such conclusions assume the slave trade was, in fact, the primary target of the Africa Squadron. As the record showed, the squadron was conceived, constructed and commanded to counter British power and its perceived threat to American interests. In this regard, the squadron performed well. During the 1840s and 1850s, American trade expanded steadily in the region to the point of meeting the demand that Britain was simply unable to fulfil. ⁵⁵ Just a half decade after the treaty went into effect, it seemed as though the squadron had achieved its goal. Writing to an American paper, a sailor aboard the USS United States, identified only as ‘Africanus’, appraised the squadron's activity. In a statement difficult to support, that sailor remarked: ‘You will be pleased to hear that the slave trade has diminished very much within a year or two.’ But more importantly, ‘American vessels are no longer troubled by English cruisers … The most amicable relations exist between the two squadrons.’ ⁵⁶

The Africa Squadron operated as a check on the British navy to redeem American sovereignty at sea and extend American commerce – in doing so, the squadron carried out the major tasks of antebellum American foreign relations. The creation and operation of the Africa Squadron point to the primary role the navy played in not only conducting, but also shaping American intercourse with the outside world during the nineteenth century. But pursuit of these goals came at the expense of the humanitarian mission to which the squadron was, ostensibly, devoted.