engagements of the Dutch commandant, Thieleman, and
of Captain Romer. But it was not lawful. By the docu-
ments transmitted by Mr. Anduaga it appears, that a part
of the cargo of the Neptune, after her capture by the Firgen
del Carmen, had been transshipped to another vessel; and
that at Porto Cabello it was condemned by Captain Lavorde,
commander of the Spanish frigate Ligera, who had issued
the privateer's commission, and then sat as judge of the
Admiralty Court upon the prize. And the sole ground of
condemnation assigned is the breach of the pretended block-
ade by the Neptune, and her trading with the independent
patriots. You will remark the great irregularity and in-
compatibility with the principles of general justice, as well
as of the Spanish constitution, that one and the same person
should be acting at once in the capacity of a naval officer, of
a magistrate issuing commissions to privateers, and of a
1823I JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 393
judge to decide upon the prizes taken by them. But the
whole foundation of his decision Is a nullity. The blockade
was a public wrong. The Interdiction of all trade was an
outrage upon the rights of all neutral nations. And the
resort to the two expedients bears on Its face the demon-
stration, that they who assumed them both had no reliance
upon the justice of either: for If the Interdiction of all neutral
trade ivlth the Independents were lawful, there could be as
little occasion or pretence for the Interdiction of the trade.
The correctness of this reasoning can no longer be contested
by the Spanish government Itself. The blockade and Inter-
diction of trade have, from the first notice of them, not only
been denounced and protested against by the government
and officers of the United States, but by those of Great
Britain, even when the ally of Spain, and who has not yet
acknowledged the Independence of the revolted colonies.
The consequences of these pretensions have been still more
serious to Spain; since they terminated In a formal notifica-
tion by the British government, that they had issued orders
of reprisal to their squadrons In the West Indies, to capture
all Spanish vessels, until satisfaction should be made for
the property of all British subjects, taken or detained under
color of this preposterous blockade and Interdiction. And
Spain has formally pledged herself to make this demanded
reparation.
2. The second case of complaint by Mr. Anduaga, upon
which I have to animadvert, Is that of the capture of the
Porto Rico privateer Palmira, by the United States armed
schooner Gra?npus, Lieutenant Gregory commander. With
his letter of the nth of October, 1822, Mr. Anduaga trans-
mitted copies of a letter from the captain of the privateer,
Escurra, to the Spanish consul at Charleston, dated the i6th
of September, 1822, and of sundry depositions taken at
394 THE WRITINGS OF [1823
Porto Rico, from seamen who had belonged to her, relating
to the capture. The account of the transaction given by
Lieutenant Gregory is among the documents to be trans-
mitted to Congress with the President's message at the com-
mencement of the last session, pp. 62, 63, 64, to which I refer.
The subject is yet before the competent judicial tribunal
of this country. The captain and seamen of the Palmira,
with the exception of those charged with the robbery of the
Coquette, were discharged by a decree of the District Court
of the United States at Charleston, and the vessel was re-
stored to her captain; but the judge (Drayton, since de-
ceased,) in giving this decree declared that Lieutenant
Gregory had been fully justified in the capture. By a decree
of the Circuit Court of the same district, heavy damages
were awarded against Lieutenant Gregory, from which
sentence there is an appeal pending before the Supreme
Judicial Court of the United States. Whatever their final
decision may be, the character of the court is a sure warrant
that it will be given with every regard due to the rights and
interests of all the parties concerned, and the most perfect
reliance may be placed upon its justice, impartiality, and
independence.
The decision of the Circuit Court indeed would imply
some censure upon the conduct of Lieutenant Gregory, and
may be represented as giving support to the complaints
of the Spanish minister against him. But it is the opinion
of a single judge, in direct opposition to that of his colleague
on the same bench, and liable to the revisal and correction
of the supreme tribunal. It is marked by two principles,
upon which it may be fairly presumed the judgment of the
Supreme Court will be more in accord with that of the
District. The justification of Lieutenant Gregory, for
taking and sending in the Palmira, rests upon two important
1823] JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 395
facts; first, the robbery committed by part of her crew,
sworn to by Captain Souther of the schooner Coquette, and
confirmed by the oaths of her mate and two of her seamen;
and secondly, that at the time of her capture she had com-
menced the firing upon the Grampus, by a full volley from
small arms and cannon. But as the fact of the robbery from
the Coquette was not in rigorously judicial evidence before
the Circuit Court, the judge declared, that although he
had no doubt the fact was true, yet in the absence of the
evidence to prove it he must officially decide that it was false;
and as to the circumstance of the first fire, as the Spanish and
American testimony were in contradiction to each other,
he should set them both aside, and form his decision upon
other principles. If indeed Lieutenant Gregory is ulti-
mately to be deprived of the benefit of these two facts, he
will be left judicially without justification. But considered
with reference to the discharge of his duty as an officer of
the United States, if the declaration of Captain Souther
taken upon oath, confirmed by those of his mate and two
of his men, was not competent testimony upon which he
was bound to act, upon what evidence could an officer of
the navy ever dare to execute his instructions and the law,
by rescuing or protecting from the robbers of the sea, the
property of his fellow citizens.^
The robbery of the Coquette by the boats' crew from the
Palmira is assuredly sufficiently proved for all other than
judicial purposes, by the fact which was in evidence before
the District Court, that the memorandum book sworn by
John Peabody, junior, mate of the Coquette, to have been
taken from him together with clothing, was actually found
in a bag with clothing on board the Palmira.
In ansvv^ering Mr. Anduaga's letter of 11 October, I trans-
mitted to him a copy of the printed decree of Judge Drayton,
396 THE WRITINGS OF [1823
In which the most material facts relating to the case, and
the principles applicable to it upon which his decision was
given, are set forth. Some additional facts are disclosed
in a statement published by Lieutenant Gregory, highly
important to this discussion, inasmuch as they identify a
portion of the crew of the Palmira, with a gang of the Cape
Antonio pirates, and with an establishment of the same
character which had before been broken up by that officer.
In a long and elaborate reply to my letter dated the nth
of December, 1822, Mr. Anduaga, without contesting the
fact that the Coquette had been robbed by the boarding crew
from the Palmira, objects to the decision of Judge Drayton,
as if, by detaining for trial the individual seamen belonging
to the Palmira, charged with the robbery, it assumed a
jurisdiction, disclaimed by any acknowledgment that the
privateer was lawfully commissioned, and sanctioned the
right of search, so long and so strenuously resisted by the
American government. In this reply, too, Mr. Anduaga
attempts by laborious arguments to maintain to the fullest
and most unqualified extent the right of the Spanish priva-
teers to capture, and of the Spanish prize courts to condemn,
all vessels of every other nation, trading with any of the
ports of the independent patriots of South America, because
under the old colonial laws of Spain that trade had been
prohibited. And with the consistency of candor at least,
he explicitly says that the decrees issued by the Spanish
commanders on the main, under the name of blockades,
were not properly so called, but were mere enforcements of
the antediluvian colonial exclusions, and such were the in-
structions under which the Palmira, and all the other priva-
teers from Porto Rico and Porto Cabello have been cruising.
Is it surprising that the final answer of Great Britain to this
pretension was an order of reprisals? or that under the laws
1823] JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 397
of the United States it has brought their naval officers In
conflict of actual hostility with privateers so commissioned
and so Instructed? The Spanish government have for many
years had notice, both from Great Britain and from the
United States, that they considered as rightful the peaceful
commerce of their people, with the ports In possession of the
independent patriots. Spain herself has opened most of
those of which her forces have been able to retain or to re-
cover the possession. The blockades proclaimed by General
Morillo in 181 5 were coupled with this same absurd preten-
sion: they were formally protested against by the govern-
ment of the United States; and wherever Morillo obtained
possession, he himself immediately opened the port to
foreign and neutral commerce.
Mr. Anduaga seems to have had much confidence in the
conclusiveness of his reasoning, in this letter of 11 December:
for without considering the character of our institutions,
which have committed to the executive authority all com-
munications with the ministers of foreign powers, he per-
mitted himself the request that the President would com-
municate It to Congress; without having the apology for
this indiscretion, which on a prior occasion he had alleged
for a like request, namely, that It was In answer to letters
from this Department which had been communicated to the
legislature. In the former case he was Indulged by com-
pliance with his request. In the latter It was passed over
without notice. But Mr. Anduaga was determined that
his argument should come before the public, and sent a
copy of It to the Havana, where it was published In the news-
papers; whence it has been translated and inserted In some
of our public journals.
The British order of reprisals; the appropriation by the
Cortes of forty millions of reals for reparation to British
398 THE WRITINGS OF [1823
subjects, of damages sustained by them, in part from cap-
ture and condemnation of their property under this absurd
pretension; and the formal revocation by the king of Spain
of these unlawful blockades, will, it is presumed, supersede
the necessity of a serious argument in reply to that of Mr.
Anduaga upon this point. It is in vain for Spain to pretend
that during the existence of a civil war, in which by the uni-
versal law of nations, both parties have equal rights with
reference to foreign nations, she can enforce against all
neutrals by the seizure and condemnation of their property,
the laws of colonial monopoly and prohibition, by which
they had been excluded from commercial intercourse with
the colonies before the existence of the war, and when her
possession and authority were alike undisputed. And if at
any stage of the war, this pretension could have been ad-
vanced with any color of reason, it was preeminently nuga-
tory on the renewal of the war, after the formal treaty
between Morillo and Bolivar, and the express stipulation
which it contained, that if the war should be renewed, it
should be conducted on the principles applicable to wars
between independent nations; and not on the disgusting
and sanguinary doctrine of suppressing rebellion.
As little foundation is there for the inference drawn by
Mr. Anduaga from the decree of the District judge, admitting
the Palmira to have been lawfully commissioned as a priva-
teer, but detaining for trial the portion of her crew charged
with the robbery from the Coquette, that it sanctions the
right of search, against which the United States have so
long and so constantly protested. For in the first place, the
United States have never disputed the belligerent right of
search as required and universally practised conformably
to the laws of nations. They have disputed the right of
belligerents under color of the right of search for contraband
i823l JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 399
of war, to seize and carry away men, at the discretion of the
boarding officer, without trial and without appeal; men,
not as contraband of war, or belonging to the enemy, but as
subjects, real or pretended, of the belligerent himself, and
to be used by him against his enemy. It is the fundamental
abuse of the right of search, for purposes never recognized
or admitted by the laws of nations, purposes in their practical
operation of the greatest oppression and most crying in-
justice, that the United States have resisted and will resist,
and which warns them against assenting to the extension
in time of peace of a right which experience has shown to
be liable to such gross perversion in time of war. And
secondly the Palmira was taken for acts of piratical aggres-
sion and depredation upon a vessel of the United States, and
upon the property of their citizens. Acts of piratical aggres-
sion and depredation may be committed by vessels having
lawful commissions as privateers, and many such had been
committed by the Palmira. The act of robbery from the
Coquette was in every respect piratical; for it was com-
mitted while the privateer was under the Venezuelan flag,
and under that flag she had fired upon the Coquette and
brought her to. It was piratical, therefore, not only as dep-
redation of the property by the boat's crew who took it
away, but as aggression under the sanction of the captain
of the privateer, who was exercising belligerent rights under
false colors. To combat under any other flag than that of
the nation by which she is commissioned, by the laws of
nations subjects a vessel, though lawfully commissioned,
to seizure and condemnation as a pirate; ^ and although the
decree of the District judge ordered the restitution of the
vessel to her captain, because it held him to have been law-
fully commissioned, neither did the law of nations require,
^ Valin, Ordonnance de la Marine, II. 239.
400 THE WRITINGS OF [1823
nor would the law of the United States permit, that men,
brought within the jurisdiction of the court, and charged
with piratical depredations upon citizens of the United
States, should be discharged and turned over to a foreign
tribunal for trial, as was demanded by Mr. Anduaga. They
had been brought within the jurisdiction of the court, not
by the exercise of any right of search, but as part of the
crew of a vessel which had committed piratical depredations
and aggressions upon vessels and citizens of the United
States. The District Court adjudging the commission of
the privateer to have been lawful, and considering the gun
fired under the Venezuelan flag to bring the Coquette to,
though wrongful and unwarrantable, as not amounting
rigorously to that combat, which would have been complete
piracy, discharged the captain and portion of the crew which
had not been guilty of the robbery of the Coquette, but
reserved for trial the individuals charged with that act.
The conduct of the Palmira, for months before her capture,
had been notoriously and flagrantly piratical. She had in
company with another privateer, named the Boves, both
commanded by the same captain, Pablo Llanger, fired upon
the United States schooner Porpoise, Captain Ramage, who
abstained from returning the fire. For this act of unequivo-
cal hostility. Captain Llanger's only apology to Captain
Ramage was that he had taken the Porpoise for a patriot
cruiser.' Numbers of neutral vessels of different nations
had been plundered by her; and among the affidavits made
to Lieutenant Gregory at St. Thomas, was one of the master
and mate of a French schooner, that she had been robbed
by a boat's crew from her of a barrel of beef and a barrel of
rice. In the letter from Captain Escurra to the Spanish
consul at Charleston, he admits the taking of these provi-
• See Documents with the President's message of December, 1822, p. 65.
1823] JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 401
sions, alleging that the master of the French vessel gave
them to him at his own request. The affidavit of the French
master and mate shows what sort of a gift it was, and is more
coincident with all the other transactions of this privateer.
In the same letter of 11 December, Mr. Anduaga with
more ingenuity than candor, attempts at once to raise a
wall of separation between the pirates of Cuba, and the
privateersmen of Porto Rico and Porto Cabello, and to
identify the pirates, not only with all those who at a prior
period, had abused the several independent flags of South
America, but with the adventurers from the United States
who at different times have engaged in the patriot service;
and he endeavors to blend them all with the foolish expedi-
tion of last summer against Porto Rico. While indulging
his propensity to complain, he revives all the long exploded
and groundless charges of his predecessors in former years,
and does not scruple to insinuate that the Cuba pirates
themselves are North Americans from the United States.
It is easy to discern and point out the fallacy of these
endeavors to blend together things totally distinct, and to
discriminate between things that are identical. It is in
proof before our tribunals in the case of the Palmira itself
that some of the pirates of Cuba and of the Porto Rico
privateersmen, are the same. Among the Cuba pirates
that have been taken, as well by the vessels of the United
States as by British cruisers, not one North American has
been found. A number of those pirates have been executed
at the Bahama Islands, and ten from one vessel at the island
of Jamaica, all Spanish subjects, and from the Spanish
islands. Not a shadow of evidence has been seen that among
the Cuba pirates a single citizen of the United States was
to be found.
As to the complaints of Mr. Anduaga's predecessors,
402 THE WRITINGS OF [1823
meaning those of Don Luis de Onis, it might have been ex-
pected that we should hear no more of them after the ratifi-
cation of the treaty of 1819. Whatever had been the merits
of those complaints, full satisfaction for them all had been
made by that treaty to Spain, and was acknowledged by
the ratification of the Spanish government in October,
1820. Since that time no complaints had been made by
Mr. Anduaga's predecessors. It was reserved for him, as
well to call up those phantoms from the dead, as to conjure
new ones from the living. That supplies of every kind,
including arms, and other implements of war have been in
the way of lawful commerce procured within the United
States for the account of the South America independents,
and at their expense and hazard exported to them is doubt-
less true. And Spain has enjoyed and availed herself of
the same advantages.
The neutrality of the United States has throughout this
contest between Spain and South America been cautiously
and faithfully observed by their government. But the
complaints of Mr. Anduaga, as well as those of his predeces-
sor, Mr. Onis, are founded upon erroneous views and mis-
taken principles of neutrality. They assume that all com-
merce, even the most peaceful commerce of other nations,
with the South Americans is a violation of neutrality; and
while they assert this in principle, the Spanish commanders,
in the few places where they yet hold authority, attempt
to carry it into eflFect in a spirit worthy of itself. The decree
of General Morales of the 15th of September, 1822, is in
perfect accord with the argument of Mr. Anduaga, on the
nth of December of the same year. The unconcerted but
concurring solemn protests against the former; of the Dutch
governor of Curasao, Cantzlaer; of the British admiral
Rowley, and of our own Captain Spencer, was but the chorus
i823] JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 403
of all human feeling revolting at the acts of which Mr. An-
duaga's reasoning was the attempted justification.
3. The next case of complaint by Mr. Anduaga is in a
letter of the 23d of February last, against Lieutenant Wil-
kinson, commander of the United States armed schooner
Spark, for capturing oiT the Havana a vessel called the
Ninfa Catalana, or the Santissima Trinidad, Nicholas Gar-
yole master, and sending her into Norfolk. As there are
reasons for believing that in this case Lieutenant Wilkinson
acted upon erroneous information, a court of inquiry has
been ordered upon his conduct, the result of which will be
communicated to you.
The Ninfa Catalana remains for trial at the District
Court to be held in the Eastern District of Virginia in the
course of the next month. Immediately after receiving
Mr. Anduaga's letter on the subject, I wrote to the attorney
of the United States for the District instructing him to
obtain, if possible, an extraordinary session of the court,
that the cause might be decided without delay; but the
judge declined appointing such session, unless all the wit-
nesses summoned to the court upon the case could be noti-
fied of it, which not being practicable, the short delay till
the meeting of the regular session of the court has been un-
avoidable. You will assure the Spanish government that
the most impartial justice will be rendered to all the parties
concerned, as well by the adjudication of the Admiralty
Court as by the military enquiry on the conduct of Lieu-
tenant Wilkinson. I ought to add that no evidence hitherto
has come to the knowledge of the government which has
implicated the correctness of Lieutenant Wilkinson's in-
tentions, or manifested any other motive than that of dis-
charging his duty and protecting the* property of his fellow
citizens.
404 THE WRITINGS OF [1823
4. The capture of the Spanish schooner Carmen alias
Gallega the Third by the United States sloop of war Peacock,
Captain Cassin, has furnished the fourth occasion for this
class of Mr. Anduaga's remonstrances.
There are two declarations or depositions made by the
captain and persons who were on board of this vessel at the
time of her capture, one at Pensacola and the other at New
Orleans. The first before the notary Jose Ecaro, by Jacinto
Correa, Captain of the Gallega, the pilot Ramon Echaverria,
boatswain Manuel Agacis, three sailors, and Juan Martin
Ferreyro, a passenger. All the witnesses after the first
only confirm in general and unqualified terms all his state-
ments; although many of the circumstances asserted by
him as facts could not have been personally known to him-
self, but by hearing from some of them. The protest for
example avers that when first captured by the Peacock,
Captain Correa, with his steward and cook were taken on
board that vessel; and while they were there he represents
various disorders to have been committed on board of his
own vessel, by the boarding officer from the Peacock, though
by his own showing he was not present to witness them.
His whole narrative is composed of alleged occurrences on
board of three vessels, the Peacock, the Louisiana cutter, and
the Gallega, and no discrimination is made between those of
his own knowledge, and those which he had heard from
others. The second declaration was made before Antonio
Argote Villalobos, Spanish consul at New Orleans, only
by Captain Correa and Echaverria the mate, and gives an
account of several other Spanish vessels, captured by the
Peacock, while they were on board of that vessel as prisoners.
A very inadequate reason is assigned by Captain Correa
for not having made it at the same time with the first at
Pensacola; and the whole purport of it is to represent those
b
1823] JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 405
other vessels which he had seen captured, as inoffensive
unarmed vessels, and the capture of them by the Peacock
as itself piratical.
Copies of the proceedings in the courts at Pensacola and
at New Orleans upon these cases are expected at this De-
partment, and the substance of them will be duly com-
municated to you. In the meantime the reports of Captain
Cassin of the Peacock, and of Captain Jackson, commander
of the revenue cutter Louisiana to the Navy Department,
will give you a very different, and doubtless more correct
account of these transactions.
There is strong reason for believing that the Gallega did