In 1805 the British Admiralty Court decision in the case of the U.S. merchant ship Essex altered official British policy toward neutral shipping, aggravated diplomatic relations between Great Britain and the United States, and set the two nations on a collision course that ultimately led to the outbreak of the War of 1812 (1812-15). With France and Great Britain at war for most of the time from 1793 to 1815, there was a tremendous opportunity for U.S. merchants to reap profits as long as both belligerents respected neutral rights. Initially, the British wanted to follow the Rule of 1756, which stated that any trade prohibited before wartime would remain prohibited after a declaration of war. In other words, if France had prohibited neutral ships from carrying goods from its colonies to France before the outbreak of war, then it could not allow such trade to occur after war broke out. Merchants sidestepped this rule by shipping goods to the United States, unloading them, paying a small duty, and then reshipping the goods to France. Although such actions flouted British control of the seas--and allowed France to obtain goods from its colonies that would have been intercepted by the British had they been in French vessels--the British courts had allowed this trade to continue as indicated in the Polly decision of 1800. With such favorable circumstances, the reexport trade in the United States rose from $40 million in 1800 to $60 million in 1805.

The Essex decision made it more difficult for Americans to evade British regulations. The court case involved the reshipment of wine between Spain (at the time an ally of France) and Cuba (a Spanish colony). The British court said that the reshipment of the wine in the United States was meant to deceive the British and did not represent a legitimate mercantile exchange. Since Spain had prohibited other nations from carrying goods to its colonies before it went to war with Great Britain, the trade was illegal and the ship was liable to seizure. Within the next few months, scores of merchantmen from the United States were seized by the British navy. However, clever merchants soon managed to make the reshipment of goods appear more legitimate, and the total amount of the reexport trade did not decline greatly.

Perhaps more important than the exact nature of the ruling was its symbolic significance. The courts put the burden of proof of neutral trade on the merchant owner, instead of the captain of the British warship that seized a vessel. Merchants, in other words, were considered guilty of violating British regulations until they proved themselves innocent, rather than considered innocent until proven guilty. Such an approach showed little or no respect for the U.S. flag. The British government had acted in what many in the United States thought was an arbitrary way, without warning or diplomatic discussion. When James Monroe, the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, attempted to discuss this ruling with the British government, he was told that it was nothing extraordinary and therefore not an appropriate topic for a special diplomatic meeting. The affront to national pride could hardly have been more direct. From the Essex decision until the outbreak of the War of 1812, the United States had an increasingly difficult time gaining the respect of both France and Great Britain, and in continuing its profits as a neutral trader amid a world at war.

Bibliography

Bradford Perkins, Prologue to War, 1805-1812: England and the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968)

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