A Quaker Lobbyist Reports on Washington in 1812

A QUAKER LOBBYIST REPORTS ON WASHINGTON IN 1812 By William W. Comfort and Thomas E. Drake THROUGH THE COURTESY of J. Morris Wistar, of Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, we are able to print the five following letters from a Quaker merchant, lobbying for the moment in Washington, to his young wife in Philadelphia. The author of the letters is Caleb Cresson, Jr. (1775-1821), son of Caleb Cresson (1742-1816), by the latter's second wife, Annabella Bonnyman Elliott. The letters were written to his wife, Sarah Emlen, daughter of Caleb and Mary Warder Emlen; she was his second cousin, whom he married in 1807. The "little dears" were their two infant sons, Emlen Cresson, born 1811,and Charles Caleb Cresson, born 1812. Older Friends in Germantown may remember the latter, "Uncle Charlie," who sat for years in his later life on the facing bench at Coulter Street Meeting. "Uncle George" was George Emlen (1741-1812), brother of Caleb Emlen and hence the uncle of the recipient of these letters. He was a rich Quaker merchant with a house in town and another in the Whitemarsh Valley. Some of the other people mentioned—relatives, lobbyists, Philadelphia acquaintances, and Washington belles—we have been unable to identify. Caleb Cresson, Jr., the writer of these letters, was also a well-to-do Philadelphia Quaker merchant, with an office at 202 Mulberry (now Arch) Street, according to the Philadelphia Directory of 1809. As appears from a fine portrait of him in the possession of J. Morris Wistar, he was a handsome young man, not of the plainest type. A merchant with interests at stake, he was one of a group of lobbyists from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, who went to "labor" with Congress in late November, 1812. He had good reason to go to Washington, for he, like many other American merchants whose agents had shipped large quantities of British goods from England after the revocation of the Orders in Council on June 23, 1812,was in danger of losing all or part of them by confiscation. 77Vol. 34, Autumn 1945 78 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION The United States had already declared war on Great Britain, five days before the revocation, and the shipments had been taken at sea by privateers, or impounded when they reached this country. But since some owners were allowed by the courts to take out and sell their goods at high prices, giving bond for their value, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin permitted them all to do so, collecting five million dollars in duties, and receiving eighteen million in bonds. With the profits from sales, perhaps forty million dollars worth of property was involved. This was during the summer and fall of 1812. As winter drew on, with an empty Treasury and no hope of getting any money from a Congress which had refused to vote taxes for the war, Gallatin conceived a happy scheme. Instead of refunding the duties and confiscating the goods, that is, requiring full payment of the bonds, as he might do under the law, he would keep the five million and compromise with the merchants for half the value of their bonds, allowing them a fair return but siphoning off about nine million dollars of their war profits into the Treasury. It was a seductive scheme, too clever perhaps, and it aroused great protest from men of every party and faction. The Federalists, of whom our Philadelphia Quaker merchant was one, naturally opposed it. But so did a number of Republicans (we would now call them Democrats). John Randolph of Roanoke denounced the principle of the thing. Langdon Cheves and young Calhoun, War-Hawks both, fought it because they disliked the whole non-importation system as calculated to raise the prices which their Carolina planter constituency had to pay for manufactures. But the opportunity to fill an empty Treasury with nine million dollars was a great temptation to many Congressmen . It was nip and tuck as to whether Gallatin would win. In the end—but let Caleb Cresson, Jr., tell the story. He went to Washington determined to do all he could to thwart the machinations of the detested "Monsieur...