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Tyler's First Annual Message, December 6, 1841: African

I herewith submit the correspondence which has recently taken place between the American Minister at the Court of St. James, Mr. Stevenson, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of that government, on the right claimed by that government to visit and detain vessels sailing under the American flag and engaged in prosecuting lawful commerce in the African seas. Our commercial interests in that region have experienced considerable increase and have become an object of much importance, and it is the duty of this government to protect them against all improper and vexatious interruption. However desirous the United States may be for the suppression of the slave trade, they cannot consent to interpolations into the maritime code, at the mere will and pleasure of other governments. We deny the right of any such interpolation to any one, or all the nations of the earth, without our consent. We claim to have a voice in all amendments or alterations of that code; and when we are given to understand, as in this instance, by a foreign government, that its treaties with other nations cannot be executed without the establishment and enforcement of new principles of maritime police, to be applied without our consent, we must employ a language neither of equivocal import, nor susceptible of misconstruction.

American citizens, prosecuting a lawful commerce in the African seas, under the flag of their country, are not responsible for the abuse or unlawful use of that flag by others nor can they rightfully, on account of any such alleged abuses, be interrupted, molested or detained while on the ocean; and if thus molested or detained, while pursuing honest voyages, in the usual way, and violating no law themselves, they are unquestionably entitled to indemnity. This government has manifested its repugnance to the slave trade, in a manner which cannot be misunderstood; by its fundamental law, its prescribed limits in point of time to its continuance; and against its own citizens, who might so far forget the rights of humanity as to engage in that wicked traffic, it has long since, by its municipal laws, denounced the most condign punishment. Many of the states composing this Union, had made appeals to the civilized world for its suppression long before the moral sense of other nations had become shocked by the iniquities of the traffic. Whether this government should now enter into treaties containing mutual stipulations upon this subject, is a question for its mature deliberation. Certain it is that if the right to detain American ships on the high seas can be justified on the plea of a necessity for such detention, arising out of the existence of treaties between other nations, the same plea may be extended and enlarged by the new stipulations of new treaties, to which the United States may not be a party. This government will not cease to urge upon that of Great Britain full and ample remuneration for all losses, whether arising from detention or otherwise, to which American citizens have heretofore been, or may hereafter be subjected, by the exercise of rights which this government cannot recognize as legitimate and proper. Nor will I indulge a doubt but that the sense of justice of Great Britain will constrain her to make retribution for any wrong, or loss, which any American citizen, engaged in the prosecution of lawful commerce, may have experienced at the hand of her cruisers, or other public authorities. This government, at the same time, will relax no effort to prevent its citizens, if there be any so disposed, from prosecuting a traffic so revolting to the feelings of humanity. It seeks to do no more than to protect the fair and honest trader, from molestation and injury; but while the enterprising mariner, engaged in the pursui of an honorable trade, is entitled to its proection, it will visit with condign punishment others of an opposite character.