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United States Consul in Gothenburg
instructions were at once sent him to agree to a treaty, which was concluded
at Paris on April 3, 1783, by Benjamin Franklin for the United States and
Count Gustaf Philip de Creutz for Sweden. The treaty was ratified by
Congress on July 29th, and a proclamation that the treaty was in force, and
directing all the citizens and inhabitants, and more especially all officers and
others in the service of the United States, to observe it, was issued by
Congress on the 25th of September, 1783.
Well, some one may remark, what did this amount to? A treaty with
Sweden in those days did not benefit the United States very much.
Let us see. The 26th article of the treaty stipulates that “The two
contracting parties grant mutually the liberty of having each in the ports of
each other consuls, vice consuls, agents and commissaries,” etc., and thereby
hangs a tale, a very pretty tale, which I will relate.
In pursuance of this treaty and the particular article 26, cited above, the
United States had appointed as its consul in Gothenburg, Sweden, Mr. Rich-
ard S. Smith, of Philadelphia. The time when he was stationed at Gothen-
burg was in the early part of the last century, during the time of the great
Napoleonic wars of Europe. By the decrees of Berlin and Milano, and the
British order in council, all ports in Europe were closed to neutral vessels
save those of the Baltic. The United States, not being in the contest, had a
great commerce with those Northern ports, and when there appeared one morn-
ing in the roadstead of Gothenburg an American vessel without a cargo, but
with orders to call at Gothenburg and then to hurry on farther to some Rus-
sian port in the Baltic, Mr. Smith detected in the mysterious appearance of
this ship enough to satisfy him that war had broken out between the United
States and Great Britain. Mr. Smith himself tells the story as follows:
“ In the month of July, 1812, it was the law in Sweden that every vessel arrivingfrom Amer-
ica should come to anchor in the quarantine harbor, fourteen miles from the city, and, being
boarded by the master of quarantine, the necessary manifest of cargo, clearance, etc., were ex-
hibited/ and a memorandum thereof made and immediately dispatched by a boat to the proper
health officer of the city. Being anxious to be promptly advised of every arrival, I made
arrangements with the man who navigated the boat between the station and the city that he
should exhibit all the papers to me of all American ships before he took them to the Health
Office. (There was no breach of trust in this.) It so happened that on the morning of the 23d
of July, 1812, between five and six o’clock, the quarantine boy brought me the papers of the
pilot boat schooner Champlain, cleared by Minturn and Champlin, in ballast from New York
to Eastport, Maine. It was at once clear to my mind that this vessel was dispatched with most
important intelligence affecting the interests of this principal New York firm, that I did not hes-
itate a moment, but procured a boat and in less than an hour, with my consular commission in
my pocket, I was on my way to the quarantine ground. Arriving there, I called on an old offi-
cer in charge and was allowed to go out to the vessel. I was not allowed to go on board, and
Cofitinued on page 18
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