The Voyage of the U. S. Schooner Nonsuch up the Orinoco, Journal of the Perry Mission of 1819 to South America

Abstract

In May, 1819, President James Moniroe called upon Commodore Oliver H. Perry to undertake a quasi-diplomatic mission to the revolutionary governments of Venezuela and Buenos Aires. The purpose of the mission was to explain the motivations of the United States in the policies it had adopted toward the governments and to seek to remove factors that threatened friendly relations with them. The chief of these factors was the prominence of revolutionary privateers among armed vessels that had for months past been committing depredations upon American commerce. The United States wanted these depredations to stop and it wanted indemnification for the depredations already committed. Previous application to the revolutionary governments had been without effect.' Another factor involved the Venezuelan government's representative in the United States, Lino de Clemente; he was concerned with the establishment of a privateer-smuggler base on Amelia Island, just off the southern coast of Georgia. The United States had refused for this reason to hold any official communication with him. This refusal had not yet been explained to the Venezuelan government. The immediate cause for sending Perry to South America was the enactment on March 3, 1819, of piracy legislation that Monroe felt would appear to be directed against privateers of the revolutionary governments.2 The legislation authorized the commanders of naval vessels to subdue, seize, take and send into any port of the United States any armed vessel or boat . . . which shall have attempted or committed any piratical aggression, search, restraint, depredation or