Chapter XVIII
JEFFERSON'S LETTER GIVES WASHINGTON PAIN--HIS LETTERS TO LAFAYETTE AND OTHERS--UNGENEROUS SUSPICIONS--WASHINGTON LAYS BEFORE HAMILTON A SYNOPSIS OF COMPLAINTS AGAINST THE ADMINISTRATION--HAMILTON'S REPLIES--HE DENOUNCES HIS ACCUSERS--COMPLETE RUPTURE BETWEEN HAMILTON AND JEFFERSON--NEWSPAPER DISPUTES--FRENEAU'S AFFIDAVIT--WASHINGTON ANNOYED AND ALARMED BY THE FEUD--SEEKS TO HEAL THE BREACH--CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN THE PRESIDENT AND THE CONTENDING SECRETARIES--SPIRIT OF THAT CORRESPONDENCE--HOSTILITIES TO THE EXCISE LAWS--THE PRESIDENT'S PROCLAMATION--ANOTHER EFFORT TO RECONCILE THE DISPUTING SECRETARIES--WASHINGTON UNANIMOUSLY RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
Those portions of Jefferson's letter which related to public measures gave Washington a great deal of pain. They formed the first strong avowal of his able friend and coadjutor of his deep-seated suspicions of living conspiracies against the liberties of the United States, and his opposition to the measures which he considered the implements of treason in the hands of the conspirators. They were the evidences of a schism in the president's cabinet which destroyed its unity and prophesied of serious evils.
Jefferson's correspondence at that period shows the bias of his mind; and, in the light of subsequent experience, while we view him as a true patriot, jealous of his country's rights, we can not but regard him as a monomaniac at that time. He saw in every supporter of Hamilton and his measures a conspirator, or the dupe of a conspirator; and he seemed, vain-gloriously, to believe that his own political perceptions were far keener than those of Washington and all the world beside. To Lafayette he wrote: "A sect has shown itself among us, who declare they espoused our constitution, not as a good and sufficient thing in itself, but only as a step to an English constitution--the only thing good and sufficient in itself, in their eyes. It is happy for us that these are preachers without followers, and that our people are firm and constant in their republican purity. You will wonder to be told that it is from the eastward chiefly that these champions for a king, lords, and commons come. They get some important associates from New York, and are puffed up by a tribe of Agioteurs which have been hatched in a bed of corruption, made up after the model of their beloved England. Too many of these stockjobbers and kingjobbers have come into our legislature--or rather, too many of our legislature have become stockjobbers and kingjobbers. However, the voice of the people is beginning to make itself heard, and will probably cleanse their seats at the next election."
To others he wrote in a similar vein; and he seemed to be constantly haunted by the ghost of kings, lords, and commons, sitting in the seat of the republican president and of the popular Congress.
Washington pondered these things with great anxiety, and on the twenty-ninth of July he wrote a private and confidential letter to Hamilton, in which he set forth, under twenty-one distinct heads, a summary of objections to the measures of the administration, drawn chiefly from Jefferson's letter to the president just alluded to. "These," he said, "as well as my memory serves me, are the sentiments which, directly and indirectly, have been disclosed to me. To obtain light and to pursue truth being my sole aim, and wishing to have before me explanations of, as well as the complaints on, measures in which the public interest, harmony, and peace, are so deeply concerned, and my public conduct so much involved, it is my request, and you would oblige me by furnishing me with your ideas upon the discontents here enumerated; and for this purpose I have thrown them into heads, or sections, and numbered them, that those ideas may be applied to the correspondent numbers."
Hamilton answered in the required form on the eighteenth of August. "You will observe here and there," he remarked in his preface, "some severity appears. I have not fortitude enough always to bear with calmness calumnies which necessarily include me, as a principal agent in the measures censured, of the falsehood of which I have the most unqualified consciousness. I trust I shall always be able to bear as I ought imputations of errors of judgment; but I acknowledge that I can not be entirely patient under charges which impeach the integrity of my public motives or conduct. I feel that I merit them in no degree; and expressions of indignation sometimes escape me in spite of every effort to suppress them. I rely on your goodness for the proper allowances."
He then, under the head of Objections and answers respecting the administration of the government, ably justified all measures which distinguished that administration. When treating upon the charges that "the funding of the debt had furnished effectual means of corruption of such a portion of the legislature as turned the balance between the honest voters whichever way it was directed," he manifested much indignation. "This is one of those assertions," he said, "which can only be denied, and pronounced to be malignant and false. No facts exist to support it. The asserters assume to themselves, and to those who think with them, infallibility. Take their words for it, they are the only honest men in the community." "As far as I know," he said, "there is not a member of the legislature who can properly be called a stockjobber or a paper-dealer. There are several of them who were proprietors of public debt in various ways; some for money lent and property furnished for the use of the public during the war, others for sums received in payment of debts; and it is supposable enough that some of them had been purchasers of the public debt, with intention to hold it as a valuable and convenient property, considering an honorable provision for it as a matter of course.
"It is a strange perversion of ideas, and as novel as it is extraordinary, that men should be deemed corrupt and criminal for becoming proprietors in the funds of their country. Yet I believe the number of members of Congress is very small who have ever been considerable proprietors in the funds. As to improper speculations on measures depending before Congress, I believe never was any body of men freer from them."
To the charge that the federalists contemplated the establishment of a monarchy, Hamilton said: "The idea of introducing a monarchy or aristocracy into this country, by employing the influence and force of a government continually changing hands towards it, is one of those visionary things that none but madmen could meditate, and that no wise man will believe.
"If it could be done at all, which is utterly incredible, it would require a long series of time, certainly beyond the life of any individual, to effect it. Who then would enter into such a plot? for what purpose of interest or ambition?
"To hope that the people may be cajoled into giving their sanctions to such institutions is still more chimerical. A people so enlightened and so diversified as the people of this country can surely never be brought to it but from convulsions and disorders, in consequence of the arts of popular demagogues.
"The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the country is by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security."
The rupture between Hamilton and Jefferson was now complete, and the violence of party spirit manifested by the Gazettes of Fenno and Freneau was greatly augmented. The latter became more and more personal in his attacks upon the administration; and Hamilton, who was held up by name as a monarchist at heart, believing that the assaults originated in the hostility of Jefferson, in whose office Freneau was employed, at length turned sharply upon his assailant. Over an anonymous signature he inquired, in Fenno's paper, whether the government salary given to Freneau was paid him for translations, or for calumniating those whom the voice of the nation had called to the administration of public affairs; whether he was rewarded as a public servant, or as a disturber of the public peace by false insinuations. "In common life," he said, "it is thought ungrateful for a man to bite the hand that puts bread in his mouth; but if a man is hired to do it the case is altered."
Again he said, after giving a history of the establishment of Freneau's paper: "An experiment somewhat new in the history of political manoeuvres in this country; a newspaper instituted by a public officer, and the editor of it regularly pensioned with the public money in the disposal of that officer.... But, it may be asked, is it possible that Mr. Jefferson, the head of a principal department of the government, can be the patron of a paper the evident object of which is to decry the government and its measures? If he disapproves of the government itself, and thinks it deserving of his opposition, can he reconcile it to his own personal dignity and the principles of probity to hold an office under it, and employ the means of official influence in that opposition? If he disapproves of the leading measures which have been adopted in the course of his administration, can he reconcile it with the principles of delicacy and propriety to hold a place in that administration, and at the same time to be instrumental in vilifying measures which have been adopted by majorities of both branches of the legislature, and sanctioned by the chief magistrate of the Union?"
This brought out an affidavit from Freneau, in which he exculpated Mr. Jefferson from all complicity in the establishment, the conduct, or the support of his paper.
The feud between Hamilton and Jefferson gave Washington great concern and no little mortification. Both ministers discharged the duties of their respective offices to the entire satisfaction of the president. He had endeavored, on his own part, not to allow his private views to interfere with them in the performance of those duties; but he now found himself compelled to take part in the dispute. That part was the noble one of pacificator. He desired most earnestly to heal the breach, and on the twenty-third of August he wrote to Jefferson on the subject. After referring to the hostilities of the Indians, and the possible intrigues of foreigners to check the growth of the United States, he said:--
"How unfortunate and how much to be regretted is it, that while we are encompassed on all sides with armed enemies and insidious friends, internal dissentions should be harrowing and tearing our vitals. The latter, to me, is the most serious, the most alarming, and the most afflicting of the two; and, without more charity for the opinions and acts of one another in governmental matters, or some more infallible criterion by which the truth of speculative opinions, before they have undergone the test of experience, are to be forejudged, than has yet fallen to the lot of fallibility, I believe it will be difficult, if not impracticable, to manage the reins of government, or to keep the parts of it together; for if, instead of laying our shoulders to the machine after measures are decided on, one pulls this way and another that, before the utility of the thing is fairly tried, it must inevitably be torn asunder, and, in my opinion, the fairest prospect of happiness and prosperity that ever was presented to man will be lost, perhaps for ever.
"My earnest wish and my fondest hope, therefore, is that instead of wounding suspicions and irritating charges there may be liberal allowances, mutual forbearances, and temporizing yieldings on all sides. Under the exercise of these, matters will go on smoothly and, if possible, more prosperously. Without them, everything must rub; the wheels of government will clog; our enemies will triumph, and, by throwing their weight into the disaffected scale, may accomplish the ruin of the goodly fabric we have been erecting.
"I do not mean to apply this advice or these observations to any particular person or character. I have given them in the same general terms to other officers of the government; because the disagreements, which have arisen from difference of opinion, and the attacks which have been made upon almost all the measures of government and most of its executive officers, have for a long time past filled me with painful sensations, and can not fail, I think, of producing unhappy consequences at home and abroad."
To Hamilton he wrote three days afterward, expressing his regret that subjects could not be discussed with temper on the one hand, or decisions submitted to without the motives which led to them improperly implicated on the other. "When matters get to such lengths," he said, "the natural inference is that both sides have strained the cords beyond their bearing, and that a middle course would be found the best, until experience shall have decided on the right way, or (which is not to be expected, because it is denied to mortals) there shall be some infallible rule by which we could forejudge events.
"Having premised these things, I would fain hope that liberal allowances will be made for the political opinions of each other, and, instead of those wounding suspicions and irritating charges with which some of our gazettes are so strongly impregnated, and which can not fail, if persevered in, of pushing matters to extremity and thereby tearing the machine asunder, that there may be mutual forbearance and temporizing yielding on all sides. Without these, I do not see how the reins of government are to be managed, or how the union of the states can be much longer preserved.... My earnest wish is that balsam may be poured into all the wounds which have been given, to prevent them from gangrening, and from those fatal consequences which the community may sustain if it is withheld."
These letters were answered by Hamilton and Jefferson on the same day (September the ninth), one dated at Philadelphia and the other at Monticello. "I most sincerely regret," wrote Hamilton, "the causes of the uneasy sensations you experience. It is my most anxious wish, as far as may depend upon me, to smooth the path of your administration, and to render it prosperous and happy. And if any prospect shall open of healing or terminating the differences which exist, I shall most cheerfully embrace it, though I consider myself as the deeply injured party. The recommendation of such a spirit is worthy of the moderation and wisdom which dictated it. And if your endeavors should prove unsuccessful, I do not hesitate to say that, in my opinion, the period is not remote when the public good will require substitutes for the differing members of your administration. The continuance of a division must destroy the energy of government, which will be little enough with the strictest union. On my part there will be the most cheerful acquiescence in such a result.
"I trust, sir, that the greatest frankness has always marked, and will always mark, every step of my conduct toward you. In this disposition, I can not conceal from you that I have had some instrumentality of late in the retaliations which have fallen upon certain public characters, and that I find myself placed in a situation not to be able to recede for the present.
"I considered myself as compelled to this conduct by reasons, public as well as personal, of the most cogent nature. I know that I have been an object of uniform opposition from Mr. Jefferson, from the moment of his coming to the city of New York to enter upon his present office. I know from the most authentic sources that I have been the frequent subject of the most unkind whispers and insinuations from the same quarter. I have long seen a formed party in the legislature, under his auspices, bent upon my subversion. I can not doubt, from the evidence I possess, that the National Gazette was instituted by him for political purposes, and that one leading object of it has been to render me and all the measures connected with my department as odious as possible. Nevertheless, I can truly say, that, except explanations to confidential friends, I never, directly or indirectly, retaliated or countenanced retaliation till very lately. I can even assure you that I was instrumental in preventing a very severe and systematic attack upon Mr. Jefferson by an association of two or three individuals, in consequence of the persecution which he brought upon the vice-president by his indiscreet and light letter to the printer, transmitting Paine's pamphlet.
"As long as I saw no danger to the government from the machinations which were going on, I resolved to be a silent sufferer of the injuries which were done me. I determined to avoid giving occasion to anything which could manifest to the world dissentions among the principal characters of the government--a thing which can never happen without weakening its hands, and in some degree throwing a stigma upon it.
"But when I no longer doubted that there was a formed party deliberately bent upon the subversion of measures, which in its consequences would subvert the government; when I saw that the undoing of the funding system in particular (which, whatever may be the original merits of that system, would prostrate the credit and honor of the nation, and bring the government into contempt with that description of men who are in every society the only firm supporters of government) was an avowed object of the party, and that all possible pains were taking to produce that effect by rendering it odious to the body of the people, I considered it as a duty to endeavor to resist the torrent, and, as an effectual means to this end, to draw aside the veil from the principal actors. To this strong impulse, to this decided conviction, I have yielded, and I think events will prove that I have judged rightly.
"Nevertheless, I pledge my honor to you, sir, that if you shall hereafter form a plan to reunite the members of your administration upon some steady principle of co-operation, I will faithfully concur in executing it during my continuance in office; and I will not, directly or indirectly, say or do anything that shall endanger a feud."
Mr. Jefferson answered Washington, that no one regretted the dissentions in the cabinet more than himself. "Though I take to myself," he said, "no more than my share of the general observations of your letter, yet I am so desirous even that you should know the whole truth, and believe no more than the whole truth, that I am glad to seize every occasion of developing to you whatever I do or think relative to the government, and shall therefore ask permission to be more lengthy now than the occasion particularly calls for, or would otherwise, perhaps, justify.
"When I embarked in the government, it was with a determination to intermeddle not at all with the legislature, and as little as possible with my co-departments. The first and only instance of variance from the former part of my resolution I was duped into by the secretary of the treasury, and made a tool for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently understood by me; and of all the errors of my political life, this has occasioned me the deepest regret.... If it has been supposed that I have ever intrigued among the members of the legislature to defeat the plans of the secretary of the treasury, it is contrary to all truth.... That I have utterly, in my private conversations, disapproved of the system of the secretary of the treasury I acknowledge and avow; and this was not merely a speculative difference. His system flowed from principles adverse to liberty, and was calculated to undermine and demolish the republic by creating an influence of his department over the members of the legislature. I saw this influence actually produced, and its first fruits to be the establishment of the great outlines of his project, by the votes of the very persons who, having swallowed his bait, were laying themselves out to profit by his plans; and that, had these persons withdrawn, as those interested in a question ever should, the vote of the disinterested majority was clearly the reverse of what they made it. These were no longer the votes, then, of the representatives of the people, but of deserters from the rights and interests of the people."
Mr. Jefferson then proceeded to justify his opinions and conduct, and to defend himself against Hamilton's charges in Fenno's paper, which were: first, that he (Jefferson) had written letters from Europe to his friends in America to oppose the constitution while it was depending; second, with a desire not to pay the public debt; third, with setting up a paper to decry and slander the government. Jefferson pronounced all these charges false. He declared that no man approved of more of the constitution than himself--vastly more than Hamilton did; and that he was ever anxious to pay the public debt. "This," he said, "makes exactly the difference between Colonel Hamilton's views and my own. I would wish the debt paid to-morrow; he wishes it never to be paid, but always to be a thing wherewith to corrupt and manage the legislature."
Mr. Jefferson acknowledged that he favored the establishment of Freneau's newspaper for reasons already alluded to,[38] because he thought juster views of European affairs might be obtained through publications from the Leyden Gazette than any other foreign source.
"On the establishment of his paper," said Mr. Jefferson, "I furnished him with the Leyden Gazettes, with an expression of my wish that he would always translate and publish the material intelligence they contained; and I continued to furnish them from time to time, as regularly as I received them. But as to any other direction or indication of my wish, how his press should be conducted, what sort of intelligence he should give, what essays encourage, I can protest, in the presence of Heaven, that I never did by myself or any other, directly or indirectly, write, dictate, or procure any one sentiment or sentence to be inserted in his or any other gazette, to which my name was not affixed, or that of my office."
While Jefferson avowed his desire for harmony in the cabinet, he felt the lash of Hamilton too keenly to accept reconciliation with him. He avowed his intention to retire from his office at the close of the president's term; and intimating an intention to make an appeal to the country over his own signature, he said: "To a thorough disregard of the honors and emoluments of office I join as great a value for the esteem of my countrymen; and conscious of having merited it by an integrity which can not be reproached, and by an enthusiastic devotion to their rights and liberty, I will not suffer my retirement to be clouded by the slanders of a man whose history, from the moment at which history can stoop to notice him, is a tissue of machinations against the liberty of the country which has not only received and given him bread, but heaped its honors on his head."[39]
The spirit of Jefferson's letter afforded Washington no hope for reconciliation between the secretaries. The contrast between his and Hamilton's was remarkable. Hamilton held affectionate, courteous, forbearing, and patriotic language toward the president; Jefferson's exhibited much of the opposite qualities; and his implacable hatred of the man whom he had scourged into active retaliation is very marked. It gave Washington great pain, for he had the highest esteem for the contestants.
At that time there were grave reasons why officers of the cabinet should for the moment forget personal difficulties, and come as a unit to the aid of the president. There were signs of disorder, and violence, and serious insurrection in the land. The excise law enacted in 1791, and modified and made less offensive during the last session of Congress, was yet vehemently opposed in some parts of the country. In western Pennsylvania, in particular, hostility to it had become the sentiment of an organized party, and combinations were formed to prevent the execution of it. A public meeting was held at Pittsburgh on the twenty-first of August, at which resolutions were adopted disapproving of the law, and appointing a committee to correspond with other committees in different parts of the Union on the subject. It was really a rebellious movement, as the temper of their closing resolution indicated.[40]
Information of these proceedings having reached the secretary of the treasury, he sent to the president all necessary papers on the subject for his information, assuring him that he should submit to the attorney-general the question whether the persons composing the meeting at Pittsburgh had not committed an indictable offence. He gave it as his opinion that it was expedient to exert the full form of the law against the offenders. "If this is not done," he said, "the spirit of disobedience will naturally extend, and the authority of the government will be prostrated. Moderation enough has been shown: it is time to assume a different tune." In subsequent letters he recommends the issuing of a proclamation on the subject by the president, and sent a draft of one to Washington. The president approved the measure, submitted it to Jefferson, and on the fifteenth of September he issued a proclamation, countersigned by the secretary of state, in which he warned all persons to desist from such unlawful combinations and proceedings, and requiring all courts, magistrates, and officers to bring the offenders to justice. Copies of this proclamation were sent to the governor of Pennsylvania, and also to the chief magistrates of North and South Carolina, where a similar defiance of law has been manifested.
In this matter Washington proceeded with great prudence and caution. He felt indignant at the great outrage thus offered to the government, but was unwilling to employ force while more peaceful measures were left untried. "I have no doubt," he said, "the proclamation will undergo many strictures; and, as the effect proposed may not be answered by it, it will be necessary to look forward in time to ulterior arrangements:" that is to say, the employment of regular troops as a last resort.
As Washington intimated it might not, the proclamation produced no salutary effect. Too many of the civil magistrates themselves were concerned in the insurrectionary movements, and the few who were not were totally incapable of maintaining the sovereignty of the laws. With moderation the government instituted legal proceedings against the offenders; liquors distilled in the rebellious counties were seized on their way to market by revenue officers; and the agents of the army were directed to purchase only those spirits upon which a duty had been paid. Having their interests thus touched, the manufacturers of liquors would gladly have complied with the laws, but the people would not allow them. Subsequently, more serious defiance of the laws in western Pennsylvania compelled the president to order a military force into that region. This we will consider hereafter.
At the middle of October, Washington made another and last effort to restore peace to his cabinet. Jefferson had recently returned to Philadelphia, and his first care was to forward to the president extracts from his letter written while the adoption of the constitution was pending, Washington wrote to him on the eighteenth, and said: "I did not require the evidence of the extracts, which you enclosed to me, to convince me of your attachment to the constitution of the United States, or of your disposition to promote the general welfare of this country: but I regret, deeply regret, the difference in opinions which have divided you and another principal officer of the government, and I wish devoutly there would be an accommodation of them by mutual yieldings.
"A measure of this sort would produce harmony and consequent good in our public councils. The contrary will inevitably introduce confusion and serious mischiefs--and for what? Because mankind can not think alike, but would adopt different means to attain the same end. For I will frankly and solemnly declare, that I believe the views of both of you to be pure and well meant, and that experience only will decide with respect to the salutariness of the measures which are the subjects of dispute. Why, then, when some of the best citizens in the United States--men of discernment, uniform and tried patriots, who have no sinister views to promote, but are chaste in their ways of thinking and acting--are to be found some on one side and some on the other of the questions which have caused these agitations, should either of you be so tenacious of your opinions as to make no allowances for those of the other? I could, and indeed was about to, add more on this interesting subject, but will forbear, at least for the present, after expressing a wish that the cup which has been presented to us may not be snatched from our lips by a discordance of action, when I am persuaded there is no discordance in your views. I have a great, a sincere esteem and regard for you both, and ardently wish that some line may be marked out by which both of you could walk."
Washington's efforts were unavailing. The breach between Hamilton and Jefferson was too wide and deep to be healed, and the president determined to check, as much as possible, if he could not control their hostility. In one thing, however, these men, sincere patriots at heart, perfectly agreed, namely, a desire that Washington should consent to a re-election. As we have already observed, such being the universal wish of the people, Washington reluctantly consented, and he was again chosen president of the United States by a unanimous vote of the electoral college.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] See page 198
[39] For the correspondence in full, see Hamilton's Works, volume iv; Sparks's Life and Writings of Washington, volume x; Randall's Life of Jefferson, volume ii.
[40] The following is the resolution referred to: "That, whereas some men may be found amongst us, so far lost to every sense of virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country as to accept offices for the collection of the duty: Resolved, that in future we will consider such persons as unworthy of our friendship, have no intercourse or dealings with them, withdraw from them every assistance, withhold all the comforts of life which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow-citizens we owe to each other, and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they deserve; and that it be, and is hereby, most earnestly recommended to the people at large to follow the same line of conduct toward them."
Chapter XIX
FOREIGN RELATIONS OF THE UNITED STATES--EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES--THE FEDERALISTS A CONSERVATIVE PARTY--ASPECT OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION--WASHINGTON DOUBTS ITS SUCCESS--INCREASE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY--WASHINGTON'S RE-ELECTION--GOUVERNEUR MORRIS IN FRANCE--OTHER MINISTERS--GLOOMY FOREBODINGS--JEFFERSON'S IMPATIENCE--TROUBLES OF THE FRENCH KING--LAFAYETTE IN DIFFICULTY--TUILLERIES ATTACKED AND THE KING DETHRONED--REIGN OF TERROR--LAFAYETTE'S FLIGHT, ARREST, AND IMPRISONMENT--BLOODY WORK IN PARIS--JEFFERSON JUSTIFIES THE JACOBINS--WASHINGTON'S SYMPATHY FOR LAFAYETTE'S FAMILY--APPEAL OF THE MARCHIONESS--WASHINGTON POWERLESS TO AID.
The foreign relations of the United States were at this time peculiar and somewhat anomalous. Popular sentiment, the expression of the sovereignty of the nation, was mixed in character and yet crude in form, and it was difficult to discern precisely in what relation it stood to the disturbed nationalities of Europe. Separated from the old world by a vast ocean, the public mind here was not so immediately and powerfully acted upon by passing events as it would have been, if only an imaginary line of political demarcation had been drawn between the new republic and convulsed communities; and its manifestations were less demonstrative than implied.
All Europe was effervescing with antagonistic ideas; and the wisest and the best men in the old world stood in wonder and awe in the midst of the upheaval of social and political systems that were hoary with age, and apparently as settled in their places as the oceans and continents. France, the old ally and friend of the United States, was the centre of the volcanic force that was shaking the nations; and with instinctive motion the potentates, alarmed for the stability of their thrones, had assumed the attitude of implacable enemies to the new power that was bearing rule in that kingdom. As the car of revolution rolled onward, carrying King Louis to the scaffold, they felt the hot breath of avenging justice upon their own foreheads, and they called out their legions for defence and to utter a solemn and effective protest. The people were awed in the presence of gleaming bayonets. In the autumn of 1792, nearly all Europe was in arms against France.
In the United States, where revolution had done its work nobly and wisely, and the experiment of self-government was working successfully, sympathy for the struggling people of France and of all Europe was powerful and untrammelled. Without inquiry, it cheered on the patriots of France, with Lafayette at their head, when they were struggling for a constitution; and when it was gained, and the king accepted it, great satisfaction was felt by every American citizen in whose bosom glowed the love of freedom for its own sake. With this feeling was mingled a dislike of Great Britain; first, because the remembrance of her oppression and her warfare against the independence of the United States were fresh in the minds of the American people; secondly, because her government yet refused compliance with the terms of a solemn treaty made ten years before; and, thirdly, because her attitude was hostile to the republican movement in France. Thus old alliances and old hatreds, and a desire to see all people free, made those of the United States sympathize strongly with those of France in their revolutionary movements, and to hate the enemies of that nation in its avowed struggle for liberty.
But there were wise, and prudent, and thoughtful men in the United States, who had made the science of government a study, and human nature their daily reading, who perceived principles of self-destruction in the French constitution. They saw its want of balances, and the course of the representatives under it, which must inevitably allow the gallery to rule the legislature, and mobs to give color to the opinions of the executive. They clearly perceived, what Lafayette and his compatriots had already deeply lamented, that the true elements of self-government did not belong to the French nation; that with liberty they were rapidly degenerating into licentiousness; and that the constitution must prove as powerless as a rope of sand in restraining the passions of the people. And some of them, as we have seen, who wrote or spoke in favor of a well-balanced and potent government were branded by ungenerous men as the advocates of royalty and aristocracy, and held up to the people as traitors to republicanism, and fit subjects for the finger of scorn to point at. They were charged with blind prejudice in favor of British institutions, and as conspirators for the re-establishment of British rule in America. But the conservative or federal party, as they were called, were more powerful if not so numerous as their opponents; and when Europe armed against the old ally of the United States, the government of the latter, professedly representing the popular sentiment, was so restrained by the wise caution of those who held the sceptre of political power, that it presented the anomalous character of a warm-hearted, deeply-sympathizing champion of freedom, apparently in the ranks of the enemies of liberty.
Washington had hailed with satisfaction the dawn of popular liberty in France, and earnestly desired the success of those who were working for the establishment of republicanism there; but his wisdom and sagacity evidently made him doubtful of their success, even from the beginning. In the course of his correspondence, we find him often expressing earnest wishes for the happy results concerning which Lafayette had dreamed so fondly, but he never expressed a hope, because he never felt it; and when, in the summer and autumn of 1792, the Revolution in France assumed a bloody and ferocious character, and the noble goal toward which his friend the marquis had so enthusiastically pressed was utterly lost sight of in the midst of the lurid smoke of a self-constituted tyranny, as bad in feature and act as the foulest on history's records, he was disgusted, and with the conservative party, then fortunately holding the reins of executive and legislative power, he resolved that the government of the United States should stand aloof from all entanglements with European politics.
The doctrines of Jefferson and his party, having sympathy with the French Revolution and enmity to Great Britain among its prime elements, was rapidly gaining ground in the United States, because the avowed principles of that party were in accordance with the proclivities of the great mass of the people, who were moved by passion rather than by reason. Yet that very people, although aware of the sentiments of Washington and his supporters in the government, re-elected him by unanimous voice, thereby showing their great love for, and unbounded confidence in, the man of men. John Adams, who was again a candidate for the vice-presidency, was opposed by Governor George Clinton of New York, and was elected by not a large majority. He received in the electoral college seventy votes, and Clinton fifty. The Kentucky electors voted for Jefferson for the same office, and one vote was cast by a South Carolina delegate for Aaron Burr.
We have just hinted at the progress of violence in France in the autumn of 1792. Let us take a nearer view for a moment; for such scrutiny is necessary to the elucidation of political events in the United States a few months later.
Gouverneur Morris, who, as we have seen, was sent on a semi-official embassy to England, was appointed full minister at the French court, after Jefferson's retirement from that post. Mr. Morris was a federalist, and his appointment was not pleasant to Mr. Jefferson and his political friends. With Morris's commission, the president wrote a friendly, and at the same time admonitory, letter to the new minister. He frankly enumerated all the objections that had been made to his appointment, and intimated that he thought the charge of his being a favorite with the aristocracy in France, and anti-republican in his sentiments, especially as regarded the French Revolution, were too well founded upon the tenor of his conduct. "Not to go further into detail," he said, "I will place the ideas of your political adversaries in the light in which their arguments have presented them to me, namely: that the promptitude with which your lively and brilliant imagination displays itself allows too little time for deliberation and correction, and is the primary cause of those sallies which too often offend, and of that ridicule of character which begets enmity not easy to be forgotten, but which might easily be avoided if it were under the control of more caution and prudence. In a word, that it is indispensably necessary that more circumspection should be observed by our representatives abroad than they conceive you are inclined to adopt. In this statement you have the pros and cons. By reciting them I give you a proof of my friendship, if I give none of my policy or judgment. I do it on the presumption that a mind conscious of its own rectitude fears not what is said of it, but will bid defiance to shafts, that are not baited with accusations against honor or integrity. Of my good opinion and of my friendship and regard you may be assured."
Count de Moustier had been succeeded as French minister to the United States by M. Ternant, a more agreeable gentleman; and diplomatic intercourse had been opened with Great Britain, by the arrival of Mr. Hammond as minister plenipotentiary of that government, in the previous autumn, and the appointment, on the part of the United States, of Thomas Pinckney, of South Carolina, as minister to the court of St. James. Mr. Hammond was the first minister Great Britain had deigned to send to the United States, and John Adams was the only person who had been sent in the same capacity from his government to the British court. For some years there had been no diplomatic intercourse between the two countries.
Mr. Morris arrived in Paris, in May, 1792, and on the second of June he was introduced to the king and queen. Two days afterward he presented a letter from the president to his majesty--a letter which, according to Morris, gave several members of the corps diplomatique a high idea of Washington's wisdom. "It is not relished by the democrats," Morris wrote to the president, "who particularly dislike the term 'your people;' but it suits well the prevailing temper, which is monarchical." Mr. Morris was very active in his duties there; and while he communicated officially to Jefferson and Hamilton everything necessary for them to know, he kept Washington constantly apprized, by both public and private letters, of the true state of affairs in France, His accounts revealed shocking scenes of anarchy and licentiousness in the French capital. He truly represented that Lafayette, in endeavoring to check excesses, had lost his popularity. "Were he to appear just now in Paris," he wrote, "unattended by his army, he would be torn to pieces." These tidings gave Washington great concern; while Jefferson, because of the gloomy future which these letters foreshadowed and the unfavorable commentary which they made upon the French Revolution, was very impatient. With his blind devotion to democracy, and his ungenerous judgment concerning all who differed from him, he spoke of Morris as "a high-flying monarchy man, shutting his eyes and his faith to every fact against his wishes, and believing everything he desired to be true," and keeping the president's mind "constantly poisoned with his forebodings."
Almost the next vessel from Europe rebuked these unfair expressions, by confirming the most gloomy anticipations of Morris. Anarchy had seized upon unhappy France. From the head of his army at Maubeuge, Lafayette had sent a letter to the National Assembly, denouncing in unmeasured terms the conduct of the Jacobin club as inimical to the king and constitution; but it was of no avail. Day after day the disorder in the capital increased; and on the twentieth of June the populace, one hundred thousand in number, professedly incensed because the king had refused to sanction a decree of the National Assembly against the priesthood, and another for the establishment of a camp of twenty thousand men near Paris, marched to the Tuilleries with pikes, swords, muskets, and artillery, and demanded entrance. The gates were finally thrown open, and at least forty thousand armed men went through the palace and compelled the king, in the presence of his family, to put the bonnet rouge, or red cap of liberty, upon his head.
Hearing of these movements, Lafayette hastened to Paris, presented himself at the bar of the National Assembly, and in the name of the army demanded the punishment of those who had thus insulted the king in his palace and violated the constitution. But he was powerless. A party had determined to abolish royalty. On the third of August, Pelíon, in the Assembly, demanded that the king should be excluded from the throne. The unhappy monarch, perceiving the destructive storm that was impending, endeavored on the sixth to escape from the Tuilleries in the garb of a peasant. He was discovered by a sentinel, and all Paris was thrown into the greatest commotion. Two days afterward the Assembly, by a handsome majority, acquitted Lafayette of serious charges made against him by the Jacobins. The populace were dissatisfied, and, as they could not touch the general, they determined that the king whom he supported should be deposed. Members of the assembly who had voted in favor of Lafayette were insulted by armed men who surrounded the legislative hall; and the national legislature declared their sitting permanent until order should be restored.
At midnight on the ninth of August the tocsin was sounded in every quarter, and the generale was beat. Early the next morning the Tuilleries were attacked by the populace, and the king and his family, attended by the Swiss guard, fled for protection to the National Assembly. In the conflict that ensued nearly every man of that guard was butchered, and the National Assembly decreed the suspension of the king's authority.
Monarchy in France was now overthrown, and with it fell Lafayette and the constitutional party. All were involved in one common ruin. The Jacobins denounced the marquis in the National Assembly, procured a decree for his arrest, and sent emissaries to seize him. Then the Reign of Terror was inaugurated.
At first Lafayette resolved to go to Paris and boldly confront his accusers. It would have been madness. He perceived it, and, yielding to the force of circumstances, set off from his camp at Sedan, with a few faithful friends, to seek a temporary asylum in Holland until he could make his way to the United States. But he and his companions were first detained at Rochefort, the first Austrian post, and afterward cast into a dungeon at Olmutz.
When intelligence of these events reached Washington he was greatly shocked, and the sad fate of his friend grieved him sorely. Every arrival from Europe brought tidings still more dreadful than the last. "We have had a week of unchecked murders," Morris wrote to Jefferson on the tenth of September, "in which some thousands have perished in this city. It began with two or three hundred of the clergy, who had been shut up because they would not take the oaths prescribed by the law, and which they said were contrary to their conscience. Thence these executors of speedy justice went to the Abbaye, where the persons were confined who were at court on the tenth of August. These were despatched also, and afterward they visited the other prisons. All those who were confined either on the accusation or suspicion of crimes were destroyed."
Morris then detailed other horrors; yet Mr. Jefferson, looking upon the whole movement against monarchy and aristocracy as essentially right, and based upon the same principles as that of the American Revolution, persisted in regarding the Jacobins, who were the chief promoters of these bloody deeds, and who had laid violent hands on the constitution and its supporters, as "republican patriots." He was shocked, but was neither disappointed nor very sorrowful. He looked upon the whole affair as an indispensable struggle of freemen in the abolition of monarchy and all its prerogatives and injustice; and he deplored the death of the innocent who had fallen, but only as he should have done "had they fallen in battle." "The liberty of the whole earth," he said, "was depending on the issue of the contest; and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause," he continued; "but rather than that it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would have been better than it now is."
When fully assured of Lafayette's fate, Washington felt an ardent desire to befriend his family, consisting of his wife and young children. He knew that their situation, in the raging storm, must be dreadful at the best; and on the first information of their probable residence, at the close of January, 1793, he addressed the following letter to the marchioness:--
"If I had words that could convey to you an adequate idea of my feelings on the present situation of the Marquis de Lafayette, this letter would appear to you in a different garb. The sole object in writing to you now is, to inform you that I have deposited in the hands of Mr. Nicholas Van Staphorst, of Amsterdam, two thousand three hundred and ten guilders, Holland currency, equal to two hundred guineas, subject to your orders.
"This sum is, I am certain, the least I am indebted for services rendered to me by the Marquis de Lafayette, of which I never yet have received the account. I could add much; but it is best, perhaps, that I should say little on this subject. Your goodness will supply my deficiency.
"The uncertainty of your situation, after all the inquiries I have made, has occasioned a delay in this address and remittance; and, even now, the measure adopted is more the effect of a desire to find where you are, than from any knowledge I have obtained of your residence."
Soon after this letter was despatched, Washington received one from the marchioness, dated at Chavaniac on the eighth of October, 1792, which came by the way of England. It was accompanied by a letter from an English farmer who had resided several months in the family of Lafayette, in which, speaking of the marchioness, he said: "Her present situation is truly affecting; separated from her husband without the means of hearing from him, herself in captivity under the safeguard of the municipality, she is anxiously expecting the decision of his and her own destiny. Under these circumstances, she relies on your influence to adopt such measures as may effectuate their mutual freedom."
The marchioness was then a prisoner, in utter ignorance of the real fate of her husband. She had been commanded by the Jacobins to repair to Paris about the time when the attack was made upon the Tuilleries and the destruction of the Swiss guard; but they subsequently allowed her to reside at the place from which her letter was dated. In that letter she made a solemn appeal to Washington and the nation to aid her in procuring the liberty of her husband. "He was taken by the troops of the emperor," she said, "although the king of Prussia retains him a prisoner in his dominions. And while he suffers this inconceivable persecution from the enemies without, the faction which reigns within keeps me a hostage at one hundred and twenty leagues from the capital. Judge, then, at what distance I am from him. In this abyss of misery, the idea of owing to the United States and to Washington the life and liberty of M. de Lafayette kindles a ray of hope in my heart. I hope everything from the goodness of the people with whom he has set an example of that liberty of which he is now made the victim. And shall I dare speak what I hope? I would ask of them through you for an envoy, who shall go to reclaim him in the name of the republic of the United States wheresoever he may be found, and who shall be authorized to make, with the power in whose charge he may be placed, all necessary engagements for his release, and for taking him to the United States, even if he is there to be guarded as a captive. If his wife and his children could be comprised in this mission, it is easy to judge how happy it would be for her and for them; but if this would in the least degree retard or embarrass the measure, we will defer still longer the happiness of a reunion. May Heaven deign to bless the confidence with which it has inspired me! I hope my request is not a rash one."
Washington was powerless to aid his friend. His heart yearned to do so, but there were no means that, in the then political condition of Europe, could be used with any hope of success, except giving unofficial instructions to American ministers abroad to make every effort in their power to procure his release, and this was done. "The United States," says Sparks, "had neither authority to make demands, nor power to enforce them. They had no immediate intercourse with Prussia or Austria, and were in no condition to ask the favors or avenge the tyranny of the rulers of those countries, who were only responsible for the treatment of Lafayette, and whose pleasure it was, if not their policy and interest, to keep him in chains."
The whole matter was very painful to Washington, especially as a great delay in his letter made the marchioness feel that she was neglected by her husband's dearest friend, and that husband deserted by the nation for whose freedom he had so nobly fought. Referring to a former letter, she said:--
"Has this letter reached you? Was it necessary that it should arrive to excite your interest? I can not believe it. But I confess that your silence, and the abandonment of M. de Lafayette and his family for the last six months, are of all our evils the most inexplicable to me." Then assuring Washington that the fate of her husband was in a measure in the hands of the president and government of the United States, and that she, not allowed to have any communication with him, could do nothing for him, she said, "I will only add that my confidence in General Washington, though severely tried, remains firm, and that I dare make to him a tender of my homage, and of my high esteem of his character."
Although Lafayette was a citizen of the United States, an American officer, and no more in the French service, his adopted government could do nothing effectual in his behalf, and for three years he lay in the dungeon at Olmutz. His wife and daughter were permitted to share his dungeon life; and finally his eldest son, bearing the name of Washington, came to seek an asylum in the United States. His reception here we shall consider hereafter.
Chapter XX
CLOUDS GATHERING--JEALOUSY OF EXECUTIVE INFLUENCE--ANGRY PARTY DEBATES--CALLS FOR INFORMATION RESPECTING FINANCIAL AFFAIRS--HAMILTON CHARGED WITH BEING A DEFAULTER--HIS REPLY AND THE RESULT--VENERATION FOR WASHINGTON TOUCHED BY PARTY RANCOR--FORMS TO BE OBSERVED AT HIS SECOND INAUGURATION--THE CEREMONY--ACCOUNT BY AN EYE-WITNESS--WASHINGTON CALLED TO MOUNT VERNON--DEATH OF HIS NEPHEW--INTELLIGENCE OF DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST ENGLAND BY FRANCE--OF THE DEATH OF KING LOUIS--EXCITEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES IN FAVOR OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONISTS--POPULAR MANIFESTATIONS OF SYMPATHY IN BOSTON AND ELSEWHERE--DANGEROUS TENDENCY OF THAT SYMPATHY--CITIZEN GENET AND HIS MISSION--WASHINGTON HASTENS BACK TO PHILADELPHIA--CABINET COUNCIL--PROCLAMATION OF NEUTRALITY--OPPOSITION TO THE MEASURE.
When the last session of the second Congress commenced in Philadelphia on the fifth of November, 1792, ominous clouds were gathering in the political horizon, which gave Washington many apprehensions of an impending storm. Party spirit was growing more and more violent; war with the Indians in the Northwest was progressing; discontents with the operations of the excise laws were assuming alarming aspects; the attitude of the European governments brought serious questions to those who controlled public affairs in the United States; and the cabinet, where unity of feeling was necessary in order to counsel the president well, was yet torn by dissentions, with no prospect of their being healed.
There was much apparent good feeling among the members of Congress when they first met, but action upon public business soon aroused party spirit in all its rancor. It was first summoned from its sleep by a motion for the secretaries of war and of the treasury to attend the house, and give such information as they might possess concerning the conduct of the Indian war in the Northwest, with which there was much public dissatisfaction. This proposition raised a cry of alarm from those in the house opposed to the administration. It was resisted as unconstitutional, and threatening to subject the house to executive influence that might be dangerous--that heads of departments would control the legislature.
A motion to refer the portion of the president's message relating to the redemption of the public debt to the secretary of the treasury, to report a plan, called forth still more angry opposition, and Jefferson's charges of corruption were heard on every side. The secretary of the treasury was violently assailed; and dark insinuations were made that members of the house were implicated with Hamilton in dishonest proceedings in relation to the assumption of state debts, the operation of the Indian war, etc. And when Hamilton, in his report, offered a scheme for the redemption of the public debt that effectually silenced the clamors of his enemies, who had insisted that he regarded that debt as a public blessing and meant to fix it upon the country as an incubus, they changed their plans of opposition.
They called upon the president first for particular information as to the several sums of money borrowed by his authority, the terms of the loans, and the application of the money. These questions being explicitly answered, another call was made by an unscrupulous member of the opposition, from Virginia, for more minute information upon financial matters. He made an elaborate speech in presenting the motion, in which, in effect, he charged the secretary of the treasury with being a defaulter to the amount of a million and a half of dollars! Other charges having a similar bearing upon the integrity of Hamilton were made, and the administration was most foully aspersed. The speaker--acting, it was believed, under the influence of his superiors in office--based his charges upon the letter of returns and other treasury statements.
These charges were met by Hamilton in a calm and dignified report, which ought to have disarmed malignity and made implacable party spirit hide its head in shame. It was baffled for a moment, but not dismayed; and, selecting points in the secretary's management of the financial concerns of the government, the accuser already alluded to proceeded to frame nine resolutions of censure, for which he asked the vote of the house. The result was, says a careful and candid historian, "much to raise the character of the secretary of the treasury, by convincing the great body of impartial men, capable of understanding the subject, that, both as regarded talent and integrity, he was admirably qualified for his office, and that the multiplied charges against him had been engendered by envy, suspicion, and ignorance."[41]
Up to this time, the opposition had not ventured to show any disrespect to Washington. He had wisely avoided assuming in any degree the character of a leader of a party, and had labored with conscientious zeal for the public good, without the least regard to private friendships, or with feelings of enmity toward personal friends who had deserted his administration. Madison was now a leader of the opposition, yet Washington esteemed him none the less, because he believed him to be honest and patriotic.
But now, party rancor was gradually usurping the place of that veneration which every man felt for the character of Washington; and that jealousy of everything aristocratic in fact or appearance which was at that moment inaugurating a republic in France, with a baptism of blood, hesitated not to show personal disrespect to the president. The people in different parts of the Union, with spontaneous affection, prepared to celebrate the birthday of Washington on the twenty-second of February, 1793, with balls, parties, visits of congratulation, etc. Many members of Congress were desirous of waiting upon the president, in testimony of their respect for the chief magistrate of the republic, and a motion was made to adjourn for half an hour for that purpose, when quite an acrimonious debate ensued. The opposition, with real or feigned alarm, denounced the proposition as a species of homage unworthy of republicans; a tendency to monarchy; the setting up of an idol for hero-worship, dangerous to the liberties of the nation! Freneau's paper condemned the birthday celebration; and in view of the great dangers to which the republic was exposed by the monarchical bias of many leading men, a New Jersey member of the republican party in the house moved that the mace carried by the marshall on state occasions--"an unmeaning symbol, unworthy the dignity of a republican government"--be sent to the mint, broken up, and the silver coined and placed in the treasury. The peculiar state of public feeling at that time, irritated by prophets of evil, affords a reasonable excuse for these jealousies.
Washington was not unmindful of these signs, and the necessity of paying due respect even to the prejudices of the people; and as the time for his second inauguration was drawing near, he asked the opinions of his cabinet concerning the forms to be used on that occasion. Jefferson and Hamilton proposed that he should take the oath of office privately at his own house, a certificate of the fact to be deposited in the state department. Knox and Randolph proposed to have the ceremony in public, but without any ostentatious display. Washington's opinion coincided with the latter; and at a cabinet meeting held on the first of March, Mr. Jefferson being the only absentee, it was agreed that the oath should be administered by Judge Cushing, of the supreme court of the United States, in public, in the senate chamber, on the fourth of the month, at twelve o'clock at noon, and that the "president go without form, attended by such gentlemen as he shall choose, and return without form except that he be preceded by the marshall."
Accordingly, a little before twelve o'clock, the president rode from his residence to the Congress hall in his cream-colored coach drawn by six horses, preceded by the marshall, as proposed, and accompanied by a great concourse of citizens, and took the oath in the senate chamber. The heads of departments, foreign ministers, members of Congress, and as many spectators as could find room in the apartment, were present. Previous to the administration of the oath by Judge Cushing, Washington arose and said:--
"Fellow-citizens: I am again called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its chief magistrate. When the occasion proper for it shall arrive, I shall endeavor to express the high sense I entertain of this distinguished honor, and of the confidence which has been reposed in me by the people of the United States of America. Previous to the execution of any official act of the president, the constitution requires an oath of office. This oath I am now about to take, and in your presence; that if it shall be found, during my administration of the government, I have in any instance violated, willingly or knowingly, the injunction thereof, I may, besides incurring constitutional punishment, be subject to the upbraidings of all who are now witnesses of the present solemn ceremony."
The oath was then administered, and the president returned to his residence as he came.[42]
It was with sincere reluctance that Washington entered upon the duties of the office of chief magistrate of the nation for a second term. "To you," he said in a letter to Colonel Humphreys (then abroad) soon after his inauguration--"To you, who know my love of retirement and domestic life, it is unnecessary to say, that in accepting this reappointment I relinquish those personal enjoyments to which I am peculiarly attached. The motives which induced my acceptance are the same which ever ruled my decision when the public desire--or, as my countrymen are pleased to denominate it, the public good--was placed in the scale against my personal enjoyments and private interest. The latter I have ever considered as subservient to the former; and perhaps in no instance of my life have I been more sensible of the sacrifice than at the present; for at my age the love of retirement grows every day more and more powerful, and the death of my nephew will, I apprehend, cause my private concerns to suffer very much."[43]
On account of this death, Washington made a hurried visit to Mount Vernon in April, and while there the important intelligence reached him that France had declared war against England and Holland, an event which prophesied a general European war. Almost simultaneously with this intelligence came that of the execution of King Louis, by order of the National Convention of France. The king, who had been a mere shuttle-cock of faction for two years, was beheaded on the twenty-first of January, with circumstances of brutality which make humanity shudder. His death had been long predestinated by the ferocious men who ruled France, and, to accomplish it with a semblance of justice, he had been accused of crimes of which he was utterly innocent. Even at the last moment, when standing before the implement of death, he was made to feel the brutality of men in power. He looked complacently upon the vast multitude who came to see him die, and was about to say a few words, when the officer in charge, with ferocious emphasis, said, "No speeches! come, no speeches!" and ordered the drums to be beaten and the trumpets to be sounded. Louis was heard to say, "I forgive my enemies; may God forgive them, and not lay my innocent blood to the charge of the nation! God bless my people!" Thus perished a monarch, patriotic and amiable, but too weak in intellectual and moral power to control the terrible storm of popular vengeance which a long series of abuses had engendered.
For many months Washington had watched with great anxiety the manifestations of public feeling in the United States while the bloody work of the French Revolution was progressing. He saw with alarm the spirit of that Revolution, so widely different from that which had shaken off the fetters of kingly rule in America, working insidiously into the constitution of the politics of the United States, and passion assuming the control of reason in the minds of his people. This was specially manifested by an outburst of popular feeling when the proclamation of the French republic reached America, and news that French arms had made a conquest of the Austrian Netherlands. Forgetting the friendship of Holland during our war for independence, and the spirit of genuine liberty (of which that, flaunting its bloody banners in France, was but a ferocious caricature) which had prevailed in the Netherlands and made it the asylum of the persecuted for conscience' sake for centuries, the people of Boston and other places held a celebration in honor of the temporary victory. In the New England capital there was a grand barbecue. An ox was roasted whole, and then, decorated and elevated upon a car drawn by sixteen horses, the flags of France and the United States displayed from its horns, it was paraded through the streets, followed by carts bearing sixteen hundred loaves of bread and two hogsheads of punch. These were distributed among the people; and at the same time a party of three hundred, with Samuel Adams (lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts) at their head, assisted by the French consul, sat down to dinner in Faneuil hall. To the children of all the schools, who were paraded in the streets, cakes were presented bearing the inscription, "Liberty and Equality." By public subscription, the sums owed by prisoners for debt, in jail, were paid, and the victims were set free. There was a general jubilee in Boston on that barbecue day.
With a similar spirit the news of the death of the king was hailed by the leaders of the republican party in the United States; and when intelligence of the French declaration of war against England went over the land, a fervor of enthusiasm in favor of the old ally was awakened which called loudly for compliance with the spirit and letter of the treaty of 1778, by which the United States and France became allies in peace and war. By that treaty the United States were bound to guarantee the French possessions in America; and by a treaty of commerce executed at the same time, French privateers and prizes were entitled to shelter in the American ports, while those of the enemies of France should be excluded.
There was now a wide-spreading sentiment in favor of an active participation with France, on the part of the United States, in her struggles against armed Europe; and many, in the wild enthusiasm of the moment, would not have hesitated an instant in precipitating our country into a war. Indeed, for a while, the universal sentiment was a cheer for republican France, whose Convention had declared, in the name of the French nation, that they would grant fraternity and assistance to every people who wished to recover their liberty; and they charged the executive power to send the necessary orders to the generals "to give assistance to such people, and to defend those citizens who may have been, or who may be, vexed for the cause of liberty."
Filled with the spirit of this declaration, and charged with the performance of political functions seldom exercised by diplomats, Edmund Charles Genet--"Citizen Genet," as he was termed in the new nomenclature of the French republic--came to America at this time, as the representative of that republic, to supersede the more conservative M. Ternant. Genet was a man of culture, spoke the English language fluently, possessed a pleasing address, was lively, frank, and unguarded, and as fiery as the most intense Jacobins could wish. He arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, on the eighth of April, five days after the news of the French declaration of war reached New York. His presence intensified the enthusiasm with which the country was then glowing; and for a moment, until sober reason assumed the sceptre, all opposition to the revolutionary sentiment was swept away by the tide of popular zeal for a cause that seemed identical with that which secured independence to the United States. "Is it wonderful," says the latest biographer of Jefferson, "that American popular sympathy swelled to a pitch of wild enthusiasm, when an emissary came from the new republic, surrounded with its prestige; proclaiming wild, stirring doctrines; declaring the unbounded affection of his country for the United States; scorning the arts of old diplomacy, and mixing freely with the democratic masses; not declining to talk of the important objects of his mission in promiscuous assemblies of plain working men; and exhibiting in his deportment that practical democracy, that fraternity, which men in his position, of English blood, never exhibit?"[44]
These events excited the deepest anxiety in the mind of Washington. He had no confidence whatever in the men at the head of public affairs in France--the self-constituted government of that unhappy nation. "Those in whose hands the government is intrusted," he said in a letter to Governor Lee, "are ready to tear each other to pieces, and will, more than probably, prove the worst foes the country has." He deeply deplored the wild enthusiasm which was threatening to involve his country in the European war then kindling. "Unwise would we be in the extreme," he wrote to Gouverneur Morris a month before, "to involve ourselves in the contests of European nations, where our weight would be but small, though the loss to ourselves would be certain." With such views Washington hastened back to Philadelphia; for he foresaw the necessity for announcing the disposition of his country toward the belligerent powers, and the propriety of restraining as far as possible his fellow-citizens from taking part in the contest. He immediately despatched an express to Philadelphia with the following letter to Mr. Jefferson, the secretary of state:--
"Your letter of the seventh was brought to me by the last post. War having actually commenced between France and Great Britain, it behooves the government of this country to use every means in its power to prevent the citizens thereof from embroiling us with either of those powers, by endeavoring to maintain a strict neutrality. I therefore require that you will give the subject mature consideration, that such measures as shall be deemed most likely to effect this desirable purpose may be adopted without delay; for I have understood that vessels are already designated as privateers and are preparing accordingly. Such other measures as may be necessary for us to pursue, against events which it may not be in our power to avoid or control, you will also think of, and lay them before me on my arrival in Philadelphia, for which place I will set out to-morrow."
Washington reached Philadelphia on the seventeenth, and on the nineteenth held a cabinet council, having on the previous day submitted to each member of his cabinet the following questions for their consideration:--
"I. Shall a proclamation issue for the purpose of preventing interferences of the citizens of the United States in the war between France and Great Britain, etc.? Shall it contain a declaration of neutrality, or not? What shall it contain?
"II. Shall a minister from the republic of France be received?
"III. If received, shall it be absolutely without qualifications; and if with qualifications, of what kind?
"IV. Are the United States obliged by good faith to consider the treaties heretofore made with France as applying to the present situation of the parties? May they either renounce them, or hold them suspended till the government of France shall be established?
"V. If they have the right, is it expedient to do either, and which?
"VI. If they have an option, would it be a breach of neutrality to consider the treaties still in operation?
"VII. If the treaties are to be considered as now in operation, is the guaranty in the treaty of alliance applicable to a defensive war only, or to war either offensive or defensive?
"VIII. Does the war in which France is engaged appear to be offensive or defensive on her part? or of a mixed and equivocal character?
"IX. If of a mixed and equivocal character, does the guaranty, in any event, apply to such a war?
"X. What is the effect of a guaranty such as that to be found in the treaty of alliance between the United States and France?
"XI. Does any article in either of the treaties prevent ships of war, other than privateers, of the powers opposed to France, from coming into the ports of the United States to act as convoys to their own merchantmen? Or does it lay any other restraint upon them more than would apply to the ships of war with France?
"XII. Should the future regent of France send a minister to the United States, ought he to be received?
"XIII. Is it necessary or advisable to call together the two houses of Congress, with a view to the present posture of European affairs? If it is, what should be the particular object of such a call?"[45]
The cabinet meeting to consider these questions was held at the president's house. All the heads of departments and the attorney-general were present; and after a protracted discussion, it was unanimously determined that a proclamation should issue forbidding citizens of the United States to take part in any hostilities on the seas, with or against any of the belligerent powers, and warning them against carrying to any such powers any of those articles deemed contraband according to the modern usage of nations; and enjoining them from all acts and proceedings inconsistent with the duties of a friendly nation toward those at war. It was also unanimously agreed that a minister from the republic of France should be received. The remaining questions were postponed for further consideration.
In the excited state of the public mind, and the proclivity of the popular feeling toward sympathy with France, Washington's proclamation met with the severest censures. Neither his unbounded popularity nor the reverence for his character, as a wise, and honest, and patriotic man, were proof against the operations of that feeling; and the proclamation was assailed with the greatest vehemence. Every epithet in the vocabulary of the opposition party was applied to it. It was stigmatized as a royal edict, an unwarrantable and daring assumption of executive power, and an open manifestation, of the president and his political friends, of partiality for England and hostility to France. And it seems fair to infer, from his letters at that time, that Mr. Jefferson, who reluctantly voted in the cabinet for the proclamation, governed by his almost fanatical hatred of Hamilton and his sympathy with the French regicides, secretly promoted a feeling so hostile to the administration.
The wisdom of the proclamation,[46] and the position of neutrality which the government of the United States assumed at that time, was soon apparent, and has been fully vindicated by the logic of subsequent events.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] Hildreth's History of the United States, Second Series, i, 405.
[42] An eye-witness of the scene when Washington read his annual message to Congress has left a pleasant account of it on record. "As the president alighted, and, ascending the steps, paused upon the platform, looking over his shoulder, in an attitude that would have furnished an admirable subject for the pencil, he was preceded by two gentlemen bearing long white wands, who kept back the eager crowd that pressed on every side to get a nearer view. At that moment I stood so near that I might have touched his clothes; but I should as soon have thought of touching an electric battery. I was penetrated with a veneration amounting to the deepest awe. Nor was this the feeling of a schoolboy only; it pervaded, I believe, every human being that approached Washington; and I have been told that, even in his social and convivial hours, this feeling, in those who were honored to share them, never suffered intermission. I saw him a hundred times afterward, but never with any other than that same feeling. The Almighty, who raised up for our hour of need a man so peculiarly prepared for its whole dread responsibility, seems to have put an impress of sacredness upon His own instrument. The first sight of the man struck the heart with involuntary homage, and prepared everything around him to obey. When he 'addressed himself to speak,' there was an unconscious suspension of the breath, while every eye was raised in expectation.
"The president, having seated himself, remained in silence, serenely contemplating the legislature before him, whose members now resumed their seats, waiting for the speech. No house of worship, in the most solemn pauses of devotion, was ever more profoundly still than that large and crowded chamber.
"Washington was dressed precisely as Stuart has painted him in Lord Lansdowne's full-length portrait--in a full suit of the richest black velvet, with diamond knee-buckles, and square silver buckles set upon shoes japanned with the most scrupulous neatness, black silk stockings, his shirt ruffled at the breast and wrists, a light dress-sword; his hair profusely powdered, fully dressed, so as to project at the sides, and gathered behind in a silk bag, ornamented with a large rose of black riband. He held his cocked hat, which had a large black cockade on one side of it, in his hand, as he advanced toward the chair, and when seated, laid it on the table.
"At length, thrusting his hand within the side of his coat, he drew forth a roll of manuscript, which he opened, and rising held it in his hand, while, in a rich, deep, full, sonorous voice, he read his opening address to Congress. His enunciation was deliberate, justly emphasized, very distinct, and accompanied with an air of deep solemnity, as being the utterance of a mind profoundly impressed with the dignity of the act in which it was occupied, conscious of the whole responsibility of its position and action, but not oppressed by it."
[43] This was George A. Washington, to whom had been intrusted the management of affairs at Mount Vernon during the master's absence at the seat of government. He was seized with alarming symptoms of pulmonary disease early in 1792. He was greatly beloved by Washington, and his sickness gave the president much pain, and was a frequent topic in letters to his friends. To Lafayette he wrote as early as June, 1792:--
"I am afraid my nephew George, your old aid, will never have his health perfectly re-established. He has lately been attacked with the alarming symptoms of spitting large quantities of blood, and the physicians give no hopes of restoration, unless it can be effected by a change of air and a total dereliction from business, to which he is too anxiously attentive. He will, if he should be taken from his family and friends, leave three fine children, two sons and a daughter. To the eldest of the boys he has given the name of Fayette, and a fine-looking child he is."
To General Knox he wrote:--
"I thank you most sincerely for the medicine you were so obliging as to send for my nephew, and for the sympathetic feeling you express for his situation. Poor fellow! neither, I believe, will be of any avail. Present appearances indicate a speedy dissolution. He has not been able to leave his bed, except for a few moments to sit in an arm-chair, since the fourteenth or fifteenth of last month. The paroxysm of the disorder seems to be upon him, and death, or a favorable turn to it, must speedily follow."
The sufferer was then residing upon a small estate in Hanover. He lingered for several weeks, and then expired; and on the twenty-fourth of February Washington wrote to his widow:--
"MY DEAR FANNY: To you, who so well knew the affectionate regard I had for our departed friend, it is unnecessary to describe the sorrow with which I was afflicted at the news of his death, although it was an event I had expected many weeks before it happened. To express this sorrow with the force I feel it, would answer no other purpose than to revive in your breast that poignancy of anguish, which by this time I hope is abated. The object of this letter is to convey to your mind the warmest assurance of my love, friendship, and disposition to serve you. These I also profess to bear in an eminent degree for your children."
He then invites her to make Mount Vernon the home of herself and children. "You can go to no place," he said, "where you will be more welcome, nor to any where you can live at less expense or trouble."
The young widow appears to have declined the offer of a home at Mount Vernon, preferring to keep house in Alexandria, but offering to resign the charge of her eldest son, Fayette, into Washington's keeping. In March the president wrote to her, saying:--
"The carriage which I sent to Mount Vernon for your use I never intended to reclaim; and now, making you a formal present of it, it may be sent for whenever it suits your convenience and be considered as your own. I shall, when I see you, request that Fayette may be given up to me, either at that time or as soon after as he is old enough to go to school. This will relieve you of that portion of attention which his education would otherwise call for."--Mount Vernon and its Associations, pages 264, 265.
[44] The Life of Thomas Jefferson, by Henry S. Randall, LL.D., ii, 128.
[45] Sparks's Washington, x, 533, 534.
[46] The following is copy of the proclamation:--
"Whereas it appears that a state of war exists between Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, Great Britain, and the United Netherlands, on the one part, and France on the other; and the duty and interest of the United States require that they should, with sincerity and good faith, adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impartial toward the belligerent powers;
"I have therefore thought fit by these presents to declare the disposition of the United States to observe the conduct aforesaid towards those powers respectively; and to exhort and warn the citizens of the United States carefully to avoid all acts and proceedings whatsoever, which may in any manner tend to contravene such disposition.
"And I do hereby also make known, that whosoever of the citizens of the United States shall render himself liable to punishment or forfeiture under the laws of nations, by committing, aiding, or abetting hostilities against any of the said powers, or by carrying to them any of those articles which are deemed contraband by the modern usage of nations, will not receive the protection of the United States against such punishment or forfeiture; and further, that I have given instructions to those officers to whom it belongs, to cause prosecutions to be instituted against all persons who shall, within the cognizance of the courts of the United States, violate the law of nations with respect to the powers at war, or any of them.
"In testimony whereof, I have caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed to these presents, and signed the same with my hand. Done at the city of Philadelphia, the twenty-second day of April, 1793, and of the independence of the United States the seventeenth.
"GEORGE WASHINGTON"
Chapter XXI
GENET'S ARRIVAL AND RECEPTION AT CHARLESTON--HIS OBJECT IN LANDING THERE--HE COMMISSIONS PRIVATEERS--OPERATIONS OF TWO VESSELS--ARRIVAL OF L'EMBUSCADE AT PHILADELPHIA--GENET'S RECEPTION AT PHILADELPHIA--HE PRESENTS HIS CREDENTIALS--A BANQUET IN HIS HONOR--DEMOCRATIC CLUBS--EXTRAVAGANCES--SCENES IN NEW YORK--CONSERVATIVE FEELING TRIUMPHANT--HAMILTON'S VIEWS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION--GENET'S SPEECH ON PRESENTATION TO THE PRESIDENT--JEFFERSON'S SUSPICIONS--HIS UNKIND TREATMENT OF WASHINGTON--GENET'S OFFICIAL LETTER--HIS DEMANDS NOT COMPLIED WITH--ACTION OF THE CABINET CONCERNING HIS PRIVATEERING SCHEMES.
Genet, as we have observed, landed at Charleston, in South Carolina, instead of a port near the seat of the government to which he came accredited. The circumstance was not regarded of much consequence at the time, as it might have been the result of accident; but the development of his designs, in accordance with secret instructions from his government, soon revealed the fact that he chose that southern port for his destination, because its contiguity to the West Indies would give it peculiar convenience as a resort for privateers, the employment of which was a part of the programme of his diplomatic functions.
Genet came in the French frigate L'Embuscade, and was received with most enthusiastic rejoicings by Governor Moultrie and the citizens of Charleston. This reception, acting upon his ardent nature, made him forgetful of his relations to the government to which he was sent; and with a zeal untempered by sound judgment, and a mind mistaking the evanescent demonstrations of personal respect, and the exhibition of popular feeling toward the French republic in that southern city for the settled convictions of the American people, he commenced the performance of his duties under his secret instructions, before he laid his credentials before the United States government, and asked for his reception as the representative of his nation. By these private instructions, assuming that the American executive might not be sufficiently compliant with the wishes of the French government, he was authorized to employ, with the people of the United States, the same policy which had been so successfully used in Europe in producing revolutions.
Genet was provided with blank commissions, both naval and military; and while enjoying the flattering attentions at Charleston for several days, he undertook to authorize the fitting out and arming of vessels in that port as privateers, to depredate upon the commerce of England and other nations at war with France. For this purpose he granted commissions, enlisted men, and, by authority assumed by him under a decree of the convention, he constituted all consuls of France the heads of courts of admiralty, to try, condemn, and authorize the sale of all property seized by the privateer cruisers sailing under Genet's letters of marque. Two of these privateers, manned chiefly by Americans, soon put to sea under the French flag, cruised along the Carolina coasts, and captured many homeward-bound British vessels and took them into the port of Charleston. The frigate in which Genet came to America became one of these privateers, and proceeded northward toward Philadelphia, plundering the sea on her way.
The French minister travelled to Philadelphia by land, and reached that city on the sixteenth of May. His journey was like a continued ovation. The whole country through which he passed, electrified by the French Revolution, appeared alive with excitement; and the honors which the republicans, in their antipathy to aristocracy, had been anxious to withhold from Washington because it was man-worship, were lavished upon the person of the representative of the French republic without stint. On approaching Philadelphia he was met at Gray's ferry, on the Schuylkill, by a considerable number of persons, who had come to welcome him to the federal capital, and to escort him to his lodgings;[47] and on the following day he received addresses from several societies and from the citizens at large, who waited upon him in a body.
Meanwhile, L'Embuscade had arrived at Philadelphia with a British vessel, called The Grange, as a prize; and intelligence of Genet's unwarrantable proceedings at Charleston in authorizing privateers had been received. Yet so wild and unthinking was the popular enthusiasm that appeared on the surface of society, that scarcely a word in condemnation of his conduct was offered. On the contrary, these things appeared to increase the zeal of his political sympathizers, and made Genet's reception, in some respects, more flattering to his personal and national pride. In a letter to Madison at this time, Jefferson, influenced by the exultation of the movement, and in apparent forgetfulness of the serious offence which the ardent Genet had committed against the dignity of the United States and the courtesy of nations, wrote:--
"The war between France and England seems to be producing an effect not contemplated. All the old spirit of 1776, rekindling the newspapers from Boston to Charleston, proves this; and even the monocrat papers are obliged to publish the most furious philippics against England. A French frigate took a British prize (the Grange) off the capes of Delaware, the other day, and sent her up here. Upon her coming into sight, thousands and thousands of the yeomanry of the city crowded and covered the wharves. Never was there such a crowd seen there; and when the British colors were seen reversed, and the French flying above them, they burst into peals of exultation. I wish we may be able to repress the spirit of the people within the limits of a fair neutrality.... We expect Genet daily."
So eager were the republicans of Philadelphia to do honor to Genet, that, before he had presented his credentials to the president, he was invited to an evening feast. Indeed, preparations for his reception and the "republican dinner" had been made several days before, and this invitation was only a part of the programme. Genet was delighted by this demonstration--a demonstration (arranged chiefly by the labors of Peter S. Duponceau, who came to America originally as the secretary of Baron Steuben, and who was now secretary of a secret society of Frenchmen, which met at Barney M'Shane's, sign of the bunch of grapes, number twenty-three North Third street) that should strike with terror the "cowardly, conservative, Anglo-men, and monarchists," led by President Washington; and his joy was heightened by reading an approving history of the proceedings in Freneau's paper, the organ of the secretary of state. He even seemed for a moment to doubt the expediency of presenting his credentials at all, because Washington was evidently not ready to comply with all his wishes, and he believed that the whole American people were friends of France, and the enemies of all her opponents.
Genet, however, did present his credentials on the nineteenth of May, and was officially accredited. In that ceremony his pride was touched and his enthusiasm was abated. He found in the presence of Washington an atmosphere of dignity and greatness wholly unexpected, and thoroughly overpowering. He felt his littleness in the presence of that noble representative of the best men and the soundest principles of the American republic, and he returned from the audience abashed and subdued; for the genuine courtesy exhibited by the president, and the words of sincere friendship for the French nation which he uttered, had touched Genet's sensibilities; while the severe simplicity and dignity of manner, and the absence of that effervescent enthusiasm in the midst of which he had been cast since his arrival, administered rebuke alike to the adulators in public places, and his own pretentious aspirations. He had come with secret instructions to foment war between the United States and England for the benefit of France, but that single interview with Washington made him feel, for the time, that his efforts must result in failure; for the word of the chief magistrate was yet almost as omnipotent as law with the greater portion of his countrymen.
Genet was relieved of the chill by the evening banquet, where all was enthusiasm and boisterous mirth. It was given at Oeller's hotel, and quite a large number of republicans were at the board. A patriotic ode written in French, by Duponceau, and translated into English by Freneau, was sung; and the Marseilles hymn was chanted by Genet and the company, the minister adding two stanzas composed by himself, and having special reference to the navy. This followed the reception of a deputation of sailors from the frigate L'Embuscade, who, when they entered the room, were received by the guests with a "fraternal embrace." The table was decorated with the tree of liberty and the French and American flags; and after the last regular toast of the evening was given, the bonnet rouge, or red cap of liberty, was placed first upon the head of Genet, and then upon each one present in turn, the recipient being expected, under the inspiration of the emblem of freedom, to utter a patriotic sentiment. The national flags were finally delivered to the French sailors, who "swore to defend till death these tokens of liberty, and of American and French fraternity."
To the superficial observer, the great mass of the people seemed carried away with a monomaniac frenzy. Democratic societies were founded in imitation of Jacobin clubs; everything that was respectable in society was denounced as aristocratic; politeness was looked upon as a sort of lese republicanisme; the common forms of expression in use by the sans culottes were adopted by their American disciples; the title "citizen" became as common in Philadelphia as in Paris; and in the newspapers it was the fashion to announce marriages as partnerships between "Citizen" Brown, Smith, or Jones, and the "citess," who had been wooed to such an association. Entering the house of the president, Citizen Genet was astonished and indignant at perceiving in the vestibule a bust of Louis XVI, whom his friends had beheaded, and he complained of this "insult to France." At a dinner, at which Governor Mifflin was present, a roasted pig received the name of the murdered king, and the head, severed from the body, was carried round to each of the guests, who, after placing the liberty cap on his own head, pronounced the word "Tyrant!" and proceeded to mangle with his knife that of the luckless creature doomed to be served for so unworthy a company! One of the democratic taverns displayed as a sign a revolting picture of the mutilated and bloody corpse of Marie Antoinette.[48]
Nor was this enthusiasm confined to Philadelphia. In his admirable daguerreotype of old New York, the venerable Doctor Francis has given a vivid picture, from memory, of the effect of Genet's arrival and sojourn in the country. Speaking of the arrival of L'Embuscade, he says: "The notoriety of the event and its consequences enables me to bring to feeble recollection many of the scenes which transpired in this city at that time: the popular excitement and bustle; the liberty cap; the entrée of Citizen Genet; the red cockade; the song of the Carmagnole, in which with childish ambition I united; the rencontre with the Boston frigate, and the commotion arising from Jay's treaty. Though I can not speak earnestly from actual knowledge, we must all concede that these were the times when political strife assumed a formidable aspect--when the press most flagrantly outraged individual rights and domestic peace--when the impugners of the Washingtonian administration received new weapons, with which to inflict their assaults upon tried patriotism, by every arrival from abroad announcing France in her progress. The federalists and the anti-federalists now became the federal and the republican party; the Carmagnole sung every hour of every day in the streets, and on stated days at the Belvidere Club-house, fanned the embers and enkindled that zeal which caused the overthrow of many of the soundest principles of American freedom. Even the yellow fever, which, from its novelty and its malignity, struck terror into every bosom, and was rendered more lurid by the absurd preventive means of burning tar and tar-barrels in almost every street, afforded no mitigation of party animosity; and Greenleaf with his Argus, Freneau with his Time-Piece, and Cobbett with his Porcupine Gazette, increased the consternation, which only added to the inquietude of the peaceable citizen, who had often reasoned within himself that a seven-years' carnage, through which he had passed, had been enough for one life."
"Much I saw--much has been told me by the old inhabitants now departed," says Doctor Francis. "When the entire American nation, nay, when the civilized world at large, seemed electrified by the outbreak of the Revolution in France, it necessarily followed, as the shadow does the substance, that the American soul, never derelict, could not but enkindle with patriotic warmth at the cause of that people whose loftiest desire was freedom--of that people who themselves had, with profuse appropriation, enabled that very bosom, in the moment of hardest trial, to inhale the air of liberty. Successive events had now dethroned the monarchy of France, and the democratic spirit was now evolved in its fullest element. It was not surprising that the experienced and the sober champions who had effected the great revolution of the colonies should now make the cause of struggling France their own; and as victors already in one desperate crisis, they seemed ready to enter into a new contest for the rights of man. The masses coalesced and co-operated. Cheering prospects of sympathy and of support were held out in the prospective to their former friends and benefactors abroad. Jealousy of Britain--affection for France--was now the prevailing impulse, and the business of the day was often interrupted by tumultuous noises in the streets. Groups of sailors might be seen collected on the docks and at the shipping, ready to embark on a voyage of plunder; merchants and traders, in detached bodies, might be seen discussing the hazards of commerce; the schools liberated from their prescribed hours of study, because of some fresh report of L'Embuscade or of Genet; the schoolmaster uttering in his dismissal a new reason for the study of the classics, by expounding with oracular dignity to his scholars, Vivat Respublica, broadly printed as the caption of the playbill or the pamphlet just issued."[49]
But, fortunately for the United States, there were many strong, sober, and patriotic men, who had looked calmly upon the storms of the French Revolution, and wisely interpreted its portents. On the same day when Genet was received by the president and feasted by the republicans, an address was presented to Washington, signed by three hundred of the principal merchants and other "solid men" of Philadelphia, declaring their high sense of the wisdom and goodness which dictated his late proclamation of neutrality; and that the signers, believing that nothing was necessary to the happiness of the United States but a continuance of peace, not only would heed that proclamation themselves, but discountenance, in the most pointed manner, any contrary disposition in others. In his reply, Washington, with his usual dignity and discretion, expressed a hope that, in the critical juncture of public affairs, the people would evince as much freedom in pursuing peace, as they had previously displayed valor in vindicating their just rights.
The conservative class to whom we have alluded was composed of the best materials of American society. They were firm, consistent, and quiet; and while the noise that attended the demonstrations in favor of the French Revolution appeared to the shallow and timid as the voice of the nation, a very large majority of the people doubtless sympathized with the restraining measures of the president.
Among those who had wisely interpreted the teachings of the Revolution in France, and deprecated the infatuation of his countrymen who had adopted the doctrines of the Jacobins, was Hamilton. To a friend who had expressed his sorrow because of the aspect of the public feeling at that time, he revealed his views freely--views which were held in common with Washington and the great conservative party of which he was the head. "I agree with you," Hamilton said, "in the reflections you make on the tendency of public demonstrations of attachment to the cause of France. 'Tis certainly not wise to expose ourselves to the jealousy and resentment of the rest of the world, by a fruitless display of zeal for that cause. It may do us much harm, and it can do France no good (unless, indeed, we are to embark in the war with her, which nobody is so hardy as to avow, though some secretly machinate it). It can not be without danger and inconvenience to our interests, to impress on the nations of Europe an idea that we are actuated by the same spirit which has, for some time past, fatally misguided the measures of those who conduct the affairs of France, and sullied a cause once glorious, and that might have been triumphant. The cause of France is compared with that of America during its late Revolution. Would to Heaven that the comparison were just. Would to Heaven that we could discern in the mirror of French affairs the same decorum, the same gravity, the same order, the same dignity, the same solemnity, which distinguished the cause of the American Revolution. Clouds and darkness would not then rest upon the issue as they now do. I own I do not like the comparison. When I contemplate the horrid and systematic massacres of the second and third of September; when I observe that a Murat and a Robespierre, the notorious prompters of those bloody scenes, sit triumphantly in the convention and take a conspicuous part in its measures--that an attempt to bring the assassins to justice has been abandoned; when I see an unfortunate prince, whose reign was a continued demonstration of the goodness and benevolence of his heart, of his attachment to the people of whom he was the monarch, who, though educated in the lap of despotism, had given repeated proofs that he was not the enemy of liberty, brought precipitately and ignominiously to the block without any substantial proof of guilt, as yet disclosed--without even an authentic exhibition of motives, in decent regard to the opinions of mankind; when I find the doctrines of atheism openly advanced in the convention, and heard with loud applauses; when I see the sword of fanaticism extended to force a political creed upon citizens who were invited to submit to the arms of France as the harbingers of liberty; when I behold the hand of rapacity outstretched to prostrate and ravish the monuments of religious worship, erected by those citizens and their ancestors; when I perceive passion, tumult, and violence, usurping those seats where reason and cool deliberation ought to preside--I acknowledge that I am glad to believe there is no real resemblance between what was the cause of America and what is the cause of France; that the difference is no less great than that between liberty and licentiousness. I regret whatever has a tendency to confound them, and I feel anxious, as an American, that the ebullitions of inconsiderate men among us may not tend to involve our reputation in the issue."[50]
Genet had scarcely reached the seat of government, before his conduct in authorizing the fitting out of privateers, and the capture of The Grange by L'Embuscade, called forth complaints from Mr. Hammond, the British minister at Philadelphia. Genet, in his address to the president on presenting his credentials, had disavowed any wish to involve the United States in the pending war.
"We wish you to do nothing," he said, "but what is for your own good, and we will do all in our power to promote it. Cherish your own peace and prosperity. You have expressed a willingness to enter into a more liberal commerce with us; I bring full powers to form such a treaty, and a preliminary decree of the National Convention to lay open our country and its colonies to you, for every purpose of utility, without your participating in the burden of maintaining and defending them. We see in you the only person on earth who can love us sincerely, and merit to be so loved."
This was uttered while the secret instructions in his pocket authorized him to foment discord between the United States and Great Britain; to set the government of our republic at defiance, if necessary; and in the face of his open insult to the government by his acts at Charleston. And yet Mr. Jefferson, apparently blinding his eyes to passing events in Genet's brief career here, said in a letter to Madison, in reference to the French minister's speech, "It was impossible for anything to be more affectionate, more magnanimous, than the purport of Genet's mission.... He offers everything and asks nothing."
"Yet I know," Jefferson added, "that the offers will be opposed, and suspect they will not be accepted. In short, my dear sir, it is impossible for you to conceive what is passing in our conclave; and it is evident that one or two [meaning Hamilton and Knox] at least, under pretence of avoiding war on the one side, have no great antipathy to run foul of it on the other, and to make a part in the confederacy of princes against human liberty." Thus, on all occasions, the secretary of state ungenerously charged those of his official associates who could not lovingly embrace the bloody French Jacobins as brothers, with monarchical principles, and designs to subvert the government of the United States. To Washington he expressed the same suspicions; and, from his own record in his Anas, he appears to have been rebuked by the president, and to have persisted in a most unfriendly course. "He [the president] observed," he said, "that if anybody wanted to change the form of our government into a monarchy, he was sure it was only a few individuals, and that no man in the United States would set himself against it more than himself; but that this was not what he was afraid of--his fears were from another quarter--that there was more danger of anarchy being introduced."
Washington, according to the same record, then spoke with great warmth concerning the hostility of Freneau as manifested in his newspaper. He despised all personal attacks upon himself; but, he said, not a solitary act of the government had escaped the slanderer's assaults. He adverted to the fact that Freneau (evidently for the impudent purpose of insulting Washington) sent him three of his papers every day; and Mr. Jefferson records these facts in a way that shows the enjoyment he seemed to derive from such evidences of great annoyance displayed by the president. "He was evidently sore and worn," wrote Mr. Jefferson, "and I took his intention to be, that I should interpose in some way with Freneau--perhaps withdraw his appointment of translating clerk in my office. But I will not do it."
"It appears to us," says Mr. Irving,[51] "rather an ungracious determination on the part of Jefferson to keep this barking cur in his employ, when he found him so annoying to the chief, whom he professed, and we believe with sincerity, to revere.[52] Neither are his reasons for so doing satisfactory, savoring as they do of those strong political suspicions already noticed. 'His [Freneau's] paper,' observed he, 'has saved our constitution, which was galloping fast into monarchy, and has been checked by no means so powerfully as by that paper. It is well and universally known that it has been that paper which checked the career of the monocrats. The president, not sensible of the designs of the party, has not, with his usual good sense and sang froid, looked on the efforts and effects of this free press, and seen that though some bad things have passed through it to the public, yet the good have preponderated immensely.'"
On the day succeeding his presentation to the president, Genet addressed an official letter to Mr. Jefferson, announcing his mission, as follows:--
"Single, against innumerable hordes of tyrants and slaves who menace her rising liberty, the French nation would have a right to reclaim the obligations imposed on the United States by the treaties she has contracted with them, and which she has cemented with her blood; but strong in the greatness of her means, and of the power of her principles, not less redoubtable to her enemies than the virtuous arm which she opposes to their rage, she comes, in the very time when the emissaries of our common enemies are making useless efforts to neutralize the gratitude, to damp the zeal, to weaken or cloud the view of your fellow-citizens; she comes, I say, that generous nation, that faithful friend, to labor still to increase the prosperity and add to the happiness which she is pleased to see them enjoy.
"The obstacles raised with intentions hostile to liberty, by the perfidious ministers of despotism--the obstacles whose object was to stop the rapid progress of the commerce of the Americans and the extension of their principles, exist no more. The French republic, seeing in them but brothers, has opened to them, by the decrees now enclosed, all her ports in the two worlds; has granted them all the favors which her own citizens enjoy in her vast possessions; has invited them to participate the benefits of her navigation, in granting to their vessels the same rights as her own; and has charged me to propose to your government to establish, in a truly family compact--that is, in a national compact--the liberal and fraternal basis on which she wishes to see raised the commercial and political system of two people, all whose interests are blended. I am invested, sir, with the powers necessary to undertake this important negotiation, of which the sad annals of humanity offer no example before the brilliant era at length opening on it."[53]
Notwithstanding the boast, in this letter, of his country being "strong in the greatness of her means," Genet had opened his diplomatic correspondence by a request for immediate payment, by anticipation, of the remaining installments of the debt due France by the United States, amounting to two millions, three hundred thousand dollars, and offered, as an inducement, to invest the amount in provisions and other American products, to be shipped partly to the St. Domingo, and partly to France. But neither his propositions for an alliance nor his application for money were received with favor. The United States government well knew that his assurance that the offered relaxation of commercial restrictions, as a boon of pure good will toward the Americans, was only a convenient plan for obtaining needed supplies. The request for money was met by a candid statement by the secretary of the treasury, that his government had no means of anticipating the payment of the French debt, except by borrowing money in Europe, which could not be done then on reasonable terms. Hamilton also told Genet that, even were there no other obstacle, the anticipation of payment at that time might be regarded by Great Britain as a breach of neutrality.
This reply greatly offended the French minister, and he threatened to make the debt to France available for his purpose, by giving assignments of it in payment for provisions and other supplies. Hamilton calmly replied that his government would decidedly object to that procedure, and expressed a hope that, in a matter of mutual concern, nothing would be done but by mutual consent.
While the British minister, in view of the dereliction of duty on the part of his government, manifested in its omission to comply with some of the stipulations of the treaty of 1783, should have been comparatively silent, the grounds of some of his complaints were too obviously just, not to be seriously considered. Cabinet meetings were accordingly held, and the subject was fully discussed. The capture of The Grange within American waters (in Delaware bay), and the demand, not only for its restitution, but of all others captured on the high seas by the privateers authorized by Genet, made by the British minister, was the chief topic. It was unanimously agreed that The Grange should be restored, but there was a difference of opinion respecting the others. Hamilton and Knox, assuming, as a basis for argument, that it is the duty of a neutral nation to remedy every injury sustained by armaments fitted out in its ports, were of opinion that the government should interpose to restore the prizes. Jefferson and Randolph contended that the case should be left to the decision of courts of justice; arguing, that if the courts should decide the commissions given by Genet to be invalid, they would, as a matter of course, order restitution to be made.[54]
Washington reserved his decision upon this point, and took time to deliberate. The cabinet had agreed unanimously that the jurisdiction of every independent nation, within the limits of its own territory, being of a nature to exclude the exercise of any authority therein by any foreign power, the proceedings complained of, not being warranted by any treaty, were usurpations of national sovereignty and violations of neutral rights, a repetition of which it was the duty of the government to prevent. Also, that the efficacy of the laws should be tried against those citizens of the United States who had joined in perpetrating the offence. These principles being considered as settled, the president directed the secretary of state to communicate the fact to the ministers of France and Great Britain. Circular letters, also, were addressed to the governors of several states requiring their co-operation, with military force if necessary, to carry out the principles and rules agreed upon.
FOOTNOTES:
[47] The number of people who met and welcomed Genet at Gray's ferry was greatly exaggerated, as usual on such occasions, by the friends of the movement. It was called "a great concourse of citizens," but Hamilton, who was then in Philadelphia, and whose truthfulness has never been questioned, placed the number at an insignificant figure. In a letter to a friend, he said, "It is seldom easy to speak with absolute certainty in such cases, but from all I could observe, or have been able to learn, I believe the number would be stated high at a hundred persons." Of a meeting convened at evening to receive Mr. Genet, Hamilton said, "From forty to one hundred persons give you the extremes of the number present." On the ensuing evening a much greater number attended. Altogether the demonstration, in numbers, was a failure.
[48] Griswold's Republican Court, page 350.
[49] Old New York, or Reminiscences of the past Sixty Years, pages 115-119, inclusive.
[50] Hamilton's Works, v. 566.
[51] Life of Washington, v. 164.
[52] A little later, Jefferson wrote to Madison: "The president is not well; little lingering fevers have been hanging about him for a week or ten days, and affect his looks most remarkably. He is also extremely affected by the attacks made and kept up on him in the public papers. I think he feels these things more than any other person I ever yet met with. I am sincerely sorry to see them." How utterly insincere appears the last clause of this paragraph, compared with the one next preceding it! The most scurrilous of the attacks alluded to proceeded from Freneau, a clerk in Mr. Jefferson's office!
[53] Letter to Mr. Jefferson, Secretary of State, dated "Philadelphia, May 23d, 1793, second year of the republic."
[54] "During these proceedings," says Chief-Justice Jay, "the circuit court was held at Richmond by the chief justice, who in his charge to the grand jury explained the obligations of the United States as a neutral nation, and directed the jury to present all persons within their district guilty of violating the laws of nations with respect to any of the belligerent powers. The charge was well calculated to strengthen the government, by letting the public perceive that the supreme court would fearlessly discharge its duty, in punishing acts forbidden by the neutral position of the nation."--Life and Writings of John Jay, i. 302.
Chapter XXII
GENET'S LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE ON THE SUBJECT OF TREATY GUARANTIES--THE QUESTION RECONSIDERED BY THE CABINET--THEIR DECISION AND GENET'S ANGER--GENET SUPPORTED AND MISLED BY THE REPUBLICANS--HIS INDECOROUS CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE SECRETARY OF STATE--MADNESS OF THE POPULACE--HAMILTON AND MADISON--POSITION OF THE GOVERNMENT ASSAILED--WASHINGTON ON THE DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES--CALLED TO MOUNT VERNON--GENET FITS OUT A PRIVATEER AT PHILADELPHIA--MEASURES TO PREVENT HER SAILING--WASHINGTON RETURNS TO PHILADELPHIA--A CABINET COUNCIL--GENET DEFIES THE GOVERNMENT--ONE OF THE AMERICAN PRIVATEERS ACQUITTED--WASHINGTON LAMENTS THE DISAFFECTION OF THE PEOPLE, BUT SWERVES NOT--DETERMINATION TO HAVE GENET RECALLED--PROCEEDINGS IN THE CABINET--WASHINGTON'S WRATH.
The action of the cabinet gave umbrage to Genet, and he wrote a spirited letter to the secretary of state. He assented to the restoration of "The Grange," she having been captured within American waters, but he protested most vehemently against all interference on the part of the United States with the privateers at sea. He alleged that they were armed and furnished by French residents in Charleston, were commanded by French officers, or Americans who knew of no law or treaty to restrain their action, and that they had gone to sea with the consent of the governor of South Carolina. He argued, that as the treaty of commerce secured to the parties the right of bringing prizes into each other's ports, it followed that their right to the control and disposal of prizes so brought in, was conceded to each. As the treaty of 1778 only forbade each party allowing enemies to fit out privateers in their respective ports, it was fair to conclude that there was also conceded a mutual right in the parties themselves to fit out privateers in the ports of the other. He insisted that the Americans on board the privateers had, for the time, entered the service of France and renounced the protection of the United States, and that therefore they were no longer responsible to their own government for their acts.
Notwithstanding the want of decorum in some portions of Genet's letter, the president and his cabinet reconsidered the questions at issue in the light of the minister's arguments. Their opinions remained unchanged, and Genet was informed that the privateer then in the Delaware, bearing his name, must forthwith leave American waters; that orders had been sent to all the ports of the United States for the seizure of all vessels fitted out as privateers, and to prevent the sale of any prizes captured by such vessels; and also for the arrest of Henfield and Singleterry, two Americans, who had enlisted on board the Citizen Genet at Charleston.
The decision and action of the cabinet made Genet very angry, and he resolved not to acquiesce in it. He was led to believe that the great body of the American people, grateful for what France had done in times past, were ready to go all lengths in his favor, short of actual war. He had heard clamors among the people, and read violent paragraphs in the republican newspapers against the position of neutrality taken by the government, and he resolved to encourage privateering, and to defend his position before the American people by his pen. At that time, Freneau's paper was assisted in its warfare upon the administration by another called the General Advertiser, known afterward as the Aurora. It was edited by a grandson of Doctor Franklin, whose French education caused him to favor the fanaticism of that people in their revolutionary movements. It was sometimes more virulent in its vituperation than Freneau's Gazette, and both urged Genet to go forward, heedless of the executive and his cabinet, at the same time charging Washington himself with an intention of joining in the league of kings against the French republic.[55]
"I hope," said a writer in Freneau's paper, "the minister of France will act with firmness and spirit. The people are his friends, or the friends of France, and he will have nothing to apprehend; for, as yet, the people are the sovereigns of the United States. Too much complacency is an injury done to his cause; for, as every advantage is already taken of France (not by the people), further condescension may lead to further abuse. If one of the leading features of our government is pusillanimity, when the British lion shows his teeth, let France and her minister act as becomes the dignity of their cause, and the honor and faith of nations."[56]
The arrest and indictment of the two Americans on board the Citizen Genet added greatly to the irritation of the French minister. "The crime laid to their charge," said Genet in a letter to Jefferson on the first of June--"the crime which my mind can not conceive, and which my pen almost refuses to state, is the serving of France, and defending with her children the common glorious cause of liberty.
"Being ignorant of any positive law or treaty which deprives Americans of this privilege, and authorizes officers arbitrarily to take mariners in the service of France from on board their vessels, I call upon your intervention, sir, and that of the president of the United States, in order to obtain the immediate releasement of the above mentioned officers, who have acquired, by the sentiments animating them, and by the act of their engagement, anterior to every act to the contrary, the right of French citizens, if they have lost that of American citizens. I renew at the same time, sir, the requisition which I made in favor of another French officer, detained for the same cause and for the same object."
To this appeal Jefferson replied by sending Genet a copy of the opinion of the attorney-general of the United States, who decided that the prisoners had acted in violation of treaties, and were guilty of an indictable offence. In a subsequent note, the secretary of state reiterated the opinion of the president that it was the right of every nation, and the duty of neutral nations, to prohibit acts of sovereignty within their limits, injurious to either of the belligerent powers; that the granting of military commissions within the United States by any foreign authority was an infringement of their sovereignty, especially when granted to American citizens as an inducement to act against the duty which they owed to their country; and that it was expected that the French privateers would immediately leave the waters of the United States.
Genet, with impudent pertinacity, denounced these doctrines as contrary to right, justice, the law of nations, and even the proclamation of neutrality by the president; and when he was informed that a French privateer, fitted out in New York, had been seized by a body of militia acting under the authority of Governor Clinton, he was greatly enraged, and demanded its immediate "restitution, with damages and interest, and also the immediate" "restitution, with damages and interest, of the French prizes arrested and seized at Philadelphia." But the government was unmoved. The prisoners were not released, nor the vessels restored; whereupon Genet ventured to declare that he "would appeal from the president to the people." His only excuse for this rash assertion was his utter ignorance of the character of the president and people whose actions, in concerns so momentous, he assumed to control or defy. He seemed really to have imagined that the love of France and the sentiment of republicanism were so strong among the people of the United States, that he would be able to overthrow the government. He had already said, in a letter to Jefferson, "Every obstruction by the government of the United States to the arming of French vessels must be an attempt on the rights of man, upon which repose the independence and laws of the United States; a violation of the ties which unite France and America; and even a manifest contradiction of the system of neutrality of the president; for, in fact, if our merchant-vessels or others are not allowed to arm themselves, when the French alone are resisting the league of all the tyrants against the liberty of the people, they will be exposed to inevitable ruin in going out of the ports of the United States, which is certainly not the intention of the people of America. This fraternal voice has resounded from every quarter around me, and their accents are not equivocal. They are pure as the hearts of those by whom they are expressed; and the more they have touched my sensibility, the more they must interest in the happiness of America the nation I represent; the more I wish, sir, that the federal government should observe, as far as in its power, the public engagements contracted by both nations, and that, by this generous and prudent conduct, they will give at least to the world the example of a true neutrality, which does not consist in the cowardly abandonment of their friends in the moment when danger menaces them, but in adhering strictly, if they can do no better, to the obligations they have contracted with them. It is by such proceedings that they will render themselves respectable to all the powers--that they will preserve their friends, and deserve to augment their numbers."
All around the French minister there was a sea of passion while the controversy was progressing. The republican party became more and more bold in their denunciations. Open expressions of enthusiastic devotion to France, and of hatred toward all the powers at war with that republic, were heard on every side. Every measure of the government that tended to thwart the views of Genet was assailed with the most malignant zeal. The president's proclamation of neutrality, as we have observed, was branded as a "royal edict." It was condemned as having been issued without authority, and in contradiction with the treaties with France; as contrary to the gratitude which was due to that country by the people of the United States, and out of time and unnecessary; and a series of articles written by Hamilton in support of the proclamation, over the signature of Pacificus, were assailed in another series against the proclamation, written by Madison (at the suggestion of Jefferson) over the signature of Helvidius, as having "been read with singular pleasure and applause by the foreigners and degenerate citizens among us, who hate our republican government and the French Revolution."
The declaration that "the duty and interest of the United States required that they should, with sincerity and good faith, adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impartial toward the belligerent powers," was assailed as a monstrous doctrine, and gave the greatest umbrage to Genet and his friends. The latter insisted that the French minister's demands were sanctioned by solemn treaties, and that his interpretation of the instruments was correct. The wrongs inflicted upon America by Great Britain, and the aid given to the struggling patriots by France, were recited in most pathetic terms; and the questions were significantly asked, "Shall the services of the one, as well as the injuries of the other, be forgotten? Shall a friend and an enemy be treated with equal favor? Shall neither gratitude nor resentment constitute a feature of the American character?" It was concluded that there was a natural and inveterate hostility between monarchies and republics; that the present combination against France was a combination against liberty in every part of the world; and that the destinies of America were inseparably connected with those of the French republic. They declared that the conduct of the executive, in withholding privileges to which France was said to be entitled by the most solemn engagements, was indicative of a desire to coalesce with despots in a crusade against liberty, furnishing to the French republic just motives for war; and that all her moderation and forbearance were required to restrain her from declaring it against the United States. They went so far, as we have seen, as to exhort Genet not to relax in his endeavors to maintain the just rights of his country; and he received assurances of the steady and affectionate support of the American people. Genet was taught to believe that Washington was acting under the influence of a British monarchical faction, and that everything was to be hoped from the predominance of republicanism in the new Congress then in progress of being chosen.
It was now midsummer, and the whole social and political fabric of the Union was shaken by these party contentions; and the democratic societies of which we have spoken, secret and open, were exceedingly active. "That these societies," Washington observed, "were instituted by the artful and designing members (many of their body, I have no doubt, mean well, but know little of the real plan), primarily to sow among the people the seeds of jealousy and distrust of the government, by destroying all confidence in the administration of it, and that these doctrines have been budding and blowing ever since, is not new to any one who is acquainted with the character of their leaders, and has been attentive to their manoeuvres.
"Can anything be more absurd, more arrogant, or more pernicious to the peace of society, than for self-created bodies, forming themselves into permanent censors, and under the shade of night, in a conclave, resolving that acts of Congress, which have undergone the most deliberate and solemn discussion by the representatives of the people, chosen for the express purpose, and bringing with them from the different parts of the Union the sense of their constituents, endeavoring, as far as the nature of the thing will admit, to form their will into laws for the government of the whole--I say, under these circumstances, for a self-created permanent body (for no one denies the right of the people to meet occasionally to petition for, or remonstrate against, any act of the legislature) to declare that this act is unconstitutional, and that act is pregnant with mischiefs, and that all who vote contrary to their dogmas are actuated by selfish motives or under foreign influence, nay, are traitors to their country? Is such a stretch of arrogant presumption to be reconciled with laudable motives, especially when we see the same set of men endeavoring to destroy all confidence in the administration, by arraigning all its acts, without knowing on what ground or with what information it proceeds?"
While the controversy was at its height, Washington was suddenly called to Mount Vernon by the death of the chief manager of his estates. He was absent a little more than a fortnight. Meanwhile, an incident occurred which brought the controversy between the United States government and the French minister to a crisis. A British merchant-vessel was captured by L'Embuscade, sent to Philadelphia, and there Genet, under the very eye of the federal authorities and in direct opposition to the decision of Washington and his cabinet, undertook to equip her as a privateer, under the new name of Le Petite Democrat. This movement was discovered by Hamilton on the sixth of July. He communicated the facts to the cabinet, with whom Washington had left the control of the public affairs during his absence, and an investigation was ordered. It was ascertained that the vessel would probably sail on a cruise the next day, and Governor Mifflin was called upon to interfere. At midnight he sent Alexander Dallas, his secretary, to request Genet to desist from his unlawful course, and to inform him that the vessel would be detained by force if he refused compliance. The minister flew into a rage, declared that the president was not the sovereign of the country, and had no right, without consulting Congress, to give such instructions as he had done to state governors; that he was a misled man, and wholly under the influence of the enemies of France and human liberty; and then again expressed his determination to appeal to the people.
Genet refused to give Mifflin any distinct pledges, and early in the morning the governor ordered out one hundred and twenty of the militia to take possession of the privateer. Mr. Jefferson, who perceived the rashness of Genet's course, now took the matter in hand, and at a personal interview tried to persuade him to detain the privateer until the president's return to the seat of government. The secretary of state was not more successful than the secretary of Governor Mifflin. Genet stormed like a madman. Jefferson was unable, most of the time, to thrust in a word, and he sat in silence while the angry minister poured out the vials of his wrath upon the United States government. He declared that any attempt to seize the vessel would be resisted by the crew; that he had been thwarted in all his plans by the government; and that he was half a mind to leave the country in disgust, as he could not be useful to his nation here. He censured the president severely, and declared that on Washington's return he should press him to convene the Congress immediately.
Jefferson stopped him at the subject of calling a Congress, and explained to him the threefold character of the government; assuring him that all questions which had arisen between himself and the executive belonged only to that department, and that, were Congress in session, the matters would not be carried to them, nor would they take any notice of them. Genet was surprised, and inquired if the Congress were not the sovereign? Jefferson replied that they were sovereign only in making laws; that the executive was the sovereign in executing them, and the judiciary in construing them. "But at least," said Genet, "Congress are bound to see that the treaties are observed." "There are very few cases," replied Jefferson, "arising out of treaties, which Congress can take notice of. The president is to see that treaties are observed." "To whom then is the nation to appeal, if the president decides against a treaty?" quickly inquired Genet. "The constitution has made the president the last appeal," replied Jefferson. Genet was confounded by his own ignorance, shrugged his shoulders, and, making a bow, remarked that he would not compliment Mr. Jefferson on such a constitution.
Genet had now become cool, assured Mr. Jefferson that the privateer was not yet ready for sea, and, without promising that she should not sail before the president's return, said that it would be necessary for her to shift her position to the lower end of the town to receive supplies, and gave the secretary to understand that she would not leave before Washington's return to Philadelphia. Jefferson accepted his remarks as honest assurance, and Governor Mifflin dismissed his soldiers; but Hamilton and Knox, having no faith in the minister's word, proposed the immediate erection of a battery below the city, where Fort Mifflin stood in the Revolution, with guns mounted to prevent the privateer's going down the river. Jefferson, fearing further to offend Genet, refused to concur in this measure, and the next day the vessel went down the river as far as Chester.
Washington returned to Philadelphia on the eleventh, and received some papers, concerning the events we have just described, from Mr. Jefferson, with an intimation that they required "instant attention." They aroused the president's indignation. "What is to be done in the case of the Little Sarah [the original name of the Petite Democrat] now at Chester?" he asked, in a note written to Mr. Jefferson on the spur of the moment. "Is the minister of the French republic to set the acts of this government at defiance with impunity, and then threaten the executive with an appeal to the people? What must the world think of such conduct, and of the government of the United States in submitting to it?
"These are serious questions. Circumstances press for a decision, and, as you have had time to consider them (upon me they come unexpectedly), I wish to know your opinion upon them, even before to-morrow, for the vessel may then be gone."
Mr. Jefferson assured Washington that the privateer was not yet ready for sea, and that Genet had promised that she should not sail before the decision of the president in her case should be known. In a cabinet council held the next day, it was resolved to detain in the ports of the United States all privateers which had been equipped therein, and this decision was immediately communicated to Genet. In defiance of it, the French minister sent the privateer to sea; and yet the republicans, forgetful of all national dignity, commended the representative of a foreign nation in thus offering a marked insult to the chief magistrate and the government of the republic.
At about the same time, Henfield, one of the prisoners indicted, under the advice of the attorney-general, for having enlisted on board the French privateer at Charleston, was tried. The populace, instigated by the opposition leaders, took the part of the prisoner, and the jury acquitted him. At once the opposition press heaped obloquy upon the administration, for having attempted what they were pleased to call an unlawful measure. They asked, scornfully, "What law had been offended, and under what statute was the indictment supported? Are the American people already prepared to give to a proclamation the force of a legislative act, and to subject themselves to the will of the executive? But," they said, "if the people are already sunk to such a state of degradation, are they to be punished for violating a proclamation which had not been published when the offence was committed, if indeed it could be termed an offence to engage with France combatting for liberty against the combined despots of Europe?" And when the prisoner was acquitted, the event was celebrated with extravagant marks of joy and exultation.[57]
These events annoyed Washington exceedingly. He perceived the spirit of the French Revolution animating his own people, making them regardless of law and justice, and drunk with ideas that tended to anarchy and confusion. He perceived the futility of attempts to enforce laws in support of the doctrines of his proclamation of neutrality, and the disposition of a large class of people to thwart that conservative policy which he advised as being most conducive to the welfare of the state. Yet, strong in his consciousness of rectitude, he swerved not a line from his prescribed course of duty. "As it respects myself," he said in a letter to Governor Lee on the twenty-first of July, "I care not; for I have a consolation within, that no earthly efforts can deprive me of; and that is, that neither ambitious nor interested motives have influenced my conduct. The arrows of malevolence, therefore, however barbed and well pointed, never can reach the most vulnerable point of me; though, whilst I am up as a mark, they will be continually aimed. The publications in Freneau's and Bache's papers are outrages on common decency; and they progress in that style in proportion as their pieces are treated with contempt, and are passed by in silence, by those at whom they were aimed. The tendency of them, however, is too obvious to be mistaken by men of cool and dispassionate minds, and in my opinion ought to alarm them, because it is difficult to prescribe bounds to the effect."
Matters had now reached a point where forbearance toward the insolent French minister was no longer required by the most exacting courtesy. His official communications, and public and private acts, were becoming too offensive to be longer tolerated by the government, without virtually abdicating authority and acknowledging its utter incompetency. So the president called the cabinet together at the beginning of August to consult upon the matter, when the whole official correspondence between Jefferson and Genet, and the conduct of the latter, were thoroughly reviewed. The result was, a determination that the French government should be requested to recall their minister, because he was offensive to that of the United States. Jefferson recommended great delicacy in the terms of this request; the others were favorable to a peremptory demand for his recall; while Knox, whose indignation had been thoroughly aroused by the conduct of Genet, proposed to dismiss him at once without consulting his government. It was at length agreed that a letter should be written to Gouverneur Morris, the American minister in Paris, in which should be given a statement of the case, with accompanying documents, with directions to lay the whole subject before the Executive Council of France; also that a letter, the same in substance as the one written to Morris, should be sent to Genet.
It was also proposed to publish the whole correspondence, as an appeal to the people of the United States and the world, in justification of the action of the administration. Jefferson opposed the proposition on the ground that it would make matters worse. He said Genet would appeal, also; that anonymous writers would take up the subject; that public opinion would still be divided; and there would be a difference of opinion in Congress, likewise, for the matter must be laid before them. "It would," Jefferson said, "be a contest between the president and Genet."
Washington took fire at this last suggestion. Wearied and annoyed by the continual dissentions in his cabinet, and the unjust abuse of his political opponents, the idea that he should stand before the world as a contestant with a man like Genet, and be subjected to the ribaldry of the press, touched his sensitive nature at the most tender point. At that moment, Knox, with peculiar mal-appropriateness, "in a foolish, incoherent sort of speech," says Jefferson, "introduced the pasquinade, lately printed, called The Funeral of George Washington"--a parody on the decapitation of the French king, in which the president was represented as placed on a guillotine. "The president," says Mr. Jefferson, "was much inflamed; got into one of those passions [which only for a moment and very rarely occurred] where he can not control himself; ran on much on the personal abuse that had been bestowed upon him; defied any man on earth to produce one single act of his, since he had been in the government, which was not done on the purest motives; that he had never repented but once the having slipped the moment of resigning his office, and that was every moment since; that he had rather be in his grave than in his present situation; that he had rather be on his farm than to be made an emperor of the world." And yet, he said with most emphatic indignation, "they are charging me with wanting to be king!"
When Washington ceased there was a pause. All had remained silent during this burst of passion, and it was with some difficulty that the questions at issue were resumed. The president soon recovered his equanimity, and opened the subject again by saying that there was no necessity for deciding the question of an appeal to the people on Genet's recall at that moment. The propositions already agreed to respecting the letter to Gouverneur Morris might be put into execution, and events would doubtless show whether an appeal would be necessary or not. The cabinet agreed to send a circular to all the collectors of customs, instructing them in their duty respecting ships of the belligerent nations within the waters of the United States. It was also agreed that information should be communicated to the British minister that compensation would be made to the owners of British vessels captured by French privateers, fitted out within the United States, previous to the notice given to Genet that such equipments would not be allowed; but that in future the British government must regard the efforts of that of the United States, to prevent the arming of privateers within its waters, as a full discharge of all neutral obligations. At the same time, Genet was called upon to give up all the vessels captured previous to the notice above alluded to, as otherwise the French government would be held responsible for the amount of necessary indemnities; also, all vessels captured within the waters of the United States, those waters being defined as within a marine league from the exterior coast.
FOOTNOTES:
[55] Life and Writings of John Jay, i. 303.
[56] Greenleaf's Patriotic Register, at New York, and the Boston Chronicle echoed these sentiments, and the smaller opposition journals throughout the country re-echoed the strain.
[57] Marshall, ii. 273.
Chapter XXIII
UNPLEASANT RELATIONS WITH GREAT BRITAIN--THE UNITED STATES AGGRIEVED BY THE PRACTICE OF THE BRITISH CRUISERS TOWARD NEUTRALS, AND IN THE IMPRESSMENT OF SEAMEN--ALSO, CONCERNING THE GIVING UP OF WESTERN POSTS, AND TAMPERING WITH THE INDIANS--RELATIONS WITH SPAIN--THREATENED DISSOLUTION OF THE CABINET--JEFFERSON'S UNEASINESS--HIS OFFICIAL LETTER TO GOUVERNEUR MORRIS--GENET'S ANGER AND ACCUSATIVE INSINUATIONS--EVENTS IN NEW YORK--GENET'S RECEPTION THERE--HIS INSOLENT LETTER TO JEFFERSON UNNOTICED--HIS COMPLAINTS--DECLINE OF HIS POPULARITY--YELLOW FEVER IN PHILADELPHIA--WASHINGTON RETIRES TO MOUNT VERNON TO AVOID IT--DOCTOR RUSH--ABATEMENT OF THE FEVER--WASHINGTON RETURNS TO PHILADELPHIA.
While Washington's cabinet was thus perplexed by the conduct of the French minister, it was equally so by the relations of the governments of the United States and Great Britain. As we have observed, a diplomatic intercourse between the two governments did not commence until the federal constitution had established the republic upon a more solid basis. Then Mr. Hammond was appointed British minister to the United States, and took up his residence in Philadelphia; and Mr. Pinckney, appointed United States minister to Great Britain, repaired to London. We have also observed that the evacuation of some of the western posts by the British, and other stipulations of the treaty of 1783, yet remained uncomplied with when Mr. Hammond came. These causes for complaint on the part of the United States, and the establishment of just commercial relations between the two governments, had been the chief subjects for negotiation since his arrival. At the time in question, no progress had been made toward accommodation, and for this reason a large number of the Americans felt more disposed to take part with their old ally, and against their old enemy.
In fact, the catalogue of grievances suffered by the people of the United States at the hand of Great Britain had increased, new difficulties having grown out of the belligerent position of Europe at the time we are considering. France, as we have seen, by a decree of her National Convention, had placed the shipping of neutrals during the pending war on the same footing as that of her own; and, in consequence, a rich commerce had presented itself to American merchantmen, of which they took advantage. Great Britain paid no attention to this decree, but claimed for its cruisers the right to seize French property, even on board American vessels. The British also refused to recognise as neutral the trade between France and her West India colonies, carried on in American bottoms, which the pressure of war had created.
The British government had also instructed their cruisers to seize and bring in all vessels employed in carrying breadstuffs to French ports, even though vessel and cargo should be neutral property; claiming the right, contrary to modern usage, of preventing, by all means in her power, supplies being carried to her enemy, her statesmen having conceived the idea of destroying the French Revolution by starvation. Such vessels and cargoes were, however, to be paid for on proof being presented of their neutral character, and bonds being given to land in countries at peace with Great Britain. It is proper to state, that, at about the time in question, the French government--under the pressure of circumstances, and driven to it, they said, "by their implacable and ferocious enemies"--authorized the same system of seizure, with promises to pay. The British did pay, the French did not, and on that score the Americans more highly respected the former than the latter.
A more serious ground of complaint against Great Britain was the authority given to the commanders of British ships of war to make up any deficiency in their crews, by pressing into their service British-born seamen, wherever found, not within the immediate jurisdiction of any foreign state. Under this authority, many American merchant-vessels were crippled, while in mid-ocean, by British seamen being taken from them. Nor were British seamen alone taken. It was sometimes difficult to distinguish an Englishman from an American; and as the commanders of vessels-of-war were not very strict in their scrutiny, native-born Americans were frequently dragged on board British vessels, and kept in slavery in the royal service for years. American seamen were thus pressed into foreign service, even within the jurisdiction of the United States. The remonstrances of the latter government against these outrages were unheeded, and bitter feelings were engendered.
And yet another serious cause of difficulty with, and resentment toward Great Britain existed in the hostile position of the Indian tribes in the Northwest. Abortive attempts were made by the United States' commissioners to form a treaty with some of them. The Indians insisted upon making the Ohio river the boundary between themselves and the white people, and to this they inflexibly adhered. It was generally believed that the government of Canada encouraged them to persevere in this claim. Indeed, information obtained from the Indians themselves made the suspicion plausible, and the justice of that suspicion was enforced by the tenacity with which the British held on to the western posts, under the pretext, however, that the portion of the treaty of 1783 relating to the payment of debts to British creditors, contracted by Americans previous to the Revolution, had not yet been fulfilled by the government of the United States, or promised to be by any decisions of the federal courts.
These several causes of complaint against the British government, viewed superficially by the people, caused great irritation in the public mind, and a corresponding sympathy for France, the avowed and active enemy of Great Britain. That sympathy, as we have seen, gave strength to the insolent pretensions of Genet. Added to this was a decision in the federal court at Richmond, which declared that, according to the treaty of 1783, debts due from American citizens to British merchants previous to the Revolution must be paid. This gave intensity to the excitement, and the cry of usurpation on the part of the federal judiciary, which had frequently been raised by the opposition, now went over the land with vehement cadence.
The relations of the United States with Spain rather strengthened Genet's position. The Mississippi river was still closed to the Americans; and the Creek and Cherokee Indians, evidently encouraged by Spanish emissaries among them, assumed a position hostile to the United States. It was also asserted that propositions had been made by Spain to Great Britain inimical to the United States. These facts and rumors inflamed the people of the extreme South and West; and as a part of Genet's programme of operations in this country contemplated an armed invasion of Louisiana and the opening of the Mississippi, he and his cause were very popular with the settlers in the great valleys beyond the mountains of the Southwest.
While these things were perplexing Washington's cabinet, the dissentions in that cabinet were more perplexing to the president. And yet, so profoundly was Washington impressed with the skill, judgment, forecast, and patriotism of the chief contestants, Jefferson and Hamilton, that he contemplated the loss of their service, in their respective stations, with the greatest solicitude. Such contemplations were pressed upon his mind during the season of contest with Genet, which we have just considered. Toward the close of June, Hamilton notified the president that "considerations relative both to the public interest and to his own delicacy" had brought him to the conclusion of resigning at the close of the ensuing session of Congress; and on the thirty-first of July, Jefferson informed him that, at the close of the ensuing month of September, he should "beg leave to retire to scenes of greater tranquillity from those for which," he said, "I am every day more and more convinced that neither my talents, tone of mind, nor time of life fit me."
These communications distressed the president; and on the sixth of August he called upon Mr. Jefferson at his house, a little out of Philadelphia, and expressed himself greatly concerned because of the threatened desertion of those on whom he most relied, in this the hour of greatest perplexity to the government. He did not know where he should look to find suitable characters to fill up the offices. Mere talents, he said, did not suffice for the department of state; for its duties required a person conversant with foreign affairs, and perhaps with foreign courts.
"He expressed great apprehensions," says Jefferson in his Anas, "at the fermentation which seemed to be working in the mind of the public; that many descriptions of persons, actuated by different causes, appeared to be uniting [alluding to the democratic societies]; what it would end in he knew not; a new Congress was to assemble, more numerous, and perhaps of a different spirit; and the first expression of their sentiments would be important." He then urged Jefferson to remain until the close of the next session, if no longer.
Jefferson pleaded his repugnance to public life, and especially the uneasiness of the position in which he was placed. He and Hamilton were bitter enemies, and his course, he said, had caused "the wealthy aristocrats, the merchants connected closely with England, the newly-created paper factions," to bear him peculiar hatred. Thus surrounded, he said, his "words were caught, multiplied, misconstrued, and even fabricated and spread abroad," to his injury. Disclaiming any knowledge of the views of the republican party at that time, he gave it as his opinion that they would be found strong supporters of the government in all measures for the public welfare; that in the next Congress they would attempt nothing material but to make that body independent; and that though the manoeuvres of Mr. Genet might produce some embarrassment, he would be abandoned by the republicans and all true friends of the country the moment they knew the nature and tendency of his conduct.
The want of candor exhibited by Mr. Jefferson in these assurances, recorded by his own pen, must have been plainly visible to Washington. The idea that the secretary, the head and front of the republican party, should be ignorant of their "views," and that the "party" would desert Genet when they should know "the nature of his conduct," when that party were his continual backers and supporters, is simply absurd; and it is difficult to believe that Washington on that occasion, as Mr. Jefferson says, actually asserted his belief "in the purity of the motives" of that party.[58]
Jefferson consented to remain longer in the cabinet, and wrote the vigorous and high-toned letter to Gouverneur Morris on the subject of Genet's recall--a letter forming one of the most admirable state papers ever issued from that department. That letter gave Genet great umbrage, and in his comments he bitterly reproached Jefferson because he had allowed himself to be made "an ungenerous instrument" of attack upon him, after having made him believe that he was his friend, and "initiating him into the mysteries which had influenced his hatred against all those who aspired to absolute power." It seems, from other remarks of Genet, that the tone of Jefferson's private conversations with the minister upon public topics had differed materially from that of his official communications. Genet intimated this when he said that "it was not in his character to speak, as many people do, in one way, and to act in another--to have an official language, and a language confidential."[59]
While the subject of Genet's recall was pending, the minister proceeded to New York. Already the common sense of the people began to prevail over the nonsense of passion and feeling. Business-men--and the whole population of the country had interests directly associated with business-men--began to reflect upon the tendency of the doctrines of Genet, and clearly perceived that their practical effect would be the involvement of the United States in a war with England, and the sweeping of all their commerce from the ocean. From the moment when these reflections were heeded, there was a pause in the popular expressions of enthusiasm in favor of Genet. The last libations of fulsome adulation were poured out on his arrival in New York in September, while the whole town and surrounding country were wild with excitement. The frigate L'Embuscade, while lying in the harbor of New York, had been challenged to single combat by the British frigate Boston, then cruising off Sandy Hook. L'Embuscade accepted the challenge; a severe battle ensued; Captain Courtenay, commander of the Boston, was killed; and the French vessel returned in triumph to New York. Multitudes of people gathered upon the wharves and greeted her with loud cheers. The excitement was intensified by the arrival, on the same day, of a French fleet from Chesapeake bay, which anchored in the Hudson river. The commander of L'Embuscade, and the officers of the other French vessels, were regarded as almost superhuman by the most enthusiastic sympathizers with the French Revolution; and tri-colored ribbons and cockades were seen on every side, while the streets were made resonant with the Marsellaise Hymn and the Carmagnole.
While this new phase of excitement was at its culmination, the booming of cannon and the merry peal of the bells announced the approach of Citizen Genet. He was at Paulus' Hook (now Jersey City), opposite New York, and thousands of his friends immediately gathered in "The Fields" (now City-hall park) to adopt measures for his reception. A committee of escort was appointed, and Genet entered the city, amid the acclamations of an excited populace, with all the pomp of a conqueror. "Addresses were made to him," says Mr. Irving, "expressing devoted attachment to the French republic, and abjuring all neutrality in regard to its heroic struggle. 'The cause of France is the cause of America,' cried the enthusiasts; 'it is time to distinguish its friends from its foes.' Genet looked around him. The tri-colored cockade figured in the hats of the shouting multitude; tri-colored ribbons fluttered from the dresses of females in the windows; the French flag was hoisted on the top of the Tontine coffee-house (the city exchange), surmounted by the cap of liberty. Can we wonder that what little discretion Genet possessed was completely overborne by this tide of seeming popularity?"
Genet had scarcely touched this cup of delight with his lips, when a copy of Jefferson's letter to Morris came to embitter the intoxicating draught. He received the document on the fifteenth of September, with assurances that, out of regard to the interests of France, the president would receive Mr. Genet's communications in writing, and respect him as the representative of his government until his successor should arrive, as long as his deportment should be of the tenor usually observed by embassadors toward independent nations. Genet was stung to the quick; and, three days after the receipt of this letter, he wrote a most angry reply to Jefferson, in which, as we have just noticed, he accused him of playing false to his professions of friendship, and charged the disfavor in which he was held by the government to the machinations of "aristocrats, partisans of monarchy, partisans of England and her constitution and consequently enemies of the principles which all good Frenchmen had imbued with religious enthusiasm;" and who, "instead of a democratic embassador, would prefer a minister of the ancient regimé, very complaisant, very gentle, very disposed to pay court to people in office, to conform blindly to everything which flattered their views and projects; above all, to prefer to the sure and modest society of good farmers, simple citizens, and honest artisans, that of distinguished personages who speculate so patriotically in the public funds, in the lands, and in the paper of government."
Among the twelve enumerated great grievances of which Genet complained, was, that at his first interview with the president, the latter did not speak to him, specially, but of the friendship of the United States toward France; that he did not, with partisan enthusiasm, announce a single sentiment on the French Revolution, "while all the towns from Charleston to Philadelphia had made the air resound with their most ardent wishes for the French republic." He complained that the president had admitted to a private audience, before his arrival, "Noailles[60] and Talon, known agents of the French counter-revolutionists;" that the "first magistrate of a free people decorated his parlor with certain medallions" of the murdered king and his family, "which served at Paris as signals of rallying;" that when he applied to the secretary of war to lend his government some cannon and firearms for defensive use in the Windward islands, that functionary had "the front to answer, with an ironical carelessness, that the principles established by the president did not permit him to lend the French so much as a pistol!" and, lastly, that the president, in spite of the French minister's "respectful insinuations," had deferred "to convoke Congress immediately in order to take the true sentiments of the people, to fix the political system of the United States, and to decide whether they would break, suspend, or tighten their bonds with France."
Jefferson, who had become heartily disgusted with Genet, took no notice of this angry and insolent letter, and the speedily-changed tone of public feeling toward the writer justified the silence. His threat of appealing from the president to the people--in other words, to excite an insurrection for the purpose of overthrowing the government--had shocked the national pride, and many considerate republicans, who had been zealous in the cause of the French Revolution, paused while listening to the audacious words of a foreigner, who presumed to dictate a course of conduct for the beloved Washington to pursue.
The rumor of Genet's threat first went abroad in August, and met him, while on a visit to New York, in the form of a statement in one of the public papers. His partisans denied the truth of the statement, when Chief-Justice Jay and Rufus King (the latter a leading member of Congress) assumed the responsibility of it in a published note dated the twelfth of August. The fact was thus established, notwithstanding the violent assaults made by Genet's partisans upon the integrity of Messrs. Jay and King; and on the very day when, as we have observed, he was received in New York in the midst of pealing bells and roaring cannon, a public meeting was held, in which his insolence was rebuked, and the policy of Washington's proclamation of neutrality strongly commended. Similar meetings were held throughout the Union, and there soon appeared a demonstration of public sentiment, the existence of which was not suspected by the partisans of Genet. His more violent friends attempted to check the counter-current, but in vain. When they could no longer deny the fact of his menace, they unwisely advocated his right to appeal from the president to the people. But this advocacy, and Genet's own intemperate conduct, damaged his interests past recovery. The tide of his popularity began rapidly to ebb, and in the public mind there was commenced a strong and irresistible reaction in favor of the federal government.
During the summer of 1793, a malignant fever, with slow but sure steps, invaded the city of Philadelphia. One after another of the inhabitants fell before its pestilential breath, until at length physicians and the voice of daily experience pronounced it infectious. It was, in truth, the deadly yellow fever that had fastened its fangs upon the doomed city. With the conviction of imminent peril, the population began to move. Those whose circumstances permitted them to leave fled to the country; and as August, with its hot days and cool, moist nights, drew to a close, its intensity fearfully increased. It respected neither age nor class. Early in September, Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury, was prostrated by it, but recovered; and on the ninth, Washington with his family left for Mount Vernon, leaving directions about his household with General Knox, who resolved to remain, contrary to the advice of the president.
"I think it would not be prudent," said Washington, "either for you or the clerks in your office, or the office itself, to be too much exposed to the malignant fever, which, by well-authenticated report, is spreading through the city.... I sincerely wish and pray that you and yours may escape untouched, and when we meet again, that it may be under circumstances more pleasing than the present."
Washington would have remained longer, but Mrs. Washington, alarmed for the safety of the whole family (the house in which they lived being in a manner blockaded by the disorder), prevailed on him to leave. The fever continued to rage with great violence until late in October, when frost checked its progress. Before it ceased, between three and four thousand of the inhabitants of Philadelphia perished. There was mourning in almost every family; and during the ensuing session of Congress, there was very little gayety in the federal capital. Some of the physicians fled like cowards from the field of battle, while others remained and assumed the two-fold functions of physicians and nurses, during those dark days of the autumn of 1793. Among the latter was the eminent Doctor Rush, whose courage and philanthropy are matters of history.[61]
The progress of the disease in Philadelphia was watched by the president at Mount Vernon with great solicitude, as the autumn wore away, for it was near the time for the assembling of a new Congress, and public affairs demanded their earliest and most serious attention. September passed away, and much of October had gone, before the fever abated. Meanwhile, he proposed to call the Congress together at Germantown, or some other place near Philadelphia, at a safe distance from the pestilence. He had some doubt concerning his power to change the place of meeting, or to call them together at all, and asked the opinion of Mr. Randolph, the attorney-general. That gentleman expressed his belief that the president had not the power, and suggested the propriety of the Congress assembling at some place within the limits of Philadelphia, and then adjourning to some more remote and safe position. In the event of their not so assembling at the proper time, the "extraordinary occasion" contemplated by the constitution would occur, and the president then, clearly, had the right to call them together at the most suitable place. He also asked the opinions of other members of his cabinet on the subject; but the abatement of the disease rendered any change unnecessary.
At the close of October Washington set out for Philadelphia with his family, and there, on the second of December, the new Congress assembled.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] In a letter to Richard Henry Lee, written at Mount Vernon a few weeks later, Washington said: "On fair ground it would be difficult to assign reasons for the conduct of those [the republican party] who are arraigning, and, so far as they are able, constantly embarrassing, the measures of government with respect to its pacific disposition towards the belligerent powers in the convulsive dispute which agitates them. But their motives are too obvious to those who have the means of information, and have viewed the different grounds which they have taken, to mistake their object. It is not the cause of France, nor I believe of liberty, which they regard; for, could they involve this country in war (no matter with whom) and disgrace, they would be among the first and loudest of the clamorous against the expense and impolicy of the measure."
[59] Genet's Letter to Jefferson, September 18, 1793.
[60] De Noailles was a young French nobleman, who married a sister of Madame Lafayette, and served with distinction at the siege of Yorktown, in 1781. Like his brother-in-law, the marquis, he had engaged warmly in the French Revolution, in its earlier stages, but, like him, found himself in a proscribed party, and obliged to fly for safety. He came to the United States by way of England, and early in May he was in Philadelphia with his friend Talon, seeking an audience with Washington. The latter, with his usual circumspection, declined any direct communication with him until the object of his visit should be known. In a note to Hamilton, Washington remarked, "I pray you intimate to him [Viscount de Noailles], gently and delicately, that if the letters or papers which he has to present are, knowingly to him, of a nature which relates to public matters, and not particularly addressed to me, or if he has any verbal communications to make of a similar kind, I had rather they should come through a proper channel. Add thereto, generally, that the peculiar situation of European affairs at this moment, my good wishes for his nation aggregately, my regard for those of it, in particular, with whom I have had the honor of an acquaintance, my anxious desire to keep this country in peace, and the delicacy of my situation, render a circumspect conduct indispensably necessary on my part. I do not, however, mean by this that I am to withhold from him such civilities as are common to others. Those more marked, notwithstanding our former acquaintance, would excite speculations, which had better be avoided."
[61] Dr. Benjamin Rush was then in the prime of life, being forty-eight years of age. He had already achieved the highest success in his profession as a writer and practitioner; and as a member of the continental Congress, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, he had a wide-spread popularity. He founded the Philadelphia dispensary in 1786, and was one of the principal founders of Dickinson college, at Carlisle, in Pennsylvania. He was professor of medical science in the medical college of Philadelphia, and also in the medical college of Pennsylvania. He was president of the American Anti-slavery society and other associations for the good of mankind.
"In private life," says Doctor John W. Francis, "his disposition and deportment were in the highest degree exemplary. Admired and courted for his intellectual endowments, he riveted to him the affections of all who enjoyed the pleasure of an intimate acquaintance. The affability of his manners, the amiableness of his temper, and the benevolence of his character, were ever conspicuous. He was ardent in his friendships, and forgiving in his resentments; and yet, entertaining a due regard for himself and a high sense of honor, he possessed a manly independence of spirit which disdained everything mean and servile. He had an extraordinary command of language, and always imparted his thoughts in a peculiarly impressive and eloquent manner. Those who had the happiness to experience the delights of his conversation will long recollect with pleasure his unassuming modesty, and the rich stores of knowledge he poured forth on the most instructive topics. Even when his opinions were solicited, they were given, not as the dictates or admonitions of a superior, but as the kind advice of a friend and equal. He never evinced any of that haughtiness and affectation of importance which sometimes attaches to men of eminence, and which so materially lessens the pleasures and comforts of social life."--Sketch of the Life and Character of the late Doctor Benjamin Rush, in the American Medical and Philosophical Register, July, 1813.
Chapter XXIV
ASSEMBLING OF THE THIRD CONGRESS--ITS CHARACTER--RECOMMENDATIONS IN WASHINGTON'S ANNUAL MESSAGE--HIS SPECIAL MESSAGE CONCERNING RELATIONS WITH EUROPE--HIS NOTICE OF GENET--OPINIONS OF THE CABINET CONCERNING THE MESSAGE--WASHINGTON SUPPORTED BY CONGRESS--JEFFERSON'S REPORT ON COMMERCIAL RELATIONS--HIS PARTING MISSILE CAST AT GENET--JEFFERSON'S RETIREMENT FROM OFFICE--WASHINGTON'S CONFIDENCE IN HIM--CORRESPONDENCE--JEFFERSON AT HOME--MADISON'S RESOLUTIONS BASED ON JEFFERSON'S REPORT.
The third Congress assembled at Philadelphia on the second of December. In the senate, many of the leading members of former sessions remained, having their places either by holding over or by re-election. Many of the old members of the house of representatives had also been re-chosen, and yet there were a great many changes in that body. The elements of party strife were active among them all, and it was evident to every man that a great struggle was impending. The aggressions of the British and the intrigues of Genet continued to inflame the zeal of the republicans, and they carried their partiality to France to a degree of absolute fanaticism. To many minds, open war between England and the United States appeared inevitable.
Washington's annual message, delivered at the opening of Congress, was calculated to still the turbulent waves of faction, had reason and judgment, and not passion and fanaticism, swayed the opinions of men. He expressed his sense of the continued confidence of the people in re-electing him to the high office of chief-magistrate of the nation; and then, in firm, explicit, and dignified terms, spoke of existing public affairs, especially the measures he had taken, in consequence of the war in Europe, to preserve peace at home and to protect the rights and interests of the United States. He pressed upon Congress the necessity of placing the country in a condition of complete defence, and of exacting from other governments the fulfilment of their duties toward his own.
"The United States ought not," he said, "to indulge a persuasion that, contrary to the order of human events, they will for ever keep at a distance those painful appeals to arms with which the history of every other nation abounds. There is a rank due to the United States among nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it. If we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war." With such suggestions, he urged them to adopt measures for increasing the amount of arms and ammunition in the arsenals, and to improve the militia establishment. He assured them that every reasonable effort had been made to adjust the causes of dissention with the Indians north of the Ohio, and yet war with them continued. He alluded to the political connection of the United States with Europe, and promised to give them, in a subsequent communication, a statement of occurrences which related to it, that had passed under the knowledge of the executive.
The president urged the house of representatives to adopt measures for the "regular redemption and discharge of the public debt," as a matter of the first importance; and announced the necessity of an augmentation of the public revenue to meet all proper demands upon the treasury. He concluded by saying, "Permit me to bring to your remembrance the magnitude of your task. Without an unprejudiced coolness, the welfare of the government may be hazarded; without harmony, as far as consists with freedom of sentiment, its dignity may be lost. But, as the legislative proceedings of the United States will never, I trust, be reproached for the want of temper or of candor, so shall not the public happiness languish for the want of my strenuous and warmest co-operation."
On the fifth of December, according to promise, Washington laid before Congress the documents relating, not only to Genet and his mission, but to negotiations with England and other European governments. In his message accompanying these documents, after alluding to the general feeling of friendship for the United States exhibited by the representative and executive bodies of France, the president spoke as follows of the insolent Genet:--
"It is with extreme concern I have to inform you, that the proceedings of the person whom they have unfortunately appointed their minister plenipotentiary here have breathed nothing of the friendly spirit of the nation which sent him. Their tendency, on the contrary, has been to involve us in war abroad, and discord and anarchy at home. So far as his acts, or those of his agents, have threatened our immediate commitment in the war, or flagrant insult to the authority of the laws, their effect has been counteracted by the ordinary cognizance of the laws, and by an exertion of the powers confided to me. Where their danger was not imminent, they have been borne with from sentiments of regard to his nation, from a sense of their friendship toward us, from a conviction that they would not suffer us to long remain exposed to the action of a person who has so little respected our mutual dispositions, and from a reliance on the firmness of my fellow-citizens in their principles of peace and order." He then alluded to the spoliations which had been committed upon the commerce of the United States by the cruisers of the belligerent powers, and the restrictions upon American commerce attempted to be enforced by the commanders of British vessels pursuant to instructions of their government. He also called attention to the inexecution of the treaty of 1783, and the relations of the United States and Spain.
"The message," says Hildreth, "as originally drafted by Jefferson, contained a contrast between the conduct of France and England, especially in relation to commercial facilities, highly favorable to the former. This had been objected to by Hamilton, who considered the disposition of the people toward France a serious calamity, and that the executive ought not, by echoing her praises, to nourish that disposition. In his opinion, the balance of commercial favors was decidedly with the British; the commercial offers made by France were the offspring of the moment, growing out of circumstances that could not last. To evade Hamilton's objections, Jefferson consented to some modifications of the message. Hamilton then insisted that the papers relating to the non-execution of the treaty of peace, and to the stopping of the corn-ships, ought not to be communicated, unless in a secret message, as the matters therein discussed were still unsettled, and the tendency of the communication was to inflame the public mind against Great Britain. Jefferson was a good deal alarmed at this threatened suppression of his diplomatic labors; but Washington decided that all the papers should be communicated without any restrictions of secrecy, even those respecting the corn-ships, which all the cabinet except Jefferson had advised to withhold."
In a letter to his wife, written on the nineteenth of December, John Adams, referring to the sentence in Washington's special message in relation to the French minister, said, "The president has considered the conduct of Genet very nearly in the same light with Columbus, and has given him a bolt of thunder. We shall see how this is supported by both houses. We shall soon see whether we have any government or not in this country." Doubting whether Washington would be sustained by Congress, Adams continued: "But, although he stands at present as high in the admiration and confidence of the people as ever he did, I expect he will find many bitter and desperate enemies arise in consequence of his just judgment against Genet."
In this, Adams was mistaken. The house, where the opposition was most rampant, determined, and unscrupulous, responded most affectionately to the president's message, and tacitly rebuked the demagogues for their personal abuse of Washington. They expressed their satisfaction at his re-election, and their confidence in the purity and patriotism of his motives, in all his acts, especially in again consenting, at the call of his country, to fill the presidential chair. "It is to virtues which have commanded long and universal reverence, and services from which have flowed great and lasting benefits, that the tribute of praise may be paid, without the reproach of flattery; and it is from the same sources that the fairest anticipations may be derived in favor of the public happiness."
Both houses, likewise, in the face of the popular excitement in favor of France, approved of the president's course in regard to that country and its representative; and while the lower house was guarded in its terms of approval of the proclamation of neutrality that had been so loudly condemned by the partisan press, the senate pronounced it "a measure well-timed and wise, manifesting a watchful solicitude for the welfare of the nation and calculated to promote it."
Jefferson's official connection with Washington was now drawing to a close. He had consented to remain in the cabinet until the end of the current year. With the completion and submission of some able state papers he finished his career as secretary of state. One of them was an elaborate report called for by a resolution of Congress adopted in February, 1791, on the state of trade of the United States with different countries; the nature and extent of exports and imports, and the amount of tonnage of American shipping. It also specified the various restrictions and prohibitions by which American commerce was embarrassed and greatly injured, and recommended the adoption of discriminating duties, as against Great Britain, to compel her to put the United States on a more equal footing, she having thus far persistently declined to enter into any treaty stipulations on the subject.
Jefferson's last official act was the administration of a deserved rebuke to Genet. That meddling functionary had sent to him translations of the instructions given him by the executive council of France, desiring the president to lay them officially before both houses of Congress, and proposing to transmit, from time to time, other papers to be laid before them in like manner. "I have it in charge to observe," said Jefferson to Genet in a letter on the thirty-first of December, "that your functions as the minister of a foreign nation here are confined to the transactions of the affairs of your nation with the executive of the United States; that the communications which are to pass between the executive and legislative branches can not be a subject for your interference; and that the president must be left to judge for himself what matters his duty, or the public good, may require him to propose to the deliberations of Congress. I have, therefore, the honor of returning you the copies sent for distribution, and of being, with great respect, sir, your most obedient and most humble servant." Even this did not keep Genet quiet.
Throughout all the storm that had agitated his cabinet, and the hostility of Jefferson and his party to the measures of the administration, Washington never withheld from the secretary of state his confidence in his wisdom and patriotism; and the latter left office with the happy consciousness that he carried with him into retirement the friendship of one, of whom he said in after years, "His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, and good, and great man"[62]
On the last day of the year, Mr. Jefferson offered his resignation in the following letter to the president: "Having had the honor of communicating to you, in my letter of the last of July, my purpose of retiring from the office of secretary of state at the end of the month of September, you were pleased, for particular reasons, to wish its postponement to the close of the year. That time being now arrived, and my propensities to retirement daily more and more irresistible, I now take the liberty of resigning the office into your hands. Be pleased to accept with it my sincere thanks for all the indulgences which you have been so good as to exercise toward me in the discharge of its duties. Conscious that my need of them have been great, I have still ever found them greater, without any other claim on my part than a firm pursuit of what has appeared to me to be right, and a thorough disdain of all means which were not as open and honorable as their object was pure. I carry into my retirement a lively sense of your goodness, and shall continue gratefully to remember it.
"With very sincere prayers for your life, health, and tranquillity, I pray you to accept the homage of great and constant respect and attachment."
To this Washington replied the next day as follows: "I yesterday received, with sincere regret, your resignation of the office of secretary of state. Since it has been impossible to prevail upon you to forego any longer the indulgence of your desire for private life, the event, however anxious I am to avert it, must be submitted to.
"But I can not suffer you to leave your station without assuring you that the opinion which I had formed of your integrity and talents, and which dictated your original nomination, has been confirmed by the fullest experience, and that both have been eminently displayed in the discharge of your duty.
"Let a conviction of my most earnest prayers for your happiness accompany you in your retirement; and while I accept, with the warmest thanks, your solicitude for my welfare, I beg you to believe that I always am, dear sir, &c."
Edmund Randolph, the attorney-general, took Jefferson's place in the cabinet, and his own was filled by William Bradford, of Pennsylvania. Mr. Jefferson left the seat of government as soon as possible after withdrawing from public life; and a fortnight after his resignation he arrived at Monticello, his beautiful home in the interior of Virginia, in full view of the Blue Ridge along a continuous line of almost sixty miles. He was then fifty years of age. His whole family, with all his servants, were at his home to receive him; and so delightful was this, his first experience of private life for many long years, that he resolved to abandon himself to it entirely.
He boasted, almost a month after he left Philadelphia, that he had not seen a newspaper since his flight from the cares of government, and he declared that he thought of never taking one again. "I think it is Montaigne," he wrote to Edmund Randolph on the third of February, "who has said that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head. I am sure it is true, as to anything political, and shall endeavor to estrange myself to everything of that character." But his hatred of Hamilton, and his persistence in regarding the political friends of that gentleman as necessarily corrupt, would not allow party feud to sleep in his mind, and he added, in the next sentence, "I indulge myself on one political topic only; that is, in declaring to my countrymen the shameless corruption of a portion of the representatives to the first and second Congress, and their implicit devotion to the treasury."
Meanwhile, the report of Jefferson on commercial affairs was eliciting warm debates in Congress. In that report he had suggested two methods for modifying or removing commercial restrictions: first, by amicable arrangements with foreign powers; and, secondly, by counteracting acts of the legislature. With the design, as we have seen, of distressing France by cutting off her supplies, two orders in council were issued by the British government, one in June and the other in November, which bore heavily upon the commercial prosperity of the United States. By the first order, British cruisers were instructed to stop all ships laden with corn, flour, or meal (corn-ships already alluded to), bound to any French port, and send them to any convenient port, home or continental, where the cargoes might be purchased in behalf of the British government. By the second, British ships-of-war and privateers were required to detain all vessels laden with goods produced in any colony belonging to France, or with provisions for any such colony, and bring them to adjudication before British courts of admiralty. These were such flagrant outrages upon the rights of neutrals, that the United States government strongly remonstrated against them as unjust in principle and injurious in their practical effects. It was to these orders in council and their effects that the president pointed in his annual message, when urging the necessity of placing the country in a state of defense, and in a position to assert its just rights.[63]
Mr. Jefferson's report gave rise to a series of resolutions offered, by Mr. Madison on the third of January, 1794, the leading idea of which was that of opposing commercial resistance to commercial injury, and to enforce a perfect equality by retaliating impositions on the assumption that the commercial system of Great Britain was hostile to that of the United States. This scheme embodied the idea of a proposition made by Madison in the first Congress. His resolutions now took wider range, however, than did his proposition then. It was now proposed to impose restrictions and additional duties on the manufactures and navigation of nations which had no commercial treaties with the United States, and a reduction of duties on the tonnage of vessels belonging to nations with which such treaties existed.
FOOTNOTES:
[62] Letter to Doctor Walter Jones, January 2, 1814.
[63] In allusion to the annual and special messages of Washington at this time, the eminent Charles James Fox made the following remarks in the British parliament on the thirty-first of January, 1794:--
"And here, sir, I can not help alluding to the president of the United States, General Washington, a character whose conduct has been so different from that which has been pursued by ministers of this country. How infinitely wiser must appear the spirit and principles manifested in his late addresses to Congress than the policy of modern European courts! Illustrious man! deriving honor less from the splendor of his situation than from the dignity of his mind; before whom all borrowed greatness sinks into insignificance, and all the potentates of Europe (excepting the members of our own royal family) become little and contemptible! He has had no occasion to have recourse to any tricks of policy or arts of alarm; his authority has been sufficiently supported by the same means by which it was acquired, and his conduct has uniformly been characterized by wisdom, moderation, and firmness. Feeling gratitude to France for the assistance received from her in that great contest which secured the independence of America, he did not choose to give up the system of neutrality. Having once laid down that line of conduct, which both gratitude and policy pointed out as most proper to be pursued, not all the insults and provocations of the French minister, Genet, could turn him from his purpose. Intrusted with the welfare of a great people, he did not allow the misconduct of another with respect to himself, for one moment, to withdraw his attention from their interest. He had no fear of the Jacobins; he felt no alarm for their principles, and considered no precaution as necessary in order to stop their progress.
"The people over whom he presided he knew to be acquainted with their rights and their duties. He trusted to their own good sense to defeat the effect of those arts which might be employed to inflame or mislead their minds; and was sensible that a government could be in no danger while it retained the attachment and confidence of its subjects; attachment, in this instance, not blindly adopted--confidence not implicitly given, but arising from the conviction of its excellence, and the experience of its blessings. I can not, indeed, help admiring the wisdom and fortune of this great man. By the phrase 'fortune,' I mean not in the smallest degree to derogate from his merit. But, notwithstanding his extraordinary talent and exalted integrity, it must be considered as singularly fortunate that he should have experienced a lot which so seldom falls to the portion of humanity, and have passed through such a variety of scenes without stain and reproach. It must indeed create astonishment, that, placed in circumstances so critical, and filling for a series of years a station so conspicuous, his character should never once have been called in question; that he should in no one instance have been accused either of improper insolence or of mean submission in his transactions with foreign nations. For him it has been reserved to run the race of glory, without experiencing the smallest interruption to the brilliancy of his career."
Chapter XXV
DEBATES ON MADISON'S RESOLUTIONS--THEIR FATE--PROCEEDINGS IN REGARD TO ALGERINE CORSAIRS--COMMENCEMENT OF A NAVY--FIRST COMMITTEE OF WAYS AND MEANS--FRIGATES ORDERED TO BE BUILT--NAVAL OFFICERS APPOINTED--GENET RECALLED--ARRIVAL OF HIS SUCCESSOR--GENET MARRIES AND BECOMES AN AMERICAN CITIZEN--EXCITEMENT AGAINST GREAT BRITAIN--APPOINTMENT OF A SPECIAL ENVOY TO THE BRITISH COURT DISCUSSED--JOHN JAY APPOINTED--BELLIGERENT ACTION IN CONGRESS--JAMES MONROE APPOINTED MORRIS'S SUCCESSOR IN FRANCE--ADJOURNMENT OF CONGRESS--WASHINGTON VISITS MOUNT VERNON--REBELLIOUS MOVEMENTS IN KENTUCKY--WASHINGTON'S COMMENTS THEREON.
Madison's resolutions elicited very warm, and at times, violent debates. The subject was of a purely commercial nature; but the questions it involved were so interwoven with political considerations, that the debates inevitably assumed a political and partisan aspect. The federalists plainly saw that the recommendations in Jefferson's report, and in the resolutions of Madison, hostility to England and undue favor toward France, neither position being warranted by a wise policy, nor consistent with neutrality. The republicans, on the other hand, regarded the scheme as equitable in itself, and as absolutely necessary for the assertion of the rights of neutral nations, and the protection of American commerce from insult, aggression, and plunder. These debates, which commenced on the thirteenth of January, continued until the third of February, with few intermissions; and the house was so nearly equally divided in sentiment, that the first resolution, authorizing commercial restrictions, was passed by a majority of only five. This was subsequently rejected in the senate by the casting vote of the vice-president, and the further consideration of the whole subject was postponed until March. When it was resumed, the progress of events had given such new complexion to the whole matter, that it was indefinitely postponed.
A new and important subject for legislation was brought up at this time. Very soon after the close of the Revolution, the piratical practices of corsairs belonging to the Barbary powers on the southern shores of the Mediterranean sea, and particularly of Algiers, had suggested the importance of a naval establishment for the protection of the infant commerce of the new-born nation. Many American merchant-ships, trading in the Mediterranean sea, were captured by these corsairs, their cargoes appropriated by the pirates, and their crews sold into slavery. Toward the close of 1790, President Washington called the attention of Congress to the subject, and at the same time Mr. Jefferson, the secretary of state, who had made himself thoroughly acquainted with the facts when in France, gave many interesting details in an official report on the subject.
Colonel David Humphreys was appointed a commissioner to treat with the dey or governor of Algiers concerning his corsairs; but that semi-barbarian--proud, haughty, and avaricious--was not disposed to relinquish his share of the profitable sea-robberies carried on under his sanction. "If I were to make peace with everybody," he said, "what should I do with my corsairs? What should I do with my soldiers? They would take off my head for the want of other prizes, not being able to live on their miserable allowance!"
This was certainly good logic for the perplexed dey, but it did not convince Humphreys of the justice of piratical practices; and, at the close of 1793, he wrote to the government of the United States, "If we mean to have a commerce, we must have a navy to defend it. Besides, the very semblance of this would tend more toward enabling us to maintain our neutrality, in the actual critical state of affairs in Europe, than all the declarations, reasonings, concessions, and sacrifices, that can possibly be made."
Washington had communicated to the house on the twenty-third day of December, in a confidential message, the state of affairs with Algiers; and its consideration with closed doors brought about a debate as to whether the public should at any time, or under any circumstances, be excluded from the galleries of the halls of Congress. This, however, interrupted the business only for a short time.
On the second of January, a committee was appointed to report the amount of force necessary to protect American commerce against the Algerine corsairs, and the ways and means for its support. This was the first committee of ways and means ever appointed by Congress, questions of that sort having been hitherto referred to the secretary of the treasury. It indicated an opposition majority in the house, but, as we have seen in the case of Madison's resolutions, it was very small.
Finally, in the spring of 1794, Congress passed an act to provide for a naval armament, because, as the preamble recited, "the depredations committed by the Algerine corsairs on the commerce of the United States, render it necessary that a naval force should be provided for its protection." The bill met with strenuous opposition: first, because the time required to form a navy would be too long, the pressing exigency of the case requiring immediate action; and, secondly, because it would be cheaper to purchase the friendship of Algiers by paying a money-tribute, as had been done for some time by European nations, or to purchase the protection of those nations. It appears strange that suggestions so degrading to the character of a free and independent nation should not have been met with indignant rebuke.
The bill was passed by a small majority. The president was authorized to provide four frigates, to carry forty-four guns each, and two to carry thirty-six guns each, and to equip, man, and employ them. The act also gave him some discretion about the size and metal of the vessels. Washington, impressed with the stern necessity that called for this armament, immediately ordered the six vessels to be built, one each at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Portsmouth in Virginia, and Portsmouth in New Hampshire. He also, with the advice and consent of the senate, proceeded to appoint six naval commanders and other officers; and thus was commenced the navy of the United States.[64]
During the progress of the debates on Madison's resolutions, Washington communicated to Congress evidences of efforts on the part of Genet to excite the people of portions of the Union against the Spanish authorities on its southwestern border, and to organize military expeditions against Louisiana and the Floridas. It was now determined to bear with the insolence and mischievous meddling of the French minister no longer; and, at a cabinet council, it was agreed that his diplomatic functions should be suspended, the privileges resting thereon to be denied him, and his person arrested. This was the only course for the government to pursue for the preservation of its dignity, and perhaps the safety of the republic. This resolution was about to be put into execution, when a despatch was received from Gouverneur Morris announcing Genet's recall. The French minister of foreign affairs had, as soon as he heard of Genet's misconduct, reprobated it as unauthorized by his government, and appointed M. Fauchet secretary of the executive council to succeed him. At the same time the French government asked the recall of Gouverneur Morris, whose views of democracy, as he saw it daily in Paris, did not coincide with the doctrines of the Jacobins. Morris was recalled, and Washington, with a liberal spirit, nominated James Monroe, a political opponent, as his successor. He knew that Monroe would be acceptable to the French Convention, and likely, therefore, to be useful to his government.
Fauchet was a keen diplomatist, and came as the representative of an administration more radical in its democracy than the one that appointed Genet. The Girondists had fallen, and the government of France had passed into the hands of Danton and Robespierre, the leaders of the Jacobins. The Reign of Terror was now in full force. The republican constitution had been suspended, and the Convention had assumed despotic powers with bloody proclivities. Even the warmest sympathizers with the French Revolution, in America, stood appalled at the aspect of affairs there; and many began to doubt, after all, whether English liberty was not preferable to French liberty.[65]
Fauchet arrived at Philadelphia in February, and Genet had liberty to return to France. But he did not choose to trust his person to the caprices of his countrymen in that time of anarchy and blood, and he remained in America. He married Cornelia Tappen, daughter of Governor Clinton, of New York, and became a resident of that state. He at once disappeared from the firmament of politics, but was an excellent citizen of his adopted country, and took great interest in agriculture. His course as minister has been ably defended; but the verdict of impartial history condemns it as unwise and unwarrantable, to say the least. He died at his residence in Greenbush, opposite Albany, in July, 1834.
Another subject now violently agitated the American people. The news of the British orders in council concerning the French colonial trade had produced great excitement in commercial circles at Philadelphia and New York. It was considered a flagrant act of injustice toward neutrals, and both parties vehemently condemned the British government. In Congress a resolution was offered for the raising of fifteen thousand men to serve two years, and for other preparations for war; and it was at this juncture that Madison's commercial resolutions, as we have observed, were called up, debated, and indefinitely postponed. While the debates on these resolutions were pending, the feeling against Great Britain was further stimulated by the publication, in New York, of a reputed speech of Lord Dorchester (Carleton), governor of Canada, to a deputation of Indians of Lower Canada, who had attended a great council of savage tribes, in the Ohio country, in 1793. In this speech, Dorchester, it was alleged, openly avowed his opinion that war between the United States and Great Britain would be commenced that year, and that "a new line between the two nations must be drawn by the sword." This document was pronounced a forgery. But it had its intended effect in increasing the hatred of Great Britain in the hearts of a very large portion of the American people. Congress, under the excitement of the moment, passed a joint resolution, laying an embargo for thirty days, and afterward for thirty days longer, for the purpose of preventing British supply-ships carrying provisions to their fleet in the West Indies. It was also proposed to enroll an army of eighty thousand minute-men, to man forts and be ready for action; also an additional standing army of twenty thousand men.
War with Great Britain now seemed inevitable. To avert it, was Washington's most anxious solicitude; and, firm in his purpose of preserving for his country neutrality and peace, he resolved to make an experiment for the maintenance of both, by sending an envoy extraordinary to England to open negotiations anew. It required great heroism to attempt such a course; for the popular excitement was intense, and the idea of holding any further intercourse with England was scouted as pusillanimous. The tri-colored cockade was seen upon every side, and the partisans of the French regicides appeared again to rule the popular will for the hour.
While the public mind was thus agitated, the president received despatches from Mr. Pinckney, the resident American minister in London, advising him that the offensive orders in council of the previous November, concerning neutral ships, had been revoked, and that Lord Grenville, in conversation, had assured Mr. Pinckney that that measure had not been intended for the special vexation of American commerce, but to distress France. This intelligence subdued the belligerent tone of the opposition for a moment; yet they showed no reluctance to an open rupture with Great Britain, affecting to regard Grenville's words as insincere. Their vehement opposition to the appointment of a special envoy was speedily renewed, and unscrupulous partisans kept up the war-cry. The opposition press and the democratic societies used every means to inflame the populace and increase the exasperation of their feelings toward Great Britain; and they declared that the crisis had arrived when decision and energy, not moderation toward that government, was demanded.
But these manifestations had no sensible effect upon Washington. His purpose had been adopted after mature reflection. His sagacious mind perceived clearly the probability of success, and his moral heroism, as on all other occasions, was proof against animadversions. He hesitated only when the question, Who shall be appointed? was presented.
Washington's first preference for the mission was Hamilton; but the earliest intimation of this preference that reached the public ear raised a storm of opposition. The proposed mission itself was condemned as a cowardly advance to the British government; and a member of the house of representatives addressed an earnest letter to the president, opposing the mission in general terms, and in an especial manner deprecating the appointment of Hamilton as the envoy to be employed. Senator James Monroe also took upon himself the task of remonstrating with Washington, in writing, against the nomination of Hamilton, assuring him that it would be injurious to the public interest and to the interest of the president himself; and proposed to explain his reasons at a private interview. Washington declined the interview, but requested Mr. Monroe to submit to him, in writing, any facts he might possess which would disqualify the secretary of the treasury for the mission; and added: "Colonel Hamilton and others have been mentioned, but no one is yet absolutely decided upon in my mind. But, as much will depend, among other things, upon the abilities of the person sent, and his knowledge of the affairs of this country, and as I am alone responsible for a proper nomination, it certainly behooves me to name such a one as, in my judgment, combines the requisites for a mission so peculiarly interesting to the peace and happiness of this country." Nothing more was heard from Mr. Monroe on the subject.
Hamilton, with his usual disinterestedness, relieved the president by advising him to choose, for the proposed envoy, Chief-Justice Jay. In a long letter to the president, written on the fifteenth of April, in which he took a general and comprehensive view of national affairs and the relative position of the country to England, he recommended him to nominate, as special minister to England, a person who should "have the confidence of those who think peace still within our reach, and who may be thought qualified for the mission," with an observation to Congress that it was done "with an intention to make a solemn appeal to the justice and good sense of the British government;" at the same time, to make an "earnest recommendation that vigorous and effectual measures may be adopted to be prepared for war."
Hamilton then alluded to the fact that Washington had contemplated nominating him for the mission; and after saying that he was well aware of the obstacles that existed, and that he would be "completely and entirely satisfied with the election of another," he nominated Mr. Jay, as "the only man in whose qualifications for success there would be thorough confidence.... I think," he continued, "the business would have the best chance possible in his hands, and I flatter myself that his mission would issue in a manner that would produce the most important good to the nation."
"Let me add, sir," said Hamilton in conclusion, "that those whom I call the sober-minded men of the country, look up to you with solicitude on the present occasion. If happily you should be the instrument of still rescuing the country from the dangers and calamities of war, there is no part of your life, sir, which will produce to you more real satisfaction, or true glory, than that which shall be distinguished by this very important service."
Washington took Hamilton's advice, and, in the following message to the senate, nominated Mr. Jay for the mission:--
"Gentlemen of the Senate:--The communications which I have made to you during the present session, from the despatches of our minister in London, contain a serious aspect of our affairs with Great Britain. But, as peace ought to be pursued with unremitted zeal before the last resource, which has so often been the scourge of nations, and can not fail to check the advancing prosperity of the United States, is contemplated, I have thought proper to nominate, and do hereby nominate, John Jay as envoy extraordinary of the United States to his Britannic majesty.
"My confidence in our minister plenipotentiary in London continues undiminished. But a mission like this, while it corresponds with the solemnity of the occasion, will announce to the world a solicitude for a friendly adjustment of our complaints, and a reluctance to hostility. Going immediately from the United States, such an envoy will carry with him a full knowledge of the existing temper and sensibility of our country, and will thus be taught to vindicate our rights with firmness, and to cultivate peace with sincerity."
Mr. Jay had recently arrived in Philadelphia from New York, and consented to accept the nomination. It was confirmed by the senate on Saturday, the nineteenth of April, by a majority of eighteen to eight; Aaron Burr being among the few who opposed it, it being his practice to dissent from every measure proposed by Washington.
Conscious of the urgency of his mission, Mr. Jay made immediate preparations for his departure; and on the twelfth of May he embarked at New York, with Colonel John Trumbull, the artist, as his secretary. He was accompanied to the ship by about a thousand of his fellow-citizens, who desired thus to testify their personal respect and their interest in his mission of peace. A few days preceding, the Democratic Society of Philadelphia issued a most inflammatory denunciation of the mission and the minister; and the opposition in the lower house of Congress succeeded in adopting a resolution to cut off all intercourse with Great Britain. It was lost in the senate by the casting vote of Vice-President Adams; "not," as Washington remarked in a letter to Tobias Lear on the sixth of May, "as it is said and generally believed, from a disinclination to the ulterior expedience of the measure, but from a desire to try the effect of negotiation previous thereto." Mr. Monroe, acting under instructions from the Virginia legislature, proposed in the senate to suspend by law the article of the treaty of peace which secured to British creditors the right of recovering in the United States their honest debts. This proposition was frowned down by every right-minded man in that chamber.
Another delicate matter connected with the foreign relations of the United States now occupied the mind of Washington. The French government, as we have observed, on recalling Genet, asked that of the United States to recall Mr. Morris. Washington was anxious to appoint a judicious successor--one that would be acceptable to the French, and who would not compromise the neutrality of his own country. He confided in Pinckney, and desired Mr. Jay, in the event of his mission being successful, to remain in London as resident minister. Pinckney would then be sent to France. But Jay would not consent to the arrangement. Washington then offered the French mission to Robert R. Livingston, chancellor of the state of New York, who, with his extensive and influential family connections, was in politics a republican. Livingston declined, and the president finally offered it to James Monroe. He consented to serve, and his nomination was confirmed by the senate on the twenty-eighth of May. Soon after this, John Quincy Adams, son of the vice-president, was appointed minister at the Hague in place of Mr. Short, Jefferson's secretary of legation in France, who went to Spain to ascertain what Carmichael, the American minister there, was doing, his government being unable to hear from him except at long intervals.
Mr. Monroe arrived in Paris toward the middle of August, and immediately sent to the president of the convention the following letter:--
"Citizen-President:--Having, several days since, arrived with a commission from the president of the United States of America, to represent those states in quality of minister plenipotentiary at the capital of the French republic, I have thought it my duty to make my mission known as early as possible to the national representatives. It belongs to them to determine the day, and to point out the mode, in which I am to be acknowledged the representative of their ally and sister republic. I make this communication with the greater pleasure, because it affords me an opportunity, not only to certify to the representatives of the free citizens of France my personal attachment to the cause of liberty, but to assure them at the same time, in the most positive way, that the government and people of America take the highest interest in the liberty, success, and prosperity of the French republic."
Robespierre had lately fallen. His bloody rule was at an end. For some time he had been hated by the Convention, to which body reason and conscience were bringing their convictions. On the twenty-eighth of July the Convention resolved to crush him. Billaud Varennes, in a speech replete with invective, denounced him as a tyrant; and when Robespierre attempted to speak, his voice was drowned with cries of "Down with the tyrant! down with the tyrant!" A decree of outlawry was then passed, and he and some of his friends were ordered to immediate execution. With their fall the Reign of Terror ended. The nation breathed freer, and the curtain fell upon one of the bloodiest tragedies in the history of the race.
It was at this auspicious moment that Monroe appeared. The sentiments of his letter were so much in consonance with the feelings of the hour, that it is said the president of the Convention embraced Monroe affectionately when they met. It was decreed that the American and French flags should be entwined and hung up in the hall of the Convention, as an emblem of the union of the two republics; and Monroe, not to be outdone in acts of courtesy, presented the banner of his country to the Convention in the name of his people.
Congress adjourned on the ninth of June to the first Monday in the succeeding November. The session had been a stormy one. Questions of national policy had arisen, which called forth some of the most animated and eloquent discussions ever held upon the floor of the house of representatives; and when the adjournment took place, questions were pending, the solution of which caused many an anxious hour to the president and the friends of the republic.
As soon as Washington could make proper arrangements, he set out on a flying visit to Mount Vernon. Many persons had predicted that the yellow fever would reappear in Philadelphia during that summer; and, to guard his family against the dangers of its presence, he removed them to a pleasant house at Germantown. On the eighteenth of June he left for the Potomac; and at Baltimore he wrote a brief letter to Gouverneur Morris, assuring him of his undiminished personal friendship, notwithstanding his recall. At Mount Vernon he wrote another, in which Washington evinced his consciousness that vigilant eyes were upon all his public movements, and not with friendly intent. "The affairs of this country," he said to Morris ironically, "can not go wrong; there are so many watchful guardians of them, and such infallible guides, that no one is at a loss for a director at every turn."
Washington did not return to Philadelphia quite as early as he had anticipated, owing to an injury to his back, received while using exertions to prevent himself and horse being precipitated among the rocks at the Falls of the Potomac, at Georgetown, whither he went on a Sunday morning to view the canal and locks at that place, in which he felt a deep interest. He was back, however, early in July, and was soon informed of popular movements in western Pennsylvania and in Kentucky, which presented the serious question whether the government had sufficient strength to execute its own laws.
The movement in Kentucky was the result, in a great degree, of Genet's machinations, and the influence of the Democratic societies. It is true, there had been dissatisfaction among the people there for several years, because the Spanish government kept the Mississippi closed against American commerce. Now, that dissatisfaction assumed the form of menace. During the recent session of Congress, the people of that region sent a remonstrance to the supreme legislature respecting the navigation of the Mississippi. It was intemperate and indecorous in language. It charged the government with being under the influence of a local policy, which had prevented its making a single real effort for the security of the commercial advantages which the people of the West demanded, and cast aspersions upon the several departments of government. They also intimated that they would leave the Union if their grievances were not speedily redressed, and the "great territorial right" of the free navigation of the Mississippi secured to them.
This remonstrance was referred to a committee by the senate, who reported, that such rights to the navigation of the great river as were sought by the western people were well asserted in the negotiations then going on at Madrid; and on the recommendation of the committee, the senate resolved that the president should be requested to communicate to the governor of Kentucky such part of the pending treaty between the United States and Spain as he might deem advisable, and not inconsistent with the course of the negotiation. The house of representatives also passed a resolution, expressing their conviction that the president was doing all in his power to bring about the negotiation as speedily as possible.
The demagogues at the West, who hoped to profit by the excitement and bring about hostilities with the Spaniards in Louisiana, refused to be soothed by these assurances; and at a convention of a number of the principal citizens of Kentucky, assembled at Lexington, the following intemperate and indecorous resolutions were adopted:--
"That the general government, whose duty it is to put us in possession of this right [free navigation of the Mississippi] have, either through design or mistaken policy, adopted no effectual measures for its attainment.
"That even the measures they have adopted have been uniformly concealed from us, and veiled in mysterious secrecy.
"That civil liberty is prostituted, when the servants of the people are suffered to tell their masters, that communications which they may judge important may not be intrusted to them."
These resolutions concluded with a recommendation of county meetings, of county committees of correspondence, and of a convention when it might be judged expedient, to deliberate on the proper steps for the attainment and security of their just rights.
No doubt the leaders in these movements felt indignant because an expedition, which had been prepared in the West for an invasion of Louisiana under the auspices of Genet, had been frustrated by the vigilance of the president, who, when informed of the fact, had ordered General Wayne, then in the Ohio country, to establish a military post at an eligible place on the Ohio river, to stop any armed men who should be going down that stream. This interference with what they had been taught to believe were their inalienable rights was considered a very great grievance.
In a private letter, on the tenth of August, Washington referred to these movements in Kentucky, and said, after expressing a conviction that there "must exist a predisposition among them to be dissatisfied:" "The protection they receive, and the unwearied endeavors of the general government to accomplish, by repeated and ardent remonstrances, what they seem to have most at heart--namely, the navigation of the Mississippi--obtain no credit with them, or, what is full as likely, may be concealed from them, or misrepresented by those societies, which, under specious colorings, are spreading far and wide, either from real ignorance of the measures pursued by the government, or from a wish to bring it, as much as they are able, into discredit; for what purposes, every man is left to his own conjectures."
Washington continued: "That similar attempts to give discontent to the public mind have been practised with too much success in some of the western counties in this state [Pennsylvania], you are, I am certain, not to learn. Actual rebellion against the laws of the United States exists at this moment, notwithstanding every lenient measure, which could comport with the duties of the public officers, has been exercised to reconcile them to the collection of taxes upon spirituous liquors and stills. What may be the consequence of such violent and outrageous proceedings is painful in a high degree, even in contemplation. But, if the laws are to be so trampled upon with impunity, and a minority, a small one too, is to dictate to the majority, there is an end put, at one stroke, to republican government; and nothing but anarchy and confusion are to be expected hereafter. Some other man or society may dislike another law, and oppose it with equal propriety, until all laws are prostrate, and every one--the strongest, I presume--will carve for himself."
Washington alluded to the rebellious movement in western Pennsylvania, at that time, known in history as "The Whiskey Insurrection."
FOOTNOTES:
[64] The following are the names of the officers appointed by Washington: John Barry, Samuel Nicholson, Silas Talbot, Richard Dale, Thomas Truxton, James Sever, commanders; Joshua Humphreys, George Cleghorn, Forman Cheeseman, John Morgan, David Stodder, James Hackett, naval constructors; Isaac Coxe, Henry Jackson, John Blagge, W. Pennock, Jeremiah Yellott, Jacob Sheafe, navy agents.
[65] A striking caricature appeared a little earlier than this, entitled The Contrast. It was in the form of two medallions, one called English liberty, and the other French liberty. On the former is seen Britannia, holding the pileus and cap of liberty in one hand with Magna Charta, and in the other the scales of justice. At her feet stoops a lion; and on the placid sea, in the distance, is a British merchant-vessel under full sail. Under the medallion are the words, "Religion, Morality, Loyalty, Obedience to the Laws, Independence, Personal Security, Justice, Inheritance, Protection, Property, Industry, National Prosperity, Happiness." On the latter medallion is a fury, in the form of a woman; her hair formed of serpents; flames issuing from her cestus of snakes; in one hand a bloody sword, in the other a trident--the head of a man, streaming with blood upon one prong, and a human heart upon each of the others; while under her feet is a prostrate, naked, headless man. In the distance is seen a street lamp, with a man hanging by the neck from its supporting bracket. Under this medallion are the words, "Atheism, Perjury, Rebellion, Treason, Anarchy, Murder, Equality, Madness, Cruelty, Injustice, Treachery, Ingratitude, Idleness, Famine, National and Private Ruin, Misery." Below all is the significant question, "Which is best?"