Believing a rumor that “an old militia general up the North [Hudson] River” possessed a plan in Hamilton’s handwriting for crowning an American king, Jefferson felt all the more strongly that the safety of the American republic depended on a French victory. He was far from reassured to have Washington pooh-pooh the possibility of monarchy at home, and express worry for the future of the French rather than the American republic. France, Washington stated, seemed “in the highest paroxysm of disorder, not so much from the pressure of foreign enemies … but because those in whose hands the g[overnmen]t is entrusted are ready to tear each other to pieces and will, more than probably, prove the worst foes the government has.” As Jefferson dreamed of a Gallic utopia, Washington dimly prophesied Napoleon. He foresaw “a crisis of sad confusion” leading possibly to an “entire change in the French system.”
The revolutionary government in France, recalling the minister who had represented Louis XVI, was sending its own minister to the United States. At a cabinet meeting, Hamilton insisted that in receiving Edmond Charles Genêt, the President should state that the various dangerous clauses in the French treaties—“the guarantee,” etc.—were no longer in force. Since the government with which the treaties had been negotiated had been overthrown, this would be in conformity with international law. But, so Hamilton continued, if Genêt were received without reservations, the dangerous clauses would be in effect reaffirmed, to be picked up at will by the bloody hands of the French revolutionaries.
Jefferson reacted with such fury that he could hardly enunciate. Later, he sent Washington a memorandum in which he contended that denouncing the treaties would in international law be a ticklish business and that receiving the minister would, in any case, commit the United States to nothing. While agreeing that the “law of self-preservation” overrode all others, Jefferson contended that the clauses should only be denounced if the danger became “great, inevitable, and imminent.”
Washington, who (as he later admitted) considered Hamilton’s contentions silly, also believed in never crossing bridges until you came to them. He was the more pleased with Jefferson’s memorandum because the Secretary of State, now the practical statesman not the Francophile, saw a way to get around the most immediately troublesome problem the treaties raised. It had been provided that the enemies of France could not fit out privateers or sell prizes in the United States. But, so Jefferson pointed out, it was not specifically stated that the French could. Washington agreed that the same rule might be applied to both belligerents, leaving the French with no important exclusive privileges in relation to privateers.
This policy was to become the basis for a rending fight with the new French minister.
Genêt’s head had remained on his shoulders rather than dropping from the guillotine blade because he was so indiscreet. Brought up, although a commoner, in the court of Louis XVI, he had been assigned to various diplomatic missions. That he always fought with his superiors, forcing his recall, gave him, when the monarchy fell, credentials as an opponent of the royal government. He now threw all the ebullience of his nature into the revolutionary cause. The inexperienced government, being desperately in need of diplomats with experience, gave the man who referred to himself as “Citizen Genêt” his choice of missions. He chose the United States.
Genêt should have landed in Philadelphia to present his credentials to the President. His warship landed him in Charleston, South Carolina, where he was instantly busy enlisting an army to attack Louisiana and seeing to the commissioning and fitting out of American ships as privateers.
The endlessly vital envoy, who spoke perfect English and was an ecstatic orator, was acclaimed in the streets and toasted at banquets until he concluded that the American people were so overwhelmingly pro-French that he did not need to worry about their silly little government in Philadelphia. He was sure that his superiors in Paris, who had warned him to proceed cautiously, would, if they heard the plaudits he received, agree that there was no need for guile. Should the American government oppose him, he would undertake and win a popularity contest with that friend of the counterrevolutionary Lafayette who was said to be pro-British, with le vieillard (the old man) Washington.
Having finally completed his business in Charleston, he did not sail in his waiting frigate to Philadelphia, but moved slowly overland haranguing the people at every crossroads. He was at Richmond, Virginia, when he learned of the Neutrality Proclamation. He considered the proclamation clearly ridiculous, but realized that the situation needed looking into. He now advanced as rapidly as he could to Philadelphia.
Not only did the Philadelphia crowds surge and roar French revolutionary slogans, but the Secretary of State fell most satisfactorily under the magnetic Frenchman’s sway. As Genêt’s reports to his government reveal, Jefferson disassociated himself to the French Minister, as he was in the habit of doing to his Virginia supporters, from acts which at cabinet meetings he had in fact approved. In officially communicating cabinet decisions in his role as Secretary of State, Jefferson would explain that he was acting only as “the passive instrument of the President.” Jefferson, Genêt wrote, “did not conceal from me that Senator [Robert] Morris and Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton, attached to the British interest, exerted the greatest influence on the mind of the President, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that he counteracted their efforts.” Genêt concluded that the least he could do for France and freedom and indeed American republicanism was to use his own obvious popularity to work (as he viewed it) side by side with the Secretary of State against the President.
Under Genêt’s spell, Jefferson committed his greatest indiscretion while in the cabinet. To officials in Kentucky he backed, subtly but yet clearly, Genêt’s scheme for raising an army of American citizens that would liberate Louisiana from Spain, and create an independent nation under the French aegis. Jefferson must have known that this was exactly opposite to the policies of his President. Washington was doing all in his power to reduce the possibility of war with Spain. Such a conflict would surely involve the British, who were further demonstrating their ability to prevent the United States from even conferring with the most belligerent northwestern tribes. And Washington was violently opposed to establishing in the West new nations with foreign connections. They would, Washington foresaw, break up the American continent into another bickering Europe.
When word came back to Philadelphia of the Kentucky plots, Jefferson obediently relayed Washington’s orders that any freebooting expeditions against Spain should be suppressed, but he continued to hide from the President what he had previously done.
Jefferson watched with “affectionate” eyes when Genêt finally and belatedly presented his credentials to Washington. The Frenchman delivered a speech in which he dwelt on his nation’s magnanimity in not evoking “the guarantee,” her generosity in offering trade concessions in her West Indian Islands (that Washington knew was to the French advantage). “We wish you,” Genêt intoned, “to do nothing but what is for your own good.” “Cherish,” he admonished, “your own peace and prosperity!”
Washington was courteous while saying little, a combination which allowed Genêt to depart in a flood of self-satisfaction concerning the effect of his performance. Only later did he realize that Washington had expressed no desire to assist what Genêt considered a sacred crusade for liberty; Washington had not gone beyond speaking of the desire of the United States “to live in peace and harmony with all the powers and particularly France.”
On June 9, 1793, Jefferson wrote Madison, “The President is not well. Little lingering fevers have been hanging about him for a week or ten days, and have affected his looks most remarkably. He is also extremely affected by the attacks made and kept on him in the public papers. I think he feels those things more than any person I ever yet met with. I am extremely sorry to see them.” But, so Jefferson continued, Washington had brought the attacks on himself. “Naked he would have been sanctimoniously reverenced, but en
veloped in the rags of royalty, they can hardly be torn off without laceration. It is the more unfortunate that this attack is planted on popular ground, on the love of the people to France and its cause, which is universal.”
James Monroe, who, as official Minister to France, felt less responsible to Washington and the government than to Jefferson and the opposition. Portrait by Gilbert Stuart (Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts)
Edmond Charles Genêt, the ebullient French Minister to the United States, who tried to turn the American people against President Washington. Portrait by Ezra Ames (Courtesy of the Albany Institute of History and Art, gift of Mrs. George Clinton Genêt)
As a matter of fact, Washington’s emotional sympathies were more with France than England. He had in his two wars fought both nations, but the Revolution had been fratricidal and thus more bitter. Traveling through New England during his first presidential term, he had commented on “the destructive evidences of British cruelty” yet visible in Connecticut. After the Revolution, he did not have a single English friend, but he remained close, if only by letter, to Frenchmen who had fought in his army and as his allies: not only his beloved Lafayette but the Marquis de Chastellux and others. The French, furthermore, were seeking freedom from aristocratic domination, even if their road took strange turns.
Washington’s cabinet was now engaged in endless discussion of specific interpretations of the Neutrality Proclamation. Although Jefferson continued to present himself to his followers as a solitary champion fighting a solid block of pro-British monarchists, Washington agreed, when there was a difference, more often with Jefferson than with the pro-British Hamilton. This was made possible by the fact that, applying to his official acts the practical and balanced side of his nature, Jefferson rarely allowed his bias to carry him beyond the confines of judicious behavior. And Washington was glad to lean as far towards the French side as he thought was compatible with the fundamental principle enunciated in the Neutrality Proclamation.
Since Hamilton very rarely put his emotions on paper, we do not know how he reacted, from issue to issue, on being so often overridden. But in late June, 1793, he sent Washington an angry letter: “Considerations relative both to the public interest and to my own delicacy” had made him resolve to resign his office towards the end of the present session of Congress. Washington commented that Hamilton “had often before intimated dispositions to resign, but never as decisively before.” Washington must have tried to change his Secretary’s mind, but for the moment at least Hamilton adhered to his intention.
Jefferson was coming to realize that by his early confidences to Genêt he had encouraged a menace to American peace and a wild force who might by extreme behavior damage in American public opinion the French cause. Genêt had his own interpretation of America’s treaty obligations. In his opinion, the French clearly had a right to create and man privateers in the United States, and to set up their own courts that would award to the captors prizes brought into American harbors. If the executive continued to try to enforce the Neutrality Proclamation, which Genêt had ruled illegal, the French Minister would arrange to have Congress called in a special session. Or by writing in the newspapers, he would undermine the superannuated and reactionary President, who was jealous, Genêt believed, because Genêt was closer to the American people than he.
Jefferson now tried to tone the Frenchman down, but it was like arguing with a tornado. “He renders my position immensely difficult,” Jefferson complained. “… I am on a footing to advise him freely, and he respects it, but he breaks out again on the very first occasion.” (Genêt was later to claim that Jefferson had double-crossed him.)
Washington’s new estate manager had become incapacitated with tuberculosis, leaving no one at the helm—and just at the time of the June harvest. The President felt required to make a flying trip home. Although the manager died before he arrived and everything proved to be in dismal confusion, Washington felt he could stay at Mount Vernon for only ten days. He posted back to Philadelphia, arriving on July 11, 1793, to find on his desk a pile of papers marked in Jefferson’s handwriting “instant attention.”
The documents revealed that Genêt was publicly challenging the government. He was mounting cannon and enlisting an American crew on a former British brigantine, the Little Sarah, which the French had captured before the Neutrality Proclamation and renamed La Petite Démocrate. When the Pennsylvania authorities, who had jurisdiction because the bustle was going on in Philadelphia harbor, warned him that he was breaking the law, Genêt defied them. He had also defied the intervention of Jefferson.
Washington read with horror Genêt’s statement that the crew of the ship, most of whom were American citizens, were such “high-spirited” French patriots that they would resist by force any efforts to stop their sailing. Genêt had furthermore warned a Pennsylvania mediator that “he would appeal from the President to the people.” In a fury that a foreign representative should “threaten the executive,” Washington called for Jefferson to come to him at once. Jefferson, who wanted to take as little responsibility as possible, pleaded illness (he was well the next day) and did not come.
Further papers sent by Jefferson reported a debate that had taken place in the cabinet. Hamilton and Knox had argued that if the United States allowed the Little Sarah to sail, the prestige of the government would be wounded and England would have a cause for war. Jefferson had argued that attacking the ship would exaggerate a minor infraction and give France a cause for war. While the ministers bickered, Genêt sailed the ship to a point where the United States, having no naval frigate, could not stop her. She was soon out in the ocean, where she proved a very effective raider.
Genêt was convinced of the rectitude of his acts. “When treaties speak,” he explained, “the agents of nations have but to obey.” And he could not doubt that he could mitigate Washington’s anger with his persuasive charm. Ignoring Jefferson’s warnings, he made a surprise call on the President. He explained that his own popularity in the United States was not due to any scheming on his part: it reflected “the honesty and integrity” of the American people. Washington would of course realize that Genêt could not, unless he were to be a traitor, submit to the Neutrality Proclamation, which “annulled the most sacred treaties.” France was emerging triumphant from the war and would, Genêt assured the President, treat the United States with magnanimity.
Having listened in silence, Washington replied only to Genêt’s comments on popularity: “He did not read the gazettes, and it was of very slight importance to him whether his administration was talked about.”
Genêt departed with “flattering thoughts” that he had mollified Washington. The next day, he hurried to Jefferson’s office to boast of his triumph. He had hardly begun when a door opened and in walked a stony-faced Washington. Genêt made one of his best bows, and then saw that Jefferson was now equally stony-faced. He looked from one to the other for “an invitation to remain for which I would willingly have given part of my life.” Jefferson made “an imperative sign.” Hurt and amazed at such behavior by a man he considered his friend and supporter, Genêt felt forced to retire.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Trouble All Around
(1793)
It was a summer of riots. As a very old man, John Adams reminisced about “the terrorism excited by Genêt in 1793, when ten thousand people in the streets of Philadelphia day after day threatened to drag Washington from his house,” start a revolution, and declare war on England. This is a senile exaggeration, yet it is a fact that discontents were widespread in Virginia and mobs did roam city streets, hooting at any visible elegance and threatening the Federalists.
“That there are in this as well as in all other countries,” Washington wrote, “discontented characters, I well knew, and also that these characters are actuated by very different views: some good, from an opinion that the measures of the general government are impure; some bad, and (if I might be allowed to use so har
sh an expression) diabolical, inasmuch as they are not meant to impede the measures of that government generally, but more especially (as a great means towards the accomplishment of it) to destroy the confidence which it is necessary for the people to place (until they have unequivocal proof of dismerit) in their public servants.” Washington could not resist adding that he could better be called a slave than a servant.
Washington was eyeing with great uneasiness the Pennsylvania Democratic Society, organized by friends of Genêt with the avowed object of sponsoring a network of clubs across the nation to rouse pro-French and anti-administration sentiment. The movement is variously said to have been based on the Committees of Safety which had helped foment the American Revolution or on the Jacobin Clubs that had brought the French Revolution to its bloodiest phase. Neither alternative could be reassuring to those who did not believe that the United States needed a second revolution. “I early gave it as my opinion to the confidential characters around me,” Washington was to remember, “that if these societies were not counteracted (not by prosecutions, the ready way to make them grow stronger), or did not fall into disesteem” through knowledge of the purposes for which they were instituted “by their father, Genêt, … they would shake the government to its foundations.”
Hamilton insisted that Genêt was applying to the United States France’s general policy of subverting all governments. Jefferson argued that Genêt was no more than an unfortunate appointment. Washington, with his eyes focused on the domestic scene, believed that the fault lay with the Americans (he was not well enough informed to include Jefferson) who had egged Genêt on.
Since Jefferson now regarded the French Minister as a liability, the executive leadership was unanimous that Genêt’s recall should be requested. Cabinet debates turned on how the request should be worded and whether the record of Genêt’s misbehavior should be published. Hamilton was, of course, for a stern protest to Paris and complete disclosure. Jefferson wanted the request to be as between friends, and, in opposing disclosure, he found himself arguing against his professed principles. He believed in obeisance to the legislature, but he knew that informing Congress would be to inform the people. One of his favorite contentions was that the people should be completely trusted, yet he feared that, if Genêt’s desire to interfere in the American government were known, “universal indignation” would wound pro-French sentiment and the emerging Republican party.
Washington- The Indispensable Man Page 32