John Marshall

by Harlow Giles Unger

  Before Washington could decide on the final language of his proclamation, Citizen Edmond-Charles-Edouard Genet, the French Republic’s new minister plenipotentiary (ambassador) to the United States, sailed into Charleston, South Carolina, with more fuel for the nation’s political inferno. He carried two sets of instructions from the French revolutionary government, an official set and a second set of secret orders.13

  His official instructions ordered him to seek passive American cooperation under the Franco-American treaties of 1778 for mutual defense. In effect, he was to convince Washington to let the French navy bring captured ships and cargoes into American ports for auction and/or refitting as French naval vessels. He was also to persuade the American government to pay enough of its war debts to France to allow him to purchase badly needed American foodstuffs to ease the famine in France.

  Genet’s second set of secret instructions, however, ordered him to pursue other, more nefarious goals: he was to spread chaos across the continent—to organize three armies to “liberate” Louisiana, capture the rich Mexican silver mines, and seize the Floridas from Spain. He was also to organize and launch a fleet of privateers to prey on British shipping. If Washington’s government refused to cooperate, he was to exploit pro-French ferment to foment revolution, topple the American government, and convert the United States into a French puppet state. Once under French control, the United States would become part of a French-controlled North American federation of Canada, Florida, Louisiana, and the French West Indies.

  Pro-French newspapers headlined Genet’s arrival and whipped up mass hysteria that engulfed daily life in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and other cities. Reinventing themselves as revolutionary egalitarians, self-styled Francophiles addressed each other as “Citizen” and “Citess” (for women) and shot angry stares or insults at those who used “monarchist” forms of address such as “Mister,” “Sir,” or “Madam.” The title “Reverend” was “not only anti-republican, but blasphemous,” according to the New-York Journal.14 The Boston Gazette asserted that “every friend of the Rights of Man in America will constantly feel an attachment for their French brethren. . . . France is contending the cause of both EUROPE and AMERICA, and GOD grant her success.”15

  Fearing the British would see the United States as a French ally and draw the nation into war, Washington threw off constitutional restraints and, on April 22, issued a formal neutrality proclamation. With Hamilton’s help he avoided a possible constitutional flap over the word “neutrality” and declared the United States at peace—with Britain, France, and all other combatants. He pledged to engage in “conduct friendly and impartial toward [all] the belligerent powers.” He enjoined Americans “from all acts and proceedings inconsistent with the duties of a friendly nation toward those at war,” including “any hostilities on the seas.” He barred American ships from carrying “any of those articles deemed contraband by the modern usage of nations.”16

  Genet tried offsetting the effects of Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation by buying boldfaced newspaper advertisements that called on “Friends of France” to ignore the President and enlist in the French service to fight the British.

  “Does not patriotism call upon us to assist France?” his advertisements asked. “As Sons of Freedom, would it not become our character to lend some assistance to a nation combating to secure their liberty?”17

  To support his advertisements, Genet organized a network of agents to enlist Americans in a French war to recapture Canada, Louisiana, and the rest of the North American empire that France had lost in 1763.18 Within weeks French agents had organized a fleet of American privateers to prey on British shipping offshore and a network of nearly forty so-called Democratic Societies across the United States that merged into local political groups formed to support Jefferson’s presidential ambitions.

  By mid-April 1793 Genet’s plans were complete.

  “I have prepared the revolution of New Orleans and Canada,” he wrote to the French foreign minister in Paris. “I have destroyed the maritime commerce of the English in these waters.”19 Washington, he predicted, would have no choice but to support him with additional troops, weapons, and funds or resign in favor of the Francophile Jefferson.

  With his privateers marauding British ships along the coast, Genet left Charleston for Philadelphia in a coach and four on what grew into a triumphal procession. Jefferson’s Democratic Clubs heralded Genet’s approach to each town as a Second Coming. Church bells tolled his arrival, cannons boomed, and French flags flapped in the wind in what Genet called a succession of civic festivals.

  “The arrival and conduct of Mr. Genet excited great sensation throughout the southern states,” Marshall explained with evident mixed feelings as Genet approached Richmond.

  We were all strongly attached to France—scarcely any man more strongly than myself. I sincerely believed human liberty to depend in a great measure on the success of the French revolution. My partiality to France, however, did not . . . render me insensible to the danger of permitting a foreign minister to mingle himself in the management of our affairs and to intrude himself between our government and people.20

  Marshall organized a meeting of city and state leaders in Richmond to rally support for the President and the Neutrality Proclamation.

  “Ever since . . . the voice of your country induced you to abandon the retirement you loved,” Marshall addressed the President, “your conduct has been uniformly calculated to promote [our] happiness and welfare. And in no instance has this been more remarkable . . . than in your Proclamation respecting the neutrality of the United States. As genuine Americans . . . we cannot refrain from expressing our pleasure in its adoption.”

  Then, in a harsh rebuke to Jefferson, Marshall declared,

  We recollect too well the calamities of war not to use our best endeavors to restrain any wicked citizen . . . who, disregarding his own duty and the happiness of the United States, in violation of the law of the land and the wish of the people, shall dare to gratify his paltry passions at the risk of his country’s welfare.21

  In a political maneuver that startled Jefferson more than the resolution itself, John Marshall recruited College of William and Mary law professor George Wythe to chair the Richmond conference and sign the resolution supporting Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation. The sixty-seven-year-old judge had trained both Marshall and Jefferson in the law, and though a Federalist, he remained a Jefferson intimate.

  Although Genet never saw the Marshall resolution, Marshall’s friend Senator James Monroe did, and he responded with heat.

  Writing under the pseudonym Agricola,* Monroe called those at Marshall’s Richmond conference “enemies of the French Revolution, who are likewise notoriously the partisans for monarchy.” Monroe’s wartime friendship with Lafayette—formed at Brandywine, Valley Forge, and Monmouth—had turned him into so confirmed a Francophile that he questioned Marshall’s “attachment to the equal rights of mankind.” Monroe charged Marshall with trying “to bring about a more intimate connection with Britain.”22

  Marshall returned fire with a barrage of sarcasm and vitriol: “When a gentleman . . . who seems not to be impelled by the mere vanity of becoming an author, presses forward with a bold venture on the conduct of his fellow citizens, his charge demands our consideration.”23

  Writing under the pseudonym Aristides* Marshall castigated Agricola (Monroe) for subordinating his love of country to party zeal and affection for a foreign nation.

  The citizens of Richmond, Marshall declared, had convened for two purposes: “The one, approving the conduct of the President of the United States toward the belligerent powers of Europe; the other declaring a detestation and abhorrence of any interference whatever of a foreign nation or minister with our political contests or internal government.”

  Can the American exist who, like Agricola . . . could witness . . . efforts to create divisions among us and opposition to our government without feeling himsel
f . . . degraded and insulted? Weigh, I beseech you, the consequences of a foreign minister . . . appealing to the people from the constitutional decisions of their government. If one foreign minister can make the appeal, what shall restrain every other from making it?24

  Marshall argued that the nation was at peace with all of Europe’s warring nations and had treaties with them all—none either offensive or defensive. “They place us in a state of perfect neutrality . . . and until it shall be the will of Congress to dissolve them, it is the duty of the Supreme Executive of the United States to observe them.”25

  Undeterred by Marshall’s cold reception in Richmond, Genet continued his triumphal procession northward toward the American capital of Philadelphia. While he was en route his privateers captured more than eighty British merchant vessels—many inside American territorial waters—and sailed them into American ports to be sold by French consuls. Without arms, customs officials from Hamilton’s Treasury Department could only stand along the waterfront and watch helplessly.

  News of Genet’s triumphal procession widened the already bitter divisions in the cabinet and provoked a frenzy of fear in the national capital of Philadelphia that Genet’s approach might herald a French invasion. Washington was irate, warning that Genet’s activities might provoke Britain into declaring war on the United States. Jefferson tried calming the President, defending Genet’s activities:

  “It is impossible for anything to be more affectionate, more magnanimous, than the purport of his mission,” Jefferson cooed before leaving the presidential mansion to greet Genet.

  When Genet arrived at the outskirts of Philadelphia, 500 coaches of ardent Francophiles waited to escort him into the city. Thousands rushed into the streets to cheer and march—and discard all pretenses of neutrality or loyalty to the President. An estimated 5,000 supporters rallied outside Genet’s hotel and set off demonstrations that raged through the night into the next day—and the next—and the next.

  John Adams described “the terrorism excited by Genet . . . 10,000 people in the streets of Philadelphia, day after day, threatened to drag Washington out of his house and effect a revolution in the government or compel it to declare war in favor of the French Revolution and against England.” Adams said he “judged it prudent and necessary to order chests of arms from the war office” to protect his house.26

  When Jefferson met Genet, he embraced the Frenchman as a friend and confidant and all but conspired with him to drag the United States into another war with Britain before escorting him to the Presidential mansion to present his credentials to Washington.27

  In a near-treasonous action Jefferson gave Genet’s confederate André Michaux, a French botanist, a letter of introduction to Governor Isaac Shelby of Kentucky, implying federal government approval of Genet’s efforts to raise an army in the West.

  When the President learned of the letter, he erupted in anger, raging at Genet and accusing Jefferson of disloyalty for supporting Genet. After the President questioned Jefferson’s allegiance to the nation, the secretary of state offered to resign, but the President demanded that Jefferson remain until the end-of-the-year government recess.

  Citizen Edmond-Charles-Edouard Genet, the first minister plenipotentiary to the United States from the French revolutionary regime, presents his credentials to President George Washington in the Executive Mansion, Philadelphia, as Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson looks on. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

  In Virginia Marshall and other state officials rallied behind the President and ordered the state militia to seize all privateers and their cargoes entering Virginia ports. Virginia prepared for war with France.

  Adding to the turmoil generated by Genet’s arrival in Philadelphia was the sudden appearance of the French fleet sailing into Delaware Bay from the Antilles. Genet raced to the waterfront and ordered gangways lowered, allowing French seamen to pour into the streets and join the Jacobin mobs.

  “The town is one continuous scene of riot,” the British consul wrote to his foreign minister in London. “The French seamen range the streets by night and by day, armed with cutlasses and commit the most daring outrages. Genet seems ready to raise the tricolor and proclaim himself proconsul. President Washington is unable to enforce any measures in opposition.”28

  As pro-French mobs raged through the city’s streets demanding Washington’s head, Genet sent the President an ultimatum “in the name of France”—to call Congress into a special session to choose between neutrality and war. He predicted that Americans would support him and “demonstrate . . . that their future is ultimately bound with France.”29

  Without a law enforcement arm, President Washington watched helplessly as his young American republic began to collapse. In Richmond, however, Washington’s friend Governor Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee ordered defenses reinforced at Norfolk and called up the Virginia militia to defend the port against invasion. Aware of John Marshall’s heroics on the battlefield, he appointed Marshall brigadier general and gave him command of the second brigade.

  “We fear—and not without reason—a war,” John Marshall warned his friend Virginia attorney general Archibald Stuart. “The man does not live who wishes for peace more than I do, but the outrages committed upon us are beyond human bearing. Pray Heaven we may weather the storm.”30

  _______________

  * Most Americans signed letters and essays to periodicals with pseudonyms—primarily to avoid challenges to duels, but also to avoid libel suits and to avoid alienating friends and family. Gracchus was a Roman tribune who championed social, political, and judicial reform.

  * Anti-British to the core at the time, Monroe chose the pseudonym Agricola, the Roman general who led the Roman conquest of Britain.

  * Aristides the Just, as he was known, was an Athenian statesman and heroic general in the defense of Athens in the Persian War.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Two Happiest People on Earth

  “IS GENET TO SET THE ACTS OF THIS GOVERNMENT AT DEFIANCE WITH impunity?” Washington raged at Jefferson. “What must the world think of such conduct, and of the government . . . submitting to it? We are an independent nation! We will not be dictated to by the politics of any nation under heaven!”1

  On July 31 Washington ordered Jefferson to draw up a demand for Genet’s recall, but Genet ignored Jefferson and the President by boarding a French warship and sailing to New York with the French fleet for refitting. In Richmond Governor Lee ordered Marshall and his men to march to Smithfield, on the James River, where the notorious privateer/pirate captain John Sinclair and a group of French sympathizers were outfitting the Unicorn with cannons to attack British shipping offshore. On July 23 Marshall reached Smithfield, surrounded Sinclair’s house and seized thirteen cannons and a store of small arms before approaching the river’s edge, where they surprised Sinclair and his men, who surrendered the ship without resistance.

  Genet, meanwhile, arrived in New York on August 15, where a sea of French flags and huge crowds along the waterfront cheered him with songs of the French Revolution.

  Oui, ça ira, ça ira, ça ira;

  Les aristos á la lanterne;

  Oui ça ira, ça ira, ça ira;

  Les aristos on les pendera.*

  Within a few days, however, the chant diminished, and one by one, the church bells ceased ringing. On August 15, 1793, an eerie silence enveloped the ship, and when Genet emerged topside and looked over the rail, he found the waterfront deserted. He disembarked and walked toward the inn where he had been lodging. A servant awaited, his bag packed to leave. Genet demanded an explanation. The answer struck like a dagger:

  “Yellow fever, Monsieur.”

  Yellow fever had swept into the city and sent all but the very poor fleeing for their lives into the country.

  “The coolest and the firmest minds,” John Adams recalled later, “have given their opinions to me that nothing but the yellow fever . . . could have saved the United States from a fatal revolution of government.�
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  The pro-French Jefferson resigned as secretary of state at the end of the year, and a new French government, angry over Genet’s alienation of the Washington administration, recalled him. His replacement sailed from France with an arrest warrant. Genet insisted the incoming ship carried a guillotine on board to execute him once it left American waters to return to France.

  The tearful envoy pleaded for political asylum, and Washington allowed the Frenchman who had threatened the foundations of American government to remain. In the year that followed, he became an American citizen, married New York Governor George Clinton’s daughter, and retired to obscurity as a Long Island farmer near New York City.** Washington replaced Jefferson with Attorney General Edmund Randolph, the former governor of Virginia and a cousin of both Jefferson and Marshall. Federalist attorney William Bradford of Philadelphia took over as attorney general.

  The departures of Jefferson and Genet calmed the chaos in Washington’s cabinet and on America’s streets long enough to give Washington’s Neutrality Proclamation a chance to take hold. As neutral American ships ferried ever-increasing cargoes to France and Britain, American shipbuilders, merchants, craftsmen, and farmers reaped the benefits of increased prosperity and a sudden spike in the re-export trade. With Britain and France attacking and sinking each other’s cargo ships, merchants in the British and French West Indies shipped their Europe-bound cargoes to the United States first, then re-exported them to Europe on ships flying the neutral American flag. More than 50 percent of the sugar, coffee, spirits, cocoa, indigo, pepper, and spices from the West Indies now traveled to the United States for transfer onto neutral American vessels bound for Europe. With the economic boom, shipbuilders expanded the American merchant fleet to more than 5,000 vessels, putting so many Americans to work that dissatisfaction with the federal government and the Washington administration all but vanished.