Washington lost his self-control. He had had enough “personal abuse” heaped on him. He angrily “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.” Washington’s rage was uncharacteristic. Months of arguing over neutrality and Genet had taken a toll. Washington swore that “by god he had rather be in his grave than in his present situation. That he had rather be on his farm than to be made emperor of the world and yet they were charging him with wanting to be a king.”52
The Genet affair would have enormous consequences for the president, his cabinet, the nation, and Marshall. Jefferson tendered his resignation to the president effective at the end of September 1793. He wished “to retire to scenes of greater tranquility, from those which I am every day more and more convinced that neither my talents, tone of mind, nor time of life fit me.”53 The toxic partisanship that Jefferson and his republican colleagues had cultivated had driven him from office. Perhaps Jefferson would have remained in office if he had known that Hamilton had reached the same conclusion about retiring.
Washington, too, was exhausted by the unpleasantness that Jefferson and Genet had sown. The president feared that the republican societies inspired by Genet were fomenting a second revolution.54 Washington had been routinely savaged by the leading republican newspaper in Philadelphia, the National Gazette, established by Jefferson and Monroe and run by Philip Freneau, Jefferson’s employee in the State Department.55 Washington felt betrayed by his fellow Virginians, and his once robust health deteriorated. He, too, resolved to retire from public life at the end of his term.56
Meanwhile, the battle over Genet and the Proclamation of Neutrality widened. Republicans in Congress continued to denounce the proclamation as exceeding the president’s constitutional powers. Under the pseudonym Pacificus, Hamilton wrote a series of essays arguing that the president had broad implied authority to function as the chief organ of foreign relations and that empowered him to issue the Proclamation of Neutrality.57 “If the Legislature have a right to make war on the one hand—it is on the other the duty of the Executive to preserve Peace till war is declared,” he asserted.58
Jefferson instructed Madison to go after Hamilton: “For God’s sake, my dear Sir, take up your pen, select the most striking heresies, and cut him to pieces in the face of the public.”59 Writing under his nom de plume, Madison blasted the idea that the executive possessed any authority beyond the literal text of the Constitution or whatever additional powers Congress assigned to him. Madison insisted that since treaties are the “supreme law of the land” under the Constitution, Washington was legally obligated to enforce the Treaty of Alliance with France.60
In his reply to Madison, Hamilton warned his countrymen not to “rashly mingle our destiny in the consequences of the errors and extravagances of another nation.”61 Hamilton worried that the Republic would be irreparably damaged if it allowed itself to be entangled in foreign alliances. These were the same sentiments echoed in Washington’s famous Farewell Address two years later. Hamilton, who largely wrote Washington’s speech, could be excused for repeating himself.62
The partisan sniping over Genet and the French Republic drove Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson out of the federal government. And it spawned two competing political parties. In Virginia and much of the South, Jefferson’s party dominated. The opposition to this emerging Republican Party called themselves Federalists. Southern Federalists needed a leader who could match the intellectual firepower of Jefferson and Madison. They found that leader in John Marshall.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ENTANGLING ALLIANCES
August 1793 was a cruel month in Philadelphia. The unusually dry warm weather combined with the lack of sanitary conditions in the densely populated capital had triggered an outbreak of yellow fever. Every morning carts stacked with jaundiced corpses prowled the streets looking for more bodies. In the space of two months, about five thousand souls perished out of a population of about forty thousand.1 Half of the remaining population fled, including nearly all the nation’s leaders. Those inhabitants who remained covered their noses with cloths dipped in vinegar to avoid the stench of rotting flesh. People were too fearful to shake hands as they passed one another on the street. Physicians had no effective treatments, and many patients died after being treated with bloodletting. Both Hamilton and his wife fell gravely ill. They retreated to their estate outside the city, where they suffered tense days of violent fevers, chills, and vomiting before recovering. Jefferson callously accused Hamilton of faking his illness to win sympathy.2 Yellow fever continued its killing spree until the first chill of October.
The epidemic brought a quick end to the debate over neutrality. The specter of so much death had, for the moment, eclipsed partisan politics as the chief preoccupation of the capital. But beyond the capital, Genet began a speaking tour to drum up opposition to the president’s neutrality policy. Genet made increasingly aggressive public statements denouncing Washington during the autumn of that year. When Jefferson tried to dissuade him, Genet felt betrayed by Jefferson. He was unaware that the cabinet had requested his recall and that his speeches were triggering a powerful backlash among federalists. Federalist clubs now sprung up to compete with the republican societies.
Hamilton, though still recovering, began to orchestrate rallies around the country to show support for Washington and neutrality. Hamilton and Chief Justice John Jay leaked some of Genet’s correspondence to Jefferson that criticized Washington. Hamilton also persuaded Jay and New York Senator Rufus King to publish an article in a New York newspaper attacking Genet for interfering in the country’s domestic politics.3 Genet and his republican supporters launched a ferocious counterattack in the press and called on the U.S. attorney general to prosecute the chief justice for defaming Genet in public.4
Dozens of public rallies in support of Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality were held throughout New England, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. The most significant rally was held in Virginia, the heart of republican territory. To organize that critical event, Hamilton reached out to the man who was the effective leader of the federalists in Virginia: John Marshall.
Madison was visiting Monroe at his farmhouse in Charlottesville when he learned that Marshall was organizing a rally in Richmond in support of the Proclamation of Neutrality. Madison and Monroe appreciated how persuasive Marshall could be as a legislator and an advocate. Monroe wrote to Jefferson that Marshall “threatened the most furious attack on the French minister [Genet].”5
They were right. Marshall staged the Richmond rally with finesse. He won support from Governor Henry Lee, the last federalist governor of the commonwealth, and in a brilliant stroke, he invited his former law professor, George Wythe, Virginia’s leading legal authority and an associate of Jefferson’s, to preside over the meeting. Marshall knew that Wythe agreed with Hamilton’s analysis of presidential power. Wythe’s reputation added credence to the federalist argument while creating a veneer of nonpartisanship to attract Virginians who were not federalists. Marshall cleverly framed the meeting as a call to support Virginia’s own colossus, George Washington, but it was much more than that: It was the beginning of a resistance movement against the republicans. Marshall published a public notice in the capital’s newspaper—the Virginia Gazette, and General Advertiser—inviting all citizens to attend on Saturday, August 17, 1793. He drew the largest crowd of any rally in the nation. People flooded into the capital to demonstrate support for Virginia’s native son and president.6
Marshall drafted six resolutions to put before his fellow Virginians. All six were adopted unanimously by the hundreds in attendance. The resolutions began by endorsing “strict neutrality towards the belligerent powers of Europe” and praising “our illustrious fellow citizen, GEORGE WASHINGTON, to whose eminent services, great talents, and exalted virtues, all America pays so just a tribute” for the Proclamatio
n of Neutrality. Marshall condemned Washington’s critics as “wicked” for daring “to gratify [their] paltry passions at the risk of [their] country’s welfare, perhaps its existence.” And he blasted Genet’s “extravagant pretensions” and “indiscreet arrogance.” Marshall’s resolutions warned the republicans that “any interference of a foreign minister with our internal government or administration; any intriguing of a foreign minister with the political parties of this country; would violate the laws and usages of nations, would be a high indignity to the government and people of America, and would be a great and just cause of alarm.”7 Marshall had bested Jefferson and Madison in their own backyard.
The rally also adopted an address crafted by Marshall to President Washington to be published in the Richmond newspaper. The address was an unqualified endorsement of the president. In a rebuke to the republicans, Marshall wrote that “[a]s genuine Americans, with no other interest at heart but that of our country, unbiased by foreign influence, [we concur with the] propriety, justice, and wisdom” of the Proclamation of Neutrality.8
By implicitly questioning the motives and loyalty of republicans, Marshall became the target of republican attacks in pamphlets and newspapers around the state. Madison spread a false rumor that the National Bank that Hamilton had created had loaned Marshall the money to buy the Fairfax property. This was taken as evidence that Marshall was under the control of “monied interests.”9 Republicans charged that Marshall, like Hamilton, was a closet monarchist. They claimed that Marshall was a drunk—a false allegation that plagued his career. (Marshall’s sister-in-law swore that “he was, of all men, the most temperate.”) Marshall mused that “there appears to me every day to be more folly, envy, malice, and damn rascality in the world than there was the day before and I do verily begin to think that plain downright honesty and unintriguing integrity will be kicked out of doors.”10
In response to the Richmond meeting, Monroe wrote an essay under the pen name Agricola that was published in the Virginia Gazette, and General Advertiser in September. In it, Monroe charged that the organizers of the Richmond meeting, by which he meant his old school friend Marshall, were monarchists and enemies of France. He accused federalists of being “more attached to the Constitution of England, than to that of their own country.” Monroe alleged that federalists were determined to impose a constitutional monarchy “upon the ruin of our own [government].”11 He also attacked Chief Justice Jay for leaking Genet’s diplomatic correspondence.12 Jay was guilty of the leak, but Monroe accused Jay and Marshall of embarrassing the executive in the conduct of foreign relations, which was quite the contrary. This was the first instance in American politics—certainly not the last—in which a political party falsely alleged that leaked state department documents risked damaging our foreign relations.
Republicans were not troubled by the inconsistency of their position: on the one hand, attacking President Washington for exceeding his authority in foreign relations, and on the other hand, criticizing the federalists for compromising the secrecy of the secretary of state’s diplomatic correspondence. Though republicans extolled the virtues of popular democracy in theory, they now denounced federalist rallies as interfering with federal foreign policy.
Monroe’s letter initiated a round of responses and counterresponses with Marshall that ran in the Virginia Gazette, and General Advertiser from September through November 1793. This exchange crystallized two opposing views of America’s role in the world and clarified the positions of the two emerging political parties.
Marshall felt that these attacks were personal. He later commented that “[t]he resentments” of republicans “had been directed towards me for some time,” and he was “attacked with great virulence” by Monroe, who accused Marshall of being a tool of Hamilton’s.13 Marshall responded to Monroe under the pseudonym Aristides—after Aristides the Just, an Athenian reformer. Marshall certainly knew that the source of Agricola’s letter was either Jefferson, Madison, or Monroe, and since he was familiar with their writing styles, he probably suspected Monroe. It would be equally obvious to Monroe that the only man who could write so persuasively in defense of the Richmond resolution was Marshall. The use of pen names allowed these two old friends to attack each other in the strongest terms without risking a lawsuit or a duel.14
Marshall questioned Agricola’s (Monroe’s) loyalty for burying “the love of country under a zeal for party or affection for a foreign nation.” He skewered Monroe for opposing the right of citizens to voice their views by adopting resolutions. The citizens of Richmond, Marshall asserted, were not enemies of France or the French Revolution, but they were “every day offended by the most malignant charges against their beloved Chief Magistrate.” For Marshall, the issue was not how well we love France but rather how well we love our own country.15
Monroe, as Agricola, replied that Washington’s policies—tariffs on French imports, the appointment of Morris as envoy to France, and the Proclamation of Neutrality—all threatened America’s single alliance.16 He charged that there was a cabal within the government plotting against France and threatening to destroy universal “Liberty and Equality.”17 To suggest that Marshall and Hamilton were not committed to the values of the Revolutionary War in which they had risked their lives and served with distinction was infuriating.
Marshall, as Aristides, responded that any defense of Genet’s “extreme impropriety” would only “impair the affection of America” for France. By distinguishing support for the ideals of the French Revolution from support for Genet, Marshall undercut Monroe’s principal argument. Marshall railed against republicans for defending a foreign envoy who had meddled in U.S. politics and warned that if republicans aligned themselves with a foreign power it would threaten democracy.18
The Richmond meeting and the exchange with Monroe confirmed Marshall as the leading federalist in the nation’s largest state. There was no more effective advocate for federalist ideas south of Philadelphia. Marshall’s views on the president’s role in foreign relations had won a wide audience. President Washington and the federalist leaders knew they could rely on Marshall as a powerful ally in Jefferson’s base. The Genet affair and the debate over the Proclamation of Neutrality accelerated the formation of political parties in America. Americans often say that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” In fact, our party politics started at the water’s edge with the battle between the friends and foes of the French Revolution.
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AS A CONSEQUENCE of this debate, supporters of neutrality coalesced into the Federalist Party, and critics of the administration formed the Republican Party, led by Jefferson. The congressional election in 1794 was the first time that representatives ran and were elected on party tickets. The House of Representatives in 1795 had fifty-nine Republican and forty-seven Federalist representatives; the Senate had twenty-one Federalists and eleven Republicans. The bitter disagreement over the French Revolution had produced a familiar result—a divided government with a Senate friendly to the president and a House governed by a hostile Republican majority.
It would be a mistake to superimpose the longitudes of our liberal-conservative politics onto the political landscape of the early Republic. Both Republicans and Federalists were conservatives in the sense that they sought to protect the existing institutions and elites in their respective regions. Though Republicans were more likely to deploy terms such as “liberty,” “democracy,” and “equality” in challenging Washington and his allies, they were the party that fought to protect state power, slavery, and an agrarian economy from the reach of federal power and opposed the transformative influence of industry, finance, and cities. And though Federalists feared populism and revolution, they embraced a strong federal government as an instrument for modernization, industrialization, and urbanization. Marshall considered himself a conservative in the sense that he wanted to protect property rights and resisted following the path of the Frenc
h republicans. But his conservatism was like that of the British statesman Edmund Burke. Marshall was forward-looking, progressive, and reformist. By defending federal power and aligning himself with financial and urban interests, he favored a more modern national economy. In so doing, he challenged the power elite in Virginia and implicitly the slave plantation system from which that elite derived its wealth.
Marshall, like other Federalists, supported a standing military and a strong executive to safeguard the liberty won in the American Revolution against foreign adversaries. Federalists favored a policy of neutrality to keep a safe distance from foreign wars and high tariffs to protect infant manufacturing industries from European competition. By contrast, Republicans saw the French Revolution as a continuation of the American Revolution, and they embraced the revolutionary idea of liberating all the peoples of the earth from monarchy. Republicans had a missionary impulse to transform the world by force if necessary, but conversely they opposed a standing army as a threat to liberty. Southern Republicans opposed tariffs that drove up import prices because they had no manufacturing to protect.
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