No rival for the office had appeared, none was so much as mentioned. Unless Washington declined almost immediately, he would be reelected. That was certain. Equally was it certain that the contest for Vice President would be hard fought. Washington took no part in the battle for the Vice Presidency, which became an ugly fight against John Adams by George Clinton and the Republicans. The President of all the people did not feel that he could be the advocate of even so admirable a public servant as he considered his second in command to be.
When questions between the followers of Jefferson and of Hamilton were brought to a test in Congress, victory was more often with the Federalists than with the Republicans. A definite victory for the Federalists, Hamilton in particular, came late in the session after the impetuous Republican representative, William B. Giles, moved and the House directed, that Washington and Hamilton respectively supply information about loans and balances with the Bank of the United States. Giles’s resolutions were so worded that they might be regarded as heavy with innuendo that something was wrong. Hamilton met the demand so promptly and with such detailed and inclusive papers that even the voluble Giles was almost silenced. The other contest of importance between the parties was over a proposal to extend the assumption of state debts. After the usual debate, maneuver and minor amendment, the bill passed the House by the casting vote of the Speaker, with substantially the whole Republican contingent in opposition; but in the Senate the measure was defeated, 17 to 11, on its second reading. When defeats and victories for Hamilton and Jefferson had been set down, it might have been said that the Federalists had won the campaign but that the Republicans might win the war.
Washington observed the struggle with regret and strove both to reduce personal animosities and prevent damage to the new government. Long before the party battles ended in Congress he had evidence that the faith of Americans in him was undiminished. As the weeks had passed, he had made no statement concerning the election to the Presidency. In his own mind, he had been restrained by what he termed “strong solicitations” from saying that he would not accept reelection. Silence had been taken as consent: On February 13, 1793, when the vote was counted, John Adams was found the choice of seventy-seven electors and George Clinton of fifty for Vice President. Washington again had first place unanimously.
CHAPTER / 21
Washington was gratified at the unanimity that kept him in the presidential chair. This decision to stay on in public service had not exacted the sharp searching of the spirit as had that first decision to accept the Presidency in 1789; this time there was more of resignation than determination. There was comfort in the fact that his reputation had weathered the risk of four years’ exposure in high places. Ceremony and ceremonial had consumed many hours, but at no time had all of it been unwelcome. There had been much that was pleasurable associated with the office: warm affection of the people, their demonstrations of respect and reverence, unmistakable evidence of their belief in his leadership. Perennial nostalgia for Mount Vernon, however was the more poignant because of the hopeless illness of George Augustine, word of whose death February 5 had come within the week.
It was pleasant to think upon the progress the past four years had witnessed in the nation. America’s survival under the Constitution in a period mercifully unclouded by serious threat of war was satisfying and promising. The single imperative to progress, peace, now would assure extension of her enterprise and happiness to a far horizon. While the distant view was pleasing, there were, close by, objects that threatened to disturb an idyllic picture. The most intrusive was the difference between the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury. For only a few months had the President been aware of this growing disfigurement. Whether he could ignore it now seemed doubtful, though he was not without hope that Jefferson and Hamilton might be reconciled in their actions as, in his belief, they were in their principles. Their single common interest was their country’s ultimate good, yet where one sought strength for the nation, the other saw only the seed of dissolution; the ideal of the one was the abomination of the other. The once disciplined differences of political opinion no longer were restrained, now that vociferous champions of each Secretary took sides in Congress. Every issue reaffirmed the diametrical opposition of Federalists and Republicans.
Another unhappy prospect was that of increasing public censure of Washington as well as of his official acts. He, personally, had been spared editorial attack until late in 1792 and had been able to ignore newspaper controversy even when the tide of invective crept close to his own door. Once it was clear that the campaign to unseat Vice President Adams had failed, editor Freneau of the National Gazette opened his batteries on the President himself. Freneau had one criticism only—that the President’s fondness for pomp masked a tendency towards monarchism. In issue after issue the charge was reiterated. Washington said nothing, but to his sensitive spirit these remarks were agonizing. One thing the President knew for certain—he need not expect the immunity in his second term that had shielded him previously.
Alone in his carriage towards noon of March 4, Washington set out for the Senate Chamber where he would take his oath. The chair designated for him in the elegantly furnished room was the one usually occupied by the President of the Senate, Adams, who on this occasion was seated to the right. A place on the left was provided Justice William Cushing. Through the open doors of the Chamber, state and municipal personages, foreign diplomats and distinguished Philadelphians could see and be seen. Beyond them and around them every available space was filled with eager, solemn witnesses.
There was a brief pause. Then the President of the Senate arose and addressed Washington. The General stood and read his short Inaugural Address. The oath was administered and the President walked from the room as quietly as he had come. The solemnity of the occasion was the more moving because of its simplicity, but admiring restraint gave way to spontaneous cheers as the President left Congress Hall.
For weeks Washington had known that a visit to Mount Vernon would be necessary and had expressed his hope of going there by the first of April; but urgent business would have to be eased before the President could leave Philadelphia. Washington could justify no hope of immediate improvement in the troubled business of the Federal District. For months the surveyor, Andrew Ellicott, had been quarrelling with the District commissioners. The President did not know what was vexing Ellicott, but he was determined that the matter be settled and made plans to be at Georgetown about April 1. Washington was gratified that he was able to transmit to Congress Ellicott’s completed plat of the District and a formal report of progress from the commissioners. He was pleased by the “grandeur, simplicity, and beauty” of a plan for the Capitol drawn by Dr. William Thornton of Philadelphia. Moreover, he concurred with the commissioners that the President’s mansion should be erected only in part and built to “admit of an addition in future . . . without hurting but rather adding to the beauty and magnificence of the whole as an original plan.”
Complexities of the Federal City called forth far less concern than did foreign relations, particularly with Britain. Almost a decade since ink had dried on the Definitive Treaty of Peace, and England still had not acted to evacuate the seven military and trading posts that dotted the Canadian-American frontier from Lake Champlain to Lake Superior. These posts lay well within American territory as defined by the treaty; one of them, Detroit, was more a fortified garrison than a trader’s camp. All diplomatic efforts had been in vain. Another factor now complicated the situation. Throughout 1792 there had been reason to believe that the King’s Canadian officials were using their possession of the posts to revive and enlarge British influence over the Indians of the Northwest. Particularly suspect was Lt. Gov. John Graves Simcoe who enjoyed transcendent prestige in the councils of the Shawnee, Miami and Kickapoo. Precisely what Simcoe’s motive could be Washington did not know, but conditions north of the Ohio had become desperate in the past year. The ugly spectre of Indian war h
ung everywhere. The northwest frontier had been receding steadily for more than two years. In the last year, Indian depredation had caused farms to be abandoned on the Allegheny, the Muskingum and the Great Miami; families sought safety at Pittsburgh, Wheeling or Louisville; intrepid adventurers welcomed the cover of fortified posts at Marietta or Cincinnati. Military foresight was fundamental in every consideration of the problems of the West—even, in deliberations that seemed to point a way to pacification of the hostile tribes without resort to war.
Such deliberations were under way early in 1793 and the President was hopeful. During 1792 five emissaries had been sent by Knox to the Indian country, but only one, Gen. Rufus Putnam, had returned with a formal agreement, and in no way could his pact with a few unimportant headmen of the Wabash and Illinois tribes be thought prophetic. Its real significance lay in the possibility that the signers might work salutary influence on their agitated brethren, the Miami and Shawnee. This might be the outcome also of pacific exertion on the part of the Six Nations of Iroquois native councils. The Secretary of War had directed Samuel Kirkland in the spring of 1792 to solicit the help of the Six Nations and Hendrick Aupaumat was ordered abroad among the hostile tribes. The efforts of Aupaumat came to fruition early in October when a grand council of northern tribes met at Au Glaize, south of Detroit. Out of this convocation there issued a call to the United States government to treat for peace the following spring at Sandusky.
The President’s first idea had been to bring Cornplanter, one of the Iroquois spokesmen, to Philadelphia for consultation; but he had to be satisfied with information culled from Wayne’s dispatches, Wabash and Illinois headmen who came east with Putnam, and a commission from the Six Nations that arrived on the heels of Putnam’s party and dined with Washington, Knox and others on February 11. Opportunity for negotiation must not be lost; commissioners must be selected to treat with the savages in their own camp. Appeals to Timothy Pickering, Benjamin Lincoln and Beverley Randolph were accepted and their nominations were confirmed on March 2. The hostile tribes were set on the idea that their eastern boundary should be the Ohio. In a meeting of the Cabinet on February 25 Washington propounded these essential questions: Did the Executive have the power to relinquish to the Indians any lands beyond the Ohio acquired by previous treaty? Should the commissioners be instructed to effect such recessions if necessary to the achievement of peace? Hamilton, Knox and Randolph responded to both questions in the affirmative; Jefferson dissented on both. Majority opinion prevailed—the government must be willing to make concessions “essential to peace.”
The situation on the southern frontier was much the same as in the Northwest, but in this area the motive of foreign intrigue was better understood by the President. The intriguer was Spain, and for years her colonial officers in Louisiana and the Floridas had been bargaining for the friendship of the southern tribes. By the treaty of 1783 Great Britain had acknowledged the thirty-first parallel to be the southwestern boundary of the American republic; but in another article England relinquished to Spain her title to West Florida—defined at 32° 28’, that point more than a hundred miles farther north where the Yazoo River joined the Mississippi. For almost ten years the title to the Yazoo Strip, a rectangular tract extending eastward to the Chattahoochee River, had been in question. Spain preserved effective possession with a fortified post at Natchez and insisted that successful military operations had given her a rightful claim to former British territory as far north as the Tennessee and even the Ohio. Spain recognized that the most serious threat to her pretensions was the land hunger of Americans in Kentucky, the Tennessee country and Georgia. Her own twenty-five thousand subjects in Louisiana and the Floridas would not be able to check for long the pressure of aggressive American pioneers. Against this Spain must use her control of Natchez and New Orleans to close the Mississippi to American trade and maneuver for the cooperation of the four principal Indian nations of the South—their hostility to American expansion would provide a splendid barrier.
Almost continually since 1784 each development in the Southwest had been more deplorable than the one before it. Jay’s negotiation in 1786 with the Spanish Minister, Don Diego de Gardoqui, failed to win for Westerners the use of the Mississippi. Now the gifted chief of the Creeks, McGillivray, was in active alliance with Gov. Estéban Miró of Louisiana and, with Choctaws and Chickasaws participating, the southern border was in a state of war. Americans were not without blame; incursions on the traditional hunting grounds of the native had been lawless, frequent and often brutal. Most despicable of all was the conspiratorial attempt of James Wilkinson and other Kentuckians, after Congress had refused their petition for statehood in 1788, to annex a part of the West to the Spanish domain in return for commercial favors from Miró. Early in the first Federal administration it appeared that the situation was to improve. Statehood was granted to Kentucky on June 1, 1792, but by that time clouds again were darkening the southern border. A new Spanish governor, Baron Hector de Carondolet, arrived at New Orleans to replace Miró. Carondolet nourished hope that he might establish the supremacy of Spain in her most extreme pretensions. What was worse, his presence revived the threat of Indian war. As reports reached Philadelphia in the fall of 1792 that Spanish agents again were in contact with McGillivray, Washington found fresh cause for concern. Jefferson instructed the American representatives at Madrid, William Short and William Carmichael, to protest to the Court of Spain, but Carondolet accelerated his activities. The most recent news was that in January 1793 he had called the principal chiefs of the Creeks, Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Choctaws to a grand council at Pensacola, that the conference was poorly attended, and that McGillivray had died suddenly in one of the sessions. What course would the unpredictable Indians take now their wily leader was gone? Neither Washington nor Secretary of War Knox ventured a guess, but this they certainly knew: Carondolet’s plans were desperate and his influence was growing daily among the southern tribes. A general war might blaze on the border at any moment.
More and more the troubled affairs of France had been pressing upon the President. Each fresh report from abroad brought the thunder of the French Revolution closer to American shores. It had been known through the autumn of 1792 that the republican experiment of 1789 in France had escaped constitutional bounds and was proceeding towards a climax. Lafayette had been impeached for treasonable collusion with the King and proscribed; he fled Paris, and was captured by the Austrians and imprisoned at Olmutz. From a vantage point in the Netherlands, American Minister Short reported that “those mad and corrupt people in France . . . have destroyed their government,” that total power now resided “in the hands of the most mad, wicked and atrocious assembly that was ever collected in any country.”
There had come to Philadelphia in late autumn only a murmur of the Paris massacre in the first week of September. Then, on the afternoon of December 14, a cry Ça, Ira! and a peal of bells announced the arrival of “glorious and interesting advices” from Europe. A new French army had routed the Duke of Brunswick’s Austro-Prussian invaders on September 20; the National Convention had assembled in Paris, abolished the monarchy and proclaimed France a republic. These accounts satisfied the hunger of American Republicans for favorable interpretation of French affairs and provided them with an irresistible battle-cry against Federalists. Washington’s first thought was for the safety of Lafayette and his family. He directed Nicholas van Staphorst of Amsterdam to place 2310 Dutch guilders at the Marquise’s disposal and wrote her that this was “the least I am indebted for services rendered me by Mr. de la Fayette, of which I never yet have received the account.” The President subscribed himself to her service “at all times and under all circumstances,” but little could be undertaken either informally or officially to achieve the liberation of a gentleman who had given so bountifully to the cause of American freedom.
Jean Baptiste Ternant, the French Minister in Philadelphia, presented on February 8 a request that the American government
make immediate advances on the debt to France of three million livres, over $500,000, to be laid out in provisions. While regular installments on the debt had been suspended in October for lack of an effective government at Paris to receive them, Washington had authorized financial aid to French colonials beset by the insurrection in San Domingo. On February 13 the President authorized an advance of $100,000 to Ternant and confided to Randolph his dread of criticism should France be disappointed in her application. The counsel of the Attorney General was compromise: assure Ternant that all arrearage to the end of 1792 would be made in good time. Washington pondered the question and a week and a day later brought it up unexpectedly in a meeting of the Cabinet. It was voted three to one that “the whole sum asked for . . . ought to be furnished.” This victory of Jefferson over Hamilton was a small tactical one for American Republicans as well as a diplomatic victory for Ternant and France. The President’s fear of public censure made it possible.
While the fate of his application hung suspended, Ternant submitted to Jefferson formal notice that the National Convention had constituted France a republic. The Secretary of State had been expecting such an announcement and by February 23 had ready an exuberant reply:
The Government and the citizens of the United States . . . consider the union of principles and pursuits between our two countries as a link which binds still closer their interests and affections. The genuine and general effusions of joy which . . . overspread our country on seeing the liberties of yours rise superior to foreign invasion and domestic troubles have proved to you that our sympathies are great and sincere. . . .
Washington approved this declaration as soon as it came to his desk.
Jefferson’s extravagance may have sprung in some measure from an interview held on February 20 with Col. William S. Smith, son-in-law of Vice President Adams and former aide-de-camp to Washington. Smith had just come from France as the confidential agent of the Girondist party. He brought information that the leaders of the Gironde had shut their doors to Gouverneur Morris and were about to send a new Minister to replace Ternant. This diplomat, a young man named Edmond Charles Genet, would be empowered to purchase American provisions and grant broad commercial privileges to American shipping in the French West Indies. France could be expected to liberate these islands within the coming year; the adventurer Francisco de Miranda soon would strike the Spaniards at New Orleans with forty-five ships of the line. In this event, France would not object if the United States chose to attack the Spanish Floridas. Smith declared to Jefferson that the Gironde had entrusted him, rather than Ternant, to receive payments on the debt and to make extensive purchases of American provisions until Genet’s arrival.
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