By the first of December snow was falling in Philadelphia, the last trace of the fever had vanished, and members of the Third Congress were arriving daily. Washington was at his city residence when notice came on December 2 that a quorum existed in each House. The next morning, as the President entered the Senate Chamber to deliver his fifth Annual Address, he may have taken solace in the thought that Congress now would share tribulations which had been exclusively his for so long. His explanation of the policy of neutrality was direct and unpretentious, vigorous in its simplicity. “It seemed . . . my duty to admonish our citizens of the consequences of a contraband trade and of hostile acts. Under these impressions . . . the Proclamation was issued. In this posture of affairs, both new and delicate, I resolved to adopt general rules which should conform to the treaties [of 1778] of Congress to correct, improve or enforce this plan of procedure.” There followed recommendation for stronger defences, brief reference to the necessity of punitive war against Ohio tribes, and a request that newspapers be freed of transportation tax.
Two days later the President’s special message on French and British relations went to Congress. Separate messages on Spain and the Barbary States were withheld until the sixteenth in order that latest dispatches from abroad might be included. Washington might have burdened each message with severe comment; instead, he let the accompanying documents speak for themselves. Only when he came to the subject of Genet did the President show asperity. The French Minister, Washington told Congress, evidenced “nothing of the friendly spirit of the nation which sent him.”
As Congress began its deliberations, the business of the Executive went on. Until France recalled her unwelcome diplomat, communications from Genet must be given some formal acknowledgment. There was need now to anticipate a request by France for recall of Morris, long persona non grata at Paris, and, more immediate, a need to replace Jefferson. The resignation of the Secretary of State would be effective at the close of the year. To Jefferson’s formal note of resignation the President replied generously. Washington invited Randolph to succeed Jefferson, and the day after Christmas an interview at the President’s house confirmed the new arrangement. The Attorney General would take Jefferson’s portfolio and his would go to Justice William Bradford of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Randolph was the logical choice and the President’s personal preference. Since the estrangement of Hamilton and Jefferson in 1792, Randolph had been his closest adviser. Time and time again Washington had sought the confidential opinion of his Attorney General; time and time again Randolph’s impartial view of a question had paralleled his own. Randolph desired the appointment; the President was pleased to offer it to this old and trusted friend.
The General spent the holiday season in contemplation of the problems of a planter. Three letters went to Pearce. Washington outlined an elaborate system of crop rotation and completed a map of the five farms on the Potomac. As 1793 came to a close, one last act was characteristic. On December 31 he asked Bishop William White of Philadelphia how, “without ostentation or mention of my name,” he could contribute to the relief of the widows and orphans of the city. “The pressure of public business,” he wrote, “hitherto has suspended but not altered my resolution.” The President’s gift of $250 followed on New Year’s Day.
Friends of the administration viewed the advent of 1794 with happiness and hope. To Washington clouds were visible, and they darkened with the intelligence which came in that month. General Wayne complained of poor supplies, expiring enlistments, even of sedition among officers of his Legion. Latest word from Spain told of little progress in the negotiation for commercial privileges on the Mississippi, and Pinckney wrote gloomily from London that no relaxation need be expected in the policies of the British admiralty. Worst of all, there was alarming news from South Carolina and from Kentucky which prompted the President again to consider immediate revocation of Genet’s diplomatic status.
Even before the first of the year, stories were spreading to the effect that Genet had sponsored recruiting five thousand South Carolinians in the service of France. The Minister admitted that “several brave republicans” had been commissioned, but he denied any direct part in preparations against the Spanish Floridas. There followed Governor Moultrie’s confirmation of recruiting activities in South Carolina and reports of the movements of Clark in Kentucky and of publication of inflammatory resolves of the Democratic Society of that State. Genet was at the bottom of an elaborate plan of war against the Spanish colonies, and discontented Americans seemed determined to carry it out. Washington’s anxiety mounted. Evidences of the diplomat’s intrigue were forwarded to Congress, but on the twentieth Washington was able to communicate the long awaited word that made action unnecessary: France was sending a new envoy to the United States.
The President’s own relations with Congress were under strain. On January 24, with a view to embarrassing the administration, Senate Republicans asked the Chief Executive to transmit copies of the diplomatic correspondence of Gouverneur Morris, American Minister to France since June 1792. Federalists feared that Morris’s dispatches would show the American envoy to have been violently at odds with both the personalities and the principles of the French Revolution. Washington watched with interest the progress of a debate which began in the House of Representatives on January 3. That day Madison, armed with Jefferson’s report on foreign trade, rose to offer startling resolutions. Let Congress, the Virginian said, lay new duties against ships and goods of those nations with which the United States had no commercial treaty—let there be retaliation in kind against the maritime outrages of Britain! Federalists were aghast; these Republican resolutions seemed to invite war. By the last week of January Federalists and Republicans locked every day in verbal battle. An issue of greatest consequence had been joined. Some who wished Madison well doubted the prudence of his move at so uncertain a juncture in the foreign affairs of the nation. Federalists could interpret the resolutions only as an irresistible challenge to England, a headlong plunge to war. They tried desperately to kill the measures, but the Republican majority contrived a postponement of debate to the first Monday in March.
No sooner were Madison’s resolutions put aside than the House shifted attention to the “Algerine business,” business in which England again played the villain’s part. Indignation against the Barbary pirates themselves was no higher than that against Great Britain, their alleged prompter. Federalists called for construction of a naval force of six frigates. The naval bill narrowly survived a test vote on February 21. Its passage seemed probable.
Washington’s sixty-third birthday was notable for festive parading, pealing bells and artillery salutes. To the President, it had importance as the formal termination of Genet’s nine month’s residence as Minister of the French Republic. Genet’s successor, Joseph Fauchet, had disembarked at Philadelphia the day before and had promptly delivered a request which both Randolph and Washington had anticipated: Robespierre’s Jacobin government asked for the arrest and return of Genet to France for punishment. Washington would take no agency, even remote, in the bloody business of the French Terror; whatever Genet had done or tried to do, the President did not intend to order the young man to his doom. If Genet wished, it was agreed, he might have political asylum in America.
Randolph ushered Fauchet into the President’s parlor on February 22. The new Minister spoke through an interpreter and his reception was brief, but Washington liked the grave, handsome face of this Frenchman in his mid-thirties who somehow possessed the good sense not to argue unduly for Genet’s deportation. Fauchet left, and at half past twelve members of Congress came in a group to pay respects to the President. He greeted the legislators cordially, invited them to partake of cake and punch, and similarly entertained others who visited him that afternoon. In the evening Washington escorted Martha to a ball given in his honor by the City Dancing Assembly.
At last Genet was technically powerless, but movements inaugurated by him months earli
er now assumed ominous proportions. Every day it became more certain that the French diplomat had planned to involve the United States in war with Spain. Evidently a two-edged attack was projected against the Spanish dependencies in North America; South Carolinians and Georgians under Samuel Hammond would strike East Florida and take St. Augustine; Kentuckians under Clark would seize St. Louis, then move down the Mississippi against Louisiana. When Clark published a call for recruits and Governor Shelby wrote defiantly from Kentucky that he possessed no authority to restrain armed men from leaving his State, Washington realized that the axe of war was poised. Hastily, he drafted a stern admonition to American citizens who might be involved and sent the paper to Randolph for suggestions. Towards the end of the month, unofficial reports of actual mobilization by Clark alarmed Federalists profoundly. Anxious to maintain the good impression he had made, Fauchet issued a proclamation on March 6 which revoked all commissions granted by Genet to Clark and his cohorts. Federalists in the Senate tried desperately to enact legislation that would define such filibustering expeditions as criminal, but only when the President submitted a documented complaint from the Spanish commissioners did Republican members yield to the bill on March 13. To Washington’s chagrin, the House laid the measure aside after two readings. This left the President to take action on his own, but Randolph seemed to fear that such a gesture by the Executive would aggrieve Republicans in the West and the South. On March 24, a month after Washington had given the Secretary of State his draft, a fair copy was returned. The President signed the Proclamation the same day. Americans were warned “to refrain from enlisting, enrolling or assembling themselves for such unlawful purposes, and from being in any wise concerned . . . as all lawful means will be strictly put in execution for securing obedience to the laws and for punishing such dangerous and daring violations. . . .” General Wayne was instructed to post troops on the Ohio to intercept Clark’s expedition should it attempt to pass. Clark did not move his freebooters against Louisiana. By the end of March the threat of precipitate war with Spain had passed.
Trouble with Spain would have been doubly calamitous at a time when difficulties with Great Britain were striking a new height. Multiplying reports from the Caribbean made it appear that English naval commanders were instructed to seize every neutral vessel in trade with the French West Indies. Federalists read of the depredations in stunned disbelief. Did Britain intend to force the United States out of her neutral position? It was fortunate that Congress found itself sufficiently relieved of party strife to take up problems of defence in earnest. By the beginning of March full attention focused on military preparation. Washington asked the Secretary of State to prepare an accounting of all spoliations against American vessels by the powers at war. When Randolph’s report went to Congress on March 5, many were surprised at the Secretary’s statement that all belligerents, France included, were in the habit of seizing neutral ships in West Indies waters. This may have given solace to Federalists who continued to hope that Britain soon would relax her maritime rigor, but many acknowledged Anglophiles wondered and doubted. Knox was heard to say that war with England had become inevitable. Radical Republicans would welcome it; some even urged immediate attack on Detroit. Before the end of the second week in March, the House had passed the naval construction bill in original form, together with a bill for harbor fortification and a large army appropriation.
While vigorous military measures were imperative, it remained the hope of Federalists to avert a rupture in England. Their faith in the President was large; their dependence on his popularity was total. They looked to the Senate for inspiration and, within that body, their spokesmen were contriving a plan to salvage the abused neutrality of the nation. The Secretary of State had suggested to Washington the idea of a special conciliatory mission to England, and on March 10 Oliver Ellsworth appeared at the President’s house with definite proposals. The Connecticut Federalist asked if an envoy extraordinary might not be sent to London to negotiate a general settlement of Anglo-American quarrels. Washington was uncommunicative at first, then interested as Ellsworth enumerated the probable achievements of such an undertaking. When the Senator mentioned Hamilton as a suitable agent, Washington interrupted the discourse—Hamilton simply did not possess the confidence of the American people. Ellsworth departed without satisfaction of a commitment from the President.
Madison’s “restrictive” resolutions had been all but forgotten in the excitement of preparation for war. William M. Giles made an unsuccessful effort to revive them on March 14. Two days before, Theodore Sedgwick introduced decisive resolutions of his own. The Massachusetts Federalist called for establishment of a wartime army of fifteen auxiliary regiments, each of one thousand men, and for a short-term Presidential embargo on American shipping. Madison thought he saw the hand of Hamilton behind these proposals, and he was not mistaken. Republicans showed surprise at the new belligerency of the Federalists, but certain it was that something must be done. The enforced idleness of embargo, Federalists reasoned, was at least preferable to confiscation of cargoes at sea. Perhaps an interruption of the lucrative American trade would bring England to her senses. On March 25 the House called for Executive enactment of a thirty-day embargo. The Senate concurred the next morning, and Washington received a unanimous opinion of the Cabinet that state governors be instructed to detain vessels by use of militia if necessary. On the twenty-eighth the President proclaimed the embargo in force.
Next in the business of the House were Sedgwick’s proposals for invigoration of the army, and news reached Philadelphia which gave the measures fresh importance. On February 10 the Governor General of Canada, Lord Dorchester, had delivered an inflammatory address to western Indians who visited him that day at Quebec. Soon, Dorchester was alleged to have said, the United States and Great Britain would fight; soon, the King’s native warriors might reoccupy much of their former territory. If war was as near as Dorchester seemed to think, it was comfort that Congress possessed the caliber to act decisively. On March 31 the House adopted resolutions for mobilization of eighty thousand effective militia. The day following, Sedgwick’s proposal for an auxiliary army, now of twenty-five thousand rather than fifteen thousand troops, met approval.
In the wake of the ominous news from Canada came good news from London. On April 4 the President submitted to Congress three dispatches from Minister Pinckney. The first two told of the order of November 6, 1793, instructing British commanders to seize neutral vessels in trade with the French West Indies. The third conveyed information that, on January 8, William Pitt’s government had revoked the order. Confiscations in the Caribbean would cease. George Hammond rushed to Hamilton with the glad tidings; but, to the dismay of the British envoy, he found this “most moderate of the American ministers” not at all ready to forgive and forget. Nor were other Federalists sympathetic. The fact remained that Pitt still meant to seize American cargoes of foodstuff bound for the continental ports of France. While to some members in the House the prospect of peace was bright again, unanimity did not prevail. On March 27 Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey had introduced a surprise resolution: Let the Treasury sequester all private debts due British merchants as a guarantee to American shippers for indemnification of their losses at sea! Happily for Federalists debate was postponed, but on April 7 Republican Abraham Clark rose to demand absolute suspension of commercial intercourse between Americans and Britons. Non-intercourse, Clark insisted, must be the rule until England made restitution for every illegal seizure—and until George III had withdrawn every Redcoat from posts on American soil!
Clark’s proposal dramatized a situation which had become intolerable. With the King’s officers in Canada poised for war, British occupation of northern posts constituted a threat of the gravest kind. In the view of Federalist leaders the frontier problem and every other Anglo-American difficulty might be resolved by fulfillment of the plan to send a special emissary to London. A month with the idea before him did not overcome Washington
’s reluctance to supersede Pinckney with an extraordinary mission, but Randolph’s favorable argument finally convinced the President of its expediency. Who should be sent? On April 8 Robert Morris came to Washington’s office as informal spokesman of Senate Federalists. Morris favored Hamilton, and once more the President had to state his firm objection. He had been thinking instead, he told Morris, of three men, the country’s most experienced diplomatists—Vice President Adams, Secretary Jefferson and Chief Justice Jay. Probably Morris remarked that Adams was not suited temperamentally for the present task; Jefferson disqualified himself for the mission by his obvious adoration of France. Jay, the Senator intimated, would be acceptable. Washington wondered. To Federalists, of course, Jay would be acceptable—but to Republicans perhaps only Hamilton himself would prove more objectionable! A nomination of Jay would not be universally applauded, Washington knew, however strong national desires for peace might be, but he invited Jay to dinner that evening.
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