Washington

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  News of the action of the Senate went out in every direction, and with as much praise, criticism or innuendo as excited pens could call forth. Washington was occupied on June 25 with two unrelated messages for the Senate, the more important of which concerned impending negotiation with the Creeks in Georgia and embodied his nomination of Benjamin Hawkins, Andrew Pickens and George Clymer as commissioners of peace. Both communications went forward that day and were confirmed the next. In the afternoon George Cabot and John Brown called to say that the Senate was about to adjourn sine die. Perhaps in private conversation with Cabot, Washington learned of the passage of a significant motion, the only one of the session: strict secrecy was rescinded, but Senators were enjoined not to disclose any part of the treaty until it had been ratified by presidential signature. One Federalist, Oliver Wolcott, felt the secret was out. “The right of conversing generally about it,” he said, “will be found equivalent to a publication.” Washington still had no comment, but he and Randolph were ready to accept the advice of Senator King and release an official copy for publication in Andrew Brown’s Philadelphia Gazette. Before this could be done, Bache’s Aurora on June 29 offered an abstract over the pseudonym “A Citizen.” Then, two days later, Bache advertised a pamphlet edition of the full text for twenty-five cents, and gave an explanation by Senator Stevens T. Mason, a Virginia Republican, that he had surrendered his copy in order to correct the “false impressions” of the abstract. As Madison later described it, the treaty now “flew with an electric velocity to every part of the union.”

  The Chief Executive now faced a mighty problem of procedure. As Randolph intimated, it had become the desperate design of the opposition “to embarrass the treaty by objecting to the course which is at hand.” Washington put the problem before his Cabinet on June 29. Opinions of Wolcott and Pickering came the next morning. They were unequivocal: the President need not deliver the revised clause to the Senate. Randolph reiterated this counsel in terms slightly less positive. For two full days Washington turned the problem of the treaty in his mind and reached no decision. Then he posted a letter to Hamilton. “My desire,” Washington wrote, “is to learn from dispassionate men, who have knowledge of the subject and abilities to judge of it, the genuine opinion they entertain of each article of the instrument, and the result of it in the aggregate. . . . My wishes are to have the favorable and unfavorable side of each article stated and compared together, that I may see the bearing and tendency of them and, ultimately, on which side the balance is to be found.” The President’s request ended on a hopeful note that Hamilton would find time to comply.

  Perhaps he sought only the views of “dispassionate men,” but Washington scarcely could fail to observe the reaction of citizens who hated the treaty with passion. Eleazer Oswald’s Independent Gazetteer opened the Fourth of July with a notice that henceforth the national anniversary would be an occasion of national mourning. Oswald’s harangue produced no immediate result; Philadelphians paid the President visits of congratulation in the usual manner. Then, towards midnight, a boisterous crowd appeared in the streets. A parade began, and overhead the rioters carried an illuminated effigy of Jay. The excited demonstrators marched on to Kensington, a suburb of the city, where the effigy was burned with shouts and huzzas. When Captain Morrell’s Light Horse appeared to disperse the mob, his men were stoned and a placard erected to mark the spot: “Morrell’s Defeat—Jay Burned—July 4, 1795.”

  These proceedings drew comment neither from the President nor from Jay, and the latter’s retirement from the Supreme Court caused Washington to write warmly to him in appreciation of six years of sterling service. The day he received Jay’s resignation, the President offered the Chief Justiceship to John Rutledge, who had been a member of the Court before his return to South Carolina in 1791 to become the leading jurist of that State. The Charlestonian, Washington knew, coveted the appointment; he knew also that Rutledge, an old and ardent Republican, was no admirer of Jay or of the present Court, but Rutledge was a seasoned jurist and a brilliant one. Washington made his choice “without hesitating a moment.”

  He must decide whether to ratify now, or whether to follow the counsel of his Cabinet and do so before Article XII had been adjusted. While he awaited the advice of Hamilton, routine duties occupied him. Then, on July 7 and 8, the mail from New York brought confirmations from Hamilton and Jay of a shocking report in the public prints: British cruisers again were seizing as contraband cargoes of American grain ships bound for France! Were not these confiscations proof that a new instruction had been issued which restated the obnoxious provision order of June 8, 1793? Washington was exasperated. England gave him cause to believe that the United States was the victim of a diplomatic deception, that no true basis of accommodation underlay the treaty. The President conferred at once with the Secretary of State. Randolph submitted a conclusive opinion on July 12: “The order for capturing provisions is too irreconcilable with a state of harmony for the treaty to be put in motion during its existence.” Here was Randolph’s idea of a way to remove every difficulty: He could be sent to the British Minister to declare unreservedly that the President had determined to sign the treaty without submitting a revision of Article XII to the Senate. Once this was understood, Randolph would attach a proviso: “The President cannot persuade himself that he ought to ratify during the existence of the order. . . . That order being removed, he will ratify with-out delay or further scruple.” If Hammond was agreeable, he would receive a memorial in this sense, to be delivered to his government with a revised draft of Article XII. The British Foreign Office could make reply to William A. Deas, chargé ad interim at London, and final ratifications could be exchanged at Philadelphia. This procedure, Randolph thought, would be attractive to Hammond because it gave him a role in the exchange of ratifications; it would be attractive to Grenville, who was eager for final action, because it overcame all delays foreseen in the assignment of a new American representative to perform the function of the absent Pinckney.

  Randolph’s plan seemed a sensible one. Washington gave the Secretary permission to carry it out. Soon Randolph was back to report an unsatisfactory conversation with Hammond. The British Minister actually had asked if it might be sufficient to lift the order temporarily, then renew it after the ratification! Further, he wished to know if the President was “irrevocably determined” not to ratify while the order remained in effect. When Randolph told Washington he had given no positive answer to this second question, the President’s comment was sharp. Hammond might have been informed, he said, that he would never sign a pact with Great Britain while her warships seized American cargoes and insulted the American flag in the Atlantic! If Pitt and Grenville came to their senses, he would ratify; if they failed to do so, he would not. Randolph was instructed to draft a memorial for Hammond and prepare a revision of Article XII so that the American government would be ready for the eventuality of a ratification.

  While England’s caprice had resolved the mind of the President, he was glad to receive in the post of the thirteenth a paper Hamilton called “Remarks on the Treaty” though it bore signs of necessary haste. The New Yorker’s comment was extensive on several articles but fragmentary on others. Article XII he dismissed as “an exceptionable one” without analysis of the reasons which made it so. On the whole, he concluded, the treaty was in “the true interest of the United States” and ought to be accepted. A second mail from Hamilton came, and a third. In the last he gave his opinion that the revision of Article XII must be approved by the Senate before ratification. This view surprised Washington; would Hamilton please amplify in further correspondence? “Notwithstanding one great object of my visit to Mount Vernon is relaxation,” the President wrote on July 14, “yet to hear from you in the sentiments entertained of the treaty . . . would be considerable gratification.”

  Washington started for Mount Vernon July 15. It was good to leave the city; and perhaps more so this time than previously. In Washington’s word, P
hiladelphia had been “suffocating” for the past week. Although he did not say it, the problems of the presidential office were more oppressive at this moment than the heat. His responsibilities never were larger, his role never more difficult. “A hot and disagreeable ride,” Washington said of the six days of travel that took him down the familiar road to Virginia. He made Wilmington the first night and Susquehanna Ferry the next, but not until the eighteenth did the President’s entourage reach Baltimore, and there came another unexpected delay. An express from Boston was put into his hands: the people of Boston had voiced disapproval of the treaty and, by way of the enclosed address of their Selectmen, implored the President not to sign it. Washington wrote hastily to Randolph: “The application is of an unusual and disagreeable nature and . . . is intended, I have no doubt, to place me in an embarrassed situation from whence an advantage may be taken.” Would the Secretary of State consult with his colleagues and decide whether a reply was proper? If so, one should be drafted in “accord with all your ideas,” and sent quickly to Mount Vernon for signature.

  The President the next night lodged at Georgetown and was ready on July 20 for a conference with the commissioners of the Federal District. To his dismay, the commissioners presented a complaint that went much beyond the usual personal bickering. Payments were not arriving on schedule from Robert Morris and John Nicholson, whose extensive holdings now included seven thousand lots originally purchased by James Greenleaf. Further deficiencies in the stipulated monthly payment of $12,000 would necessitate discharge of irreplaceable workmen. Such a circumstance could result in suspension of work on the public buildings. The President saw yet another danger: Morris’s failure to make good his obligations “would throw such a cloud over the public and private concerns of the City, and would be susceptible of such magnified and unfavorable interpretation, as to give it a vital wound.” When Washington took leave of the commissioners after a full day of discussion, he promised to urge Morris and Nicholson to deliver funds at once.

  The President reached Mount Vernon by the dinner hour. He planned to extend this vacation to the end of September if possible, but it was only too obvious that public affairs could not be forgotten even for a day. Two communications from Randolph awaited him, one enclosing a recent issue of the Pittsburgh Gazette which featured an inflammatory speech against the treaty by H. H. Brackenridge, the Western agitator. “A Solomon is not necessary to interpret the design of the oration of Mr. Brackenridge,” Washington noted cryptically in reply to the Secretary of State on the twenty-second. This same letter set forth the President’s decision on the treaty; Randolph was instructed to make sure the other Cabinet officers understood the decision. Should it prove that no British maritime order was in effect, “a conditional ratification . . . may on all fit occasions be spoken of as my determination. . . . My opinion respecting the treaty is the same now that it was: namely, not favorable to it—but that it is better to ratify it than to suffer matters to remain as they are, unsettled.” In the next post came Randolph’s excited report that other towns appeared to be following the example of Boston; the commotion over the treaty, he thought, was “the greatest in its consequences which had occurred under this Government.” Should he hasten to Mount Vernon to consult with the President?

  The spread of popular protest might have been expected. Republican newspapers were lending much space to criticisms of the treaty, and the Aurora urged all American towns to emulate the proceedings of the Boston Selectmen. While he could not yet have known details, Washington must have heard of the mass meetings a week earlier in Portsmouth and in Charleston. “The same leaven that fermented a part of the town of Boston,” he answered Randolph on July 24, “is at work, I am informed, in other places. But whether it will produce the same fruit remains to be decided.” If circumstances became such that he must consult with the Secretary of State, Washington would prefer to return to Philadelphia rather than summon Randolph to Virginia: “If matters are peculiarly embarrassed, I should be on the theatre of information with documents and other aids about me that could not be had here.”

  Three days later news from New York crystallized every dread expectation. A recent commotion in that metropolis dwarfed the tumult of lesser towns. By wide newspaper advertisement and circulation of handbills, New York Republicans had been able to arouse great enthusiasm for a town meeting scheduled July 18, in front of City Hall. Federalist merchants hastily declared their approbation of the treaty in the press, but the crowd which gathered in Wall Street at the appointed hour was large and rowdy. Hamilton appeared to defend the treaty, but shouts for “A Chairman! A Chairman!” subdued him and allowed Col. William S. Smith to be elevated to that role. When Hamilton and Peter Livingston appealed to Smith for a chance to present their opposite views, Smith appealed to the crowd and Hamilton was overruled. The chairman then asked the multitude to divide left and right, for and against the treaty, and confusion was compounded. Hamilton called for full and free discussion, but Brockholst Livingston deprecated this as a waste of precious time. Thereupon, those who had gone to the right marched off to the Battery and burned copies of the treaty before the residence of Governor Jay. Soon they returned, carrying French flags and accompanied by seamen from French ships in the harbor, and Hamilton became the target of a barrage of stones. When one struck him in the head and drew blood, he left the scene and every supporter of the treaty departed with him. Brockholst Livingston then moved that an address be prepared and sent to the President; a list of fifteen committeemen for this work was read rapidly by another Republican. As soon as these names were affirmed by acclamation, the crowd dispersed and the chosen ones retired to draft a set of resolutions.

  Their twenty-eight resolves Washington now read with care. They repeated and enlarged the charges of the Boston Selectmen. The treaty was damned for the permission it gave British troops to remain eighteen months more in the northwest posts and its failure to obtain compensation for twelve years’ illegal occupancy; its failure to secure payment for slave property carried away during the Revolution; its failure to stipulate restitution for recent maritime outrages; its indulgence of the old claims of English creditors; the heavy advantage given to Britain in every commercial clause; and, above all, the patent hostility of the whole instrument to France. “Not willing to lose a post day,” the President wrote instantly to Randolph, “I hasten to send these resolutions. . . .” Would the Cabinet please consider the advisability of a reply?

  The next post brought an address favorable to the treaty, adopted in counter action by the New York Chamber of Commerce July 21, but vastly more significant was news from Wolcott of demonstrations in Philadelphia on July 23 and 25. As announced by an inflammatory handbill, a town meeting was held on the twenty-third in the yard of the State House. The turnout was poor—no more than 1500—and adjournment followed the selection of a committee of fifteen, under Dr. William Shippen, to frame resolutions for the President. A second meeting on the twenty-fifth also proved thin in numbers; but those who came included such conspicuous Philadelphians as Alexander J. Dallas and Thomas McKean, respectively the Commonwealth Secretary and Chief Justice, the merchant prince Stephen Girard, and the popular Irish orator Blair McClenachan. An address, primarily the work of Dallas, was read aloud; a show of hands gave almost unanimous approval to each paragraph. Then McClenachan, in a high state of excitement, waved a printed sheet above his head and shouted: “What a damned treaty! I make a motion that every good citizen in this assembly kick this damned treaty to hell!” His followers immediately impaled the treaty on a pole and carried it to the house of Pierre Adet, but the French Minister did not respond to their calls to join the riot. The mob then paraded to George Hammond’s residence, stoned his windows and burned the treaty on his doorstep. Another copy was destroyed in front of the house of the British consul, Phineas Bond, and Senator William Bingham was insulted similarly.

  Four enclosures from the Secretary of State came in the same mail that brought Wolcott�
�s account of the agitation in Philadelphia. Here were the Cabinet consensus of an appropriate reply to the Boston Selectmen, Randolph’s draft of the memorial to be presented to the British Minister, a proposed revision of Article XII, and an outline of instructions for the American agent who would handle the exchange of ratifications in London should the treaty be signed. Washington examined each, then made up his mind to return to Philadelphia. A meeting of the Potomac Company in Alexandria on August 3 would prevent his departure until that date; but he might be expected at the seat of government a few days thereafter.

  The President meant to attend the meeting in Alexandria and then start for Philadelphia on the same evening, but torrential rain made travel impossible. Water was high and rising in every stream; most of the bridges were gone. Not until August 5 was there a regular delivery of mail to Mount Vernon. That post brought word from Lear that the Potomac Company would convene in Georgetown the next day. He would try to be there, Washington replied; but “such an accumulation” of official mail was expected momentarily that probably it would be the eighth before he had answered it and could start for Philadelphia. Would Lear please represent him if he did not appear?

  The Philadelphia mail arrived and was found to contain three overdue letters. One from the Secretary of State dated July 29 gave the unanimous opinion of the Cabinet that the President ought not to return hurriedly to the seat of government; obvious haste, it was thought, would show the Chief Executive to be excited by the recent town meetings and would endow these demonstrations with a new importance. Randolph reversed this advice in a communication of July 31; late developments, he wrote, made it necessary for the President to be at Philadelphia. A letter from Pickering was more specific and more alarming: The British Minister had been recalled and would be leaving in three weeks; “some useful and perhaps very important arrangements” might be made before Hammond’s departure. Then the Secretary of War added this passage: