Secretary of State Jefferson did not say a word of reproach to Freneau. Nor did James Madison. Meanwhile, Jefferson received another letter from Gouverneur Morris reporting that the National Assembly had put Louis XVI on trial for treason. With not a little irony, Morris wrote that it “would seem strange to a person less intimately acquainted than you are with the history of human affairs,” that “the mildest monarch who ever fill’d the French throne…a man whom none can charge with a criminal or crude act, should be prosecuted” as “one of the most nefarious tyrants that ever disgraced the annals of human nature.” Morris thought it was very likely that the King would be sentenced to death.
On the French border, a small battle took place in the Argonne Valley near the town of Valmy. The Prussian monarch, King Frederick William, had joined his Austrian counterpart in armed hostility to the Revolution. The French army repulsed the vaunted Prussian regulars, and they retreated back across the border. In Paris, the National Assembly had disbanded and become the National Convention—a term that signified a new revolution was about to be launched. The news of Valmy was hailed as a French Thermopylae. The next day the Convention voted to abandon the monarchy and declared a new era in history had begun. It was “Year One of French Liberty.”21
More French victories followed. Their revitalized armies drove the Austrians out of what is now Belgium. Other armies occupied many small German principalities to the east. Everywhere, the conquering revolutionaries told the local population that liberty was about to transform their lives. What the locals actually got was massive requisitions of cash and property to finance the penniless government in Paris. As one disillusioned resident of Mainz remarked, they would have felt less cruelly deceived if these apostles of liberty had told them from that start, “We have come to take everything.”22
In America, the French military victories were hailed by Philip Freneau and other admirers of the Revolution as proof that the upheaval was indeed what Secretary of State Jefferson called it: “The True God.” In December of 1792, “Civic Feasts” featuring fine wine, mountains of food, and innumerable toasts to France became frequent events in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York.
For Thomas Jefferson, an even more exciting event was a conversation he had with President Washington on December 27. According to the Secretary’s Anas, the President told him that he had begun to think America should concentrate on improving its relationship with France. Neither the Spanish nor the British were trustworthy. Both continued to treat America with barely concealed hostility. Jefferson could hardly believe his ears. He noted almost smugly that this idea had been his “polar star” as secretary of state, long before France’s armies won any battles.23
A few days later, the combination of Washington’s change of heart and the French military victories—and the enthusiasm they generated in America—moved Jefferson to write a long, angry letter to William Short, in which he all but demolished the young man for his negative reports on the French Revolution. “The tone of your letters had for some time given me pain on account of the extreme warmth with which you censured the proceedings of the Jacobins of France,” the Secretary of State told him. For his part, Jefferson considered the Jacobins “as the same with the Republican patriots of America.”
This was an astonishing statement, all by itself. The murderers of over one thousand people were morally equal to James Madison, James Monroe, and other followers of the Secretary of State? Even more amazing was what followed this sanctification. In the struggle to “expunge” the King, “many guilty persons fell without the forms of trial, and with them some innocent. These I deplore as much as any body, and shall deplore some of them to the day of my death. But I deplore them as I would have done if they had fallen in battle…. Time and truth will rescue and embalm their memories, while their posterity will be enjoying the very liberty for which they would never have hesitated to offer their lives. The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was there ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?…Rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is.”24
Jefferson went on to claim that his extraordinary sentiments “are really those of 99 in an hundred of our citizens.” He cited the feasts and “rejoicings” over France’s military successes. Even more important, he told Short that he had recently learned the President felt the same way. His “reserve” had hitherto made it difficult to discover his opinion of the revolution. That was why Jefferson had forwarded all of Short’s letters to Washington, even though he was troubled by their abusive tone. The most recent letter had forced the President to “break silence and notice the extreme acrimony of your expressions.”
Washington also supposedly said he had been informed that Short’s conversations “with our allies” had been as offensive as his letters. The President wanted Jefferson to remind Short that he was “the representative of [his] country and should realize his French listeners might conclude that all or most Americans had similar negative opinions.” The President urged Jefferson to remind Short that “France was the sheet anchor of this country.” Her friendship should be regarded as “a first object” of an American diplomat.
Diligent research by this and other historians has failed to find President Washington saying these things. In fact, Short is not even mentioned in the notes on Jefferson’s conversation with the President that survive in his Anas. By this time, it had become apparent to Washington that France was not in any way, shape, or form a sheet anchor to the American ship of state. Most of the government’s revenues were coming from duties on imports from Great Britain. France simply lacked the economy that could replicate the volume and variety of Britain’s commerce. It seems more than likely that Secretary of State Jefferson was concocting a rather cruel form of intimidation to make sure William Short said nothing else negative about the French Revolution.
William Short never responded to this letter. He also did not change his mind about the French Revolution. Many years later, he remarked on this fundamental disagreement between him and his mentor. “Mr. J’s greatest illusions in politics have proceeded from a most amiable error… too favorable an opinion of the animal called man…who, in mass form, [is] in my opinion, only a many headed monster. Mr. J, on the contrary, judging him [man] from himself, conceived that his sense of moral rectitude would suffice to induce him to keep a straight path, & that he had need of little restraint.” As a kind of footnote, Short added, “it was most difficult to make him change an opinion.”25
In Paris, the National Convention had been debating the fate of Louis XVI. By a margin of seventy-five in a legislative body of more than eight hundred, the vote was for death. On January 21, 1793, Louis was awakened in the predawn darkness to receive holy communion from the royal chaplain. He dressed simply and gave his valet his wedding ring to pass on to the Queen. When an escort from the Commune arrived, the King asked if he could have his hair cut now, rather than on the scaffold, like a common criminal. The committee said no.
Next came a two-hour ride in the executioner’s cart along Paris streets shrouded in clammy fog. Windows along the route were closed and often shuttered. The immense crowd lining the route was silent, as if they could not quite believe what they were seeing.
The King arrived at the scaffold at ten o’clock. He was helped up the steep steps and submitted to the standard haircut by the executioner. Turning, he spoke to the twenty thousand citizens crammed into the square. “I die innocent of all the crimes with which I have been charged,” he cried. “I pardon those who have brought about my death and I pray that the blood you are about to shed will never be required of France.”
A roll of drums ended his attempt to say more. Louis was strapped to a plank and pushed forward until his head was in a kind of brace. The executioner pulled a cord and the twelve inch blade hissed down to separate the royal head from its
body. The head toppled into a basket; the executioner pulled it out and held it up, dripping blood, for the people to bear witness that France was now a republic.
Schoolboys cheered and rushed to dip their fingers in the royal blood. One tasted it and said it was “well-salted.” The executioner sold snippets of hair and fragments of the king’s clothes. People strolled away, arm in arm, laughing. No one was even faintly aware that beheading the king would launch a European war of incredible ferocity that would bring tragedy into millions of French lives for the next twenty terrible years.26
In America, Thomas Jefferson and his followers received the news with something close to exultation. Philip Freneau set the tone with a mocking announcement in the National Gazette: “Louis Capet has lost his caput.” He went on to say that from his use of a pun, one might suppose he “thought lightly” of the King’s fate. “I certainly do,” he agreed. “It affects me no more than the execution of another malefactor.” He went on to declare the killing “a great act of justice.” Anyone who was shocked by it should be regarded with suspicion “of a strong remaining attachment to royalty.”27
Jefferson was in complete agreement with his spokesman’s sentiments. Although he had once said Louis was a good man, and even an honest man, he now declared that kings should be “amenable to punishment like other criminals.” Unsurprisingly, James Madison chimed in, announcing that if the King were a traitor, he should be “punished as well as another man.” The Congressman dismissed as “spurious” newspaper stories that argued for the King’s innocence. Instead, he continued to praise the Revolution in Paris as “wonderful in its progress and stupendous in its consequences.”28
Neither the Secretary of State nor his chief follower were aware that the French Revolution was about to arrive on their doorsteps with consequences that were disastrous for them and their new political party.
CHAPTER 13
Can America Remain Neutral in a Warring World?
ON FEBRUARY 1, 1793, the French National Convention declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands. By the time the news reached America in early April, President Washington had taken his oath of office for a second term. He was relaxing at Mount Vernon when a letter from Treasury Secretary Hamilton reached him, reporting that after several rumors about an outbreak of hostilities between France and England, “there seems to be no room for doubt of the existence of war.”
The President instantly saw a crisis in the making and rushed back to Philadelphia. In a letter to Secretary of State Jefferson, Washington said the federal government should use “every means in its power” to prevent citizens of either England or France from forcing America to deviate from “a strict neutrality.”1
The British had struggled to remain neutral in regard to the French Revolution. Prime Minister William Pitt and his cabinet thought it would be a mistake to try to intervene in the upheaval with force. That would only inspire another round of messianic fervor. But the men in control of the National Convention were already too infected by this emotion to accept a pragmatic arrangement. In January 1793, Armand Kersaint, a former naval officer who had fought in the war for American independence, made an inflammatory speech in the National Convention. He declared the oppressed English “sans-culottes” (without knee breeches—the poor) were ready and eager to join their French brothers and sisters in a war to “establish the liberty of the world.” They would greet a French invasion with enormous enthusiasm. The speech was greeted with wild cheers and stamping feet.2
The British would be easy to defeat, Kersaint declared. Their national debt was enormous; remove the bankers who funded it and the entire edifice would collapse. With the irony that the gods of history seem to relish, Thomas Paine had said almost exactly the same thing in his 1776 pamphlet, Common Sense, assuring the Americans that the British could not afford to send a large army to America. A few months later, the biggest army Britain had ever sent overseas arrived in New York’s harbor. Deepening the irony, Kersaint had recently written a pamphlet called Le Bon Sens (Common Sense).
In spite of this war talk from Paris, the British clung to a determination to remain neutral—until the National Convention decapitated King Louis XVI. A wave of abhorrence swept Britain. Prime Minister William Pitt called the King’s execution “the foulest and most atrocious act the world has ever seen.”3 But George III hesitated to declare war without a better pretext than the regicide. Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man had sold hundreds of thousands of copies in Britain. There was some truth in Kersaint’s portrait of the British lower class.
On February 1, the National Convention made up the King’s mind for him. The delegates also declared war on the Dutch Republic for resisting a French invasion. On March 7, deciding Spain was not sufficiently sympathetic to the birth of global liberté, another declaration of war placed her on the enemies list. By summer, the Spanish, fearing France intended to stir revolts in their colonies, would negotiate an alliance with their long-standing enemy, Britain.4
At a cabinet meeting in Philadelphia, President Washington asked his four advisors to answer thirteen questions. First and most important, should United States proclaim its neutrality? Other questions explored the nation’s relationship with the new French republic. Should America receive an ambassador from France? Did the Treaty of Alliance Benjamin Franklin had negotiated in 1778 still apply? Was France waging an offensive or defensive war? In the treaty, both nations had pledged mutual support if attacked by another power.
Secretary of State Jefferson listened with barely controlled outrage. Although the President had written out the questions, the Secretary was convinced that “the language was Hamilton’s and the doubts his alone.” The letter Washington had written to him from Mount Vernon stating strict neutrality as the centerpiece of America’s policy apparently had no impact. The Secretary of State seemed on the verge of paranoia about Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton.5
The proceedings of the cabinet meeting did little to lessen Jefferson’s agitation. He opposed an immediate declaration of neutrality. He thought it would be better to force both the warring nations to compete for America’s support. The idea that the French might make the United States an ally with a plethora of extravagant promises appalled Secretary Hamilton. America did not even have a navy. Its army, defeated twice by western Indians, was close to a joke. Major General Anthony Wayne was still training his raw troops in the western wilderness. The confident Indians, buoyed by British guarantees of support, had sent emissaries to tribes further west and north, urging the creation of an immense native army. On the southern frontier, the Creek Indians and American settlers were virtually at war. The pioneers had ignored the treaty Washington had negotiated with their chiefs in 1790.6
Hamilton said a war with England would be “unequal and calamitous” for the nation. America desperately needed more years of peace to create a stable country. The Treasury Secretary argued that France’s declaration of war made her the aggressor and the 1778 Treaty of Alliance void. Moreover, the treaty had been signed by Louis XVI’s government, which had ceased to exist.
Hamilton also declared that there had been nothing generous or idealistic in France’s motives when she supported America in 1778. The move had been part of their policy of weakening the triumphant British empire, which had shattered the French army and navy in the Seven Years War (1756–63). To Jefferson’s chagrin, the cabinet voted for an immediate declaration of neutrality.
Not content with this victory, Secretary Hamilton also opposed a friendly reception for the new French ambassador, Edmond-Charles Genet, who had recently landed in Charleston, South Carolina. Secretary of State Jefferson objected with ferocity and skill. Why make an enemy of the ambassador and the new French republic, which had as yet done nothing hostile to America? The President decided Jefferson was right.
The argument now shifted to the wording of the proclamation. The Secretary of State won an important opening point. He objected to the word neutrality, insisting that it woul
d offend France. Instead, the final proclamation, drafted by Attorney General Edmund Randolph, simply urged Americans to be “friendly and impartial” toward both warring powers. President Washington insisted that the document should also warn Americans against “committing, aiding or abetting hostilities against any of the said powers,” and forbid American ships to carry guns or ammunition to either combatant.
A far more serious dispute erupted over when and how the proclamation should be issued. Secretary of State Jefferson maintained that the president lacked the power to make this crucial choice between peace and war without consulting Congress. President Washington informed the Secretary of State that he considered the proclamation well within the powers of the presidency. Aside from this executive prerogative, Congress would not meet for several months. To summon them for a special session would alarm the nation. Far better to issue the proclamation immediately, without excessive fanfare.7
The proclamation became American policy on April 23, 1793—and soon had the word “neutrality” attached to it. Even Secretary of State Jefferson used the term although he remained unreconciled to it. In a letter to James Madison, he sneered at the “cold caution” of the government and the “milk and water views” of the text. Jefferson assured Madison that the British could have been browbeaten into granting “the broadest neutral privileges” if he had been permitted to bargain with them.8 The Secretary of State told Senator James Monroe that Hamilton—and Washington—were ready to tolerate “every kick” the British may “choose to give” the Americans. Jefferson knew both men would vent these opinions in Congress and in the newspapers.9
“I fear a fair neutrality will be a bitter pill to our friends,” he told Madison. Madison promptly rushed to assault the proclamation as motivated by “a secret Anglomany.” [A term invented by Jefferson to describe partisanship for Great Britain.] Congressman Madison called the proclamation a “most unfortunate error” that “wounds the national honor by seeming to disregard the stipulated duties to France.”10
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