The Great Divide

by Thomas Fleming

  To this battle plan the Secretary added a P.S. “The Pres is anxious to know your sentiments on the Proclamation. He has asked me several times. I tell him you are so absorbed in farming you write to me always about ploughs, rotations, etc.” This addendum was probably designed to distance Madison from Washington, and reduce the chances of an invitation to join the cabinet.2

  Some readers may puzzle over the President’s desire to keep Jefferson or his alter ego, Madison, in the cabinet. What did Washington gain from such an arrangement? Madison’s reply to Jefferson reported a conference with Monroe. They decided Washington had been using Jefferson as a “shield.” There was a core of truth in this observation. The President, confronted by the emergence of a new political party, saw the value of keeping its founder or one of its leaders in the cabinet. The arrangement gave the administration an aura of neutrality—and a largely invisible way of communicating either disagreement or agreement with the opposition. Here was more evidence of George Washington’s political skills.

  Jefferson soon accepted Washington’s proposal to stay until December and got to work on the letter to the French government requesting Genet’s recall. The eight thousand-word message was a masterful balancing act. Instead of denouncing Genet’s reckless statements, Jefferson wrote: “We draw a veil over the sensations which these expressions excite…We see in them neither a portrait of ourselves nor the pencil of our friends, but an attempt to embroil both.” Two decades later, another secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, read a copy in the State Department’s files, and called it a “perfect model of diplomatic discussion.”3

  It would take another six months for the French government to order Genet home. By that time, all the men who had sent him to America had been guillotined by the Jacobin Committee of Safety under that implacable moralist, Maximilian Robespierre. Among the dead was Armand Kersaint, the delegate who had assured the National Convention that Britain would be easy to conquer.

  When the Committee of Safety read Jefferson’s letter, they apologized profusely for Genet’s wild schemes and repudiated all of them—including the attack on New Orleans and the insurrection in Canada. Having rediscovered the importance of executive power in government, Robespierre was reportedly fascinated by the American presidency and doubly appalled by Genet’s personal attacks on Washington.

  In Philadelphia, the frenzy over Genet was all but snuffed out by a ghastly visitation of the eighteenth century’s most fearsome disease, yellow fever. People began taking to their beds, terrified as the fatal color spread up their arms and down their bodies. Within twenty-four hours, many were dead. By August 25, President Washington was telling correspondents that he and Martha were well but “the city is very sickly and numbers are dying daily.” Thousands began fleeing to the healthier countryside along the winding Schuykill River. Philadelphia soon resembled a ghost town, with empty streets and shuttered houses everywhere.4

  One by one, newspapers ceased to publish. Business came to a virtual standstill. For Washington, the disease acquired a personal dimension when Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton and his wife contracted it. Fortunately for them, they had a friend in the medical profession, Edward Stevens, the son of the merchant for whom Hamilton had clerked in his youth in the West Indies. A brilliant doctor, he scorned the primitive tactics of Dr. Benjamin Rush and other physicians—bleeding and purging, until the patient was often too weak to resist the disease. Stevens’s treatment saved both Hamiltons. But for a few weeks, the Secretary of the Treasury was a shattered ghost of the vigorous warrior of the political wars.

  Philip Freneau was one of the few editors who persisted in publishing the National Gazette throughout the worst of the epidemic. But he pursued an editorial policy that did nothing to soften the impact of the catastrophe on his circulation. He continued to rhapsodize about the wisdom of Citizen Genet and the French Revolution. By mid-October, yellow fever had all but vanished and the city’s normal life began to resume. But the plague, combined with the editor’s stubbornness, became a literary death sentence. On October 27, 1793, the National Gazette published its last issue.

  Neither Thomas Jefferson nor James Madison said a word on the paper’s behalf. The editor’s violently pro-French politics no longer fit into their plans for the future of the Democratic-Republican Party. They let Freneau write frantic letters, vainly begging subscribers to renew. The editor retreated to his sandy acres in New Jersey and tried to start another paper there. He got nowhere, suggesting that without Jefferson’s backing he would never have achieved his brief flirtation with fame.

  Not until November 1 did President Washington summon the cabinet to meet with him in Germantown—eight miles outside Philadelphia. Washington rented a mansion owned by Colonel David Franks, former aide to Major General Benedict Arnold. Jefferson spent a very unpleasant first night on a bed in the corner of the public room of a tavern, before obtaining decent quarters. This inconvenience did nothing to improve his mood. After almost two months at Monticello, he had no appetite for more political combat.

  At the head of the list of issues the cabinet discussed was whether to lay before Congress Jefferson’s letter requesting Genet’s recall, and the envoy’s intemperate correspondence with the American government. Jefferson had strongly opposed this move a few months earlier. Now, with his chief lieutenants in agreement on the Democratic-Republican Party’s new policy of dumping Genet, he acquiesced.

  There were other more alarming problems to discuss. Late in August, a few days before the yellow fever outbreak, the President had learned that the British government had issued new Orders in Council. They authorized His Majesty’s navy to seize the cargoes of any and all neutral ships carrying corn, flour, or grain to France or its West Indies islands. Britain’s web of intelligence agents had informed London of their enemy’s desperate need for food to feed their armies. This was Britain’s answer—even grain became contraband of war.

  The President and his cabinet agreed unanimously to protest this ukase. But their angry words did not prevent the seizure of the cargoes of over two hundred American ships. Orders were sent to Thomas Pinckney, the American minister in London, to lodge strenuous protests over this violation of America’s neutral rights.

  From the Northwest frontier came more grim news. A final attempt to negotiate with the Indians had gone nowhere. The recent conference had been little more than the delivery of an ultimatum from the tribesmen: they wanted every American settler to retreat south of the Ohio River. Behind this arrogance were assurances of support from the British in Canada.

  Meanwhile, Citizen Genet, unaware of the request for his recall, was still trying to spread France’s influence up and down the continent. The Spanish commissioners continued to complain about French agents in Kentucky, plotting an attack on New Orleans. Rumors from South Carolina renewed fears that Genet was recruiting volunteers for an assault on Spanish Florida. The President told his cabinet that it was time to revoke Genet’s powers. Hamilton and Knox heartily agreed, but Jefferson argued it would be wiser to let the French remove him. Attorney General Randolph agreed with the Secretary of State and the President dropped the subject.

  Next they began discussing the President’s fifth annual message to Congress. A fierce debate exploded about how to describe the Proclamation of Neutrality. Hamilton argued for claiming it was an unequivocal example of the president’s power to define the nation’s foreign policy. Jefferson insisted it should be described as a mere statement of the status quo—America was at peace and was determined to remain that way. To Hamilton’s dismay, the President agreed with the Secretary of State. Washington said he had no intention of interfering with Congress’s power to choose between peace and war.

  Next came an even more heated discussion of what to say about British depredations against American commerce. Hamilton vehemently protested a draft in which the Orders in Council were described in harsh terms. As usual, Jefferson disagreed. Attorney General Randolph argued for a compromise. He said
it was important to keep the door open to negotiations with London. The President amazed everyone by insisting that the entire story of the British abuse of American rights and seamen be told without the slightest reserve. He spoke, Jefferson told his Anas, “with more vehemence than I have seen him show.”5

  The result was an address to Congress that won praise from both Federalists and Republicans. Even Benjamin Franklin Bache, who had replaced Philip Freneau as the most outspoken newspaper critic of the President, was delighted. Bache said the address had “universally pleased” and its “energetic simplicity of expression” proved Washington was truly “the Man of the People.”6 He might have added it also proved that the President was a very good politician.

  A few days before Christmas, President Washington had another conversation with the Secretary of State. He wanted to know if Jefferson would consider staying in office for a few more months—or possibly a year. But Jefferson’s mind was made up. He turned the President down “so decidedly,” Washington said he could not even “hint this to him” again. He soon asked Edmund Randolph to become Secretary of State, and he accepted without hesitation.7

  On the last day of 1793, Jefferson submitted his letter of resignation. “I carry into retirement a lively sense of your goodness, and shall continue gratefully to remember it,” he wrote. Washington’s reply also rose to the occasion. He assured Jefferson that “the opinion which I had formed of your integrity and talents…has been confirmed by the fullest experience, and that both have been eminently displayed in the discharge of your duties.”

  There were deep reservations on both sides. Washington could not help thinking that Jefferson was retreating for self-serving reasons—his dislike of Philadelphia’s aristocrats, a weariness with public office. Jefferson had to admit that Washington had agreed with him in at least half of the nineteen disputed issues that roiled the cabinet during his years as Secretary of State. But there were constant “moral” issues involved. Every time Washington decided in Hamilton’s favor, he was violating a “sacred” principle of good government by siding with “the monocrats of our country.”

  As the departing Secretary saw their disagreements, it was “immoral to pursue a middle line” and admit the possibility of compromise between “honest men and rogues.” In a word, Thomas Jefferson remained that most troublesome of politicians—an ideologue.8

  Ex-General Horatio Gates wrote the Secretary of State a warm letter of congratulation on his retirement. Jefferson replied that he hated politics, “both in theory and practice.” He told Senator John Langdon of New Hampshire that he would “never touch a newspaper again nor meddle in politics more.” From Monticello, Jefferson informed Madison that “the little spice of ambition which I had in my younger days has long since evaporated…the question is forever closed to me.”9

  Secretary Hamilton did not believe a word of Jefferson’s intention to abandon politics. He was convinced that it was “evident beyond question that Mr. Jefferson aims with ardent desire at the presidential chair.” Vice President John Adams was even more cynical. He greeted Jefferson’s proclaimed retirement with “a good riddance of bad ware…He is as ambitious as Oliver Cromwell…his soul is poisoned with ambition.”10

  One is tempted to agree with these skeptics. In October 1793, when Jefferson was at Monticello, he had spent hours with Madison and Monroe discussing political strategy for the coming year. In late December, as a parting gift, he presented to Congress, “A Report on the Privileges and Restrictions of Commerce of the United States in Foreign Countries.” It was an all out attack on British dominance of America’s trade and an attempt to prove Revolutionary France could replace Britain as America’s most important trading partner. This would require heavy tariffs on British goods to destroy their “unnatural” monopoly of American imports and exports.11

  An enraged Secretary Hamilton snarled that Jefferson “threw this firebrand of discord” into the heavily Democratic-Republican Congress “and instantly decamped to Monticello.”12 There would seem to be little doubt that Mr. Jefferson’s “retirement” was more myth than fact. But the coming year would produce events that made Democratic-Republican hopes of majority power turn to chimeras. Politics, as Jefferson had already discovered thanks to Citizen Genet, was quintessentially unpredictable.

  CHAPTER 16

  Shooting Wars Loom on Several Doorsteps

  THE YEAR 1794 BEGAN with James Madison launching an attack on the nation’s policy toward trade with the British, using the former Secretary of State’s report as ammunition. Madison introduced resolutions calling for higher duties and charges on tonnage for imports from countries lacking a commercial treaty with the United States. His target, of course, was Great Britain. The Congressman argued that even if the irate British stopped trading with America, the nation could remain prosperous by finding other outlets for its food and raw materials. British imports were mostly “luxuries” he maintained, and many of them could be replaced by domestic manufacturers.

  The Federalists responded with vigor. Congressman William Loughton Smith of South Carolina staggered Madison with statistics (supplied by Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton) that showed two-thirds of America’s exports went to Britain while only one-seventh of Britain’s came to America. Who was more likely to get hurt by declaring a trade war? In monetary terms, the British took $8.5 million worth of American exports, France only $4.9 million. The import picture was even more starkly in Britain’s favor. America had welcomed $15.28 million worth of goods from the erstwhile mother country, and only $2.06 million from France. Moreover, British merchants had millions of pounds in their banks and gave Americans “extensive credit.” Was Madison urging the United States to commit economic suicide?1

  Samuel Smith of Maryland noted that Britain supplied Americans with textiles, leather goods, and tools while French imports were almost entirely fans, combs, perfumes, silk stockings, lute-strings, walking canes, and umbrellas—in a word, luxuries. Madison had predicted an embargo on British trade would throw 250,000 British men and women out of work. What would it do to the same number of American farmers? With no place to sell their surplus crops, they would be forced to borrow to pay for their “necessary supplies” such as fertilizer and tools.2

  Fisher Ames of Massachusetts wondered if Madison knew what he was talking about. “Trade flourishes at our wharves,” he sneered, “And droops in speeches.” Americans were building new ships at an astonishing rate, and Ames had the numbers to prove it (again thanks to Hamilton). By the end of 1792, American vessels carrying imports and exports exceeded British and other foreign vessels by 108,067 tons, and Ames predicted the figure would rise even higher in 1793 when statistics were computed for that year. He was right and then some. The proportion in America’s favor would soar to four times British tonnage. This meant huge profits and prosperity for the United States.3

  Madison fought back by descanting on the evils of British influence. He cast doubt on any figures from merchants who traded with Britain. They were not “American” opinions. He noted that the British had broadened the definition of contraband and were responsible for emboldening the Northwest Indians. He tried to include the costs of these acts of hostility in his anti-British statistics. Soon Ames and other orators were pointing out that “Madison & Co.” now avowed that these political wrongs were the wrongs to be cured by commercial restrictions. How this miracle would take place, Madison did not bother to discuss.4

  Democratic-Republican congressmen began deserting their leader’s sinking ship. A desperate Madison delayed a vote on his proposals. In a discouraged letter to his supposedly retired leader, Farmer Jefferson, Madison admitted he was reduced to the hope that England would commit yet more outrages on American ships and seamen. “The intelligence would strengthen the arguments for retaliation,” he wrote. In cities such as New York and Boston, where Democratic Societies and other groups tried to organize support for Madison’s contentions, his backers were voted down by huge majorities—as hig
h as two-thirds in commercial-minded Boston.

  Soon a lot of people were saying that Madison’s resolves were a not too subtle plot to benefit France. A Boston newspaper went into overkill mode, declaring Madison had been “a corrupt tool of France since he entered the Continental Congress in 1780.”5 None of the angry critics mentioned the man behind Madison—Thomas Jefferson. His pseudo-retirement was working well as political cover. But President Washington undoubtedly watched with not a little satisfaction the way a tough response soon extinguished the former Secretary of State’s “firebrand” on trade with Britain.6

  More satisfaction enriched the President’s political plate from another quarter of the continent. Citizen Genet’s plans to invade Florida and Louisiana remained very much alive, and Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton resumed his attempt to persuade Washington to condemn and sequester the pretentious envoy. It would, among other things, be a statement of the President’s executive power. But a letter from Gouverneur Morris arrived from Paris, assuring Washington that Genet was political toast, and the President put off a decision.

  In the Senate, the Federalists passed a bill forbidding Americans to attack a nation with whom they were at peace. In the House, Congressman Madison and his friends strangled this infant in its cradle. Kentucky Governor Shelby backed this vote with a defiant letter, claiming he had no authority to stop anyone from seizing New Orleans. Washington decided to exercise some of that executive power he believed was crucial to a successful presidency. He issued a proclamation, forbidding the Kentucky expedition. To show he meant business, he ordered General Anthony Wayne to intercept any and all armed men moving down the Ohio River to the Mississippi.