Secretary of State Edmund Randolph wrung his hands over this step. He feared the threat of force would offend westerners and southerners. In December, the Democratic Society of Kentucky had issued a call to “all the inhabitants west of the Allegheny and Appalachian Mountains” to join an attack on Spain’s colonies. Adding paranoia to their message, they claimed the federal government was conspiring to keep the Mississippi River off-limits to Americans. President Washington left no doubt of what he thought of this defiance. He told Governor Henry Lee of Virginia that some people were “aiming at nothing less than the subversion” of the government.7
In the midst of this tension, the new French minister, Joseph Fauchet, arrived on President Washington’s birthday with a very welcome present—a message of peace and apology. He assured the President that his government disapproved of all Genet’s schemes. He would soon prove these words with a proclamation of his own, revoking all French support and commissions. It marked finis to George Rogers Clark’s dream of becoming a French general.8
The French frigate that brought Minister Fauchet had orders to take Citizen Genet back to Paris. It was said to be carrying a guillotine on its main deck. Many thought the ship had orders to bring back not the envoy but his decapitated corpse. A frantic Genet begged President Washington for asylum. He granted it without the slightest hesitation, and Genet retreated to New York, where he soon married Cornelia Clinton, the daughter of Democratic-Republican Governor George Clinton.
Most histories of Genet’s explosive career consign him to a rural non-political existence henceforth. But two years later—two years of brooding on the way Thomas Jefferson had deceived him—Citizen Genet would reveal he still had the power to destroy “Mr Jeff’s” hopes of becoming president.
The promise of peace in the Southwest was nullified by the latest news from London. A new Order in Council had been issued in November 1793, empowering His Majesty’s men of war to seize every American ship carrying products to the ports of the French West Indies. This was one of America’s prime markets, and in a few months a staggering 250 ships were captured, their cargoes sold and their crews stripped of their money and freedom.9
On top of this came a report forwarded by New York Governor George Clinton to the President, revealing that Lord Dorchester, the governor general of Canada, had virtually invited the Indians of the Northwest to make war on the Americans. Dorchester told a gathering of chiefs that he expected hostilities between Britain and America to begin within a year. If the tribes remained loyal to their benevolent “father,” George III, they would regain all the land they had lost since 1783. The Americans would be scoured from every foot of ground west of the Appalachian Mountains.
To prove his sincerity, Dorchester ordered another Revolutionary War veteran, Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe, to build a fort on the Maumee River, well within American territory, and call it Fort Miami, in honor of the most warlike tribe in the Indian confederacy. The six forts the British had built in the last years of the Revolution also remained in their hands.
Worsening matters was bad news from the Mediterranean. The British had signed a treaty with their traditional ally, Portugal, and the Algerines. It permitted Muslim warships to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar and assault neutral ships in the Atlantic. American vessels were the chief victims—a fate that meant either sudden death or a lifetime of slavery for their captured crews. The British saw the treaty as a way to protect their merchantmen. Americans saw it as another plot to cripple their prosperity.
Indignation about the Orders in Council and the Algerines simmered in every port. The stunned Federalists did not know what to think or say. Congressman Fisher Ames of Massachusetts could only gasp: “The English are absolutely madmen.” Even moderate Democratic-Republicans, remembering that the President had won fame as a general, were sure he would soon call for a declaration of war.
Ironically, the most dismayed politician in Philadelphia was Congressman James Madison. The uproar cast his Jefferson-inspired attack on British trade supremacy into virtual oblivion. Even his most loyal supporters began telling him that “more vigorous measures” were called for. Congress began discussing the need to create a strong army and navy to deal with the crisis. They voted to build six frigates to confront the Algerines and began fortifying America’s ports. Madison, still the leader of the House, vehemently opposed arming America. He killed a proposal to recruit ten thousand soldiers. He told Jefferson that the Federalists were up to the “old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government.”10
Madison’s fellow Jeffersonian lieutenant, Senator James Monroe, told the retired Secretary of State that an army was a plot to “destroy the happiness of America.” Hamilton would be put in command of it. Next would come an attempt to achieve “the great object of a change in government.” The Senator did not have to add the nasty word, monarchism.11 Jefferson’s obsession with this idea had total control of both men’s minds. Obviously, he had never told either man about the President’s vehement denials that he would ever even consider such a move.
Although enthusiasm among his Democratic-Republican followers was now close to zero, Madison made another push at Jefferson’s retaliatory regulations. Fisher Ames demolished him. “When our commerce is nearly annihilated, it is trifling to talk of regulating it,” he told the House. The congressmen voted to postpone Madison’s proposals indefinitely. Madison retreated to a demand for an embargo on all trade with Britain. Congress agreed to a one-month suspension, and President Washington signed the bill into law.12
A group of senators came up with another alternative. They asked Washington to consider sending a special envoy to London to find a way to avoid gunfire. Washington was not enthusiastic at first. The combination of the Dorchester speech to the Indians and the French West Indies Orders in Council had convinced him that declaring war might well be the best solution.
Another message from London changed his mind. The Order in Council banning American ships from the French West Indies had been revoked. Prime Minister William Pitt had met with a delegation of British merchants in the American trade and admitted the order had been a mistake. He promised those who had been injured by the measure would receive “MOST ample compensation.”13
The idea of sending a special envoy to London acquired new appeal. It was infinitely preferable to Madison’s idea of a lengthy embargo on all trade with Britain. Attention now shifted to the President’s choice of the envoy. Senator Monroe offered to explain to Washington why he should NOT name Alexander Hamilton. He got a curt reply from the President, who told him that “I alone am responsible for a proper nomination”—and Hamilton was one of the men he was considering. If the Senator wanted to express an opinion, he could put it in writing.14
In the House of Representatives, anti-British extremism became the order of the day. Abraham Clark of New Jersey proposed that Congress should end trade with Great Britain until the seized West Indies ships were returned with the value of their cargoes paid in full, and the forts in the Northwest evacuated. Clark also wanted to sequester all debts to British merchants until London capitulated. Madison suggested tempering this plunge to war by not inflicting the punishment immediately. The boycott would begin on November 1 if the British failed to meet these demands. The President was appalled. This was hardly the way to persuade anyone to negotiate, above all a nation as proud and powerful as Britain.
Secretary Hamilton wrote Washington an urgent letter, begging him to speak out against the boycott. The President refused; he had made it his policy not to intervene in Congress’s deliberations. But the extremism of the measure made up his mind to send an envoy. The President asked Chief Justice John Jay to undertake the mission. After a day of hesitation, he accepted. Democratic-Republicans immediately heaped insults on Jay and the President. They claimed the Chief Justice could not be trusted to represent the best interests of the whole country. They dredged up his 1786 proposal to swap th
e right to use the Mississippi River for New England’s right to trade with Britain.
Congressman Madison continued to push Abraham Clark’s embargo bill. It passed the House, 58–38, and went to the Senate on April 25. After an angry debate, the vote ended in a tie. Vice President John Adams cast an emphatic “NO” and the measure was dead. But the bill was a grim omen of the Democratic-Republicans’s hostility to the idea of negotiating with the British.
The President temporarily solved this problem with a masterful pivot that left Madison and his fellow Democratic-Republicans floundering. Washington asked Senator James Monroe to become minister to France, replacing Gouverneur Morris. Madison’s trade restrictions against British commerce became as irrelevant as yesterday’s news. In a mournful letter to his pseudo-retired chief at Monticello, Madison lamented that the “influence of the Ex [the Executive] on events and the public confidence in the P [President] are an overmatch for all the efforts that Republicanism can make. The party of that sentiment in the Senate is completely wrecked; and in the H. of Reps, in a much worse condition than at an earlier period in this session.”15
In New York, a crowd estimated at one thousand well-wishers saw John Jay off on his voyage to London. They were really cheering the President. Once more, Washington had added new power to his office. In a very good mood, he permitted himself a little wry humor in a letter to a friend: “The affairs of this country cannot go amiss. There are so many watchful guardians of them and such infallible guides, that one is at no loss for a director at every turn.”16
In Virginia, Jefferson began showing symptoms of the French fever he had brought back from Paris in 1790. Some “very quiet” people, he told Senator Monroe, were in favor of continuing to tolerate the “kicks and cuffs Great Britain has been giving us.” But they were obviously a tiny minority. “The great mass of thinking men seem to be of the opinion that we have borne as much as to invite eternal insults in the future should not a very spirited conduct be assumed.” In other words, he—and supposedly, the great mass of thinking men—were in favor of war.
Jefferson hastily added that he still “wished for peace” if it could be preserved with some shreds of honor. Citizen Genet would have recognized this outburst instantly as his friend “Mr. Jeff” speaking—with even less inhibition—and the former Secretary of State supplying a pro-forma denial.17
In a letter to Madison, Jefferson veered into a total fantasy. He thought the Americans should publicly declare their intention of defending the French West Indies against the British fleet. The ex-secretary of state argued that the United States was obligated to make this pledge under the terms of the Treaty of Alliance America had signed with France in 1778. How this feat would be accomplished without a navy, Mr. Jeff did not bother to discuss.
In other letters, Jefferson revealed fierce enthusiasm for the news of French army triumphs in Europe. He told one correspondent he longed for a complete French victory that would bring all Europe’s “kings, nobles, and priests to the scaffolds which they have so long been deluging with human blood.” He said nothing about the fervor with which the Jacobin Reign of Terror was tackling that task in France. In Paris, Robespierre and his friends were guillotining nine hundred people a month; in Lyons, the scene was even gorier. Mr. Jeff undoubtedly dismissed reports of these massacres as British propaganda.
Throughout the first months of 1794, President Washington wrote only one letter to his former secretary of state. It was mostly about how to obtain and use the best available fertilizer. At its close, there was a cryptic political comment. “We are going on in the old way, ‘and slow’ I hope events will justify me in saying ‘sure.’”18
A thick envelope from the Democratic Society of Lexington, Kentucky, momentarily made the President think he might need Jefferson’s services. The packet contained a letter from a Frenchman in Louisiana, wondering what had happened to the army of “brave Kentuckians” that was going to free him and his friends from Spain’s yoke. The Democratic Society responded with a mass meeting that forwarded a “remonstrance to the President of the United States.” They wanted Washington to send an ultimatum to the Spanish king, demanding free navigation of the Mississippi, or the United States would declare war.
Washington had an anxious conference with his new Secretary of State, Edmund Randolph, who suggested persuading Jefferson to be a special envoy to Spain. Kentuckians, Democratic-Republicans almost to a man, trusted him. The President had to admit there was much to be said for this idea. For one thing, it would silence the Kentucky radicals— and demonstrate to Spain that America wanted peace. But he worried that he and Jefferson might disagree over what terms they should propose to Madrid.
The President allowed Secretary Randolph to explore the appointment with Jefferson. The former secretary of state returned an instant refusal, claiming that the “torments” of rheumatism had convinced him that his public life was at an end. A relieved Washington decided to send the current minister to London, Thomas Pinckney, to Madrid. He would be more or less superfluous in the British capital while John Jay was trying to negotiate a treaty.
As the President pondered the pros and cons of a Jefferson mission, he received a letter from Governor Henry Lee of Virginia who told him “a very respectable gentleman” had asked Jefferson if Washington was “really governed by the British interest.” Jefferson had sarcastically replied that as long as the President had the “wise advice” of his present cabinet, there was no danger of this becoming a fact.
Washington was infuriated. He told Lee he could not believe there was any doubt in Jefferson’s mind that he had not an iota of predilection toward Britain, “unless he set me down as one of the most deceitful and uncandid men living.” The ex-secretary of state had had innumerable opportunities to hear Washington “express very different sentiments with an energy that could not be mistaken by anyone present.”19
This exchange would be the first—but not the last—evidence that Thomas Jefferson was ready and willing to demolish George Washington’s reputation. The President considered it an unforgivably low blow. The friendship was teetering toward collapse. A gathering crisis in western Pennsylvania would damage it beyond repair.
CHAPTER 17
Will Whiskey Rebels Unravel the Union?
WITH CONGRESS ADJOURNED, THE President looked forward to a visit to Mount Vernon to talk with his new overseer. He had scarcely arrived in his beloved home when trouble flared in another part of America—the western counties of Pennsylvania. There were about seventy thousand pioneers in this part of the Keystone State. They—and compatriots in the western counties of Virginia and North Carolina and Maryland—still nursed a grievance against the federal government’s 1791 decision to lay a tax on the most lucrative product of their labors—whiskey. Almost every good-sized farm had a still where grain was turned into alcohol.1
The tax was crucial to Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton’s plan to reduce the national debt. That made the President and the Secretary doubly sensitive to protests from the region, which were frequent. In 1792 and 1793, there were mass meetings, and angry demands for repeal of the tax were forwarded to Philadelphia. The government tried to meet some of these objections. Congress agreed to reduce the tax, and exempted farmers from paying it in cash, which was scarce on their side of the mountains. In June 1794, Congress dropped the requirement that accused violators had to travel all the way to Philadelphia to be tried in a federal court. Local state courts were permitted to handle the cases.
But resentment remained strong. Not a little of it was fanned by the growth of Citizen Genet’s brainchild, the Democratic Societies. The original, personally founded by the envoy in Philadelphia, had been busy exporting the idea that the federal government was in the hands of would be aristocrats and British sympathizers. Democratic-Republican newspapers frequently said the same thing. The slander found an enthusiastic reception in the West. Local Democratic Societies became proponents of extreme measures to oppose the tax.
Federal collectors were beaten up as they travelled the roads; some were tarred and feathered. A character named “Tom the Tinker” sent threatening letters to owners of large stills that were complying with the law. Those who did not respond had their tanks shot full of holes—a gesture the rebels called Tom’s way of “mending” a still. Several of Tom’s friends torched the house of John Neville, the regional supervisor in charge of collecting the tax. A bullet whistled close to the federal marshal who was protecting him.
On August 1, 1794, some seven thousand protestors gathered at Braddock’s Field, near Pittsburgh. The site was named for the British general, Edward Braddock, whose army had been routed there by the French and their Indian allies in 1755. A young George Washington had been the luckless general’s aide. The principal orator at the gathering was a popular attorney named David Bradford, who appeared in the uniform of a major general, and urged the mob to join him in forming a new state—or better, an independent country. Other speakers called Pittsburgh, “Sodom,” and recommended looting and burning it. Women among the rioters talked eagerly of the fine clothes they hoped to procure from the houses of the Sodomites before they went up in smoke.
Above the mob floated a flag with six stripes, representing four Pennsylvania counties and two in Virginia. Everyone knew that Kentucky, the next state down the mountain line, was already talking about secession, and the word was soon adopted by the orators. One speaker revealed his admiration for France’s Jacobins by urging the construction of a guillotine and the formation of a Committee of Safety. No one knew that by this time Robespierre and many of his fellow fanatics had been guillotined in yet another transfer of power in Paris.2
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