Later in the summer, another Jefferson lieutenant experienced the results of adhering too enthusiastically to the political creed of his retired chief at Monticello. In Paris, Minister James Monroe had continued to embrace France and the French Revolution with unbecoming fervor. He had ignored the warning letter he had received about his ecstatic speech to the National Convention and continued to talk in extravagant terms about the destiny of the two republics. When the Jay Treaty became an issue in American politics, Monroe did nothing to present it to the French as part of the President’s policy of neutrality. Instead, he echoed Jefferson and Madison, and described it as the triumph of the British faction in American politics.
By this time, France was under the control of a five-man council known as the Directory. The radicalism of the Jacobins had been banished, along with Robespierre and his friends. Military victories, some of them won by a promising young general named Napoleon Bonaparte, fed the arrogance of the survivors, who still thought they could claim the magical word, liberté as their key to world power.
In early 1796, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs told Monroe that France now considered the 1778 Treaty of Alliance a dead letter. They were planning to send an envoy extraordinary to America to present President Washington with an ultimatum: France wanted a new treaty, giving them the same privileges and respect that the British had achieved in the Jay negotiation. Next the President received a letter from Gouverneur Morris in London, warning him of a rumor that this envoy extraordinary would be accompanied by a French fleet which had orders to start attacking American ships if Washington did not capitulate.19
An irked President blamed France’s attitude on Madison’s attempt to rewrite the Constitution to wreck the Jay Treaty, and “perhaps by communications of influential men in this country through a medium which ought to be the last to engage in it.” The influential men were Jefferson and Madison and the medium was Monroe. It is another glimpse of the extent to which the ex-spymaster of Revolutionary days was aware of what the Democratic-Republicans were doing. Along with receiving a stream of letters from Jefferson and Madison, Monroe was sending them copies of what he was reporting to the President about French-American relations.
The coup de grace in this underhanded game was an essay that Monroe wrote for publication in Benjamin Franklin Bache’s Aurora. It was supposedly a report from an anonymous American gentleman about “the state of things” in France. This diplomatic double-cross had been “intercepted”—no one has ever said how—and given to Secretary of State Pickering, who rushed it to the President. It was an all- out attack on the Jay Treaty and Washington’s supposedly pro-British foreign policy. The essay was to be the first of a series that would be delivered to the salivating Bache for instant publication. Washington showed it to his new attorney general, Charles Lee, who told him Monroe’s immediate recall was “indispensably necessary.”20
On the heels of this discovery, gossip swirled through Philadelphia about a Paris dinner party Monroe attended on July 4. When someone proposed a toast to President Washington, several outspoken members of the party objected. Monroe suggested they might raise their glasses to “the Executive”—eliminating the supposedly detested name. Then came news from Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott that leaders in Kentucky and nearby states were receiving letters reviving Genet’s scheme of a pro-French nation in the West. The final nail in Monroe’s diplomatic coffin was a letter from John Quincy Adams, now envoy to the Netherlands, to his father that described how Monroe and others in Paris, notably Tom Paine, were telling the French that the United States had become a British ally.21
The President decided to recall Monroe, even though he knew the move would “set all the envenomed pens” to work. While Secretary of State Pickering’s letter informing Monroe of the President’s decision began its voyage to France, Washington sent letters to several men who might be worthwhile replacements. He soon learned that Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, older brother of the man who had negotiated the Spanish treaty, was willing and able.
From Paris, Monroe wrote to James Madison, describing Secretary of State Pickering’s letter of recall as something that might have been “addressed as from an overseer on the farm to one of his gang ascribing…that it is altogether owing to my misconduct.”22
Monroe wrote an infuriated reply to Pickering, claiming he had followed Washington’s instructions to the letter and done everything in his power to prevent a rupture between France and America. The swelling discontent with the United States was not his fault. He had warned the President of the “probable ill consequences” of the Jay Treaty, and Washington had ignored him.
Rather than return home and become the focus of a dispute between the two political parties, Monroe decided to travel in Europe for several months. He may have been aware that his defense would be difficult, once the Federalists produced his intercepted essay to Benjamin Franklin Bache. Another reason was almost certainly news from Madison that President Washington had decided not to run for another term, and the Democratic-Republicans were backing Thomas Jefferson against Vice President John Adams in the fall election. In an earlier letter to Madison, the envoy had remarked: “I most sincerely hope that Mr. Jefferson will be elected and that he will serve. If he is elected, everything will most probably be right here [in Paris] from that moment.”
For Monroe, the master of Monticello still had almost magical powers. The ex-envoy began work on a book that that would eventually total 473 pages. Its title was as forbidding as its length: “A View of the Conduct of the Executive, in the Foreign Affairs of the United States, connected to the mission to the French Republic during the years 1794, 5 and 6.” Monroe’s goal was the annihilation of George Washington’s reputation. His editorial advisor—in deep background, of course—was Thomas Jefferson. He was soon telling Madison the book was “masterly…and unanswerable.”23
CHAPTER 20
A Very Political Farewell
EVEN BEFORE HIS VICTORY over James Madison in the Jay Treaty clash, George Washington had begun thinking about retirement. Shrewd politician that he was, he realized the decision was not a simple one. He worried about what the public would say when he made the announcement. He was still under almost daily attack from Benjamin Franklin Bache and other Democratic-Republican editors. Even his old nemesis, Philip Freneau, got back in the game again with a short-lived paper he floated from New Jersey, thick with the usual insults.
Would people be influenced by these partisans and sneer that he was quitting because he knew there was no hope of being elected again—certainly not unanimously? The more he thought about it, the more convinced Washington became that it would be a good idea to issue a statement, defending his reputation against the slanderers. He exhumed from his files the brief speech he had prepared with James Madison’s help in 1792. Rereading it, he decided to make it the opening section of this new message. It would prove that he had not desired a second term; even better would be the evidence that it was “known to one or two of these characters” [Madison and Jefferson] who were now bent on demolishing him as a power hungry monocrat.1
When he sat down to write the statement, the President realized it would be a mistake to say Madison had been involved in the draft of the earlier announcement. The bipartisanship of the first term had become a distant memory. Things had deteriorated so totally between the President and the erudite little Congressman, the mere mention of Madison’s name would make Washington look foolish.
Instead, he devoted the opening lines of his statement to discussing how rotation in the office of the presidency would be a bulwark of liberty for future generations. Turning to contemporary politics, he wrote a fierce attack on his critics. He accused them of filling newspapers “with all the invective that disappointment, ignorance of facts and malicious falsehoods could invent to misrepresent my politics.”2
After reading over these first pages, the President decided to consult the man who had written so many of the documents that had
played major roles in his presidency. The ex-secretary of the treasury, now working fifteen or sixteen hours a day as one of New York’s busiest lawyers, responded with deep emotion. Alexander Hamilton immediately grasped the momentous nature of the statement the President was asking his help to create.
Over the next months, the two men worked their way through several drafts. Each felt free to add and discard, as their thinking about the statement evolved. Hamilton, for instance, jettisoned Washington’s attack on his critics, arguing it made the address too blatantly political. The President tried to insert a paragraph on the importance of a national university in Washington, D.C.—an idea he fervently espoused. Hamilton persuaded him to shift this to his final message to Congress. The President warned Hamilton against being too wordy. Washington feared one of his early drafts would take up an entire edition of a newspaper.
In the final draft, the address of 1792 was only mentioned in passing, with the explanation that the “perplexed and critical posture of our affairs with foreign nations” had impelled him to abandon it. Now, Washington was glad to say that “the present circumstances of our country”—America’s prosperity and peace—made him think no one would disapprove of his determination to retire. Then came deeply moving sentences about how grateful he was for “the constancy” of the American people’s support when, at times, “the spirit of criticism” might have discouraged him. He would carry this gratitude with him to his grave, with the prayer that the Union, and the “brotherly affection” that sustained it, would be perpetual. He hoped with equal intensity that their “free constitution” would also be “sacredly maintained.”
At this point, President Washington admitted he could and perhaps should stop. But “a solicitude for your welfare” prompted him to discuss dangers that he hoped Americans would avoid—now and in the future. He also hoped men and women would hear the advice he was about to offer as “disinterested warnings of a parting friend” who had “no personal motive” to distort his words.
At the top of the President’s list was the crucial importance of “the unity of government which constitutes you one people.” It was “the main pillar” in the edifice of “your real independence.” It was also “the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, your prosperity, of that very Liberty which you so highly prize.”
For a dozen paragraphs, Washington stressed the crucial importance of the federal union. He discussed the strengths of the different sections, North and South, East and West, and how they blended to create a thriving nation. A strong Union would enable them to avoid becoming like the Europeans, fighting endless wars between various sections of their continent. It would also help America avoid an “overgrown military establishment.” If there were fears that a “common government” could not deal with so large a nation, let experience resolve their doubts.
Washington also warned against “geographical” prejudices which “designing men” may try to exploit. That was where the “fraternal affection” they had created in their struggle for independence should come into play. He admitted that political parties may be inevitable in a free society. But the “spirit of party” must never lose sight of the central value of the Union.
Then he turned to a subject that brought him into direct conflict with Thomas Jefferson and his followers. Nothing was more essential to a nation’s happiness, the President declared, “than that permanent inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded” from the public mind. “Just and amicable feelings” toward all nations should be the rule. “The nation that indulges toward another a habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave.” Such a habit of mind will only lead to magnifying “accidental or trifling…disputes” into bloody contests.
Obviously remembering the storms of emotion he had endured as president, Washington dwelt on how a “passionate attachment” to one foreign nation “produces a variety of evils. It leads not only to wars but conceding to the favorite nation ‘privileges denied to others.’” It also inclines “ambitious, corrupted or deluded citizens” an excuse to “betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country.” The President was undoubtedly thinking of James Monroe in Paris when he wrote these words.
With a surge of emotion, Washington reiterated the importance of this point. “Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake.” Foreign influence was particularly fatal to republican government. It led those who have succumbed to partiality to condemn those who disagree with them. “Real patriots…are liable to become suspected and odious.” While the “tools and dupes” usurp the applause and confidence of the people. Can there be any doubt that he was talking about Thomas Jefferson and his followers, here?
Next, Washington turned to another aspect of the danger of favoring a foreign nation. “Tis folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another.” It is too likely to pay “with a portion of its independence” for accepting privileges offered under this guise. Here the words stirred memories of Citizen Genet and his hopes of turning America into a French satellite. “There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from Nation to Nation.” It was “an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.”
The President closed with a statement of the policy that had guided his administration in foreign affairs. It was summed up in his Proclamation of Neutrality. “The spirit of this measure has continually governed me; uninfluenced by attempts to deter or avert me from it.” Once more, there is little doubt that Washington was thinking of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
Solemnly, the President asked his fellow Americans to accept these words in the spirit in which he had composed them. He freely admitted that in his years of service, he had committed more than a few errors. He never claimed to be infallible. But he prayed to the Almighty to “mitigate” any evils that these mistakes may have caused.
Meanwhile, he hoped that the American people “under the benign influence of good laws under a free government” would achieve the happiness he wished for them. He saw this contentment as “the happy reward… of our mutual cares, labours, and dangers.”3
In a decade or two, as the issues that animated these words faded away, the Farewell Address would acquire an oracular quality. By the time America entered the twentieth century, it had achieved fame on a par with the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. But it can and should also be read as it was by men and women in 1796—as a demolition of Thomas Jefferson and his political party.
President Washington had no such anticipation of the address’s enduring fame when he released it to the public. If a president wrote anything similar to it today, the words would vibrate from every newspaper, radio station, and television screen around the world. In 1796 Philadelphia, Washington summoned David Claypoole, publisher of the American Daily Advertiser, to his executive mansion. He gave the newsman his only copy of the manuscript, and asked him to print it as soon as possible.
The paper had a tradition of publishing important government documents, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Claypoole soon had the manuscript in type, and the President made several corrections on the proofs. When Washington gave his final approval, Claypoole returned the handwritten version. He confessed he had been so moved by it, he regretted letting it leave his hands.
The pleased President said, if he felt that way, he could keep it. This offhand act is an insight into Washington’s innate modesty. It would also give generations of archivists and historians the bends whenever they thought of it. The handwritten copy has never been found.4
On September 19, 1796, the Daily Advertiser ran the address on page two of its four-page edition. As was customary, the front page was devoted to ads. There was no comment by the editor. He obviously thought the document needed
none. The headline on the second page was only one column wide, in somewhat enlarged type.
TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.
FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS.
The text filled the entire page and most of the next page. For the rest of the day, copies of the Daily Advertiser sold at an unprecedented rate. The edition also stirred wild excitement among other Philadelphia newspapers, who frantically ordered their typesetters to get to work. Three papers had copies on the street by that afternoon. Post riders galloped to New York, Boston, and other major cities with copies in their saddlebags.
In Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin Bache published the address in the Aurora in two installments, without any comment—his way of saying that he considered it unworthy of his notice. His friend William Duane, who would later assume Bache’s editorship of the Aurora and role as chief Democratic-Republican defender, published a long pamphlet, in which he abused Washington on every page. Another opposition paper summed up the address as the “loathings of a sick mind.”
The Boston Gazette damned Washington’s pretensions to saintliness and sneered at those who “worship at the shrine of Mt. Vernon.” An angry James Madison vented his hostility to James Monroe in Paris, denouncing the President’s “suspicion” of anyone who sympathized with France and her revolution. Like his mentor, Jefferson, he remained impervious to the Jacobin bloodbath.5
Unrelated to the Farewell Address but beautifully timed from Benjamin Franklin Bache’s point of view, was a long open letter from Thomas Paine to President Washington. This passionate backer of the French Revolution had not approved its plunge into mass murder. In the National Convention, he had even opposed the execution of Louis XVI, predicting it would make him a martyr. This benevolence earned him the murderous enmity of Robespierre and his fellow Jacobins.
The Great Divide Page 29