by Carol Berkin
Yet, despite the problems Genet posed, his impact has largely been measured by his role in the contest for power between Federalists and Republicans. In this framework, Genet is important only as a catalyst for political divisions between the parties within the Washington administration. But, looked at in a different light, Genet’s behavior and his attitude toward the federal government exposes the pervasive sense of the fragility of American sovereignty in the 1790s. Public and private documents in 1793 and early 1794 reveal an almost palpable anxiety in both Federalists and Republicans about whether the more powerful and established European nations would respect America as a sovereign nation; whether they were and would continue to be contemptuous of its independence; and whether they would attempt to direct American economic, fiscal, and military destiny as if this country were merely a satellite of a stronger empire. If Federalists and Republicans differed on who the European enemy of American sovereignty was, their fear of domination was the same. The correspondence between Genet and Jefferson, the records of cabinet meetings, the policy statements of Washington’s administration, the congressional debates, and the instructions from the French government Genet labored so zealously to fulfill—all these bear witness to the crisis of sovereignty the French minister heightened when he arrived on American shores. It is this story that we must understand if we hope to grasp how a small, constitutionally limited federal government managed to not only hold the nation together but bind Americans more firmly to the idea of the nation itself.
1
“France is on the high-road to despotism.”
—Gouverneur Morris, 1792
ON APRIL 1, 1789, the first session of the House of Representatives finally achieved a quorum and the business of the First Federal Congress began. Five days later, the Senate opened its session by electing its officers. With that, the era of a new representative government had started. A month later, across the Atlantic Ocean in France, King Louis XVI found himself forced to convene his own nation’s long-dormant assembly in order to raise much-needed taxes. That summer, while congressmen debated James Madison’s proposed Bill of Rights, a Paris mob stormed Paris’s notorious Bastille prison. It was the start of a revolution. Over the course of the next four years, most Americans watched with amazement and delight as a second republic rose from the ashes of monarchy with a cry of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”—far more dramatic than their own rallying cry of “No Taxation Without Representation.”
America’s positive response to the revolution in France was no surprise. Most Americans felt gratitude toward the nation that had supported them in their struggle against British rule. There was a general consensus that monarchy, as a form of government, was inevitably abusive and a general wish that the world would someday see the wisdom of a republic based on the sovereignty of the people. But, above all, America’s enthusiasm arose from a realization that the system of representative government it had embraced had found a new and powerful champion. The idea of a republic based on a constitution could no longer be dismissed as a quixotic and doomed experiment, for a major European nation had given it legitimacy. In this sense, the French Revolution was a vindication of America’s own Revolution; Americans realized that the United States was no longer alone.
Few Americans demurred from the celebration of events in France. Indeed, Alexander Hamilton was almost alone in 1790 in predicting that the revolution would lead to anarchy and greater bloodshed rather than to the creation of a stable republic. By 1792, however, the escalating violence of the revolutionaries persuaded other Americans that Hamilton was right. The US ambassador to France, Gouverneur Morris, did not mince words in his condemnation of the revolution’s direction. “France is on the high-road to despotism,” he wrote to his friend William Carmichael on May 14, 1792, adding, “They have made the common mistake that to enjoy liberty it is necessary only to demolish authority.” His conviction grew when the Marquis de Lafayette, hero of the American Revolution, was forced to flee France for Austria, and it hardened when he learned of the massacre that August of more than a thousand Royalists being held in the Parisian prisons. Writing to Thomas Jefferson, a staunch supporter of the French Revolution, Morris recounted the execution of two to three hundred clergy and the beheading and disemboweling of a noblewoman whose “head and entrails [were] paraded on pikes through the street.” When news reached America that the king had been executed in January 1793, a number of other leading Federalists—including John Adams and his family, and George Washington himself—concluded that the trajectories of their own revolution and that of France had dramatically and irrevocably diverged.1
In the United States, the effect of the increasing radicalism of the French Revolution was an increasing partisanship. Federalists began to take pains to distinguish their own country’s revolutionary past from the violence committed in the name of liberty and equality across the Atlantic. As Thomas Boylston Adams wrote to his father on April 7, 1793, “Since the Execution of the King… nothing can be thought too mad or extravagant for the National Convention to commit.” The younger Adams questioned whether France could be called a republic, for no laws existed there and there was no power to enforce new laws if they were passed. France had become living proof that “nothing would be easier than to create a Republic in any Country, for they have only to destroy the existing Government.” The Secretary of the Senate Samuel Allyne Otis agreed with these sentiments. Writing to John Adams on April 17, he conceded that his friend had been correct when he predicted “Egaulite [sic] would be so bloody.”2
Federalists may have abandoned support for the new French regime, but the Republican coalition led by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison refused to turn its back on the Revolution. In the same month that the young Adams wrote his blistering commentary, James Madison sent a thank-you note to the French government for honoring him with the title “French Citizen.” The act that conferred this honor, Madison declared, spoke of “the magnanimity of the French Nation.” The Virginian expressed his personal wish that the French people achieve “all the prosperity & glory… which can accrue from an example corresponding with the dignified maxims they have established, and compleating the triumphs of Liberty.” Jefferson’s support for the Revolution did not waver. Despite Gouverneur Morris’s vivid descriptions of beheadings of nobles and royalty, Jefferson still maintained, as he had in 1787, that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants.” By 1793, the disagreement over the promise of the French Revolution had become a distinguishing feature of the rivalry between Federalists and Republicans.3
The Federalist conviction that the two revolutions had taken different paths intensified as French leaders exported theirs. The Girondin faction, who held the reins of power in France by early 1792, had little political experience but unlimited revolutionary fervor. They were proselytizers, men with a utopian vision of spreading their revolution across Europe, even if this meant an invading army would carry the banner of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” into neighboring countries. The Girondins would not let existing treaties with other European nations nor the pressing needs of their own citizens stand in the way of their sacred mission to expand the “empire de la liberté.” Confident that the oppressed subjects of kings and tyrants would greet their troops as liberators, they ignored the warnings of Jacobin leader Maximillian Robespierre that “no one loves armed missionaries.” By April 1792 they had declared war on Austria, and, by February of the following year, they had extended the war to Britain, Russia, Prussia, Portugal, and Spain. These nations, along with Austria, quickly formed an alliance to halt the expansion of the so-called empire of liberty.4
Americans watched these events unfold, assuming that their country would remain out of the fray, cheering France or condemning it but never becoming active participants. John Adams was among the Federalist leaders who quickly embraced “a Neutrality, absolute total Neutrality” as the only option for the United States. The problem was t
hat the Girondins would not tolerate neutrality. They expected Americans to support their efforts to spread republican ideology and republican institutions to the monarchies of the world, if not on the battlefield then through the provision of money, supplies, and a safe haven for French ships in France’s emerging naval contest with Britain. Their reading of the 1778 treaties signed between America and France made them confident of their right to demand American support. Some members of the Girondin leadership knew that a pro-British faction existed in the United States and that it wielded considerable influence within Washington’s administration, but they did not consider this problem insurmountable. Anglophiles might delay the desired alliance between the two republics, but they could not prevent it. France, after all, had come to the aid of the Americans in their hour of need; it was unthinkable that America would not reciprocate.5
2
“I find him to be a great treasure to sustain and employ.”
—Count de Segur to Count de Montmorin, 1788
IN NOVEMBER 1792, the Girondins appointed their new minister to the United States. The instructions they drafted for Edmond Genet left no doubt about his mission: he was to see that the federal government did everything in its power, short of sending troops to the battlefields of Europe, to assist in the victory of liberty over tyranny. He was to negotiate a new commercial treaty that would marry the economies of the two nations. Among other things, the envisioned treaty would provide France with a favored nation status when it came to US charges on foreign ships and goods. He was also to assert the right of France to use US ports as provisioning and repair stations and as points of embarkation for attacks on British ships. The French government’s interpretation of the treaties of 1778 granted it an exclusive right to sell captured enemy goods to American buyers and to transform captured merchant marine vessels into warships in American ports. Although the treaties made no mention of recruiting Americans to serve in the French navy or of Americans turning their own vessels into French privateers, the minister was not to ignore those possibilities. In fact, he would be provided with blank government licenses, known as letters of marque, to be delivered to Frenchmen and Americans willing to arm privateers. He was also to make clear that the British must not enjoy any of these advantages.
It was also crucial that the French minister secure an arrangement for full liquidation of the US debt to France rather than its gradual payment. France intended to pay for its purchases from American suppliers with this money. The funds would also be used to finance the Girondin government’s land and naval operations against the Spanish and British territories in North America. These invasions—or, as the French government thought of them, liberations—would originate in the United States. The leaders of the French government fully intended to turn the United States into a base of operations for campaigns to liberate Canada and Louisiana from the grip of British and Spanish monarchies. To pave the way for these invasions, they were prepared to deploy spies and secret agents to these enemy territories and to provoke French inhabitants there to join in armed rebellion. And they were eager to recruit American citizens from border areas like Kentucky to do the fighting. In the army to expand the empire of liberty, all men could be considered French soldiers.
In return for American compliance with these demands, France offered to lift all restrictions on American goods and ships in French ports. This was a gesture less generous than selfish, for the French desperately needed the supplies that America could provide. And, finally, as evidence of his nation’s affection for its revolutionary brothers-in-arms, the minister was to pledge French protection of America’s borders—even if it meant stationing French forces on American soil. This assurance cavalierly ignored American sovereignty over its own territory, just as the proposed recruitment of Americans for the invasion of Spanish territories ignored its sovereignty over its own citizens. That France appeared oblivious of this insult to American sovereignty was telling: the British flag no longer flew over its former colonies, but, in the minds of America’s powerful transatlantic neighbors, the United States remained a dependent of Europe.6
Despite the fact that his sisters were attendants of the queen, the new minister, Edmond Genet, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Revolution. He had made this clear while serving in the diplomatic corps in Russia in 1791. His open—and very vocal—approval of the new French constitution and the extreme limitation on the king’s authority led the Russian empress Catherine, who had once been charmed by Genet, to declare him “an insane demagogue… and a crazy little fool.” No friend to republics or constitutions, the empress expelled Genet from her country. He returned to France, proud of his daring show of patriotism in the face of unrestrained tyrannical power. He preferred to think of his actions not as impolitic but heroic. The French government appeared to agree. It rewarded him first with an appointment as minister to Holland and then with the appointment as minister to the United States.7
Genet did seem the perfect choice in many ways. He had grown up in a family devoted to government service. From his father, a career diplomat, Edmond had inherited elegance and charm as well as a talent for languages. The young Genet spoke English by the age of five and, soon afterward, began to learn Greek. At twelve, he was awarded a medal from the king of Sweden for his translation into French of a work of Swedish history. In 1792 at twenty-nine, he was fluent in German as well. His linguistic skills had allowed him to take over as head of the Bureau of Interpretation in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs when his father died. Soon afterward, Edmond began his promising career as a diplomat. One of his patrons described him in glowing terms. He is “a very distinguished young man… in all respects suitable. He unites agreeable talents with profound knowledge. He is erudite without pedantry, bright without pretension; his logic is just, his zeal indefatigable, his wit is ornate, his manner of thinking noble and attractive.” Above all, the young Citizen Genet radiated boundless energy, enthusiasm, and optimism.8
Genet was not without his critics, however. Some who knew him well conceded that he had an excellent mind but also a lazy one. Genet, they said, was content with only a general knowledge of a subject rather than its mastery. Some considered him overimpulsive—a trait his behavior in Russia might suggest. Perhaps his supporters in the French government worried about that too, for as he headed to America he was explicitly warned to “scrupulously observe the forms established for official communications between the government and foreign agents and never engage in any move or proposals which might offend free Americans concerning their constitution which differs in many respects from the principles established in France.” It is unlikely that Genet thought these warnings necessary for, like his superiors, he was confident that Americans would be eager to assist France in any and every way possible.9
Genet came to his assignment with two serious disadvantages, neither of which he was aware of until it was too late. First, he did not read the political situation in France as clearly as he should have, failing to consider that the men who had appointed him might not remain in power. Second, he had not thoroughly studied—if he studied at all—the political context in America. He did not understand the distribution of power and authority among the branches of the federal government. Rather, he assumed that the American legislature, like the legislature in revolutionary France, was the sole representative of the will of the people. He also assumed that the fundamental political division between the emerging Republican Party and the Federalists was based upon their respective loyalties to France or Britain; he did not appreciate that it was primarily the struggle over the nature of the American Republic itself that pitted the Federalist priorities of law, order, and stability against the growing Republican emphasis on liberty and equality.
Genet paid little attention to the problems that the European war was causing America. Despite the thousands of miles of ocean that separated the United States from that war, most Americans realized that the cords of commerce connected their country to the belliger
ents in Europe. America’s economic recovery and its fiscal stability depended upon foreign trade, and that trade, in turn, depended on the goodwill of its key trading partners, Britain and France. Any obstacles these two great powers imposed on US imports or exports could be disastrous. In fact, in the wake of the French Revolution, both had begun to pass legislation or establish policies that restricted US trade with their territorial possessions. As open war between Britain and France loomed, each began to target US trade with the enemy. American merchant ships were vulnerable to attack and seizure on the high seas, for, in 1793, the United States had no navy to protect them from pirates or the British and French navies that controlled the Atlantic. The American public might be willing to sing the “Marseillaise,” but, once France declared war against Britain, both Francophiles and Anglophiles in Washington’s cabinet recognized they would need to cautiously navigate between the two European rivals. In this situation, the French minister’s agenda was likely to create a crisis. One thing was certain: it would find a fierce and powerful opponent in Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.
That Hamilton would reject Genet’s demands was foreshadowed by a simple fact: the nation’s primary trading partner was Great Britain. Any decision that alienated Britain meant an interruption, if not a cessation, of this vital revenue flow. Hamilton’s position on America’s existing treaties with France, on Genet himself, and on Genet’s mission would not stem from a personal hatred of France, as many of his own opponents would argue; it would arise from his desire to protect the system he had constructed.