by Carol Berkin
Jefferson had little expectation that this moratorium would hold. As he told James Madison in a letter of July 14, “I am excessively afraid that an open rupture will take place between the Fr. min. & us. I think there has been something to blame on both sides, but much more on his.” Jefferson knew the Federalists had already begun to take political advantage of Genet’s outrageous behavior by issuing newspaper appeals to the people to stand by the president. “They know too well that the whole game is played into their hands, & that there is right enough on both sides to marshal each nation with its own agents, and consequently against one another.” The only winners, Jefferson feared, would be the American monarchists and their beloved Great Britain. Madison could do little but sympathize. Genet “must be brought right if possible,” he wrote on July 18. “His folly will otherwise do mischief which no wisdom can repair.”66
Jefferson at last vented his frustrations at Genet in a long letter addressed to the Frenchman, written on July 16. He dismissed the claim that French consuls had jurisdiction over prizes brought into American ports. Every nation, he wrote, has a natural right to exclusive jurisdiction over the territory it occupies, and every nation has a right to preserve peace, to punish acts that breach that peace, and to restore property taken by force within its own limits. He declared Genet’s assertion that the president should not have made several decisions without congressional approval both presumptuous and incorrect. The executive “is the sole organ of our communications with foreign governments,” and agents of those governments “are not authorized to judge what cases are to be decided by this or that department.” Genet’s claim that the will of the people differed from the will of the president was equally wrong. The French minister may have come to this conclusion by listening to men neither qualified to speak nor authorized to pronounce on the subject. Better to look closely at the Constitution, Jefferson said, for here you will find that the people freely give the president the power to execute his office as he thinks wisest and best. For Jefferson, this was an unrestrained tirade; having written it, he chose, probably wisely, not to send it to Genet.67
The cabinet met once again on July 23—and it was here that Genet’s fate began to be decided. Although the meeting was ostensibly to discuss money matters raised in several of Genet’s letters to Jefferson, the president had something else on his mind: what to do about Citizen Genet himself. The Supreme Court justices had declined to rule on the administration’s neutrality policy, so the cabinet alone would need to resolve the problems of enforcement. Washington made clear his own preferred course of action: send the entire correspondence with the French minister to Gouverneur Morris, the American minister in France, and instruct Morris to request Genet’s recall. Washington thought that the request should be cushioned by declarations of friendship to the French nation and assurances that the American government distinguished between Genet and his nation.
Hamilton, according to Jefferson’s notes on this meeting, did not want the request made with such sensitivity; in his view, the president should make a firm demand. Hamilton was well aware of the propaganda value in revealing Genet’s insults to the public, and so he also urged Washington to lay the entire correspondence before the American people, who must be informed of the many crises Genet had generated. Otherwise, they might come under the sway of those “incendiaries” who hoped to see the federal government overthrown.68
Hamilton had already begun to warn the public about the danger the young nation faced. Writing as “Pacificus,” he had published a series of essays in Federalist newspapers arguing that the objections to the president’s right to issue the Proclamation of Neutrality were unfounded and had been put forward by American opponents of the Washington administration as well as by French officials. By July 31, he would begin another essay series, this one entitled “No Jacobin.” In the opening sentence of the first essay, he exposed the rumor that Hamilton himself knew to be fact: Genet “has threatened to appeal from The President of The United States to the People.”69
During the July 23 cabinet meeting, Knox concurred with all of Hamilton’s suggestions. The secretary of war then attempted to stoke the president’s ire with examples of incendiary talk among American citizens. He recounted the tale of a woman who had overheard Washington called a great tyrant who would soon need to be chased out of the city. But Washington did not need convincing. Only two days before the meeting, he had confided his concern about the critics of his administration to his friend Henry Lee. Every country had its discontented characters, he wrote, and some of these were motivated by a genuine belief that the government’s policies are harmful. But others, he said, are “diabolical.” Their intentions were not only to impede the Government but also to “destroy the confidence which it is necessary for the People to place… in their public Servants.” As for the personal attacks, he insisted, “I care not.” He knew that he had neither ambitious nor self-interested motives for his conduct in office. “The arrows of malevolence therefore, however barbed & well pointed, never can reach the most valuable part of me.” Yet his close associates knew he did care deeply. Jefferson had seen how profoundly offended and angered Washington was by the criticism from the Republican press. His statement to Lee that “the publications in Freneau’s and Beach’s [Bache] Papers are outrages on common decency” was more revealing than his claims about his disregard of criticism.70
Despite Washington’s intense feelings, he was not yet willing to see a public dissemination of Genet’s correspondence. And although the president himself had raised the topic of Genet’s recall, no final decision appears to have been made. In matters of diplomacy, just as in the handling of domestic disorder, Washington did not want the public to think he was acting precipitously. He had no doubt that Genet would continue his irritating, insulting behavior and that eventually, the people would support the French minister’s recall.
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“He will sink the republican interest if they do not abandon him.”
—Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, August 3, 1793
THE PRESIDENT WAS disturbed by the criticism he received in the press and by the growing political divisiveness these newspaper attacks reflected. But his frustration also stemmed from the almost daily problem of enforcing a rather nebulous neutrality policy. It was the administration’s hope that a test case in the courts would ease, if not solve, this dilemma. That case was brought against Gideon Henfield, the American sailor who, in May, had served as prize master for France on the captured British vessel the William. At issue were several questions: How was neutrality defined? How was it to be enforced? Under whose jurisdiction did that enforcement fall? On July 22, 1793, the Henfield case came before a special session of the US Circuit Court of Pennsylvania. On July 27, the seaman was indicted by a grand jury. The indictment, drafted by Edmund Randolph and perhaps amended by Alexander Hamilton, charged Henfield with violating the law of nations and the peace and dignity of the United States.
The US government was not on the firmest ground in prosecuting Gideon Henfield. There was no congressional act that expressly forbade an American citizen from enlisting in a foreign service when the United States was at peace. But Randolph had been adamant from the beginning: Henfield was indictable under federal law for serving on the privateer and for participating in the capture of the William because these actions violated the American treaties guaranteeing peace with Britain as well as the Netherlands and Prussia. These treaties, Randolph declared, were the supreme law of the land. Henfield’s actions were also indictable under common law because they disturbed the peace in the United States.
When the government first raised the issue of Henfield’s enlistment in the French navy Genet had fiercely defended the American’s right to volunteer. Henfield, he told Jefferson, was guilty of nothing more than “embracing the cause supported by the United States,” and, for that reason, the Massachusetts sailor deserved the support and protection of the French Republic. Genet had decided to provide tha
t support in the form of three skilled lawyers. Peter Stephen Du Ponceau was a French philosopher and jurist who had immigrated to the American colonies in 1777 and had served in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Jared Ingersoll was a signer of the Constitution, a man with a reputation as a very able lawyer who spoke well and understood his subject thoroughly. The third in this impressive triumvirate was Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant, a New Jersey political leader and attorney who had moved to Philadelphia in 1777.
The prosecutor, District Attorney William Rawle, argued to the jury that Henfield’s actions threatened reprisals from the nations at war with France and violated the federal government’s exclusive right to wage war. Henfield’s attorneys conceded that he had committed the acts he was accused of but argued that he had done so after he renounced his American citizenship by entering French service. Furthermore, they argued, his actions had taken place before the president’s proclamation was issued, and the US treaty with France did not forbid an American citizen from enlisting in French service. In his charge to the jury, Supreme Court justice James Wilson upheld the prosecution’s contentions, but the jury refused to convict. On July 29, Gideon Henfield was acquitted on all counts. The decision stunned and embarrassed members of the cabinet and the prosecution. Genet, of course, hailed the acquittal as a vindication of his right to enlist Americans in the service of his country.71
The acquittal of Henfield forced the cabinet to make a series of individual judgments on the various cases pending. It also prompted it to at last set down a clear set of rules that would identify what was—and what was not—allowed to belligerents whose ships came into US ports. By August 3, Hamilton, Knox, and Jefferson were ready to present the president with eight rules, several of which actually showed some bias in favor of France. Once Washington approved these rules, Knox included them in his circular letter to the state governors. Despite this, and despite a congressional act on the subject in June 1794, the problem of defining and enforcing neutrality would continue for two decades.72
Genet’s vocal and financial support of Henfield was simply the last in a long list of diplomatic missteps by the French minister. Indeed, as August 1793 began, the cabinet seemed determined to see him removed from his post. Throughout the month, it met with the president to discuss Genet’s conduct. Hamilton prepared a rough outline of the justification for demanding the minister’s recall. He understood, perhaps better than the others, Genet’s underlying problem: “If his constructions were right his course was wrong.” Genet, in short, was his own worst enemy, alienating those he needed to negotiate with, persisting in practices that clearly offended the administration, and attacking the president’s reputation and authority. Genet, so eager to carry out his instructions, was temperamentally and intellectually the wrong man for the job.73
Although all members of the cabinet agreed that Genet must be recalled, they still did not agree on the tone or the content of the letter Gouverneur Morris was to present to the French government. Nor did they agree on how confidential their actions should remain. As Jefferson later recalled, a number of proposals were made. The first was that Morris receive a full statement of Genet’s conduct and that this letter, along with the French minister’s correspondence, should be communicated by him to the Executive Council of France. The cabinet unanimously agreed to this. But then the question of phrasing arose. Here, agreement broke down. Once again Jefferson proposed the demand be expressed “with great delicacy,” but Knox and Randolph now supported Hamilton’s preference for preemptory terms. Knox went so far as to propose that Genet be sent off immediately, but no one supported this drastic step. The fourth proposal was to inform Genet of the decision to ask for his recall. Jefferson feared this might prompt more recklessness from Genet, but the president and the other three cabinet members approved this proposal. It was the fifth proposal—that the whole correspondence between Genet and Jefferson should be made public—that most starkly illuminated the divide between Republicans and Federalists in the administration. Hamilton made what Jefferson described as an inflammatory and declamatory “jury speech” in favor of the publishing of these documents. Randolph immediately opposed the idea. Jefferson remained silent on the issue until the following day, when, after Hamilton finished a second, long defense of the idea, the secretary of state voiced his opposition.
The president seemed to favor the publication of the correspondence. Once again, Henry Knox played the role of provocateur, hoping to stoke Washington’s outrage at his critics by citing a broadside entitled “The Funeral Dirge of George Washington and James Wilson, King and Judge.” The poem, said to be the work of the National Gazette’s Philip Freneau, described the execution of the president and the Supreme Court justice by the guillotine. Knox’s efforts were rewarded with one of the president’s rare tirades, which Jefferson described as “one of those passions when he cannot command himself.” He was sick of the personal abuse heaped upon him, Washington said, and he defied any man on earth to produce evidence that he had ever acted out of any but the purest motives. “By god,” Jefferson recalled him saying, he would “rather be in his grave than in his present situation… [or] on his farm than to be made emperor of the world.” Yet here they were, claiming he wished to be a king. He was furious that Freneau sent him three copies of his paper every day, as if he expected the president to distribute them. This was nothing more than “an impudent design to insult him.” When Washington finished, there was a brief and uncomfortable silence in the room. Then, the discussion began again. The president, now calm, declared that he saw no reason to immediately decide whether to publish Genet’s letters. He hoped events would make such an appeal to the people unnecessary.74
Jefferson now fully understood the threat that continued support of Genet posed to the Republicans. The tide of public opinion, already showing signs of shifting, was certain to turn dramatically if Genet’s correspondence were made public. Only a few days earlier, Charles Adams had lamented to his brother, John Quincy, that anyone who ventured to disapprove of a single measure of the French was excoriated as an “Aristocrat.” But now Jefferson considered it necessary to advise his fellow Republicans to abandon Genet or “he will sink the republican interest.” Jefferson was appalled that the Frenchman had loudly defended his “unfounded pretensions” on the treaty without any knowledge of the opinion of leading legal authorities like Vattel. “His ignorance of everything written on the subject is astonishing,” Jefferson told Madison. “I think he has never read a book of any sort in that branch of science.” To Jefferson, there were few more damning critiques one could make of a man.75
A few days later, Jefferson set about to assuage Washington’s fears that Genet and partisans like Freneau were producing a crisis of public confidence in the executive branch and an irreparable political division within American society. He assured the president that Congress would take no radical or irresponsible action when it reconvened in December and that the Republicans in the legislature would abandon Genet the moment they learned of his conduct. The president responded with assurances of his own. He believed, he told his secretary of state, that the motives of the Republicans were “perfectly pure” and that they arose from a sincere belief that a faction existed that was determined to create a monarchy. But, he continued, Jefferson must realize that the president would never support such a plan. Jefferson hurriedly replied that “no rational man in the US suspects you of any other disposition.” However, he insisted that not a week passed without declarations from the monarchical party that the federal government was good for nothing, that it was “a milk and water thing that cannot support itself,” and that it must be knocked down and replaced with something more energetic. Though apparently certain of the existence of a monarchical plot, Jefferson offered no specific examples to back up this claim.76
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“We stand united and firm.”
Gazette of the United States, August 14, 1793
IT FELL TO Jefferson as secreta
ry of state to draft the letter to Gouverneur Morris for presentation to the French Executive Council. On August 15, Jefferson presented a rough draft to the cabinet meeting. At the August 20 meeting, the letter was read and amended, paragraph by paragraph, before it was finally approved. Hamilton was then instructed to obtain a ship to carry the cover letter and the request for Genet’s recall to Morris. On August 23, the letter received the president’s final approval, but it would not reach Morris until October 5.77
And what was Genet doing while, unknown to him, his fate hung in the balance? Naturally, he was busy pursuing his grand plans to invade Spanish and British American territories. Writing to the French minister of foreign affairs on August 2, Genet outlined his plan of conquest. He would first send the French fleet, which had just arrived in New York, to Canada, where crews of Frenchmen and American volunteers would destroy the British fisheries off the Canadian coast and burn Halifax. Then he would send the ships to capture New Orleans and, with the help of American land forces, liberate the entire Louisiana Territory.78
From the beginning, Genet planned to find his American army largely among Kentucky settlers. It was no secret that Kentuckians were angry that Washington’s government had failed to negotiate a treaty with Spain to open shipping on the Mississippi River. Indeed, the Whiskey Rebellion, which at that time was growing more threatening, was the best evidence of frontier discontent with the federal government. Genet was certain he could harness this growing unrest for his own ends. He had already acquired a famous volunteer to lead the American troops: the Revolutionary War hero George Rogers Clark.
The tall, red-haired Clark, acclaimed by Americans as the “Conqueror of the Old Northwest” and known as “Long Knife” among the Indian tribes, had, in fact, volunteered his services to Genet earlier in 1793. Writing to Genet on February 5, he praised the French war against the despots of Europe as “the most awful, interesting and solemn… that has ever arisen in the world.” The wish to join the struggle, he added, was “strong and vivid in my bosom.” Clark, however, was no longer the bold warrior of the 1770s. He had fallen on hard times after the war, due in large part to debts incurred when he personally signed for materials needed by his troops. After the war, neither his home state of Virginia nor the federal government proved willing to settle those debts. Angry at being abandoned by these governments and weary of being pursued by creditors, Clark began to drink heavily. By 1793, he was a desperate, almost broken man. Nevertheless, Genet gave Clark the rank of major general in his invasion army.79