A Sovereign People

by Carol Berkin

  Pinckney’s conversation with X the following day did little to quiet his concerns or Marshall’s. X arrived with the demands of the 18th in writing. He suggested that the United States could disguise the loan by calling it an advance payment to the French for debts owed by various Americans. Sums could then be taken out of this “advance” for what he termed the “customary distribution” in diplomatic affairs, that is, the bribe. When Pinckney reported this conversation, Marshall’s response was a firm no. He restated his position that the envoys should refuse to engage in any further indirect negotiations. Pinckney concurred. But Gerry did not, repeating his argument that to demand direct negotiations would be taking a hard line that would surely lead to war.

  The next day, a second unauthorized agent arrived at the envoys’ lodgings with X. Pierre Bellamy, or Y, introduced himself to the Americans as a close friend of Talleyrand. He too was a banker, but he was not just any banker—he was Talleyrand’s personal banker. Y’s task was to once again point out how offended the French government was by parts of Adams’s speech and to insist that the envoys repudiate the offending comments. Above all, he made clear that official negotiations would be costly. “Il faut de l’argent,” he said. “Il faut beaucoup de l’argent.” Marshall responded with a question: If we refuse to pay this money, will the Directory refuse to officially receive us? Bellamy hedged; he did not know.38

  Once again the three envoys discussed their options. Marshall declared the situation preposterous, as neither of their visitors had any authority within the French government. He did not think it was in America’s best interest to carry on these “clandestine negotiations.” Gerry disagreed, and a heated argument followed. In the end, Gerry agreed that when X and Y arrived for breakfast the next morning, they would be told that the envoys would engage in no further informal discussions.

  The envoys’ resolve vanished, however, when their visitors arrived. X and Y told them once more that the Directory was furious about the president’s speech. They assured the Americans that Talleyrand considered the repudiation essential, unless some means could be found to change the French government’s mind—in other words, bribes and loans. The message was clear: the only solution to the envoys’ dilemma was money. Y suggested that the United States could advance France 32 million Dutch florins. Then, when France signed a peace treaty with Holland, Holland would be required to repay the advance in full. Thus, the loan would not cost the United States anything. When Marshall asked about the bribe to Talleyrand, Y quickly replied that it remained an additional payment.

  In discussion later that day, Gerry urged his fellow envoys to delay any formal answer to this proposal. Another heated argument followed. Marshall announced that he would return to Philadelphia for instructions on the French demands, but only if France agreed to suspend its attacks on American shipping until he returned with an answer. When this offer was conveyed to Y, the banker responded with frustration. Was it not clear, he asked, that the Directory will expel you from France if you don’t immediately comply?

  On October 22, a dispirited Marshall sat down to write the first of two long dispatches to Secretary of State Pickering. It had been, he knew, almost two months since the three Americans had arrived in Paris, and they had no progress to report. Pinckney and Gerry signed Marshall’s dispatch, but it did not reach its destination until March 1798.

  4

  “We experience a haughtiness… unexampled in the history and practice of nations.”

  —Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, October 1797

  JOHN MARSHALL’S PESSIMISM was palpable as October ended. He wrote to William Vans Murray that he did not think the Directory would ever receive the envoys. And, in a letter to Charles Lee, he expressed his conviction that France “is not and never will be a republic.” The United States stood alone, as it had before the French Revolution raised the hopes of Americans that liberty was spreading. “It is in America and America only,” Marshall lamented, “that human liberty has found an asylum.” Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was no less pessimistic. His wife, knowing her husband’s mood, began to pack for a return to the United States. Elbridge Gerry, never an optimist, was equally glum. Writing to William Vans Murray, he declared, “The fact is, as I conceive it, that a small cargo of Mexican dollars would be more efficient in a negotiation at present than two Cargoes of Ambassadors.” The three men agreed, “We experience a haughtiness which is unexampled in the history and practice of nations.”39

  On the same day Marshall sent his dispatch to Pickering, Talleyrand sent a third agent, the wealthy sugar planter from Santo Domingo, Lucien Hauteval, to continue the pressure on the envoys. Hauteval, or “Z,” had lived in Boston and knew Gerry. It was a mark of Talleyrand’s cleverness that he chose agents who had a personal connection with one of the Americans and thus had reason to visit them. When Hauteval arrived, only Gerry was home. The planter wasted little time repeating the monetary terms allegedly set by the Directory: the loan and the bribe were essential. He assured Gerry that, unlike X and Y, he had no business connections with Talleyrand. In other words, he could be believed because he had no financial motive.

  The next day, October 23, Z returned to talk to all three envoys. He suggested that they call on Talleyrand privately. Pinckney and Marshall refused, but Gerry, who had known Talleyrand during the French minister’s years in America, said he would pay a personal visit on October 28. Talleyrand’s patience was growing thin, however, and he sent X back to the envoys on the 27th.

  The meeting was decidedly more confrontational than earlier ones. As Marshall later reported it to Pickering, Hottinguer began the two-hour conversation with boasts of recent French military successes. Austria has just made peace with France, he announced, and the French military cannot be defeated. The Americans’ response to this vision of an invincible France was not what Hottinguer desired. They made clear that the French victories would not change their position on the Directory demands. In the face of this stubbornness, Hottinguer lost his temper. He resorted to an open threat: the Directory will move against any neutral nation. An equally angry Pinckney fired back that the United States would never pay tribute. “No, no not a sixpence!” he declared. Agent X, who could not fathom what he considered foolish resistance to an established practice, asked whether the US government was unaware that nothing was done in France without money changing hands. Pinckney confessed that such a practice was never suspected. To this admission, the amazed Hottinguer observed that any American living in Paris could have told him as much.40

  Hottinguer viewed the bribe and the forced loan as a practical matter; the Americans viewed it not only as a corrupt practice but also as a belittling assertion of domination. Perhaps if the memory of Genet and Adet and of Pinckney’s own expulsion were not so fresh in the envoys’ minds, they might have viewed the demands as part of a game of diplomatic chess, a move that needed to be countered by equal cunning. But attacks on the sovereignty of the federal government by Britain and France had convinced men like Pinckney and Marshall that their country was in peril. When X threatened that the failure to offer the loan and the bribe would lead to war, Marshall replied, “To lend this money under the lash & coercion of France was to relinquish the government of ourselves & to submit to a foreign government imposed upon us by force.” Marshall’s vow that his country would make “at least one manly struggle before we thus surrender our national independence” suggests that the Virginian saw the demand for money as a challenge to American virility. Framed in this manner, the situation brought out American bravado rather than subtle gamesmanship.41

  On October 28, Gerry and Z went to see Talleyrand. Gerry told the foreign minister that the envoys had agreed one of them must go home to get instructions on the demand for a loan. A thoroughly annoyed Talleyrand retorted that the Directory was accustomed to dispatching business promptly and could not wait. The envoys, he declared, must assume the responsibility themselves—another challenge to their manhood—and they must do it soon.
But, the following day, Talleyrand appeared to relent. X arrived with a new message and a new proposal: pay the bribe and two of you can remain in Paris while the third returns to the United States for instructions. The envoys asked whether France would agree to a moratorium on attacks on American ships while the consultation with the Adams administration took place. X replied no. Hearing this, Marshall responded that France had already taken $15 million from the United States through privateering. Despite this, he continued, we have come here to find a way to restore the harmony between our two nations. And all you can offer in return is that you might let us remain in Paris if we pay a bribe? The answer from X was yes. You must pay—or leave.42

  Over the next few days, the visits from Talleyrand’s agents continued. In addition to their old threat that there would be war if French demands were not met, they added a new one: France could easily persuade the “French Party” in America to blame the failure of negotiations on the Federalists. In effect, this was an admission of French meddling in America’s domestic politics. The envoys’ response to this threat was prophetic: “[France’s] extreme injustice offered to our country would unite every man against her.” Much hinged, Marshall knew, on whether this would prove true.43

  November began with a decision by the envoys, once again, not to engage in indirect negotiations with the French government, a decision promptly broken when Talleyrand sent a new set of intermediaries to talk with them. The wealthy Parisian merchant Caron de Beaumarchais called on the envoys on November 8; his assignment was to discover whether their resistance to the bribe had softened. Soon afterward, James Mountflorence paid a visit to Pinckney, who succumbed to the temptation to send a message through Mountflorence to Talleyrand. Mountflorence was to tell the French minister that the envoys were disgusted with the treatment they had received. “We neither came to buy or beg a peace,” Pinckney declared. Instead they were in Paris “to treat as an independent nation on the subject of differences subsisting between us.” Pinckney’s indignation was wasted; like the letter the envoys sent that month requesting that formal negotiations begin at once, this complaint did not receive a response.44

  December came and with it a new strategy from Talleyrand. The French minister had decided to initiate a divide-and-conquer approach, designed to pry Gerry away from his two companions. Although Marshall was more certain than ever that Talleyrand was stalling and that France did not want a formal rupture with the United States, Gerry had grown even more anxious that war was imminent. He worried that a war between the world’s only two republics would “disgrace republicanism and make it the scoff of despots.” But Gerry’s deepest fear was that the failure of negotiations would propel the United States into an alliance with Britain. In short, his abiding hatred of England was leading him to demand the envoys accommodate France. Certain that Gerry could be manipulated, Talleyrand invited him to dinner along with X, Y, and Z early in the month, and Y invited him to call on the foreign minister again on the 17th.45

  Talleyrand did not, of course, relent in his pressuring of Pinckney and Marshall. They were visited several times that month by X and Y, who continued to urge them to change their minds about the bribe. While he was busy courting Gerry, Talleyrand carefully selected additional men to make the case for a bribe to the other envoys. He sent Pierre du Pont de Nemours, an old friend of the Pinckneys, to Charles Pinckney and Beaumarchais to Marshall. None of Talleyrand’s agents managed to shake their resolve. Yet both men began to worry about Gerry’s.

  In truth, all three were restless and weary, and their letters were marked by pessimism. Gerry described their situation to his wife as “painful” and confessed to her that he had “no prospect that our mission will be of much service.” And on Christmas Eve, Marshall conveyed his impatience and doubts in a letter to Rufus King, the American minister to Great Britain. He was determined, he said, to leave by mid-January if negotiations had not begun. “Submission has its limits,” he declared, “and if we have not actually already passed, we are certainly approaching them.” His doubts that the French could be trusted, even if a bribe were paid, were confirmed in a December 23 letter on its way to the envoys from Rufus King. Writing in cipher, King reported that England had just rejected a peace treaty offered by the Directory. The problem had not been the demand for an exorbitant bribe; it had been the English government’s certainty that France could not be trusted to live up to the terms of the treaty. King strongly urged the three Americans to follow the British example. “To Ransom our country from Injustice and Power,” he wrote, “would be to invite Dishonor and injury, because there can be no guaranty [sic] against them.”46

  In spite of the deadline Marshall set, January found the three Americans still in Paris. And at home, in Philadelphia, John Adams could do little but wonder about the success or failure of his efforts for peace.

  5

  “Shall an immediate declaration of war be recommended?”

  —John Adams, November 1797

  WHILE THE ENVOYS wrestled with their predicament, Adams had been dealing with a crisis of a very different order at home. A new epidemic of yellow fever, similar to the one that had struck Philadelphia in 1793, had sent the president and much of the executive and legislative branches away from the city during October and November. At last the disease abated, and both the president and members of Congress returned to the capital. When the president addressed the reconvening Congress on November 22, he had no news to share about the negotiations. All he could report was what most congressmen surely knew: Europe was still racked by war; American ships were still vulnerable at sea. If America could do nothing to end that war, it could take steps, Adams declared, to protect its own commerce. Like the good New Englander he was, John Adams believed “Commerce has made this Country what it is.” But to protect it would take money, money that must come, he said, from domestic sources rather than loans from foreign nations. This call for additional taxes was unlikely to be welcomed by the ordinary American voter.47

  Winter began, and Marshall’s October 22 dispatch had still not arrived. The apparent silence from the envoys proved more and more troubling. As George Washington wrote to Oliver Wolcott Jr., “It is somewhat singular that the Government should have received no advices from our Envoys at Paris since their arrival there.” Even if the news were bad, Washington was impatient to learn it. Adams agreed. Assuming the worst because no positive news had been forthcoming, he decided to consult with his cabinet, sending it, on January 24, a long list of questions. If the envoys were refused an audience, or were ordered to depart without accomplishing their mission, what should they then do? Should they all go to Holland? Should two return to America while a third remained in Europe? Or should all of them come home? The two key questions were these: “Shall an immediate declaration of war be recommended or suggested?” And “What… above all… will policy dictate to be said to England?”48

  Adams was worried—and he would have been more worried had he known what Talleyrand was plotting. In February, 1798, the French minister intensified his efforts to create a division among the envoys. He slyly suggested to Gerry that the French government ought to deal exclusively with him. He also asked Gerry to promise secrecy about their future meetings. Gerry was so flattered by this request that his usual wariness and suspicion wholly deserted him. He agreed to Talleyrand’s insistence on confidentiality. He then compounded his error in judgment by revealing to his two colleagues that he had received several promising proposals from Talleyrand that he was not at liberty to share with them. With great drama, he added that his answer to these proposals would determine whether there would be war or peace.49

  What were Marshall and Pinckney to make of this development? Marshall was no fool; he realized that Talleyrand planned to put the blame on the two of them if negotiations failed and to credit Gerry if they succeeded. He also concluded that Talleyrand intended to keep the suggestible Gerry in Paris and send the other two envoys home. As long as one of them remained, the l
ikelihood of a US alliance with Great Britain was diminished. And if Talleyrand and Gerry could hammer out a treaty, this would help the Republicans—the “French Party”—in the next American presidential election. Marshall shared his insights with Pinckney. Much was at stake, including their own reputations, yet, inexplicably, the two men decided that Gerry should be free to respond to Talleyrand’s proposals as he saw fit.

  Two more meetings between Talleyrand and Gerry quickly followed. Marshall interceded only to remind Gerry that the French minister was not likely to offer anything the United States would accept. How, he asked Gerry, could you fail to see that all promises from Talleyrand were empty and that the foreign minister was simply stalling until the war with Britain was settled? Gerry’s response was to insist that Talleyrand’s offers were sincere.

  The relationship between Gerry and his fellow envoys was unraveling. On February 9, Gerry reported that he had come from an “extraordinary conversation” with Talleyrand’s secretary. He could not, however, report what was said. Marshall, weary of Gerry’s secrets and his boasting about them, refused to ask anything about the conversation. Surprised, Gerry chose to share his extraordinary news after all: the Directory had decided to order all three envoys out of the country within twenty-four hours unless the bribe was paid. But there was more. Talleyrand, the secretary said, had managed to delay their expulsion to give them time to reconsider their position. Marshall could not hide his amazement at Gerry’s gullibility. The threat, he told his colleague, was not real; it was just another of Talleyrand’s tricks.

  Marshall was right. February passed without any move by the French to expel the American envoys. Despite this, Gerry seemed more convinced than ever that the bribe and the loan were essential to prevent war. Talleyrand’s secretary visited Gerry again on February 25, with a new proposal that America could pay the loan France demanded after the war with Great Britain was over. Gerry immediately shared the proposal with his colleagues, but Marshall just as immediately rejected it. He pointed out the obvious: there was nothing to prevent France from using the promised money as collateral for new loans during the current war. Even if prevention were possible, Marshall added, a loan granted under duress meant “we no longer acted for ourselves but according to the will of France.” Pinckney agreed that France would quickly put the promised loan to use. This argument, Gerry retorted, rests on the suspicion that France would not honor its agreement. Forgetting for the moment his own reputation as the most suspicious man in American politics, Gerry declared solemnly, “It was extremely unwise for a man to deliver himself up entirely to suspicion, and the person who permitted himself to be governed by it in great national concerns would very often find himself mistaken.”50