A Sovereign People

by Carol Berkin

  A long debate followed, settling nothing. The next day brought a second confrontation. Pinckney had heard a rumor that Talleyrand intended to send him and Marshall home so that he could negotiate a treaty with Gerry. This was, of course, exactly what Talleyrand intended to do. When Gerry confirmed the rumor, harsh words followed.

  Marshall realized the situation had become impossible. If Talleyrand did ask for a loan payable after peace was declared with England, Marshall proposed that the envoys pledge to consult with their government before agreeing to these terms. The unspoken advantage of this pledge was that it would restrain Gerry if he were indeed left alone to negotiate with the French minister.

  On the afternoon of March 2 the three envoys had their first meeting with Talleyrand in five months. They were told that the Directory now demanded an apology for George Washington’s farewell address of September 19, 1796, in addition to Adams’s May 16, 1797, address to Congress. They were also told that the loan to the French government was a prerequisite for any formal negotiations. Finally, the terms of that loan had changed; although it could be paid after the war, some aid must be given immediately. Marshall asked bluntly whether this was an ultimatum. Talleyrand’s reply was maddeningly vague: some demonstration of friendship was required before negotiations could begin.

  That night the envoys reached a stalemate. Marshall would not agree to Talleyrand’s terms, and Gerry would not abandon his support for them. Gerry accused Marshall of implying that he had tried to trick them into agreeing to the French demands. Marshall dismissed the notion, insisting that no personal insult had been offered to Gerry. Gerry was not appeased. He took up the same issues the next morning. This time, Marshall was adamant: there was no point in discussing things further; neither of us is going to change our mind. There were only two alternatives: Gerry could remain in Paris and negotiate on his own, or he could return to Philadelphia for instructions. Marshall quickly added a third option. You and I, he told Gerry, could go home for instructions and Pinckney could remain in Paris. This discussion, like many other recent ones, ended with nothing decided.

  The Americans scheduled another meeting with Talleyrand for March 6. As they prepared to leave for the foreign minister’s office, Gerry asked Marshall whether he would be willing to insert a statement in any new treaty that the complaints Washington and Adams had made against France were “founded in mistake.” At this, Marshall exploded. An equally angry Gerry announced that he wished to God that Marshall would propose something—anything!—that would accommodate French positions. Marshall coldly replied that he was not accustomed to such language. With this harsh exchange, all pretense of cordiality vanished.51

  At the meeting, Talleyrand confirmed Pinckney and Marshall’s suspicions that France would immediately use the promise of an American loan as collateral for other loans. In an effort to allay their concerns about Britain’s response to the loan, the French minister suggested that the transactions between their two countries could be concealed from the public. Britain, in particular, need never know. Not surprisingly, Marshall objected. It remained clear to him that to assist France with a loan was to become France’s ally in the war.

  There was little more to be said. All that remained was the frantic maneuvering to place the blame for the failure of the negotiations on the other party. Would the Americans demand their passports and go home—or would the French government expel them? Realizing that it would be a blow to the Federalists if they initiated a departure, Marshall and Pinckney wisely dug in their heels. They were determined to make Talleyrand order them away. Talleyrand was just as determined to make them voluntarily depart. On March 20, he informed the Americans that the Directory was willing to negotiate only with an impartial envoy, and that man was Elbridge Gerry. The other two might just as well ask for their passports and depart.

  For a brief moment, the envoys closed ranks. They agreed to tell Talleyrand that they would negotiate only as a team. In a carefully crafted message, Marshall made it clear to Talleyrand that France could not choose who would represent America at the table. While they waited for a response, Gerry repeatedly assured his colleagues that he would not remain in Paris alone. He would, he said, “sooner be thrown in the Seine than consent to stay.”52

  Yet, before the month was over, Gerry had changed his mind. On March 23, Talleyrand sent his secretary with a message: either Marshall and Pinckney submit a request for their passports within three days, or all three Americans would be ordered out of France. Marshall’s response was to do nothing, which would force the French government to expel them. But Gerry, certain that their departure under any circumstances would lead to war, saw things differently. He insisted that Marshall and Pinckney must ask for their passports. He would make the sacrifice and remain in France to prevent a declaration of war. Marshall rejected this plan, but Gerry was certain it was the only viable solution. Writing home to his wife on March 26, he explained that he had to stay in Paris “to prevent a rupture.” He appeared puzzled at the dynamics of his relationship with his fellow envoys. He had, he wrote, united with his colleagues on every decision, yet “their conduct to me has not been of that frank & friendly description which I expected.” In Gerry’s version of the mission, he was blameless. Marshall’s journal and dispatches would tell a different story.53

  For two weeks, Talleyrand and Marshall argued through surrogates over the details of the two Americans’ departure. Marshall demanded a letter of safe passage to protect him from privateers. Talleyrand warned him not to stop in England on his way home. Marshall countered with the threat that he would indeed go to England if he did not receive the letter. Finally, on April 10, Marshall sent a message through Beaumarchais: the last ship bound directly to the United States was leaving soon. If Talleyrand did not want him to travel by way of England, a letter of safe conduct and a passport must be sent at once. Talleyrand replied as he had replied to Pinckney in 1797: if Marshall wanted a passport, he should apply for it from the Paris police like any other American civilian. Marshall fired back just as Pinckney had done: he was no ordinary citizen but a minister of the United States of America. In this, as in all the maneuvering that had preceded it, Marshall was determined to protect the honor and authority of the federal government.

  It was perhaps inevitable that a confrontation with Gerry would take place while Marshall and Pinckney waited for the papers they needed to depart. The argument began with Pinckney’s accusation that Gerry’s behavior was an embarrassment to the American government. Gerry responded in kind, insisting that Pinckney and Marshall were embittered against him and had formed views and made plans that they kept secret from him. “It is false, sir,” replied Pinckney, who threw back the charge of secrecy upon Gerry. Gerry defended himself, insisting he had simply honored a pledge of secrecy to Talleyrand. A livid Pinckney declared that Gerry ought never to have made such a promise!54

  On April 13, Talleyrand ended his battle of wills with John Marshall and sent a letter requesting that both he and Pinckney leave Paris. He enclosed two passports and two letters of safe conduct. On April 23, Marshall boarded the American brig the Alexander Hamilton for a long voyage home. Pinckney left Paris but spent several months in southern France until an ailing daughter of his was strong enough to make the Atlantic crossing. He and his family at last set sail for America on August 7. Only a day later, Elbridge Gerry began his own two-month journey home.55

  6

  “He… was the dupe of Diplomatic Skill.”

  —George Washington, February 1798

  UPON THEIR RETURN, the three American envoys would tell wildly varied tales of their experiences in Paris. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was openly critical of Elbridge Gerry’s role in the unraveling of the negotiations. In a letter to Rufus King on April 4, 1798, Pinckney offered a harsh judgment of Gerry’s character: “I never met a man of less candor and so much duplicity as Mr. Gerry.” The men who had served in government with Gerry knew him to be abrasive, self-righteous, and always relu
ctant to compromise, but they did not doubt his patriotic intentions. If many of the choices he made as an envoy were unwise, to those who had not been in Paris, naïveté rather than cunning explained his duplicity. As John Quincy Adams would put it, “That Gentleman unfortunately was not qualified for negotiation with such men as now govern France—He was charmed with words; he was duped by professions; he had neither the spirit nor the penetration absolutely necessary for dealing with adversaries at once so bold, so cunning, and so false.” George Washington agreed, although he was less charitable. “He was led astray,” the former president declared, “by his own vanity & self importance, and was the dupe of Diplomatic Skill.”56

  Gerry, in short, like Edmond Genet, was simply out of his league as a diplomat. Yet the same could be said for Pinckney and Marshall. John Adams, who had considerable experience in such negotiations, should have known better than to send three novices to wrest concessions from a government known for its hubris—and slyness—in dealing with other countries.

  Each of the three men Adams appointed had an obvious Achilles’ heel. There was ample reason to suspect that Pinckney would be overly sensitive to slights after his humiliating experience in 1796. And there was even more reason to believe that Gerry would be, as he had always proved to be uncooperative persistently annoying, and self-righteous. Finally, John Marshall, for all his obvious intelligence, lacked the gravitas to take charge of the commission when differences of opinion arose. Marshall became leader by default, and, although his analysis of the situation was usually correct, he too often appeased Gerry when he knew it was unwise.

  From the beginning, Marshall’s contempt for France, his rejection of its claim to be a republic, and his certainty that Talleyrand’s dealings with the envoys dishonored America allowed him the distance needed to see that the Directory had more to gain by keeping the United States neutral than by making war against it. Without a new treaty, American neutrality would continue to be abused and manipulated and American supplies to be acquired without cost through privateering. Recognizing this, Marshall was able to develop an approach that was both more cynical and less frantic than Gerry’s. Yet Marshall made serious tactical errors: he gave in to Gerry’s pressure to treat with Talleyrand’s agents, he tacitly approved Gerry’s secret meetings with Talleyrand, and he foolishly agreed to let Gerry use his own judgment in responding to the French minister’s proposals.

  Pinckney’s harsh judgment of Gerry sprang from frustration rather than a considered assessment of the latter’s role in their failed mission. As a diplomat, Pinckney had no more skill than the man he accused of duplicity. Pinckney rarely asserted himself in the envoys’ discussions, content to agree with Marshall except when he felt his personal honor—or his country’s honor—was under direct attack. Honor was, in fact, the prism through which this South Carolina gentleman refracted much of what was proposed by Talleyrand and his agents. He may have underestimated Talleyrand’s skill, for he had little respect for the French minister. He considered him to be a mere adventurer, and Talleyrand’s demand for a bribe confirmed him in this judgment. When Marshall seemed willing to consider the bribe if a quid pro quo could be obtained, Pinckney’s fierce declaration of “No, no not a sixpence” was less a parry to a proposal than a reflexive response to an assault upon America’s honor.

  And Gerry? He was a prisoner to his own intense hatred of England and all things British. That hatred prompted him to endure French insults and to bend to French demands in order to prevent a war that might propel America into an alliance with Britain. His anxiety about this outcome blinded him to the possibility that the French did not want war with the United States and probably did not have the ability to invade America even if they wished to do so. His desire to accommodate France reflected poorly on his confidence in America’s ability to defend itself and on the Federalists’ willingness to avoid an alliance with Britain should war with France became a reality.

  Charles Talleyrand, the fourth major player in the Paris disaster, enjoyed several advantages in dealing with the Americans. He saw no conflict in serving the interests of his country and the interests of his personal wealth. He intended to throw as many obstacles as possible in the path of the envoys until, in desperation, they acceded to his demands for a loan and a douceur. Unlike the American envoys, he had a clear plan to stall and mislead in order to extract concessions. He was able to keep the American envoys at arm’s length through the use of intermediaries. That the Americans could not hold firm in their refusal to deal with X, Y, and Z, or Talleyrand’s other agents, was their greatest mistake. Talleyrand’s own misstep proved to be his belief, as Genet had believed before him, that the fundamental division in American politics was between a “French Party” and a “British Party” and that France could manipulate the outcome of that struggle. He ignored the American ministers’ warning: France’s extreme injustice would surely serve to unite every American against it.

  In the end, Talleyrand and his agents simply outmaneuvered the three inexperienced diplomats. Only their stubbornness, born of national pride, ultimately defeated the French minister’s scheme to enrich his government and, at the same time, line his own pockets. Yet, after seven months, they had fulfilled none of their instructions and never managed to bring Talleyrand into formal treaty negotiations. Their success, if it can be called that, resulted from their firm assertion that neither France nor any European power had the right to challenge American sovereignty or imperil its independence. This was a lesson the United States had been forced to teach France before, when Edmond Genet had flagrantly ignored that sovereignty and Adet had attempted to place leaders sympathetic to France in American political office.

  7

  “Is this the language of an American who loves his country?”

  —John Allen, spring 1798

  ON MARCH 5, 1798, the long-awaited dispatches from the envoys at last reached Philadelphia. The president immediately notified the Senate, warning that it would take some time for them all to be decoded. The following day, the president and the secretary of state sat down to read the earliest reports written by Marshall in October 1797, which had been decoded. Thus, just as the final meeting between Talleyrand and the envoys was taking place, John Adams discovered that his peace mission had failed. The news was potentially devastating to American neutrality, yet Adams could hardly fail to see that exposure of French demands for loans and bribes, coupled with the disdain shown to the American envoys, might work to his political advantage. Nevertheless, he did not act to make the dispatches public. He was concerned that their publication would endanger the lives of the three American envoys who he assumed were still in France. All Adams was willing to do for the moment was report to Congress that the peace mission had failed.

  Two weeks later, on March 19, he offered his blunt assessment to the legislature: “I perceive no ground of expectation that the object of [the envoys’] mission can be accomplished, on terms compatible with the safety, the honor, or the essential interests of the nation.” His assessment thus placed the blame for the negotiation failure squarely on the French. The United States, he declared, must now take the necessary measures to protect its “seafaring and commercial citizens,” and it must arm itself to defend America from the possibility of invasion. He accompanied this warning with the announcement of a policy that had been considered, and rejected, before the peace mission to France was undertaken: American merchantmen would be given permission to arm themselves for their defense. Soon afterward, Adams issued a recall of the envoys; by the time it reached Paris, Marshall had already departed. In effect, the president was sanctioning an undeclared war. When these steps were reported to Thomas Jefferson, the sitting vice president and the leader of the Republican Party, he declared Adams’s message “insane.”57

  Just as Adams expected, the Republican press put the blame for the failure of the negotiations on the president, members of his cabinet, and even the envoys themselves. The president, they said, had chose
n the wrong men to represent the United States; Pickering had given Pinckney faulty instructions for his initial mission as the minister to France; Pinckney had been openly contemptuous of France; the Federalist press had offended the French authorities with its constant criticism. The president’s call for Congress to pass major defense measures prompted newspapers like the Aurora to predict the ruin of American commerce and agriculture. Bache’s nightmare prediction included a soaring national debt, mass deprivation for American citizens, and the imposition of crushing new taxes. The only sensible solution, the newspaper editor declared, was for Adams to resign.58

  The response of the Republicans in Congress was far more cautious. They realized that the rejection of Pinckney and the continued attacks on American shipping had produced a rising tide of anti-French sentiment. The insulting behavior of the French government implicit in the president’s message and his firm commitment to the defense of America would only increase that sentiment. Thus, the Republican minority carefully avoided a full defense of France. Instead, they vigorously opposed what one Representative called the president’s effort to take the nation “step to step, until they are irrevocably involved in war.”59