First of Men

by Ferling, John;

  A domestic battle flared first, drawing on and further exacerbating the party splits that had begun to show two years earlier. The rival party organs blared apologies for and excoriations of the administration’s policy, and by late summer Hamilton and Madison, writing under pseudonyms, were gouging at one another in public. At its most elevated level the issue was constitutional: did the president have the power to promulgate such a foreign policy statement? But beneath the legalisms lay the basic conflict that tore at the nation and the administration. What shape would the new nation take? Foreign policy would have more than a little to do with the answer that finally unfolded. One thing seemed certain. The sentiments of the president and his cabinet did not coincide with popular opinion.13

  Given the violent anti-British and pro-republican feelings that had taken firm root in the course of the long War of Independence, the great majority in the country prayed for the success of French arms. French victories were hailed and celebrated, and many American nationals took to calling one another “citizen” and “citess.” Some even wore the tricolored cockade made popular in revolutionary France. But it was the arrival that spring of the new French minister, Citizen Edmond Genêt, that crystallized the expansive pro-French sentiment within the nation. Dashing, flamboyant, and brillant (he could speak six languages before his tenth birthday), Genêt seemed a good salesman to vend an already fashionable cause. In fact, he was not.14

  Although the vessel that brought him across the Atlantic continued on to Philadelphia, Citizen Genêt jumped ship in Charleston. He lingered there for eleven days, his time taken up largely in overseeing the outfitting of privateers to hunt down British vessels. That completed, he slowly ascended to the capital, along the way peddling the virtues of republican France and reminding everyone he met of the noble assistance his country so recently had provided revolutionary America. By the time he reached Philadelphia, three weeks after landing in the United States, the enterprising young envoy had received the sort of ecstatic welcome that probably no American—save for Washington—ever had received. Indeed, the crowd that ushered him into the capital on May 16 was greater than the city had witnessed since Washington passed through en route to his inauguration four years before. In some circles, however, the arrival of the ebullient minister produced less ecstasy. Intelligence from South Carolina indicated that Genêt had used a satchel filled with French francs to recruit American citizens to serve on his newly rigged privateers.15

  The public knew nothing of this though, and Genêt’s first two days in the capital were more than rewarding. Each night he was fêted at a banquet, evenings that commenced with stirring renditions of the “Marseillaise” and bombastic toasts offered to republican France. Then he met Washington. Jefferson escorted the minister into the president’s company on May 18. The secretary of state knew what was coming, for earlier he had spoken of Washington’s “cold caution” toward the French. But Genêt was unprepared, and he must have been startled at the contrast between the public’s warm reception and Washington’s greeting. Anxious to make it plain that his government planned to be truly neutral, the president was at his chilliest and most formal, even greeting Genêt pointedly beneath paintings of the late French monarch and his queen. Washington must have hoped to communicate to Genêt by the gravity of his manner what he had told others: “I believe it is the sincere wish of United America to have nothing to do with the political intrigues, or the squabbles of European Nations; but [only] to exchange commodities and live in peace and amity. . . .”16

  The cunning antics of Genêt became Washington’s immediate problem, although in the long run America’s ability to “exchange commodities” provoked a far more serious crisis. But Genêt was there first, and through that hot, sticky Philadelphia summer Washington was unable to escape entirely the guile of the French envoy. With public opinion so enthusiastically on his side, a more savvy diplomat than Genêt might have successfully exploited it and managed to paint the president into a corner. Instead, France’s minister self-destructed.

  Much of what France desired was not unreasonable. It could live with American neutrality, but it did insist that the Treaty of Commerce of 1778 be honored, a pact that would admit not only French warships but also the prizes they captured to American ports. In addition, while France did not ask for direct American involvement in the war in the West Indies, it did urge the United States to provide money, provisions, and military stores for the French armed forces, the very sort of assistance called for by the Treaty of Alliance. Finally, France desired a new commercial treaty, a step which the Washington administration had agreed to consider more than a year before Genêt’s arrival.17

  Genêt wasted no time in informing Washington of Paris’s desires. He proposed that the United States pay for the supplies it rendered to the French army and navy through an advance on the debt it owed France. The funds, he suggested, could be laundered so as to make it appear that they came only from private citizens. It was an ancient ruse, one, in fact, that France had utilized during the initial years of the War of Independence when it had funneled aid to Washington’s armies through the guise of the Rodrique Hortalez Company. But Washington would have none of it. Although the United States had advanced a considerable sum to France since 1792, the president now refused Genêt’s appeal, scuttling the envoy’s hope for military succor.18

  Genêt’s entreaties had been anticipated. Other of his actions had not been foreseen, however, and these more dubious ventures led the diplomat into dangerous waters. Before leaving Charleston, Citizen Genêt not only recruited Americans to serve on French privateers, he equipped several marauding vessels and even authorized French consuls in the United States to serve as judges of prize courts. Clearly such actions transgressed the bounds of legality, but it was not until his privateers began to seize British ships that more serious matters arose. Things came to a head in June when the Little Sarah, a merchant vessel sailing under the Union Jack, fell to the frigate L’Embuscade. The Washington administration discovered that the prize had been brought into the port of Philadelphia where, under the very nose of the United States government, it was being outfitted as a French privateer, a craft that Genêt himself rechristened the Petite Démocrate. The neutrality of the United States was compromised. But what could be done? If the vessel sailed, Britain had grounds for war. But to restrain the ship was to risk antagonizing France, and to use force to detain the Petite Démocrate was to risk spilling French blood. In the end Washington ordered Genêt not to permit the renovated ship to sail. Genêt’s response was intemperate and arrogant, and amounted to a threat to appeal over the president’s head to the American public. What is more, the Petite Démocrate sailed. In private, the envoy wrote a friend in Paris expressing his exasperation with “Old Washington” who “impedes my course in a thousand ways. . . .”19

  Genêt’s foolish intransigence was the last straw, though Washington had other grounds sufficient for moving against the diplomat. While the full details of Genêt’s machinations were not clear, the administration discovered that the busy Frenchman was piecing together armed forces comprised of American frontiersmen to assail Spanish Florida and Louisiana as well as British Canada. He never got very far with his Canadian venture, but the attack on Spain’s colonies verged on implementation, for Western yeomen, aggrieved by Spain’s aid to Native Americans and its recalcitrant stand on permitting American shipping on the Mississippi, did not require much browbeating to volunteer as soldiers. Genêt concocted a plan for a three-pronged attack, one through Georgia into East Florida, one into West Florida, and one against New Orleans; George Rogers Clark, the Virginian who had won a reputation in the Revolution as a frontier fighter, was set to lead one of the attacks. Ultimately the projected campaign fizzled before a shot was fired, largely for lack of funds. Nor did the administration’s actions help, for Washington moved to forestall conduct that surely would have plunged the United States into the wide net of the European war. He and Jefferson publicly sp
oke of prosecuting all American participants, and he induced Congress to enact legislation making it illegal for United States citizens to enlist “under the color of a foreign authority” for the purpose of “invading and plundering the territories of a nation at peace with the said United States.”20

  Genêt also was blamed for something for which he was not entirely responsible. During 1793 democratic-republican societies sprang up throughout America, organizations given life as a result of the euphoria that accompanied the republicanization of revolutionary France. The societies openly were pro-French and anti-British, prorepublican and antimonarchial, and they encouraged the United States’ adherence to the French alliance. By the end of the year eleven such societies existed; twenty-four others were created in 1794. Philadelphia was home to the first club, and there can be little doubt that Genêt played a key role in its founding. But he did not, as if by magic, launch the movement. The societies drew on the reservoir of revolutionary idealism left over from 1776, modeling themselves not only on the Jacobin clubs of France but on the Sons of Liberty who had flourished in an earlier day in America. Societies of artisans and mechanics also served as a wellspring for the movement, and so too did the simmering partisan newspaper war that had raged for eighteen months before Genêt’s arrival. His presence perhaps was catalytic, yet the ground that he trod was fertile for such an occurrence. Indeed, given the magnitude of the French Revolution, democratic societies probably were inevitable, that was not how President Washington saw things, however. He laid what he called “Mob and Club Govt” at the feet of the “diabolical leader G[enê]t.”21

  Into 1794 the societies gave focus to the general unrest and dissatisfaction with the Washington administration. Not only did they scorn the neutrality proclamation and urge assistance for beleaguered France but they villified the domestic policies of Hamiltonian Federalism. Nor was Washington spared. Innuendo and thinly veiled criticism of the president crept into the resolutions of the societies. More alarming were the street demonstrations organized by the Philadelphia “mother society.” Generally peaceful affairs patterned after the example of the Sons of Liberty gatherings, chanting crowds nevertheless had a way of unnerving folk. John Adams later recalled the “terrorism excited by Genêt,” a campaign that he believed desired nothing less than “a revolution in government.” When an octogenarian, Adams recollected scenes in 1793 in which “day after day” mobs led by “old revolutionary Americans” and totaling up to ten thousand fanatics gathered to curse the president; at times, he remembered, they “threatened to drag Washington out of his house.”22

  Adams’s memory surely played tricks on him, causing him to exaggerate the street protests. But he was correct in remembering that Washington had been criticized, hardly a turn of events likely to endear Genêt to Washington. Ultimately, the president came to believe that the public demonstrations were “embarrassing” to the government, and like Adams he thought the societies, as a prelude to revolution, hoped to “discredit” his administration. By midsummer 1793, Washington was ready to move against the troublesome envoy whom he held responsible for the rising clamor.23

  By then Genêt had few defenders left in high places. Even Jefferson, initially friendly toward the diplomat, had lost patience when Genêt acted with disrespect toward the office of the president, threatening to appeal over Washington’s head to the American people. No one else in Washington’s cabinet had ever exhibited any affection for the man. Certainly not Hamilton, who back in March during a secret tête-á-tête with the British minister, had pledged to work unflaggingly not to let France break America’s neutrality. What influence he had with Washington during the initial two months of Genêt’s presence cannot be known, but with the cabinet meeting of July 13 he took the lead in the campaign to remove the envoy. Genêt’s fate hardly was in doubt. Three meetings in the space of three weeks were required to resolve matters, but the discussions revolved less around saving Genêt than how best to get rid of him without unduly upsetting Paris. Ultimately it was decided to send to his bosses in France copies both of his intemperate correspondence and a covering letter requesting his recall. Because of the communication lag caused by the wide Atlantic, months dragged by while the administration anxiously awaited France’s response. At last the answer came, a birthday present for the president: on the day before Washington turned sixty-two in 1794 a new French minister disembarked in Philadelphia. Among his papers were documents prepared by still another revolutionary regime in turbulent France; they called for the arrest and return of Genêt. Graciously Washington spared his life by granting him political asylum, and Genêt lived on quietly near Albany for the next four decades, dying on the forty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Bastille.24

  While Washington’s attention was absorbed by the Genêt “crisis,” Whitehall was instituting a policy that soon plunged the administration into a far more grave situation. In June 1793, Great Britain announced a blockade of the French coast. In the autumn Pitt the Younger’s government unveiled an order-in-council that authorized the capture of all neutral vessels carrying goods to or from the French West Indies. It was the same policy the prime minister’s father had promulgated during the Seven Years’ War, a defense of obstructing trade based on a dictum called the “Rule of 1756.” Trade that was illegal in peacetime remained illegal in wartime, trumpeted London. In the time between its proclamation of the two blockades, Britain sent a small force to the Netherlands to fight the French; it dispatched a much larger force to the Caribbean to wrest control of its adversary’s priceless sugar islands. Before spring of 1794 some of the smaller French islands were in British hands. So were approximately 250 American vessels, seized by the British navy on the translucent blue-green waters of the Caribbean.25

  The “vexations and spoliations” of American commerce that resulted from British policy has “thrown them into a flame,” Washington soon remarked of his countrymen. It did that and more. American newspapers were crammed with calls for war, a pugnacity soon matched by the similar importunings of the democratic societies. The hysteria reached such a fever pitch that when tattle spread through London that Congress had declared war, knowledgeable officials in Whitehall momentarily believed the rumor. The Republican leadership also chose to use this crisis as a means of luring New England Federalists into their party. Jefferson and Madison introduced resolutions in the House of Representatives that urged discriminatory duties against British imports. It seemed the mildest of the steps that could be taken. In fact, war seemed inevitable. Two years of negotiation with Hammond had proved fruitless. In addition, not only was General Wayne gathering his frontier army for a strike at Britain’s Native American allies, but in March word leaked out of a secret speech made to American tribesmen by the governor of Canada, superheated remarks in which that official seemed to concede that Britain planned a war with the United States. Now Britain was violating America’s neutral rights, and soon came word that British sailors had begun to board United States’ merchant vessels and seize suspected deserters from among the crewman, impressing them into the royal fleet.26

  But not only were hostilities forestalled, even Jefferson’s rigorous retaliatory measures failed to pass Congress. Adroit rearguard maneuvers by Federalist congressmen stopped those who yearned for drastic action. Pressed by the public clamor for revenge, Federalist leaders in Congress urged defensive preparations, calling for an army of fifteen thousand and the augmentation of what passed for a navy; in addition, they countenanced mild, temporary retributive policies against both British and French shipping. It was a shrewd strategy. Covering their flanks so as not to appear pusillanimous, they nevertheless bought time that ultimately permitted them to adopt a more moderate course. Congress huffed and puffed with invective from the time it assembled early in December until late the following March, then it agreed only to a one-month embargo on all shipping already in American ports. Within a few days of that small gesture, word reached the capital that Whitehall had relaxed its order
s-in-council, permitting a resumption of United States trade with the French West Indies. It was a step that “allayed the violence of the heat,” as President Washington put it. Moreover, as word trickled in that the French were also committing depredations against American ships, the “heat” that lingered was somewhat deflected. But the death blow to those who hoped to immediately retaliate against Britain came from the president’s office.27

  Since early spring the Federalist leadership in Congress quietly had mulled over the notion of urging Washington to dispatch a special envoy to London to seek to hammer out a treaty that might resolve all differences between the two nations. It was not an entirely new idea. Ironically, the first to propose a mission to London may have been Jefferson. About to retire as secretary of state, Jefferson, early in March, seems to have privately suggested such a step to the president, although he linked it to congressional passage of an American Navigation Act. Jefferson got nowhere. Not only did Washington oppose commercial retaliation, he apparently believed that Britain was bent on war. A few days later Senator Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut was deputed by some of his Federalist colleagues to visit Washington and to propose that Hamilton be sent to London as a minister plenipotentiary. The president listened, but he was unconvinced. He especially balked at the notion of using Hamilton. Either he feared he would give away the store, or he felt—as he said—that the treasury secretary was too unpopular in his own country to be entrusted with such an assignment.28

  Three weeks later Washington changed his mind. On March 27 word arrived that Britain had modified its November orders-in-council. The very next day the president summoned both Robert Morris and the new secretary of state, Edmund Randolph, for consultation. Both urged him to send a special envoy to London, one armed with extraordinary powers. But whom should he send? Washington preferred either the vice president, or Chief Justice Jay, or Jefferson. It was logical list. The very act of replacing the regular minister with a special emissary implied that only someone of great stature could be considered. No one—save for Hamilton or Madison—was more eminent than these three men. The president had ruled out his treasury secretary, and Madison was eliminated, if not because of his pro-French leanings, then probably because earlier that same month he had turned down Washington’s offer of the post of minister to Paris. That left Jefferson and Jay. Washington wrestled with the matter for nearly three weeks before deciding, and, as with so many other matters, his final decision was influenced by Hamilton.29