First of Men

by Ferling, John;

  The evidence suggests that Whitehall, knowing full well how badly Jay wanted to preserve the peace with Great Britain, adopted an unpliable stance. The evidence also suggests that Jay collapsed in the face of British intransigence. What cannot be known, however, is how inflexible Britain all along had intended to be. But armed with a thorough understanding of Jay’s wishes, and over the years advised by Hamilton of Washington’s similar yearning for peace, Grenville was dealt the sort of powerhouse hand of which every diplomat dreams.8

  When Washington first read the terms of Jay’s Treaty that cold Philadelphia afternoon, he was concerned at the meagerness of his envoy’s achievement. He did not find the accord filled with “mischiefs,” as he put it, but he found it disconcertingly free of concessions to the United States. Whitehall, in fact, had made just one important concession. It had agreed to withdraw from the United States’s western posts by June 1796. A second concession was virtually meaningless. In Article XII Britain agreed to a slight accommodation concerning United States trade in the British West Indies, pledging to admit American ships of seventy tons or less into these ports. This allowance was so modest that there could be no doubt that Britain’s carriers clearly would remain predominant in this commerce. For these presentments Jay conceded the right of Britain and its Native American allies to trap and trade on the rivers of the Northwest Territory, including the Mississippi, and he pledged that the United States would not impose discriminatory duties on Great Britain. The treaty said nothing about the impressment of American seamen, and it was silent concerning compensation for the slaves liberated by Britain during the War of Independence, but it did contain a provision for settling the prewar claims of British creditors in America. Moreover, the treaty seemed to give legal sanction to two British policies that were decidedly unpopular in most American circles: American ships were to be prohibited from transporting goods from British ports to France or to other non-aligned nations, and naval stores and virtually all foodstuffs were placed on the contraband list. Finally, the pact made provisions for the eventual solution of two troubling matters. The United States-Canadian border was to be determined by an Anglo-American commission, and it was agreed that binding arbitration should set compensation for American shippers who had lost property in the Caribbean as a result of the orders-in-council.9

  If Washington’s reaction to the Jay Treaty was mixed, he apparently never considered not submitting it to the Senate. For three months, while he carefully kept secret the terms of the pact, the only person to whom the president spoke about the treaty was the secretary of state. Secretary Randolph signaled his lukewarm endorsement of Jay’s handiwork, although he did propose that Washington scuttle the article that limited the size of American vessels trading in the British Caribbean; he also favored tying the implementation of the treaty to Britain’s repeal of its orders-in-council. When the Senate reassembled for a special session in June, Washington submitted the treaty, accompanied by a statement that revealed a unique interpretation of the constitutional process of treaty ratification. He truly wished to have the Senate’s advice. If it failed to consent, the matter was done; only if it consented would Washington agonize over whether to sign the treaty.10

  The Senate required only two weeks of deliberation before ratifying the Jay Treaty. Still, to secure approval the Federalists had to agree to delete Article XII, and even then they pushed the accord through with the minimum number of votes necessary. The vote was along the now-familiar partisan lines, and it was accompanied by a strident indignation that had not been present even in the disputes over Hamiltonian economics. Fairly accurate rumors about the contents of the treaty had begun to spread as early as January, talk that elicited the earliest attacks on the document. By the time the Senate at last began its deliberations, the country seemed to be rocking with outrage, and that was just the beginning. Five days after the Senate voted for ratification, a Philadelphia newspaper published the treaty. The public finally glimpsed what it had been howling about. The bellowing increased. It was, said Washington, a cry “like that against a mad-dog.”11

  The protest reflected the deep anti-British mood that persisted in America, and the administration came in for a pounding for allegedly being little better than Whitehall’s puppets and lackeys. There also was an economic motive for the opposition. The South, in particular, seemed about to explode with wrath when it learned that the pact was silent on the matter of compensation for the slaves carried away by the British army during the War of Independence. The region had not expected much from Jay. A past president of the New York Society for the Abolition of Slavery, he long had been suspect in the southern states. Now, said Madison, his “extraordinary abandonment” of the South left no room for doubt about whom he represented. But the slavery portion of the pact was not the only reason for southern outrage. The wide-ranging contraband list evoked howls both from the region’s yeomenry and from those who eked out a living from the forest industries. The residents of Charleston, it was said, reacted to the pact as they had to the Stamp Act thirty years before.

  Although almost every northern senator had voted for the treaty, that region also reverberated with denunciations of an accord that failed to outlaw impressment and that had secured negligible gains for the nation’s shippers. A Boston town meeting at Faneuil Hall unanimously disapproved of Jay’s handiwork, and to the four corners of the northern states newspapers overflowed with invective. Some rioting occurred, including an ugly scene in Boston when a mob torched a British ship anchored in that city’s famous harbor. John Jay was hanged in effigy by more than one throng—and he got off lightly. Hamilton was struck by a stone while addressing a forum in New York. So visceral was the public outcry that Federalists were compelled to assume a defensive posture. The treaty, they said, was the best that a small, weak nation could expect. Besides, it was a better bargain than the alternative—another war with Britain.12

  Still, the Senate had acted positively, leaving the matter for the president to resolve. Washington had watched the Senate debate closely, but he had not intruded. Nor did he make any public comment immediately after its vote. For two weeks he wrestled with the matter, closely following the public debate and almost daily consulting with his secretary of state, Edmund Randolph. On July 7 matters took a bizarre turn. That day news arrived that Britain once again had begun to plunder American ships bound for France. The Pitt ministry apparently had reinstituted its orders-in-council. The president was outraged. On the verge of signing the treaty, he abruptly reversed himself. After conferring with Randolph, he directed the secretary of state to inform the British minister that he never would consent to the treaty while these depradations persisted.13

  A week later Washington departed for Virginia to begin a long-planned vacation. He had not seen Mount Vernon in three months, and then he had sojourned at his estate for less than a week. The president was not about to permit the treaty crisis to rob him of this excursion. He bumped out of the capital on July 15, commencing the long trek home. Predictably, it was a “disagreeable ride,” he told a correspondent upon his arrival, one made all the more unpleasant by his receipt of the news of the action of Boston’s town meeting just as his carriage was being readied for the journey. His plan was to remain at home for the next ten weeks, not returning to the capital until early fall. By then Philadelphia’s oppressive and unhealthy summer weather should have ended, and, with luck, whatever he chose to do about the Jay Treaty should have become of as ancient history.14

  The president had been home only a few days before he evinced signs that he missed the excitement that swirled in the capital. Even though his leading cabinet officials assured him that his presence was not required, Washington announced that he might have to return to Philadelphia sooner than planned, and on his fourteenth day at home he decided that he must scrap his vacation. Nevertheless, business and the weather confined him to Mount Vernon for a few additional days. First he wished to attend a board meeting of the Potomac Company, then
a spate of torrential rains compelled his continued presence, for he wished to direct the repairs to his fields made necessary by the downpours. But on August 5 he received a mysterious note from the secretary of war. Could he not return to Philadelphia quickly, Pickering asked. A “special reason” required the president’s presence. He could not divulge that reason in a letter.15

  Early the next morning Washington’s carriage rolled out of Mount Vernon. On August 11 he was back in the sweltering oven of Philadelphia, and that very evening he summoned Pickering to his residence. The secretary arrived to find Washington dining with Secretary of State Randolph. Leaving Randolph alone for the moment, the president and Pickering adjourned to another chamber. While Washington sipped a glass of wine, Pickering unveiled an incredible tale.

  Pickering launched into a story about how George Hammond, the British minister, had set in motion a train of events by inviting Secretary Wolcott to his office. There on July 26, Pickering said, Hammond had divulged an intercepted letter written to the French foreign minister by Citizen Genêt’s successor, Joseph Fauchet. In the document Fauchet alleged in veiled and indistinct language that Edmund Randolph had sought to play a game of extortion, requesting money from Paris in return for a promise that the United States would pursue a pro-French policy. In addition, the letter could be interpreted to suggest that the secretary of state had passed along state secrets to Fauchet; the French minister’s terminology once again was imprecise, however, for he alluded only to “Precious confessions” that Randolph allegedly had made. Fauchet’s only categorical charge was that Randolph had helped foment the Whiskey Rebellion as a means of reducing Washington’s popularity and influence. Wolcott had secured the original letter, Pickering added, and he had showed it to his two Federalist colleagues in the cabinet. The three agreed upon the necessity for Pickering’s urgent letter to Mount Vernon.16

  The president was shocked. What is most shocking today, however, is that Washington immediately embraced the charge that Randolph had acted as a traitor. He had known and trusted the secretary of state for more than twenty years. Randolph, moreover, had served in his cabinet for six years without the slightest hint of impropriety. Washington had known in 1789 that Randolph was in financial straits, nearly ruined, in fact, by his public service and his wife’s protracted and expensive illness. Still, he had selected him to head the justice department, then, contrary to Jefferson’s counsel, he had named his fellow Virginian to head the state department. Until his conversation with Pickering, Washington had never expressed the slightest misgiving about Randolph’s performance. Now, when presented with no more evidence than an epistle composed in vague and uncertain terms, a letter translated by Pickering (a translation which the president evidently made no attempt to authenticate), which had surfaced from the depths of the British embassy in the midst of a British campaign to see the Jay Treaty finally approved, and which was championed by three Federalist comrades at the expense of the lone non-Federalist in the cabinet—on such slight evidence Washington instantly judged the secretary of state to be guilty as charged.17

  With that as his starting point, Washington also concluded that Randolph must have deliberately misled him about the Jay Treaty. By urging him not to sign the treaty until Britain rescinded its orders-in-council, the president now surmised, Randolph discreetly had manipulated him into not approving the accord.

  Without a word of any of this to Randolph, Washinton mustered his cabinet the following morning. He commenced the meeting by calling for recommendations concerning the Jay Treaty. As he must have anticipated, the three Federalists counseled ratification, while Randolph once again advised against the president’s acquiescence until Britain discontinued its policy of seizing American cargoes. To the secretary of state’s considerable surprise, Washington soon cut off the discussion and announced his plan to sign the accord. Without a word to the man responsible for American foreign affairs, the president had made an about-face on an issue of paramount importance.18

  Washington’s decision has been attributed to a “fit of rage, or outrage” at Randolph, an act “against his own best judgment and against the advice of his most trusted intimates.” Such a conclusion is unwarranted. There can be no doubt that Washington believed that he had been misused by Randolph, yet factors other than personal pique weighed more heavily on his final decision. The Senate had advised ratification. In addition, the strong, even violent, public outcry that had characterized the initial response to the treaty had given way by mid-August to a debate in the press, an emotionally charged battle to be sure, but one that now was peaceful and confined to the printed page. Furthermore, not only had the cabinet recommended that he sign the treaty, it also was clear that the northern merchant community, toward many of whose leading lights he felt a deep kindredship, endorsed the treaty. Finally, Hamilton, as usual, played a crucial role in the evolution of Washington’s thinking.19

  Shortly after the Senate’s vote Washington wrote Hamilton to request two favors. On the one hand he virtually urged his young friend to publicly defend the treaty. Hamilton soon complied by publishing thirty-nine open letters under the signature of “Camillus,” essays that many scholars regard as equal in quality to his Federalist treatises of 1787–88. The president also requested the private views of Hamilton, credulously suggesting that he wished “to learn from dispassionate men” the pros and cons of the Jay Treaty. Three days later Hamilton drafted the first of seven letters that he would write to Washington in the next two weeks; in addition, he sent along a typically lengthy essay—it spans fifty pages in the modern edition of Hamilton’s papers—which enjoined Washington to sign the treaty. The former secretary told Washington that the pact had resolved most Anglo-American differences about “as reasonably as could have been expected.” At the same time, he added, it gave the United States the means of “escaping finally from being implicated in the dreadful war which is ruining Europe—and of preserving ourselves in a state of peace for a considerable time to come.”

  The last of Hamilton’s letters arrived at Mount Vernon on July 29. The president’s actions on that day indicate that he at last had made up his mind to sign the treaty. He decided to return to the capital where he could meet with his cabinet and divulge his decision. That same day he drafted a missive to Hamilton which all but stated that he was prepared to sign Jay’s treaty. Most of the arguments against the accord were erroneous and founded on “misrepresentations,” he began, and he went on to suggest that the great virtue of the pact was that it afforded a chance for peace with London. Though his would be an unpopular act, he added, he believed that once “the paroxysm of the fever is a little abated” the “real temper of the people” would change, endorsing his decision. Thus, by the time he departed Virginia, five days before he learned of the allegations against Randolph, Washington appears to have decided to exchange ratifications with Whitehall. The machinations of the Pickering-Wolcott-Hammond cabal, at best, only hastened and colored the inevitable.20

  On August 18 President Washington signed the Jay Treaty. Only then did he confront Randolph with the evidence of his alleged treason. The cabinet again was assembled at Washington’s residence, and following some perfunctory pleasantries the president asked Randolph to read Fauchet’s dispatch. By prearrangement Washington and the three Federalists carefully studied Randolph’s features as he perused the letter. Whatever they expected, they observed no evidence of discomposure. And Randolph confessed to no crimes. He had neither requested nor received money from France. He denied having ever passed secrets to any foreign government. The charge that he had fomented the unrest in western Pennsylvania was preposterous, he said. Defiantly Randolph pledged to defend himself in writing. The following day he resigned his place in the Washington administration making it quite clear that he believed his old friend, the president, had subjected him to the most base and cruel treatment. Timothy Pickering, who had carried Fauchet’s dispatch to Washington, agreed to serve as the acting secretary of state,
and in the ensuing personnel shuffle the Washington administration grew unmistakably Federalist.21

  The president named his wartime aide James McHenry to succeed Pickering at the war department. Steadfastly loyal to Washington, McHenry had served as a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention and he had worked diligently for the document’s ratification; since 1791 he had been among the Senate’s strongest supporters of the Washington-Hamilton program. Samuel Chase, also of Maryland, was at the same time named to one of two vacancies that materialized suddenly on the Supreme Court. The son of an immigrant preacher from England, Chase had launched his national career as one of the First Continental Congress’s most conservative members, supporting Joseph Galloway’s Anglo-American reconciliation scheme. Ultimately he swung behind the notion of separation, signed the Declaration of Independence, and won a reputation as one of Washington’s staunchest supporters in Congress during the “Conway Cabal” frenzy. Thereafter, however, his political ascent was stymied by his implication in a scandal to use inside government information for personal profit. Washington overlooked that blot on Chase’s record to name him to the nation’s highest court. Oliver Ellsworth got Washington’s nod for the other opening, the post of chief justice of the United States. Ellsworth had the reputation, according to John Adams, of being Washington’s “firmest pillar” in the Senate. A graduate of Princeton College, a wealthy Hartford, Connecticut, lawyer, he had been elected to Congress as early as 1778, and he too had sat as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.22