Chapter 47
The Calamitous Frenchman
Edmond-Charles Genêt, a child of privilege in King Louis XVI’s France, arrived in America in 1793 as a diplomat for a nation that was deploying the guillotine to decimate his class. His time in the spotlight was brief, but in a few short weeks, the thirty-year-old Frenchman set America’s political world afire and defied Washington. Few people so thoroughly earned Washington’s dislike as did the man who entered history as “Citizen Genêt.”
On April 8, 1793, Genêt’s ship, blown off course by storms, tied up at Charleston, South Carolina. Facing many European enemies, Revolutionary France wanted help from its sister republic across the Atlantic, and wanted it fast. It was Genêt’s task to secure that help. The impatient young man immediately began to implement his instructions.
Unluckily for Genêt, his instructions did not match American interests. France wanted a new treaty with the United States, but Americans did not need one; the existing agreement, signed in 1778, already opened French ports to American goods. Nor could Genêt secure faster repayment of the $5.6 million owed to France; the United States could barely keep up with debt payments at the current rate of repayment. Neither could Genêt induce the United States to harass British and Spanish colonies in America, or win access to American ports for French privateers; Washington’s government had no wish to antagonize Britain and its Royal Navy.1
Nevertheless, after Charleston gave Genêt an enthusiastic welcome, he issued privateering commissions that authorized shipowners to arm their ships and prey on British and Dutch merchantmen. In a leisurely procession northward, Genêt basked in the fawning attention of Americans sentimentally attached to their wartime ally, then was greeted in Philadelphia by what Jefferson called a “vast concourse of people.” The experience gave Genêt an inflated sense of his influence over American policy.2
As Genêt set American hearts fluttering, news arrived that France and Britain were at war. From Mount Vernon, Washington instructed Jefferson and his cabinet to keep America out of the conflict, then hurried back to Philadelphia. The president’s desire for peace came from his clear-eyed appreciation that the United States had little at stake in the European contest, plus the need to shield American trade so it could produce the tariff revenue that kept the government afloat.3
A unanimous cabinet agreed that Washington should announce a policy of strict neutrality (without using that word), forbidding Americans from assisting any warring nation. Issued on April 22, what became known as the Neutrality Proclamation pledged that America would be “friendly and impartial” to all. Washington warned that his government would not protect Americans who joined the European fighting or supplied contraband to either side. The proclamation barred the privateering commissions that Genêt was passing out and forbade service on French privateers or warships. Strong statements of support for the policy came from local governments and public meetings around the nation.4
Reaching Philadelphia after the Neutrality Proclamation was issued, Genêt hoped to modify it by capitalizing on the general pro-French feeling. He impressed Secretary of State Jefferson in their first meeting. “It is impossible,” the Virginian swooned, “for anything to be more affectionate, more magnanimous than the purport of his mission.” Jefferson was not the only American to fall under Genêt’s spell. The Frenchman boasted in a report to Paris that he dwelt “in the midst of perpetual fetes.”5
Washington did not share the infatuation with Genêt. The president had cherished French support for American independence, yet was skeptical of that nation’s current government and its young diplomat. France’s revolutionaries had expelled the favorite of Washington’s heart, Lafayette, who had led the first rising against the king. Those in the French government, Washington worried, “are ready to tear each other to pieces, and will, more than probably, prove the worst foes th[eir] country has.”
The president resolved to respect most of the 1778 treaty with France (though he lacked the warships to fulfill the pledge to defend France’s Caribbean colonies), but he adhered to his lifelong view that nations, like men, will follow their interests. America needed peace. He would not risk a new war by indulging sentimental feelings about the last war.6
Genêt lost no time in flouting Washington’s policy. On May 1, thousands cheered from Philadelphia’s shores as a French privateer hauled a British merchantman into port, having seized it in American waters. Within two weeks, the American government freed the captured crew and returned the ship and cargo to its owners. Jefferson advised Genêt that American ports were closed to French privateers. Neither, he added, would repayment of French loans accelerate.7
As Genêt discovered that public adulation did not translate into political advantage, Gallic temper flared in his letters to Jefferson as secretary of state. Hamilton denounced one of those letters as “the most offensive paper, perhaps, that ever was offered by a foreign Minister to a friendly power with which he resided.” Jefferson blandly summarized Washington’s neutrality policy as producing “decisions . . . [that] dissatisfy both parties and draw complaints from both.”8
Genêt did not relent. He instructed French consuls in other American ports to continue to commission privateers, and French privateers continued to make seizures in American waters, often within sight of land. The French then converted the ships they had seized into new privateers. With no navy to intercept the illegal vessels, Washington’s government could act against only those privateers docking at American ports, seizing them through court proceedings. Pointing out that the Neutrality Proclamation was issued without congressional approval, Genêt announced that he would urge Washington to summon Congress to repeal the policy. Even Jefferson, pro-French to his core, was losing patience. “I stopped him [Genêt] at the subject of calling Congress,” the secretary of state recorded, and “explained our constitution to him.”9
Prodded by Washington, the cabinet met repeatedly to address British complaints about Genêt’s neutrality violations. Each incident had to be judged according to Washington’s proclamation and international law. It mattered what cargo the seized ship carried and where it was bound, whether the vessel had been purchased from an American shipbuilder, and whether it was owned by an American or a foreigner. The cabinet considered where a privateer’s cannons had been installed and its crew recruited, as well as the crew’s nationality. Washington asked the Supreme Court for guidance.10
Frustrated, Genêt vibrated between reckless actions and foolish statements. That pattern crested when he told a Pennsylvania official that he would “appeal from the president to the people,” then announced to Jefferson that he would publish a statement revealing the unfairness of America’s neutrality policy. Jefferson confessed to Madison his dismay:
Never, in my opinion, was so calamitous an appointment made, as that of the present minister of F[rance] here. Hotheaded, all imagination, no judgment, passionate, disrespectful and even indecent towards the P[resident] . . . , talking of appeals from him to Congress, from them to the people, urging the most unseasonable and groundless propositions, and in the most dictatorial style.11
Both Britain and France taxed Washington’s patience. Confronted at a cabinet meeting with a newspaper cartoon that portrayed him being executed by guillotine, the president lost his fabled temper. According to Jefferson’s notes, Washington grew “much inflamed, [and] got into one of those passions where he cannot command himself.”12 By the beginning of August, Genêt had so worn out his welcome that Washington and his cabinet asked France to recall him.13
Neutrality continued to command public support. In the twelve months after Washington announced the policy, nearly seventy public meetings adopted pro-neutrality resolutions. Some mentioned their “partiality for the French,” or offered a general statement of sympathy for the former ally, but most Americans agreed with Washington: The country needed peace. Even Jefferson concluded that defending Genêt had bec
ome hopeless. “Finding the man absolutely incorrigible,” Jefferson wrote, “I saw the necessity of quitting a wreck which could not but sink all who should cling to it.”14
* * *
As furor swirled around Genêt’s provocations, a plague of yellow fever brought Philadelphia to its knees. The disease began with high fevers and jaundice, then black vomit caused by internal bleeding. Many died quickly. “At first three of four died,” Jefferson wrote in early September. “Now about one out of three.” The city emptied. Everyone left who could.15
Hamilton fell sick but weathered the fever. By the second week of September, Washington yielded to Martha’s entreaties and left for Mount Vernon. Jefferson headed for Monticello. For weeks, a skeleton of a government kept the lights on in government offices. A single clerk occupied the State Department. The treasury moved to a private home outside the city. “Business is in a great measure abandoned,” wrote a senior treasury official.16
“The streets are lonely to a melancholy degree,” War Secretary Knox reported. “The merchants generally have fled—Ships are arriving and no consignees to be found. Notes at the banks are suffered to be unpaid. . . . [It is] as if an army of enemies had possessed the city without plundering it.”17 By mid-October, more than 3,500 were dead. The irony was bitter: America’s leaders had argued for a decade over where to house their government, then chose a location beset with contagion.18
At Mount Vernon, Washington contemplated a government that barely existed. He had brought no papers from Philadelphia with him and had no secretary to assist him. Though he had hoped to address Mount Vernon’s tangled affairs, he had time only to try to hold the government together.19
By letter, he hounded the cabinet secretaries for a plan to reconvene the government. America’s leaders should not cower in quiet places while Philadelphians sickened and died. Every suggestion seemed to raise a constitutional question. Did the cabinet have to meet in the seat of government? Did Congress? Could the president summon Congress into session? For each proposal, he considered how the people would react. Washington and his aides searched for an alternative location close to Philadelphia yet safe from the pestilence.20
Washington insisted that the executive officers had to gather by November 1. Providentially, in the third week of October, temperatures in Philadelphia dropped. The epidemic receded, then ended. Though no one then understood the science, cold temperatures had killed the mosquitoes that spread the disease.21
* * *
On December 3, with Philadelphia flickering back to life, Washington delivered his fifth annual message. His tone was improved from the four grumpy sentences of his second inaugural address. He had serious matters to discuss with Congress and the nation. He did not sugarcoat them.
He began with the European war, which could disrupt trade or even draw America into the bloodletting. He explained that his neutrality policy aimed to resist those dangers while respecting France’s treaty rights, and set rules for when the combatants’ vessels could enter American ports. He invited Congress to review the situation and “correct, improve, or enforce” his policies.
More of Genêt’s mischief was coming to light. A South Carolina investigation found that Genêt had commissioned an invasion of Spanish colonies with troops recruited in America. He also had enlisted George Rogers Clark, a frontier hero of the Revolutionary War, to recruit Americans to attack Spanish Louisiana from Kentucky.22
The Frenchman and his American allies, the president wrote to a friend, “are aiming . . . at nothing short of the subversion of the general government,” and would be happy to “plung[e] the country into the horrors of a disastrous war.” Fortunately, Genêt’s plots were too poorly funded and uncoordinated to succeed, while a new government in France was demanding his return and possible execution. The high-handed Frenchman was reduced to begging for permission to remain in America as a private person, which Washington granted.23
Washington’s address also reviewed threats to internal peace. Westward migration triggered resistance from Indian tribes who were losing their homelands and way of life. Washington insisted that he had tried to satisfy the northwestern tribes, but now only a military solution would do. General Wayne was preparing a force to subdue those tribes. Washington hoped a peaceful agreement could be reached on the southern border with the Creeks and Cherokees.
Threatened from within and without, Washington explained, America needed to be in a “condition of complete defense.” Since the end of the Revolutionary War, Americans had resisted his call for a professional military, but he thought the message was ever more important: “If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, . . . it must be known, that we are at all times ready for war.”24
It had been a difficult year for Washington, but one development would especially influence the balance of his presidency. In response to Genêt’s agitation, a number of “democratic societies” formed, ultimately numbering nearly forty across the country. They became hotbeds of pro-French sentiment and criticism of Washington. The president bitterly resented them, and blamed Genêt for aggravating the nation’s political partisanship.25
Political polarization accelerated with Jefferson’s resignation from the cabinet at the end of the year. Washington appointed his attorney general, Edmund Randolph, to lead the State Department, naming William Bradford of Pennsylvania the new attorney general.26 Jefferson’s departure marked the end of political balance in the cabinet. So long as Jefferson was secretary of state, a voice near the president presented the concerns of pro-French Republicans. Now, Republicans would feel that the Washington administration did not reflect their views, and Jefferson at Monticello would become a symbol of opposition.
Nevertheless, Washington looked to the New Year with hope. The nation was at peace. His neutrality policy was holding. The new French minister disavowed Genêt’s conduct, then directed French citizens to respect American neutrality.27 But troubles would not stop coming. This time, it would be internal rebellion.
Chapter 48
Troubles Within
Americans disliked paying taxes. Both the war for independence and the Shays Rebellion began with tax resistance. Washington himself took a jaundiced view of tax collectors. In April 1793, he directed his farm manager not to pay a local tax unless it was explained in writing, because Virginia’s collectors were “amongst the greatest rascals in the world.” Having appointed and supervised tax collectors when he served on the Fairfax County Court, Washington knew whereof he spoke. But Washington also knew that there can be no government without taxes. His court had supervised the prosecution of tax cheats before the war, and he had insisted that the government under the Constitution have the power to tax.1
Washington’s fiscal adviser, Hamilton, understood the challenges of tax collection. His financial program emphasized revenue from import taxes, which were largely unseen by consumers. Merchants paid tariffs when they received imported goods, then folded the cost into prices for the goods. In one Federalist essay, Hamilton observed that an excise tax is difficult to collect because it is so visible.2
Nevertheless, in 1790 Hamilton had urged an excise tax on whiskey, noting that even prickly residents of Connecticut and Massachusetts were paying state liquor excises without complaint. By the treasury secretary’s calculations, each man, woman, and child in the nation drank an average of ten quarts of liquor a year. They should be willing to pay a modest liquor excise (exempting beer and cider) that would amount to less than “a dollar and a half” per person per year. Congress and the president approved the tax.3
Noncompliance was immediate in western communities from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas, where liquor distilled from grains was prepared for shipment to distant markets. As Congressman Albert Gallatin of Pennsylvania explained, westerners were “distillers through necessity, not choice, that [they] may comprehend the greatest value on the smallest size and weight.
” Many farmer-distillers lacked currency to pay the tax until they shipped their liquor and received payment, but the government demanded prompt payment. Noncompliance with the excise morphed into defiance.4
In his annual message in late 1791, the president admitted that the liquor excise had caused “some degree of discontent.” He pledged to seek revisions to meet legitimate objections.5 Four months later, Hamilton sent Congress a spirited defense of the excise and proposed only technical revisions. When Washington dispatched a former congressman to western Pennsylvania to investigate an attack on the home of a tax collector, the report came back that westerners despised the liquor excise and those who tried to collect it.6
The standoff festered through 1793, while Washington’s administration was distracted by Genêt, neutrality, and yellow fever. Not wanting to give up the tax but unwilling to risk a conflict, Washington elected to look away from the problem. In early 1794, the commissioner of revenue made a halfhearted claim that compliance was improving, but conceded that “the obstacles to it are yet far from being entirely vanquished.” Washington proposed more technical revisions, but no major revamping. He was not backing down.7
In the spring of 1794, western petitioners renewed their complaints about their lack of access to the Mississippi and continuing Indian violence. Washington took a dim view of the petitions when he noted that they came from the new democratic societies, which he saw as the evil spawn of the demon Genêt. “The fruit of the Democratic Society,” he wrote, “begins more and more to unfold itself.” Four months later, he wrote that the societies were created “by their father, Genêt” to sow “jealousy and distrust . . . of the government, by destroying all confidence in the Administration.” If the societies were not opposed, “they would shake the government to its foundation.” Thus the president who aimed to be nonpartisan leaned hard into partisanship, an attitude that kept him from appreciating the broader discontent that many Americans were feeling. The angry temper of the time was infecting Washington.8
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