George Washington

by David O. Stewart

  * * *

  For many weeks, Washington withheld the treaty terms, sharing them only with a few trusted confidants, which did not include three of his four cabinet officers. He sent a quiet note to Vice President Adams, suggesting that the Senate convene on June 8, more than three months in the future, to consider the treaty. Not even the ambassador to France, James Monroe, had seen the treaty. American political figures were left to shadowbox with a bogeyman treaty of unknown dimensions that was stashed in a Philadelphia desk.10

  Knowing that peace and war hung in the balance, Washington used the time to consider his options with an agreement that was no better than problematic.11 The treaty included the provision that Washington most cherished: The British agreed (again) to abandon the western posts, though not until mid-1796. Other, less central provisions were tolerable: The two governments would appoint joint commissions to resolve American claims for shipping losses, and to draw the boundaries between Maine and Canada, and between the Northwest Territory and Canada; American traders could call at British ports in Asia. Securing any concessions from a powerful adversary was an achievement.

  But some provisions were unfortunate, and some that Washington wanted were entirely missing. American and British traders could operate across the Canadian border, which invited British meddling with the Northwest tribes. The treaty never mentioned sailor impressments or reimbursement for slaves who fled with the British at the end of the war. Nor did it address the principle, cherished by Americans, that “neutral ships make neutral cargoes,” which would bar seizures of American ships in the future. Although Britain had never previously entertained those last three proposals, critics would denounce their absence. American shippers would gain access to British West Indies markets, but in a cramped, limited fashion. Finally, the United States agreed not to discriminate against British goods for ten years, but won no reciprocal commitment.12

  Though the treaty was no triumph for the United States, it may have been the best one possible. It would secure peace, but it would draw vehement opposition. After long reflection, Washington resolved that if the Senate ratified the pact by the required two-thirds majority, he would sign it.13

  Then news from Britain threatened to sabotage his decision. Facing a food shortage, British “provision orders” authorized the seizure of food shipments to France. Most of those shipments would be in American vessels. Though Britain promised to pay for seized cargoes, it seemed to be repudiating its commitment to treat American shipping fairly before the ink was dry on the treaty. A further complication arose when the Senate ratified the treaty in June, except for the paragraph allowing very limited trade to British Caribbean ports, which the Senate considered inadequate. Excluding that provision presented the constitutional question whether the president could approve the rest of the treaty without renewing negotiations over the omitted provision. Finally, a Philadelphia newspaper printed a leaked copy of the treaty, denying Washington the chance to release it with his own explanation, while also making him seem secretive and devious.14

  Many reacted to the treaty with rage.

  When Hamilton defended it before a New York crowd of 5,000, people threw stones. Struck in the forehead, Hamilton wisely left the event. Bostonians burned a British privateer. Jay joked that he could travel the nation by the light of his burning effigies, while a Jay biographer estimates that every day for six weeks, an anti-treaty protest occurred somewhere in the nation. Crowds in Philadelphia and Charleston marched to the homes of British diplomats, where they defiled the Union Jack and the treaty.15 The anti-administration Aurora of Philadelphia predicted that the treaty would lead to the “completest political union between Great Britain and the United States,” a prospect that “must fill the American mind with horror.” Citizen petitions and resolutions complained about one-sided trade terms, the failure to recognize the rights of neutral countries, and a dozen other features and omissions. One of Washington’s relatives reported that in Virginia, “not one man has ever attempted to justify the treaty.”16

  The president faced no good choices. If he overlooked the recent provision orders and signed the treaty, he would look like a toady to King George. If he withheld his signature until the provision orders were resolved, he would look indecisive, and the treaty would die if Britain stood by the provision orders. War might follow. If he signed the treaty on condition that the provision orders be revoked, or if he refused to sign, he would abandon those Federalist senators who already had voted for his treaty.

  Preparing to leave for Mount Vernon. Washington asked his cabinet secretaries for written recommendations. He also requested that Hamilton in New York report the views of “dispassionate men, who have knowledge of the subject and abilities to judge of it.” He wanted to study the case for and against each treaty provision. Secretary of State Randolph’s opinion exceeded 4,000 words, while Hamilton’s was more than twice as long. Washington left Philadelphia in mid-July, intending to make his decision after sober reflection.17

  It would not be so simple.

  * * *

  Federalists belatedly moved to defend the pact. A few public meetings endorsed it, while mere stones could not silence Hamilton. Over the next five months, he published twenty-eight pro-treaty essays totaling nearly 100,000 words.18

  The most important response came from Washington at Mount Vernon. Though shaken in his earlier resolve to sign the treaty, he moved to calm the tumult. In a response to an anti-treaty letter from Boston officials, he wrote that he had always sought the happiness of all Americans. He pledged to consider every argument about the treaty while respecting the Constitution, which was “the guide which I never can abandon.” He stressed that the Senate and the president have the power to make treaties because they can judge “without passion, and with the best means of information, those facts and principles upon which the success of our foreign relations will always depend.” He would decide, he concluded, “by obeying the dictates of my conscience.”19

  By its steady tone and commitment to the Constitution, his letter—which was widely reprinted—began to lower the temperature of the public debate. A friend reported that the western country was quiet, untroubled about the treaty. John Adams wrote that the furor never reached the Massachusetts countryside. Washington’s letter could not, as he wrote to Secretary of State Randolph, change the unpalatable choices before him: “If the treaty is ratified the partisans of the French (or rather of war and confusion) will excite [the French] to hostile measures, or at least to unfriendly sentiments—if it is not [ratified], there is no foreseeing all the consequences which may follow as it respects G[reat] B[ritain].”20

  Always sensitive to criticism, Washington resented the “obloquy which disappointment and malice are collecting to heap upon my character.” Since becoming president, he added, he had “never . . . seen a crisis . . . from which more is to be apprehended.” From a man who had weathered Genêt’s manipulations and the Whiskey Rebellion, that was a sobering judgment.21

  But another crisis soon crowded in. This one reached into the heart of Washington’s administration.

  * * *

  The British had intercepted dispatches from Genêt’s successor as French minister to America, Jean Antoine Joseph Fauchet. One described conversations with Secretary of State Randolph in a suggestive way—suggesting, that is, that Randolph was corrupt. The British minister in Philadelphia presented the letter to Treasury Secretary Wolcott, who shared the pro-British sympathies of his predecessor, Hamilton, though with less intelligence and imagination.

  Wolcott pored over the French text of Fauchet’s dispatch with Secretary of War Pickering. The document quoted unflattering remarks by Randolph about Washington.22 But the explosive material—or what Wolcott and Pickering deemed explosive—described Randolph approaching the Frenchman “with an air of great eagerness” and making “overtures” concerning the Whiskey Rebellion, which Fauchet had reported previously. The Fre
nchman added:

  Thus with some thousands of dollars the [French] Republic would have decided on civil war or on peace! Thus the consciences of the pretended patriots of America have already their scale of prices.

  Without knowing Fauchet’s earlier reports, his meaning was murky, but Wolcott and Pickering thought he described Randolph demanding a bribe. Randolph’s well-known financial distress reinforced that inference. Two years earlier, Jefferson had warned that Randolph’s debts might compromise his independence. A week before, complaining about money troubles, Randolph had asked Washington for an appointment to the Supreme Court. When briefed about the Fauchet letter, Attorney General Bradford agreed that the president should return to Philadelphia to confront Randolph. Pickering sent a note urging Washington to return “for a special reason,” which could only be related in person, adding portentously that Washington should decide no important matters until then.23

  Delayed by heavy rains and a meeting with the commissioners of the District of Columbia, Washington reached Philadelphia on August 11. Pickering and Wolcott promptly presented the Fauchet letter, as translated by Pickering.24

  The letter’s suggestion of corruption was unsettling. Randolph was the highest-ranking administration appointee and the only remaining member of the original cabinet. As others had resigned, Washington increasingly had relied on Randolph, whose family the president had known for decades. Most disturbing, Washington needed to make a difficult foreign-policy decision while doubting his chief diplomat’s loyalty. Washington resolved to address those questions sequentially: the treaty first, then Randolph.

  Next morning, Washington announced he would ignore Randolph’s advice and sign the treaty without demanding rescission of Britain’s provision orders. The case for signing was straightforward: It was better than no treaty, and the United States needed peace. Britain’s naval power could plunder American ships and ports at will. Signing the treaty might ignite another firestorm of protest, but short-term political considerations would not alter Washington’s judgment of what was best for the union.25

  After Washington signed the treaty on August 19, the Republican press howled for his scalp. A writer in the Philadelphia Aurora urged Washington to resign to “save the wreck of character now crumbling to pieces under the tempest of an universal irritation.” Public meetings in Southern states lodged angry protests.26 But Washington’s signature also prompted some to reconsider the treaty. New public resolutions endorsed it. A New Hampshire senator found that his most persuasive pro-treaty argument was to point to Washington’s signature. “They say,” a Massachusetts congressman wrote, “the president will not see the country wronged, much less wrong it himself.”27

  While working with the secretary of state to produce the official documents approving the treaty, Washington gnawed silently on the Randolph problem, never mentioning the Fauchet allegations to Randolph. He decided not to seek more documentation from Fauchet’s successor as minister, expecting that the request would be futile. He resolved to present Randolph with what he had, then gauge Randolph’s culpability from his conduct when confronted.28

  * * *

  At midmorning of August 19, Randolph reached the president’s residence on Market Street. Washington, Pickering, and Wolcott, already in Washington’s office, greeted him formally. Washington handed over Fauchet’s letter and asked the secretary of state to “make such explanations as you choose.”

  As Randolph read, he commented that without the Frenchman’s earlier dispatches, Fauchet’s statements were not clear, but he denied any improper actions. When he reached the incriminating reference to the “scale of prices” demanded by American patriots, Randolph offered a hazy recollection that Fauchet had advised him of “machinations against the French Republic, Governor Clinton [of New York] and myself.” His ordeal was interrupted when Washington was called from the office. When the president returned, he asked Randolph to leave so he could confer with the other two.

  Cooling his heels in the anteroom, Randolph decided that the president had prejudged him. When the meeting resumed, Randolph agreed to Washington’s suggestion that he prepare a written response to the Fauchet material, then announced his resignation. Later that day, he sent a resignation letter from home, noting that he had lost Washington’s confidence. He plainly had.29

  Washington appointed Pickering to be interim secretary of state. Randolph embarked on a four-month quest to defend himself, starting with a breakneck dash to Rhode Island to acquire a sworn statement from the homebound Fauchet, plus copies of the Frenchman’s earlier dispatches. When Randolph published his lengthy Vindication in December 1795, it included a peculiar explanation of Fauchet’s ambiguous statements.30

  Randolph’s explanation, largely backed by Fauchet, was that the secretary of state had suspected that the British incited the Whiskey Rebellion. He supposedly told Fauchet that four unnamed grain merchants could resolve that suspicion and end the rebellion if only they were freed of their debts to British businesses. To that end, Randolph allegedly encouraged Fauchet to fulfill contracts to buy flour from those unnamed figures, freeing them from British influence. That exchange supposedly prompted Fauchet’s remark about the “scale of prices” for American patriots.31

  If Randolph truly made that convoluted proposal to Fauchet, the Frenchman might well have suspected that the American was soliciting a bribe; money paid to mysterious grain merchants could end up in any number of pockets, including Randolph’s. Indeed, Randolph’s account of the episode—that as secretary of state, without consulting the president, he asked a foreign diplomat to pay American citizens to secure secret information—raised more doubts than it dispelled. Washington, a shrewd spymaster during the war, hardly needed someone with no experience in espionage (Randolph) to combine with a French revolutionary with no command of English (Fauchet) to gather intelligence about events on the American frontier. Moreover, at a time when Washington saw Genêt and the democratic societies lurking behind every tree, the secretary of state should not have secretly been playing footsie with the new French minister. Though direct evidence of bribery never surfaced, Washington’s loss of confidence in Randolph seems well founded.32

  Randolph’s published Vindication did his reputation no good. John Adams dismissed it as “a weak thing.” It did not, Jefferson lamented, prompt “high ideas of [Randolph’s] wisdom or steadiness.” Madison regretted that Randolph’s “best friend can’t save him from the self-condemnation of his political career as explained by himself.” In private, Washington fulminated about Randolph; in public, he said nothing.33

  Randolph’s departure from the cabinet showed Washington at his least sentimental. Though the president never explained his handling of the episode, he may have been dissatisfied with his secretary of state in other ways. Never the steadiest character, Randolph had shifted his position on the treaty issue, ultimately pressing Washington not to sign. Then there were Randolph’s slighting remarks to Fauchet about the president. Moreover, there is no evidence that Washington ever held a high opinion of Randolph’s abilities. Washington may have seen Randolph’s departure as no great loss.

  Washington asked five different men to accept permanent appointment as secretary of state; each declined. It was deflating. Hamilton delivered a hard truth about the situation: “In fact a first-rate character is not attainable. A second rate must be taken with good dispositions and barely decent qualifications.”34

  Washington had to agree. He elevated Pickering from interim to permanent secretary of state and recruited James McHenry, an aide during the war, to take over the War Department. When Attorney General Bradford died of fever at age thirty-nine, two men turned down that office before Washington named Charles Lee, his personal lawyer in Virginia (not to be confused with the general of the same name).35 Washington, as Hamilton warned, would finish his presidency assisted by second-stringers, all dedicated Federalists. The president might consider himself no
npartisan, but his government no longer looked that way.

  No matter what its lineup, the Washington administration still faced a fight for peace. Congressional Republicans had a plan to undermine the Jay Treaty, and thought they had the votes to do it.

  * * *

  Washington’s seventh annual message, delivered on December 8, 1795, was another exercise in optimism. A Massachusetts congressman called the speech “one of the most animating, firm, and manly addresses I ever heard from him or any other person.” When the president called on Americans to support the government, that congressman yearned to swear allegiance on the spot. The address did not challenge Republicans directly, and there were no references to self-created societies. Washington had learned that lesson.36

  He offered an impressive list of advances. Incomes were rising with sky-high European demand for American crops. Treaties had brought peace with tribes on every frontier. Morocco had signed a treaty to control piracy against American ships, while the American envoy to Spain was predicting “a speedy and satisfactory conclusion of his negotiation” over the Mississippi. The Jay Treaty awaited only ratification by George III. Washington contrasted war-torn Europe with tranquil America, enjoying “a spectacle of national happiness never surpassed.” He recommended strengthening the nation’s military and implored his fellow citizens to stop attacking peaceful Indians.37

  Disturbing this idyll of contentment and wealth, the Republicans planned to use their control of the House of Representatives to deny funds needed for the commissions established by the Jay Treaty, and for reclaiming the western forts from Britain. Without those funds, the treaty’s gains could never be realized. This strategy underlined Republican doctrine that the House, the popular branch of government, must participate in treaty-making.