The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5)
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For a short time, the opponents of this measure treated it with some
degree of delicacy. The opposition prints occasionally glanced at the
executive; considered all governments, including that of the United
States, as naturally hostile to the liberty of the people; and
ascribed to this disposition, the combination of European governments
against France, and the apathy with which this combination was
contemplated by the executive. At the same time, the most vehement
declamations were published, for the purpose of inflaming the
resentments of the people against Britain; of enhancing the
obligations of America to France; of confirming the opinions, that the
coalition of European monarchs was directed, not less against the
United States, than against that power to which its hostility was
avowed, and that those who did not avow this sentiment were the
friends of that coalition, and equally the enemies of America and
France.
These publications, in the first instance, sufficiently bitter,
quickly assumed a highly increased degree of acrimony.
As soon as the commotions which succeeded the deposition of Louis XVI.
had, in some degree, subsided, the attention of the French government
was directed to the United States, and the resolution was taken to
recall the minister who had been appointed by the king; and to replace
him with one who might be expected to enter, with more enthusiasm,
into the views of the republic.[4]
[Footnote 4: See note No. II. at the end of the volume.]
The citizen Genet, a gentleman of considerable talents, and of an
ardent temper, was selected for this purpose.
The letters he brought to the executive of the United States, and his
instructions, which he occasionally communicated, were, in a high
degree, flattering to the nation, and decently respectful to its
government. But Mr. Genet was also furnished with private
instructions, which the course of subsequent events tempted him to
publish. These indicate that, if the American executive should not be
found sufficiently compliant with the views of France, the resolution
had been taken to employ with the people of the United States the same
policy which was so successfully used with those of Europe; and thus
to affect an object which legitimate negotiations might fail to
accomplish.
[Sidenote: Arrival of Mr. Genet as minister from France.]
Mr. Genet possessed many qualities which were peculiarly adapted to
the objects of his mission; but he seems to have been betrayed by the
flattering reception which was given him, and by the universal fervour
expressed for his republic, into a too speedy disclosure of his
intentions.
[Sidenote: His conduct.]
On the eighth of April he arrived, not at Philadelphia, but at
Charleston, in South Carolina, a port whose contiguity to the West
Indies would give it peculiar convenience as a resort for privateers.
He was received by the governor of that state, and by its citizens,
with an enthusiasm well calculated to dissipate every doubt he might
previously have entertained, concerning the dispositions on which he
was to operate. At this place he continued for several days, receiving
extravagant marks of public attachment, during which time, he
undertook to authorize the fitting and arming of vessels in that port,
enlisting men, and giving commissions to cruise and commit hostilities
on nations with whom the United States were at peace. The captures
made by these cruisers were brought into port, and the consuls of
France were assuming, under the authority of Mr. Genet, to hold courts
of admiralty on them, to try, condemn, and authorize their sale.
From Charleston, Mr. Genet proceeded by land to Philadelphia,
receiving on his journey, at the different towns through which he
passed, such marks of enthusiastic attachment as had never before been
lavished on a foreign minister. On the 16th of May, he arrived at the
seat of government, preceded by the intelligence of his transactions
in South Carolina. This information did not diminish the extravagant
transports of joy with which he was welcomed by the great body of the
inhabitants. Means had been taken to render his entry pompous and
triumphal; and the opposition papers exultingly stated that he was met
at Gray's ferry by "crowds who flocked from every avenue of the city,
to meet the republican ambassador of an allied nation."
The day succeeding his arrival, he received addresses of
congratulation from particular societies, and from the citizens of
Philadelphia, who waited on him in a body, in which they expressed
their fervent gratitude for the "zealous and disinterested aids,"
which the French people had furnished to America, unbounded exultation
at the success with which their arms had been crowned, and a positive
conviction that the safety of the United States depended on the
establishment of the republic. The answers to these addresses were
well calculated to preserve the idea of a complete fraternity between
the two nations; and that their interests were identified.
The day after being thus accredited by the citizens of Philadelphia,
he was presented to the President, by whom he was received with
frankness, and with expressions of a sincere and cordial regard for
his nation. In the conversation which took place on this occasion, Mr.
Genet gave the most explicit assurances that, in consequence of the
distance of the United States from the theatre of action, and of other
circumstances, France did not wish to engage them in the war, but
would willingly leave them to pursue their happiness and prosperity in
peace. The more ready faith was given to these declarations, because
it was believed that France might derive advantages from the
neutrality of America, which would be a full equivalent for any
services which she could render as a belligerent.
Before the ambassador of the republic had reached the seat of
government, a long catalogue of complaints, partly founded on his
proceedings in Charleston, had been made by the British minister to
the American executive.
This catalogue was composed of the assumptions of sovereignty already
mentioned;--assumptions calculated to render America an instrument of
hostility to be wielded by France against those powers with which she
might be at war.
[Sidenote: Illegal proceedings of the French cruisers.]
These were still further aggravated by the commission of actual
hostilities within the territories of the United States. The ship
Grange, a British vessel which had been cleared out from Philadelphia,
was captured by the French frigate L'Ambuscade within the capes of the
Delaware, while on her way to the ocean.
The prizes thus unwarrantly made, being brought within the power of
the American government, Mr. Hammond, among other things, demanded a
restitution of them.
On many of the points suggested by the conduct of Mr. Genet, and by
the memorials of the British minister, it would seem impossible that
any difference of opinion could exist among intelligent men, not under
the dominion of a blind infatuation. Accordingly it was agreed in the
cabinet, without a dissenting voice, that the jurisdiction of every
independent nation, within the limits of its own territory, being of a
nature to exclude the exercise of any authority therein by a foreign
power, the proceedings complained of, not being warranted by any
treaty, were usurpations of national sovereignty, and violations of
neutral rights, a repetition of which it was the duty of the
government to prevent.
It was also agreed that the efficacy of the laws should be tried
against those citizens of the United States who had joined in
perpetrating the offence.
[Sidenote: Opinions of the Cabinet in relation thereto.]
The question of restitution, except as to the Grange, was more
dubious. The secretary of state and the attorney general contended
that, if the commissions granted by Mr. Genet were invalid, the
captures were totally void, and the courts would adjudge the property
to remain in the former owners. In this point of view, therefore,
there being a regular remedy at law, it would be irregular for the
government to interpose.
If, on the contrary, the commissions were good, then, the captures
having been made on the high seas, under a valid commission from a
power at war with Great Britain, the original right of the British
owner was, by the laws of war, transferred to the captor.
The legal right being in the captor, it could only be taken from him
by an act of force, that is to say, of reprisal for the offence
committed against the United States in the port of Charleston.
Reprisal is a very serious thing, ought always to be preceded by a
demand and refusal of satisfaction, is generally considered as an act
of war, and never yet failed to produce it in the case of a nation
able to make war.
[Illustration: Martha Washington
_From the portrait by James Sharples_
_This is one of the three Sharples portraits of the Washington family
and the only good profile of Martha Washington that was painted from
life. Martha, who was a few months younger than her husband, is
described as having been "amiable in character and lovely in person."
By the courtesy of the period she was called Lady Washington, and
whether in her own home or at the "federal court," she presided with
marked dignity and grace. She died at Mount Vernon, May 22, 1802,
having survived her husband two and a half years._
Courtesy Herbert L. Pratt]
Admitting the case to be of sufficient importance to require reprisal,
and to be ripe for that step, the power of taking it was vested by the
constitution in congress, not in the executive department of the
government.
Of the reparation for the offence committed against the United States,
they were themselves the judges, and could not be required by a
foreign nation, to demand more than was satisfactory to themselves. By
disavowing the act, by taking measures to prevent its repetition, by
prosecuting the American citizens who were engaged in it, the United
States ought to stand justified with Great Britain; and a demand of
further reparation by that power would be a wrong on her part.
The circumstances under which these equipments had been made, in the
first moments of the war, before the government could have time to
take precautions against them, and its immediate disapprobation of
those equipments, must rescue it from every imputation of being
accessory to them, and had placed it with the offended, not the
offending party.
Those gentlemen were therefore of opinion, that the vessels which had
been captured on the high seas, and brought into the United States, by
privateers fitted out and commissioned in their ports, ought not to be
restored.
The secretaries of the treasury, and of war, were of different
opinion. They urged that a neutral, permitting itself to be made an
instrument of hostility by one belligerent against another, became
thereby an associate in the war. If land or naval armaments might be
formed by France within the United States, for the purpose of carrying
on expeditions against her enemy, and might return with the spoils
they had taken, and prepare new enterprises, it was apparent that a
state of war would exist between America and those enemies, of the
worst kind for them: since, while the resources of the country were
employed in annoying them, the instruments of this annoyance would be
occasionally protected from pursuit, by the privileges of an
ostensible neutrality. It was easy to see that such a state of things
could not be tolerated longer than until it should be perceived.
It being confessedly contrary to the duty of the United States, as a
neutral nation, to suffer privateers to be fitted in their ports to
annoy the British trade, it seemed to follow that it would comport
with their duty, to remedy the injury which may have been sustained,
when it is in their power so to do.
That the fact had been committed before the government could provide
against it might be an excuse, but not a justification. Every
government is responsible for the conduct of all parts of the
community over which it presides, and is supposed to possess, at all
times, the means of preventing infractions of its duty to foreign
nations. In the present instance, the magistracy of the place ought to
have prevented them. However valid this excuse might have been, had
the privateers expedited from Charleston been sent to the French
dominions, there to operate out of the reach of the United States, it
could be of no avail when their prizes were brought into the American
ports, and the government, thereby, completely enabled to administer a
specific remedy for the injury.
Although the commissions, and the captures made under them, were valid
as between the parties at war, they were not so as to the United
States. For the violation of their rights, they had a claim to
reparation, and might reasonably demand, as the reparation to which
they were entitled, restitution of the property taken, with or without
an apology for the infringement of their sovereignty. This they had a
right to demand as a species of reparation consonant with the nature
of the injury, and enabling them to do justice to the party in
injuring whom they had been made instrumental. It could be no just
cause of complaint on the part of the captors that they were required
to surrender a property, the means of acquiring which took their
origin in a violation of the rights of the United States.
On the other hand, there was a claim on the American government to
arrest the effects of the injury or annoyance to which it had been
made accessory. To insist therefore on the restitution of the property
taken, would be to enforce a right, in order to the performance of a
duty.
These commissions, though void as to the United States, being valid as
between the parties, the case was not proper for the decision of the
courts of justice. The whole was an affair between the governments of
the parties concerned, to be settled by reasons of state, not rules of
law. It was the case of an infringement of national sovereignty to the
prejudice of a third party, in which the government was to demand a
reparation, with the double view of vindicating its own rights, and of
doing justice to the suffering party.
They, therefore, were of opinion that, in the case stated for their
consideration, restitution ought to be made.
On the point respecting which his cabinet was divided, the President
took time to deliberate. Those principles on which a concurrence of
sentiment had been manifested being considered as settled, the
secretary of state was desired to communicate them to the ministers of
France and Britain; and circular letters were addressed to the
executives of the several states, requiring their co-operation, with
force if necessary, in the execution of the rules which were
established.
The citizen Genet was much dissatisfied with these decisions of the
American government. He thought them contrary to natural right, and
subversive of the treaties by which the two nations were connected. In
his exposition of these treaties, he claimed, for his own country, all
that the two nations were restricted from conceding to others, thereby
converting negative limitations into an affirmative grant of
privileges to France.
Without noticing a want of decorum in some of the expressions which
Mr. Genet had employed, he was informed that the subjects on which his
letter treated had, from respect to him, been reconsidered by the
executive; but that no cause was perceived for changing the system
which had been adopted. He was further informed that, in the opinion
of the President, the United States owed it to themselves, and to the
nations in their friendship, to expect, as a reparation for the
offence of infringing their sovereignty, that the vessels, thus
illegally equipped, would depart from their ports.
Mr. Genet was not disposed to acquiesce in these decisions. Adhering
to his own construction of the existing treaty, he affected to
consider the measures of the American government as infractions of it,
which no power in the nation had a right to make, unless the United
States in congress assembled should determine that their solemn
engagements should no longer be performed. Intoxicated with the
sentiments expressed by a great portion of the people, and
unacquainted with the firm character of the executive, he seems to
have expected that the popularity of his nation would enable him to
overthrow that department, or to render it subservient to his views.
It is difficult otherwise to account for his persisting to disregard
its decisions, and for passages with which his letters abound, such as
the following:
"Every obstruction by the government of the United States to the
arming of French vessels must be an attempt on the rights of man, upon
which repose the independence and laws of the United States; a
violation of the ties which unite the people of France and America;
and even a manifest contradiction of the system of neutrality of the
President; for, in fact, if our merchant vessels,[5] or others, are
not allowed to arm themselves, when the French alone are resisting the
league of all the tyrants against the liberty of the people, they will
be exposed to inevitable ruin in going out of the ports of the United
States, which is certainly not the intention of the people of America.
Their fraternal voice has resounded from every quarter around me, and
their accents are not equivocal. They are pure as the hearts of those
by whom they are expressed, and the more they have touched my
sensibility, the more they must interest in the happiness of America
the nation I represent;--the more I wish, sir, that the federal
government should observe, as far as in their power, the public
engagements contracted by both nations; and that, by this generous and
prudent conduct, they will give at least to the world, the example of
a true neutrality, which does not consist in the cowardly abandonment
of their friends in the moment when danger menaces them, but in
adhering strictly, if they can do no better, to the obligations they
have contracted with them. It is by such proceedings that they will
render themselves respectable to all the powers; that they will
preserve their friends and deserve to augment their numbers."
[Footnote 5: The regulation alluded to as was stated by Mr.
Jefferson in reply, did not relate to vessels arming for
defence, but to cruisers against the enemies of France.]
A few days previous to the reception of the letter from which the
above is an extract, two citizens of the United States, who had been
engaged by Mr. Genet in Charleston to cruise in the service of France,
were arrested by the civil magistrate, in pursuance of the
determination formed by the executive for the prosecution of persons
having thus offended against the laws. Mr. Genet demanded their
release in the following extraordinary terms:
"I have this moment been informed that two officers in the service of
the republic of France, citizen Gideon Henfield and John Singletary,
have been arrested on board the privateer of the French republic, the
Citizen Genet, and conducted to prison. The crime laid to their
charge--the crime which my mind can not conceive, and which my pen
almost refuses to state,--is the serving of France, and defending with
her children the common glorious cause of liberty.
"Being ignorant of any positive law or treaty which deprives Americans
of this privilege, and authorizes officers of police arbitrarily to
take mariners in the service of France from on board their vessels, I
call upon your intervention, sir, and that of the President of the
United States, in order to obtain the immediate releasement of the
above mentioned officers, who have acquired, by the sentiments
animating them, and by the act of their engagement, anterior to every
act to the contrary, the right of French citizens, if they have lost
that of American citizens."
This lofty offensive style could not fail to make a deep impression on
a mind penetrated with a just sense of those obligations by which the
chief magistrate is bound to guard the dignity of his government, and
to take care that his nation be not degraded in his person. Yet, in no
single instance, did the administration, in its communications with
Mr. Genet, permit itself to be betrayed into the use of one
intemperate expression. The firmness with which the extravagant
pretensions of that gentleman were resisted, proceeding entirely from
a sense of duty and conviction of right, was unaccompanied with any
marks of that resentment which his language and his conduct were alike
calculated to inspire.
[Sidenote: State of parties.]
Mr. Genet appears to have been prevented from acquiescing in a line of
conduct thus deliberately adopted and prudently pursued, by a belief
that the sentiments of the people were in direct opposition to the
measures of their government. So excessive, and so general, were the
demonstrations of enthusiastic devotion to France; so open were their
expressions of outrage and hostility towards all the powers at war
with that republic; so thin was the veil which covered the chief
magistrate from that stream of malignant opprobrium directed against
every measure which thwarted the views of Mr. Genet; that a person
less sanguine than that minister might have cherished the hope of
being able ultimately to triumph over the opposition to his designs.
Civic festivals, and other public assemblages of people, at which the
ensigns of France were displayed in union with those of America; at
which the red cap, as a symbol of French liberty and fraternity,
triumphantly passed from head to head; at which toasts were given
expressive of a desire to identify the people of America with those of
France; and, under the imposing guise of adhering to principles not to
men, containing allusions to the influence of the President which
could not be mistaken; appeared to Mr. Genet to indicate a temper
extremely favourable to his hopes, and very different from that which
would be required for the preservation of an honest neutrality.
Through the medium of the press, these sentiments were communicated to
the public, and were represented as flowing from the hearts of the
great body of the people. In various other modes, that important
engine contributed its powerful aid to the extension of opinions,
calculated, essentially, to vary the situation of the United States.
The proclamation of neutrality which was treated as a royal edict, was
not only considered as assuming powers not belonging to the executive,
and, as evidencing the monarchical tendencies of that department, but
as demonstrating the disposition of the government to break its
connexions with France, and to dissolve the friendship which united
the people of the two republics. The declaration that "the duty and
interest of the United States required that they should with sincerity
and good faith adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impartial
towards the belligerent powers," gave peculiar umbrage. The scenes of
the revolutionary war were brought into review; the object and effect
of British hostility were painted in glowing colours; and the
important aids afforded by France were drawn with a pencil not less
animated. That the conduct of Britain, since the treaty of peace had
furnished unequivocal testimony of enmity to the United States, was
strongly pressed. With this continuing enmity was contrasted the
amicable dispositions professed by the French republic; and it was
asked with indignation, whether the interests of the United States
required that they should pursue "a line of conduct entirely impartial
between these two powers? That the services of the one as well as the
injuries of the other, should be forgotten? that a friend and an enemy
should be treated with equal favour? and that neither gratitude nor
resentment should constitute a feature of the American character?" The
supposed freedom of the French was opposed to the imagined slavery of
the English; and it was demanded whether "the people of America were
alike friendly to republicanism and to monarchy? to liberty and to
despotism?"
With infectious enthusiasm it was contended, that there was a natural
and inveterate hostility between monarchies and republics; that the
present combination against France was a combination against liberty
in every part of the world; and that the destinies of America were
inseparably linked with those of the French republic.
On the various points of controversy which had arisen between the
executive and Mr. Genet, this active and powerful party openly and
decidedly embraced the principles for which that minister contended.
It was assumed that his demands were sanctioned by subsisting
treaties, and that his exposition of those instruments was perfectly
correct. The conduct of the executive in withholding privileges to
which France was said to be entitled by the most solemn engagements,
was reprobated with extreme acrimony; was considered as indicative of
a desire to join the coalesced despots in their crusade against
liberty; and as furnishing to the French republic such just motives
for war, that it required all her moderation and forbearance to
restrain her from declaring it against the United States.