by Conrad Black
The Democratic societies had been supporting Genet, but the great majority of Americans backed Washington’s firm and sensible response, and the whole affair then rapidly descended into farce. Genet lingered in America but had no status, as the Revolution in France moved toward its most extreme phase. Genêt’s successor, Joseph Fauchet, arrived in 1794 and demanded Genêt’s arrest and extradition to France in chains. Washington, in a typical gentlemanly flourish, refused and gave him asylum, and Genet became an American and married a daughter of Governor and future vice president George Clinton. Support for France was also diluted by Thomas Paine’s pamphlet The Age of Reason, which sold scores of thousands of copies in America but was an attack on all religion, raised the strenuous opposition of all denominations, and brought the entire clergy of America into the Federalist camp, instantly cured of any sympathy for the French Revolution, which Paine had served as a member of the National Convention. It also destroyed much of his historical standing and caused otherwise kindred spirits to defect from his admirers, such as Theodore Roosevelt, who generally referred to him as “a filthy little atheist.”56
The Treaty of 1783 had recognized American independence and ended the the American Revolutionary War but did not resolve all issues between the United States and Great Britain. Britain continued to occupy a series of forts and trading posts in the Northwest that were recognized as American but that the British still operated. The British justified their retention by the failure of the Americans to pay pre-revolutionaty debts to British merchants and promised compensation to loyalists whose property had been confiscated. The British had promoted the creation of an Indian buffer state in the Ohio country, and the Americans believed that the British had incited attacks on American settlers and had generally retarded the western progress of the United States. Orders in council of June and November 1793 authorized the impressments into British service of American crews seized on the high seas, an act of war the Americans could not ignore (and Madison did not when his time came to deal with such matters).
Canadian and West Indian ports were closed to American ships, and the British, once war broke out with France in 1792, arrogated unto themselves the right to seize American cargoes intended for France, and to detain indefinitely American ships and sailors. The Federalists responded by making war-like noises and building up the country’s armed forces, an army of 20,000 and a vigorous program of naval construction, following Washington’s long-held maxim that to preserve peace one must prepare for war. The Jefferson-Madison Republicans wanted to avoid war but engage in a complete boycott of any imports from Britain, which was impossible to enforce, punitive to certain regions, especially New England, and would have had no leverage opposite the British, since the United States provided only about 15 percent of their trade, which could be replaced. This was a mad suggestion, because tariffs on British imports were what chiefly financed Hamilton’s sinking fund for Revolutionary War and Confederation debt, the country’s standing army, and any incentivization to manufacturing such as the secretary of the Treasury proposed. In trade matters, the Americans had started out with a naïve idea of free trade with everyone, and the Confederation had empowered a commission of Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson to pursue such agreements with all countries. Only Prussia, Sweden, and Morocco agreed, countries with which America’s trade was negligible.
The Federalist plan seemed to have helped motivate the British to end their policy of wholesale seizures of American shipping, which gave Washington the latitude he felt he needed to send John Jay to negotiate an agreement with the British. Madison and Jefferson were raving that any war preparations were part of a Hamiltonian plot to foist a military and monarchical dictatorship on the country in the guise of avenging wrongs from England, but that any effort to negotiate a settlement was the first step to dishonoring the nation with a sell-out of the republic’s interests to the former abusive colonial master. As was his practice, Jefferson left it to Madison to make these implausible arguments, reserving the necessary room to maneuver and dissemble, as he did in the Genet affair. Jefferson retired as secretary of state in July 1793, with effect at the end of that year. The crushing of the Whiskey Rebellion confirmed the Republicans’ fear that Hamilton, behind the cloak of Washington’s prestige, was cranking up to use the militia to curtail popular liberties.
Jay signed with the British a draft treaty on November 19, 1794, which assured the British withdrawal from the Northwest posts and forts by June 1, 1796; admitted U.S. vessels to British East Indian ports, and to West Indian ports if they did not carry over 70 tons of cargo; and renounced the right to ship from the West Indies cotton, molasses, sugar, and other staples. Joint commissions would take up pre-revolutionary debts, a dispute over the northeast border with Canada, and compensation for illegal seizures of American vessels. Trade between the two countries was upgraded to a most-favored-nation status. Impressment of sailors had been officially abandoned and compensation for impressed sailors and for deported slaves taken by the British were dropped as a complaint, as was, on the British side, compensation for loyalist property that had been seized. Various concerns about the Indians, including responsibility for their alleged aggressions, were not dealt with, leaving the Americans a free hand to resolve matters by force, as they were more than pleased to do.
There was fierce opposition from the Republicans (again, Jefferson and Madison), because of treatment of debts, West Indian shipping rights, and, for the southerners, fugitive slaves. Washington acknowledged that the agreement, known at the time and since as Jay’s Treaty, was imperfect, but he recognized that given the correlation of forces, it was a commendable effort. Furthermore, it was brilliant general policy, because it levered on a military build-up to magnify the trade relationship with Britain, which sharply increased tariff and excise revenue and strengthened the American central government and directly increased and spread American prosperity. The sources of revenue safeguarded by Jay’s Treaty, the tariffs, financed the military build-up that gave America the leverage to extract the revenue from its arrangements with Britain. The treaty, and Jefferson and Madison’s response to it, showed the superiority of the Washington, Hamilton, Jay, and later Adams policy, which had been pioneered by Franklin, of playing on the British vulnerability in Canada and manipulating Britain and France against each other. It was profoundly sensible strategic thinking, rigorously implemented by Washington, Hamilton, and Jay.
The Jefferson-Madison policy of a trade embargo would have severely enfeebled America without much harming the British. Hamilton led the fight for ratification, against Madison, and the treaty was voted through by the Senate, except for the West Indian trade provisions. Madison led a battle in the House to block appropriations for enforcement. The House asked Washington for the papers of the treaty negotiations. Washington refused, establishing an important precedent. In April 1796, in a stunning defeat for Madison, even the appropriations were passed, as sensible opinion warmed to the virtues of Jay’s Treaty, while the Reign of Terror unfolded in France in 1794 and during its seedy aftermath.
Randolph (again, Jefferson’s cousin), who had succeeded Jefferson in the State Department, was accused of conspiring with Fauchet, the French minister, to sandbag the treaty, on the basis of captured letters, and resigned, in order to avoid being fired by Washington, and was replaced by Timothy Pickering, in August 1795. Hamilton retired as secretary of the Treasury and was replaced by Oliver Wolcott. Pickering had replaced the rather plodding Knox at the War Department, and was succeeded by James McHenry, though Washington was his own secretary of war, as many future presidents would be their own secretaries of state. (McHenry was only Washington’s fourth choice for the War Department, and Pickering was his seventh choice for State—the atmosphere was becoming inflamed and many of the best-qualified people declined to enter public life.)57 Hamilton continued to be a strong influence and counselor to the president, and it was an entirely Federalist cabinet.
The British claims for pre-revolu
tionary debts were finally settled by mutual agreement in 1802 at $2.66 million. In October 1795, Thomas Pinckney, minister to Britain and special envoy to Spain, signed the Treaty of San Lorenzo with Spain, which conceded points Spain had sought to withhold from America when Jay had negotiated with the Spanish in 1786, especially the unfettered navigation of the Mississippi. In 1796, Washington and Pickering recalled James Monroe as minister to France, when it came to light that he had implied to the French that he could negotiate an American loan to France of $5 million, and showered his hosts with other obsequious deferences that completely exceeded his diplomatic remit.
Washington, Hamilton, and Jay’s sensible and profitable and honorable foreign policy, to navigate around a general European war, was a complement to their very successful financial and economic policies. Hamilton’s assumption of state debts had, as had been intended, led to a drastic reduction in state taxes and had encouraged a huge increase in American prosperity by all indices. American imports from Britain increased from $23.5 million in 1790 to $63 million in 1795, and American exports enjoyed a parallel increase in the same time. The European war and Jay’s suddenly popular treaty had raised the demand and price for all agricultural commodities. Thus began, with as great a success as it ever enjoyed in subsequent centuries, including under Ronald Reagan 190 years later (Chapter 16), the application of tax cuts and supply side economics to American spending, saving, investment, and job creation. Although the administration was decisively successful, Washington, ever mindful of his reputation and a tireless enemy of the spirit of party and faction, had found the partisan back-biting tiresome, and declined publicly and in good time to seek a third term as president.
This was another immense contribution to the stability of American politics and to the public’s trust in the presidency. It was notoriously clear that he could have retained his office as long as he wished, and his handing over of it, especially in the light of the blood-stained chaos and pelagic corruption in France, reflected great honor on him and on the young republic he had secured, had helped design, and had launched. His farewell address is generally considered another of the great state papers in the nation’s history. A first version was written four years earlier by Madison and, without being delivered, was heavily modified by Hamilton, and then substantially refined by Washington himself. The message was delivered by hand and never publicly read by the president. It extolled the virtues of religion, morality, knowledge, and financial soundness, and then dealt at length with foreign policy and warned against “permanent, inveterate antipathies” and “passionate attachments” to other countries. Washington called for commercial relations but “as little political connection as possible” to foreign countries. “Temporary alliances” might be appropriate in “extraordinary emergencies.” But the United States should “steer clear of permanent alliances,” as it was “folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another.”58
Washington and Franklin had been the principal American collaborators in the British removal of the French threat from America’s borders, the first strategic initiative of the Americans, even if in a very secondary role to the British. He and Franklin were the principal architects of the first and most important autonomous American strategic undertaking: the revision of and American emancipation from the British relationship. They would have accepted a less abrupt and complete version of this than actually occurred, but not one more ambiguous in terms of emergent American sovereignty. Jefferson was the principal expositor and propagandist of the Revolution, and Washington, Franklin, Madison, and Hamilton were, in different ways, the chief authors of America’s third move of strategic genius, the Constitution. Washington was the creator of the fourth great strategic achievement, a distinguished and respected presidency, and, importantly assisted by Hamilton, was the creator of an effective executive branch and, with Hamilton, of extremely imaginative and successful economic and foreign policies for the new nation. It had been a masterly progression.
George Washington had led the new nation successfully in war and in peace for a total of 23 years with no pay except out-of-pocket expenses, and had voluntarily surrendered his supreme offices when many wished him to continue in them. He would carry into retirement the profound admiration and gratitude of his countrymen and the well-earned esteem of the whole known world. The immense regard Americans had for him while he lived has withstood the closest historical analysis and has not wavered or declined in the more than two centuries since his death. He is universally recognized as having been a capable general, a fine statesman, an outstanding president, and one of history’s great men.
5. JOHN ADAMS AS PRESIDENT AND THE CRISIS WITH FRANCE
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were the two most prominent candidates to replace Washington, and General Thomas Pinckney ran to be Adams’s vice president, and Aaron Burr, without encouragement from Jefferson, sought the same office. Ballots were not separated; Electoral College members each wrote two different names on ballots, office unspecified. The person with the highest number of ballots became president, and the person in second place became vice president, provided there was a majority. Washington was concerned that, though Madison had done the dirty work, Jefferson had sponsored much criticism of him and that Jefferson’s victory would be interpreted as a rejection of the outgoing president. He was also concerned that Virginia not seem to be entitled to permanent occupancy of the presidency, so he publicly endorsed Adams, who was elected by 71 electoral votes to 68 for Jefferson, 59 for Pinckney, and 30 for Burr. Jefferson, as recipient of the second-largest vote total, would take office as vice president. Wolcott, Pickering, and McHenry retained the Treasury, State, and War departments, and Hamilton’s influence on them also continued. It had been a fine launch for the country, exalting the presidency, navigating the international currents, and building the foundations of prosperity and union. It was about to become more complicated, and more difficult, without Washington’s fine judgment and immense prestige.
Both Jefferson and Hamilton were sensitive to criticism and reckless in their conduct and correspondence. Jefferson sent a letter to an Italian friend, Philip Mazzei, in 1796, which was republished in the United States the following year. Jefferson had written that “An Anglican, monarchical and aristocratical party” was subverting the Revolution, and America was being led astray by “apostates who have gone over to these heresies, men who were Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot England.” (GSW235) This was widely interpreted as a slur on Washington, a step Jefferson had often skirted. He declined to comment and Washington would not deign to refer to it, and the controversy passed eventually. It did confirm that Jefferson’s was the party of the Enlightenment, religious and industrial skepticism, the landed gentry, and the common people; but not of faith, capitalism, or a modern economic future.
Hamilton, who, though brilliant and courageous, was young and impetuous, had in 1792 had an adulterous affair with a Mrs. Maria Reynolds, and to avoid publicity, as he was the 37-year-old Treasury secretary, had paid blackmail to her husband. When interrogated by some opposition members of the Congress, including then senator James Monroe, about his private use of Treasury funds, Hamilton foolishly confessed the affair, and five years later it came to light. A duel between Hamilton and Monroe was narrowly avoided, ironically, as it would turn out, by the suave and ambitious Aaron Burr. Monroe too was a hothead, and almost challenged President Adams to a duel in 1797, after Adams described him as “a disgraced minister, recalled in displeasure for misconduct,” only a slight exaggeration.
Despite the provision in the 1778 France-America Treaty of Friendship for free trade and navigation, France responded to Jay’s Treaty like an angry uncle, and began seizing American ships without any pretext of legality, much as the British had been doing. It refused to receive General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, brother of Adams’s vice presidential running mate, whom Washington had sent to replace Monroe as
minister in Paris after Monroe’s recall. Adams called a special session of Congress for May 1797, accused the French of trying to drive a wedge between the government and the people of the U.S., and vowed that the United States would not cower in “a colonial spirit of fear and sense of inferiority,” nor “be the miserable instruments of foreign influence.”59 Congress approved the calling up of 80,000 militiamen, the fortification of ports and harbors, and the completion of three frigates. Adams followed the successful precedent of his predecessor and tried to replicate the Jay mission to Britain in 1795. He considered sending Madison, a political foe but reliable patriot, but eventually sent the Federalists Charles C. Pinckney and John Marshall, a distinguished Virginia lawyer and assemblyman (who had declined Washington’s offers of the War office and the ministry to Paris), and the Republican Elbridge Gerry, as a commission to iron out relations with France.
