American Aurora
Page 20
Any thing in the shape of persecution against the cause which I have espoused … will meet with the countenance of our federal executive …
You may have … heard me speak of an unprovoked, premeditated, assassin-like, and cowardly assault upon my person on board the Frigate United States. The perpetrator of that foul deed has been taken by the hand by the Executive and has been sent the bearer of special dispatches to France …
To take this marked notice of a man who was yet under penalty of the law … is giving direct encouragement to assassination and setting a price upon my head. You may suppose that, in writing thus freely, I may expose myself to further outrage.421
The President’s appointment of Clement Humphreys might remind us of Poor Richard’s adage:
Pardoning the Bad is injuring the Good.422
Jimmy Callender:
[T]he case of Humphries demonstrates how gladly those who professed to applaud his intended murder and who paid his fine would butcher if they dared.423
Today, Abigail Adams writes her sister:
I was out yesterday at the Farm of Judge Peters calld Belmont. It is in all its Glory. I have been twice there … The Judge is an old friend and acquaintance of the President …
We have just got a Pamphlet from France, abusive as Thom. Paines against Washington, part Prose & part Poetry, the very language of their Party here, the very words of Bache & Volney in some parts of it …424
SUNDAY, JUNE 10, 1798
Today, James Madison writes Thomas Jefferson:
The law for capturing French privateers may certainly be deemed a formal commencement of hostilities and renders all hope of peace vain, unless a progress in amicable arrangements at Paris, not to be expected, should have secured it against the designs of our Gover[nment] …
The answers of Mr. Adams to his addressers form the most grotesque scene in the tragicomedy acting by the Gover[nment] … He is verifying compleatly the last feature in the character drawn of him by Dr. F.[ranklin] … “Always an honest man, often a wise one, but sometimes wholly out of his senses.”425
Poor Richard also said,
A Man in a Passion rides a mad Horse.426
MONDAY, JUNE 11, 1798
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
It has been surmised that the editors of well affected papers are about forming themselves into a corps to be armed in the Parthian [defensive] manner …
CHAPTER FOUR
AMERICAN TERROR
I received a visit from Thomas Jefferson who told me he had been greatly concerned for me … He said … he was himself dogged and watched in the most extraordinary manner; and he apologized for the lateness of his visit (for we were at tea when he arrived) by saying that, in order to elude the curiosity of his spies, he had not taken the direct road but had come by a circuitous route by the Falls of Schuylkill … He spoke of the temper of the times and of the late acts of the Legislature with a sort of despair, but said he thought even the shadows of our liberties must be gone if they attempted anything that would injure me …
DEBORAH LOGAN427
TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 1798
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
Attached by education, example & principle to my native country; unconscious of a single sentiment that is not devoted to her welfare, I have watched with tremendous anxiety the progress of those events which threatened to interrupt her tranquillity … [&c, &c] APPREHENSION
Today, the Quaker peace petitioner Dr. George Logan departs on his private peace mission to France. His wife, Deborah, explains:
At length, after having disposed of two parcels of real estate very cheaply in order to obtain funds to undertake the voyage and … pay off all his debts, on the 12th of June, 1798, he left me and his children, and his pleasant home at Stenton, and embarked on board the “Iris” a neutral vessel bound for Hamburg … When he left me, indeed I was as completely miserable as I could be, whilst innocent myself and united to a man whose honor I knew to be without stain. But I found it necessary, by a strong effort, to control my feelings. As soon as his [Federalist] committee of surveillance missed their charge, there was a prodigious stir in the city; they looked upon each other with blank faces as having suffered an adroit enemy to escape their vigilance. Some idea may be formed of the temper of the time when I add that … Dr. Rush … suffered himself to be one of this committee …428
The loss of subscribers has worsened the Aurora’s financial condition. Tonight, in the Porcupine’s Gazette:
To the Generous, Humane, and Charitable …
Ben Surgo, the Grandson of the great Philosopher “qui eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis” … [is] suffering from the obstinacy of the Federal Government … It is useless to dwell on the merits of the [Gazette] published by the aforesaid Citizen … [T]o the Grandson of the reknowned Lightening-catcher, we are indebted for early and large-editions of those excellent works, [Tom Paine’s writing against established religion,] the Age of Reason, [Tom Paine’s] Letter to George Washington, and a string of et ceteras … The immortal Paine … is employed in writing a book to be entitled “Treachery a Virtue.” … Surgo, the correspondent of the celebrated and virtuous Paine, will undoubtedly have it first in America. With such powerful claims on your purses, is there a man who can refuse some assistance …? Surgo’s butcher’s bill unpaid, he has not credit for a shin of beef … —Alas! alas! If this pathetic narrative should not have the desired effect, the shade of the great Franklin … will view with the deepest afflictions our degeneracy and apathy with respect to his meritorious grandson.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13, 1798
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
The name of that man who proposed to make our constitution a nullity by retraining the liberty of speech and the press ought to possess that species of immortality attached to the ruffian who burnt the temple of the Ephesian Diana.—We ring the alarm. Papers of freedom, you that have not sold yourselves, you that forget not your revolution and the constitution … —take up the sound before it dies, and let the peal rouse the spirit and reflection of the land …
Today, my fellow Irish scribbler John Daly Burk becomes co-editor of the New York Time Piece, a thrice-weekly newspaper published in New York City.429 In today’s paper, he explains his editorial policy:
The spirit of the Paper shall be wholly Republican. It will support the Federal Constitution. But its Federalism will not be of that kind which displays itself in mean sycophantic compliance with every act of Administration, in clamouring for … a government of terror in efforts to suppress liberty of speech and the press. It will love the Constitution as it ought to be loved, for its excellence, for its republicanism; and will hold up to public abhorrence those who attempt to violate it, whatever be their professions.—This is our Federalism.
War measures … Today, John Adams approves and signs into law,
AN ACT
To suspend the commercial intercourse between the
United States and France, and the dependencies thereof.
Be it enacted, &c., That no ship or vessel owned, hired, or employed, wholly or in part, by any person resident in the United States … shall be allowed to proceed … to any port or place within the territory of the French Republic or the dependencies thereof … or shall be employed in any traffic or commerce with, or for any person resident within the jurisdiction, or under the authority of the French Republic …430
FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 1798
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
In this state of things—when some of the tories are for committing the people by declaring war … it is greatly to be lamented that so many of the Whigs [Republicans] have absented themselves … Although his excellency of Braintree has said to our youth, “To arms! To arms my young friends!” yet it may be possible to prevent the use of them if the republican absentees will but return to their seats.
All that Callender has alleged against the conduct of government never mounted to the oddity of the four alien bills n
ow depending in congress and which, as I am informed by members of both houses, were principally and confessedly framed for Callender’s destruction. His having stolen a march upon the party by becoming a citizen was received in the upper house with infinite mortification. This I heard a very distinguished senator declaring to Callender himself.
Today, in the Gazette of the United States:
Bache … would be well to recollect that though he has not nominally renounced his allegiance to the United States and therefore is yet entitled to the privileges of a Citizen, it is no part of those privileges to misrepresent the proceedings of either branch of the legislature or to calumniate its members—that both houses are in duty bound to protect their members, and that he owes his impunity to their forbearance and his own insignificance.—He ought not to presume too far.
SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 1798
GENERAL * AURORA * ADVERTISER
We hasten to communicate to our Readers the following very
IMPORTANT STATE PAPER
From the French Minister of Foreign Affairs
to the American Commissioners
Paris … 18th March 1798 …
It is an incontestable truth … that France is entitled to a priority of complaints and of grievances … before the United States had the least foundation for either... [A]ll the grievances exhibited by the [American] commissioners and envoys extraordinary, with some exceptions that the undersigned was ready to discuss, are a necessary consequence of the measures which the prior conduct of the United States has rendered justifiable on the part of the French Republic …
Complaint was made [by France] … of the non-execution of the only clauses of the treaties concluded in 1778 in which France has stipulated some advantages in return for the efforts she had engaged [to win America’s independence]. [C]ontrary to the letter of the Treaty of Commerce of 1778 … the French were entirely discouraged from cruising in the American seas against an enemy … The French government endeavored in vain to … procure … privileges to our commerce and navigation the principle of which was well established by the treaties of 1778 …
What has been, till [recently], the conduct of the French government toward the United States? … Scarcely was the Republic [of France] constituted when we sent a minister [Edmund Genět] to Philadelphia whose first step was to declare to the United States that they should not be urged to carry into execution the defensive clauses of the Treaty of alliance [requiring the United States to defend the French West Indies islands against the British] …
Yet it will hardly be believed that the French Republic and her [American] alliance were actually sacrificed at the very moment she was giving to her ally increased proof of her attention … Mr. [John] Jay … signing a Treaty [with Britain] … to make the neutrality of the United States operate to the disadvantage of the French Republic and to the advantage of England … French cruisers were notified … they could not longer … sell their prizes in the ports of the United States. This decision was grounded … on the treaty concluded between the United States and Great Britain …
Such are the motives which have prompted the arretes [decrees] of the Directory of which the United States complain, as well as the conduct of its agents in the West Indies [seizing American shipping]. All those measures are founded on the Article II of the treaty of 1778 [between the U.S. and France] which provides that, as to navigation and commerce, France shall always stand in relation to the United States on the footing of the most favored nation. The Executive Directory cannot be blamed if … this clause has produced some inconveniences to the American flag. As to abuses which may have arisen under the operation of that principle, the undersigned again repeats—that he was ready to discuss them in the most amicable manner…
(Signed) CH. MAU. TALLEYRAND
We have good reason to believe that [the] administration have been for more than a week in possession of the important State Paper which we this day communicate. Is it not astonishing that it should so long have been kept secret[?] Surely, while Congress are engaged in determining on the awful alternative of peace or war, they should be possessed of the fullest and earliest information … or are they to be the mere puppets of the Executive[?] We shall strike off an extra number of our paper this day …
Today’s publication of the Talleyrand letter is the scoop of the year. It should give the lie to those who say France doesn’t want to negotiate.
Benny and I share Talleyrand’s perspective.431 During the American Revolution while Washington was leading American forces against Britain, the Continental Congress dispatched Ben Franklin and John Adams to get French help. In February of 1778, a Treaty of Alliance and a Treaty of Amity and Commerce were signed with France, providing that, in exchange for France’s entering the war on America’s side, America would always defend France’s islands in the West Indies (Caribbean), would always let France take prizes (i.e., ships France captures from her enemies) into American ports, and would not allow any nation except France to outfit privateers (privately commissioned vessels of war) in American ports. By these treaties, France and America pledged to honor each other’s freedom of the seas, meaning the freedom to carry trade anywhere, even to the ports of the other’s enemies during wartime (with the obvious exception of military contraband). Finally, America promised to treat France, in commerce and navigation, as favorably as America treated her most favored of other nations.
Fifteen years later, France called for help under these treaties. Ben Franklin was dead. George Washington and John Adams were governing America.
In early 1793, two weeks after the French Revolution guillotined the King of France, Britain’s King George III went to war against the new French Republic to end French democracy and to restore monarchical rule. Two weeks thereafter, the French Republic dispatched its first American ambassador, Edmond Genět, to ask for American help.
Genět would make clear that France was not asking—as well she might—for America to defend France’s islands in the West Indies, but France did want to sell French prizes and outfit privateers in American ports. Suddenly, Washington and Adams had to decide how to treat America’s old and only ally.
As “an Old French Soldier” asked in the pages of the Philadelphia Aurora, “Who would have thought, when the blood of Frenchmen drenched the foundation of the temple of your [American] liberty, that a day would come when the interests of your former tyrants and those of your allies should be weighed in the same balance …?”432
But that day had come. Within twenty-four hours of Genět’s arrival in Philadelphia and even before he met with the President, George Washington issued his Neutrality Proclamation of 1793, declaring, in effect, that America would not help France. When the French ambassador threatened to appeal to the American people, Washington asked France to recall Edmond Genět.
As America was abandoning its old French ally, its old enemy, Great Britain, continued to seize American shipping to French ports, abducting (impressing) into the British navy large numbers of American seaman whose American citizenship Britain refused to recognize. In 1794, under pressure from these attacks, Washington dispatched Federalist John Jay to conciliate Britain, whereupon Jay negotiated and Washington signed the so-called Jay Treaty of 1795 (also known as the “British treaty”), which promised Britain that America would not permit France to sell prizes or outfit privateers in American ports (Articles XXIV and XXV) and which recognized Britain’s right to seize any American shipments—even nonmilitary shipments like food—to French ports, even to ports in the French islands America had promised to defend (Article XVII).
John Jay was familiar with America’s obligations to France. Jay had also gone to France during America’s Revolution and, with Ben Franklin and John Adams, negotiated the treaty that ended America’s Revolutionary War. Yet, ten years later, Jay negotiated this shameful treaty.
That’s what brings America to the crisis of 1798. French reaction to the Jay Treaty has been to treat American shipping on the same unfa
vorable basis (“as favorably”) as Jay and Washington agreed Britain could treat it. That’s what January’s decree promises to do. Despite America’s proclamation of neutrality, France will seize any American ship with a British product on board. How could France do otherwise? How could America permit Britain to seize American food and other nonmilitary shipments to France while France was obligated, by her American treaties, not to impede such American shipments to Britain? France has every right to be outraged, and France is doing no more than what America permits Britain to do.433 Freedom of the seas is gone.
Last year, Benny addressed Washington’s conduct in a powerful pamphlet, Remarks Occasioned by the Late Conduct of Mr. Washington, President of the United States, including,
Such however is the fate of America that, after having kept the world in flames for above seven years to save her own liberties; yet, before twice seven years are expired, she makes herself an instrument to undo the liberties of [France] her great benefactor; to increase the power of [Britain] her only persecutor; to surrender the rights of neutral nations … finally to enter into stipulations for spreading famine among mankind during war … This pursuit of the new friendship of [Britain,] an arbitrary court, and this rejection of the old alliance of [France,] a freed nation, speak for themselves.—Let each American take this subject to his pillow …434