The Great Divide

by Thomas Fleming

  The President was unaware that the Secretary of State was secretly disagreeing with almost everything he communicated to Genet in his official capacity as the nation’s chief diplomat. Jefferson’s description of Washington in the grip of a pro-monarchist clique inspired Genet to consider extreme statements and acts. The envoy told his superiors in Paris that the President “impedes my course in a thousand ways and forces me to urge secretly the calling of Congress.”3

  For Citizen Genet, Congress was a magic word; it represented the voice of the people. The President represented no one but himself and the Anglomanic Hamilton and his allies. It never seemed to occur to Genet, with his endless apostrophes to the will of the people, that the President had been elected by the people—unanimously. Genet’s antipathy to “Old Man Washington,” as he began calling the President, escalated when the Secretary of State informed him that the British ship Grange, would have to be returned to her owners. An investigation by Attorney General Randolph concluded that the vessel had been seized within the territorial waters of the United States.4

  The Secretary of State also solemnly informed the complaining British minister, George Hammond, that the United States “condemns in the highest degree the conduct of any of our citizens who may personally engage in committing hostilities at sea against any of the nations [that are] parties to the present war.” Hammond had good reason to doubt these words. Citizen Genet continued to commission privateers in cities up and down the American seaboard and recruit hundreds of Americans for their crews. French consuls had been dispatched to almost all the nation’s ports, with orders to set up courts in which they could condemn and auction off the prizes that these raiders brought in.

  Attorney General Edmund Randolph arrested two members of one privateer’s crew and ordered them prosecuted for violating the Proclamation of Neutrality. When one of this indicted pair went on trial in Philadelphia, he was promptly acquitted by a feverishly pro-French jury. The Attorney General counterattacked, Washington-style. He sent a stern warning to all state attorneys general that the acquittal did NOT mean American citizens could serve on French privateers. Such service was still considered a crime.5

  This illegal warfare at sea was by no means the only questionable enterprise Genet was sponsoring. He dispatched an envoy to Kentucky, with orders to organize a foray down the Mississippi to capture New Orleans from the Spanish. To lead this expedition, Citizen Genet had discovered in the Blue Grass State a hugely symbolic figure, General George Rogers Clark, the man who had liberated much of the Northwest Territory from Britain in the closing years of the Revolution. The hero had fallen on hard times and was desperate for a way to acquire land and money before old age incapacitated him. He leaped at the offer to become a general in the French army, with suitable pay, rank, and privileges.

  To cement the bargain, Genet dispatched to Kentucky a Frenchman named Michaux, who he thought could function as the French consul in that state. He took these plans to the Secretary of State for his approval. Jefferson told him he was pleased and excited by the proposal—Genet described his reaction as a “lively sense of the utility of such a project”—but there were problems.

  America was currently negotiating with two Spanish commissioners about the possibility of acquiring a trading post on the Mississippi below New Orleans. In Madrid, Jefferson’s protégé, William Short, and another American diplomat, William Carmichael, were trying to persuade the Spanish to lift their ban against western Americans using the Mississippi to export their surplus grain and other farm products. Unless the Spanish broke off the negotiations, “a regard for propriety” would prevent the United States from participating directly in the Clark expedition, Jefferson said.

  However, the Secretary of State said he could see how “a little spontaneous irruption of the inhabitants of Kentucky into New Orleans” might get the negotiations “moving.” He gave Genet letters of introduction to several congressmen and a senator from Kentucky. Also on the list was Governor Isaac Shelby. They were all more than willing to listen to Genet’s proposal that the expedition found an independent state in Louisiana “connected in commerce with France and the United States.” It was an unnerving glimpse of how westerners viewed the federal union and its government. Like the Shays’ Rebellion protestors, there was an instinctive hostility to obeying laws issued by distant, seemingly alien Atlantic coast legislatures, including Congress.

  Genet said he was guaranteeing the raiders the support of two French frigates, who would join them in the climactic attack on New Orleans. All this, Genet continued, he was telling Jefferson not as the Secretary of State, but as “Mr. Jeff,” his friend and the friend of France. Mr. Jeff’s reply was almost schizophrenic in its division between official and unofficial opinion. First, he told Genet that the Americans in the Clark expedition might wind up on a gallows for waging war against a nation with whom the United States was at peace. But “leaving out that article” he “did not care what insurrection should be excited in Louisiana.”

  As for Monsieur Michaux, he could not function as a French consul in Kentucky; consuls were permitted only in port cities. Genet cheerfully assented to this distinction—and asked “Mr. Jeff” to give Michaux a letter of introduction to Governor Shelby. Mr. Jeff sent him the letter—which Genet returned. He did not like Mr. Jeff’s description of Michaux as a mere botanist on the lookout for new plants. He wanted Governor Shelby to view him as “something more—a French citizen possessing his [Genet’s] confidence.” Mr. Jeff promptly complied with a revised copy.

  It takes a moment, perhaps, for the reader to realize that as Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson was tolerating and even encouraging an attack on Spain, which he admitted was a crime—and simultaneously, in the guise of “Mr. Jeff,” doing everything in his power to help it succeed. He was also encouraging the creation of an independent nation in the West, an idea President Washington considered a deathblow to the primary goal of his presidency—the preservation of the American union. Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that “Mr. Jeff” was being a very disloyal Secretary of State?

  Jefferson had apparently convinced himself that some form of western independence was inevitable in the long run—the people (of the west) willed it. The similarity of this kind of thinking to the demagogues who were turning the French Revolution into a bloodbath is striking—and dismaying. The will of the people can be simulated by a mob (Paris) or a swarm of frontiersmen recruited by a bankrupt but popular general and a governor who likes the idea of becoming an independent ruler.

  Jefferson told himself the negotiations with Spain were hopelessly stalled, and war seemed probable. So why not accelerate it a little? To add to the unreality, “Mr. Jeff” also warmly approved plans by Citizen Genet to arouse the French in Canada to revolt against their British “oppressors” and join the march to universal liberté. It was not difficult to imagine how the British would react to this provocation.6

  At this point, the two Spanish commissioners wrote an agitated letter to President Washington, claiming that some people in Kentucky were plotting to attack the “Spanish dominions of the Mississippi.” Neither Genet nor Mr. Jeff was aware that Madrid had a well-paid spy in Kentucky, General James Wilkinson, a U.S. Army officer who was currently in the force commanded by General Anthony Wayne. The President asked the Secretary of State to find out if there was any substance to the Spanish complaint. If so, he should tell Governor Shelby to end the scheme with the threat of legal action.

  Abandoning the sentiments Mr. Jeff had expressed to Citizen Genet, the Secretary of State solemnly warned Governor Shelby that the “interests of Kentucky” were at the center of the negotiations between Spain and the United States, and “nothing could be more inauspicious than an appeal to violence.” Governor Shelby, well aware of what Jefferson was covering up with this bland solemnity, assured the Secretary of State that all was peaceful and law-abiding in his state.7

  In cabinet meetings, the Secretary of State pursued his angry feu
d with Alexander Hamilton, even when the issue involved matters that were almost entirely within the Treasury Secretary’s purview. Hamilton proposed to float a two million florin loan from Holland, although the United States did not have an immediate need for the money. Jefferson vehemently opposed the proposal. He claimed to see no reason to add to America’s public debt. In private letters, he told Madison and Monroe that he was convinced Hamilton intended to use the money to bribe the incoming Congress to do his bidding.8

  The President decided in Hamilton’s favor, explaining to Jefferson that if Europe plunged into the titanic war that seemed to be brewing, it might be impossible to borrow money from anyone. Reports he was receiving from Georgia suggested America might soon be at war with the Creek Indians. In the Northwest, diplomacy with the Miami Indians and other warlike tribes was also floundering toward failure, leaving General Anthony Wayne and his army as the only recourse. One wonders what the President would have thought if he had learned of his Secretary of State’s encouragement of Genet’s schemes to invade Louisiana.9

  At the end of June, President Washington’s overseer at Mount Vernon died unexpectedly and he was forced to make a hurried visit to see what could be done to find a replacement. When he returned to Philadelphia on July 11, he found a packet of papers awaiting him from the Secretary of State, marked “INSTANT ATTENTION.” At the top of the pile were two letters from Governor Thomas Mifflin. He had discovered that Citizen Genet was turning a captured British ship, the Little Sarah, which the privateer Citizen Genet had escorted to Philadelphia, into a privateer. Cannon were being installed. American sailors were being recruited on the waterfront.

  Mifflin had told Alexander James Dallas, Pennsylvania’s secretary of state, to warn Genet that he was violating the Proclamation of Neutrality. Under no circumstances should the ship, now renamed La Petite Democrate, be put to sea before President Washington returned from Mount Vernon. Governor Mifflin was summoning a detachment of militia to make sure the ship stayed at her dock. Citizen Genet exploded into a tirade in which he told Dallas he might publish his correspondence with the American government and combine this gesture with “an appeal from the President to the people.”10

  Governor Mifflin rushed a messenger to Jefferson, who had retreated to a house in Philadelphia’s countryside, which he preferred to his quarters in the city. Jefferson hurried back and went to Genet’s rooms in the City Tavern to urge him not to let the ship sail until the President returned. The Secretary of State was soon enduring a tirade that far surpassed the verbiage Citizen Genet had flung at Dallas.

  Genet accused America of violating her obligations to France under the Treaty of 1778. He veered to denouncing the ridiculous American Constitution which gave a single man, this president, so much power. Old Washington had opposed and thwarted him in everything he had tried to do to help his country. The President obviously had no intention of negotiating a commercial treaty with the French Republic. That left Citizen Genet with only one alternative. He would dare the President to summon Congress to Philadelphia so that he could plead for their help. They were the only voice he would listen to in the American government!

  The Secretary of State managed to tell Genet that if he had any complaints about the American government, he should report them to his superiors in Paris. “He was silent and I thought was sensible it [this] was right,” Jefferson told Washington in his letter describing the encounter. But the Secretary of State swiftly learned that Genet was immoveable on the future of the Little Sarah. There was no way Jefferson could “justify him detaining her,” the red-faced envoy bellowed.11

  For the moment, Genet said the Little Sarah was not ready to sail. However, her crew and a new captain, an ensign from the Embuscade, were aboard, and were planning to move the ship to a new anchorage farther down the Delaware, where the final work on turning her into a warship would be completed. Genet warned Jefferson that Governor Mifflin’s militiamen should not try to board her. “She is filled with high spirited patriots and will undoubtedly resist,” he said.

  Although Genet had not explicitly promised that the Little Sarah would refrain from heading for the open sea, Jefferson told Governor Mifflin to dismiss the militia. He was horrified by the possibility of blood being spilled in this dispute. The next morning, the Secretary of State met with Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton and Secretary of War Knox. Neither had any confidence in Genet, and wanted to erect a battery of cannon on Mud Island, where a bend in the Delaware River had enabled artillery to block the British fleet in 1777. Jefferson strenuously objected to this idea. He claimed that firing on the Little Sarah would infuriate France and possibly lead to war.

  Later that day, the cabinet members learned that the ship had passed Mud Island and was now anchored off Chester, obviously about to depart for the open sea. Citizen Genet confirmed this intention with a letter to Jefferson. “When ready I shall dispatch her…When treaties speak, the agents of nations have but to obey, ” he declared.12

  The President read all this in Jefferson’s account and the accompanying letters. His temper rising, Washington sent a messenger racing to summon the Secretary of State. The messenger returned to inform the President that the Secretary was out of town. He had again retreated to his country house, apparently leaving the entire mess in the President’s lap. Washington seized a pen and wrote the angriest letter he had yet written to Thomas Jefferson.

  “After I had read the papers put into my hands by you, requiring instant attention, and before a messenger could reach your office, you had left town. What is to be done in the case of the Little Sarah, now at Chester? Is the minister of the French Republic to set the acts of this government at defiance with impunity and then threaten the executive with an appeal to the people? What must the world think of such conduct, and of the government of the United States for submitting to it?

  “These are serious questions. Circumstances press for decision, and as you have had time to consider them (upon me they come unexpected), I wish to know your opinion of them even before tomorrow, for the vessel may then be gone.”13

  That evening, a strange response arrived from the Secretary of State. It was written in the third person. “T.J. has had a fever the last two nights which has held him till the morning. Something of the same is now coming on him. But nothing but absolute inability will prevent his being in town early tomorrow morning.”14

  After mocking the harassed President for his bouts of fever, the Secretary of State seemed to be undergoing the same malady. Was the illness real or merely convenient? In his private notes, Jefferson scribbled a revealing sentence. “It appears to me that the President wished the Little Sarah had been stopped by military coercion, that is by firing on her. Yet I do not believe he would have ordered it himself if he had been here but he would have been glad if we had ordered it.”15 Psychologists call this thought process projection. Jefferson was attributing to the President a wish that had tormented him.

  In the midst of this imbroglio about the Little Sarah, Jefferson sent a frantic plea to James Madison to take up his pen and answer Hamilton, who was blasting the Democratic-Republicans under the name Pacificus, accusing them of trying to drag the nation into the war as France’s ally. The Secretary begged Madison to “cut him to pieces in the face of the public.” Then Jefferson turned his attention to Genet and confessed why their new political party was desperately in need of protection.

  “Never in my opinion was so calamitous an appointment made, as that of the present minister of F. here. Hotheaded, all imagination, no judgment, passionate, disrespectful, and even indecent toward the P in his written as well as verbal communications, talking of appeals to Congress and from them to the people, urging the most unreasonable and groundless propositions, and in the most dictatorial style, etc. etc. etc. He renders my position immensely difficult.”16

  Further complicating matters was a note from Genet, informing the Secretary of State that the French West Indies fleet of twenty men of war was comin
g to the United States to escape the hurricane season in that turbulent part of the world. Admiral François De Grasse had cited the same reason when he sailed north in 1781 to rendezvous with General Washington and trap a British army in the Virginia tobacco port of Yorktown. Was Genet hoping to remind the Americans of that historic deliverance? Or was he suggesting that an attempt to use force to stop the Little Sarah might persuade him to order the French fleet to support an overthrow of Old Man Washington and his clique?

  Jefferson kept his promise to return to Philadelphia and the cabinet met on July 12, 1793. Attorney General Randolph was absent—traveling in Virginia, at the President’s suggestion, trying to counter the hostility against the administration fueled by Freneau and Genet. The President soon revealed that his anger about the Little Sarah had not cooled. He had harsh words about Governor Mifflin, who should have acted against arming the ship early in her transformation into a man of war, when a handful of militia could have stopped the work. Washington listened in seeming agreement when Secretary Hamilton urged Genet’s recall and Knox suggested suspending him immediately as France’s envoy. Jefferson defended Mifflin by reporting Genet’s claim that the Little Sarah had been armed by cannon taken from other French ships in the harbor.

  Wasn’t arming the ship the main point? Secretary Hamilton asked. Not where the cannon had come from? The President decided to ask the Supreme Court to help them decide this and other fine points of a nation’s neutrality. He would make no decision on recalling or suspending Genet until he heard from them. Two days later, the Little Sarah (now La Petite Democrate) went to sea, where it soon began seizing British merchantmen.