Part 4 (1/2)
The mission of Adams at the Court of St. James was not less successful.
The Ministry agreed to modify the objectionable order in council and to accept the treaty without the twelfth article. With a deep sense of relief Was.h.i.+ngton promulgated the treaty as the law of the land on February 27, 1795. With these three treaties of 1795, not only was war averted, but our slender hold upon the vast tract between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi immeasurably strengthened, if not secured for all time.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The att.i.tude of historical writers toward the events recorded in this chapter has been considerably altered since the publication of a series of articles by F. J. Turner. The more important of these contributions are: ”The Origin of Genet's Projected Attack on Louisiana and the Floridas” (_American Historical Review_, III); ”The Policy of France toward the Mississippi Valley”
(_Ibid._, X); and ”The Diplomatic Contest for the Mississippi Valley” (_Atlantic Monthly_, XCIII). Nearly all the authorities cited in the foregoing chapter deal in greater or less detail with the diplomatic events of Was.h.i.+ngton's Administrations. The following may be added to the list: Trescott, _Diplomatic History of the Administrations of Was.h.i.+ngton and Adams_ (1857); F. A. Ogg, _The Opening of the Mississippi_ (1904); C. D. Hazen, _Contemporary American Opinion of the French Revolution_ (1897).
The story of the expeditions against the Indians of the Northwest is told by Roosevelt, _Winning of the West_ (vol. IV). A reliable account of the Whiskey Insurrection is given in Brackenridge, _History of the Western Insurrection_ (1859).
CHAPTER V
ANGLOMEN AND JACOBINS
In January, 1795, Hamilton retired from the Treasury Department. The moment was well chosen, for his great creative work was done and signs were not wanting that the initiative in finance was about to pa.s.s to the House of Representatives. As he pa.s.sed out of office, a young Representative from Pennsylvania made his appearance in Congress who was scarcely his inferior in quick grasp of the intricacies of public finance. Almost the first efforts of Albert Gallatin were directed to the improvement of the methods of congressional finance. It was at his suggestion that the first standing Committee of Ways and Means in the House was appointed, in the expectation that it would a.s.sume a general superintendence of finance. Believing that the Executive could be held in check only by systematic, specific appropriations, Gallatin became an insistent advocate of the rule, and in consequence a thorn in the flesh of the departments. ”The management of the Treasury,” complained Wolcott to Hamilton, ”becomes more and more difficult. The legislature will not pa.s.s laws in gross. Their appropriations are minute; Gallatin, to whom they yield, is evidently intending to break down this department, by charging it with an impracticable detail.” ”The heads of departments,”
Fisher Ames wrote despondently, two years after Hamilton left office, ”are chief clerks. Instead of being the ministry, the organs of the executive power, and imparting a kind of momentum to the operation of the laws, they are precluded even from communicating with the House by reports.” There was no room for a British ministry in the Republican scheme of politics.
Meantime, Was.h.i.+ngton's foreign policy had widened the breach between the political factions and had forced him into a partisan position. From the Republican point of view, Jay's treaty threw the United States into the arms of England and gave just cause of offense to France. Knowing the popular temper, which was undoubtedly hostile to the treaty, the Republican leaders endeavored to defeat the purposes of the Administration by refusing to vote the necessary appropriations. Their first demand was for the papers relating to the treaty, on the ground that in matters upon which the action of the House was needed, that body might properly call for information to guide its deliberations. The President refused this demand, both because he deemed it imprudent to make the papers public, and because he denied the right of the House to partic.i.p.ate in the treaty-making power.
The debate which followed is one of the most illuminating in the early history of Congress. The trend of argument may be suggested by two remarks of opposing partisans. Said Griswold for the Federalists, ”The House of Representatives have nothing to do with the treaty but provide for its execution.” Disclaiming that the House was bent upon impairing the const.i.tutional right of the President and Senate to make treaties, Gallatin contended that the power claimed by the House was ”only a negative, a restraining power on those subjects over which Congress has the right to legislate.” In vigorous resolutions the House sustained Gallatin's position; and the appropriation for the treaty was carried only by the casting vote of the Speaker, on April 29, two months after Was.h.i.+ngton by proclamation had declared the treaty to be the law of the land.
The consequences of the _rapprochement_ between the United States and Great Britain were far-reaching. The French Minister, Fauchet, urged his Government to take immediate steps to acquire a continental colony which would not only serve France and her West India colonies as a granary and as a market for their exports, but which would also bring pressure to bear upon the disaffected border communities of the United States. Such a colony was Louisiana. With this province in her possession, a power like France would speedily control the Mississippi and the Western people who used that highway for their commerce. Throughout the year 1795, the French Government sought by persuasion and threats to secure Louisiana from Spain as the price of an alliance.
How far the Administration was apprised of these designs is not clear; but against the background of French intrigue certain pa.s.sages of Was.h.i.+ngton's Farewell Address take on a new significance. The West was warned that it could control ”the indispensable outlets for its own productions” only by attaching itself firmly to ”the Atlantic side of the Union.” ”Any other tenure ... whether derived from its own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious.” And the admission of Tennessee as a State in the year 1796 may have been hastened by an ill-defined fear that the people of the West might not be proof against French machinations.
The purpose of Was.h.i.+ngton not to accept a re-election was known to his intimates early in the spring of 1796. Upon whom would his mantle fall?
There was much searching of hearts among Federalist leaders, but by the end of the summer it was well understood that Federalist electors would support John Adams and Thomas Pinckney for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency. The most talented man in the party was unquestionably Alexander Hamilton; but Hamilton had made too many enemies to be a popular candidate. By common consent, Thomas Jefferson became the candidate of the Republicans for President; with him was a.s.sociated Aaron Burr, of New York.
The most remarkable aspect of the campaign of 1796 was the undisguised attempt of Adet, who had succeeded Fauchet, to turn the election in Jefferson's favor. The treaty with England could not be undone; but France had much to hope from a Republican administration. In a series of letters directed to the Secretary of State, but printed in the Philadelphia _Aurora_, Adet announced that the Directory regarded the treaty of commerce concluded with Great Britain as ”a violation of the treaty made with France in 1778, and equivalent to a treaty of alliance with Great Britain.” ”Justly offended,” the Directory had ordered him to ”suspend his ministerial functions with the Federal Government.” This action, however, was not to be regarded as a rupture between the two peoples, but only ”as a mark of just discontent, which is to last until the Government of the United States returns to sentiments and to measures, more conformable to the interests of the alliance, and the sworn friends.h.i.+p between the two nations.”
Adet would have had the people believe that the alternatives were Jefferson or war; and the threat of war, so it was said, was enough to drive the peace-loving Quakers of Pennsylvania into the Republican ranks. In more northerly States Adet's manifesto probably had the opposite effect. ”There is not one elector east of the Delaware River,”
declared the Connecticut _Courant_, ”who would not sooner be shot than vote for Thomas Jefferson.” Not a Republican elector was chosen in the States to the north and east of Pennsylvania. On the other hand, Adams received only two electoral votes south of the Potomac. South Carolina divided its vote between Jefferson and Pinckney. Only unexpected votes in Virginia and North Carolina gave Adams the election, for Pennsylvania was carried by the Republicans. Pinckney lost the Vice-Presidency through the defection of Federalists in New England.
An incident of the election in Pennsylvania revealed the change already wrought by parties in the Const.i.tution. The framers of the Const.i.tution expected that a small number of persons selected by their fellow citizens from the general ma.s.s would deliberately weigh ”all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice,” and in their mature wisdom choose the individual who met the requirements of the office. It fell out otherwise. In Pennsylvania, one of the six States to choose electors by popular vote, each party had put forward a ticket with fifteen names. Thirteen of the fifteen Republican electors were chosen. Of the two Federalist electors who were chosen, one broke faith with his party and cast his vote for Jefferson and Pinckney. The Federalists were exasperated by this treachery. ”What!” expostulated a writer in the _United States Gazette_: ”Do I chuse Samuel Miles to determine for me whether John Adams or Thomas Jefferson shall be President? No! I chuse him to _act_, not to _think_.”
While Adet was endeavoring to bring what the Federalists called the French party into power, the Administration was urging the reluctant Monroe at Paris to make the Jay Treaty as palatable as possible to the French Government. This was an irksome task for that ardent Republican.
From the outset of his mission he found it difficult to sustain that detachment from French politics which his position demanded. Moreover, after having a.s.sured the French Government that Jay was negotiating at London only for the redress of grievances and not for a commercial treaty, Monroe found it peculiarly humiliating to be obliged to confess that he had been kept in ignorance of the real trend of negotiations.
Under these circ.u.mstances, he temporized and gave only half-hearted attention to the task of placating the Directory. Hamilton now advised his recall; and Was.h.i.+ngton, who had on two occasions expressed his displeasure with Monroe's conduct, determined to send Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in his stead.
Trivial as this incident seems, it was not without its effect upon the course of diplomacy abroad and of politics at home. When Monroe endeavored to put his successor into touch with the French Foreign Office, he was told that the Directory was not prepared to receive another American representative until their grievances had been redressed. This affront left Pinckney in an embarra.s.sing position, for until his credentials were accepted, he was liable, like all foreigners at that time, to arrest as a spy. It was not until February, after many months of waiting, that he was given his pa.s.sport. He at once crossed the border and took up his residence at Amsterdam.
Meantime, Monroe had taken his departure with the warmest expressions of regard on the part of the French Government. He was a.s.sured that his worth and his efforts in behalf of his country's interests were understood and appreciated. He returned to the United States with the firm conviction, which his Republican friends shared, that he had been made the victim of Federalist chicanery. In the following year he published an elaborate defense which served admirably as a popular campaign doc.u.ment in the next presidential elections.
It fell to John Adams on the very threshold of his administration to deal with what he euphemistically called the misunderstanding with France. His inaugural address announced unmistakably his intention to preserve neutrality between the belligerents of Europe, and to treat France with impartiality but with a sincere desire for her friends.h.i.+p.
Between the lines may be read also an equally sincere desire to placate the opposition and to free himself from all imputation of a bias toward Great Britain and a monarchical system. From the first news of Pinckney's dismissal, President Adams was disposed ”to inst.i.tute a fresh attempt at negotiation”: he even approached Jefferson to see if he would not persuade Madison to serve on a special commission, believing that Madison's well-known Gallic sympathies would commend him to the French nation. At the same time he declared stoutly in a message to Congress, in special session on May 15, that France had treated the United States ”neither as allies nor as friends nor as a sovereign state.” Attempts which had been made to create a rupture between the people of the United States and their Government ”ought to be repelled with a decision which shall convince France and the world that we are not a degraded people humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and sense of inferiority.”
While he therefore recommended measures of defense, he asked the Senate to confirm the appointment of three commissioners whom he proposed to send to France. Two of these, Pinckney and John Marshall, were Federalists, but the third was Elbridge Gerry, a Ma.s.sachusetts Republican, who was the second choice of the President, Dana having declined to serve.