Part 19 (1/2)
[44] _The Life of Thomas Jefferson_, by Henry S. Randall, LL.D., ii, 128.
[45] Sparks's Was.h.i.+ngton, x, 533, 534.
[46] The following is copy of the proclamation:--
”Whereas it appears that a state of war exists between Austria, Prussia, Sardinia, Great Britain, and the United Netherlands, on the one part, and France on the other; and the duty and interest of the United States require that they should, with sincerity and good faith, adopt and pursue a conduct friendly and impartial toward the belligerent powers;
”I have therefore thought fit by these presents to declare the disposition of the United States to observe the conduct aforesaid towards those powers respectively; and to exhort and warn the citizens of the United States carefully to avoid all acts and proceedings whatsoever, which may in any manner tend to contravene such disposition.
”And I do hereby also make known, that whosoever of the citizens of the United States shall render himself liable to punishment or forfeiture under the laws of nations, by committing, aiding, or abetting hostilities against any of the said powers, or by carrying to them any of those articles which are deemed contraband by the modern usage of nations, will not receive the protection of the United States against such punishment or forfeiture; and further, that I have given instructions to those officers to whom it belongs, to cause prosecutions to be inst.i.tuted against all persons who shall, within the cognizance of the courts of the United States, violate the law of nations with respect to the powers at war, or any of them.
”In testimony whereof, I have caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed to these presents, and signed the same with my hand. Done at the city of Philadelphia, the twenty-second day of April, 1793, and of the independence of the United States the seventeenth.
”GEORGE WAs.h.i.+NGTON”
CHAPTER XXI.
GENET'S ARRIVAL AND RECEPTION AT CHARLESTON--HIS OBJECT IN LANDING THERE--HE COMMISSIONS PRIVATEERS--OPERATIONS OF TWO VESSELS--ARRIVAL OF _L'EMBUSCADE_ AT PHILADELPHIA--GENET'S RECEPTION AT PHILADELPHIA--HE PRESENTS HIS CREDENTIALS--A BANQUET IN HIS HONOR--DEMOCRATIC CLUBS--EXTRAVAGANCES--SCENES IN NEW YORK--CONSERVATIVE FEELING TRIUMPHANT--HAMILTON'S VIEWS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION--GENET'S SPEECH ON PRESENTATION TO THE PRESIDENT--JEFFERSON'S SUSPICIONS--HIS UNKIND TREATMENT OF WAs.h.i.+NGTON--GENET'S OFFICIAL LETTER--HIS DEMANDS NOT COMPLIED WITH--ACTION OF THE CABINET CONCERNING HIS PRIVATEERING SCHEMES.
Genet, as we have observed, landed at Charleston, in South Carolina, instead of a port near the seat of the government to which he came accredited. The circ.u.mstance was not regarded of much consequence at the time, as it might have been the result of accident; but the development of his designs, in accordance with secret instructions from his government, soon revealed the fact that he chose that southern port for his destination, because its contiguity to the West Indies would give it peculiar convenience as a resort for privateers, the employment of which was a part of the programme of his diplomatic functions.
Genet came in the French frigate _L'Embuscade_, and was received with most enthusiastic rejoicings by Governor Moultrie and the citizens of Charleston. This reception, acting upon his ardent nature, made him forgetful of his relations to the government to which he was sent; and with a zeal untempered by sound judgment, and a mind mistaking the evanescent demonstrations of personal respect, and the exhibition of popular feeling toward the French republic in that southern city for the settled convictions of the American people, he commenced the performance of his duties under his secret instructions, before he laid his credentials before the United States government, and asked for his reception as the representative of his nation. By these private instructions, a.s.suming that the American executive might not be sufficiently compliant with the wishes of the French government, he was authorized to employ, with the _people_ of the United States, the same policy which had been so successfully used in Europe in producing revolutions.
Genet was provided with blank commissions, both naval and military; and while enjoying the flattering attentions at Charleston for several days, he undertook to authorize the fitting out and arming of vessels in that port as privateers, to depredate upon the commerce of England and other nations at war with France. For this purpose he granted commissions, enlisted men, and, by authority a.s.sumed by him under a decree of the convention, he const.i.tuted all consuls of France the heads of courts of admiralty, to try, condemn, and authorize the sale of all property seized by the privateer cruisers sailing under Genet's _letters of marque_. Two of these privateers, manned chiefly by Americans, soon put to sea under the French flag, cruised along the Carolina coasts, and captured many homeward-bound British vessels and took them into the port of Charleston. The frigate in which Genet came to America became one of these privateers, and proceeded northward toward Philadelphia, plundering the sea on her way.
The French minister travelled to Philadelphia by land, and reached that city on the sixteenth of May. His journey was like a continued ovation.
The whole country through which he pa.s.sed, electrified by the French Revolution, appeared alive with excitement; and the honors which the republicans, in their antipathy to aristocracy, had been anxious to withhold from Was.h.i.+ngton because it was man-wors.h.i.+p, were lavished upon the person of the representative of the French republic without stint.
On approaching Philadelphia he was met at Gray's ferry, on the Schuylkill, by a considerable number of persons, who had come to welcome him to the federal capital, and to escort him to his lodgings;[47] and on the following day he received addresses from several societies and from the citizens at large, who waited upon him in a body.
Meanwhile, _L'Embuscade_ had arrived at Philadelphia with a British vessel, called _The Grange_, as a prize; and intelligence of Genet's unwarrantable proceedings at Charleston in authorizing privateers had been received. Yet so wild and unthinking was the popular enthusiasm that appeared on the surface of society, that scarcely a word in condemnation of his conduct was offered. On the contrary, these things appeared to increase the zeal of his political sympathizers, and made Genet's reception, in some respects, more flattering to his personal and national pride. In a letter to Madison at this time, Jefferson, influenced by the exultation of the movement, and in apparent forgetfulness of the serious offence which the ardent Genet had committed against the dignity of the United States and the courtesy of nations, wrote:--
”The war between France and England seems to be producing an effect not contemplated. All the old spirit of 1776, rekindling the newspapers from Boston to Charleston, proves this; and even the monocrat papers are obliged to publish the most furious philippics against England. A French frigate took a British prize (the _Grange_) off the capes of Delaware, the other day, and sent her up here. Upon her coming into sight, thousands and thousands of the _yeomanry_ of the city crowded and covered the wharves. Never was there such a crowd seen there; and when the British colors were seen reversed, and the French flying above them, they burst into peals of exultation. I wish we may be able to repress the spirit of the people within the limits of a fair neutrality.... We expect Genet daily.”
So eager were the republicans of Philadelphia to do honor to Genet, that, before he had presented his credentials to the president, he was invited to an evening feast. Indeed, preparations for his reception and the ”republican dinner” had been made several days before, and this invitation was only a part of the programme. Genet was delighted by this demonstration--a demonstration (arranged chiefly by the labors of Peter S. Duponceau, who came to America originally as the secretary of Baron Steuben, and who was now secretary of a secret society of Frenchmen, which met at Barney M'Shane's, sign of the bunch of grapes, number twenty-three North Third street) that should strike with terror the ”cowardly, conservative, Anglo-men, and monarchists,” led by President Was.h.i.+ngton; and his joy was heightened by reading an approving history of the proceedings in Freneau's paper, the organ of the secretary of state. He even seemed for a moment to doubt the expediency of presenting his credentials at all, because Was.h.i.+ngton was evidently not ready to comply with all his wishes, and he believed that the whole American people were friends of France, and the enemies of all her opponents.
Genet, however, did present his credentials on the nineteenth of May, and was officially accredited. In that ceremony his pride was touched and his enthusiasm was abated. He found in the presence of Was.h.i.+ngton an atmosphere of dignity and greatness wholly unexpected, and thoroughly overpowering. He felt his littleness in the presence of that n.o.ble representative of the best men and the soundest principles of the American republic, and he returned from the audience abashed and subdued; for the genuine courtesy exhibited by the president, and the words of sincere friends.h.i.+p for the French nation which he uttered, had touched Genet's sensibilities; while the severe simplicity and dignity of manner, and the absence of that effervescent enthusiasm in the midst of which he had been cast since his arrival, administered rebuke alike to the adulators in public places, and his own pretentious aspirations.
He had come with secret instructions to foment war between the United States and England for the benefit of France, but that single interview with Was.h.i.+ngton made him feel, for the time, that his efforts must result in failure; for the word of the chief magistrate was yet almost as omnipotent as law with the greater portion of his countrymen.
Genet was relieved of the chill by the evening banquet, where all was enthusiasm and boisterous mirth. It was given at Oeller's hotel, and quite a large number of republicans were at the board. A patriotic ode written in French, by Duponceau, and translated into English by Freneau, was sung; and the Ma.r.s.eilles hymn was chanted by Genet and the company, the minister adding two stanzas composed by himself, and having special reference to the navy. This followed the reception of a deputation of sailors from the frigate _L'Embuscade_, who, when they entered the room, were received by the guests with a ”fraternal embrace.” The table was decorated with the tree of liberty and the French and American flags; and after the last regular toast of the evening was given, the _bonnet rouge_, or red cap of liberty, was placed first upon the head of Genet, and then upon each one present in turn, the recipient being expected, under the inspiration of the emblem of freedom, to utter a patriotic sentiment. The national flags were finally delivered to the French sailors, who ”swore to defend till death these tokens of liberty, and of American and French fraternity.”
To the superficial observer, the great ma.s.s of the people seemed carried away with a monomaniac frenzy. Democratic societies were founded in imitation of Jacobin clubs; everything that was respectable in society was denounced as aristocratic; politeness was looked upon as a sort of _lese republicanisme_; the common forms of expression in use by the _sans culottes_ were adopted by their American disciples; the t.i.tle ”citizen” became as common in Philadelphia as in Paris; and in the newspapers it was the fas.h.i.+on to announce marriages as partners.h.i.+ps between ”Citizen” Brown, Smith, or Jones, and the ”citess,” who had been wooed to such an a.s.sociation. Entering the house of the president, Citizen Genet was astonished and indignant at perceiving in the vestibule a bust of Louis XVI, whom his friends had beheaded, and he complained of this ”insult to France.” At a dinner, at which Governor Mifflin was present, a roasted pig received the name of the murdered king, and the head, severed from the body, was carried round to each of the guests, who, after placing the liberty cap on his own head, p.r.o.nounced the word ”Tyrant!” and proceeded to mangle with his knife that of the luckless creature doomed to be served for so unworthy a company! One of the democratic taverns displayed as a sign a revolting picture of the mutilated and b.l.o.o.d.y corpse of Marie Antoinette.[48]
Nor was this enthusiasm confined to Philadelphia. In his admirable daguerreotype of old New York, the venerable Doctor Francis has given a vivid picture, from memory, of the effect of Genet's arrival and sojourn in the country. Speaking of the arrival of _L'Embuscade_, he says: ”The notoriety of the event and its consequences enables me to bring to feeble recollection many of the scenes which transpired in this city at that time: the popular excitement and bustle; the liberty cap; the _entree_ of Citizen Genet; the red c.o.c.kade; the song of the _Carmagnole_, in which with childish ambition I united; the _rencontre_ with the _Boston_ frigate, and the commotion arising from Jay's treaty.
Though I can not speak earnestly from actual knowledge, we must all concede that these were the times when political strife a.s.sumed a formidable aspect--when the press most flagrantly outraged individual rights and domestic peace--when the impugners of the Was.h.i.+ngtonian administration received new weapons, with which to inflict their a.s.saults upon tried patriotism, by every arrival from abroad announcing France in her progress. The federalists and the anti-federalists now became the federal and the republican party; the _Carmagnole_ sung every hour of every day in the streets, and on stated days at the Belvidere Club-house, fanned the embers and enkindled that zeal which caused the overthrow of many of the soundest principles of American freedom. Even the yellow fever, which, from its novelty and its malignity, struck terror into every bosom, and was rendered more lurid by the absurd preventive means of burning tar and tar-barrels in almost every street, afforded no mitigation of party animosity; and Greenleaf with his _Argus_, Freneau with his _Time-Piece_, and Cobbett with his _Porcupine Gazette_, increased the consternation, which only added to the inquietude of the peaceable citizen, who had often reasoned within himself that a seven-years' carnage, through which he had pa.s.sed, had been enough for one life.”
”Much I saw--much has been told me by the old inhabitants now departed,”
says Doctor Francis. ”When the entire American nation, nay, when the civilized world at large, seemed electrified by the outbreak of the Revolution in France, it necessarily followed, as the shadow does the substance, that the American soul, never derelict, could not but enkindle with patriotic warmth at the cause of that people whose loftiest desire was freedom--of that people who themselves had, with profuse appropriation, enabled that very bosom, in the moment of hardest trial, to inhale the air of liberty. Successive events had now dethroned the monarchy of France, and the democratic spirit was now evolved in its fullest element. It was not surprising that the experienced and the sober champions who had effected the great revolution of the colonies should now make the cause of struggling France their own; and as victors already in one desperate crisis, they seemed ready to enter into a new contest for the rights of man. The ma.s.ses coalesced and co-operated.