Part 23 (1/2)
Mr. Jay had recently arrived in Philadelphia from New York, and consented to accept the nomination. It was confirmed by the senate on Sat.u.r.day, the nineteenth of April, by a majority of eighteen to eight; Aaron Burr being among the few who opposed it, it being his practice to dissent from every measure proposed by Was.h.i.+ngton.
Conscious of the urgency of his mission, Mr. Jay made immediate preparations for his departure; and on the twelfth of May he embarked at New York, with Colonel John Trumbull, the artist, as his secretary. He was accompanied to the s.h.i.+p by about a thousand of his fellow-citizens, who desired thus to testify their personal respect and their interest in his mission of peace. A few days preceding, the Democratic Society of Philadelphia issued a most inflammatory denunciation of the mission and the minister; and the opposition in the lower house of Congress succeeded in adopting a resolution to cut off all intercourse with Great Britain. It was lost in the senate by the casting vote of Vice-President Adams; ”not,” as Was.h.i.+ngton remarked in a letter to Tobias Lear on the sixth of May, ”as it is said and generally believed, from a disinclination to the ulterior expedience of the measure, but from a desire to try the effect of negotiation previous thereto.” Mr.
Monroe, acting under instructions from the Virginia legislature, proposed in the senate to suspend by law the article of the treaty of peace which secured to British creditors the right of recovering in the United States their honest debts. This proposition was frowned down by every right-minded man in that chamber.
Another delicate matter connected with the foreign relations of the United States now occupied the mind of Was.h.i.+ngton. The French government, as we have observed, on recalling Genet, asked that of the United States to recall Mr. Morris. Was.h.i.+ngton was anxious to appoint a judicious successor--one that would be acceptable to the French, and who would not compromise the neutrality of his own country. He confided in Pinckney, and desired Mr. Jay, in the event of his mission being successful, to remain in London as resident minister. Pinckney would then be sent to France. But Jay would not consent to the arrangement.
Was.h.i.+ngton then offered the French mission to Robert R. Livingston, chancellor of the state of New York, who, with his extensive and influential family connections, was in politics a republican. Livingston declined, and the president finally offered it to James Monroe. He consented to serve, and his nomination was confirmed by the senate on the twenty-eighth of May. Soon after this, John Quincy Adams, son of the vice-president, was appointed minister at the Hague in place of Mr.
Short, Jefferson's secretary of legation in France, who went to Spain to ascertain what Carmichael, the American minister there, was doing, his government being unable to hear from him except at long intervals.
Mr. Monroe arrived in Paris toward the middle of August, and immediately sent to the president of the convention the following letter:--
”_Citizen-President:_--Having, several days since, arrived with a commission from the president of the United States of America, to represent those states in quality of minister plenipotentiary at the capital of the French republic, I have thought it my duty to make my mission known as early as possible to the national representatives. It belongs to them to determine the day, and to point out the mode, in which I am to be acknowledged the representative of their ally and sister republic. I make this communication with the greater pleasure, because it affords me an opportunity, not only to certify to the representatives of the free citizens of France my personal attachment to the cause of liberty, but to a.s.sure them at the same time, in the most positive way, that the government and people of America take the highest interest in the liberty, success, and prosperity of the French republic.”
Robespierre had lately fallen. His b.l.o.o.d.y rule was at an end. For some time he had been hated by the Convention, to which body reason and conscience were bringing their convictions. On the twenty-eighth of July the Convention resolved to crush him. Billaud Varennes, in a speech replete with invective, denounced him as a tyrant; and when Robespierre attempted to speak, his voice was drowned with cries of ”Down with the tyrant! down with the tyrant!” A decree of outlawry was then pa.s.sed, and he and some of his friends were ordered to immediate execution. With their fall the Reign of Terror ended. The nation breathed freer, and the curtain fell upon one of the bloodiest tragedies in the history of the race.
It was at this auspicious moment that Monroe appeared. The sentiments of his letter were so much in consonance with the feelings of the hour, that it is said the president of the Convention embraced Monroe affectionately when they met. It was decreed that the American and French flags should be entwined and hung up in the hall of the Convention, as an emblem of the union of the two republics; and Monroe, not to be outdone in acts of courtesy, presented the banner of his country to the Convention in the name of his people.
Congress adjourned on the ninth of June to the first Monday in the succeeding November. The session had been a stormy one. Questions of national policy had arisen, which called forth some of the most animated and eloquent discussions ever held upon the floor of the house of representatives; and when the adjournment took place, questions were pending, the solution of which caused many an anxious hour to the president and the friends of the republic.
As soon as Was.h.i.+ngton could make proper arrangements, he set out on a flying visit to Mount Vernon. Many persons had predicted that the yellow fever would reappear in Philadelphia during that summer; and, to guard his family against the dangers of its presence, he removed them to a pleasant house at Germantown. On the eighteenth of June he left for the Potomac; and at Baltimore he wrote a brief letter to Gouverneur Morris, a.s.suring him of his undiminished personal friends.h.i.+p, notwithstanding his recall. At Mount Vernon he wrote another, in which Was.h.i.+ngton evinced his consciousness that vigilant eyes were upon all his public movements, and not with friendly intent. ”The affairs of this country,”
he said to Morris ironically, ”can not go wrong; there are so many watchful guardians of them, and such infallible guides, that no one is at a loss for a director at every turn.”
Was.h.i.+ngton did not return to Philadelphia quite as early as he had antic.i.p.ated, owing to an injury to his back, received while using exertions to prevent himself and horse being precipitated among the rocks at the Falls of the Potomac, at Georgetown, whither he went on a Sunday morning to view the ca.n.a.l and locks at that place, in which he felt a deep interest. He was back, however, early in July, and was soon informed of popular movements in western Pennsylvania and in Kentucky, which presented the serious question whether the government had sufficient strength to execute its own laws.
The movement in Kentucky was the result, in a great degree, of Genet's machinations, and the influence of the Democratic societies. It is true, there had been dissatisfaction among the people there for several years, because the Spanish government kept the Mississippi closed against American commerce. Now, that dissatisfaction a.s.sumed the form of menace.
During the recent session of Congress, the people of that region sent a remonstrance to the supreme legislature respecting the navigation of the Mississippi. It was intemperate and indecorous in language. It charged the government with being under the influence of a local policy, which had prevented its making a single real effort for the security of the commercial advantages which the people of the West demanded, and cast aspersions upon the several departments of government. They also intimated that they would leave the Union if their grievances were not speedily redressed, and the ”great territorial right” of the free navigation of the Mississippi secured to them.
This remonstrance was referred to a committee by the senate, who reported, that such rights to the navigation of the great river as were sought by the western people were well a.s.serted in the negotiations then going on at Madrid; and on the recommendation of the committee, the senate resolved that the president should be requested to communicate to the governor of Kentucky such part of the pending treaty between the United States and Spain as he might deem advisable, and not inconsistent with the course of the negotiation. The house of representatives also pa.s.sed a resolution, expressing their conviction that the president was doing all in his power to bring about the negotiation as speedily as possible.
The demagogues at the West, who hoped to profit by the excitement and bring about hostilities with the Spaniards in Louisiana, refused to be soothed by these a.s.surances; and at a convention of a number of the princ.i.p.al citizens of Kentucky, a.s.sembled at Lexington, the following intemperate and indecorous resolutions were adopted:--
”That the general government, whose duty it is to put us in possession of this right [free navigation of the Mississippi] have, either through design or mistaken policy, adopted no effectual measures for its attainment.
”That even the measures they have adopted have been uniformly concealed from us, and veiled in mysterious secrecy.
”That civil liberty is prost.i.tuted, when the servants of the people are suffered to tell their masters, that communications which they may judge important may not be intrusted to them.”
These resolutions concluded with a recommendation of county meetings, of county committees of correspondence, and of a convention when it might be judged expedient, to deliberate on the proper steps for the attainment and security of their just rights.
No doubt the leaders in these movements felt indignant because an expedition, which had been prepared in the West for an invasion of Louisiana under the auspices of Genet, had been frustrated by the vigilance of the president, who, when informed of the fact, had ordered General Wayne, then in the Ohio country, to establish a military post at an eligible place on the Ohio river, to stop any armed men who should be going down that stream. This interference with what they had been taught to believe were their inalienable rights was considered a very great grievance.
In a private letter, on the tenth of August, Was.h.i.+ngton referred to these movements in Kentucky, and said, after expressing a conviction that there ”must exist a predisposition among them to be dissatisfied:”
”The protection they receive, and the unwearied endeavors of the general government to accomplish, by repeated and ardent remonstrances, what they seem to have most at heart--namely, the navigation of the Mississippi--obtain no credit with them, or, what is full as likely, may be concealed from them, or misrepresented by those _societies_, which, under specious colorings, are spreading far and wide, either from real ignorance of the measures pursued by the government, or from a wish to bring it, as much as they are able, into discredit; for what purposes, every man is left to his own conjectures.”
Was.h.i.+ngton continued: ”That similar attempts to give discontent to the public mind have been practised with too much success in some of the western counties in this state [Pennsylvania], you are, I am certain, not to learn. Actual rebellion against the laws of the United States exists at this moment, notwithstanding every lenient measure, which could comport with the duties of the public officers, has been exercised to reconcile them to the collection of taxes upon spirituous liquors and stills. What may be the consequence of such violent and outrageous proceedings is painful in a high degree, even in contemplation. But, if the laws are to be so trampled upon with impunity, and a minority, a small one too, is to dictate to the majority, there is an end put, at one stroke, to republican government; and nothing but anarchy and confusion are to be expected hereafter. Some other man or society may dislike another law, and oppose it with equal propriety, until all laws are prostrate, and every one--the strongest, I presume--will carve for himself.”
Was.h.i.+ngton alluded to the rebellious movement in western Pennsylvania, at that time, known in history as ”The Whiskey Insurrection.”
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