Volume Ii Part 17 (1/2)
From a painting by S. F. B. Morse in the Yale College Collection.
[1795]
Worst of all, Britain claimed and acted upon the right to press into her naval service British-born seamen found anywhere outside the territory of a foreign State, halting our s.h.i.+ps on the high seas for this purpose, often leaving them half-manned, and sometimes recklessly and cruelly impressing native-born Americans--an outrageous policy which ended in the war of 1812. The ignorance and injustice of the English admiralty courts aggravated most of these abuses.
Genet's proceedings, spoken of in the next chapter, which partly public sentiment, partly lack of army and navy, made it impossible for our Government to prevent, enraged Great Britain to the verge of war. After the British orders in council of November 6, 1793, intended to destroy all neutral commerce with the French colonies, and Congress's counter-stroke of an embargo the following March, war was positively imminent. The President resolved to send Jay to England as envoy extraordinary, to make one more effort for an understanding.
The treaty negotiated by this gentleman, and ratified June 24, 1795 (excepting Article XII., on the French West India trade), was doubtless the most favorable that could have been secured under the circ.u.mstances; yet it satisfied no one and was humiliating in the extreme. The western posts were indeed to be vacated by June 1, 1796, though without indemnity for the past, but a British right of search and impressment was implicitly recognized, the French West Indian trade not rendered secure, and arbitrary liberty accorded to Great Britain in defining contraband. Opposition to ratification was bitter and nearly universal.
The friends of France were jubilant. Jay was burned in effigy, Was.h.i.+ngton himself attacked. The utmost that Hamilton in his powerful ”Letters of Camillus” could show was that the treaty seemed preferable to war. Plainly we had then little to hope and much to fear from war with Great Britain, yet even vast numbers of Federalists denounced the pact as a base surrender to the nation's ancient tyrant, and wished an appeal to arms.
Fisher Ames's eloquence decided the House for the treaty. An invalid, with but a span of life before him, he spoke as from the tomb. ”There is, I believe,” so ran his peroration, ”no member who will not think his chance to be a witness of the consequences (should the treaty fail of ratification) greater than mine. If, however, the vote should pa.s.s to reject, and a spirit should rise, as it will, with the public disorders, to make confusion worse confounded, even I, slender and almost broken as my hold on life is, may outlive the Government and Const.i.tution of my country!”
It was the most delicate crisis of Was.h.i.+ngton's presidency, and no other American then alive, being in his place, could have pa.s.sed through it successfully. After the fury gradually subsided, men for a long time acquiesced rather than believed in the step which had been taken. In the end the treaty proved solidly advantageous, rather through circ.u.mstances, however, than by its intrinsic excellence.
CHAPTER V.
RELATIONS WITH THE FRENCH REPUBLIC
[1793]
At its beginning all Americans hailed the Revolution in France with joy, but its terrible excesses, when they appeared, produced here the same effect as in England, of alienating everyone conservatively inclined. This included the ma.s.s of the Federalist party. On the contrary, most of the Republicans, now more numerous, now less, actuated partly by true insight into the struggle, and partly by the magic of the words ”revolution” and ”republic,” favored the revolutionists with a devotion which even the Reign of Terror in France scarcely shook. It was in consequence of this att.i.tude on its part that the party came to be dubbed ”democratic-republican” instead of ”republican,” the compound t.i.tle itself giving way after about 1810 to simple ”democratic.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]
John Adams From a copy by Jane Stuart, about 1874, of a painting by her father, Gilbert Stuart, about 1800--in possession of Henry Adams.
Hostility to England, the memory of France's aid to us in our hour of need, the doctrine of ”the rights of man,” then so much in vogue, the known sympathies of Jefferson and Madison, who were already popular, and, alas, a mean wish to hamper the administration, all helped to swell the ranks of those who swung their hats for France. A far deeper motive with the more thoughtful was the belief that neutrality violated our treaty of 1778 with France, a conclusion at present beyond question.
Politically our policy may have been wise, morally it was wrong.
The administration, at least its honored head, was doubtless innocent of any intentional injustice; and it could certainly urge a great deal in justification of its course. The form and the aims of the French Government had changed since the treaty originated, involving a state of things which that instrument had not contemplated. France herself defied international law and compact, revolutionizing and incorporating Holland and Geneva, and a.s.saulting our commerce. And war with England then threatened our ruin. Yet the pleading of these considerations in that so trying hour, even had they been wholly pertinent, could not but seem to Frenchmen treason to the cause of liberty. As to many Federalists, trucklers to England, such a charge would have been true.
France was not slow to reciprocate in the matter of grievances. In fact, so early as May, 1793, before the proclamation of neutrality could have been heard of in that country, orders had been issued there, wholly repugnant to the treaty (which had ordained that neutral s.h.i.+ps could carry what goods they pleased--free s.h.i.+ps, free goods), to capture and condemn English merchandise on American vessels. Provisions owned by Americans and en route to England were also to be forfeited as contraband. Even the most reasonable French officials seemed bent on treating our country as a dependency of France.
We see this in the actions of Genet, the first envoy to America from the French const.i.tutional monarchy, accredited hither by a ministry of high-minded Republicans while Louis XVI. still sat upon his throne.
Genet arrived in Charleston in 1793, before our neutrality had been proclaimed. Immediately, before presenting his credentials to our Government, he set about fitting out privateers, manning them with Americans, and sending them to prey upon British s.h.i.+ps, some of which they captured in American waters. All this was in utter derogation of the treaty, which only guaranteed shelter to bona fide French vessels.
Under a law of the French National Convention, Genet a.s.sumed to erect the French consulates in this country into so many admiralty courts for the trial of British prizes. We could not have allowed this without decidedly violating international law at least in spirit. He also devised and partly arranged expeditions of Americans, to start, one from Georgia to invade Florida, another from Kentucky to capture New Orleans, both as means of weakening Spain, which up to this time and for several years later was France's foe.
[1795]
But Genet's worst gall came out in his conduct toward Was.h.i.+ngton. Him he insulted, challenging his motives and his authority for his acts and threatening to appeal from him to the people. He tried to bully and browbeat the whole cabinet as if they had been so many boys. So ludicrous did he make himself by such useless bl.u.s.ter, that his friends, at first numerous and many of them influential, gave him the cold shoulder, and the ardor for France greatly cooled. At length Was.h.i.+ngton effected his removal, the more easily, it would seem, as he was not radical enough for the Jacobins, who had now succeeded to the helm in France. The officious Frenchman did not return to his own country, but settled down in New York, marrying a daughter of Governor Clinton. He was succeeded by Adet.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]
George Clinton.