Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3.

by Benson John Lossing

The foreign relations of the United States were at this time peculiar and somewhat anomalous. Popular sentiment, the expression of the sovereignty of the nation, was mixed in character and yet crude in form, and it was difficult to discern precisely in what relation it stood to the disturbed nationalities of Europe. Separated from the old world by a vast ocean, the public mind here was not so immediately and powerfully acted upon by passing events as it would have been, if only an imaginary line of political demarcation had been drawn between the new republic and convulsed communities; and its manifestations were less demonstrative than implied.

All Europe was effervescing with antagonistic ideas; and the wisest and the best men in the old world stood in wonder and awe in the midst of the upheaval of social and political systems that were hoary with age, and apparently as settled in their places as the oceans and continents. France, the old ally and friend of the United States, was the centre of the volcanic force that was shaking the nations; and with instinctive motion the potentates, alarmed for the stability of their thrones, had assumed the attitude of implacable enemies to the new power that was bearing rule in that kingdom. As the car of revolution rolled onward, carrying King Louis to the scaffold, they felt the hot breath of avenging justice upon their own foreheads, and they called out their legions for defence and to utter a solemn and effective protest. The people were awed in the presence of gleaming bayonets. In the autumn of 1792, nearly all Europe was in arms against France.

In the United States, where revolution had done its work nobly and wisely, and the experiment of self-government was working successfully, sympathy for the struggling people of France and of all Europe was powerful and untrammelled. Without inquiry, it cheered on the patriots of France, with Lafayette at their head, when they were struggling for a constitution; and when it was gained, and the king accepted it, great satisfaction was felt by every American citizen in whose bosom glowed the love of freedom for its own sake. With this feeling was mingled a dislike of Great Britain; first, because the remembrance of her oppression and her warfare against the independence of the United States were fresh in the minds of the American people; secondly, because her government yet refused compliance with the terms of a solemn treaty made ten years before; and, thirdly, because her attitude was hostile to the republican movement in France. Thus old alliances and old hatreds, and a desire to see all people free, made those of the United States sympathize strongly with those of France in their revolutionary movements, and to hate the enemies of that nation in its avowed struggle for liberty.

But there were wise, and prudent, and thoughtful men in the United States, who had made the science of government a study, and human nature their daily reading, who perceived principles of self-destruction in the French constitution. They saw its want of balances, and the course of the representatives under it, which must inevitably allow the gallery to rule the legislature, and mobs to give color to the opinions of the executive. They clearly perceived, what Lafayette and his compatriots had already deeply lamented, that the true elements of self-government did not belong to the French nation; that with liberty they were rapidly degenerating into licentiousness; and that the constitution must prove as powerless as a rope of sand in restraining the passions of the people. And some of them, as we have seen, who wrote or spoke in favor of a well-balanced and potent government were branded by ungenerous men as the advocates of royalty and aristocracy, and held up to the people as traitors to republicanism, and fit subjects for the finger of scorn to point at. They were charged with blind prejudice in favor of British institutions, and as conspirators for the re-establishment of British rule in America. But the conservative or federal party, as they were called, were more powerful if not so numerous as their opponents; and when Europe armed against the old ally of the United States, the government of the latter, professedly representing the popular sentiment, was so restrained by the wise caution of those who held the sceptre of political power, that it presented the anomalous character of a warm-hearted, deeply-sympathizing champion of freedom, apparently in the ranks of the enemies of liberty.

Washington had hailed with satisfaction the dawn of popular liberty in France, and earnestly desired the success of those who were working for the establishment of republicanism there; but his wisdom and sagacity evidently made him doubtful of their success, even from the beginning. In the course of his correspondence, we find him often expressing earnest wishes for the happy results concerning which Lafayette had dreamed so fondly, but he never expressed a hope, because he never felt it; and when, in the summer and autumn of 1792, the Revolution in France assumed a bloody and ferocious character, and the noble goal toward which his friend the marquis had so enthusiastically pressed was utterly lost sight of in the midst of the lurid smoke of a self-constituted tyranny, as bad in feature and act as the foulest on history's records, he was disgusted, and with the conservative party, then fortunately holding the reins of executive and legislative power, he resolved that the government of the United States should stand aloof from all entanglements with European politics.

The doctrines of Jefferson and his party, having sympathy with the French Revolution and enmity to Great Britain among its prime elements, was rapidly gaining ground in the United States, because the avowed principles of that party were in accordance with the proclivities of the great mass of the people, who were moved by passion rather than by reason. Yet that very people, although aware of the sentiments of Washington and his supporters in the government, re-elected him by unanimous voice, thereby showing their great love for, and unbounded confidence in, the man of men. John Adams, who was again a candidate for the vice-presidency, was opposed by Governor George Clinton of New York, and was elected by not a large majority. He received in the electoral college seventy votes, and Clinton fifty. The Kentucky electors voted for Jefferson for the same office, and one vote was cast by a South Carolina delegate for Aaron Burr.

We have just hinted at the progress of violence in France in the autumn of 1792. Let us take a nearer view for a moment; for such scrutiny is necessary to the elucidation of political events in the United States a few months later.

Gouverneur Morris, who, as we have seen, was sent on a semi-official embassy to England, was appointed full minister at the French court, after Jefferson's retirement from that post. Mr. Morris was a federalist, and his appointment was not pleasant to Mr. Jefferson and his political friends. With Morris's commission, the president wrote a friendly, and at the same time admonitory, letter to the new minister. He frankly enumerated all the objections that had been made to his appointment, and intimated that he thought the charge of his being a favorite with the aristocracy in France, and anti-republican in his sentiments, especially as regarded the French Revolution, were too well founded upon the tenor of his conduct. “Not to go further into detail,” he said, “I will place the ideas of your political adversaries in the light in which their arguments have presented them to me, namely: that the promptitude with which your lively and brilliant imagination displays itself allows too little time for deliberation and correction, and is the primary cause of those sallies which too often offend, and of that ridicule of character which begets enmity not easy to be forgotten, but which might easily be avoided if it were under the control of more caution and prudence. In a word, that it is indispensably necessary that more circumspection should be observed by our representatives abroad than they conceive you are inclined to adopt. In this statement you have the pros and cons. By reciting them I give you a proof of my friendship, if I give none of my policy or judgment. I do it on the presumption that a mind conscious of its own rectitude fears not what is said of it, but will bid defiance to shafts, that are not baited with accusations against honor or integrity. Of my good opinion and of my friendship and regard you may be assured.”

Count de Moustier had been succeeded as French minister to the United States by M. Ternant, a more agreeable gentleman; and diplomatic intercourse had been opened with Great Britain, by the arrival of Mr. Hammond as minister plenipotentiary of that government, in the previous autumn, and the appointment, on the part of the United States, of Thomas Pinckney, of South Carolina, as minister to the court of St. James. Mr. Hammond was the first minister Great Britain had deigned to send to the United States, and John Adams was the only person who had been sent in the same capacity from his government to the British court. For some years there had been no diplomatic intercourse between the two countries.

Mr. Morris arrived in Paris, in May, 1792, and on the second of June he was introduced to the king and queen. Two days afterward he presented a letter from the president to his majesty—a letter which, according to Morris, gave several members of the corps diplomatique a high idea of Washington's wisdom. “It is not relished by the democrats,” Morris wrote to the president, “who particularly dislike the term 'your people;' but it suits well the prevailing temper, which is monarchical.” Mr. Morris was very active in his duties there; and while he communicated officially to Jefferson and Hamilton everything necessary for them to know, he kept Washington constantly apprized, by both public and private letters, of the true state of affairs in France, His accounts revealed shocking scenes of anarchy and licentiousness in the French capital. He truly represented that Lafayette, in endeavoring to check excesses, had lost his popularity. “Were he to appear just now in Paris,” he wrote, “unattended by his army, he would be torn to pieces.” These tidings gave Washington great concern; while Jefferson, because of the gloomy future which these letters foreshadowed and the unfavorable commentary which they made upon the French Revolution, was very impatient. With his blind devotion to democracy, and his ungenerous judgment concerning all who differed from him, he spoke of Morris as “a high-flying monarchy man, shutting his eyes and his faith to every fact against his wishes, and believing everything he desired to be true,” and keeping the president's mind “constantly poisoned with his forebodings.”