Among those who had wisely interpreted the teachings of the Revolution in France, and deprecated the infatuation of his countrymen who had adopted the doctrines of the Jacobins, was Hamilton. To a friend who had expressed his sorrow because of the aspect of the public feeling at that time, he revealed his views freely—views which were held in common with Washington and the great conservative party of which he was the head. “I agree with you,” Hamilton said, “in the reflections you make on the tendency of public demonstrations of attachment to the cause of France. 'Tis certainly not wise to expose ourselves to the jealousy and resentment of the rest of the world, by a fruitless display of zeal for that cause. It may do us much harm, and it can do France no good (unless, indeed, we are to embark in the war with her, which nobody is so hardy as to avow, though some secretly machinate it). It can not be without danger and inconvenience to our interests, to impress on the nations of Europe an idea that we are actuated by the same spirit which has, for some time past, fatally misguided the measures of those who conduct the affairs of France, and sullied a cause once glorious, and that might have been triumphant. The cause of France is compared with that of America during its late Revolution. Would to Heaven that the comparison were just. Would to Heaven that we could discern in the mirror of French affairs the same decorum, the same gravity, the same order, the same dignity, the same solemnity, which distinguished the cause of the American Revolution. Clouds and darkness would not then rest upon the issue as they now do. I own I do not like the comparison. When I contemplate the horrid and systematic massacres of the second and third of September; when I observe that a Murat and a Robespierre, the notorious prompters of those bloody scenes, sit triumphantly in the convention and take a conspicuous part in its measures—that an attempt to bring the assassins to justice has been abandoned; when I see an unfortunate prince, whose reign was a continued demonstration of the goodness and benevolence of his heart, of his attachment to the people of whom he was the monarch, who, though educated in the lap of despotism, had given repeated proofs that he was not the enemy of liberty, brought precipitately and ignominiously to the block without any substantial proof of guilt, as yet disclosed—without even an authentic exhibition of motives, in decent regard to the opinions of mankind; when I find the doctrines of atheism openly advanced in the convention, and heard with loud applauses; when I see the sword of fanaticism extended to force a political creed upon citizens who were invited to submit to the arms of France as the harbingers of liberty; when I behold the hand of rapacity outstretched to prostrate and ravish the monuments of religious worship, erected by those citizens and their ancestors; when I perceive passion, tumult, and violence, usurping those seats where reason and cool deliberation ought to preside—I acknowledge that I am glad to believe there is no real resemblance between what was the cause of America and what is the cause of France; that the difference is no less great than that between liberty and licentiousness. I regret whatever has a tendency to confound them, and I feel anxious, as an American, that the ebullitions of inconsiderate men among us may not tend to involve our reputation in the issue.”[50]
Genet had scarcely reached the seat of government, before his conduct in authorizing the fitting out of privateers, and the capture of The Grange by L'Embuscade, called forth complaints from Mr. Hammond, the British minister at Philadelphia. Genet, in his address to the president on presenting his credentials, had disavowed any wish to involve the United States in the pending war.
“We wish you to do nothing,” he said, “but what is for your own good, and we will do all in our power to promote it. Cherish your own peace and prosperity. You have expressed a willingness to enter into a more liberal commerce with us; I bring full powers to form such a treaty, and a preliminary decree of the National Convention to lay open our country and its colonies to you, for every purpose of utility, without your participating in the burden of maintaining and defending them. We see in you the only person on earth who can love us sincerely, and merit to be so loved.”
This was uttered while the secret instructions in his pocket authorized him to foment discord between the United States and Great Britain; to set the government of our republic at defiance, if necessary; and in the face of his open insult to the government by his acts at Charleston. And yet Mr. Jefferson, apparently blinding his eyes to passing events in Genet's brief career here, said in a letter to Madison, in reference to the French minister's speech, “It was impossible for anything to be more affectionate, more magnanimous, than the purport of Genet's mission.... He offers everything and asks nothing.”
“Yet I know,” Jefferson added, “that the offers will be opposed, and suspect they will not be accepted. In short, my dear sir, it is impossible for you to conceive what is passing in our conclave; and it is evident that one or two [meaning Hamilton and Knox] at least, under pretence of avoiding war on the one side, have no great antipathy to run foul of it on the other, and to make a part in the confederacy of princes against human liberty.” Thus, on all occasions, the secretary of state ungenerously charged those of his official associates who could not lovingly embrace the bloody French Jacobins as brothers, with monarchical principles, and designs to subvert the government of the United States. To Washington he expressed the same suspicions; and, from his own record in his Anas, he appears to have been rebuked by the president, and to have persisted in a most unfriendly course. “He [the president] observed,” he said, “that if anybody wanted to change the form of our government into a monarchy, he was sure it was only a few individuals, and that no man in the United States would set himself against it more than himself; but that this was not what he was afraid of—his fears were from another quarter—that there was more danger of anarchy being introduced.”
Washington, according to the same record, then spoke with great warmth concerning the hostility of Freneau as manifested in his newspaper. He despised all personal attacks upon himself; but, he said, not a solitary act of the government had escaped the slanderer's assaults. He adverted to the fact that Freneau (evidently for the impudent purpose of insulting Washington) sent him three of his papers every day; and Mr. Jefferson records these facts in a way that shows the enjoyment he seemed to derive from such evidences of great annoyance displayed by the president. “He was evidently sore and worn,” wrote Mr. Jefferson, “and I took his intention to be, that I should interpose in some way with Freneau—perhaps withdraw his appointment of translating clerk in my office. But I will not do it.”
“It appears to us,” says Mr. Irving,[51] “rather an ungracious determination on the part of Jefferson to keep this barking cur in his employ, when he found him so annoying to the chief, whom he professed, and we believe with sincerity, to revere.[52] Neither are his reasons for so doing satisfactory, savoring as they do of those strong political suspicions already noticed. 'His [Freneau's] paper,' observed he, 'has saved our constitution, which was galloping fast into monarchy, and has been checked by no means so powerfully as by that paper. It is well and universally known that it has been that paper which checked the career of the monocrats. The president, not sensible of the designs of the party, has not, with his usual good sense and sang froid, looked on the efforts and effects of this free press, and seen that though some bad things have passed through it to the public, yet the good have preponderated immensely.'”
On the day succeeding his presentation to the president, Genet addressed an official letter to Mr. Jefferson, announcing his mission, as follows:—
“Single, against innumerable hordes of tyrants and slaves who menace her rising liberty, the French nation would have a right to reclaim the obligations imposed on the United States by the treaties she has contracted with them, and which she has cemented with her blood; but strong in the greatness of her means, and of the power of her principles, not less redoubtable to her enemies than the virtuous arm which she opposes to their rage, she comes, in the very time when the emissaries of our common enemies are making useless efforts to neutralize the gratitude, to damp the zeal, to weaken or cloud the view of your fellow-citizens; she comes, I say, that generous nation, that faithful friend, to labor still to increase the prosperity and add to the happiness which she is pleased to see them enjoy.
“The obstacles raised with intentions hostile to liberty, by the perfidious ministers of despotism—the obstacles whose object was to stop the rapid progress of the commerce of the Americans and the extension of their principles, exist no more. The French republic, seeing in them but brothers, has opened to them, by the decrees now enclosed, all her ports in the two worlds; has granted them all the favors which her own citizens enjoy in her vast possessions; has invited them to participate the benefits of her navigation, in granting to their vessels the same rights as her own; and has charged me to propose to your government to establish, in a truly family compact—that is, in a national compact—the liberal and fraternal basis on which she wishes to see raised the commercial and political system of two people, all whose interests are blended. I am invested, sir, with the powers necessary to undertake this important negotiation, of which the sad annals of humanity offer no example before the brilliant era at length opening on it.”[53]