"I have this moment been informed that two officers in the service of the republic of France, citizen Gideon Henfield and John Singletary, have been arrested on board the privateer of the French republic, the Citizen Genet, and conducted to prison. The crime laid to their charge—the crime which my mind cannot conceive, and which my pen almost refuses to state—is the serving of France, and defending with her children the common glorious cause of liberty.
"Being ignorant of any positive law or treaty which deprives Americans of this privilege, and authorizes officers of police arbitrarily to take mariners in the service of France from on board their vessels, I call upon your intervention, sir, and that of the President of the United States, in order to obtain the immediate releasement of the above-mentioned officers, who have acquired, by the sentiments animating them and by the act of their engagement, anterior to every act to the contrary, the right of French citizens, if they have lost that of American citizens."
Such an insolent style of address as this could not be otherwise than deeply offensive to Washington. He must have regarded this, and most of the other effusions of Genet, as studied insults, net only to himself, but to the country of which he was the chief magistrate. Yet, in no single instance did the administration in its communications with Genet, permit itself to be betrayed into the use of one intemperate expression. The firmness with which his extravagant pretensions were resisted, proceeding entirely from a sense of duty and conviction of right, was unaccompanied with any marks of that resentment which his language and his conduct were alike calculated to inspire.
Genet's intemperate language and insolent conduct arose from a belief that the people were ready to support his pretensions, in opposition to their own government. This belief was strengthened by the proceedings and publications of the party opposed to the administration. Civic festivals and other public assemblages of people, at which the ensigns of France were displayed in union with those of America—at which the red cap, as a symbol of French liberty and fraternity, triumphantly passed from head to head—at which toasts were given expressive of a desire to identify the people of America with those of France, and, under the imposing guise of adhering to principles not to men, containing allusions to the influence of the President which could not be mistaken—appeared to Genet to indicate a temper extremely favorable to his hopes, and very different from that which would be required for the preservation of an honest neutrality.
Through the medium of the press, these sentiments were communicated to the public, and were represented as flowing from the hearts of the great body of the people.
Soon after the arrival of Genet, a democratic society was formed in Philadelphia on the model of the Jacobin clubs in Paris. An anxious solicitude for the preservation of freedom, the very existence of which was menaced by a "European confederacy transcendent in power and unparalleled in iniquity," which was endangered also by "the pride of wealth and arrogance of power" displayed within the United States, was the motive assigned for the association. "A constant circulation of useful information, and a liberal communication of republican sentiments, were thought to be the best antidotes to any political poison with which the vital principle of civil liberty might be attacked;" and to give the more extensive operation to their labors, a corresponding committee was appointed, through whom they would communicate with other societies which might be established on similar principles throughout the United States.
Faithful to their founder, and true to the real objects of their association, these societies continued during the term of their existence to be the resolute champions of all the encroachments attempted by the agents of the French republic on the government of the United States, and the steady defamers of the views and measures of the American executive.
Thus strongly supported, Genet persisted in his construction of the treaties between the two nations, and, in defiance of the positive determination of the government, continued to act according to that construction.
At this period Washington was called to Mount Vernon by urgent business, which detained him less than three weeks; and, in his absence, the heads of departments superintended the execution of those rules which had been previously established.
In this short interval a circumstance occurred, strongly marking the rashness of Genet, and his disrespect to the executive of the United States.