Life and Times of Washington, Volume 2 / Revised, Enlarged, and Enriched

by John Frederick Schroeder; Benson John Lossing

On Monday, the 8th of June (1795), the Senate, in conformity with the summons of the President, convened in the Senate chamber, and the treaty, with the documents connected with it, were submitted to their consideration.

On the 24th of June, after a minute and laborious investigation, the Senate, by precisely a constitutional majority, advised and consented to its conditional ratification.

An insuperable objection existed to an article regulating the intercourse with the British West Indies, founded on a fact which is understood to have been unknown to Mr. Jay. The intention of the contracting parties was to admit the direct intercourse between the United States and those islands, but not to permit the productions of the latter to be carried to Europe in the vessels of the former. To give effect to the intention, the exportation from the United States of those articles which were the principal productions of the islands was to be relinquished. Among these was cotton. This article, which a few years before was scarcely raised in sufficient quantity for domestic consumption, was becoming one of the richest staples of the southern States. The Senate, being informed of this act, advised and consented that the treaty should be ratified on condition that an article be added thereto, suspending that part of the twelfth article which related to the intercourse with the West Indies.

This resolution of the Senate presented difficulties which required consideration. Whether they could advise and consent to an article which had not been laid before them, and whether their resolution was to be considered as the final exercise of their power, were questions not entirely free from difficulty. Nor was it absolutely clear that the executive could ratify the treaty, under the advice of the Senate, until the suspending article should be introduced into it. A few days were employed in the removal of these doubts, at the expiration of which, intelligence was received from Europe which suspended the resolution the President had formed.

The English newspapers reported that the British government had renewed the order in council for seizing provisions in neutral vessels bound to French ports. Washington directed the Secretary of State to prepare a strong memorial to the British government against this order, and postponed the signing of the treaty until it should be ready. In the meantime his private affairs required that he should visit Mount Vernon, for which place he set off about the middle of July (1795).

Meanwhile, one of the Virginia senators, S. T. Mason, in violation of the obligation of secrecy and the evident demands of propriety, sent a copy of the treaty to the "Aurora," a violent partisan paper in Philadelphia. On the 2nd of July it was published and spread before the community without the authority of the executive, and without any of the official documents and correspondence necessary to a fair appreciation and understanding of its various provisions.

If, in the existing state of parties and the embittered feelings which widely prevailed, the mission of Jay was censured, and the result of his labors condemned in advance, before it was known at all what the treaty contained, the reader can imagine what an effect must have been produced by the publication of the treaty in this clandestine manner. Great Britain was hated and reviled, and France was almost adored by a large and powerful party in the United States, and there were numbers ready, in their blind political fury and excitement, to sacrifice everything rather than be on any terms of concord with the mother country, and rather than moderate in any degree their passionate devotion to France.

In the populous cities meetings of the people were immediately summoned, in order to take into consideration and to express their opinions respecting the treaty. It may well be supposed that persons feeling some distrust of their capacity to form a correct judgment on a subject so complex, would be unwilling to make so hasty a decision, and consequently be disinclined to attend such meetings. Many intelligent men stood aloof, while the most intemperate assumed, as usual, the name of the people—pronounced a definitive and unqualified condemnation of every article in the treaty, and, with the utmost confidence, assigned reasons for their opinions which, in many instances, had only an imaginary existence, and in some were obviously founded on the strong prejudices which were entertained with respect to foreign powers. It is difficult to review the various resolutions and addresses to which the occasion gave birth without feeling some degree of astonishment, mingled with humiliation, at perceiving such proofs of the fallibility of human reason.

The first meeting was held in Boston. The example of that city was soon followed by New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston, and, as if their addresses were designed at least as much for their fellow-citizens as for their President, while one copy was transmitted to him another was committed to the press. The precedent set by these large cities was followed with wonderful rapidity throughout the Union, and the spirit in which this system of opposition originated sustained no diminution of violence in its progress. The party which supported the administration, however, were not idle; they held meetings and sent addresses to Washington, approving his principles of neutrality and peace. On the 18th of July (1795), at Baltimore, on his way to Mount Vernon, the President received the resolutions passed by the meeting at Boston, which were enclosed to him in a letter from the selectmen of that town. The answer to this letter and to these resolutions, given in a subsequent page, evinced the firmness with which he had resolved to meet the effort that was obviously making to control the exercise of his constitutional functions, by giving a promptness and vigor to the expression of the sentiments of a party which might impose it upon the world as the deliberate judgment of the public.

Addresses to Washington, and resolutions of town and country meetings were not the only means which were employed to enlist the American people against the measure which had been advised by the Senate. In an immense number of essays, the treaty was critically examined and every argument which might operate on the judgment or prejudice of the public was urged in the warm and glowing language of passion. To meet these efforts by counter efforts was deemed indispensably necessary by the friends of that instrument, and the gazettes of the day are replete with appeals to the passions and to the reason of those who are the ultimate arbiters of every political question. That the treaty affected the interests of France not less than those of the United States, was, in this memorable controversy, asserted by the one party with as much zeal as it was denied by the other. These agitations furnished matter to Washington for deep reflection and for serious regret, but they appear not to have shaken the decision he had formed or to have affected his conduct otherwise than to induce a still greater degree of circumspection in the mode of transacting the delicate business before him. On their first appearance, therefore, he resolved to hasten his return to Philadelphia, for the purpose of considering at that place, rather than at Mount Vernon, the memorial against the provision order and the conditional ratification of the treaty.