Early in April, the declaration of war made by France against Great Britain and Holland reached the United States. This event restored full vivacity to a flame, which a peace of ten years had not been able to extinguish. A great majority of the American people deemed it criminal to remain unconcerned spectators of a conflict between their ancient enemy and republican France. The feeling upon this occasion was almost universal. Men of all parties partook of it. Disregarding totally the circumstances which led to the rupture, except the order which had been given to the French minister to leave London, and disregarding equally the fact that actual hostilities were first commenced by France, the war was confidently and generally pronounced a war of aggression on the part of Great Britain, undertaken with the sole purpose of imposing a monarchical government on the French people. The few who did not embrace these opinions, and they were certainly very few, were held up as objects of public detestation; and were calumniated as the tools of Britain, and the satellites of despotism.
Yet the disposition to engage in the war, was far from being general. The inclination of the public led to a full indulgence of the most extravagant partiality; but not many were willing to encounter the consequences which that indulgence would infallibly produce. The situation of America was precisely that, in which the wisdom and foresight of a prudent and enlightened government, was indispensably necessary to prevent the nation from inconsiderately precipitating itself into calamities, which its reflecting judgment would avoid.
As soon as intelligence of the rupture between France and Britain was received in the United States, indications were given in some of the seaports, of a disposition to engage in the unlawful business of privateering on the commerce of the belligerent powers. The President was firmly determined to suppress these practices, and immediately requested the attention of the heads of departments to this interesting subject.
Queries put by the president to his cabinet in relation to the conduct proper to be adopted by the American government in consequence of this event.
[As] the new and difficult situation in which the United States were placed suggested many delicate inquiries, he addressed a circular letter to the cabinet ministers, inclosing for their consideration a well digested series of questions, the answers to which would form a complete system by which to regulate the conduct of the executive in the arduous situations which were approaching.[3]
These queries, with some of the answers of them, though submitted only to the cabinet, found their way to the leading members of the opposition; and were among the unacknowledged but operating pieces of testimony, on which the charge against the administration, of cherishing dispositions unfriendly to the French republic, was founded. In taking a view of the whole ground, points certainly occurred, and were submitted to the consideration of the cabinet, on which neither the chief magistrate nor his ministers felt any doubt. But the introduction of questions relative to these points, among others with which they were intimately connected, would present a more full view of the subject, and was incapable of producing any mischievous effect, while they were confined to those for whom alone they were intended.
In the meeting of the heads of departments and the attorney general, which was held in consequence of this letter, it was unanimously agreed, that a proclamation ought to issue, forbidding the citizens of the United States to take part in any hostilities on the seas, with, or against, any of the belligerent powers; warning them against carrying to any of those powers articles deemed contraband according to the modern usages of nations; and enjoining them from all acts inconsistent with the duties of a friendly nation towards those at war.
With the same unanimity, the President was advised to receive a minister from the republic of France; but, on the question respecting a qualification to his reception, a division was perceived. The secretary of state and the attorney general were of opinion, that no cause existed for departing in the present instance from the usual mode of acting on such occasions. The revolution in France, they conceived, had produced no change in the relations between the two nations; nor was there any thing in the alteration of government, or in the character of the war, which would impair the right of France to demand, or weaken the duty of the United States faithfully to comply with the engagements which had been solemnly formed.
The secretaries of the treasury, and of war, held a different opinion. Admitting in its fullest latitude the right of a nation to change its political institutions according to its own will, they denied its right to involve other nations, absolutely and unconditionally, in the consequences of the changes which it may think proper to make. They maintained the right of a nation to absolve itself from the obligations even of real treaties, when such a change of circumstances takes place in the internal situation of the other contracting party, as so essentially to alter the existing state of things, that it may with good faith be pronounced to render a continuance of the connexion which results from them, disadvantageous or dangerous.
They reviewed the most prominent of those transactions which had recently taken place in France, and noticed the turbulence, the fury, and the injustice with which they were marked. The Jacobin club at Paris, whose influence was well understood, had even gone so far, previous to the meeting of the convention, as to enter into measures with the avowed object of purging that body of those persons, favourers of royalty, who might have escaped the attention of the primary assemblies. This review was taken, to show that the course of the revolution had been attended with circumstances which militate against a full conviction of its having been brought to its present stage, by such a free, regular, and deliberate act of the nation, as ought to silence all scruples about the validity of what had been done. They appeared to doubt whether the present possessors of power ought to be considered as having acquired it with the real consent of France, or as having seized it by violence;—whether the existing system could be considered as permanent, or merely temporary.