The number of 60,000 inhabitants being required to constitute a state government, and Tennessee having attained to a still higher population, was admitted into the Union this year; and Sevier, who had distinguished himself in the extinct state of Frankland, was elected governor. This new State was peopled principally from North Carolina. The first newspaper established at Knoxville was in 1793.
The troubles regarding Jay’s treaty with Great Britain were not yet at an end. The French government and its partisans in America, who had, spite of the neutral position assumed by the United States, always calculated upon substantial aid and service being rendered to France, were consequently greatly disappointed and annoyed by the line of conduct which Washington had adopted, and which had tended to knit up, rather than to dissever, the old relationships between the two kindred countries. Washington and the federalists were pronounced to be hostile to the cause of France; to be traitors to their own principles, enemies to the rights of man, and meanly subservient to Great Britain.
Morris, the successor of Jefferson as American representative in France, a man of great sagacity and cool judgment, who having taken an active part in the revolution of his own country, could not yet regard with satisfaction the means adopted to establish a republic in France, was looked upon with suspicion by whatever party for the time being held the reins of government. Accordingly, when the Committee of Public Safety, under Robespierre and his associates, sent letters of recall to Genet, they requested also that another ambassador might be sent to supply the place of Morris. Mr. Monroe, an ardent friend of republican liberty and the rights of man, was sent over. The fall of Robespierre had taken place when Monroe arrived in Paris, and the Thermodorians, who were then in power, received him with considerable coolness, as questioning the loyalty of the nation which he represented to their great goddess of liberty.
The new ambassador by his instructions was empowered to contradict the report circulated in France of the unfriendly feelings of the president and his party towards the cause of that country. Monroe made the most of this permission; and Merlin de Douay and he embraced in public, that the French people might be edified by the spectacle which was to “complete the annihilation of an impious coalition of tyrants;” and the convention passed a decree that the “flags of the two republics should be entertwined and suspended in their hall, in testimony of eternal union and friendship.” In return, the French colours were sent to America for the same purpose, by M. Adet, who superseded Fauchet, he being removed at the fall of the Robespierre faction. These colours were duly presented on New-year’s-day, 1796, with an address, and the president replying, the colours were ordered to be deposited with the archives of the nation.
These theatrical flatteries were, however, but tricks and cajoleries to induce America to take part in the wars of France; and Monroe, caught in the snare that was laid, was not long before he wrote to urge the policy of a loan to France, adding “that the Americans in that case might at once seize the western posts, and the territory on the Lower Mississippi, occupied by the Spaniards, and trust to French aid to see them out of the war—if war should follow, which he did not conceive likely, either on the part of Britain or Spain, considering the success of the French arms.”
The schemes of the infatuated Monroe did not meet with that encouragement in America which he had led the French government to expect; and Jay’s treaty being about this time ratified, the French cruisers were ordered to capture, in certain cases, the vessels of the United States, and several hundred vessels laden with valuable cargoes were in consequence seized and confiscated.
Monroe, highly unfit for his office, not only displeased the government at home by his attempt to compromise them, but fell into disgrace at Paris, because he had failed to bring about that close alliance between the United States and France which he had promised. He was recalled; and Charles C. Pinckney, of South Carolina, appointed in his stead, he being furnished with instructions to use every effort, compatible with national honour, to restore the amicable relations which had formerly existed between the two countries.
But events were tending more and more to separate them. The British, at this time, were endeavouring to complete the conquest of the French portion of St. Domingo, the defence of which, for the republic, was left almost entirely in the hands of the black general, Touissaint. Provisions and horses, purchased in America, had been forwarded in American vessels chartered for that purpose, for the supply of the British troops. Adet complained of this, and very soon after had to communicate the decree of July 14, which empowered the seizure of American vessels in the West India seas. In November a proclamation was issued by Adet, commanding, in the name of the French Directory, all Frenchmen in America to assume the tri-coloured cockade. And this cockade was at once mounted, not only by Frenchmen, but by the American partisans of the French Republic. Adet was commencing the career of Genet.
With the close of 1796, which was now at hand, the time for the election of a new president was come. Washington, weary of the anxieties and contentions of public life, had already, in September, published a farewell address to his countrymen, which bore strongly upon the present state of public feeling; he emphatically urged the maintenance of Union, as the palladium of political prosperity and safety; of the Federal constitution, and of the public credit; he solemnly adjured them to avoid sectional jealousies and heartburnings, the baleful effect of party-spirit, and of permanent inveterate antipathies against particular nations or passionate attachments for others. He dwelt at length on the policy of an impartial neutrality and of a disconnexion with the nations of Europe, so far as existing treaties would permit, together with the dangers of foreign influence.
The address bore directly upon the present position of America with regard to France, and was, in fact, so important in this respect, that Adet followed it up with a manifesto which, like the address, was circulated through the newspapers and intended to counteract its effect.