The Wars Between England and America

by Theodore Clarke Smith

THE TRIUMPH OF DEMOCRACY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1795-1805

With the temporary shelving of British antagonism, the Federalist administration passed its second great crisis; but it was immediately called upon to face new and equally serious differences with France which were ultimately to prove the cause of its downfall. The fundamental difficulty in the political situation in America was that the two parties were now so bitterly opposed as to render every governmental act a test of party strength. The Republicans, who accepted the leadership of Jefferson or of Clinton of New York, comprised all who favoured democracy in any sense—whether that of human equality, or local self-government, or freedom from taxes, or sympathy with France—and all who had any grievance against the administration, from frontiersmen whose cabins had not been protected against Indians or who had been forced to pay a whisky tax, to seamen whose ships had not been protected by the Jay treaty. In short, all in whom still persisted the deep-rooted colonial traditions of opposition to strong government and dislike of any but local authorities were {170} summoned to oppose an administration on the familiar ground that it was working against their liberties by corruption, usurpation, financial burdens, and gross partisanship for England and against France.

On the other side, the Federalists were rapidly acquiring a state of mind substantially Tory in character. They were coming to dread and detest "democracy" as dangerous to the family and to society as well as to government, and to identify it with the guillotine and the blasphemies of the Worship of Reason. In the furious attacks which, after the fashion of the day, the opposition papers hurled against every act of the Federalist leaders, and which aimed as much to defile their characters as to discredit their policies, they saw a pit of anarchy yawning. Between parties so constituted, no alternative remained but a fight to a finish; and, from the moment the Federalists became genuinely anti-democratic, they were doomed. Only accident or conspicuous success on the part of their leaders could delay their destruction. A single false step on their part meant ruin.

With the ratification of the Jay treaty, a long period of peaceful relations began between England and the United States. The American shipowners quickly adapted themselves to the situation, and were soon {171} prosperously occupied in neutral commerce. In England, American affairs dropped wholly out of public notice during the exciting and anxious years of the war of the second coalition. The Pitt Ministry ended, leaving the country under the grip of a rigid repression of all liberal thought or utterance, and was followed by the commonplace Toryism of Addington and his colleagues. Then came the Treaty of Amiens with France, the year of peace, the renewed war in 1803, and, after an interval of confused parliamentary wranglings, the return to power of Pitt in 1804, called by the voice of the nation to meet the crisis of the threatened French invasion. The United States was forgotten, diplomatic relations sank to mere routine. Such were the unquestionable benefits of the execrated treaty made by Jay and Grenville.

With France, however, American relations became suddenly strained, as a result of the same treaty. The French Republic, in the year 1795, was finally reorganized under a definite constitution as a Directorate—a republic with a plural executive of five. This government, ceasing to be merely a revolutionary body, undertook to play the game of grand politics and compelled all the neighbouring smaller States to submit to democratic revolutions, accept a constitution on the French model, and become {172} dependent allies of the French Republic. The local democratic faction, large or small, was in each case utilized to carry through this programme, which was always accompanied with corruption and plunder to swell the revenues of France and fill the pockets of the directors and their agents. Such a policy the Directorate now endeavoured, as a matter of course, to carry out with the United States, expecting to ally themselves with the Jeffersonian party and to bribe or bully the American Republic into a lucrative alliance. The way was prepared by the infatuation with which Randolph, Jefferson, Madison, and other Republican leaders had unbosomed themselves to Fauchet, and also by an unfortunate blunder which had led Washington to send James Monroe as Minister to France in 1794. This man was known to be an active sympathizer with France, and it was hoped that his influence would assist in keeping friendly relations; but his conduct was calculated to do nothing but harm. When the news of the Jay treaty came to France, the Directorate chose to regard it as an unfriendly act, and Monroe, sharing their feelings, exerted himself rather to mollify their resentment than to justify his country.

In 1796 a new Minister, Adet, was sent to the United States to remain only in case {173} the government should adopt a just policy toward France. This precipitated a party contest squarely on the issue of French relations. In the first place Congress, after a bitter struggle and by a bare majority, voted to appropriate the money to carry the Jay treaty into effect. This was a defeat for the French party. In the second place, in spite of a manifesto issued by Adet, threatening French displeasure, the presidential electors gave a majority of three votes for Adams over Jefferson to succeed Washington. The election had been a sharp party struggle, the whole theory of a deliberate choice by electors vanishing in the stress of partisan excitement. After this second defeat, the French Minister withdrew, severing diplomatic relations; and French vessels began to capture American merchantmen, to impress the country with the serious results of French irritation. The Washington administration now recalled Monroe and sent C. C. Pinckney to replace him, but the Directory, while showering compliments upon Monroe, refused to receive Pinckney at all and virtually expelled him from the country. In the midst of these annoying events, Washington's term closed, and the sorely tried man, disgusted with party abuse and what he felt to be national ingratitude, retired to his Virginia estates, no longer {174} the president of the whole country, but the leader of a faction. His Farewell Address showed, under its stately phrases, his detestation of party controversy and his fears for the future.

Washington's successor, Adams, was a man of less calmness and steadiness of soul; independent, but with a somewhat petulant habit of mind, and nervously afraid of ceasing to be independent; a man of sound sense, yet of a too great personal vanity. His treatment of the French situation showed national pride and dignity as well as an adherence to the traditional Federalist policy of avoiding war. Unfortunately, his handling of the party leaders was so deficient in tact as to assist in bringing quick and final defeat upon himself and upon them.

The relations with France rapidly developed into an international scandal. Adams, supported by his party, determined to send a mission of three, including Pinckney, in order to restore friendly relations, as well as to protest against depredations and seizures which the few French cruisers at sea were now beginning to make. In the spring of 1798, however, the commission reported that its efforts had failed, and Adams was obliged to lay its correspondence before Congress. This showed that the great obstacle in the way of carrying on {175} negotiations with the French had been the persistent demands on the part of Talleyrand—the French Minister of Foreign Affairs—for a preliminary money payment, either under the form of a so-called "loan" or as a bribe outright. Such a revelation of venality struck dumb the Republican leaders who had kept asserting their distrust of Adams's sincerity and accusing the administration of injustice toward France. It took all heart out of the opposition members of Congress, and encouraged the Federalists to commit the government to actual hostilities with the hated Democrats and Jacobins. Declaring the treaties of 1778 to be abrogated, Congress authorized naval reprisals, voted money and a loan, and so began what was called a "quasi-war," since neither side made a formal declaration. Adams, riding on the crest of a brief wave of popularity, declared in a message to Congress that he would never send another Minister to France without receiving assurances that he would be received as "befitted the representative of a great, free, powerful, and independent nation." "Millions for defence, but not a cent for tribute!" became the Federalist watch-word; and, when the little navy of a few frigates and sloops began to bring in French men-of-war and privateers as prizes, the country actually felt a thrill of pride and {176} manhood. For the moment, the United States stood side by side with England in fighting the dangerous enemy of civilization. American Federalist and British Tory were at one; Adams and Pitt were carrying on the same war.

Unfortunately for the Federalists, they failed to appreciate the fundamental differences between the situation in England and in the United States, for they went on to imitate the mother country not merely in fighting the French, but in seeking to suppress what they felt to be dangerous "Jacobinical" features of American politics. In the summer of 1798, three laws were enacted which have become synonymous with party folly. Two—the Alien Acts—authorized the President at his discretion to imprison or deport any alien, friend or enemy; the third—the Sedition Act—punished by fine and imprisonment any utterance or publication tending to cause opposition to a federal law or to bring into contempt the federal government or any of its officers. Such statutes had stood in England since 1793 and were used to suppress democratic assailants of the monarchy; but such a law in the United States could mean nothing more than the suppression by Federalist courts of criticisms upon the administration made by Republican newspapers. {177} It furnished every opposition agitator with a deadly weapon for use against the administration; and when the Sedition Law was actually enforced, and a half-dozen Republican editors were subjected to fine or imprisonment for scurrilous but scarcely dangerous utterances, the demonstration of the inherently tyrannical nature of the Federalists seemed to be complete. It was an unpardonable political blunder.

Equally damaging to the prosperity of the Federalist party was the fact that the French Republic, instead of accepting the issue, showed a complete unwillingness to fight, and protested in public that it was having a war forced upon it. Talleyrand showered upon the United States, through every channel, official or unofficial, assurances of kindly feelings, and, so soon as he learned of Adams's demand for a suitable reception for an American Minister, gave the required assurance in his exact words. Under the circumstances, the war preparations of the Federalists became visibly superfluous, especially a provisional army which Congress had authorized under Hamilton as active commander. The opposition press and speakers denounced this as a Federalist army destined to act against the liberties of the people; and the administration could point to no real danger to justify its existence.