If By Sea

By the end of Washington’s first term in 1792 the gulf of suspicion between Hamilton and Jefferson so disturbed him that he changed his mind about retirement. He had planned to return to Mount Vernon after his first term, but the bothersome divisions in the country as reflected in the cabinet caused him to reluctantly stand for reelection. Since he was the essential force for unity in the country and his own cabinet threatened it, he felt compelled to remain. Once again, as he had been during the Revolution, at the Constitutional Convention, and as the first president, he was the indispensable man.

Interestingly, both Hamilton and Jefferson, sensing that matters could indeed spin out of control, urged the president to stay. And as things turned out, it was good that he did, for beginning in the spring of 1793 the maelstrom of the French Revolution reached America’s shores, severely testing the new Constitution. Had it not been for Washington holding the center, the centrifugal forces unleashed by the new European war might well have torn the country apart.

By the fall of 1792, events in France took an ominous turn as reason gave way to passion. Since the hopeful days of 1789, the France that Jefferson and Madison so admired had undergone profound change. On the night of August 10, 1792, a second revolution occurred. The Parisian mob stormed the Tuileries, deposed and imprisoned King Louis XVI, dispersed the National Assembly, and convoked the National Convention to determine France’s republican future. When it met, the convention called for a national election, which took place a month later. The election produced a new National Convention, which ruled France for the next three years with no constitutional restraints. Unlike America, where power was divided, in France all authority resided in the National Convention. It had no more checks on it than had the French kings, and perhaps fewer. In September 1792, after drumhead trials, eleven hundred assorted “enemies of the republic” were executed. Some estimates of the number murdered were as high as six thousand.

Secretary of State Jefferson knew of the bloody massacres, and, although he wished they hadn’t happened, he was willing to overlook them. Ambassador Gouverneur Morris in Paris and William Short, the former American chargé d’affaires in France, now observing from The Hague, reported accurately on what transpired. But Jefferson objected to their interpretation of events. He wrote to Short, reprimanding him. “The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest,” Jefferson said, “and was ever such a prize won with so little blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than it now is.”

French armies under General Charles-François Dumouriez unexpectly won victories at Valmy on September 20,1792, and at Jemappes on November 6,1792, and easily conquered the Austrian Netherlands (now Belgium). The liberated Belgians had welcomed the French at first, and French revolutionaries began thinking that people all over Europe would welcome them as liberators. On November 19, 1792, the ideologically aggressive convention declared its intention to “grant fraternity and assistance to all people who wish to recover their liberty.” Brissot de Warville, one of Jefferson’s friends and a fiery leader of the convention, urged overthrowing the ancien régime in every European country, declaring “a war of the human race against its oppressors . . . a war of all peoples against all kings.”

On February 1, 1793, France declared war on Britain and then on Holland and Spain, making the fighting in Europe general. War had already begun the previous spring and summer against Austria and Prussia. The convention assumed that its brother republic, the United States, would be a staunch ally, and Jefferson and Madison hoped that it would.

Washington, however, did not. He received the news of war between Britain and France on April 12, 1793, just as his second term was beginning. An express rider from Philadelphia galloped up the drive at Mount Vernon and handed him the shocking report. His immediate instinct was to keep the country from being sucked into another European conflict. Ten days later, he wrote to the Earl of Buchan, “[We want] to have nothing to do with the political intrigues, or the squabbles of European nations; but on the contrary, to exchange commodities and live in peace and amity with all the inhabitants of the earth.”

Even though Americans were overwhelmingly pro-French, and though it was not clear that the president had the authority to proclaim neutrality, Washington intended to do so as soon as possible. Congress was in recess and would not meet until December 3. A special session would take at least two months to assemble, and Washington didn’t think he could wait that long. Events might spin out of control and the country could find itself allied with France whether it wanted to or not. At the moment, the French cause was wildly popular and Britain was still hated. Privateers were waiting to dash into the Atlantic to begin their lucrative trade.

Although he was usually scrupulous about observing congressional prerogatives,Washington rushed back to Philadelphia and on April 22 issued on his own authority what became known as the Proclamation of Neutrality. In it he demanded that the country be “friendly and impartial towards belligerent powers” and prohibited American citizens from “aiding or abetting hostilities or otherwise engaging in unnatural acts within the jurisdiction of the United States.” He obtained the full backing of his four-member cabinet, including Secretary of State Jefferson, who made it clear that while the correct posture for the government might be neutrality, his sympathies were with France.

Privately Jefferson opposed neutrality. He thought that since Congress had the sole right to declare war, it also had exclusive power to declare neutrality. Madison felt the same. Jefferson proposed that America at least obtain concessions from the belligerents—particularly Britain—for remaining neutral, but Washington rejected the idea.

On April 8, 1793, four days before Washington received news of the outbreak of war, France’s new ambassador to the United States, Edmund Charles Genet, had arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, aboard the frigate Embuscade. He had brought an ambitious program, aimed at negotiating a new treaty with the United States that would establish “an intimate concert to foster in every way the extension of the Empire of Liberty, to guarantee the sovereignty of peoples, and to punish those powers with exclusive colonial and commercial systems by declaring that their vessels should not be received within the ports of the two contracting nations.”

Genet took it for granted that under Article 17 of the Treaty of Commerce of 1778, France had the right to sail warships and privateers into American ports, repair and victual them, outfit and man privateers, bring in captured vessels, dispose of prizes without having to sail to France and be subject to interception by the Royal Navy, and establish independent French courts to condemn those prizes. Article 22, in effect, also prohibited Britain, if at war with France, from fitting out privateers in American ports. Ambassador Genet carried with him hundreds of blank commissions for privateers, and it was precisely to prevent them from setting out under French flags that Washington had declared neutrality.

Genet also had instructions to obtain advance payment of the American debt to purchase grain for France and for Saint-Domingue. And he was ordered to encourage independence movements in Canada, Louisiana, and the Floridas. Bourbon Spain was Britain’s ally at the time. In short, Genet intended to involve the United States in France’s war with Britain whether the American president wanted it or not.

The French ambassador represented the Girondin faction in the National Convention. From August 1792 until June 1793, the Girondin ruled France, maintaining an ideologically aggressive foreign policy. Its leaders felt that if the governments of the world did not support France, their people would. Genet’s instructions reflected this messianic sentiment. But on May 31, 1793, Jacobin zealots, supported by the Parisian mob, overthrew the Gironde and guillotined its leaders. The same fate would await Genet when he returned home. Unaware of his changed circumstances, however, he continued his clumsy attempts to align the United States with France.

Threatened internally and externally, the French convention had fallen more and more into the hands of its radicals, who concentrated power in the Committee on Public Safety, composed of twelve people. The police remained under the control of the Committee on General Security, but otherwise, a single committee now ruled France, dominated by a puritanical genius, Maximilien Robespierre, and a few cohorts.

Robespierre imposed an efficient dictatorship on France. Blood flowed freely as he dealt ruthlessly with any opposition, real or imagined. His Reign of Terror took the lives of as many as forty thousand citizens, until Robespierre himself was brought down and executed in July 1794. By that time the country had been in the grip of mindless violence for a year and a half. Hamilton and the Federalists were horrified and drew closer to Britain, while Jefferson, Madison, and the Republicans overlooked the killing and the dictatorship and continued to support France, believing that in time the republic of their dreams would be instituted.

Normally a new minister entering the country would present his credentials to the president at the seat of government in Philadelphia, so it was a surprise when Citizen Genet chose Charleston as his port of entry. Nevertheless, Governor Moultrie of South Carolina greeted him warmly. Genet expected as much; since France and America were fellow republics and allies under the treaties of 1778, the ambassador expected to be received with open arms. Immediately he began outfitting American ships as French privateers in Charleston and manning them with local sailors. Governor Moultrie allowed him to send out four privateers and make plans for more. The Republican, Anti-George, Sans-Culotte, and Citizen Genet put to sea and were soon sending captured British prizes into Charleston, where Genet had established prize courts administered by the French consul, Michel Ange Mangourit. Genet also entrusted Mangourit with organizing a clandestine army to invade Spanish Florida. Governor Moultrie assisted with the Army of Florida. Genet also started a Democratic Society in Charleston—an American version of the Jacobin Clubs in France. Similar organizations had been springing up all over the country since the beginning of the year.

Having set all this in motion in only eleven days, the energetic new minister traveled to Philadelphia not in the Embuscade but overland, speaking in perfect English to enthusiastic crowds who gave him the impression that overwhelming numbers of Americans supported the new French republic. When he arrived in Richmond, Genet learned of Washington’s neutrality proclamation and was surprised, since it was so at variance with what he had experienced on his triumphal journey north. Genet concluded that the American people would support the French cause despite their misguided president. Because in France all power resided in the legislative body, Genet was confident that he could appeal to Congress, and that it would countermand Washington’s proclamation.

On May 2, while Genet was on the road to Philadelphia, the Embuscade, under Captain Bompard, sailed into Philadelphia with two British merchantmen in tow as prizes. One of them, the Grange, had been taken in Delaware Bay in American territorial waters—a direct violation of Washington’s neutrality proclamation. The Embuscade had already captured two other British prizes and had brought them into Charleston. Hundreds of well-wishers crowded the wharves in Philadelphia, cheering the frigate as she approached the waterfront. Jefferson described the scene to Monroe: “The yeomanry of the city crowded and covered the wharves. Never before was such a crowd seen there, and when the British colors were seen reversed and the French flying above them they burst into peals of exultation.”

When Genet arrived in Philadelphia on May 16, enthusiastic crowds greeted him there as well. So did Secretary Jefferson. “All America,” Genet reported home, “has risen up to recognize me the Minister of the French Republic: the voice of the people continues to neutralize President Washington’s declaration of neutrality. I live here amid perpetual feasts.” For weeks Philadelphians feted Genet, their guests unaware of events in France that would soon make it impossible for him to return home without being led forthwith to the national razor. The Democratic Society of Philadelphia was just forming as he arrived, providing him more evidence of the enthusiasm for the French cause in America.

On May 18, Ambassador Genet belatedly presented his credentials to President Washington, who received him correctly but coolly, expressing no interest in a crusade to liberate North America from British or Spanish rule and replace it with an “Empire of Liberty.” Undeterred, Genet kept on with his activities, which were directly at odds with Washington’s policy of neutrality.

Hamilton kept the British ambassador, George Hammond, informed of the rift between Genet and the administration.The British were pleased that, without their having to alter their harsh policies toward the United States, a new Franco-American alliance was not in the cards. In fact, Genet’s ill-conceived maneuvers allowed the British to become even tougher on neutral trade and impressment.

Meanwhile, in July Genet directly challenged Washington by arming and outfitting the brigantine La Petite Democrate as a French privateer right in Philadelphia. She had been the British merchantman Little Sarah, taken as a prize by the Embuscade and sent into Philadelphia to have her armament strengthened from four to fourteen guns. She had a crew of 120, some of whom were Americans. Genet planned to use her to help liberate Louisiana from Spanish tyranny. Genet himself directed the projected invasion from Philadelphia. He was aided by George Rogers Clark, a hero of the Revolution, and Clark’s partner, Dr. James O’Fallon. At the same time that Genet had his eye on Louisiana he was also pursuing the old French dream of taking Canada back from the British.

All of these projects were a direct challenge to Washington. But when Pennsylvania authorities and Secretary Jefferson warned Genet that he was defying a presidential order, the ambassador threatened to fight any effort to stop La Petite Democrate from sailing. Genet’s outburst angered Jefferson, who finally realized that the Frenchman was doing more harm than good. On the night of the interview, he wrote to Madison, “Never in my opinion [has] so calamitous an appointment [been] made as that of the present Minister of France here. Hot headed, all imagination, no judgment, passionate, disrespectful and even indecent to the [President] in his written as well as his verbal communications.... He renders my position immensely difficult.”

On July 9 La Petite Democrate left Philadelphia and dropped down the Delaware to Chester, where she anchored.Two days later Washington arrived in Philadelphia from Mount Vernon, furious at Genet’s effrontery and at the inability of the United States to do anything about it. A few days later, in defiance of the president, La Petite Democrate sailed down the Delaware and into the Atlantic. There was no American navy to stop her; not a single warship was flying the American flag. Secretary of War Knox had tried to set up a battery on Mud Island but was too late.

When Washington issued formal protests, Genet took vehement exception. On August 12, Washington demanded his recall and France, now securely in the hands of Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety, agreed. The French needed American food, and Robespierre wanted to maintain friendly relations. He did not like Washington’s neutrality, but until a change of presidents brought someone like Jefferson or Madison or Monroe to power, he was willing to work with the present administration. He did, however, link Genet’s recall to that of Gouverneur Morris, the Federalist minister in Paris, who never had any use for the Revolution and certainly not for its most recent incarnation. To appease Robespierre, Washington replaced Morris with the pro-French Monroe.

Official word of Genet’s recall did not reach America until the end of the year, and in the meantime Genet continued his fanciful projects. His ambition had soared during the second week of July 1793, when a French fleet commanded by Vice Admiral Cambis and Vice Admiral Sercey arrived on the American coast from Saint-Domingue in poor condition and put into New York for refitting.The fleet consisted of seven warships, two of them 74s. Genet had high hopes of employing them against Florida, Louisiana, and Canada, but the admirals had other ideas. They kept the fleet in New York until October 5 and then sailed home, taking Genet’s dreams with them. In the end he succeeded in commissioning only twelve privateers in the United States, and they captured eighty British merchantmen.

Genet’s replacement, Jean Fauchet, presented his credentials to Washington on February 22, 1794. He requested the arrest of Genet, intending to send him back to France and the guillotine. Fauchet also relieved every consul who had armed privateers and withdrew support for Genet’s plan against Spanish Louisiana. As Fauchet confirmed, Robespierre intended to support Washington’s neutrality.

Chastened, Genet sought asylum in the United States, which Washington generously granted. He had done the same for Genet’s predecessor, Jean-Baptiste Ternant. Politically identified with Lafayette,Ternant was scheduled to return home when the Gironde was in power and any Fayettiste who showed his face in Paris would have been murdered.

The need for an American navy had become more apparent than ever to Washington. Genet’s mischief had made it obvious that the time had come for the United States to begin the long process of building a respectable fleet. But a large body of opinion, led by Jefferson and Madison, still opposed the president, making his task exceptionally difficult.

While Washington was having trouble maintaining neutrality toward France, he was having an even more difficult time with Britain. War with France had led to the seizure of American ships by the Royal Navy and the impressment of America seamen. Despite London’s manifest interest in keeping the United States neutral, Pitt was pushing Washington so hard that, regardless of Genet’s bungling, America was being forced into the war on France’s side. Pitt felt that the war would be over in a few months, and he could put up with the displeasure of the United States until then. Americans were outraged, not only by Britain’s reckless tactics on the high seas but by her activities in the Northwest Territory as well. Talk of a second war of independence was widespread.

By the order in council of June 8,1793, British captains had been instructed to stop all cargoes of corn, flour, and meal from reaching France, thus declaring food contraband. The American ambassador in London, Thomas Pinckney, protested immediately to Lord Grenville, the foreign minister, telling him that starving France into submission was impossible. Grenville responded by saying that starving France could bring peace. Washington insisted on the rights of neutral commerce, and Secretary Jefferson instructed Pinckney to keep protesting that free ships make free goods.

Pitt ignored Washington; British warships continued to stop American merchantmen, capturing them and impressing men as they pleased. Charles James Fox, the opposition leader in Parliament, thought it was folly for Pitt to pick a quarrel with the United States at this moment. Had it not been for Washington’s preoccupation with Genet’s intrigues, the reaction of the United States might have been far stronger.

The order in council of November 6, 1793, was worse than any that had preceded it. Under this decree British captains were allowed to seize any American vessel sailing to any French port or carrying any French goods. The order was kept secret for three months while dozens and then hundreds of unsuspecting American ships fell into British hands. Traders flying the flag of the United States were everywhere in the Caribbean, and British men-of-war captured them under any pretext, claiming they were carrying French goods or goods bound for French ports, whether they were or not. Royal Navy captains put the burden of proof on the American ship’s captain to prove the goods in his hold were not going to France or her colonies. Since that was impossible, the merchantman would then be taken into a British port and confiscated, the crew given the choice of a British prison hulk or impressment. More than three hundred vessels were captured in the West Indies before the Americans realized what was happening.

While Pitt was pressing Washington hard on the high seas, he was also refusing to give up the forts in the northwest or cease encouraging the Indians against the Americans. Settlers in the Northwest Territory attributed the continuing hostility of the Indian nations north of the Ohio to British machinations. Lord Dorchester, the royal governor of Canada, upset by Genet’s attempts to foment insurrection in Canada, thought war with the United States was imminent and on February 10, 1794, delivered a bellicose speech to the six Iroquois nations. He told them they would soon be at war with the Americans and promised British support to drive the “long knives” south of the Ohio once and for all. In response, Washington ordered intelligence collected to learn just how many troops Britain had in Canada.

Adding to the resentment against England was an agreement between Portugal and Algeria. Since 1786 the Portuguese navy had kept the Algerine corsairs confined to the Mediterranean. Portugal was the only European country that used force instead of bribery to contain the pirate states. In October 1793, Colonel David Humphreys, the American minister resident in Lisbon, wrote to Secretary Jefferson that Portugal had concluded a year’s truce with Algeria and Algerian ships were now free to roam the Atlantic. On October 8, immediately after the truce had been signed, Algerian pirates seized the American merchantmen Dispatch, Hope, and Thomas, enslaving their crews and giving every indication of capturing more. Within two months Algeria had taken thirteen American vessels. In a separate letter to Washington, Humphreys insisted that this was the work of the British.

The U.S. consul in Lisbon, Edward Church, reinforced Humphreys’s opinion. On October 12 he wrote to Jefferson, “The conduct of the British in this business leaves no room to doubt or mistake their object which was evidently aimed at us, and proves that their envy, jealousy, and hatred, will never be appeased, and that they will leave nothing unstamped to effect our ruin.”

News of the Algerian attacks reached Philadelphia on December 12,1793, throwing the country into an uproar. Americans saw Algeria as a British surrogate. On December 16 Washington laid Church’s communications before Congress. Foreign Secretary Grenville denied that Britain was using Portugal’s truce with Algeria as a weapon against the United States. He told Ambassador Pinckney that the truce was designed to free the Portuguese fleet for duty against France, not to unleash Algeria for attacks on American shipping. Few in the United States believed him.

At the opening of Congress in December 1793, the frustrated Washington gave vent to sentiments he had long held. “There is a rank due to the United States among nations,” he said, “which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost by a reputation for weakness. If we desire to avoid insult we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace—one of the most powerful instruments of our prosperity—it must be known that we are, at all times, ready for war.”

Reacting to the brazen behavior of Ambassador Genet, Prime Minister Pitt, and the dey of Algiers, and frustrated with American impotence in general, Congress secretly debated whether or not the time had finally come to start a navy. On January 2, 1794, the House of Representatives voted narrowly, 46 to 44, to create a fleet adequate to protect American commerce from the Barbary corsairs and appointed a committee to determine its size. The select committee had estimates drawn up by Secretary Henry Knox in 1790, and by Samuel Hodgdon of Philadelphia in 1793. Hodgdon had been quartermaster general of the army and was now superintendent of military stores.

While they did, Secretary Knox invited naval architect Joshua Humphreys to his office. (At the time, the navy was part of the War Department.) Knox intended to get right to work on the frigates as soon as Congress passed a bill. Captain Richard Dale, the first lieutenant under John Paul Jones on the Bonhomme Richard, John Barry, and Thomas Truxtun had all written to Knox about the urgency of confronting the Barbary pirates. Knox wanted to push ahead with construction of a fleet while the political will existed in Congress to do it.

Madison led the opposition. Six warships, he thought, were only a beginning; supporters of a navy would want far more (as indeed they did). He decided to stop the momentum before it got started. He wrote to Jefferson, “You will understand the game behind the curtain too well not to perceive the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the Government.”

Madison’s allies maintained that bribing the Barbary pirates would be cheaper than building an expensive navy, which would expand the public debt. They pointed out that since the United States had no bases in the Mediterranean, a larger fleet would be required. And they contended that sending warships into a European war zone would provoke further hostilities. Britain, they argued, would aid the pirates, and the captives in Algeria would suffer rather than be saved. Abraham Clark of New Jersey warned that once construction of a fleet commenced “there would be no end of it. We must then have a secretary of the Navy and a swarm of other people in office, at a monstrous expense.” In a similar vein, Senator William Maclay of Pennsylvania said, “It is the design of the Court party to have a fleet and an army. This is but the entering wedge of a new monarchy in America, after all the bloodshed and sufferings of a seven years’ war to establish a republic.... eleven unfortunate men now in slavery in Algeria is the pretext for fitting out a fleet.”

Madison assumed a building program would take a long time and, once completed, the warships, as had been the case with the Continental Navy, would be pitifully inadequate in any contest with Britain. A navy would necessitate high taxes that would grow as it embroiled the country in wars she could not win. A better way to deal with Britain, he argued, was through economic warfare, where America had substantial weapons and the British were vulnerable. He felt that England, with its heavy dependence on American business, would be forced to relent. He did not believe that economic sanctions would cause London to retaliate or declare war.

To Madison, Britain was at the root of America’s problems. When the disputes with her were resolved, those with Algiers would be resolved as well. “It is all French that is spoken in favor [of Madison’s measures],” Fisher Ames wrote. “I like the Yankee dialect better.”

Led by Hamilton, the Federalists predicted that Madison’s economic reprisals would provoke war at a time when the country was wholly unprepared. If the United States wanted to avoid both war and humiliation, they argued, she needed a respectable navy. They manifestly did not want war with Britain, but they did want a navy that could minimally protect the nation’s rights and grow in the future. They insisted that six warships would be enough to handle Algeria.

The tide of anti-British feeling in the country was strong enough to give the Federalists the upper hand, and they pushed hard for approval of the proposed fleet. On March 7, 1794, news reached Philadelphia of the notorious British orders in council of November 6 and the unrestrained seizing of American vessels in the Caribbean. Even Hamilton was outraged. The feeling against England grew white hot. On March 25 the House enacted a thirty-day embargo against Britain, which the Senate approved the following day and Washington signed immediately. The law went into effect on March 28.

The Naval Act of 1794, having passed the House on March 10 by a vote of 50 to 39 and the Senate nine days later with no recorded vote, was signed by Washington on March 27. It authorized building four 44-gun frigates and two 36s, increasing the size of the latter from the earlier 20s. The bill also detailed the number, grades, and ratings of officers and men, even their pay and rations. The preamble stated that the law was meant to protect American commerce from the Barbary States. Left unsaid was the lawmakers’ intention to make an impression on Britain and France as well. But the only impression they made was one of continued weakness, for the country was obviously divided, uncertain whether it wanted a navy or not. Six frigates, by any measure, was a pathetically small force. Weakening it further was the final section of the act, which read, “if a peace shall take place between the United States and the Regency of Algiers, that no farther proceeding be had under this act.” In other words, when peace was secured with the dey, construction on an American fleet would cease. The Federalists in the House, led by South Carolinian William Loughton Smith, had included this provision to appease their opponents, but a more nonsensical compromise would be hard to imagine.

Pitt had maintained his tough policy toward the United States through 1793, expecting the war with France to be brief; in that case he could avoid altering his posture toward America. He had not anticipated the conflicting interests and gross incompetence of his European allies or his own strategic misjudgments in attacking France in the West Indies and dividing his forces instead of concentrating them directly against Paris. The war looked very different to him and to the cabinet at the end of 1793 than it had at the beginning. By year’s end the French had grown far stronger, and the war seemed likely to continue for some time.

France’s strength came from her new radical government. Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety created the most efficient (if not humane) regime France had known in the eighteenth century. Lazare Carnot took over direction of the army, and by instituting conscription and ruthless efficiency, he created a military force so large and powerful that it had the capacity to defeat the combined armies of all the European monarchs, including Britain. The world had never seen such a force. Its sheer numbers were overwhelming.

The French navy did not enjoy a similar renaissance. Prior to the upheavals of 1789, the entire officer corps had been aristocrats—officiers rouge. The Revolution drove nearly all of them out of the service. Mutinies occurred in every French port as crews rose against their officers, who fled the country or were murdered. All French admirals, including distinguished seamen like D’Albert de Rions, were forced from the navy and either left France or were guillotined. When the government tried to resuscitate the navy, it had to replace the entire officer corps. Some deserving petty officers—officiers bleu— were promoted from the ranks and performed well, although for the most part men who lacked the training and experience to command ships of war were installed. The chaotic state of the French navy allowed the British a nearly uninterrupted string of victories at sea.

On January 8,1794, as war fever spread in the United States,Ambassador Pinckney wrote from London that Pitt had reversed course and revoked the noxious order in council of November 6, 1793. Food bound for France, however, was still to be interdicted. Disturbed by the drift toward war, Washington welcomed the news when it reached him on April 4. Prior to Pinckney’s message, the president thought that Britain might be deliberately provoking hostilities. To him, war was an unmitigated evil that profited no one. If peace could be honorably obtained, it was infinitely preferable.

Hamilton supported the president. Although he was dismayed by British behavior and demanded indemnification for losses, he also urged a pacific resolution of the crisis on revenue grounds. As Britain and America raced toward war, he wrote to Washington pointing out that should British imports be cut off, the consequences would be catastrophic. A stoppage would give a “sudden and violent blow to our revenue which cannot easily, if at all, be repaired from other sources,” he argued. “It will be such a great interruption to commerce as may very possibly interfere with the payment of duties which have hitherto accrued, and bring the Treasury to an absolute stoppage of payments—an event which would cut up credit by the roots.”

Hamilton and several others, including Edmund Randolph (Jefferson’s successor as secretary of state), Robert Morris, Rufus King, George Cabot, Oliver Ellsworth, Caleb Strong, and John Jay, urged Washington to dispatch a special envoy to London. The president, reluctant to offend Ambassador Pinckney, eventually agreed. After rejecting Hamilton for the assignment, he chose Chief Justice Jay.

Washington wrote later to his secretary, Tobias Lear, “The order of his Britannic Majesty in Council of the 8th of June last, respecting neutral vessels had given much discontent in the United States, and that of the 6th of November, and its results had thrown them into a flame. . . .The subsequent order of the 8th of January has, in a degree, allayed the violence of the heat, but will by no means satisfy them without reparations for the spoliations on our trade, and the injuries we sustain from the non-performance of the Treaty of Peace.To effect these, if possible, by temperate means, by fair and firm negotiation, an envoy extraordinary is appointed.”

Jay avoided consulting with the Senate before leaving, for fear that it would put restrictions on his freedom to negotiate; senators would get the finished treaty to approve or not later. Jay sailed on May 12 and arrived on June 8 with instructions that gave him wide latitude. He was, however, specifically prohibited from entering into an agreement contrary to the treaties the United States had with France, and he was not to approve any treaty of commerce that forbade American trade with British colonies in the West Indies. Apart from these two stipulations, he was left to his own devices.

While Washington was pursuing peace he was also arming. On June 5 he appointed six captains to oversee construction of the new frigates, assigning each captain a warship to superintend.The frigates would be built in six different cities, spreading the work around and thus strengthening political support for the navy, even though using separate sites would add substantially to costs. Philadelphia, Portsmouth, Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Norfolk were chosen, and the captains, in order of seniority, were John Barry, Samuel Nicholson, Silas Talbot, Joshua Barney, Richard Dale, and Thomas Truxtun—all veterans of the Revolutionary War. Barney, however, didn’t like the arrangement; he insisted he was senior to Talbot, and when Secretary Knox informed him, none too tactfully, that he was not, Barney refused to serve. Not lacking for senior officers, Knox replaced him with James Sever. Barney was an exceptional leader, and Knox’s unnecessarily harsh treatment of him deprived the service of perhaps the country’s finest fighting sailor.

Washington expected the design of the frigates to answer the critics’ argument that they would be useless against the British. Although they would certainly be inferior in numbers, Washington intended them to be, ship for ship, superior to any frigate in the Royal Navy. Secretary Knox considered a number of designers and finally settled on Philadelphian Joshua Humphreys, generally recognized as America’s foremost naval architect. In May 1794, Knox appointed him “Constructor of the Navy of the United States.” Humphreys had played a key role in designing and constructing the first ships of the Continental Navy when he was a young man in his twenties. Now in his early forties, he had many years of experience behind him. The father of eleven children, Humphreys lived in Haverford, Pennsylvania, a western suburb of Philadelphia, and he was eager for the assignment. A year before Congress passed the Navy Act of 1794 he had already developed plans for the frigates, consulting with many people, including Philadelphia’s famous Captain John Barry and Senator Robert Morris, the most influential member of Congress on naval matters. Both Barry and Morris were strong supporters of the plans. Humphreys also had assistance from Josiah Fox, an Englishman with experience building British warships, and Thomas Doughty, a talented young naval architect.

Humphreys envisioned warships that were faster and more powerful than their European counterparts, able to fight or run, depending on the circumstances. Heavily influenced by French designers, who had “cut down several of their 74s to make heavy frigates,” he “expected the commanders of [the American frigates to] have it in their power to engage, or not, any ship, as they may think proper; and no ship under 64–guns now afloat but must submit to them.” Their largest guns were to be 24–pounders rather than the 12- and 18–pounders common on British frigates, and they were to be built with the best materials available: Georgia live oak, red cedar, pitch pine, locust, and Maine white pine.

Resembling small battleships, Humphreys’s frigates could carry more than 50 guns, but he could not classify them as sail of the line without raising hackles in Congress. He devised planking and rigging similar to sail of the line, with tumble home (incurving) sides to handle greater weight on the top deck, wide beams that gave the masts more stability, and gun decks nine feet above the waterline, making a better platform for cannon and providing enhanced safety in dirty weather. In addition, Humphreys’s frigates, because of the design of their hulls and sail plans, would be exceptionally fast.

The British found the notion of American frigates as the fastest and most powerful ships afloat absurd. The Royal Navy’s superiority had been demonstrated time and again against every European country that challenged it, especially France.Their belief in English dominance conveniently overlooked the fact that the officer corps of the French navy had been decimated by the egalitarian theology of the Revolution; winning encounter after encounter with it proved little. A better test would come later in ship-to-ship battles with the Americans during the War of 1812, when Humphreys’s frigates would vindicate his claims.

As powerful as they were, Humphreys’s ships carried less armament than their displacement would allow. He used the extra space to improve living quarters for the crew and enlarge the storage area for water and food. This was but one indication of the humane treatment American seamen were accorded. Well paid, well fed, and well cared for, with enlistments of two years or less, they were all volunteers; impressment was forbidden, in contrast to the Royal Navy, where crews included felons or landsmen captured by press gangs and condemned to serve for as long as the ship was afloat, which could be years. British tars were illiterate for the most part and had no benefits, except for pay, which they were regularly cheated out of. They were never permitted leave for fear they would desert, and for the same reason they received no remuneration until their ship was discharged.

The unfortunates who were caught by British press gangs were hauled aboard warships with nothing but the clothes on their backs and thrown into a filthy hell below. None of them would ever forget the stench. Suffocating fumes produced an odor that no landsman could even conceive of. Its sources were easily identifiable. The men slept in hammocks fourteen inches apart, in a ship that, like all wooden ships, continually leaked in fair weather and foul, producing a perpetual damp. The crew seldom changed clothes or even washed. With no fires permitted below, except in the galley forward, the tars lay in their wet clothing in the cold. Sweaty, clammy, close packed, lousy, flea infested, they breathed air that reeked from dirty water in the bilge, an accumulation of rotting refuse swept into the ballast, and the decaying carcasses of drowned rats and other vermin trapped in hidden crevices.

Horrendous punishment awaited deserters who were caught, yet conditions aboard were so bad that many risked it, creating a continuous problem of manning. Death from disease and accidents was far more common than death in combat. It’s a wonder that these men ever fought, but when the time came, they did, making the Royal Navy the strongest in the world.

In June Washington ordered the six captains to take charge of building, outfitting, and manning the frigates. Copper sheathing was required, and this, along with other materials, such as some of the cannon, had to be imported from England. Paul Revere’s rolled copper would not be available until after the turn of the century.

Washington visited Humphreys’s shipyard at Southwark on the Delaware River and was pleased with what he saw. The president kept a close eye on the frigate program in Philadelphia. So did John Barry, leaving the city on October 5, 1794, to spend a month in Georgia examining the live oak operation on St. Simons and Hawkins islands. Barry found that obtaining the live oak was extraordinary difficult. The inhospitable climate, the way the trees grew, and dangers from snakes and fevers delayed the harvesting.

Nothing about constructing the warships was easy, and invariably compromises had to be made. The builders looked for suitable wood wherever they could find it. The Constitution, which was being built in Boston, used white pine masts and spars from Maine. Fortunately these were the finest in the world. The giant trees were over a hundred feet tall and two to three feet thick. It took three dozen oxen and their drivers, with axmen and other laborers—about fifty men in all—to fell a tree and drag it to the nearest river. Mainers usually cut in winter because the deep snow cushioned the tree’s fall. They would chop out a road leading to the nearest tidal river and then trample it down with oxen. The tree’s larger branches—used for bowsprits, yards, and topsails—were pulled over the roadway to firm the ground, and then the great trunk itself was dragged on sleds by teams of oxen—thirty in front and four to eight at the side—down to the water, where the great pine would be floated to a mast house for hewing.The Royal Navy had used the pines for 130 years before the Revolution. Henry Hudson, it was said, had cut the first one near Penobscot Bay as early as 1609, but it wasn’t until the summer of 1634, when HMS Hercules sailed into Camden harbor with orders from the Navy Board to collect great white pines from the surrounding hills, that serious harvesting had begun.

Most of the great trees close to rivers had been cut, so many of the trees for the Constitution had to come from the town of Unity, Maine, which was somewhat inland. Still, Unity was not far from the towns of Waldoboro, Damariscotta, and Sheepscot, whose shipbuilders had been using local white pine for decades.Their shipyards were conveniently located on tidal rivers like the Medomac, Damariscotta, and Sheepscot. The trees from Unity were hauled down to them and towed behind packet boats to Boston.

On June 5 Washington signed a bill for the construction of ten row-galleys, modeled after those built during the Revolution. Jere–miah Wadsworth of Connecticut praised the galleys’ utility, as did Thomas Fitzsimons of Pennsylvania. The proponents of the bill told how useful they had been in the war, wildly exaggerating their accomplishments. The truth was that no ambitious officer wanted to command them; frigates were always far more attractive. Building only ten, however, was a waste. To be useful, hundreds were needed.

When Ambassador Jay landed in England, Foreign Secretary Grenville received him warmly, emphasizing that the cabinet wanted a friendly relationship with the United States. During his first two weeks Jay talked frequently with the foreign secretary and dined with the cabinet. Despite the goodwill on both sides, however, the issues that separated them were difficult. But Jay and Grenville persevered, both knowing that the alternative was war, which neither wanted. On August 5, 1794, Jay wrote to Washington that the ministry was prepared to settle.

While negotiating with Jay, Grenville kept a wary eye on the new American ambassador in Paris, James Monroe. Monroe had arrived in France on July 31 aboard the Cincinnatus, captained by Joshua Barney. Three days earlier the convention had executed Robespierre, putting an end to his Reign of Terror and ushering in a period of uncertainty. Despite its disorganized state, the convention received Monroe warmly, and he reciprocated, ignoring the bloodshed of recent months and expressing great goodwill toward the republic. Grenville was suspicious. He didn’t want to abandon Britain’s North American forts, reduce her troops in Canada, weaken her policies on neutral trade, and in general seek a rapprochement with the United States, only to find Washington on the side of the enemy.

Grenville complained to Jay in writing, knowing that Jay would be receptive. Jay had never been enthusiastic about the French Revolution. He wrote letters to Washington, Hamilton, and Secretary Randolph, criticizing Monroe’s behavior. Somewhat mollified, Grenville went on with the negotiations, although Monroe’s desire to ally the United States to France, despite Washington’s policy of neutrality, continued to be a problem.

In the same spirit Grenville wrote to Jay on November 19, the day they signed the treaty, “I cannot conclude this letter without repeating to you the very great satisfaction I have derived from the open and candid manner in which you have conducted . . . the whole of the difficult negotiation which we have now brought to a successful issue, and from the disposition which you have uniformly manifested to promote . . . lasting friendship, between our two countries.”

From Jay’s point of view, the virtue of the treaty was that it prevented war and established a more friendly relationship with Britain at a time when the United States was defenseless. For the British, the treaty reinforced American neutrality. Pitt agreed to evacuate the northwestern posts. He gave up the idea of pushing the United States south to the Ohio River and setting up a British-dominated Indian buffer state between the Ohio River and Canada. The thorny issues of spoliations by the Royal Navy, debts from the Revolution, the Maine–New Brunswick boundary, and other Canadian boundary questions were left to commissions.

In addition, Jay agreed that Britain’s enemies would not be permitted to operate warships and privateers from American ports or sell prizes there. He accepted Britain’s Rule of 1756, which stipulated that trade with enemy colonies not permitted in peace would not be allowed in war, and he accepted the British doctrine of consolato del mare concerning neutral goods. This traditional British practice allowed the Royal Navy to take enemy goods from neutral ships and was entirely at odds with the American principle of freedom for neutrals to trade in noncontraband goods.

With certain restrictions, Article 13 of the treaty granted trade privileges in India, a little-recognized provision that eventually proved to be of importance to the expansion of American commerce. Article 12 allowed American merchant vessels not exceeding seventy tons to trade in the British West Indies; in return, American bottoms were prohibited from carrying molasses, sugar, coffee, cocoa, and cotton “to any part of the world, except the United States.” This article naturally caused much consternation in America because these items, particularly cotton, were of increasing importance to American trade, and because seventy tons of cargo seemed much too little.

Jay agreed to a ten-year guarantee against tonnage and tariff discrimination against British goods, and granted Britain most favored nation treatment. The treaty also contained language aimed at mollifying France. Article 25 stipulated, “Nothing in this Treaty contained shall however be construed or operate contrary to former and existing Public Treaties with other Sovereigns or States.”

The British offered no compensation for the slaves they carried off after the Revolution. At the conclusion of the war, American slaves who had joined British forces were taken aboard their departing vessels. The more fortunate were delivered to the Canadian maritime provinces or taken to England, but many were shipped to the West Indies and sold into even more abominable slave societies.This was an important matter for the south. Jay was a known abolitionist, and southerners watched closely to see if he would protect the property rights of slaveholders. But since Jay considered these “rights” obscene, he did not oppose Grenville’s refusal to compensate the slave owners.

Impressment would not have been a problem at all if the Royal Navy had treated its seamen decently. The grim lot of British tars caused young men to avoid the service, making impressing necessary in wartime. For three hundred years England had employed this counterproductive method of manning her warships, and she refused to change. It was no wonder that whenever a British warship docked in an American port, some crew members looked to desert and hire aboard the first American vessel they found.

If given fair treatment, British seamen might have volunteered in adequate numbers. Generous enlistment bonuses, fair and timely pay, better food, improved treatment for the wounded, the right to leave, pensions for the permanently injured, and a more equitable distribution of prize money would have strengthened the seamen’s underlying patriotism and attracted the men Britain needed. But the continued dominance of the ocean by British warships against France and all other European navies led the Admiralty to cling to its traditions.

The more enlightened officers of the Royal Navy recognized that the foul treatment of crews reduced their fighting capacity. Had the Admiralty employed more humane methods, its ships would have been more effective instruments. But the old ways were hard to change. Even the dramatic mutiny at Spithead on Easter Sunday, April 16, 1797, and that at the Nore on May 7 did not lead to fundamental change. The chief complaint of the mutineers at Spithead was pay; despite inflation, wages for seamen in the Royal Navy had not changed since 1652. The mutineers’ demand was so obviously just that the Admiralty and Parliament reluctantly agreed to a modest increase. The other demands of the Spithead mutineers, such as a more rational bounty system, more and better food, and improved conditions for the injured, were so modest that they were eventually agreed to, although the changes were fitfully administered.

On March 7, 1795, four days after the close of the congressional session, Jay’s Treaty arrived in Philadelphia. Jay himself followed on the 28th. His treaty was the first of importance completed under the new Constitution, and it would become one of the most famous and controversial in American history. Washington thought it favored the British too much, but he accepted it as the best obtainable under the circumstances. It was a way to avoid having to choose between war and humiliation.

Popular indignation, however, ran rampant wherever the Republicans were strong. South Carolina’s Christopher Gadsden declared that he would “as soon send a favorite virgin to a brothel, as a man to England to make a treaty.” Jefferson called Jay’s work “infamous.”The treaty’s sole merit for him was that it averted war, but, in his view, wasn’t worth the price. He branded it as “nothing more than a treaty of alliance between England and the Anglomen of this country against the legislature and people of the United States.”

It was a tribute to Washington’s broad tolerance for differences of opinion that he had put up with Jefferson’s bizarre criticism, while he was secretary of state, for as long as he did. To suggest, as Jefferson did at every opportunity, that Hamilton was bent on establishing a British-style monarchy in the United States seemed to the president patent nonsense.

On June 8, 1795, Washington laid the treaty before the Senate, and on the 24th it passed by a close two-thirds vote, on condition that Article 12 be suspended. This did not end the controversy, however. Republicans wanted to use the treaty’s unpopularity to strengthen Jefferson’s run for the presidency in 1796. Even though the Senate had approved it and the president had ratified it, the treaty still needed funds for the mixed commissions it created to do their work. Led by Madison, Gallatin, Edward Livingston of New York, John Beckley of Pennsylvania, and William Giles of Virginia, House Republicans attempted to use their control of spending to destroy the treaty.

Public opinion, however, had changed since the treaty had first arrived in the United States the previous year. The country was enjoying a general prosperity, and people were reluctant to put it at risk by warring with Britain. In addition, Spain was responding to the Anglo-American rapprochement by allowing free navigation of the Mississippi. And the provisions in Jay’s Treaty with respect to the forts of the northwest, coupled with General Anthony Wayne’s victory over the Indians at Fallen Timbers on the Maumee River (near present-day Toledo) on August 20, 1794, appeared to emasculate the Indians and open the Northwest Territory to exploitation.

The matter came before Congress on February 29,1796. For their opening move, House Republicans asked the president to release all documents related to the treaty. Washington viewed their request as unconstitutional and refused. The disagreement was bitter. Madison wrote to Jefferson, “The progress of this business throughout has to me been the most worrying and vexatious that I ever encountered. . . .The people have been everywhere made to believe that the object of the House of Representatives in resisting the treaty was war, and have thence listened to the summons ‘to follow where Washington leads.’ . . . The New England states have been ready to rise in mass against the House of Representatives. Such have been the exertions and influence of Aristocracy, Anglicism, and Mercantilism, in that quarter, that Republicanism is perfectly overbalanced, even in the town of Boston.”

The fight over the treaty did not end until April 30, 1796.Wash–ington prevailed when the House voted 51 to 48 to appropriate the money necessary to carry the treaty into effect. John Adams wrote to Abigail, “Five months have been wasted upon a question whether national faith is binding on a nation.”

To demonstrate Britain’s change of heart, Lord Grenville offered to intercede with Algiers on America’s behalf, and his intervention drew a positive response from the dey, who had no desire to offend the British. Until this point, negotiations between the United States and Algeria, which had been going on for months, had achieved nothing. Now, concerned that Jay’s Treaty signaled a new relationship between the English-speaking countries that might include a secret naval alliance, the dey agreed to a deal. On September 5, 1795, Joseph Donaldson Jr., the American consul for Tunis and Tripoli, signed a treaty with Algiers in which the United States agreed to pay $642,500 in a lump sum, plus $21,600 yearly in naval stores, and deliver a 36–gun frigate.

Under the terms of the Naval Act of 1794, the treaty with Algiers halted construction of the six frigates. Washington asked Congress to reconsider the old law, which it did. On April 20, 1796, Congress passed the Naval Act of 1796, a nonsensical compromise that authorized completing three of the six frigates but not equipping or manning them, and leaving it up to the president to decide which ones should be completed. Washington was chagrined at the result of this Byzantine tug-of-war between the pro- and anti-naval factions in Congress, but decided it was the best he could hope for and signed the legislation. He chose the 44–gun Constitution being built in Boston under Captain Nicholson, the 36–gun Constellation in Baltimore under Captain Truxtun, and the 44–gun United States in Philadelphia under Captain Barry.

The new relationship between Britain and America concerned Spain as much as it did the dey of Algiers. Madrid worried about a secret Anglo-American alliance directed against her, and about the United States, with British acquiescence, invading her colonial territory. Advised of Spain’s new attitude, Washington announced to the Senate on November 21, 1794, that he planned to send Thomas Pinckney to negotiate a resolution of disputes with Madrid that had festered since the Revolution.

Except for Spain’s adamant refusal to open her colonial ports to American ships and goods, Ambassador Pinckney achieved every one of his aims: permission to navigate the Mississippi through Spanish territory, the privilege of deposit at New Orleans for three years to be renewed there or at some other location, recognition of the thirty-first parallel as the boundary between Spanish Florida and the United States, and Spain’s pledge to end her policy of stirring up the Indians along the southern border of the United States. Spain also agreed to the principle that free ships make free goods. On October 27, 1795, Pinckney signed the Treaty of San Lorenzo, and it was greeted with universal praise in America.

In the eventful summer and fall of 1794, Washington also had to contend with what became known as the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania. This uprising had its origins in Hamilton’s excise law of March 3, 1791, which placed a tax on domestic distilled spirits. Farmers in Pennsylvania had always objected to such a tax imposed by easterners who did not understand the role of whiskey. Farmers with almost no cash used it as currency. They turned their surplus corn into liquor because it was too difficult to transport as corn to eastern markets. A gallon of moonshine was worth a quarter in every store west of the Alleghenies.

David Bradford, a Washington county attorney, emerged as the leader of the radicals who wanted to defy the federal government. Moderates like Albert Gallatin and Hugh H. Brackenridge, at considerable risk to themselves, fought hard in several acrimonious meetings to convince disaffected farmers to obey the law and settle their problems peacefully. Bradford and his followers, however, were bent on armed resistance.

Washington understood the farmers’ complaints and wanted Congress to fashion a compromise, but he would not tolerate defiance of the law by demagogues. He held cabinet meetings on August 2 and 6, and decided to issue a proclamation ordering the rebels to disperse and all inhabitants to “prevent and suppress dangerous proceedings.” He also sent commissioners to reach a settlement with the angry farmers, but he made it plain that he had the authority, and the intention, to call out the state militias to put down these disturbances if Bradford and his followers persisted. On August 7, he began calling out the militias from eastern Pennsylvania, Maryland,Virginia, and New Jersey.

Washington’s tough stance did not dissuade Bradford, who continued to organize mass resistance. Albert Gallatin was his main political opponent, but despite Gallatin’s efforts, the insurgency continued. Washington, his patience running out, issued a second proclamation on September 25, warning that he intended to put the rebellion down by force if necessary. He then left Philadelphia for Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he took command of the assembled troops, who now amounted to an impressive fifteen thousand. The rebellion collapsed in the face of this show of force, and Washington achieved his goals without bloodshed.

While the president’s methods were successful, they reminded Republicans of the potency of the federal government, and of the need to put firm restraints on its military capacity. They were particularly worried over the prominent role played by the hated Alexander Hamilton as the president’s right-hand man. Jefferson, now in retirement, sympathized with the rebels, describing Hamilton’s excise levy as an “infernal tax.” Jefferson felt that Washington’s military measures had been excessive and wrote to Madison that “an insurrection was announced and proclaimed and armed against, but could never be found.”

The president blamed the democratic societies encouraged by Ambassador Genet for the disturbances. “The self-created societies which have spread themselves over this country,” he wrote to John Jay, “have been laboring incessantly to sow the seeds of distrust . . . and discontent, thereby hoping to effect some revolution in the Government.” The president intended to crush them before they became a larger problem.

From the beginning, Jay’s mission to London had drawn the ire of France, and the final treaty threw her into a rage. Despite the provision in Article 25 stating that nothing in the document would be construed as incompatible with America’s French treaties, the Directory, France’s five-man ruling body, insisted that the treaty was a virtual alliance with Britain. In Paris Ambassador Monroe reported that, so far as the French were concerned, Jay’s Treaty annulled the alliance with the United States created by the treaties of 1778. Although warned of France’s probable reaction, Washington had not anticipated how strong it would be. He tried to assure Paris of America’s continuing neutrality, but the divided, corrupt Directory would not be appeased.

On July 2, 1796, the Directory signaled its growing displeasure by issuing an enigmatic decree, stipulating that henceforth France would “treat neutral vessels, either as to confiscation, or searches, or capture, in the same manner as they shall suffer the English to treat them.” To underscore its chagrin, the Directory simultaneously recalled Ambassador Adet, although he would not leave the United States until months later, long after the election of 1796 was over.

It was hard to say exactly what the July decree meant. The French were clearly upset by America’s rapprochement with England, but what exactly would they do? It wasn’t long before Washington found out. The July decree became a license for French warships and privateers to prey on American shipping. The French now conducted unrestricted attacks, seizing American ships under any pretext. The French directors, along with their hangers-on, personally profited from this wholesale attack. They assumed that America, divided between pro-French Republicans and pro-British Federalists, would not retaliate.

Their knowledge of American politics, however, was poor. They were unaware of the level of anger building in the United States. Ambassador Monroe failed to give them an accurate picture of American sentiment. He vehemently opposed the Jay Treaty and a British-American rapprochement. He viewed Britain as “the enemy of mankind” and looked forward to France defeating her and carving up the empire. He convinced the Directory that the coming election of 1796 would bring Jefferson to power, and that he would restore Franco-American friendship.

Not content to let matters play themselves out, the French ambassador, Pierre Adet, took the bold but unwise step of working openly for Jefferson in the election, and may well have cost him a victory. Adet was accustomed to interfering in America’s internal affairs. He had worked hard behind the scenes in the Senate and later in the House of Representatives to defeat the Jay Treaty. At the same time he was hoping to claim Louisiana for France, and, having learned nothing from Genet’s debacle, he even had a scheme to detach the lands west of the Appalachians from the United States.

Exasperated by his envoy, who seemed more intent on furthering French interests than on supporting neutrality, Washington recalled Ambassador Monroe in July 1796. The president thought that Monroe wished to kill the Jay Treaty and then apologize to the French “for having made it, and enquire of France what more she required.”

Monroe received notification of his removal in November and on December 30 made a farewell speech in Paris. “I was a witness to a revolution in my own country,” he said. “I was deeply penetrated with its principles, which are the same with those of your revolution. I saw too, its difficulties and remembering these, and the important services rendered us by France upon that occasion, I have partaken with you in all the perilous and trying situations in which you have been placed. It was my fortune to arrive among you in a moment of complicated danger from within and without; and it is with the most heartfelt satisfaction that in taking my leave, I behold victory and the dawn of prosperity upon the point of realizing all the great objects for which . . . you have . . . so nobly contended.”

French hostility began to cast doubt on Washington’s retirement. Four years previously the president had wanted to retire, and Madison had written a farewell address for him. Now Madison assumed that Washington would finally retire to Mount Vernon, clearing the way for Jefferson’s run for president. The country, in Madison’s opinion, needed Jefferson. But as long as a third term for Washington was a possibility, Jefferson’s candidacy was out of the question. The president kept his own counsel, however, and the country was left in doubt about his intentions until September 19, 1796, when his farewell address appeared in David Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser in Philadelphia. Within a fortnight, the entire country was reading the address in the local papers.

Washington retained much of what Madison had written four years before and allowed Hamilton and, to a lesser extent, Jay to make important contributions, but the essential ideas were Washington’s. The still-revered president reminded his countrymen of the importance of unity. “It is of infinite moment,” he wrote, “that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it as of the Palladium of your political safety and prosperity.” He went on to stress again the importance of neutrality. “The great rule of conduct for us,” he wrote, “in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little Political connection as possible.... Europe has a set of interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation . . . therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves . . . in the ordinary vicissitudes of her policies....

“Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government, the period is not far off, when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected. When belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by our justice, shall counsel.”

The French were displeased with the farewell address and even more so with Washington’s final message to Congress, delivered on December 7.After reporting on the state of affairs with Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli, he turned to the need for a navy. “To an active external commerce,” he said, “the protection of a naval force is indispensable. This is manifest with regard to wars in which a state itself is a party. But besides this, it is in our experience, that the most sincere neutrality is not a sufficient guard against the depredations of nations at war. To secure respect to our neutral flag requires a naval force organized and ready to vindicate it from insult or aggression.This may even prevent the necessity of going to war, by discouraging belligerent powers from committing such violations of the rights of the neutral party, as may first or last, leave no other option. From the best information I have been able to maintain, it would seem as if our trade to the Mediterranean, without a protecting force, will always be insecure; and our citizens exposed to the calamities from which a number of them have but just been relieved.

“These considerations invite the United States to look to the means, and to set about the gradual creation of a navy.The increasing progress of their navigation, promises them, at no distant period, the requisite supply of seamen; and their means, in other respects, favor the undertaking. It is an encouragement, likewise, that their particular situation, will give weight and influence to a moderate naval force in their hands.Will it not then be advisable to begin without delay to provide and lay up the materials for the building and equipping of ships of war, and to proceed in the work by degrees, in proportion as our resources shall render it practicable without inconvenience; so that a future war of Europe, may not find our commerce in the same unprotected state in which it was found by the present.”