The Secretary of State Calls It Quits
ON GEORGE WASHINGTON’S DESK, while the President and the cabinet were wrestling with the Genet crisis, was a letter from the Secretary of State, announcing that he wished to resign at the end of September. He reminded the President that he had intended to retire at the end of Washington’s first term, but “circumstances” had prompted “some of my friends” to persuade him to stay longer. Now he saw no obstacle to leaving by the proposed date.
This letter was almost as curious as the third person message the Secretary of State had sent the President in early July. Jefferson made no mention of Washington’s earlier attempts to persuade him not to resign; nor is there even a hint of apology to the man who was bearing by far the greater burden in the government. The coolness that was permeating their relationship was all too evident.
The Secretary added that the circumstances that had persuaded him to stay had now “abated” and he wanted—or needed—to seek “scenes of greater tranquility.” Jefferson was referring to the attacks on him by Hamilton and his allies; they had now shifted their verbal artillery to Genet as a better target. The Secretary was speaking as the leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, and the tranquility he sought might be better described as cover. For the time being, the Federalists were in the ascendant and Jefferson saw no point in staying around as a probable target.
On August 6, the President rode out to Jefferson’s country house hoping to change his mind. Washington began by revealing that Alexander Hamilton had also told him he wanted to resign. His growing family made life on a federal salary more and more difficult. The President reminded Jefferson that he had accepted another term with reluctance. He was not happy to find that he was about to lose two of his chief advisors.
The Secretary of the Treasury had promised to stay until the end of the next Congressional session, which would begin in December 1793 and end in March or April 1794. Would Jefferson do likewise? His advice might be helpful in dealing with this new Congress. The President did not mention what they both knew—that the Democratic-Republicans would probably have a majority in the House of Representatives, as well as almost equal strength in the Senate.
Jefferson responded with a veritable jeremiad on his “repugnance for public life.” He found service in Philadelphia caused him “particular uneasiness” because much of his time he was forced to associate with the wealthy leaders of the city’s society and their wives—a circle that “I know to bear me peculiar hatred.” He despised these “aristocrats and merchants closely associated with England with their “paper fortunes” and their penchant for spreading stories about him “to my injury.”
Jefferson said nothing about his repeated disagreements with Alexander Hamilton. That may surprise some who subscribe to the widely held belief that Washington had constantly favored Hamilton in these disputes. An examination of the record shows the President sided with Jefferson at least as often as he favored Hamilton. This was especially true in the Genet affair.
The Secretary of State assured the President that the new Congress would be basically loyal to him. Jefferson said he had had no communication with “what is called the Republican Party” since the last Congress met, but he was sure there was no desire to oppose the President’s leadership. All they might want to do was make Congress “independent.” He added that many Republicans were embarrassed by Genet, but most of them would abandon the envoy when they gave further thought to “the nature of his conduct.” Quite simply, there was “no crisis” in that quarter—no one in America wanted to overthrow the government.
The President told Jefferson he was ready to believe the views of his followers were “perfectly pure.” But he worried that it was not easy, once men “put a machine in motion” to stop it where they wanted it. Washington reiterated his satisfaction with their present Constitution and again dismissed the idea that there was a plot to change the government into a monarchy. If such a movement ever appeared, there is no man who would “set his face against it more decidedly” than him.
The Secretary of State intervened to say no “rational man” suspected Washington of “any other disposition.” But a week did not pass in which “we cannot prove” there was a “monarchical party” calling the government a “milk and water thing” which must be knocked down to create one with more energy. The President could barely control his exasperation at finding that the Secretary of State still nursed this conviction. If such people existed, Washington said, it was “proof of their insanity.”1
They turned to discussing a possible successor. Washington said his first choice was James Madison, but he was sure there was no hope of persuading him. He had already approached Chief Justice John Jay, hoping to profit from his experience as Secretary for Foreign Affairs under the old Congress. But he preferred to stay in his judicial robes. They discussed a number of other men without finding anyone who satisfied the President’s requirements.
With a sigh, Washington suggested a compromise. Would Jefferson agree to stay until the end of December? That would get them through the first weeks of the new Congress, and by that time France would almost certainly have recalled Genet. In Europe, the French might well win a decisive victory against their royalist attackers—or vice versa. Either way, it would make for a more peaceful world.
The Secretary of State advanced another clause in the emerging contract. Could he go home to Monticello in September for three or four weeks? The President quickly agreed—and gave Jefferson a few days to say yes to the final arrangement.
Five days later, Jefferson attached a detailed report of this interview to a long letter to James Madison. It was the second letter Jefferson wrote to him that day (August 11, 1793). He called the letters and the interview “timely information” which might help in formulating plans for “the state of things which is actually to take place” when Congress met in December. He insisted the report must be “sacredly kept to yourself unless you have an opportunity of communicating…to Monroe.” This abrupt about-face after assuring Washington he had had “no communication” with the Democratic-Republican Party makes it all too obvious that Thomas Jefferson had become a passionate player of power politics.
Crisply, almost bluntly, he gave Madison his recommendations for the coming session of Congress. He hoped the lawmakers would agree to divide the Treasury Department into two “equal chiefs,” one to supervise the customs, the other to oversee internal taxes. That would eliminate Alexander Hamilton’s accumulating power. A declaration of the true sense of the Constitution in regard to the Bank of the United States, even if it were made only by the House of Representatives, would suffice to divorce that entity from the government. Jefferson also urged a vote to censure Hamilton on some of the Treasury’s practices that had emerged in the failed investigation by Congressman William Branch Giles.
As for the Proclamation of Neutrality—Jefferson told Madison to junk his plans for attacking it. Genet’s antics had all but guaranteed that the “great body of the people” desired neutrality in the war between Britain and France. It would also be political suicide to “find fault with the President”—especially in regard to the Proclamation. In New York, when Genet went there to greet the French fleet, the vote at a “full [public] meeting of all classes” was nine out of ten against the diplomat. In Congress, therefore, it will be “true wisdom” for the Democratic-Republican Party “to approve unequivocally of a state of neutrality…. In this way we shall keep the people on our side by keeping ourselves in the right.”
To this battle plan the Secretary added a P.S. “The Pres is anxious to know your sentiments on the Proclamation. He has asked me several times. I tell him you are so absorbed in farming you write to me always about ploughs, rotations, etc.” This addendum was probably designed to distance Madison from Washington, and reduce the chances of an invitation to join the cabinet.2
Some readers may puzzle over the President’s desire to keep Jefferson or his alter ego, Madison, in the cabinet. What did Washington gain from such an arrangement? Madison’s reply to Jefferson reported a conference with Monroe. They decided Washington had been using Jefferson as a “shield.” There was a core of truth in this observation. The President, confronted by the emergence of a new political party, saw the value of keeping its founder or one of its leaders in the cabinet. The arrangement gave the administration an aura of neutrality—and a largely invisible way of communicating either disagreement or agreement with the opposition. Here was more evidence of George Washington’s political skills.
Jefferson soon accepted Washington’s proposal to stay until December and got to work on the letter to the French government requesting Genet’s recall. The eight thousand-word message was a masterful balancing act. Instead of denouncing Genet’s reckless statements, Jefferson wrote: “We draw a veil over the sensations which these expressions excite…We see in them neither a portrait of ourselves nor the pencil of our friends, but an attempt to embroil both.” Two decades later, another secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, read a copy in the State Department’s files, and called it a “perfect model of diplomatic discussion.”3
It would take another six months for the French government to order Genet home. By that time, all the men who had sent him to America had been guillotined by the Jacobin Committee of Safety under that implacable moralist, Maximilian Robespierre. Among the dead was Armand Kersaint, the delegate who had assured the National Convention that Britain would be easy to conquer.
When the Committee of Safety read Jefferson’s letter, they apologized profusely for Genet’s wild schemes and repudiated all of them—including the attack on New Orleans and the insurrection in Canada. Having rediscovered the importance of executive power in government, Robespierre was reportedly fascinated by the American presidency and doubly appalled by Genet’s personal attacks on Washington.
In Philadelphia, the frenzy over Genet was all but snuffed out by a ghastly visitation of the eighteenth century’s most fearsome disease, yellow fever. People began taking to their beds, terrified as the fatal color spread up their arms and down their bodies. Within twenty-four hours, many were dead. By August 25, President Washington was telling correspondents that he and Martha were well but “the city is very sickly and numbers are dying daily.” Thousands began fleeing to the healthier countryside along the winding Schuykill River. Philadelphia soon resembled a ghost town, with empty streets and shuttered houses everywhere.4
One by one, newspapers ceased to publish. Business came to a virtual standstill. For Washington, the disease acquired a personal dimension when Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton and his wife contracted it. Fortunately for them, they had a friend in the medical profession, Edward Stevens, the son of the merchant for whom Hamilton had clerked in his youth in the West Indies. A brilliant doctor, he scorned the primitive tactics of Dr. Benjamin Rush and other physicians—bleeding and purging, until the patient was often too weak to resist the disease. Stevens’s treatment saved both Hamiltons. But for a few weeks, the Secretary of the Treasury was a shattered ghost of the vigorous warrior of the political wars.
Philip Freneau was one of the few editors who persisted in publishing the National Gazette throughout the worst of the epidemic. But he pursued an editorial policy that did nothing to soften the impact of the catastrophe on his circulation. He continued to rhapsodize about the wisdom of Citizen Genet and the French Revolution. By mid-October, yellow fever had all but vanished and the city’s normal life began to resume. But the plague, combined with the editor’s stubbornness, became a literary death sentence. On October 27, 1793, the National Gazette published its last issue.
Neither Thomas Jefferson nor James Madison said a word on the paper’s behalf. The editor’s violently pro-French politics no longer fit into their plans for the future of the Democratic-Republican Party. They let Freneau write frantic letters, vainly begging subscribers to renew. The editor retreated to his sandy acres in New Jersey and tried to start another paper there. He got nowhere, suggesting that without Jefferson’s backing he would never have achieved his brief flirtation with fame.
Not until November 1 did President Washington summon the cabinet to meet with him in Germantown—eight miles outside Philadelphia. Washington rented a mansion owned by Colonel David Franks, former aide to Major General Benedict Arnold. Jefferson spent a very unpleasant first night on a bed in the corner of the public room of a tavern, before obtaining decent quarters. This inconvenience did nothing to improve his mood. After almost two months at Monticello, he had no appetite for more political combat.
At the head of the list of issues the cabinet discussed was whether to lay before Congress Jefferson’s letter requesting Genet’s recall, and the envoy’s intemperate correspondence with the American government. Jefferson had strongly opposed this move a few months earlier. Now, with his chief lieutenants in agreement on the Democratic-Republican Party’s new policy of dumping Genet, he acquiesced.
There were other more alarming problems to discuss. Late in August, a few days before the yellow fever outbreak, the President had learned that the British government had issued new Orders in Council. They authorized His Majesty’s navy to seize the cargoes of any and all neutral ships carrying corn, flour, or grain to France or its West Indies islands. Britain’s web of intelligence agents had informed London of their enemy’s desperate need for food to feed their armies. This was Britain’s answer—even grain became contraband of war.
The President and his cabinet agreed unanimously to protest this ukase. But their angry words did not prevent the seizure of the cargoes of over two hundred American ships. Orders were sent to Thomas Pinckney, the American minister in London, to lodge strenuous protests over this violation of America’s neutral rights.
From the Northwest frontier came more grim news. A final attempt to negotiate with the Indians had gone nowhere. The recent conference had been little more than the delivery of an ultimatum from the tribesmen: they wanted every American settler to retreat south of the Ohio River. Behind this arrogance were assurances of support from the British in Canada.
Meanwhile, Citizen Genet, unaware of the request for his recall, was still trying to spread France’s influence up and down the continent. The Spanish commissioners continued to complain about French agents in Kentucky, plotting an attack on New Orleans. Rumors from South Carolina renewed fears that Genet was recruiting volunteers for an assault on Spanish Florida. The President told his cabinet that it was time to revoke Genet’s powers. Hamilton and Knox heartily agreed, but Jefferson argued it would be wiser to let the French remove him. Attorney General Randolph agreed with the Secretary of State and the President dropped the subject.
Next they began discussing the President’s fifth annual message to Congress. A fierce debate exploded about how to describe the Proclamation of Neutrality. Hamilton argued for claiming it was an unequivocal example of the president’s power to define the nation’s foreign policy. Jefferson insisted it should be described as a mere statement of the status quo—America was at peace and was determined to remain that way. To Hamilton’s dismay, the President agreed with the Secretary of State. Washington said he had no intention of interfering with Congress’s power to choose between peace and war.
Next came an even more heated discussion of what to say about British depredations against American commerce. Hamilton vehemently protested a draft in which the Orders in Council were described in harsh terms. As usual, Jefferson disagreed. Attorney General Randolph argued for a compromise. He said it was important to keep the door open to negotiations with London. The President amazed everyone by insisting that the entire story of the British abuse of American rights and seamen be told without the slightest reserve. He spoke, Jefferson told his Anas, “with more vehemence than I have seen him show.”5
The result was an address to Congress that won praise from both Federalists and Republicans. Even Benjamin Franklin Bache, who had replaced Philip Freneau as the most outspoken newspaper critic of the President, was delighted. Bache said the address had “universally pleased” and its “energetic simplicity of expression” proved Washington was truly “the Man of the People.”6 He might have added it also proved that the President was a very good politician.
A few days before Christmas, President Washington had another conversation with the Secretary of State. He wanted to know if Jefferson would consider staying in office for a few more months—or possibly a year. But Jefferson’s mind was made up. He turned the President down “so decidedly,” Washington said he could not even “hint this to him” again. He soon asked Edmund Randolph to become Secretary of State, and he accepted without hesitation.7
On the last day of 1793, Jefferson submitted his letter of resignation. “I carry into retirement a lively sense of your goodness, and shall continue gratefully to remember it,” he wrote. Washington’s reply also rose to the occasion. He assured Jefferson that “the opinion which I had formed of your integrity and talents…has been confirmed by the fullest experience, and that both have been eminently displayed in the discharge of your duties.”
There were deep reservations on both sides. Washington could not help thinking that Jefferson was retreating for self-serving reasons—his dislike of Philadelphia’s aristocrats, a weariness with public office. Jefferson had to admit that Washington had agreed with him in at least half of the nineteen disputed issues that roiled the cabinet during his years as Secretary of State. But there were constant “moral” issues involved. Every time Washington decided in Hamilton’s favor, he was violating a “sacred” principle of good government by siding with “the monocrats of our country.”
As the departing Secretary saw their disagreements, it was “immoral to pursue a middle line” and admit the possibility of compromise between “honest men and rogues.” In a word, Thomas Jefferson remained that most troublesome of politicians—an ideologue.8
Ex-General Horatio Gates wrote the Secretary of State a warm letter of congratulation on his retirement. Jefferson replied that he hated politics, “both in theory and practice.” He told Senator John Langdon of New Hampshire that he would “never touch a newspaper again nor meddle in politics more.” From Monticello, Jefferson informed Madison that “the little spice of ambition which I had in my younger days has long since evaporated…the question is forever closed to me.”9
Secretary Hamilton did not believe a word of Jefferson’s intention to abandon politics. He was convinced that it was “evident beyond question that Mr. Jefferson aims with ardent desire at the presidential chair.” Vice President John Adams was even more cynical. He greeted Jefferson’s proclaimed retirement with “a good riddance of bad ware…He is as ambitious as Oliver Cromwell…his soul is poisoned with ambition.”10
One is tempted to agree with these skeptics. In October 1793, when Jefferson was at Monticello, he had spent hours with Madison and Monroe discussing political strategy for the coming year. In late December, as a parting gift, he presented to Congress, “A Report on the Privileges and Restrictions of Commerce of the United States in Foreign Countries.” It was an all out attack on British dominance of America’s trade and an attempt to prove Revolutionary France could replace Britain as America’s most important trading partner. This would require heavy tariffs on British goods to destroy their “unnatural” monopoly of American imports and exports.11
An enraged Secretary Hamilton snarled that Jefferson “threw this firebrand of discord” into the heavily Democratic-Republican Congress “and instantly decamped to Monticello.”12 There would seem to be little doubt that Mr. Jefferson’s “retirement” was more myth than fact. But the coming year would produce events that made Democratic-Republican hopes of majority power turn to chimeras. Politics, as Jefferson had already discovered thanks to Citizen Genet, was quintessentially unpredictable.