THE JAY TREATY
There is no doubt that Washington in his Olympian quiet took a real
satisfaction in his election. On January 20, 1793, he wrote to
Governor Henry Lee of Virginia:
A mind must be insensible indeed not to be gratefully impressed by
so distinguished and honorable a testimony of public approbation
and confidence; and as I suffered my name to be contemplated on
this occasion, it is more than probable that I should, for a
moment, have experienced chagrin, if my reëlection had not been
by a pretty respectable vote. But to say I feel pleasure from the
prospect of commencing another term of duty would be a departure
from the truth,--for, however it might savor of affectation in
the opinion of the world (who, by the by, can only guess at my
sentiments, as it never has been troubled with them), my
particular and confidential friends well know, that it was after a
long and painful conflict in my own breast, that I was withheld,
(by considerations which are not necessary to be mentioned), from
requesting in time, that no vote might be thrown away upon me, it
being my fixed determination to return to the walks of private
life at the end of my term.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ford, XII, 256.]
Washington felt at his reëlection not merely egotistic pleasure for
a personal success, but the assurance that it involved a triumph of
measures which he held to be of far more importance than any success
of his own. The American Nation's new organism which he had set
in motion could now continue with the uniformity of its policy
undisturbed by dislocating checks and interruptions. Much, very much
depended upon the persons appointed to direct its progress, and
they depended upon the President who appointed them. In matters of
controversy or dispute, Washington upheld a perfectly impartial
attitude. But he did not believe that this should shackle his freedom
in appointing. According to him a man must profess right views in
order to be considered worthy of appointment. The result of this was
that Washington's appointees must be orthodox in his definition of
orthodoxy.
His first important act in his new administration was to issue a
Proclamation of Neutrality on April 22d. Although this document was
clear in intent and in purpose, and was evidently framed to keep
the United States from being involved in the war between France and
England, it gave offence to partisans of either country. They used it
as a weapon for attacking the Government, so that Washington found to
his sorrow that the partisan spites, which he had hoped would vanish
almost of their own accord, were become, on the contrary, even more
formidable and irritating. At this juncture the coming of Genêt and
his machinations added greatly to the embarrassment, and, having no
sense of decency, Genêt insinuated that the President had usurped the
powers of Congress and that he himself would seek redress by appealing
to the people over the President. I have already stated that, having
tolerated Genêt's insults and menaces as far as he deemed necessary,
Washington put forth his hand and crushed the spluttering Frenchman
like a bubble.
Persons who like to trace the sardonic element in history--the element
which seems to laugh derisively at the ineffectual efforts of us poor
mortals to establish ourselves and lead rational lives in the world as
it is--can find few better examples of it than these early years of
the American Republic. In the war which brought about the independence
of the American Colonies, England had been their enemy and France
their friend. Now their instinctive gratitude to France induced many,
perhaps a majority of them, to look with effusive favor on France,
although her character and purpose had quite changed and it was very
evident that for the Americans to side with France would be against
sound policy and common sense. Neutrality, the strictest neutrality,
between England and France was therefore the only rational course; but
the American partisans of these rivals did their utmost to render this
unachievable. Much of Washington's second term see-sawed between one
horn and the other of this dilemma. The sardonic aspect becomes more
glaring if we remember that the United States were a new-born nation
which ought to have been devoting itself to establishing viable
relations among its own population and not to have been dissipating
its strength taking sides with neighbors who lived four thousand miles
away.
In the autumn of 1793 Jefferson insisted upon resigning as Secretary
of State. Washington used all his persuasiveness to dissuade him, but
in vain. Jefferson saw the matter in its true light, and insisted.
Perhaps it at last occurred to him, as it must occur to every
dispassionate critic, that he could not go on forever acting as
an important member of an administration which pursued a policy
diametrically opposed to his own. After all, even the most adroit
politicians must sometimes sacrifice an offering to candor, not to say
honesty. At the end of the year he retired to the privacy of his home
at Monticello, where he remained in seclusion, not wholly innocuous,
until the end of 1796. Edmund Randolph succeeded him as Secretary of
State.
Whether it was owing to the departure of Jefferson from the Cabinet or
not, the fact remains that Washington concluded shortly thereafter
the most difficult diplomatic negotiation of his career. This was
the treaty with England, commonly called Jay's Treaty. The President
wished at first to appoint Hamilton, the ablest member of the Cabinet,
but, realizing that it would be unwise to deprive himself and his
administration of so necessary a supporter, he offered the post to
John Jay, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The quality, deemed
most desirable, which it was feared Jay might lack, was audacity. But
he had discretion, tact, and urbanity in full share, besides that
indefinable something which went with his being a great gentleman.
The President, writing to Gouverneur Morris, who had recently been
recalled as Minister to France, said:
My primary objects, to which I have steadily adhered, have been to
preserve the country in peace, if I can, and to be prepared for
war if I cannot, to effect the first, upon terms consistent with
the respect which is due to ourselves, and with honor, justice and
good faith to all the world.
Mr. Jay (and not Mr. Jefferson) as has been suggested to you,
embarked as envoy extraordinary for England about the middle of
May. If he succeed, well; if he does not, why, knowing the worst,
we must take measures accordingly.[1]
[Footnote 1: Ford, XII, 436. Mount Vernon, June 25, 1794.]
Jay reached London early in June, 1794, and labored over the treaty
with the British negotiators during the summer and autumn, started for
home before Christmas, and put the finished document in Washington's
hands in March. From the moment of his going enemies of all kinds
talked bitterly against him. The result must be a foregone conclusion,
since John Jay was regarded as the chief Anglo-maniac in America after
Hamilton. They therefore condemned in advance any treaty he might
agree to. But their criticism went deeper than mere hatred of him: it
sprang from an inveterate hatred of England, which dated from before
the Revolution. Since the Treaty of 1783 the English seemed to act
deliberately with studied truculence, as if the Americans would not
and could not retaliate. They were believed to be instigating the
Indians to continuous underhand war. They had reached that dangerous
stage of truculence, when they did not think it mattered whether
they spoke with common diplomatic reticence. Lord Dorchester, the
Governor-General of Canada, and to-day better known as Sir Guy
Carleton, his name before they made him a peer, addressed a gathering
of Indian chiefs at Quebec on the assumption that war would come in a
few weeks. President Washington kept steady watch of every symptom,
and he knew that it would not require a large spark to kindle a
conflagration. "My objects are, to prevent a war," he wrote to Edmund
Randolph, on April 15, 1794, "if justice can be obtained by fair and
strong representations (to be made by a special envoy) of the injuries
which this country has sustained from Great Britain in various ways,
to put it into a complete state of military defence, and to provide
_eventually_ for such measures as seem to be now pending in
Congress for execution, if negotiations in a reasonable time proves
unsuccessful."[1]
[Footnote 1: Ford, XIII, 4-9.]
The year 1794 marked the sleepless anxiety of the Silent President.
Day and night his thoughts were in London, with Jay. He said little;
he had few letters from Jay--it then required from eight to ten weeks
for the mail clippers to make a voyage across the Atlantic. Opposition
to the general idea of such a treaty as the mass of Republicans and
Anti-Federalists supposed Washington hoped to secure, grew week by
week. The Silent Man heard the cavil and said nothing.
At last early in 1795 Jay returned. His Treaty caused an uproar. The
hottest of his enemies found an easy explanation on the ground that
he was a traitor. Stanch Federalists suffered all varieties of
mortification. Washington himself entered into no discussion, but he
ruminated over those which came to him. I am not sure that he
invented the phrase "Either the Treaty, or war," which summed up the
alternatives which confronted Jay; but he used it with convincing
emphasis. When it came before the Senate, both sides had gathered
every available supporter, and the vote showed only a majority of
one in its favor. Still, it passed. But that did not satisfy its
pertinacious enemies. Neither were they restrained by the President's
proclamation. The Constitution assigned the duty of negotiating and
ratifying treaties to the President and Senate; but to the perfervid
Anti-Britishers the Constitution was no more than an old cobweb to be
brushed away at pleasure. The Jay Treaty could not be put into effect
without money for expenses; all bills involving money must pass the
House of Representatives; therefore, the House would actually control
the operation of the Treaty.
The House at this time was Republican by a marked majority. In March,
1796, the President laid the matter before the House. In a twinkling
the floodgates of speechifying burst open; the debates touched
every aspect of the question. James Madison, the wise supporter of
Washington and Hamilton in earlier days and the fellow worker on "The
Federalist," led the Democrats in their furious attacks. He was ably
seconded by Albert Gallatin, the high-minded young Swiss doctrinaire
from Geneva, a terrible man, in whose head principles became two-edged
weapons with Calvinistic precision and mercilessness. The Democrats
requested the President to let them see the correspondence in
reference to the Treaty during its preparation. This he wisely
declined to do. The Constitution did not recognize their right to make
the demand, and he foresaw that, if granted by him then, it might be
used as a harmful precedent.
For many weeks the controversy waxed hot in the House. Scores of
speakers hammered at every argument, yet only one speech eclipsed
all the rest, and remains now, after one hundred and thirty years, a
paragon. There are historians who assert that this was the greatest
speech delivered in Congress before Daniel Webster spoke there--an
implication which might lead irreverent critics to whisper that too
much reading may have dulled their discrimination. But fortunately not
only the text of the speech remains; we have also ample evidence of
the effect it produced on its hearers. Fisher Ames, a Representative
from Massachusetts, uttered it. He was a young lawyer, feeble in
health, but burning, after the manner of some consumptives, with
intellectual and moral fire which strangely belied his slender thread
of physical life. Ames pictured the horrors which would ensue if the
Treaty were rejected. Quite naturally he assumed the part of a man
on the verge of the grave, which increased the impressiveness of his
words. He spoke for three hours. The members of the House listened
with feverish attention; the crowds in the balconies could not smother
their emotion. One witness reports that Vice-President John Adams sat
in the gallery, the tears running down his cheeks, and that he said to
the friend beside him, "My God, how great he is!"
When Ames began, no doubt the Anti-British groups which swelled
the audience turned towards him an unsympathetic if not a scornful
attention--they had already taken a poll of their members, from which
it appeared that they could count on a majority of six to defeat the
Treaty. As he proceeded, however, and they observed how deeply he was
moving the audience, they may have had to keep up their courage by
reflecting that speeches in Congress rarely change votes. They are
intended to be read by the public outside, which is not under the
spell of the orator or the crowd. But when Fisher Ames, after what
must have seemed to them a whirlwind speech, closed with these solemn,
restrained words, they must have doubted whether their victory was
won:
Even the minutes I have spent in expostulating, have their value [he
said] because they protract the crisis and the short period in which
alone we may resolve to escape it. Yet I have, perhaps, as little
personal interest in the event as any one here. There is, I believe, no
member, who will not think his chance to be a witness of the
consequences greater than mine. If, however, the vote should pass to
reject--even I, slender and almost broken as my hold on life is, may
outlive the government and Constitution of my country.[1]
[Footnote 1: Elson, 359.]
The next day when the vote was taken it appeared that the Republicans,
instead of winning by a majority of six, had lost by three.
The person who really triumphed was George Washington, although Fisher
Ames, who won the immediate victory, deserved undying laurel. The
Treaty had all the objections that its critics brought against it
then, but it had one sterling virtue which outweighed them all. It not
only made peace between the United States and Great Britain the normal
condition, but it removed the likelihood that the wrangling over petty
matters might lead to war. For many years Washington had a fixed idea
that if the new country could live for twenty years without a conflict
with its chief neighbors, its future would be safe; for he felt that
at the end of that time it would have grown so strong by the natural
increase in population and by the strength that comes from developing
its resources, that it need not fear the attack of any people in the
world. The Jay Treaty helped towards this end; it prevented war for
sixteen years only; but even that delay was of great service to the
Americans and made them more ready to face it than they would have
been in 1795.