Arrogance of France--Americans and Louis XVI--Genet Defies Washington--
The People Support the President--War With the Indians--Defeat of St.
Clair--Indians State Their Case--General Wayne Defeats the Savages--Jay's
Treaty--Retirement of Washington--His Character--His Military Genius--
Washington as a Statesman--His Views on Slavery--His Figure in History.
The American nation had yet to win something besides independence,
something without which independence would be a burden and a mockery--the
respect of other nations; and in dealings between nations fear and
respect are closely akin. The English still occupied posts within
territory claimed by the United States, the Indians denied the right of
the Americans to lands beyond the Ohio, and republican France, having
beheaded her king, regarded the United States as a vassal on account of
the debt of gratitude which America owed to that king. War with England
had given place to jealous and intolerant rivalry, and friendship with
France had been succeeded by an arrogant assumption of patronage and
almost of suzerainty menacing to our national independence. Such were the
clouds that rose above the ocean horizon, while the western sky was
darkened by the shadow of Indian hostility as yet far from contemptible,
and directed by able chieftains, like Little Turtle, more than a match in
the field and in diplomacy for most of their white antagonists. These
were the circumstances which made it apparent to Americans that the
Federal Constitution had come not a day too soon, which welded the nation
together like an armor-plate of steel against foes on every hand, and
taught the need of union as it never could have been taught amid
surroundings of prosperity and peace.
The French Revolution acquitted the American people of all obligations to
France. It was not to the French people, but to the French king that
Americans owed the assistance without which the war for independence
might have ended in calamity, and with the exception of the Marquis de
Lafayette the Frenchmen who were conspicuous as servants of the king in
aiding the American cause, were foes, not friends of the Revolution. The
French nation, as such, had no more to do with casting the power of
France into the scales on the side of America than the people of Russia
had to do with their czar's championship of Bulgaria. Had it been in the
power of Americans to have saved Louis XVI. from the scaffold, they would
have shown cruel ingratitude not to have interfered in his behalf. It was
a most arrogant and baseless assumption on the part of the French
democracy to claim credit for what the Bourbon king had done in sending
his army and navy to these shores and supplying funds to equip and
maintain our troops. It is true that the men he sent here were Frenchmen,
and that the money came from the pockets of the people of France, but his
will directed the troops, and diverted to American use the funds of which
France was sorely in need. To Louis XVI., to his great minister,
Vergennes, to Rochambeau and Lafayette, American independence was due, so
far as it was due to any human source outside of America. Rochambeau and
Lafayette both narrowly escaped the fate of their king, and Vergennes
died before the Revolution which would have made him either a victim or
an emigré.[1] So much for the claims of the first French republic that
America was ungrateful in not arraying its forces against embattled
Europe in defence of the men who slew Louis XVI. for crimes which others
committed.
[1] During the reign of terror Rochambeau was arrested at his estate
near Vendome, conducted to Paris, thrown into the Conciergerie and
condemned to death. When the car came to convey a number of victims
to the guillotine, he was about to mount it, but the official in
charge seeing it full thrust him back. "Stand back, old marshal,"
cried he, roughly, "your turn will come by and by." A sudden change
in political affairs saved his life, and enabled him to return to
his home near Vendome. Rochambeau survived the Revolution, and
received the grand cross of the Legion of Honor and a marshal's
pension from the great Napoleon.--_From Irving's Life of
Washington._
It is probable that none save Washington could have guided the nation
through the perilous excitement aroused by the efforts of the French
minister Genet to involve the United States in war with England and other
powers. For a time many cool-headed and able men were carried away by the
popular enthusiasm in favor of France, but Genet presumed too far, when
he deliberately insulted and defied that national authority which the
nation itself had created, and the American people rallied at length,
irrespective of party, to the support of the President. France for the
time, abandoned her menacing attitude, only to resume it a few years
later, with results disastrous to herself.
* * *
However American in feeling, it is impossible not to have some sympathy
with the Indians in their struggle to retain their hunting-grounds beyond
the Ohio. Savages as they were, natural right was on their side, and many
of the whites opposed to them were more savage and inhuman than the worst
of the redskinned barbarians. The massacre of the Christian Indians at
Gnadenhutten by a party of frontiersmen was a deed not surpassed in
atrocity in the annals of any country, and far surpassing in deliberate
cruelty anything charged against the Indian race. It was a pity that the
actual perpetrators of that dark crime did not fall into the hands of
warlike Indians, instead of the unfortunate William Crawford, the leader
of a subsequent expedition, whose awful death by fire was the Indian
penalty for the Moravian massacre. The masterly ability of Little Turtle
proved for years a barrier against pioneer progress, and the defeat of
St. Clair and his army in 1791, left the frontiers at the mercy of the
red men. This defeat was one of the most terrible ever suffered at the
hands of the Indians, and aroused on the part of Washington a display of
temper which showed how deeply he felt the wound inflicted on his
country.
General Anthony Wayne took the place of St. Clair as commander, and
further hostilities were preceded by an attempt at negotiation. It must
be confessed by any impartial reader that the Indians stated their case
calmly, clearly and with impressive reasoning. They demanded that
Americans be removed from the northern side of the Ohio, and they averred
that treaties previously signed by them to the contrary effect had been
signed under misapprehension. "Brothers," said the Indians, "you have
talked to as about concessions. It appears strange that you should expect
any from us, who have only been defending our just rights against your
invasions. We want peace. Restore to us our country, and we shall be
enemies no longer." "Your answer." said the American commissioners,
"amounts to a declaration that you will agree to no other boundary than
the Ohio. The negotiation is, therefore, at an end." This decision was
arrived at in August, 1793. Meantime the United States escaped the danger
which would have been brought upon them had Genet succeeded in his
schemes, and involved America in war with England and Spain, both of
which countries were prepared to assist the Indians, had the Americans
taken the side of France. Active hostilities were not resumed in the
Northwest, however, until the summer of 1794, when General Wayne, at the
head of his troops, again attempted to secure a peaceful settlement of
the Indian troubles, and failing in that attacked and defeated the
Indians near the rapids of the Maumee, a few miles from the Miam. Fort,
which the English had established within the American territory. Little
Turtle, who led the Indians, had been in favor of peace, but was
overborne by more impetuous warriors. Peace soon followed, and the
settlement of the Northwest proceeded for a time without interruption.
Those who regard the Indians as a lazy and thriftless race should read
what General Wayne says about them: "The very extensive and highly
cultivated fields and gardens show the work of many hands. The margins of
these beautiful rivers appear like a continued village for a number of
miles. Nor have I ever before beheld such immense fields of corn in any
part of America, from Canada to Florida."
* * *
Jay's Treaty, so-called from John Jay, who acted on behalf of the United
States in negotiating the measure, secured a temporary and unsatisfactory
adjustment of the differences between the United States and Great
Britain. The fact that Washington was willing to approve the treaty,
although dissatisfied with it, is its sufficient vindication, and the
agreement on the part of England to surrender the western posts was no
small advantage for the United States, especially in the impression which
it produced on the Indians of the decline of British and the growth of
American power. The worst features of the treaty were that it restricted
the commerce of the United States, so far as concerned molasses, sugar,
coffee, cocoa and cotton, the last-mentioned article being already a
product of the United States, and that it failed to protect the seamen on
American vessels against seizure and impressment by the British. It was,
taken as a whole, a humiliating compact, and in its commercial provisions
an abandonment of the principle which inspired the Boston Tea Party, and
for which Americans had fought in the war of independence. The mutual
freedom of intercourse and internal trading, including common navigation
of the Mississippi, was advantageous only to Great Britain, which
country, as subsequent events showed, had not given up hope of
reconquering the trans-Ohio region, and carrying British dominion from
the Lakes to Mobile.
The United States had to do something, however, to show that the American
Republic was not either secretly or openly an ally of the French Republic
against the remainder of Europe, and while the Jay Treaty was not what
Washington and the American people desired, it was all that England would
agree to. As a _modus vivendi_ with our only dangerous neighbor it enabled
the American people to devote to domestic development the energies which
would otherwise have been expended in war, and to grasp the neutral
carrying trade upon which war would have placed an embargo. England would
doubtless have been gratified with any plausible excuse that would have
enabled her to destroy American commerce, and to be without a rival on the
Atlantic. Jay's Treaty prevented this, and England had to leave to her
friends, the Barbary pirates, the work of preying on the American carrying
trade in European waters.[2] These depredations were already so serious in
1794 that a bill was introduced in Congress, passed after some opposition,
and cordially approved by President Washington, providing for a force of
six frigates to protect American commerce from the corsairs. These
frigates did splendid service later on, not only against the pirates, but
also against the French and British.
[2] As early as 1784 Lord Sheffield said in Parliament: "It is not
probable that the American States will have a very free trade in the
Mediterranean. It will not be to the interest of any of the great
maritime powers to protect them from the Barbary States. If they
know their interests they will not encourage American carriers."
* * *
The scenes which attended the close of Washington's public career were
some compensation to that ever-illustrious man for the wounds inflicted
during his administration by reckless and venomous partisanship. No
President of the United States was ever more fiercely and bitterly
assailed than Washington. His enemies even went so far as to doom him in
caricature to the fate of Louis XVI. He was accused of monarchical
designs, and had to confront treachery in his Cabinet and scurrilous
slanders in the public press. Yet throughout all he bore himself with
patience, and never swerved from the course which he deemed best for the
public weal. It should not be supposed that he was indifferent to the
arrows of malice and of falsehood. On the contrary, he was extremely
sensitive to them; but he never permitted himself, in public at least, to
be carried away by his feelings, and no matter how strong his sentiments
on any subject, his sense of justice was always supreme. In his agony
upon the news of St. Clair's defeat, he denounced that general as worse
than a murderer for having suffered his army to be taken by surprise; but
when the burst of passion was over he added: "General St. Clair shall
have justice. I will receive him without displeasure; I will hear him
without prejudice." And Washington kept his word.
Far abler pens than mine have dealt with the character of the Father of
our Republic, but a few plain and original expressions on a subject never
wearisome to Americans may not be out of place. Washington's chief
characteristics were fortitude, the sense of justice of which I have
spoken, and the ability to grasp conditions and seize upon opportunities.
He was a thoroughly practical man, a strategist by instinct, fearless but
not rash, possessing an impetuous temper kept within careful control, and
unleashed only when, as at the battle of Monmouth, there was prudence in
its vehemence. He was an excellent judge of men. The officers who owed
their advancement to Washington seldom disappointed and often exceeded
expectations. He was above the petty jealousy, so conspicuous in our late
civil war, that would permit another general to be defeated in order to
shine by contrast. He was devoted to the cause more than to winning
personal reputation, and the effect of his unselfishness was that the
cause triumphed with his name fixed in history as that of its leader and
champion.
It is difficult to compare the military achievements of Washington with
those of Old World commanders. Marlborough, Wellington and Napoleon had
troops thoroughly organized, under complete military control, and held to
service by iron rules which made the general always sure that his
military machine would be ready for use, barring the chances of war.
Washington's forces were largely composed of militia, enlisted for short
periods, many of them induced to serve by bounties, and anxious to go
home and attend to their farms.[3] The soldiers, too, were shamefully
neglected by Congress and by their States, and it seems wonderful that
Washington should have kept them together as he did, or maintained an
army at all. In this respect Washington showed genius as a military
manager without parallel in history. It should not be forgotten, also,
that to Washington is largely due credit for victories at which he was
not present. His was the master mind which scanned the entire field,
directed all operations and made the triumphs of others possible. His
closing campaign, which ended in the surrender of Cornwallis, exhibited
military talent of the highest order. In conception and execution it was
equal to any of Napoleon's campaigns. It embraced an extent of territory,
from New York to North Carolina inclusive, as extensive as the present
German empire, and every movement was that of a master hand on the
chess-board of war. Success without the French would have been
impossible, without Greene's admirable generalship it might have been
impossible, but Washington conceived and carried through to
accomplishment the whole great scheme which resulted in a final and
crashing blow to British hopes of subjugating America.[4]
[3] Mr. William L. Stone, the historical writer, recently published
the diary of a relative who served a few months in the Revolution,
and who received ten sheep for enlisting. The soldier in question
appears to have been in the habit of going home whenever he felt
like it to cultivate his crops.
Governor Clinton said of the militia: "They come in the morning and
return in the evening, and I never know when I have them, or what my
strength is."--_Letter to the New York Council of Safety._
[4] M. Barbé Marbois, who was Secretary of the French Legation in
the United States during the Revolution, says of Washington: "The
sound judgment of Washington, his steadiness and ability, had long
since elevated him above all his rivals and far beyond the reach of
envy. His enemies still labored, however, to fasten upon him, as a
general, the reproach of mediocrity. It is true that the military
career of this great man is not marked by any of those achievements
which seem prodigious, and of which the splendor dazzles and
astonishes the universe, but sublime virtues unsullied with the
least stain are a species of prodigy. His conduct throughout the
whole course of the war invariably attracted and deserved the
veneration and confidence of his fellow-citizens. The good of his
country was the sole end of his exertions, never personal glory. In
war and in peace, Washington is in my eyes the most perfect model
that can be offered to those who would devote themselves to the
service of their country and assert the cause of liberty."
As a statesman Washington merited distinction fully equal to that gained
in his military career. To him the United States were always a nation,
and only as a nation could they exist. His influence was as potent in
forming the Union as his military genius had been in achieving
independence, and the veneration with which he was regarded abroad
secured for the new nation a degree of respect in foreign cabinets, which
was almost vital to its existence, and which no other American could have
commanded. At home, too, he rose superior to the discord of ambitious men
and of rival factions, and those who, like Edmund Randolph, attempted to
belittle him, only called attention thereby to their own comparative
unworthiness and insignificance, and were glad in later years to seek
oblivion for their abortive folly.
In his domestic life Washington was one of the best of husbands, as he
was blessed with one of the best of wives. He held slaves, and I have
never been of those who claim that he regarded slavery with serious
disapproval. He was too conscientious a man to have retained a single
slave in his possession or under his control if his conscience did not
approve the relation. That Washington favored the gradual abolition of
slavery his letters leave no doubt, and especially those to John P.
Mercer and Lawrence Lewis, quoted by Washington Irving, but in the
letterbook of the great Rhode Island merchant, Moses Brown, which I was
allowed, some years ago, to examine, I read a letter from General
Washington which, as I remember, indicated Washington's anti-slavery
opinions to be more abstract than active, and conveyed distinctly the
impression that he saw nothing wrong whatever in the holding of human
chattels. Washington's views on slavery were those of a Southern planter
of the most enlightened class, and the provisions which he made in his
will for the emancipation of his slaves on the decease of his wife, and
for the care of those who might be unable to support themselves, showed
that no color-line narrowed his sense of justice and of humanity.
The fame of Washington has not lost in brilliancy since he passed from
the world in which he acted such a providential part. Like the Phidian
Zeus his proportions are all the more majestic for the distance which
rounds over any venial defect. His example is as valuable to the American
Republic of the present as his life-work was to the America of a century
ago. As water never rises above its source, so a great nation should have
a great founder, and the figure of Washington is sublime enough to be the
oriflamme of a people's empire bounded only by the oceans which wash the
land that he loved.