ASSEMBLING OF THE THIRD CONGRESS--ITS CHARACTER--RECOMMENDATIONS IN
WASHINGTON'S ANNUAL MESSAGE--HIS SPECIAL MESSAGE CONCERNING
RELATIONS WITH EUROPE--HIS NOTICE OF GENET--OPINIONS OF THE CABINET
CONCERNING THE MESSAGE--WASHINGTON SUPPORTED BY
CONGRESS--JEFFERSON'S REPORT ON COMMERCIAL RELATIONS--HIS PARTING
MISSILE CAST AT GENET--JEFFERSON'S RETIREMENT FROM
OFFICE--WASHINGTON'S CONFIDENCE IN HIM--CORRESPONDENCE--JEFFERSON AT
HOME--MADISON'S RESOLUTIONS BASED ON JEFFERSON'S REPORT.
The third Congress assembled at Philadelphia on the second of December.
In the senate, many of the leading members of former sessions remained,
having their places either by holding over or by re-election. Many of
the old members of the house of representatives had also been re-chosen,
and yet there were a great many changes in that body. The elements of
party strife were active among them all, and it was evident to every man
that a great struggle was impending. The aggressions of the British and
the intrigues of Genet continued to inflame the zeal of the republicans,
and they carried their partiality to France to a degree of absolute
fanaticism. To many minds, open war between England and the United
States appeared inevitable.
Washington's annual message, delivered at the opening of Congress, was
calculated to still the turbulent waves of faction, had reason and
judgment, and not passion and fanaticism, swayed the opinions of men. He
expressed his sense of the continued confidence of the people in
re-electing him to the high office of chief-magistrate of the nation;
and then, in firm, explicit, and dignified terms, spoke of existing
public affairs, especially the measures he had taken, in consequence of
the war in Europe, to preserve peace at home and to protect the rights
and interests of the United States. He pressed upon Congress the
necessity of placing the country in a condition of complete defence, and
of exacting from other governments the fulfilment of their duties toward
his own.
"The United States ought not," he said, "to indulge a persuasion that,
contrary to the order of human events, they will for ever keep at a
distance those painful appeals to arms with which the history of every
other nation abounds. There is a rank due to the United States among
nations which will be withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the
reputation of 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 rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at
all times ready for war." With such suggestions, he urged them to adopt
measures for increasing the amount of arms and ammunition in the
arsenals, and to improve the militia establishment. He assured them that
every reasonable effort had been made to adjust the causes of dissention
with the Indians north of the Ohio, and yet war with them continued. He
alluded to the political connection of the United States with Europe,
and promised to give them, in a subsequent communication, a statement of
occurrences which related to it, that had passed under the knowledge of
the executive.
The president urged the house of representatives to adopt measures for
the "regular redemption and discharge of the public debt," as a matter
of the first importance; and announced the necessity of an augmentation
of the public revenue to meet all proper demands upon the treasury. He
concluded by saying, "Permit me to bring to your remembrance the
magnitude of your task. Without an unprejudiced coolness, the welfare of
the government may be hazarded; without harmony, as far as consists with
freedom of sentiment, its dignity may be lost. But, as the legislative
proceedings of the United States will never, I trust, be reproached for
the want of temper or of candor, so shall not the public happiness
languish for the want of my strenuous and warmest co-operation."
On the fifth of December, according to promise, Washington laid before
Congress the documents relating, not only to Genet and his mission, but
to negotiations with England and other European governments. In his
message accompanying these documents, after alluding to the general
feeling of friendship for the United States exhibited by the
representative and executive bodies of France, the president spoke as
follows of the insolent Genet:--
"It is with extreme concern I have to inform you, that the proceedings
of the person whom they have unfortunately appointed their minister
plenipotentiary here have breathed nothing of the friendly spirit of the
nation which sent him. Their tendency, on the contrary, has been to
involve us in war abroad, and discord and anarchy at home. So far as his
acts, or those of his agents, have threatened our immediate commitment
in the war, or flagrant insult to the authority of the laws, their
effect has been counteracted by the ordinary cognizance of the laws, and
by an exertion of the powers confided to me. Where their danger was not
imminent, they have been borne with from sentiments of regard to his
nation, from a sense of their friendship toward us, from a conviction
that they would not suffer us to long remain exposed to the action of a
person who has so little respected our mutual dispositions, and from a
reliance on the firmness of my fellow-citizens in their principles of
peace and order." He then alluded to the spoliations which had been
committed upon the commerce of the United States by the cruisers of the
belligerent powers, and the restrictions upon American commerce
attempted to be enforced by the commanders of British vessels pursuant
to instructions of their government. He also called attention to the
inexecution of the treaty of 1783, and the relations of the United
States and Spain.
"The message," says Hildreth, "as originally drafted by Jefferson,
contained a contrast between the conduct of France and England,
especially in relation to commercial facilities, highly favorable to the
former. This had been objected to by Hamilton, who considered the
disposition of the people toward France a serious calamity, and that the
executive ought not, by echoing her praises, to nourish that
disposition. In his opinion, the balance of commercial favors was
decidedly with the British; the commercial offers made by France were
the offspring of the moment, growing out of circumstances that could not
last. To evade Hamilton's objections, Jefferson consented to some
modifications of the message. Hamilton then insisted that the papers
relating to the non-execution of the treaty of peace, and to the
stopping of the corn-ships, ought not to be communicated, unless in a
secret message, as the matters therein discussed were still unsettled,
and the tendency of the communication was to inflame the public mind
against Great Britain. Jefferson was a good deal alarmed at this
threatened suppression of his diplomatic labors; but Washington decided
that all the papers should be communicated without any restrictions of
secrecy, even those respecting the corn-ships, which all the cabinet
except Jefferson had advised to withhold."
In a letter to his wife, written on the nineteenth of December, John
Adams, referring to the sentence in Washington's special message in
relation to the French minister, said, "The president has considered the
conduct of Genet very nearly in the same light with Columbus, and has
given him a bolt of thunder. We shall see how this is supported by both
houses. We shall soon see whether we have any government or not in this
country." Doubting whether Washington would be sustained by Congress,
Adams continued: "But, although he stands at present as high in the
admiration and confidence of the people as ever he did, I expect he will
find many bitter and desperate enemies arise in consequence of his just
judgment against Genet."
In this, Adams was mistaken. The house, where the opposition was most
rampant, determined, and unscrupulous, responded most affectionately to
the president's message, and tacitly rebuked the demagogues for their
personal abuse of Washington. They expressed their satisfaction at his
re-election, and their confidence in the purity and patriotism of his
motives, in all his acts, especially in again consenting, at the call of
his country, to fill the presidential chair. "It is to virtues which
have commanded long and universal reverence, and services from which
have flowed great and lasting benefits, that the tribute of praise may
be paid, without the reproach of flattery; and it is from the same
sources that the fairest anticipations may be derived in favor of the
public happiness."
Both houses, likewise, in the face of the popular excitement in favor of
France, approved of the president's course in regard to that country and
its representative; and while the lower house was guarded in its terms
of approval of the proclamation of neutrality that had been so loudly
condemned by the partisan press, the senate pronounced it "a measure
well-timed and wise, manifesting a watchful solicitude for the welfare
of the nation and calculated to promote it."
Jefferson's official connection with Washington was now drawing to a
close. He had consented to remain in the cabinet until the end of the
current year. With the completion and submission of some able state
papers he finished his career as secretary of state. One of them was an
elaborate report called for by a resolution of Congress adopted in
February, 1791, on the state of trade of the United States with
different countries; the nature and extent of exports and imports, and
the amount of tonnage of American shipping. It also specified the
various restrictions and prohibitions by which American commerce was
embarrassed and greatly injured, and recommended the adoption of
discriminating duties, as against Great Britain, to compel her to put
the United States on a more equal footing, she having thus far
persistently declined to enter into any treaty stipulations on the
subject.
Jefferson's last official act was the administration of a deserved
rebuke to Genet. That meddling functionary had sent to him translations
of the instructions given him by the executive council of France,
desiring the president to lay them officially before both houses of
Congress, and proposing to transmit, from time to time, other papers to
be laid before them in like manner. "I have it in charge to observe,"
said Jefferson to Genet in a letter on the thirty-first of December,
"that your functions as the minister of a foreign nation here are
confined to the transactions of the affairs of your nation with the
executive of the United States; that the communications which are to
pass between the executive and legislative branches can not be a
subject for your interference; and that the president must be left to
judge for himself what matters his duty, or the public good, may require
him to propose to the deliberations of Congress. I have, therefore, the
honor of returning you the copies sent for distribution, and of being,
with great respect, sir, your most obedient and most humble servant."
Even this did not keep Genet quiet.
Throughout all the storm that had agitated his cabinet, and the
hostility of Jefferson and his party to the measures of the
administration, Washington never withheld from the secretary of state
his confidence in his wisdom and patriotism; and the latter left office
with the happy consciousness that he carried with him into retirement
the friendship of one, of whom he said in after years, "His integrity
was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no
motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being
able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the word, a
wise, and good, and great man"[62]
On the last day of the year, Mr. Jefferson offered his resignation in
the following letter to the president: "Having had the honor of
communicating to you, in my letter of the last of July, my purpose of
retiring from the office of secretary of state at the end of the month
of September, you were pleased, for particular reasons, to wish its
postponement to the close of the year. That time being now arrived, and
my propensities to retirement daily more and more irresistible, I now
take the liberty of resigning the office into your hands. Be pleased to
accept with it my sincere thanks for all the indulgences which you have
been so good as to exercise toward me in the discharge of its duties.
Conscious that my need of them have been great, I have still ever found
them greater, without any other claim on my part than a firm pursuit of
what has appeared to me to be right, and a thorough disdain of all means
which were not as open and honorable as their object was pure. I carry
into my retirement a lively sense of your goodness, and shall continue
gratefully to remember it.
"With very sincere prayers for your life, health, and tranquillity, I
pray you to accept the homage of great and constant respect and
attachment."
To this Washington replied the next day as follows: "I yesterday
received, with sincere regret, your resignation of the office of
secretary of state. Since it has been impossible to prevail upon you to
forego any longer the indulgence of your desire for private life, the
event, however anxious I am to avert it, must be submitted to.
"But I can not suffer you to leave your station without assuring you
that the opinion which I had formed of your integrity and talents, and
which dictated your original nomination, has been confirmed by the
fullest experience, and that both have been eminently displayed in the
discharge of your duty.
"Let a conviction of my most earnest prayers for your happiness
accompany you in your retirement; and while I accept, with the warmest
thanks, your solicitude for my welfare, I beg you to believe that I
always am, dear sir, &c."
Edmund Randolph, the attorney-general, took Jefferson's place in the
cabinet, and his own was filled by William Bradford, of Pennsylvania.
Mr. Jefferson left the seat of government as soon as possible after
withdrawing from public life; and a fortnight after his resignation he
arrived at Monticello, his beautiful home in the interior of Virginia,
in full view of the Blue Ridge along a continuous line of almost sixty
miles. He was then fifty years of age. His whole family, with all his
servants, were at his home to receive him; and so delightful was this,
his first experience of private life for many long years, that he
resolved to abandon himself to it entirely.
He boasted, almost a month after he left Philadelphia, that he had not
seen a newspaper since his flight from the cares of government, and he
declared that he thought of never taking one again. "I think it is
Montaigne," he wrote to Edmund Randolph on the third of February, "who
has said that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest
his head. I am sure it is true, as to anything political, and shall
endeavor to estrange myself to everything of that character." But his
hatred of Hamilton, and his persistence in regarding the political
friends of that gentleman as necessarily corrupt, would not allow party
feud to sleep in his mind, and he added, in the next sentence, "I
indulge myself on one political topic only; that is, in declaring to my
countrymen the shameless corruption of a portion of the representatives
to the first and second Congress, and their implicit devotion to the
treasury."
Meanwhile, the report of Jefferson on commercial affairs was eliciting
warm debates in Congress. In that report he had suggested two methods
for modifying or removing commercial restrictions: first, by amicable
arrangements with foreign powers; and, secondly, by counteracting acts
of the legislature. With the design, as we have seen, of distressing
France by cutting off her supplies, two orders in council were issued by
the British government, one in June and the other in November, which
bore heavily upon the commercial prosperity of the United States. By the
first order, British cruisers were instructed to stop all ships laden
with corn, flour, or meal (corn-ships already alluded to), bound to any
French port, and send them to any convenient port, home or continental,
where the cargoes might be purchased in behalf of the British
government. By the second, British ships-of-war and privateers were
required to detain all vessels laden with goods produced in any colony
belonging to France, or with provisions for any such colony, and bring
them to adjudication before British courts of admiralty. These were such
flagrant outrages upon the rights of neutrals, that the United States
government strongly remonstrated against them as unjust in principle and
injurious in their practical effects. It was to these orders in council
and their effects that the president pointed in his annual message, when
urging the necessity of placing the country in a state of defense, and
in a position to assert its just rights.[63]
Mr. Jefferson's report gave rise to a series of resolutions offered, by
Mr. Madison on the third of January, 1794, the leading idea of which was
that of opposing commercial resistance to commercial injury, and to
enforce a perfect equality by retaliating impositions on the assumption
that the commercial system of Great Britain was hostile to that of the
United States. This scheme embodied the idea of a proposition made by
Madison in the first Congress. His resolutions now took wider range,
however, than did his proposition then. It was now proposed to impose
restrictions and additional duties on the manufactures and navigation of
nations which had no commercial treaties with the United States, and a
reduction of duties on the tonnage of vessels belonging to nations with
which such treaties existed.
FOOTNOTES:
[62] Letter to Doctor Walter Jones, January 2, 1814.
[63] In allusion to the annual and special messages of Washington at
this time, the eminent Charles James Fox made the following remarks in
the British parliament on the thirty-first of January, 1794:--
"And here, sir, I can not help alluding to the president of the
United States, General Washington, a character whose conduct has
been so different from that which has been pursued by ministers of
this country. How infinitely wiser must appear the spirit and
principles manifested in his late addresses to Congress than the
policy of modern European courts! Illustrious man! deriving honor
less from the splendor of his situation than from the dignity of
his mind; before whom all borrowed greatness sinks into
insignificance, and all the potentates of Europe (excepting the
members of our own royal family) become little and contemptible! He
has had no occasion to have recourse to any tricks of policy or
arts of alarm; his authority has been sufficiently supported by the
same means by which it was acquired, and his conduct has uniformly
been characterized by wisdom, moderation, and firmness. Feeling
gratitude to France for the assistance received from her in that
great contest which secured the independence of America, he did not
choose to give up the system of neutrality. Having once laid down
that line of conduct, which both gratitude and policy pointed out
as most proper to be pursued, not all the insults and provocations
of the French minister, Genet, could turn him from his purpose.
Intrusted with the welfare of a great people, he did not allow the
misconduct of another with respect to himself, for one moment, to
withdraw his attention from their interest. He had no fear of the
Jacobins; he felt no alarm for their principles, and considered no
precaution as necessary in order to stop their progress.
"The people over whom he presided he knew to be acquainted with
their rights and their duties. He trusted to their own good sense
to defeat the effect of those arts which might be employed to
inflame or mislead their minds; and was sensible that a government
could be in no danger while it retained the attachment and
confidence of its subjects; attachment, in this instance, not
blindly adopted--confidence not implicitly given, but arising from
the conviction of its excellence, and the experience of its
blessings. I can not, indeed, help admiring the wisdom and fortune
of this great man. By the phrase 'fortune,' I mean not in the
smallest degree to derogate from his merit. But, notwithstanding
his extraordinary talent and exalted integrity, it must be
considered as singularly fortunate that he should have experienced
a lot which so seldom falls to the portion of humanity, and have
passed through such a variety of scenes without stain and reproach.
It must indeed create astonishment, that, placed in circumstances
so critical, and filling for a series of years a station so
conspicuous, his character should never once have been called in
question; that he should in no one instance have been accused
either of improper insolence or of mean submission in his
transactions with foreign nations. For him it has been reserved to
run the race of glory, without experiencing the smallest
interruption to the brilliancy of his career."