George Washington Part 10

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 dispa.s.sionate 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 doc.u.ment 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 a.s.sumption 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sed. But that did not satisfy its pertinacious enemies. Neither were they restrained by the President's proclamation. The Const.i.tution a.s.signed the duty of negotiating and ratifying treaties to the President and Senate; but to the perfervid Anti-Britishers the Const.i.tution 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 pa.s.s 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 Const.i.tution 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 a.s.sert 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 Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 a.s.sumed 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.s to reject--even I, slender and almost broken as my hold on life is, may outlive the government and Const.i.tution 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.

CHAPTER XI

WASHINGTON RETIRES FROM PUBLIC LIFE

The Treaty with England had scarely been put in operation before the Treaty with France, of which Washington also felt the importance, came to the front. Monroe was not an aggressive agent. Perhaps very few civilized Americans could have filled that position to the satisfaction of his American countrymen. They wished the French to acknowledge and explain various acts which they qualified as outrages, whereas the French regarded as glories what they called grievances.

The men of the Directory which now ruled France did not profess the atrocious methods of the Terrorists, but they could not afford in treating with a foreigner to disavow the Terrorists. In the summer of '96, Washington, being dissatisfied with Monroe's results, recalled him, and sent in his place Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, to whom President Adams afterwards added John Marshall and Elbridge Gerry, forming a Commission of three. Some of the President's critics have regarded his treatment of Monroe as unfair, and they imply that it was inspired by partisanship. He had always been an undisguised Federalist, whereas Monroe, during the past year or more, had followed Jefferson and become an unswerving Democrat. The publication here of a copy of Monroe's letter to the French Committee of Public Safety caused a sensation; for he had a.s.serted that he was not instructed to ask for the repeal of the French decrees by which the spoliation of American commerce had been practised, and he added that if the decrees benefited France, the United States would submit not only with patience but with pleasure. What wonder that Washington, in reading this letter and taking in the full enormity of Monroe's words, should have allowed himself the exclamation, "Extraordinary!" What wonder that in due course of time he recalled Monroe from Paris and replaced him with a man whom he could trust!

The settlement of affairs with France did not come until after Washington ceased to be President. I will, therefore, say no more about it, except to refer to the outrageous conduct of the French, who hurried two of the Commissioners out of France, and, apparently at the instigation of Talleyrand, declared that they must pay a great deal of money before they made any arrangement, to which Charles Pinckney made the famous rejoinder, "Millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute." The negotiations became so stormy that war seemed imminent.

Congress authorized President Adams to enlist ten thousand men to be put into the field in case of need, and he wrote to Washington: "We must have your name, if you will in any case permit us to use it.

There will be more efficacy in it than in many an army." McHenry, the Secretary of War, wrote: "You see how the storm thickens, and that our vessel will soon require its ancient pilot. Will you--may we flatter ourselves, that in a crisis so awful and important, you will accept the command of all our armies? I hope you will, because you alone can unite all hearts and all hands, if it is possible that they can be united."[1]

[Footnote 1: Irving, V, 290.]

To President Adams Washington replied on July 4, 1799: "As my whole life has been dedicated to my country in one shape or another, for the poor remains of it, it is not an object to contend for ease and quiet, when all that is valuable is at stake, further than to be satisfied that the sacrifice I should make of these, is acceptable and desired by my country."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Ibid_., 291.]

Congress voted to restore for Washington the rank of Commander-in-Chief, and he agreed with the Secretary of War that the three Major-Generals should be Alexander Hamilton, Inspector-General; Charles C. Pinckney, who was still in Europe; and Henry Knox. But a change came over the pa.s.sions of France; Napoleon Bonaparte, the new despot who had taken control of that hysterical republic for himself, was now aspiring to something higher and larger than the humiliation of the United States and his menace in that direction ceased.

We need to note two or three events before Washington's term ended because they were thoroughly characteristic. First of these was the Whiskey Insurrection in western Pennsylvania. The inhabitants first grew surly, then broke out in insurrection on account of the Excise Law. They found it cheaper to convert their corn and grain into whiskey, which could be more easily transported, but the Government insisted that the Excise Law, being a law, should be obeyed. The malcontents held a great ma.s.s meeting on Braddock's Field, denounced the law and declared that they would not obey it. Washington issued a proclamation calling upon the people to resume their peaceable life.

He called also on the Governors of Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia for troops, which they furnished. His right-hand lieutenant was Alexander Hamilton, who felt quite as keenly as he did himself the importance of putting down such an insurrection.

Washington knew that if any body of the people were allowed unpunished to rise and disobey any law which pinched or irritated them, all law and order would very soon go by the board. His action was one of the great examples in government which he set the people of the United States. He showed that we must never parley or haggle with sedition, treason, or lawlessness, but must strike a blow that cannot be parried, and at once. The Whiskey Insurrectionists may have imagined that they were too remote to be reached in their western wilderness, but he taught them a most salutary lesson that, as they were in the Union, the power of the Union could and would reach them.

One of the matters which Washington could not have foreseen was the outrageous abuse of the press, which surpa.s.sed in virulence and indecency anything hitherto known in the United States. At first the journalistic thugs took care not to vilify Washington personally, but, as they became more outrageous, they spared neither him nor his family. Freneau, Bache, and Giles were among the most malignant of these infamous men; and most suspicious is it that two of them at least were proteges of Thomas Jefferson. Once, when the attack was particularly atrocious, and the average citizen might well be excused if he believed that Jefferson wrote it, Jefferson, unmindful of the full bearing of the French proverb, _Qui s'excuse s'accuse_, wrote to Washington exculpating himself and protesting that he was not the author of that particular attack, and added that he had never written any article of that kind for the press. Many years later the editor of that newspaper, one of the most shameless of the malignants, calmly reported in a batch of reminiscences that Jefferson did contribute many of the most flagrant articles. Senator Lodge, in commenting on this affair, caustically remarks: "Strict veracity was not the strongest characteristic of either Freneau or Jefferson, and it is really of but little consequence whether Freneau was lying in his old age or in the prime of life."[1]

[Footnote 1: Lodge, II, 223.]

An unbia.s.sed searcher after truth to-day will find that the circ.u.mstantial evidence runs very strongly against Jefferson. He brought Freneau over from New York to Philadelphia, he knew the sort of work that Freneau would and could do, he gave him an office in the State Department, he probably discussed the topics which the "National Gazette" was to take up, and he probably read the proof of the articles which that paper was to publish. In his animosities the cloak of charity neither became him nor fitted him.

Several years later, when Bache's paper, the "Aurora," printed some material which Washington's enemies hoped would damage him, Jefferson again took alarm and wrote to Washington to free himself from blame.

To him, the magnanimous President replied in part:

If I had entertained any suspicions before, that the queries, which have been published in Bache's paper, proceeded from you, the a.s.surances you have given of the contrary would have removed them; but the truth is, I harbored none. I am at no loss to _conjecture_ from what source they flowed, through what channel they were conveyed, and for what purpose they and similar publications appear. They were known to be in the hands of Mr.

Parker in the early part of the last session of Congress. They were shown about by Mr. Giles during the session, and they made their public exhibition about the close of it.

Perceiving and probably hearing, that no abuse in the gazettes would induce me to take notice of anonymous publications against me, those, who were disposed to do me _such friendly offices_, have embraced without restraint every opportunity to weaken the confidence of the people; and, by having the whole game in their hands, they have scrupled not to publish things that do not, as well as those which do exist, and to mutilate the latter, so as to make them subserve the purposes which they have in view.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ford, XIII, 229.]

Washington's opinion of the scurrilous crusade against him, he expressed in the following letter to Henry Lee:

But in what will this abuse terminate? For the result, as it respects myself, I care not; for I have a consolation within that no earthly efforts can deprive me of, and that is, that neither ambition nor interested motives have influenced my conduct. The arrows of malevolence, therefore, however barbed and well pointed, never can reach the most vulnerable part of me; though, whilst I am up as a mark, they will be continually aimed. The publications in Freneau's and Bache's papers are outrages in that style in proportion as their pieces are treated with contempt and are pa.s.sed by in silence by those at whom they are aimed. The tendency of them, however, is too obvious to be mistaken by men of cool and dispa.s.sionate minds, and, in my opinion, ought to alarm them, because it is difficult to prescribe bounds to the effect.[1]

[Footnote 1: Lodge, II, 236.]

By his refusal to take notice of these indecencies, Washington set a high example. In other countries, in France and England, for example, the victims of such abuse resorted to duels with their abusers: a very foolish and inadequate practice, since it happened as often as not that the aggrieved person was killed. In taking no notice of the calumnies, therefore, Washington prevented the President of the United States from being drawn into an unseemly duel. We cannot fail to recognize also that Washington was very sensitive to the maintenance of freedom of speech. He seems to have acted on the belief that it was better that occasionally license should degenerate into abuse than that liberty should be suppressed. He was the President of the first government in the world which did not control the utterances of its people. Perhaps he may have supposed that their patriotism would restrain them from excesses, and there can be no doubt that the insane gibes of the Freneaus and the Baches gave him much pain because they proved that those scorpions were not up to the level which the new Nation offered them.

As the time for the conclusion of Washington's second term drew near, he left no doubt as to his intentions. Though some of his best friends urged him to stand for reelection, he firmly declined. He felt that he had done enough for his country in sacrificing the last eight years to it. He had seen it through its formative period, and had, he thought, steered it into clear, quiet water, so that there was no threatening danger to demand his continuance at the helm. Many persons thought that he was more than glad to be relieved of the increasing abuse of the scurrilous editors. No doubt he was, but we can hardly agree that merely for the sake of that relief he would abandon his Presidential post. But does it not seem more likely that his unwillingness to convert the Presidency into a life office, and so to give the critics of the American experiment a valid cause for opposition, led him to establish the precedent that two terms were enough? More than once in the century and a quarter since he retired in 1797, over-ambitious Presidents have schemed to win a third election and flattering sycophants have encouraged them to believe that they could attain it.

But before they came to the test Washington's example--"no more than two"--has blocked their advance. In this respect also we must admit that he looked far into the future and saw what would be best for posterity. The second term as it has proved is bad enough, diverting a President during his first term to devote much of his energy and attention to setting traps to secure the second. It might be better to have only one term to last six years, instead of four, which would enable a President to give all his time to the duties of his office, instead of giving a large part of it to the chase after a reelection.

As soon as Washington determined irrevocably to retire, he began thinking of the "Farewell Address" which he desired to deliver to his countrymen as the best legacy he could bequeath. Several years before he had talked it over with Madison, with whom he was then on very friendly terms, and Madison had drafted a good deal of it. Now he turned to Hamilton, giving him the topics as far as they had been outlined, and bidding him to rewrite it if he thought it desirable. In September, 1796, Washington read the "Address" before the a.s.sembled Congress.

The "Farewell Address" belongs among the few supreme utterances on human government. Its author seems to be completely detached from all personal or local interests. He tries to see the thing as it is, and as it is likely to be in its American environment. His advice applies directly to the American people, and only in so far as what he says has in a large sense human pertinence do we find in it more than a local application.

"Be united" is the summary and inspiration of the entire "Address."

"Be united and be American"; as an individual each person must feel himself most strongly an American. He urges against the poisonous effects of parties. He warns against the evils that may arise when parties choose different foreign nations for their favorites.

The great rule of conduct for us [he says] in regard to foreign Nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little _Political_ connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.

Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, ... or enmities.