by Gerald Therrien
The Unveiling of Canadian History, Volume 3.
The Storming of Hell – the War for the Territory Northwest of the Ohio, 1786 – 1796.
During the American Revolution, when General Washington had asked General Wayne to undertake an extremely perilous enterprise – the storming of Stony Point, Wayne replied : “General, I will storm Hell, if you will only plan it.”
Part 3 – Peace on the Frontier
Chapter 18 – The Proclamation of Neutrality, April 22nd 1793
The British Empire, by allying with Spain, now hoped to be able to encircle the United States, through their control of the Mississippi river, the Great lakes and the St. Lawrence river, and to stop American western expansion. And by luring the United States into an alliance with France, Americans would now become embroiled in the war on the continent of Europe. President Washington protected the young United States from this entrapment by issuing his Proclamation of Neutrality. The opposition to this neutrality by Jefferson and Madison, laid the basis for the ‘Genet Affair’.
Edmond-Charles Genet
After France had declared war on Spain on March 7th 1793, Spain and Britain formed an alliance against France on May 25th – an alliance that the British had first approached Spain about, earlier in January.
But, would this alliance now also involve a concert of actions against America’s western frontier settlements, where the entire United States western territories could face a potential coordinated attack by the Indians, from the Mississippi river in the west to the great lakes in the north – actions that might serve to draw the United States into the quagmire of the war in Europe.
A few years earlier, in 1791, Spain had begun construction of Fort Nogales, near the junction of the Yazoo river with the Mississippi river, which Spain considered to be their northern boundary line with the United States. Fort Nogales was 100 miles north of the 31st degree of latitude – which the United States considered to be their southern boundary line with Florida. This was a point of contention between the United States and Spain. But the Spanish problems in Florida also came from the British Empire.
William Bowles, a tory from Maryland, who was now retired from the British army and living in the Bahamas, had been sent to Florida to the Lower Creek towns and he began to create resentment against Alexander McGillivray, leader of the Upper Creeks, who had signed a peace treaty with President Washington in August 1790; and Bowles succeeded in stopping the surveying of the boundary line between the Creek Indians and the state of Georgia, that had been agreed to at the 1790 treaty in New York.
In 1791, William Bowles would accompany the Lower Creek and Chickamauga chiefs for meetings in London with British colonial officials. When he returned to New Providence in the Bahamas, Bowles wanted to continue his plan with Lord Dunmore, the British governor of the Bahamas, to challenge the Spanish control of trade with the Indians through Florida.
Bowles then led a band of Lower Creeks, in January 1792, to attack and plunder the Appalachee store of Panton, Leslie and Co. (the company that ran the Indian trade in Florida for Spain), for the purpose of establishing a new trading system among the Indians – directly with the British.
The Spanish responded by sending a ship, whose captain deceived and captured Bowles on February 25th. With Bowles now sent to a Cuban prison as a pirate, the Spanish governor of Louisiana, Francisco Carondelet, began to form his own plan of uniting the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Cherokee nations into a confederation – under Spain’s protection. Spain would build Fort Confederacion on the Tombigbee river – at the same latitude as Fort Nogales!
But, George Wellbank, one of Bowles chief supporters and assistants, assumed leadership of Bowles’ party to continue the Dunmore plan, and sought refuge among the Chickamaugas – who were conducting raids against the settlers in the Southwest Territory, where he sought to renew their support for building an alliance with the British. (The Chickamaugas had sent delegates with Bowles to London in 1789.)
After the council of the western Indians at the Glaize in October 1792, a delegation of Shawnee had travelled south to encourage the southern Indians to unite in a general war against the United States and to assure them of the assistance of the British government with arms and ammunition, and they stopped at the Chickamauga towns. Wellbank, accompanied by several chiefs, now undertook the journey to Detroit, to attend the great council of the western Indians at the Miami Rapids in the spring of 1793. Also, in the spring of 1793, Governor Simcoe would send his aide, Captain Charles Stevenson, to London to request reinforcements of men and supplies to protect Canada. In his written request to the new Colonial Secretary, Henry Dundas, Stevenson suggests that:
“a communication with the ocean by way of the Mississippi, if the Spanish power would let you hold Pensacola … will give you both flanks of America; two such glorious communications with the ocean as the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, with the back-country ours, must ever keep the Americans in subjection.”
On January 17th 1793, two weeks before the French declaration of war against Britain, the Provisional Executive Committee of the National Convention (under Brissot and the Girondins) had drafted the instructions for their new minister to the United States with hopes that the United States would join with France in expanding the ‘Empire de la Liberté’. France envisioned the prompt payment in advance of about two-thirds of the estimated $4,400,000 that was still outstanding on America’s Revolutionary War debt to France, and the purchase with this money of arms and food supplies in the United States for the French Republic; anticipated the use of the United States as a base for French privateering by insisting on strict compliance with articles in the 1778 commercial treaty; and planned to use United States territory as a base for French efforts to liberate Canada from Great Britain, and Louisiana from Spain.
Upon Genet’s arrival at Charleston, South Carolina on April 8th, he began to recruit and arm American privateers who would join in French expeditions against British ships. He began planning a three-pronged attack against Spain – an attack from Charleston against Florida, and a joint attack by Kentucky frontiersmen and the French fleet on Louisiana. Genet also wanted an attack on Canada, and he composed and sent a letter to Canada – ‘The Free French to their Canadian Brothers’, to encourage the French Canadians:
[to rid themselves of] “the arbitrary decrees of the court of London; of this perfidious court which granted Canada a shade of constitution only by fear that it would follow the virtuous example of France and America; that by shaking its yoke it would base its government on the imprescriptible rights of man.”
In America, since many French soldiers had shed their blood in the revolutionary war against Britain, and since Britain still held the frontier posts and were inciting the Indians to attack the frontier settlements, most people initially sympathized with France. But, if the American government adhered to the articles of their 1778 treaty of alliance with France, they would be drawn into the labyrinth of foreign entanglements, and possibly, war.
Hoping that nothing would draw the United States into a war, President Washington convened a meeting of his cabinet and asked them, ‘should the United States issue an official proclamation of neutrality?’ While Jefferson argued that it wasn’t necessary, that they should stall and make countries bid on their neutrality, Hamilton insisted that it was necessary and that American neutrality was not negotiable.
On April 22nd, President Washington issued the Proclamation of Neutrality:
“that whatsoever of the citizens of the United States shall render himself liable to punishment or forfeiture under the law of nations, by committing, aiding, or abetting hostilities against any of the said powers, or by carrying to any of them those articles which are deemed contraband by the modern usage of nations, will not receive the protection of the United States, against such punishment or forfeiture.”
Freneau’s National Gazette launched a series of articles attacking the President, criticizing his foreign policy, praising Citizen Genet and demanding America’s total support for the French Revolution. Hamilton began a campaign, writing under the name of Pacificus, of 7 letters (from June 29th to July 27th) to defend the President’s Proclamation of Neutrality from the attacks, and to answer the criticisms from the National Gazette.
Jefferson asked Madison to answer Hamilton’s letters, writing on July 7th (after the publication of the 3rd Pacificus letter) that:
“for God’s sake, my dear Sir, take up your pen, select the most striking heresies, and cut him to pieces in the face of the public.”
Madison, under the name of Helvidius, would write 5 letters (from August 24th to September 18th). Madison would also meet with Monroe to plan to overturn the proclamation, in the next Congress.
While Jefferson communicated the President’s instructions to Genet in his official capacity as the nation’s chief diplomat, in private meetings with Genet, he was secretly disagreeing with almost everything he was communicating. Jefferson was thrilled when a French frigate captured a British merchant-ship, but later informed Genet that the ship would have to be returned to her owners because it had illegally been seized in American waters. Jefferson was pleased and excited by Genet’s plan to organize an expedition down the Mississippi river to capture New Orleans, and encouraged him in his plans by providing him with letters of introduction to Kentucky Governor, Isaac Shelby – until President Washington asked Jefferson to find out if there was any substance to the Spanish commissioners’ complaint that some people were plotting to attack the Spanish dominions of the Mississippi, and if so, he should tell Governor Shelby to end the scheme, with threat of legal action.
At Philadelphia, when Genet began converting a captured British ship, the ‘Little Sarah’, into a privateer, installing cannon and recruiting American seamen, Governor Mifflin of Pennsylvania warned Genet that he was violating the Neutrality Proclamation; summoned a detachment of militia, to prevent the ship from being put out to sea; and sent a message to Jefferson. After meeting with Genet, Jefferson told Mifflin to dismiss the militia (Jefferson said he was trying to avoid any spilling of blood). Both Hamilton and Knox wanted to erect a battery of cannon on Mud island, to stop the ship from leaving, but Jefferson objected, that firing on the ship might infuriate France and possibly lead to war! (Remember that Jefferson had been trying to ally the United States with France in its war against Great Britain, and had accused Hamilton of trying to drag the United States into a war against France!) But later that day, it was learned that the ship had already left her dock at Philadelphia, had moved down the Delaware river, past Mud island and was now anchored at Chester.
Genet had also informed Jefferson that France’s West Indies fleet of 20 men-of-war was sailing to the United States to escape the hurricane season there. (This was the same reason that De Grasse used, when he had sailed north in 1781 to rendezvous with General Washington’s army to help to trap the British army at Yorktown!) If the Americans used force to stop the ‘Little Sarah’, would Genet order the French fleet to support the overthrow of President Washington and his administration!?!
On July 11th, President Washington had just returned to Philadelphia, from Mount Vernon, and found this packet of papers, about the ‘Little Sarah’, on his desk – and found that the Secretary of State, had left Philadelphia and retreated to his house in the country (claiming he had a fever) and left the whole mess in the president’s lap. President Washington wrote an angry letter to Jefferson, that:
“Is the minister of the French Republic to set the acts of this government at defiance with impunity and then threaten the executive with an appeal to the people? What must the world think of such conduct, and of the government of the United States for submitting to it?”
While President Washington waited for an opinion from the Supreme Court on this affair, the ‘Little Sarah’ slipped away out to sea, and began seizing British merchant-ships.
At a cabinet meeting on July 23rd, President Washington proposed:
“that in his own opinion, his (Genet’s) whole correspondence should be sent to Gouverneur Morris [American minister to France] with a temperate but strong representation of his conduct, drawing a clear line between him and his nation, expressing our friendship to the latter, but insisting on the recall of Genet, and in the mean time that we should desire him either to withdraw or cease his functions.”
Hamilton spoke:
“that we were now in a crisis whereon the continuance of the government or it’s overthrow by a faction depended, that we were still in time to give the tone to the public mind by laying the whole proceedings before them, and that this should be done in addition to what he had proposed.”
Hamilton had learned that on July 4th, Genet and his followers, had founded a ‘Democratic Society’ in Philadelphia, modeled on the Jacobin Clubs of Paris with plans to create similar clubs throughout the nation, to help change the public mind about the Proclamation of Neutrality. Hamilton would now write 9 letters, under the name of No Jacobin, (from July 31st to August 28th) to attack these Democratic Clubs.
Jefferson protested that the ‘Democratic Society’ was only meant for electing their candidate as governor of Pennsylvania, and that after the election they would go out of business. And, Jefferson opposed publishing the correspondence with Genet because it would show the disagreements in the cabinet – ‘will be same differences of opinion in PUBLIC as in our cabinet … will be same differences in Congress’, and it would invite Genet to write his appeal to the people. (While Jefferson was willing to sacrifice Genet, he would do anything to keep close American ties with France).
Knox would then display a recent copy of Freneau’s National Gazette, that featured a cartoon – ‘the Funeral Dirge of George Washington’, showing the president being condemned for his aristocratic pretensions, and thrust under the blade of a guillotine – which inflamed the President ‘into one of those passions when he cannot command himself’. After a pause, President Washington made his decision, that his proposal – that a letter asking for Genet’s recall, along with his correspondence, be sent to Morris in Paris – ‘should be put into a train of execution’, but that ‘events would show whether the appeal would be necessary or not’.
On July 31st, a disgruntled Jefferson would write to President Washington, that he wished to resign, at the end of September. At a meeting with the President on August 6th, Jefferson told him that:
[first, lyingly] “without knowing the views of what is called the Republican party … or having any communication with them … [and, second, half-truthfully] that I believed the next Congress would attempt nothing material but to render their own body independent; that that party were firm in their dispositions to support the government; that the measures of Mr. Genet might produce some little embarrassment, but that he would be abandoned by the Republicans the moment they knew the nature of his conduct, and that on the whole, no crisis existed which threatened anything.”
Jefferson would agree to President Washington’s request for him to remain in office until the end of December.
On August 11th, Jefferson wrote to Madison, ‘which must be sacredly kept to yourself’, a report that ‘may enable you to shape your plan for the state of things which is actually to take place’ when Congress would next meet: ‘It would be the moment for dividing the Treasury between two equal chiefs’ – one to supervise the customs, the other to oversee internal taxes – to lessen the power of Hamilton; ‘a declaration of the true sense of the Constitution on the question of the (National) bank, will suffice to divorce that from the government’; and a vote to censure Hamilton on some of the Treasury’s practices that had emerged in failed attempts by Congressman Giles. ‘With respect to the Proclamation, as the facts it declared were true, and the desire of neutrality is universal, it would place the republicans in a very unfavorable point of view with the people’. Jefferson urged him to ‘abandon G(enet) entirely, with expressions of strong friendship and adherence to his nation and confidence that he has acted against their sense … In this way we shall keep the people on our side by keeping ourselves in the right’.
On August 23rd the cabinet approved the letter to be sent to the American Ambassador to France, Gouverneur Morris, along with all the correspondence between Genet and Jefferson and other necessary documents, asking for the recall of Genet. When Genet was later recalled, he feared being sent to the guillotine and he sought asylum in America. Genet retired to New York, where he later married the daughter of Governor George Clinton! France, in turn, asked for the recall of America’s ambassador, Gouverneur Morris.
With Jefferson`s resignation, Freneau also had to resign, and Freneau`s National Gazette closed, publishing its last issue on October 27th 1793.
[next week – chapter 19 – The aborted treaty at Sandusky, August 13th 1793]
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For those who may wish to support my continuing work on ‘The Unveiling of Canadian History’, you may purchase my books, that are available as PDFs and Paperback (on Amazon) at the Canadian Patriot Review :
Volume 1 – The Approaching Conflict, 1753 – 1774.
Volume 2 – Forlorn Hope – Quebec and Nova Scotia, and the War for Independence, 1775 – 1785.
And hopefully,
Volume 3 – The Storming of Hell – the War for the Territory Northwest of Ohio, 1786 – 1796, and
Volume 4 – Ireland, Haiti, and Louisiana – the Idea of a Continental Republic, 1797 – 1804,
may also appear in print, in the near future, while I continue to work on :
Volume 5 – On the Trail of the Treasonous, 1804 – 1814.