dangers and difficulties will cement the union. The United States is sincerely attached to the liberty, prosperity, and happiness of the French Republic. I know that in perpetuating the harmony between the two republics, I shall promote the interests of both." Nor had the mission of Jay as explained by Monroe caused any alarm, for he was sent to assert American neutral rights. The French believed that he would be unsuccessful and that his mission would result in war with England. 1 liness Under these circumstances Monroe had been successful in obtaining some useful concessions. In July, 1795, the retaliatory decree of France making English French friendgoods in American vessels seizable was repealed. "It is amidst her triumphs that the Republic loves to give this striking mark of its fidelity. Victorious France knows no other concern than that of justice; no other diplomatic language than that of truth." P. A. Adet, who arrived in America in June, 1795, to replace Fauchet, had received most amicable instructions. Monroe had even encouraged France to hope for a loan from the United States, and had urged it on our government alleging that France was fighting our battles. in France The news of the signature of the Jay treaty alarmed France, and the Committee of Public Safety turned to Monroe for information as to its details; but The Jay treaty since, as the result of a policy rather difficult to account for, he had been left uninformed by Jay and by the United States government, he could give only vague assurances that the compact was not inconsistent with our obligations to France. Confident rumor, however, speedily detailed its terms, and a copy of the treaty itself, sent by Adet, reached France in the summer of 1795. Monroe and the French leaders equally were stunned. Instead of vindicating the status of neutrality laid down in our treaties with 1 James Monroe, A View of the Conduct of the Executive in the Foreign Af fairs of the United States, Philadelphia, 1797. France, it accepted a totally different status, permitting to England practices against which we had protested in the case of France. The English had just touched France to the quick by their second order for the seizure of provisions as contraband, and it was seen that they were justified by the new treaty. Monroe was unable to meet the situation. In February, 1796, France declared her alliance with the United States at an end. On July 2, 1796, a decree of the French executive Directory announced that France would treat neutrals as England did, and actually went further by declaring all goods destined for England contraband. In November, Adet announced to the American government that he had been ordered to terminate his mission. Recall of On August 22, 1796, the American government had recalled Monroe and appointed in his place Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Monroe's recall was due partly to his failure to press American claims in all cases to the satisfaction of the government; particularly the claim for compensation for captures under the decrees ordering the seizure of English goods in American vessels and making provisions contraband, both of them in violation of the treaty of 1778, but defended by France on the basis of retaliation. Still more was his recall due to the general tone of his correspondence, which constituted a protest against the policy of his own country and a defence of France. It may be said, however, that he did secure more concessions from France than Jay could obtain from England, and that he had been instructed to cultivate French friendship. He was undoubtedly indiscreet, but part of the blame must be laid to the policy of sending in such a delicate crisis a minister known to be out of touch with his superiors. The most serious fault of Monroe was his conduct after he became acquainted with the details of Jay's treaty, and still more after his own recall. In close touch with the French leaders, he impressed upon them the difference, which they were only too prone to believe, between the government of the policy in the United States United States and the people. He acknowledged that the government was hostile to France, but he urged them to wait for justice until after the next presidential election, which he was sure would bring Jefferson into the presidency. He assisted in destroying that impression of national solidarity for which Washington had labored so hard, and which Jefferson himself had confirmed by his correspondence with Genêt. France and Monroe were not without some justification for believing that the existing American government was not only anti-French but to some degree pro- Pro-English English. Washington, indeed, remained impartially American, but he had been forced to give up his vision of an administration comprehending all parties. His assistants were Federalists, and they sympathized with England. In 1796 Thomas Pinckney was replaced at London by an ardent English partisan, Rufus King. In 1797 John Quincy Adams was commissioned to reframe our treaties with Prussia and Sweden, of which the first had expired and the other was about to expire. He was instructed by Pickering to leave out the former provisions regarding free ships, free goods. "It is a principle," wrote Pickering, "that the United States have adopted in all their treaties (except that with Great Britain), and which they sincerely desire might become universal: but treaties formed for this object they find to be of little or no avail, because the principle is not universally admitted among the maritime nations." He was also to enlarge the definition of contraband. Against these changes in the American policy, showing so marked a leaning to the English practice, Adams vigorously protested, but his instructions remained unchanged. Although such details were not generally known, the atmosphere of the administration became increasingly hostile to France. Under these circumstances the French government took occasion to show its friendliness for Monroe upon his withdrawal as minister. It refused to receive his successor, France and 1796 Pinckney, and on February 3, 1797, ordered him to leave the country. Although it withdrew Adet from his mission, it allowed him to remain in the United States in the the election of hope that he might influence the presidential election of 1796. Adet announced his withdrawal in a letter which he published in the press, explaining it not as "a rupture between France and the United States, but as a mark of just discontent, which was to last until the government of the United States returned to sentiments and to measures more conformable to the interests of the alliance; and to the sworn friendship between the two nations." His interference was perhaps not without some weight, but it did not secure the election of Jefferson. John Adams was chosen to the presidency, and the officials as well as the policy of the old administration bade fair to be continued for at least four years more.1 France and Hopeless of American friendship, France turned with more energy toward other plans. In February, 1795, Fauchet had in a long letter advised that the only way of offsetting the effects of the Jay treaty, of which he did not then know the details, was by the acquisition of Louisiana. That colony could feed the islands and so wrench them free from their dependence on the United States. This familiar policy France determined to pursue. With Spain as an ally, cession and not capture must be the method. Accordingly, the French commissioners for the treaty of Basle were instructed, "The restitution of Louisiana is of all the conditions we have proposed the one to which we attach the greatest importance." Failing at that time, France instructed General Perignon, her ambassador at Madrid, March 16, 1796, to urge the point: "Our possession of Louisiana would give us the means to offset the marked predilection of the Federal government for our enemy and keep it within the line of duty by the fear of a dismemberment, we might cause." 1 McMaster, People of the United States, ii. 209-416, 429–476. This dismemberment of the United States, so clearly foreshadowed in the instructions to Genêt, continued to haunt the minds of the French ministers. Adet, New French while striving to excite the French Canadians intrigues against England,1 sent his ablest agent, General Collot, into the American West. He was to nourish sentiments of dissension among the leaders "by observing that the interests of the eastern and western parts of the United States were in collision, that the period was not distant when a separation must take place, and the range of mountains on this side of the Ohio was the natural boundary of the new government, and that in the event of separation the western people ought to look to France as their natural ally and protector." On July 15, 1797, Talleyrand became French minister of foreign affairs. Just returned from banishment in the United States, he had recently read before the Institute papers on "The Commercial Relations of the United States" and "The Colonial Interests of France." Although primarily concerned at the moment with Bonaparte's plan to divert attention to Africa, he maintained that the eastern part of the United States was irrevocably bound to England by language, habits, and trade, but that the country beyond the mountains would in time separate and need France.2 Adams's com mission to France The American government only suspected these western designs; but the official insult involved in the treatment of Pinckney was patent, and the constant seizure and condemnation of American vessels under successive decrees, unjustifiable and often contradictory, demanded attention. As experiments with Monroe, a Republican, and Pinckney, a Federalist, had proved unsatisfactory, Adams, with general approval, decided to send a joint commission of three,-to Pinckney, 1 Canadian Archives, 1891, pp. 63-79; 1894, p. 527. * A. Cans, "Les idées de Talleyrand sur la politique coloniale de la France au lendemain de la Révolution," Revue d'Histoire Moderne, 1900, ii. 58-63; F. J. Turner, "The Policy of France toward the Mississippi Valley," Amer. Hist. Review, 1905, x. 249–279. |