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the president's parlor ornamented "with certain medal- CHAPTER lions of Capet and his family." Moreover, the Marquis de Noailles and other emigrant Frenchmen had been lately 1793 admitted to the honor of a presentation. Genet, however, was consoled in the evening by a republican feast, on which occasion was sung an ode in French, composed by Citizen Duponceau, who had come originally to America as an aid to Baron Steuben, and was now settled at Philadelphia, where he rose afterward to distinction as a lawyer and man of letters. Citizen Freneau, being one of the company, was requested to translate this ode into English verse. The Marseilles Hymn was sung, with two additional stanzas composed by Genet himself, with special reference to the navy, previous to which a deputation of sailors from the frigate L'Ambuscade entered the hall, embraced, and took their seats. After the last regular toast, the red cap of Liberty was placed on the head of Citizen Genet, and then traveled from head to head, each wearer, under its inspiration, delivering a patriotic sentiment. The table was decora

ted with the tree of Liberty and the French and American flags; and the officers and sailors of the L'Ambuscade, to whom they were finally delivered, swore to defend till death these tokens of liberty and of American and French fraternity. From the moment, indeed, of Genet's arrival in the United States, the existence became evident, not only of a wide-spread and enthusiastic sympathy for France, but of a faction more French than American, ready and anxious to go all lengths toward identifying the French and American republics.

In his address to the president, Genet had disavowed any wish to involve the United States in the pending war. Yet it was sufficiently evident, from his proceedings at Charleston, that he expected favors toward France

CHAPTER and aid to her belligerent operations wholly inconsistent VI. with a neutral position on the part of the United States. 1792. Two or three days after his formal introduction to the May 22. president, he opened his diplomatic correspondence by a

request for immediate payment, by anticipation, of the remaining installments of the French debt, amounting to $2,300,000. As an inducement, he offered to invest the amount in provisions and other American products, to be shipped partly to St. Domingo and partly to France. May 23. This request was followed up by a very grandiloquent paper, communicating a decree of the French Convention, by which all the ports of France and her colonies were freely opened to American vessels on the same terms as to those of France. Such a relaxation of commercial restrictions had been usual with France on the breaking out of war, as a convenience toward obtaining needed supplies; but Genet represented it to be now granted as a boon of pure good will toward America. He communicated at the same time his authority to propose a new treaty of commerce, "a true family compact," on "the liberal and fraternal basis" of which France wished to raise up the commercial and political system of two peoples, all whose interests were confounded." To this proposal, the vague generalities of which seemed rather alarming, it was answered that nothing could be definitively concluded without the concurrence of the Senate, which was not to meet again till the autumn; and there the matter appears to have rested. The request for money was met by a statement that the United States had no means of anticipating the payment of the French debt except by borrowing money in Europe, which could not be done at present on favorable terms. Nor did Hamilton hesitate to tell Genet that, even were there no other obstacle, the anticipation of payment at this

VI.

time might be regarded by Great Britain as a breach of CHAPTER neutrality. Greatly disappointed and offended at this reply, Genet expressed his intention to make the debt to 1793. France available for his purposes by giving assignments June 14. of it in payment for provisions and other supplies. But to this the American government decidedly objected, expressing the hope that, in a matter of mutual concern, nothing would be done but by mutual consent.

Genet assented to the restoration of the Grange, but May %. protested very vehemently against the resolutions of the cabinet on the subject of privateers. He alleged that the privateers commissioned by him were owned by French houses at Charleston, were commanded by French officers, or by Americans who knew of no law or treaty to prevent their acceptance of commissions, and who had gone to sea by consent of the governor of South Carolina. As the treaty of commerce secured to the parties the right of bringing prizes into each other's ports, that provision must include the control and disposal of the prizes so brought in. He also argued that the twentysecond article of the treaty, forbidding either party to allow the enemies of the other to fit out privateers in their ports, must be understood, by what the lawyers call a negative pregnant, to imply a mutual right in the parties themselves to fit out privateers in the ports of the other. As to the Americans on board the privateers, they must be considered, in taking part with France, to have renounced for the time the protection of their own country, which therefore became no longer responsible for their conduct.

Just before Genet's arrival at Philadelphia, one of the privateers fitted out at Charleston, and named the Citizen Genet, after the French minister, had ascended the Delaware, bringing with her one out of four prizes she

CHAPTER had taken.

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This led to another cabinet council, which resulted in an intimation to Genet that the privateer, his 1793. namesake, must depart forthwith from the waters of the United States; in orders sent to all the ports to seize all vessels fitted out as privateers, and to prevent the sale of any prizes captured by such vessels; and in the arrest of Citizens Henfield and Singleterry, two Americans who had enlisted on board the Citizen Genet at Charleston, and against whom, at least against Henfield, an indictment was presently found. "The crime laid to their June 1. charge," said the French minister, in a note of inquiry on the subject, "the crime, which my mind can not conceive, and which my pen almost refuses to state, is the serving of France, and the defending with her children the common and glorious cause of liberty." To this impassioned appeal Jefferson replied by sending a copy of the attorney general's opinion, that Henfield, in enlisting on board a foreign privateer to serve against nations at peace with the United States, was acting in violation of treaties, the supreme law of the land, and was guilty of an indictable June 5. offense. This was presently followed by another note, in which was reiterated, though in very mild terms, the fixed opinion of the president, that it was the right of every nation, and the duty of neutral nations, to prohibit acts of sovereignty within their limits injurious to either of the warring powers; that the granting of military commissions within the United States by any foreign authority was an infringement of their sovereignty, especially when granted to American citizens as an inducement to act against the duty which they owed to their own country; and that the least to be expected was the immediate departure of any vessels which might, prior to this warning, have been so illegally commissioned and equipped.

June 8.

Genet, in reply, denounced these doctrines as contra.

VI.

ry to the principles of natural right, the usages of na- CHAPTER tions, the French treaties, and even the proclamation of neutrality. The commissioning of privateers, which he 1793 seemed disposed to represent as a mere arming for defense, was, in his opinion, not an act of sovereignty, but of consular administration, "which, without an act of Congress to that effect, the president had no right to prevent." He offered, however, by way of compromise, to confine the grant of commissions to such commanders as would bind themselves, by oath and security, to respect the territory of the United States and the political opinions of the president until "the representatives of the sovereign”—meaning the representatives of the people assembled in Congress should confirm or reject them. On the support of the people he evidently relied. "Their fraternal voice," he wrote, "has resounded from every quarter around me, and their accents are not equivocal -they are pure as the hearts of those by whom they are expressed."

June 27

Still more vehement were the remonstrances of Genet at the seizure at New York of a French privateer fitted June 14 out there, and just ready to go to sea, by a body of militia ordered out for that purpose by Governor Clinton, in consequence of the recent instructions from Philadelphia.

Already, indeed, an open struggle had commenced, the result of which for some time appeared quite doubtful, between the executive authority of the United States on the one hand, and Genet and the French faction on the other. Freneau's Gazette and the General Advertiser, both printed at the seat of government-the latter famous afterward as the Aurora, published by Bache, a grandson of Franklin, who had received his education in France, and was totally carried away by the French fanaticism assailed the proclamation of neutrality with