To George Washington from Timothy Pickering, 11–12 October 1796
From Timothy Pickering
Department of State Octr 11[–12]. 1796.
Sir,
Last Saturday1 I received from Colo. Monroe a letter dated the 24th of July, in which he refers to a former one, in which he transmitted copies of M. Delacroix letter to him & his answer, on the question, Whether the House of Representatives of the United States had passed a law to carry the British treaty into effect? At the same time Mr Monroe expressed his opinion that this letter originated with M. Delacroix, without any order from the Directory;2 because (as a prior letter had stated) a member of the Directory had informed him that their complaints would not be renewed.3 However, his letter of the 24th of July shows that he was mistaken, so far as their complaints respected the British treaty. I will endeavour, in an abridgement, to lay before you the essence of the complaint & the answer.
Mr Delacroix letter is dated the 7th of July. He begins by accounting for his delay in answering Mr Monroe’s letter of the 25th Ventose (March 15) because he had been daily hoping to see the departure of the new minister that the Executive Directory had proposed to send to the U. States.4 Then referring to their former complaints against the treaty between the U. States and Great Britain (for he is silent on all the other topics) he says that time had sufficiently ripened all the points which were then in discussion, and far from being weakened, “our complaints (says he) against the treaty of London, have, in our view, acquired new force.”5 He then says that the opinion of the Executive Directory on this subject has not changed. That it saw in that act, concluded in the midst of hostilities, a derogation from the friendship which united the U. States & the Republic; and in the stipulations which regarded the neutrality of the flag, an abandonment of the tacit engagement on this point which existed between the two nations, since the treaty of commerce of 1778. That the abandonment of principles consecrated by this treaty had made the more forcible impression on their minds, seeing that all the other treaties of the United States admit them;6 and that these principles are besides so generally acknowledged, that they form, at this time, the public law of all civilized nations. That hence the Executive Directory thinks itself authorized to regard the stipulations of the treaty of 1778, which concern the neutrality of the flag, as altered in their most essential parts, and thereby suspended; and that it would deem itself wanting in its duty if it did not modify a state of things which would not have been agreed to but on the condition of the most strict reciprocity.
Mr Monroe in his answer to M. De la Croix observes, That this complaint is founded on a supposed violation of the law of nations, and of our treaty with France, because in one article of the treaty of London we have admitted that our bottoms do not give protection to French goods.7 To prove that by this article we have neither violated the law of nations nor the treaty with France, Mr Monroe remarks, that the most eminent writers on the law of nations, and universal practice, where particular treaties do not stipulate the contrary, show the indisputable right of the powers at war to take the goods of their enemies in neutral ships;8 & asks, if such were not the acknowledged law of nations, why particular nations have entered into stipulations to renounce, as it respects themselves, the exercise of that right? “Is it presumable that any powers would form treaties to establish what was already established? or was it thought, when our treaty of 1778 was formed, that in this respect it made no change, or in other words stipulated nothing?”9
Mr Monroe then denies that the law of nations on this point has undergone any change; and asserts that the new rule is obligatory on those only who have bound themselves by special treaties to observe it, in respect to one another; and that the reciprocity urged by M. De la Croix, really was to be found in a change of circumstances, when the party now at war should be at peace, and enjoy, in turn (the other being at war) the privilege of its flag, in trading with the enemy of that other. Mr Monroe also remarks, That the French Republic knew, that in the last as well as in the present war, Great Britain uniformly opposed the principle, that free ships make free goods; and that in the present war, all the enemies of France had done the same, including some who were now its friends. Hence if it were even admitted that a majority of the civilized nations had a right to bind the minority, in this case, how was it to be done when the powers composing that majority had changed sides, and were now marshalled against the principle?
Mr Monroe in his letter to me, observes that he thought it expedient to attempt to divert the Directory from the subject of its own complaints, “which it had uniformly & vehemently pressed of late,” by presenting to it a list of ours, which before he had studiously avoided. He then mentions, that in violation of the treaty of 1778, as to this very point in question, 50 American vessels had been brought into French ports, and their cargoes taken from the proprietors, who yet remained unpaid. That without any reason assigned, upwards of eighty other vessels had been embargoed at Bourdeaux for more than a year, for which the owners yet remained unpaid. That for supplies rendered to the French Islands—for innumerable spoliations made & still making—and for supplies furnished to the republic at home, immense sums were due to the American citizens; by which deprivation many of them were ruined. That he had forborne hitherto to bring these things into view, because it would have the appearance of recrimination, which he wished to avoid; and because he was disposed to yield every possible accommodation, in the present exigences of the republic, which his duty would permit; and further, because he relied that the republic would do all the justice in its power to those suffering individuals.10
Mr Monroe expresses his wish that he could say this affair was ended, and that we should never hear of it again: but “so deep founded has their discontent appeared to be and so vehement their desire to give us some signal proof of it,” that it was then impossible to say what would be the result of their councils. At one time, he says, it was whispered that they meant to claim all their property taken in our vessels by the British—at another to suspend all payments to our citizens until satisfaction on their complaints was made—and again, that they would suspend those articles of our treaty of 1778, which the Minister said the Directory thought it their duty to modify. “But yet none of these things are done, nor have I (says Mr M.) any particular reason to presume they will be done, other than what appears from the general temper of the government;” and as both the government and nation, independently of the points in discussion; is friendly to us, “the probability is, that no such measure will be taken.”11
I notice the last observation of Mr Monroe, on account of the alarm excited among the merchants, by the publication from the London papers, of what is called an Official Note from the Minister for foreign affairs to M. Barthelemy in Switzerland.12 I went to see Mr Adet to-day: he has received no information concerning it. No letters have yet come to hand from Mr King; nor have I any information from London about it. Yet I received from Dr Edwards (whom you know) a letter dated there the 21st of August, in which he speaks of the political affairs and projects of France which had been the subjects of conversation in Paris; which he left the 7th of August. He says also that he has letters from Mr Monroe, who told him they contained the correspondence between him & the French government on the subject of some discontents, which he did not forward, because Mr M. desired him to deliver them himself.13 But if they contained any account of such an order of the Directory as the Official Note describes, I think Mr M. would have furnished him with duplicates & triplicates, to forward by the first vessels. I think also that Dr Edwards could not have failed to mention, if it existed, an order so much more interesting than any thing detailed in his letter. Yet we have this evening, in Brown’s paper, an extract of a letter from Paris, dated August 2d (Dr E. was there till the 7th) in which the note to Barthelemy is mentioned as printed in a Paris Newspaper: but it recites particulars not noticed at all in the Official Note; and applies wholly to American vessels: Now it is not obvious to conceive for what purpose an order respecting only the commerce of the U. States should be transmitted to M. Barthelemy in Switzerland.14
I have thought that some information to quiet the minds, or to regulate the conduct, of the merchants, on this state of things, would be proper; and will prepare something accordingly, on which I will consult the other secretaries.
Governor Blount read me a letter to a friend of his from Montflorence (Mr Skipwith’s chancellor) in which he says that M. Mangourit was to succeed Mr Adet. M. Mangourit was Consul at Charleston during Mr Genet’s administration.15 Governor Blount delivered to me a letter to him from Montflorence, who in case of a change in the consulate of the Paris department, begs the Governor to recommend him for the appointment: this letter I have the honour to inclose, for the sake of the other information it contains; altho’ it is in the spirit of the anonymous letters from him to the Messrs Blounts, which you saw last spring.16
I also inclose letters from several gentlemen in Rhode-Island, concurring in the recommendation of Benjamin Bourne Esqr. as the most suitable person in the state to succeed Mr Marchant in the office of District Judge;17 & by Mr Olney’s letter I conclude it is to be understood that the office would be acceptable to Mr Bourne.18 He is eligible by the Constitution; the increase of the Salary of the District Judge of Rhode-Island having been made in the preceeding Congress: but Mr Bradford cannot be constitutionally appointed.19 I wrote to Governor Fenner on this occasion: but Mr Foster’s letter, received this day, informs that the Governor was on a journey to Vermont.20 From that state no information has yet been received relative to the office of District Attorney. I have the honor to be, with the highest respect, sir, your most obt servant
Timothy Pickering
Octr 12. Mr Wolcot just now informs me that Mr Ellery manifests his opinion that Mr Bourne is entitled to the preference of all the candidates for the office of District Judge.21
ALS, DLC:GW; LB (incomplete), DLC:GW; LB (incomplete), DNA: RG 59, GW’s Correspondence with His Secretaries of State; LB, DNA: RG 59, Domestic Letters.
1. The previous Saturday was 8 October.
2. The letter to Pickering of 24 July from James Monroe, then U.S. minister to France, is in , 4:55–58. That letter, written from Paris, enclosed French foreign minister Charles Delacroix’s letter to Monroe of 7 July 1796 and Monroe’s reply to him of 14 July, both of which Pickering summarizes in this document (see also , 4:43–44, 47–49). The 24 July letter discussed France’s complaints against the United States pertaining to the British seizure of French goods aboard U.S. ships. The German and Italian campaigns of the French army and Napoleon Bonaparte were also given significant consideration in that letter, which Monroe concluded with a recommendation of Isaac Cox Barnet as U.S. consul at Brest, France.
The “former one” refers to Monroe’s letter to Pickering of 28 June, which had enclosed both Delacroix’s letter of 25 June to Monroe, and Monroe’s reply of 27 June. The letters concerned the actions taken by the U.S. House of Representatives to implement the Jay Treaty (see Pickering to GW, 5 Oct., and notes 1 and 2).
3. The “prior letter” was Monroe’s missive to Pickering of 12 June 1796, in which Monroe had written: “… in a late informal conference with one of the members of the Directoire, I was advised by him, that the Directoire had done nothing in regard to us” (, 4:34–35).
4. In this paragraph, Pickering accurately summarizes Delacroix’s letter to Monroe of 7 July 1796. For Monroe’s letter to Delacroix of 15 March 1796, which addressed France’s complaints about the Jay Treaty and the United States’ alleged violations of the 1778 Franco-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce, see , 3:621–26.
The “new minister” likely refers to French engineer Charles-Humbert-Marie Vincent. The Directory appointed Vincent in February 1796 as a special envoy to the United States, with instructions to announce severed Franco-American diplomatic relations occasioned by the ratification of the Jay Treaty. Vincent also was considered as a possible replacement for Pierre-Auguste Adet, the French minister to the United States who resigned from his post in February 1796. Michel Ange Bernard de Mangourit, named in late July 1796 as French chargé d’affaires to the United States, also was deemed as a possible choice to replace Adet as the new French minister (see n.15). Adet withdrew his resignation, and neither Vincent nor Mangourit assumed their respective posts as envoy or chargé d’affaires to the United States. Adet obtained his official recall in the fall of 1796 (see James Cole Mountflorence to Thomas Blount, 8 March 1796, printed as an enclosure to James McHenry to GW, 10 June 1796; see also Alexander Hamilton to GW, 19 Nov., and notes 5 and 6 to that document; and , 238–45).
5. For the full text of the 1794 Jay Treaty between Britain and the United States, see , 2:245–74.
6. For an example of a neutrality stipulation in a U.S. treaty, see Article VII of the 1783 U.S. Treaty of Amity and Commerce with Sweden, which stated that “everything which shall be on board of ships belonging to subjects of the one or the other of the contracting parties shall be considered as free, even though the cargo, or a part of it, should belong to the enemies of one or both” (, 2:128–29). The 1778 Franco-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce contained similar clauses (see , 2:20–21).
7. Article XVII of the Jay Treaty stipulated that “in all Cases where Vessels shall be captured or detained on just suspicion of having on board Enemy’s property or of carrying to the Enemy, any of the articles which are Contraband of war; The said Vessel shall be brought to the nearest or most convenient Port, and if any property of an Enemy, should be found on board such Vessel, that part only which belongs to the Enemy shall be made prize, and the Vessel shall be at liberty to proceed with the remainder without any Impediment” (, 2:258).
8. In his 14 July letter to Delacroix, Monroe cited prominent writers and jurists such as Cornelis van Bynkershoek and Emmerich de Vattel (see , 4:49).
9. Pickering is quoting a section of paragraph four from Monroe’s 14 July letter to Delacroix.
10. In a section of this paragraph, Pickering confused Monroe’s letter to him of 24 July with Monroe’s letter of 14 July to Delacroix. It was the latter document in which Monroe wrote that “about fifty of our [U.S.] vessels were brought into your [French] ports, their cargoes taken from the proprietors and … upwards of eighty others of our ships were embargoed at Bordeaux and detained there for more than a year.” Monroe’s 14 July letter to Delacroix also addressed depredations made on U.S. shipping in the West Indies.
For the 1793 French law that laid an embargo on the port of Bordeaux, see Edmund Randolph’s first letter to GW of 19 March 1794, and n.1 to that document.
11. Pickering quoted from Monroe’s 24 July letter to him.
12. The Gazette of the United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser for 7 Oct. 1796 reprinted an undated translation of an “Official Note” from Delacroix to François, marquis de Barthélemy, the French minister to Switzerland, which had appeared in the London Morning Chronicle for 9 Aug. 1796. The note announced that the “Executive Directory … orders, all the political Agents of the French Republic, to inform the different governments that the squadrons and privateers of the Republic will act against the ships of every country, in the same manner in which those governments suffer the English to act against them.” According to Delacroix, the order was made in response to earlier British directives to seize “all the cargoes which they may suppose to be destined for the French.” The note evidently had appeared in Paris papers by late July and was republished in several London newspapers, such as the True Briton and Morning Chronicle, by early August. Monroe directly alluded to it in a letter to Pickering of 4 Aug. (see , 4:73–74; see also The New Hampshire Gazette for 29 Oct. 1796 and the Gazette Nationale ou Le Moniteur Universel [Paris], 16 Thermidor [3 Aug.], which summarized Delacroix’s note). Delacroix’s official note to Barthélemy pertained to the French decree of 2 July 1796, which subjected neutral vessels bound to British ports to capture (see GW to Alexander Hamilton, 2 Nov., and n.2).
In a letter to Monroe, written on 11 Aug. from London, Rufus King, the U.S. minister to Great Britain, commented on Delacroix’s note: “I … inform you that a few days since a paper was published in the English Gazettes, purporting to be a letter from the Directory to Mr. Barthelemi, in which the French government announces their intention to stop the cargoes of all neutral vessels bound to the English ports” (, 2:78).
13. The letter to Pickering from Dr. Enoch Edwards, then associate justice of the Pennsylvania court of common pleas, written from London on 21 Aug. 1796, reads: “I … arrived here the day before yesterday—I have official Letters from our Minister at Paris directed to you. … As Duplicates may not arrive before I do, I think it proper to inform You that such Letters are on their Way, but which I do not send by this earlier Opportunity because Mr Monroe requested I would keep & deliver them myself.” Edwards then wrote about European affairs: “the [French] Government since the Victories of [Napoleon] Bonaparte—has gained great Strength & Credit. … they are in a fine situation to make peace—but I think they appear less disposed towards that much desired Event than they have at any period since I have been in France— The Prospect of distressing the English Trade … seizing in Conjunction with Spain, Portugal—& with Prussia, that of Hambro’—are Objects which tempt the pride of that high & lofty Nation … that it would seem as if the War was just begining” (MHi: Pickering Papers).
The letters that Edwards carried to America include Monroe’s letter to Pickering of 4 Aug. and his letters to James Madison and Joseph Jones of 1 Aug. (see , 4:67–74).
14. The Philadelphia Gazette & Universal Daily Advertiser for 11 Oct., published by Andrew Brown, printed an extract of a 2 Aug. letter from a “Mr. Skinner in Paris, to his brother here”: “… there has this day appeared in the Journal called Nouvelles Politiques, a note from the Directory to Mr. Bartheleme at Basle—which says that orders will be given to all French cruisers to take any American ship from America to England, or from England to America, or from England to any part of the world, and to bring them for trial, and if the cargo or any part shall be found to be English it will be condemned—and in this light will be considered all goods shipt from London—So that you will take care to make insurance against all risks whatever, or any goods shipt for——.”
15. The letter from James Cole Mountflorence, an assistant to Fulwar Skip-with, consul-general to France, has not been identified. Michel Ange Bernard de Mangourit, French consul at Charleston, S.C., from 1792 to 1794, had been named in July 1796 as French charge d’affaires to the United States, but he never assumed the post (see Pickering to GW, 20 Oct., and n.3 to that document).
16. The letter from Mountflorence to William Blount has not been identified.
The anonymous letters refer to both Mountflorence’s to Thomas Blount, 8 March 1796, printed as an enclosure with James McHenry to GW, 10 June, and an unidentified letter from Mountflorence to William Blount dated 23 March. For more on the letters, see GW to Pickering, 10 June 1796, and n.2 to that document; Pickering to GW, same date; and the Cabinet to GW, 2 July 1796.
17. The enclosed letters recommending Benjamin Bourne as district judge for Rhode Island have not been identified, but see Jabez Bowen to GW, 30 Sept., and notes 1 and 4 to that document.
18. For Jeremiah Olney’s letter to GW of 26 Sept., see GW to Pickering, 10 Oct., n.4.
19. For U.S. Senator William Bradford’s ineligibility to serve as district judge, see Bowen to GW, 30 Sept., and notes 2 and 3 to that document.
20. Pickering had written Rhode Island governor Arthur Fenner on 20 Sept. that “the President has returned to Mount Vernon, desiring that whatever information shall be received or can be obtained, to enable him to select the fittest character [as district judge for Rhode Island], may be transmitted to him.” Pickering asked Fenner to “name the gentlemen whom you think to be well qualified” for the office of district judge, “and among these, to whom, for his discernment, law-knowledge & integrity, the preference is due” (MHi: Pickering Papers).
Fenner’s brother-in-law Theodore Foster had replied to Pickering on 4 Oct., but that letter has not been identified. However, in a letter to Pickering of 8 Oct., Foster indicated that the 4 Oct. missive had expressed “the Wish of many Gentlemen that Benjamin Bourne … might be appointed District Judge.” Foster listed additional potential candidates for district judge and other offices, but still considered Bourne as the superior choice. Foster ended his letter with commentary on GW’s Farewell Address of 19 Sept: “The Presidents late Address has been received by the People of New England, with Hearts overflowing with Affection. Tears of Gratitude and Love filled their Eyes, on reading it” (MHi: Pickering Papers).
21. Treasury Secretary Oliver Wolcott, Jr., may have verbally informed Pickering about Newport, R.I., customs official William Ellery’s opinion of Bourne. For GW’s recess appointment of Bourne as U.S. district judge, see Pickering to GW, 13 Oct. and n.1 to that document.