To George Washington from David Stuart, 18 December 1796
From David Stuart
Hope-Park [Va.] Decr 18th 1796
Dear Sir,
I now inclose you a copy of your account made out by Mr Kieth, and allso one of the little extract from your books furnished me by Mr Lear in the Summer 17931—Mrs Stuart’s illness has prevented my doing it sooner. I had considered her recovery as impossible, till within these two days—I flatter myself, she is now out of danger, and will be soon freed from her long and painfull confinement.2
I hope Mr Adet’s conduct, together with the report of Louisiana being ceded to France, will prevent our Countrymen throwing themselves into the bosom of France; as it would appear to be the object of some to make them—The former seems to have excited much disgust, and the latter with great justice much alarm—I suspect the minister has gone further than his partisans could wish; or too far to enable them to make dupes of the people3—Our election has satisfyed me more than I was before, of the extreme impolicy of permitting any emigrants to this Country, to have the right of voting or being voted for at an election—They were by far the most zealous, among us, and most influential. I have no doubt but they have had a ⟨illegible⟩ effect even when—I think it is a subject worthy the attention of Congress4—I have written to Coll Simms on it, and he promises me to attempt it in our Assembly: tho’ it should fail, it may be the means of calling the attention of other legislatures, and perhaps Congress to it5—To those, who may be opposed to it, from a sense of obligation to this description of persons at the late Election, and in the Politics of the moment at this period, it may be replied, that it is in perfect conformity to the opinion of Mr Jefferson in his notes on Virginia6—Those who look further into the subject, must feel some alarm, at finding that Montesquieu (whose authority on the subject of government is admitted among all) in his history of the causes of the subversion of the Roman empire, considers the indiscriminate admission to Citizenship, first introduced by Sylla in the civil war, with Marius, for party purposes, as an essential cause of it.7
It seems, Mr Henry refuses the office of Governor, a circumstance much I think to be regretted in our situation as to parties8—A Convention Coll Simms writes me is meant to be called to form a new Constitution for this State—Tho’ it is very desirable, it is perhaps not well timed.9 With respectfull compts to Mrs Washington—I am Dr Sir, with perfect respect Your Affect. Serv.
Dd Stuart.
ALS, DLC:GW.
Stuart’s comments in this letter about immigration and citizenship privileges, including voting and office-holding, reflect a growing concern among many Federalists during this period over voting rights and foreign influence in elections. For instance, in a letter of 27 Nov. 1796 to Vice President John Adams, Abigail Adams worried that “the whole System of Electionering under foreign influence … pervades every state in the union” (, 11:417–19). Foreign influence in elections became more of a concern following the publication of French minister Pierre-Auguste Adet’s letters to Pickering, which sought to manipulate the outcome of the 1796 presidential election in favor of Republicans (see GW to Alexander Hamilton, 2 Nov. 1796, and n.2 to that document). The early American republic saw a vague distinction between aliens and citizens, and neither the U.S. Constitution nor federal laws thoroughly defined voting rights, an issue left to the authority of individual states. For instance, the U.S. Constitution had granted Congress the authority to establish a “uniform Rule of naturalization,” but left the definition of the electorate up to the states. The 1790 “Act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization” granted citizenship to alien free white males who could demonstrate two years of residence in the United States. However, increasing partisan divisions during the period of the French Revolution and growing fears of a divided electorate aligning with France or Britain caused Congress in 1795 to increase the residency requirement for citizenship from two to five years ( 103–4, 414–15). These laws, however, detailed requirements for national citizenship but did not address voting rights or the rights of foreigners to hold office. As a result, states passed laws on citizenship, voting, and office-holding. Some states’ laws stipulated citizenship requirements for voters, while others permitted residents, and therefore aliens, to vote. Foreign-born residents tended to vote for Jeffersonian Republicans. Thus, John Adams’s narrow victory of three electoral votes over Thomas Jefferson in the 1796 election led some congressmen to seek measures to disenfranchise and reduce the number of immigrants in order to avoid a Federalist defeat in subsequent elections. To this effect, Congress in spring and summer 1797 debated a tax on naturalization certificates (see , 5th Cong., 1st sess., 421, 429–30). For more on citizenship and the associated privileges in the early American republic, see James H. Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 1608–1870 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1978), 213–47; see also Terri Diane Halperin, The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 (Baltimore, 2016), 30–48; and Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York, 2000), 26–27.
1. The account made out by James Keith, GW’s attorney in the settlement of the Thomas Colvill estate, has not been identified. The enclosed “extract” of GW’s account books that had been provided to Stuart by Tobias Lear in 1793 also has not been identified. It may be related to the accounts pertaining to the estates of John and Thomas Colvill, which Keith had sent to Lear in July 1793 (see Keith to Lear, 15 July 1793; see also Lear to Keith, 14 July 1793). Stuart likely transmitted these documents to GW because of the latter’s involvement in the recent Colvill estate settlement (see GW to Rufus King, 25 Aug. 1796, and n.1; see also King to GW, 15 Dec.).
2. Stuart’s wife, Eleanor Calvert Custis Stuart, recently had given birth to a daughter, Eleanor Custis Stuart, on 8 December. The pregnancy probably was the source of her illness and confinement; she apparently did not fully recover until the following summer. In a letter of 26 June 1797 from Martha Washington to David Humphreys, drafted by GW, Martha wrote that “Poor Mrs Stuart has had very ill health for the last 6 or 8 months but is better now” (DLC:GW). For more on Eleanor’s health, see Thomas Law to GW, 6 Oct., and Thomas Peter to GW, 19 October.
3. The “conduct” of French minister Adet may refer to his lengthy letters to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, dated 27 Oct. and 15 Nov., which accused the United States of violating its treaties with France (see GW to Alexander Hamilton, 2 Nov. 1796, and n.2 to that document; see also Hamilton to GW, 19 Nov., and n.5 to that document).
In early 1796, Adet also had been implicated in the dispatch of a French secret scouting mission to various regions in North America. The mission sought to achieve French control of Louisiana and to convince American settlers in the west to attach themselves to potential French-controlled territory (see Richard Kidder Meade to GW, 21 Dec., and n.7 to that document). For the recent erroneous rumors of Spain’s cession of Louisiana and the Floridas to France, see Pickering to GW, 20 Oct., and n.5 to that document.
4. The “election” refers to the presidential election in the fall of 1796 to select GW’s successor. Polls opened in early November “for choosing an elector of the President and Vice President of the United States” (Washington Spy [Hagerstown, Md.), 5 Oct. 1796). Voting took place by 7 Dec., but the election results were not revealed until 8 Feb. 1797 (see U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to GW, 10 Feb. 1797, n.1). For more on voting and its relation to immigration, see the source note above.
5. Stuart’s letter to Charles Simms, then a representative in the Virginia House of Delegates from Fairfax County, has not been identified. Simms’s service in the legislature ended when that body adjourned on 27 December. There is no record of Virginia legislation on immigrants and voting privileges in 1796. Virginia citizenship law at the end of the Revolutionary War allowed immigrants to hold office once they fulfilled a two-year residency requirement in the state and purchased land or married a citizen (see [Hening], 11:322–24; see also [Hening], 10:129–30). In 1792, the legislature increased the residency requirement for aliens to five years before they could hold office (see [Shepherd], 1:148–50). In December 1798, the Virginia legislature passed a resolution protesting the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 (see [Shepherd], 2:192–93).
6. In his Notes on the State of Virginia (Query VIII), Jefferson warned that a significant “importation of foreigners,” specifically those from monarchical states, threatened to introduce into American society principles antithetical to republicanism. Monarchies, he claimed, were governed by “maxims” contrary to American government, which Jefferson asserted was based on “the freest principles of the English constitution” and “derived from natural right and natural reason.” Jefferson also feared that such foreigners would “bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness …” (, 82–85).
7. French political philosopher, lawyer, and writer Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689–1755) wrote about the decline of the Roman Empire in chapter 9 of his Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence (Reflections on the Causes of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire), first published in Amsterdam in 1734. In that chapter, Montesquieu alluded to the period of the Social War of 91–88 B.C., which involved conflict between Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla. During that time, Rome ceded to the demands of the people of the Italian city-states for Roman citizenship. Montesquieu suggested that widespread citizenship caused the demise of Roman civic virtue: “The nations of Italy being made citizens of Rome, every city brought thither its genius, its particular interests, and its dependence on some mighty protector: Rome being now rent and divided, no longer formed one entire body, and men were no longer citizens of it, but in a kind of fictitious way; as there were no longer the same magistrates … the same gods … Rome was no longer beheld with the same eyes; the citizens were no longer fired with the same love for their country, and the Roman sentiments were obliterated” (, 69–75).
Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix (c.138–78 B.C.), a Roman military leader and dictator, instituted legal reforms such as an increase in the senate’s power, the establishment of new courts, and clearer separation between civil and criminal law. He was, however, responsible for massacres and a proscription program.
Gaius Marius (c.157–86 B.C.) helped to professionalize the Roman military. Elected consul several times, Marius defeated African king Jugurtha and had an intense rivalry with Sulla, which led to civil wars that eventually caused the downfall of the Roman Republic. Following the Social War, conflict between Marius and Sulla intensified.
8. On 25 Nov., the Virginia legislature elected Patrick Henry as governor, but he declined the appointment by 6 Dec. (see , 14, 28). James Wood became governor instead.
9. The letter to Stuart from Simms has not been identified.
On 29 Nov., the Virginia House of Delegates “agreed to a resolution relative to the revision of the present constitution or form of state government.” The following day, the Virginia Senate ordered that the resolution be submitted to a committee on 1 December. The committee on 9 Dec. made an amendment to the resolution, which the House of Delegates approved on the 13th (see , 17, 18–19, 21, 23–24, 26, 30–31, 34–35). The House then ordered that 2,000 copies of the resolution be printed and distributed “among the several counties of this commonwealth, for the consideration of the good people thereof.” The resolution, printed as a broadside, began: “Whereas petitions have been presented to the General Assembly, from various parts of this commonwealth, praying for the establishment of some mode, whereby the present Constitution … should be revised and amended.” The House resolved “That it be recommended to the good people … to instruct their Representatives in the next session of the General Assembly, upon the propriety of calling a Convention for that purpose, and of ascertaining the manner in which the same should be carried into effect” (, no. 31501). No further action on the matter was taken, and the next convention to amend the Virginia constitution took place in 1829–30.