To George Washington from Timothy Pickering, 21 July 1796
From Timothy Pickering
Department of State, July 21. 1796.
Sir,
I have the honor to inclose a letter from Colo. Monroe, dated the 2d of May (and which was received late in the evening of last Tuesday)1 with the papers accompanying it, containing the complaints of the French Republic against the Government of the United States, and Mr Monroe’s answer to those complaints. I have only substituted a translation of the statement of M. De la Croix, the French minister for foreign affairs, for the French copy, which I retain in the office.2
After the multiplied rumours of serious uneasiness, & even of resentment, on the part of the French Republic, towards the U. States, it will afford you great satisfaction to find their complaints to be such only as the statement of M. de la Croix exhibits: all being either wholly unfounded, or resting on erroneous representations or misconceptions of facts, or misconstructions of treaties and the law of nations. Mr Monroe’s answer to these complaints is sufficient to obviate them; altho’ the facts and arguments with which he had been furnished authorized, on some points, a more forceable explanation.
Yesterday I received a letter from Mr Polanen, in New-York, announcing his appointment to be the minister Resident of the United Netherlands to the United States; of which I have the honor to inclose a translation, & to request your instruction thereon. To-day I acknowledged the receipt of his letter, and promised to communicate to him your determination as soon as made known to me.3
Connected with this subject are the advices from the Hague. On the 13th instant I received a letter from Mr T. B. Adams, dated the 28th of February last, relative to the change of government in that country, and his virtual acknowledgement of the new order of things, on the part of the U. States. I have since received a duplicate, and now do myself the honor to send you the original.4
Mr Adams grounds his proceeding on a letter to his brother from the department of State, dated the 27th of February 1795, in which I find the following passage. “The maxim of the President towards France has been to follow the government of the people. Whatsoever regimen a majority of them shall establish, is both de facto and de jure that to which our minister there addresses himself. If therefore the Independency of the United Netherlands continues, it is wished that you make no difficulty in passing from the old to any new constitution of the people. If the new rulers will accept your old powers & credentials, offer them. If they require others, adapted to the new order of things, assure the proper bodies or individuals that you will write for them, and doubt not that they will be expedited.”5
Mr Adams’s conduct appears to be perfectly conformable to this instruction, which I perceive was given in answer to a question on the subject proposed by his brother in his letter of November 2. 1794.6 I am, sir, with the highest respect, your most obt servant
Timothy Pickering.
ALS, DNA: RG 59, Miscellaneous Letters; LB, DNA: RG 59, Domestic Letters; LB, DNA: RG 59, GW’s Correspondence with His Secretaries of State. For GW’s reply, see his first letter to Pickering on 27 July.
1. The previous Tuesday was 19 July. James Monroe, U.S. minister to France, had written Pickering from Paris on 2 May: “I informed you in my last of the 25. of March that I was promised by the Directoire in an audience I had obtained of that body that the minister of foreign affairs should state to me such objections as were entertained by this government to certain measures of our own, and in the interim that no step should be taken under the existing impression, nor until my reply was received, and fully weighed, and I now have the pleasure to transmit the result of the communication which afterwards took place between the minister and myself on that subject.
“I do not know what effect my reply has had upon the mind of the Directoire because it was only sent in a few days since. …
“I think proper to communicate to you an incident which took place between the minister and myself, after I had obtained from the Directoire a promise that he should state the objections above referred to and discuss their merits with me. … Soon after that period I received from the minister the communication promised in a note of the same date but differing in some other respects from the present one, and particularly in the number of complaints, two of the catalogue being now given up by him, and to which I replied as soon as I could prepare my reply, in a note bearing likewise the same date with that which I now inclose you. After he had perused my reply he was sensible he had insisted on some points that were not tenable, and in consequence asked that I would permit him to retake his note, returning mine, that he might correct himself, and of course that I would consider the discussion as yet to be commenced. I told him immediately that I would do so with pleasure, because I did not consider myself in the light of a sollicitor bound to catch at and take advantage of little errors: that I wished upon all occasions, and with every one, and especially upon the present occasion with him to act with candour, and in consequence I soon afterwards restored him his note and took back my own. …
“The minister thought proper to give his second communication the same date with the former one, although more than a fortnight had intervened between the one and the other: and in consequence I followed his example giving my latter reply the same date with the former one. His motive I did not enquire into: mine was that the Directoire might see that the delay which took place did not proceed from me” ( 4:14–15; see also Pickering to GW, 20 July). For French foreign minister Charles Delacroix’s initial communication to Monroe dated 9 March, and Monroe’s reply dated 15 March, see 3:612–14, 621–26; see also Comments on Monroe’s A View of the Conduct of the Executive of the United States, circa March 1798, in 2:169–70, 209–13, 217; 112–29, 133–36; and 374–78. For the two versions of Monroe’s letter to Pickering dated 25 March, see 3:631–34.
2. The translation of Delacroix’s summary of French complaints is printed as an enclosure with this letter.
3. A translation of the letter from Roger Gerard Van Polanen to Pickering written at New York on 18 July reads: “I have just received from the National Convention of the Republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, my letters of Credence, as minister Resident to the United States of America.
“His Excellency the President not being now at Philadelphia, and being myself attacked by a slight indisposition, I have the honor of transmitting them to you, requesting you to inform him thereof, and to communicate to me the intentions of his Excellency, on the subject of my admission and reception in that character” (DNA: RG 59, Miscellaneous Letters). In his reply written at Philadelphia on this date, Pickering informed Van Polanen that GW “is at Mount Vernon, his seat in Virginia, whence he will probably return to this City in about five weeks” (DNA: RG 59, Domestic Letters). For Van Polanen’s official reception, see Pickering to GW, 29 Aug.; see also Batavian Republic to GW, 3 May.
4. Thomas Boylston Adams (1772–1832), a brother of John Quincy Adams, was secretary of legation at The Hague.
The letter from Adams to Pickering dated 28 Feb. 1796 has not been identified, but it presumably covered the opening of the first national assembly under the Batavian Republic.
5. Pickering quoted from Edmund Randolph to John Quincy Adams, 27 Feb. 1795 (DNA: RG 59, Diplomatic and Consular Instructions).
6. When John Quincy Adams wrote the secretary of state on 2 Nov. 1794, he asked about the status of his diplomatic mission following the French invasion of the Netherlands and that country’s possible loss of sovereignty or change in government (DNA: RG 59, Despatches from U.S. Ministers to the Netherlands).