CHAPTER tained the plea, whether on both grounds or on which XIII. of them did not appear, and so this long process came to 1798. an end. By these proceedings against him, Blount's popularity in Tennessee had been rather increased than otherwise, and nothing but his sudden death prevented his being elected governor over Sevier's head. 1799. It was not till the session of Congress was half gone, Jan. 18. and after divers urgings from Gallatin, who objected otherwise to go on with the several bills reported by the standing committee on defense, that the president laid before Congress the promised documents, including Gerry's correspondence with Talleyrand, and also the letters from Consul-general Skipwith, who, however, as well as all the consuls under him, appointed on Monroe's suggestion, had already been removed from office. One cause of the president's delay became apparent Jan. 23. in the transmission, a few days afterward, of a very elaborate report from Pickering, which it must have taken some time to prepare, and in which, though it had been somewhat trimmed down by the president's hand, Talleyrand, the Directory, and Gerry himself were very sharply criticised. The main argument of this report was, that as the several outrageous French decrees against American commerce remained unrepealed (whatever little repealing there had been being but illusory), Talleyrand's expressions of readiness to treat ought to be regarded only as a deceptive lure, intended to keep the United States quiet, while France, in the continued plunder of American commerce, enjoyed all the benefits without experiencing hardly any of the evils of war. Jan. 28. Pickering's report was presently followed by another message, communicating a new decree, extending to neutrals generally, found serving on board hostile vessels, that penalty already some time before denounced against XIII. Americans in particular, of being treated as pirates, even CHAPTER though they might allege having been forced into the service. But this sort of impartiality did not satisfy; 1799. and a bill was soon brought in by the Committee of Defense, authorizing, on proof of the execution of this decree against any American citizen, a retaliation, in like kind, upon any French prisoners in the hands of the United States. Before this bill had time to pass, news arrived that, owing to threats of retaliation by England, the late decree had been repealed. But as the former decree, embracing American citizens only, still remained in force, the bill was persevered with, and became a law. Meanwhile the House passed another bill, continuing for a year the non-intercourse with France and her dependencies, but with a clause inserted, in spite of the efforts of the opposition, designed to facilitate the renewal of commercial intercourse with St. Domingo, by which the president was authorized, whenever he might deem it expedient, to discontinue this restraint by proclamation, either with respect to the entire French republic, or any port or place belonging to it. Three other bills from the naval committee were carried through the House, one appropriating a million of dollars toward the construction of six ships of the line and six sloops of war; a second appropriating $200,000 for the purchase of timber; and a third appropriating $50,000 toward the establishment of two dock-yards. The Senate, meanwhile, had passed a bill, authorizing the president to raise, in case of war or imminent danger of invasion, besides the troops voted at the last session, the recruiting for which had but just commenced, twenty-four additional regiments of infantry, three regiments of cavalry, a regiment and a battalion of riflemen, CHAPTER and an additional battalion of artillery, making a total XIII. force of regulars, should these and the other new regi1799. ments be filled up, of upward of forty thousand men; and also to organize such volunteers as might offer their services under the act of the last session, to the number of seventy-eight thousand men, distributed in certain quotas among the states. To carry these provisions into effect, should the emergency arise, two millions of dollars were appropriated. In the midst of the progress of these vigorous measures, great was the astonishment of the Federalists, and not less the exultation of the opposition, at a message Feb. 18. sent by the president to the Senate, nominating William Van Murray, resident minister at the Hague, as minister plenipotentiary to the French republic. There was sent to the Senate along with this message, and as the occasion of it, the copy of a letter from Talleyrand to Pichon, the French secretary of legation at the Hague, intended, so it seemed to the president, as a compliance with the condition insisted upon in the message of June last, in which the return of Marshall had been notified, as that alone on which he would ever send another minister to France-"assurance that he would be received, respected, and honored as the representative of a great, free, independent, and powerful nation." Being always disposed to embrace "every plausible appearance of probability" of preserving peace, he had thought proper, so he stated in his message, to meet this advance by mak ing the present nomination. Duly to understand the exact position of affairs, and the occasion of the above-mentioned letter of Talleyrand's and of the nomination of Murray, it will be necessary to go back for a moment to Europe, and to the attempt on the part of Talleyrand at the renewal of dip lomatic relations with the United States, already men- CHAPTER tioned as set on foot at the Hague. XIII. Very shortly after Gerry's departure, M. Pichon, for- 1799. merly a resident in America, lately a clerk in Talleyrand's office, and at this moment secretary of the French legation at the Hague, had opened a communication, no doubt by Talleyrand's direction, with Murray, the American resident there. For Murray's satisfaction on certain points, Talleyrand presently addressed (August 28, 1798) a letter to Pichon, in which, after many compliments to Murray personally, and admitting, also, that the Directory might have been mistaken (as Murray had asserted to Pichon) in ascribing to the American government a design to throw itself into the arms of England, Talleyrand formally disavowed any wish on the part of the Directory to revolutionize the United States, or any intention to make war upon them. "Every contrary supposition," said this letter, "is an insult to common sense;" though Talleyrand himself, not six months before, had frightened Gerry into remaining at Paris by threats of instant war if he departed! After complaining, in terms already quoted, of Gerry's diplomatic incapacity, this letter to Pichon went a step beyond the offer to treat contained in the closing letter to Gerry himself, and which the president's speech at the opening of the session had pronounced inadmissible, clogged, as it was, by the proviso of an envoy "who should unite Gerry's advantages." Talleyrand expressly disavowed, in this letter to Pichon, any disposition to dictate as to the selection of an envoy; having only intended to hint, as he said, in a friendly way, that the Directory would have more confidence in an envoy who had not manifested a predilection for England, and who did not profess hatred or contempt for the French repub CHAPTER lic. XIII. The letter finally closed with a strong hint that Murray himself would be perfectly acceptable. 1799. After some further communications, as it would seem, from Pichon, of interviews between him and Murray, Talleyrand wrote again (September 28)—and this was the letter communicated by the president as the basis of his nomination of Murray-giving his express sanction to a declaration which Pichon had taken it upon himself to make, that, whatever plenipotentiary the government of the United States might send to France, "he would undoubtedly be received with the respect due to the representative of a free, independent, and powerful nation." Both these letters had been communicated to Murray for transmission to the United States, but only the second was laid before the Senate, and that as a secret communication. When it had been received, or why the other was kept back, does not appear. The letter communicated had probably reached the State Department not long before the nomination was made. Possibly the other, though prior in date, had not yet arrived; or, more likely, the president did not care, by communicating it, to show how much his choice of a minister had been guided by Talleyrand's selection. The first letter, however, having probably been sent by Talleyrand himself for publication in America, made its appearance in print in the course of the following summer in Callender's new paper at Richmond; Callender, since the death of Bache, disputing with Duane the editorial leadership of the opposition. In making the nomination, the president expressly pledged himself that Murray should not enter France without having first received direct and unequivocal assurances from the French minister of Foreign Relations that he should be received in character, and that a minister of equal grade would be appointed to treat with him. |