Washington [474]
On January 21, 1793, the former King Louis XVI, who had helped win American independence, was decapitated before a crowd of twenty thousand people intoxicated with a lust for revenge. After stuffing the king’s head between his legs, the executioner flung his remains into a rude cart piled with corpses, while bystanders dipped souvenirs into the royal blood pooled under the guillotine. Vendors soon hawked patches of the king’s clothing and locks of bloodstained hair, in a spectacle of sadistic glee that shocked many people inside and outside France. On February 1 France declared war on Great Britain and Holland.
Thomas Jefferson seemed unfazed by the regicide and the large-scale massacres preceding it. After William Short wrote of horrifying beheadings in Paris, Jefferson saw little cause for alarm. “My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause,” he conceded, then added cold-bloodedly, “but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than it is now.”26 Persuaded that tales of French atrocities were propaganda exploited by Federalists, Jefferson became an apologist for the burgeoning horrors of the Jacobins. “I begin to consider them the true revolutionary spirit of the whole nation,” he told Madison.27 Madison also viewed the revolution through rose-colored spectacles. While Washington and Hamilton refused to acknowledge their election as honorary French citizens, Madison sent back a warmly fraternal response, extolling the “sublime truths and precious sentiments recorded in the revolution of France.”28
Washington hoped to win respectability from foreign powers, but he also wanted to stay free of foreign entanglements so the young nation could prosper. He gave Gouverneur Morris a succinct formulation of his credo: “My primary objects . . . have been to preserve the country in peace, if I can, and to be prepared for war, if I cannot.”29 In general, he favored economic rather than political involvement with the outside world. This neutrality policy was practical in that the United States was too small to exert significant leverage among the great powers and high-minded enough to shy away from European balance-of-power politics. Washington had no desire to exploit wrangling among foreign states, telling Morris that “this country is not guided by such narrow and mistaken policy as will lead it to wish the destruction of any nation under an idea that our importance will be increased in proportion as that of others is lessened.”30 As war convulsed Europe, Washington, a former war hero, might have been tempted to become a warlike president, but he wisely abjured the use of force at this first serious threat.
In early April, while vacationing at Mount Vernon, Washington received a letter from Hamilton in Philadelphia, announcing that England and France were at war. In forwarding instructions to Jefferson, Washington left no doubt of his desire for unconditional American neutrality: “War having actually commenced between France and Great Britain, it behooves the government of this country to use every means in its power to prevent the citizens thereof from embroiling us with either of those powers by endeavoring to maintain a strict neutrality.”31 As he rushed back to the capital, he asked Jefferson to draw up a document spelling out the terms of neutrality. Washington was especially concerned that American ships might be recruited as privateers to prey on British vessels, luring the country into war.
After the abortive attempt by Giles to expel him from office, Hamilton was not eager to defer to Jefferson and turned to Chief Justice Jay for advice on drafting a neutrality proclamation. Even though Jefferson complained bitterly about Hamilton’s meddling