Washington [478]
As if he didn’t have troubles enough, Washington had to make a sudden return to Mount Vernon to cope with the death of Anthony Whitting, who had replaced George Augustine as manager of Mount Vernon. The president, at his wit’s end, complained that “my concerns at Mount Vernon are left as a body without a head.”52
On July 8, while Washington was at Mount Vernon, the cabinet discussed what to do about La Petite Démocrate, anchored in the Delaware River. Hamilton and Knox wanted to fortify Mud Island, farther down the Delaware, to intercept the ship if it tried to sail—advice rejected by Jefferson. Two days later Jefferson took up the matter with Genet, who assured him that the renegade ship would stay put until Washington returned. Swollen with power, Genet also threatened, in a grave violation of diplomatic protocol, to appeal over Washington’s head to the American people to overturn the neutrality policy. Washington was incensed over Genet’s conduct, which brought to the surface his bottled-up rage against Jefferson. He flatly asked his secretary of state: “Is the minister of the French Republic to set the acts of this government at defiance—with impunity and then threaten the executive with an appeal to the people?”53 Struggling with a fever, Jefferson relayed to Washington Genet’s assurance that the ship would stay put until Washington determined its fate. Within a day or two Genet violated his promise as La Petite Démocrate slipped past Mud Island and fled out to sea, in a flagrant breach of American neutrality. The beleaguered president, weary of the tussle between the French and British ministers, told Henry Lee that since his return to Philadelphia “I have been more than ever overwhelmed with their complaints. In a word, the trouble they give is hardly to be described.”54
In the absence of a Justice Department, Washington intermittently turned to Chief Justice Jay for legal advice. In July the cabinet sent Jay twenty-nine queries to clarify the meaning of neutrality and rule on American jurisdiction over the French seizure of ships in American waters. On August 8, replying on behalf of the Supreme Court, Jay declined to render an advisory opinion. The Constitution, he said, had set up three independent branches of government, and it would be improper for “judges of a court in the last resort” to issue an opinion that could be accepted or rejected by the president.55 This decision set a major precedent, placing a protective barrier between the presidency and an independent judiciary and sharply defining lines that had hitherto been indistinct. In lieu of the Court’s opinion, Washington’s cabinet issued a set of rules governing the conduct of belligerents, prohibiting them from arming privateers or bringing prizes captured in American waters into American ports.
Genet’s conduct stirred up a tempest in Philadelphia, and howling mobs of his supporters marched on the presidential mansion. “The town is one continuous scene of riot,” the British consul reported. “French seamen range the streets night and day with cutlasses and commit the most daring outrages. Genet seems ready to raise the tricolor and proclaim himself proconsul.”56 This British hyperbole was corroborated by John Adams, years later, in a letter to Jefferson: “You certainly never felt the terrorism excited by Genet in 1793 when ten thousand people in the streets of Philadelphia, day after day, threatened to drag Washington out of his house and effect a revolution in the government or compel it to declare war in favor of the French Revolution and against England.”57
Against this backdrop Washington convened a tense cabinet session on July 23 to discuss whether there was a way to demand Genet’s recall without insulting France. Refusing