Washington [480]
Meanwhile Citizen Genet was not about to depart quietly. In mid-August, when John Jay and Rufus King revealed in a New York newspaper that Genet had threatened to make a direct appeal to the American people over the president’s head, the country reacted with righteous indignation. Genet’s intemperance ultimately proved a bonanza for the Federalists. In late August the cabinet agreed unanimously to demand his recall and give the French a full accounting of his behavior. As it happened, the Jacobins had already dispatched his successor, Jean-Antoine Fauchet, who had orders to send Genet home to stand trial for “crimes” against the revolution. Whatever his misgivings about Genet, Washington did not care to send him to his death and granted him asylum in the United States. The Frenchman married the daughter of Governor George Clinton and passed the remainder of his days in upstate New York.
The saga of Citizen Genet had an ongoing afterlife, since his visit spawned a new form of political club—the so-called Democratic-Republican Societies. Their organizers intended them to evoke the Sons of Liberty chapters, while apprehensive Federalists found them eerily reminiscent of the French Jacobin clubs. The first one was established in April 1793 in Philadelphia; ten more were formed before year’s end, and at least two dozen more the next year. Washington always distinguished between legitimate criticism of government and an illegitimate, “diabolical” sort that sought to destroy confidence in public servants. Early on, he concluded that the new societies were of the illegitimate variety, spouting popular rhetoric while tearing down the fabric of government, “even at the expense of plunging this country in the horrors of a disastrous war.”66 He regarded them as tools of a French plot to destroy American neutrality and drag the country into war. While he acknowledged their right to protest, he was persuaded that the new societies constituted a menace because their permanence showed a settled hostility to the government.
Washington’s views on dissent were colored by his political philosophy. Along with other Federalists, he thought that officials, once elected, should apply their superior judgment and experience to make decisions on behalf of the populace. As he enunciated this position: “My political creed therefore is, to be wise in the choice of delegates—support them like gentlemen, while they are our representatives—give them competent powers for all federal purposes—support them in the due exercise thereof—and, lastly, to compel them to close attendance in Congress during their delegation.”67 As an extension of this view, Washington believed that voters, having once elected representatives, should lend them support. He found it difficult to execute the philosophical leap that voters reserved the right to a continuing critique of their elected officials. The Republicans, by contrast, wanted representatives to be continually responsive to voters and receptive to political criticism.
Some historians have faulted Washington for being intolerant of dissent, but mitigating circumstances should be cited. The concept of republican government was new, and nobody knew exactly how much criticism it could withstand. From the close of the war, Americans had worried about foreign intrusion, especially attempts by European imperial powers to roll back the Revolution, and many