Alexander Hamilton (96 page)

Jefferson’s presence lingered in Congress through Madison. On the eve of his departure, Jefferson submitted a bulky report to the House on European trade policies toward America. He laid out a litany of charges—from unfair dominance of transatlantic shipping to the banning of American boats from the British West Indies—to buttress his claim that England discriminated against American trade. Based on this evidence, Jefferson advocated commercial reprisals against Britain coupled, not surprisingly, with expanded trade relations with France.

On January 3, 1794, Madison introduced seven congressional resolutions that converted Jefferson’s brief into a tough anti-British trade policy. Ten days later, Federalist William Loughton Smith rebutted him in an eloquent speech of fifteen thousand words that adroitly picked apart Madison’s arguments. Smith suggested that it would be suicidal for America to disrupt relations with the country that accounted for most of its trade. As soon as Jefferson scanned Smith’s speech, he knew his old bête noire had struck again. “I am at no loss to ascribe Smith’s speech to its true father,” he told Madison. “Every letter of it is Hamilton’s, except the introduction.”
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Jefferson had guessed shrewdly: Hamilton either drafted Smith’s speech or provided the information.

Responding to Madison’s attempts to solidify relations with France, Hamilton lashed back in his time-tested manner. Under the disguise of “Americanus,” he published two fervid newspaper essays about the horrors of the French Revolution. He condemned apologists for “the horrid and disgusting scenes” being enacted in France and branded Marat and Robespierre “assassins still reeking with the blood of murdered fellow citizens.” Long before Napoleon came on the scene, he predicted that after “wading through seas of blood…France may find herself at length the slave of some victorious…Caesar.”
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Unfortunately for Hamilton, even as he touted England as a law-abiding ally, the British evinced a bullying arrogance and stupidity toward America that surpassed the most acrid Jeffersonian caricatures. England refused to acknowledge the traditional doctrine “free ships make free goods”—i.e., that neutral vessels had a right to carry all cargo save munitions and enter the ports of belligerent countries. On November 6, 1793, William Pitt’s ministry had decreed that British ships could intercept neutral vessels hauling produce to or from the French West Indies. Without further ado, the British fleet captured more than 250 American merchant ships, impounding more than half of them as war prizes. Britain also boarded American vessels at sea and dragged off sailors, claiming they were British seamen who had deserted. These high-handed actions kicked up such a ruckus in America that, for the first time since the Revolution, the prospect of a new war against Great Britain seemed a genuine possibility.

The Federalists felt shocked, betrayed, and embittered. “The English are absolute madmen,” sputtered an indignant Fisher Ames. “Order in this country is endangered by their hostility no less than by French friendship.”
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When Hamilton heard about British depredations, he did not behave like a pawn of British interests. Rather, he drew up for Washington contingency plans to raise a twenty-thousand-man army to defend coastal cities and impose a partial trade embargo. “The pains taken to preserve peace,” he told Washington, “include a proportional responsibility that equal pains be taken to be prepared for war.”
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Once again, Hamilton and Washington agreed that the executive branch should take the lead in a national emergency.

While continuing to meet with his dogged congressional investigators, the sorely taxed treasury secretary instructed customs collectors to fortify ports for a possible invasion, while Federalists presented plans to Congress for a provisional army. As word spread that the omnipresent Hamilton might supervise this new force, Republicans discerned another insidious power play. “You will understand the game behind the curtain too well not to perceive the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the government,” Madison told Jefferson.
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Madison and other Republicans opposed Federalist plans to form an army and increase taxes for national defense. When Federalists suggested that it was high time America had its own navy to combat the plunder of American shipping by Barbary pirates, Madison suggested, in all seriousness, that the United States hire the Portuguese navy instead.

Bent upon postponing war with Britain, influential Federalists gathered at the lodgings of Senator Rufus King. They agreed that Washington should send a special envoy to England and proposed Hamilton, who thought he was a splendid choice. As usual, the mere mention of his name sent Federalists into shivers of ecstasy:

“Who but Hamilton would perfectly satisfy all our wishes?” asked Ames.
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At first, Washington leaned toward Hamilton and grew resentful when Edmund Randolph interposed objections. Randolph thought Hamilton had been too vocal in criticizing France to enjoy credibility as an objective negotiator with Britain. Republicans joined this chorus of dissent and talked as if Washington were about to deputize the devil himself. Representative John Nicholas, brother-in-law of Senator James Monroe, told the president apropos of Hamilton that “more than half [of] America have determined it to be unsafe to trust power in the hands of this person…. Did it never occur to you that the divisions of America might be ended by the sacrifice of this one man?”
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Jefferson detected yet another cabal to place “the aristocracy of this country under the patronage” of the British government, not to mention a convenient way to send Hamilton abroad and protect him “from the disgrace and public execrations which sooner or later must fall on the man.”
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In the end, Washington concluded that Hamilton lacked “the general confidence of the country” and wisely opted for a less partisan figure.
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On April 14, Hamilton composed a long, plaintive letter to Washington and removed himself from consideration for the post. Madison said that Hamilton was crushed and informed Jefferson that he had been turned down “to his great mortification.”
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Yet Hamilton must have known he would be a divisive choice. He also had reasons for staying close to home: he feared that, without him, Washington might submit to Republican influence; he was still committed to vindicating his reputation before the congressional investigating committee; and he wanted to deal with ominous protests now gathering force in western Pennsylvania against the excise tax he had imposed on liquor.

In his letter to Washington, Hamilton made some statements on foreign policy of lasting significance, especially the idea of war as a last resort. He said that he belonged to the camp that wanted “to preserve peace at all costs, consistent with national honor,” resorting to war only if attempts at reparations failed. He warned that Republicans wanted to poison relations with Britain, foster amity with France, and cancel debts owed to England. The British would then retaliate by blocking commodity exports to America, causing a catastrophic drop in customs duties. This would “bring the Treasury to an absolute stoppage of payment[,]…an event which would cut up credit by the roots.”
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Hamilton has often been extolled as the exponent of a rational foreign policy based on cool calculations of national self-interest. But his April 14 letter expressed his unswerving conviction that nations, transported by strong emotion, often
mis
calculate their interests: “Wars oftener proceed from angry and perverse passions than from cool calculations of interest.”
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War with Britain might unleash violent popular fantasies and set in motion “turbulent passions” that would lead to extremism on the French model, pushing America to “the threshold of disorganization and anarchy.”
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Like so many Hamilton polemics, the letter was a hot-blooded defense of a cool-eyed policy.

When he took himself out of the running for envoy, Hamilton recommended John Jay as the perfect substitute—“the only man in whose qualifications for success there would be thorough confidence and him whom alone it would be advisable to send.”
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As the first chief justice of the Supreme Court, Jay lacked Hamilton’s conspicuous liabilities as a party head. Hamilton had always admired Jay, but with reservations. He once said of Jay that “he was a man of profound sagacity and pure integrity, yet he was of a suspicious temper.”
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In contrast to Hamilton’s colorful exuberance, Jay often dressed in black, tended to be taciturn, and could be aloof, though Philip Schuyler once said that he numbered Jay among the few men for whom he had an affection approaching love.

Jay consented to undertake the mission to England without resigning as chief justice. Republicans found him more palatable than Hamilton but far from a neutral choice. In their eyes, he was another Federalist smitten with England. Nevertheless, the Senate approved him. To offset Jay’s appointment, Washington decided to choose a Republican to succeed Gouverneur Morris as American minister to France and settled on James Monroe. Aaron Burr and some Republican colleagues suspected that Hamilton had induced Washington to veto Burr; for Burr, this was another of many times that Hamilton spiked his aspirations for office. But Washington continued to distrust Burr as a devious, prodigal man and needed no prodding from Hamilton.

If Hamilton could not go to London, he would engage in freelance diplomacy at home. Even before Jay was confirmed by the Senate, Hamilton met twice with the imperious George Hammond, Britain’s minister to the United States. Once again, those who saw Hamilton as toadying to Britain would have been surprised by how vehemently he laced into Hammond. Hammond told superiors back in London that the treasury secretary “entered into a pretty copious recital of the injuries which the commerce of this country had suffered from British cruisers and into a defense of the consequent claim which the American citizens had on their government to vindicate their rights.”
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Hamilton wanted compensation for American vessels captured in the British West Indies, and Hammond was taken aback by the “degree of heat” Hamilton showed.
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At a meeting with Jay and Federalist senators and in a follow-up memo prepared for Washington, Hamilton sketched out Jay’s instructions as envoy, making him the primary architect of the treaty that was to result. In addition to compensation, Hamilton wanted a settlement of outstanding issues from the 1783 peace treaty. The most controversial item on his agenda, however, was the forging of a new commercial alliance in which each nation would receive “most favored nation status” from the other—that is, the lowest possible duties on goods they traded with each other. Presumably, this would increase the volume of trade between the two countries. After some modification, Hamilton’s instructions were adopted by the cabinet as Jay’s marching orders. In frequent meetings with Jay before his departure, Hamilton made clear that he did not want to coddle the British. On the contrary, because of the outrage voiced by the American people, Hamilton wanted Jay to be tough and demand “
substantial
indemnification.”
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At the same time, he wanted Jay to woo the British with a compelling vision of the advantages of closer Anglo-American ties.

On May 12, a thousand New Yorkers cheered from the docks as Jay sailed to England, hoping to avert war. Notwithstanding Republican fears, Washington and Hamilton trod the fine line of neutrality that summer. The U.S. government protested renewed attempts by French privateers to seek asylum in American ports while building up American military strength in case of war with Britain. Washington gave orders to construct six frigates—the birth of the U.S. Navy—and Hamilton negotiated contracts for many naval components: cannon, shot and shells, iron ballast, sailcloth, live oak and cedar, and saltpeter for gunpowder.

Republicans watched Jay’s mission with grave doubts. Madison had a nagging intuition that Jay would surrender too much to England and rupture Franco-American relations. The Republican press clung to the malicious fantasy that Jay would negotiate the sale of America back to the British monarchy. There were fresh rumors to boot that Hamilton was involved in a nefarious plot to make the duke of Kent, the fourth son of King George III, the new king of the United States. This prompted one Republican wag to opine that the royal family should adopt Alexander Hamilton to sire a new line in America. With Hamilton’s well-known attraction to the ladies, the British monarchy would never need to worry about a shortage of heirs in America.

Even as the repression in France acquired a terrible new ferocity, Republicans could not shed their warm, fraternal attachment to the French Revolution. However upset by gory deeds committed in the name of liberty, Madison was heartened when Joseph Fauchet, Citizen Genêt’s successor as French minister, declared “the revolution firm as a rock.”
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Jefferson still gazed at France through rose-colored glasses that magically transformed horrific events into a fresco of glowing colors. “I am convinced they will triumph completely,” he said in May 1794 and blamed the excesses not on the French but on “invading tyrants” who had dared “to embroil them in such wickedness.” Far from being repelled by bloodshed, Jefferson awaited the day when “kings, nobles, and priests” would be packed off to “scaffolds which they have been so long deluging with blood.”
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By early summer 1794, that blood ran in rivers, and executions in Paris reached a monstrous toll of nearly eight hundred per month. Nevertheless, when Jefferson’s protégé James Monroe arrived in France, he embraced the president of the National Assembly and, to Jay’s dismay, lauded the “heroic valor” of French troops.
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