CHAPTER VI.

WASHINGTON'S ADMINISTRATION.

FIRST TERM.

1791–1793.

THE President having previously made a tour through the Northern States, was induced, after the rising of Congress, to make a similar visit to the South: but before he set out, he exercised the power assigned to him by Congress, of laying off, by Commissioners appointed for that purpose, the ten miles square which Maryland and Virginia had granted to the United States for the permanent seat of government; and an engineer of reputation thereupon planned a city which, in its extent, was better adapted to what the United States would probably need in the course of a century than to its present wants.

In his Southern excursion, the President derived much pleasure, as well as instruction, from the personal knowledge he thus acquired of the condition of the country, and of public sentiment.

"The people at large," he says, "have felt the security which it [the General government] gives, and the equal justice which it administers to them. The farmer, the merchant, and the mechanic have seen their several interests attended to, and thence they unite in placing a confidence in their representatives, as well as in those in whose hands the execution of the laws is placed. Industry has there taken the place of idleness, and economy of dissipation. Two or three years of good crops, and a ready

1791.]

THE FIRST CENSUS.

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market for the produce of their lands, have put every one in good humor; and in some instances they even impute to the government what is due only to the goodness of Providence," "

1

In the course of this summer, the first census of the inhabitants was taken, according to which the whole number was 3,929,827:

The gross population of the States north of Delaware, having 40,000 slaves, was 1,968,455; and in the Southern and Western States, having 657,047 slaves, the gross population was 1,961,374.

The white males having been distinguished into those who were sixteen years and upwards, and those under that age, it was remarked that it divided them into two nearly equal portions.

Separated as the United States are by more than three thousand miles from Europe, they might seem to have no very direct interest in the affairs of that continent; but in the present state of the world no civilized nation, especially one so commercial as the United States, could fail to have important and interesting relations with the principal nations of Europe.

The state of those relations at this time we will now notice.

We have seen that Great Britain was unwilling not only to enter into a commercial treaty with her former colonies, but even to treat them with the courtesy that prevails among civilized nations, of sending a diplomatic

X. Sparks's Washington, page 170.

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RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND.

CHAP. VI.

representative. But as some agent of her government was deemed important to her interests, an aid-de-camp of the Governor of Canada was at Philadelphia, in the character of an informal agent of his government, and he doubtless discharged one of the offices of diplomacy, perhaps the most important, of keeping his employers apprised of the sentiments and views of the leading men in the United States, and of their probable future policy.

It was soon found that the continuance of this fastidious course by Great Britain would be a sacrifice of her interests to her pride. The favor with which Mr. Madison's retaliatory propositions had been received by a large minority in Congress, gave her assurance that the United States were prepared to adopt a policy, by which her commercial interests generally, and her West India interests in particular, might be seriously affected. The terms of the treaty of peace were, moreover, still unexecuted; and though she still retained the posts which she had agreed to surrender, and though the claims against her for a part of the slaves carried away were unsatisfied, yet these failures on her part afforded no sufficient compensation for the large amount of debts due from American citizens to British subjects, and which could not yet be recovered by law, according to the stipulations of the treaty of Paris.

Mr. Gouverneur Morris, who was about to go to Europe, had been appointed by the President to sound the British government as to their views towards the United States; and in his conferences with different members of the British ministry, he found that there was no disposition to form a commercial treaty with the American Republic; and they did not hesitate to avow that they should retain the northern posts, if the delay in the American government to fulfil its engagements

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RELATIONS WITH SPAIN.

463

should render the execution impracticable,' until redress should be made for the failure, and also for the delay. They refused to point out what parts of the treaty were rendered impracticable, and showed little disposition to afford any explanation whatever.

Nor was this all the cause of complaint on the part of the United States. The recent hostilities of the Northern Indians were supposed to have been prompted by British agents in Canada; and it was known that they had been furnished with military stores, which was as inconsistent with the duties of a nation in the relation of peace and friendship, as with those of humanity.

In April, 1791, the President wrote to Mr. Jefferson to make a representation to Lord Dorchester, or other officer commanding in Canada, of the delivery of large supplies of ammunition from British posts to the hostile Indians in the year before. General Washington expressed his surprise and disappointment, but, at the same time, he was very guarded in his language, and submitted to Mr. Jefferson either to treat the matter with great delicacy, or to decline it altogether.

Such were the relations between the two countries when Mr. Hammond was appointed Minister from Great Britain to the United States. He reached Philadelphia in August, and soon entered into a long diplomatic correspondence with the American Secretary of State.

The principal difficulty with Spain was also unsettled. When, in 1790, a misunderstanding arose between Great Britain and Spain about the settlement of the latter at Nootka Sound, which for a time threatened to lead to a rupture, the United States deemed this a propitious moment to press on Spain their right to a free navigation of the Mississippi, to which their natural claim

1 V. Marshall, page 277.

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RELATIONS WITH FRANCE.

[CHAP. VI.

Their Chargé

seemed to be as just as it was important. d'Affaires, Mr. Carmichael, was accordingly so instructed; and terms were proposed which, in allowing them the navigation of a river that was the boundary of several of the States, would also give safety to the Spanish possessions to the west of it. But the adjustment of the dispute between Great Britain and Spain soon put an end to all hopes of advantage expected from that dispute, and the navigation of the Mississippi continued on the same precarious footing as before.

The relations with France, which had hitherto been altogether friendly, were destined to undergo a great change in consequence of that political revolution which not only overturned the throne and the altar in France, but whose bold innovations in every department of the social system electrified the whole civilized world.

While all parties in America seemed at first to look with favorable eyes on the political changes in France as likely to better the condition of a nation which had materially assisted the United States in achieving their independence, and which was thus more assimilated in government to themselves, yet the excesses to which it was soon led in its progress were found to be very dif ferently viewed by different portions of American citizens; and while some, in their enthusiasm for the liberty the French people professed, were disposed to excuse their crimes, as well as their folly and anarchy, others regarded them first with doubt, then with fear, and lastly with undisguised abhorrence. Those sentiments then, for a time, became the principal source of party division, and in the United States it almost swallowed up every other.

This effect was already perceptible at the epoch of which we write, in 1791, but it did not attain its utmost height until some years later.