George Washington and Neutrality

In 1789, George Washington took the oath of office and became the first President of the United States. Washington recognized that his leadership and decisions set precedence the direction of the new nation and for future presidents. Even as Washington navigated the challenges with states, congress, courts and his cabinet, international events shook the foundations of European governments and raised questions about how the United States should respond.

The French Revolution began in 1789 with the meeting of the Estates General and the Storming of the Bastille. The Marquis de Lafayette initially emerged as a leader, helping to draft the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen," and hopes rose in the United States that this war hero of the American Revolution might help to guide France toward a constitutional monarchy or republic. Since France had been an ally with the United States against Britain during the Revolutionary War, many Americans had interest and hopes for a new era of “liberty, fraternity and equality” emerging in France. 

However, in the following years as violence increased in France, Lafayette was imprisoned, and the guillotines executed members of the aristocracy and other so-called enemies of liberty, some Americans had second thoughts about supporting the bloody revolution. The War of the First Coalition began as European countries including Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia united to invade to France and try to end the violence and restore order. In January 1793 and October 1793, respectively, King Louis XVI was executed, followed by Queen Marie Antoinette. 

While the execution of King Louis XVI and the War of the First Coalition were prime factors influencing Washington’s decisions, another event unfolded on American shores. On April 8, 1793, Edmond Genet, a new ambassador from France, arrived in the United States, landing in Charleston, South Carolina. Genet received a warm reception as he journeyed northward to the nation’s capital at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, bringing military commissions and letters of marque from the French Revolutionary government and trying to recruit Americans into the European fight. 

Washington called a cabinet meeting on April 19, 1793, seeking advice for his response to affairs in Europe and Genet’s recruiting of American citizens. He wanted his response to be within the bounds of the Constitution but had to determine where that seemed to lie in this situation. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton disagreed the origins of the 1778 Treaty of Alliance; Hamilton argued the treaty was over since it had been made with King Louis XVI who was now dead while Jefferson believed that the treaty was made with the French nation and still held, even though the king had been executed. Other cabinet members affirmed that the president could issue a statement of neutrality and formally keep the United States from getting embroiled in a European conflict. As for Ambassador Genet—or Citizen Genet as he liked to be called in Revolutionary fashion—the cabinet agreed that the United States government would accept him as the new French minister, despite his unsavory tactics. 

President Washington issued a Neutrality Proclamation on April 22, 1793. It declared that the United States would “pursue a conduct friendly and impartial toward the belligerent Powers.” It further stated that the federal government would prosecute American citizens who violated this policy and would not protect such citizen if they were captured and tried by one of the European nations while violating the declared neutrality. This statement set a precedent for the president to influence and exert foreign policy measures on behalf of the nation. 

The Neutrality Proclamation received a strong reaction in the United States. Some people believed America was betraying its own revolutionary origins and refusing to help France advance the cause of liberty. They saw the proclamation as a betrayal of France, the United States first ally. In some ways, response to the Neutrality Proclamation triggered the feelings and beliefs that led to the creation of political parties in the United States.

In the criticism that followed, Alexander Hamilton defended the Washington administration by writing anonymous letters to the press, arguing in favor of neutrality and explaining that the 1778 Treaty of Alliance between France and the United States was only a defensive arrangement and not valid now because France had declared war offensively in Europe. Hamilton’s veiled arguments irritated Jefferson who convinced his friend James Madison to write countering letters to the press, taking the view that the United States should still support France and aid causes of liberty on foreign shores. 

Meanwhile Citizen Genet inserted his views and his politics in American affairs, defending an American who had joined a French privateer and been captured by the British. Genet hired lawyers to defend the American, and a jury decided that the Neutrality Proclamation did not carry weight of law. Attorney General Edmund Randolph responded, entrenching on Washington’s policy. Genet went further, paying to convert a captured British ship into a French warship in a United States port. When Jefferson confronted Genet, the Frenchman threatened to appeal to the American people and invite them to rebel against Washington if the United States would not support France. Hamilton leaked Genet’s threats to the press, and it backfired on Genet as Americans finally rallied to support Washington. The president insisted the France send a new ambassador. As for Genet, Revolutionary France declared him a criminal and recalled him; however, Washington granted asylum, and Genet stayed in the United States in no official capacity, but likely escaping the guillotine in his home country. 

In 1794, Congress passed the Neutrality Act which gave the president’s proclamation the force of law and officially keeping the United States out of the French Revolution and European wars of the 1790s. Washington’s proclamation set the direction of American foreign policy, and it was eventually reinforced by Congress and the support of many Americans.

As Washington prepared to leave the presidential office after two terms, war still raged in Europe. In his “Farewell Address” in 1796—a letter published in newspapers across the country—Washington offered words of advice that guided the United States through the rest of the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Era: 

“The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

“Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

“Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?”