When people think of early American diplomats in France,
they think of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Franklin's adventures
there were certainly fascinating and remarkable; but it is Gouverneur Morris's
time in France that I think was far more extraordinary than Jefferson's time,
and every bit as interesting as Franklin's. It coincided with the
beginning of the French Revolution, and Morris was there right through the most
violent upheavals, and knew nearly all of the principal players; and wrote
about them in detail in his wonderful diaries. What follows is taken from
a talk I've given a few times about Morris's time in France.
He
went to France on business in 1789, and quickly became involved in French
affairs, both romantic and political. He had a long affair with an
exceptional woman named Adélaide de Flahaut, married to a man 30 years older
than she, and she had followed in a French tradition by becoming the mistress
of another, the (later famous) Talleyrand. Morris viewed French
mores with interest,-- he wrote to a friend, "there are two types of men
in France, husbands and those who make children for them." He himself
tried to get Adele pregnant, but she never had more than one child, a son, who
was a young boy when Morris first met her.
He quickly became acquainted with the reformers, led by
Lafayette who was fresh from the
American Revolution and its republican principles. Jefferson was still
there as our minister plenipotentiary (we didn't call our diplomats ambassadors
until much later) and was giving Lafayette advice, helping him draft a
Bill of Rights, and discussing the appropriate form of a new
constitution. Was this an appropriate activity for a minister from
another country? Regardless, he did it, and Morris would follow his
example. Lafayette asked Morris for advice as well, and so did some of
the counselors and cabinet ministers of Louis XVI. Morris was not
nearly as optimistic as Jefferson that the French could handle rapid reform
and, unlike Jefferson, he quickly concluded that Lafayette was too ambitious
and not wise enough to lead the country safely through a political
metamorphosis.
Morris thought things were moving too quickly, that the
new assembly was too undisciplined and ignorant to be able to design an
effective government. In the summer of 1789 he predicted that unless
there was more restraint, and an effort made to reconcile the privileged
aristocracy with the changes, they would turn on the new government and attack
it, leading to anarchy and eventual despotism. He was quite right, but
few people wanted to hear this.
Where the issue becomes more interesting and worthy of
debate was when Morris was appointed minister in 1792, because he didn’t stop
giving advice to the King, who was by this time almost entirely without
power. He joined a small group of royal counselors who came up with
one escape plan after another to try and get Louis out of Paris to a safer
location from which to re-establish authority and issue a new
constitution. The American government never knew what he was
up to –even diplomatic pouches were not secure by this time; and it took too
many months to communicate with America. He certainly was doing what he
thought was right. America owed a huge debt to France for the success
of its own revolution, and Morris believed that the only hope for France’s
revolution lay with an enlightened constitutional monarchy. Should
diplomats do things like this? It’s a very interesting question, and I
don’t know the answer.
It all failed, of course, and on August 10, 1792, the royal
palace was attacked and the King’s personal guard slaughtered.
Louis and his family took refuge in the Assembly; from there they
went to prison and eventually, execution. One of Morris’s co-conspirators
was beaten to death in the street; two others were seized, and one died on the
guillotine and the other in the September massacres. The rest fled the
country.
These events threw all the game pieces on the floor, and
left Morris with a very difficult question: what tack to take with the
new revolutionary government? There were many immediate issues: should he
make a payment on the American Revolutionary War debt to France, payment which
had been arranged for just days before the king fell? Did his
credentials, which were to the court of France,still apply? Were the
treaties of 1778 between America and France still in effect? Would the
United States recognize the new government?
If
you know about all the complaints that were made about Morris, and the
objections to his appointment as minister, you might assume he demanded
his passports and left. But in fact Morris was the only minister-level diplomat to
remain in Paris after the fall of the King. He wrote to Jefferson:
Going hence however would look
like taking Part against the late Revolution and I am not only unauthoriz’d in
this Respect but I am bound to suppose that if the great Majority of the Nation
adhere to the new Form the United States will approve thereof because in the
first Place we have no Right to prescribe to this Country the Government they
shall adopt and next because the Basis of our own Constitution is the indefeasible
Right of the People to establish it.
The issues facing Morris were of great concern to the
U.S. France was already at war with Europe and it was clear that it would
soon be at war with England. The U.S. was very worried that honoring its
treaty with France would require going to war on France’s behalf. Morris
recommended to Jefferson, however, that the U.S. recognize the new government
and honor its commitments, and Jefferson agreed.
Morris’s recommendations relate to another charge against
him: that his reports to America were unfair and inaccurate. This
was a concern about Morris through all the different changes of power, from
Lafayette to Robespierre. Since Morris’s predictions about France
were mostly right it’s hard to agree they were distorted. Morris’s
reports make remarkable reading; I only have time to read you one excerpt
I particularly admire. Morris wrote this to Thomas Pinckney, the American
minister to London, in December 1792, while the King was being tried for
treason. The war in Europe had swung in France’s direction,
temporarily. Here’s what he said: it's one of my favorite quotes:
Success as you will
see, continues to crown the French Arms, but it is not our Trade to judge from
Success . . . . You will soon learn that the Patriots hitherto adored were but
little worthy of the Incense they received. The Enemies of those who now
reign treat them as they did their Predecessors and as their Successors will be
treated. Since I have been in this Country, I have seen the Worship of
many Idols and but little [illegible] of the true God. I have seen many
of those Idols broken, and some of them beaten to Dust. I have seen the
late Constitution in one short Year admired as a stupendous Monument of human
Wisdom and ridiculed as an egregious Production of Folly and Vice. I wish
much, very much, the Happiness of this inconstant People. I love
them. I feel grateful for their Efforts in our Cause and I consider the
Establishment of a good Constitution here as the principal Means, under divine
Providence, of extending the blessings of Freedom to the many millions of my
fellow Men who groan in Bondage on the Continent of Europe. But I do not
greatly indulge the flattering Illusions of Hope, because I do not yet perceive
that Reformation of Morals without which Liberty is but an empty Sound.
The French government was worried not just because of what
Morris might be saying about the political circumstances in France, but also
what he was reporting as the war with Europe and the civil war in France began
to affect Americans in France. French privateers began seizing American
ships and cargoes, in violation of the treaty with America.
Americans were thrown in jail -- the Law of Suspects meant anyone
could be rrested, pretty much, and of course being a foreigner made you a
suspect right away.
In early June 1793, the port city of Bordeaux
rebelled against the Paris government. In retaliation, the
National Convention prohibited vessels from carrying cargoes out of the
port. By late November, there were 92 American ships
trapped. Morris protested repeatedly, and met with a deputation of
captains from the ships, who also went directly to the National Convention.
Morris warned them that even if they got a decree passed it wouldn’t last
because of the dysfunctional state of the French government. He was quite
right, but that was not what the captains wanted to hear, and they apparently
complained about him in letters to America and also to the French government.
But the embargo had nothing to do with the United States but with the
civil war in France, and it stayed in place until April 1794. In
the meantime, Morris made a rare admission of frustration to Jefferson:
Every post brings me piles of letters about it from all quarters, and I see no
remedy. . . ......if I would give way to the
clamors of the injured parties, I ought to make demands very like a declaration
of war.
What am I to do in
such cases? It is impossible for me to guess the intentions of
government, and indeed, sir, the responsibility is great and distressing.
Our countrymen here find, that it is the easiest thing in the world to carry
any point with the Committees, until they
have tried. In the mean time, I am exposed to their clamors in this
country, and most probably to their censures in my own, for not performing
impossibilities. In order to complete the business, nothing more is
necessary, than that the rulers of this Republic, wearied with my complaints,
should apply for my recall, in order to get rid of a troublesome fellow.
I think it is very likely to happen, if it be not already done. I beg
your pardon, Sir, for saying so much of myself, but it is a troublesome thing,
to navigate in the dark between Scylla and Charybdis.
But, though he was operating in the dark, he consistently
displayed moderation. He was afraid that French depredations on American
shipping might undermine America’s determination to be neutral, and that this
would get America embroiled in the whole messy European war. When
the captains called for threats and retaliation, Morris refused, and his
letters to the American government urged temperance.
The papers at the American Philosophical Society contain the
piles of letters that Morris described to Jefferson, and many of them were
pleas for help from Americans in jail. Here’s one typical example:
American William Hoskins who wrote to Morris for help in December
1793. He had arrived in an American ship at Calais, where he was arrested
and taken to Paris. He wrote:
imagine to yourself
my present situation, lodged in a chamber with two persons who are extremely
sick of a fever & nothing to sleep on the last evening, without a farthing
to purchase the necessaries of life, when this fact is told you I am persuaded
the sympathy for a fellow countryman will excite your exertions as well as your
pity. . . . do not delay for I am already sick ----
Morris repeatedly protested to the foreign minister, and
after about a month, Hoskins was released.
Morris's
recall is a very interesting episode but
I will only mention it here. A recall would seem to indicate disgrace;
that Morris had failed his government. Morris was distressed by it, for
he felt that as long as his behavior had been “proper in regard to the United
States,” the Americans shouldn’t have agreed to recall him. If the
French had known they couldn’t get rid of him, they would have been far more
cooperative. He was replaced by James Monroe, who arrived in Paris two
days after Robespierre had been executed.
The ostensible reason for Morris’s recall was a quid pro quo for the recall of Edmund
Genet, the French minister to America. But there was a lot more to it than
this. Morris had enemies, who claimed to oppose him on political grounds
but had very different motives. The first time the French considered
requesting his recall was when the first revolutionary ministry was hoping to
cash in on a venture to conquer Spanish territories, and share the spoils;
Morris was considered an obstacle. The group included such unlikely
Americans as Thomas Paine and William Stephens Smith, who was John Adams’s
son-in-law, as well as Francisco de Miranda, the famous Venezuelan
general. They circulated pamphlets against Morris, and Smith told
Washington and Jefferson that Morris had alienated the French ministry and
wanted to be recalled.
There were several others who sent
damaging reports about Morris, but the one that probably did the final trick
was a letter to the Committee of Public Safety from an odd fellow named John
Cusack , an American mercenary in the French army. Cusack told
Robespierre that Washington had named Morris, a man “gangrened” by the
aristocracy to destroy French-American friendship. The letter is right
next to the request for Morris’s recall in the French archives. In
a bit of irony that is very typical of the French Revolution, two months after
Cusack wrote it, he was in jail in Paris, and asking Morris to help him
get out.
I should
also mention that the Committee was already very uneasy because of a situation
in which a French woman staying at Morris’s house was arrested. The
authorities entered Morris’s house over his protest, violating the law of
nations regarding his diplomatic status. The Committee knew the violation
had been significant, and were very worried that Morris would induce the United
States to break diplomatic relations.
It is important to understand that
during the 32 months of Morris’s ministry, there were seven different heads of
foreign affairs in France. Four were condemned as traitors, three died on
the guillotine, and one defected to the Austrians. As Morris
pointed out, “to stand well with all parties is impossible,” especially
since by standing “well” with the first government to which he was accredited,
the monarchy, he was certain to be distrusted by every succeeding
regime. With this kept in mind, it is clear that he did
an extraordinary job. This was the judgment of Theodore Roosevelt:
“We have never had a foreign minister who deserved more honor than
Morris. In his whole attitude towards the revolution, Morris
represents better than any other man the clear-headed, practical statesman, who
is genuinely devoted to the cause of constitutional freedom.”
