William Wheeler III‘s collection of Revolutionary & Presidential Americana, coming to auction June 21, features letters, documents and manuscripts that reveal the stories behind some of the most influential events in American history.
William Wheeler III
A letter from then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson reveals the young United States’ apprehension in foreign affairs. The letter is in response to Maryland Governor Thomas Sim Lee’s question regarding an incident between French and British ships in American waters that came to be known as the Citizen Genêt Affair.
In April 1793, President George Washington issued a Declaration of Neutrality in response to the outbreak of war between Britain and France. Jefferson believed in a neutral stance, joined in this opinion by Attorney General Edmund Randolph, though opposed by other members of the cabinet with respect to the enforcement of the neutrality, especially Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton and Secretary of War Henry Knox.
Adolf Ulrich Wertmüller, Edmond Charles Genet, oil on canvas, 1784. Courtesy of the Albany Institute of History & Art.
French ambassador Edmond-Charles Genêt had plans of his own. Soon after his arrival at Charleston, South Carolina, on April 8, 1793, the newly-appointed French Minister to the U.S. began commissioning privateers to seek out and capture the ships of Britain and Spain, both enemies of France, in U.S. ports and waters. One of the four privateers commissioned was the schooner Sans Culotte, which translates to “without pants” and refers to a popular revolutionary movement in Paris. On April 29, the Sans Culotte captured the British schooner Eunice off the coast of Virginia, threatening U.S. neutrality.
Jefferson and Randolph held that the 1778 Treaty of Amity and Commerce with France obligated the U.S. to allow French privateers to capture their enemies and enter U.S. ports with their prizes without interference. Hamilton and Knox argued that the U.S. ought to declare the Treaty void, and that not returning a captured ship in U.S. waters to its owner would make the U.S. an instrument of the aggressor in violation of the terms of the neutrality.
Lot 171: Thomas Jefferson, Autograph Letter Signed, to Thomas Sim Lee, stating that the government is not authorized to intervene in the Citizen Genêt affair, 1793.
Estimate $20,000 to $30,000.
Here is what Jefferson said: “Measures had been already taken for prosecuting such American citizens as had joined in the capture therein mentioned, a letter to that effect having been written to the Attorney of the US. in the state of Maryland. With respect to the prize, the government did not think itself authorised to do any thing. Your Excellency will have been informed by a letter from the Secretary at war, addressed to you as the head of the militia of your state, of the measures proposed for preventing the fitting out [of] privateers in our ports in future, as well as for the preservation of peace within our limits. . . .”
Disputes about the enforcement of neutrality recurred between the Administration’s two camps as new incidents arose involving Genêt’s privateers, culminating in the adoption by both camps of eight rules, approved by the president, clarifying U.S. policy on neutrality.
In these rules, sent in the form of a circular to the state governors by Knox on August 7, 1793, privateers were forbidden to bring captured ships into U.S. ports, demonstrating a shift in Jefferson’s opinion from that expressed in the present letter.
Genêt, after repeatedly disregarding the instructions of the Administration regarding the dangerous behavior of his privateers, was recalled to France at the request of the U.S., but was permitted to remain in the U.S. in order to avoid persecution by the new Jacobin government.
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