French Revolution and Jay`s Treaty

A Divided America:

The French Revolution & Jay’s Treaty

Presentation created by Robert Martinez Primary Source Content: America’s History Images as cited.

America’s merchants profited handsomely during the French Revolution.

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In 1793, President Washington issued a Proclamation of Neutrality, which allowed U.S. citizens to trade with both the British and the French.

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As neutral carriers, American merchants were initially able to pass their ships through the British naval blockade of French ports; soon they dominated the lucrative sugar trade between France and its West Indian islands.

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Commercial earnings rose spectacularly, averaging $20 million annually in the 1790s, twice the value of cotton and tobacco exports.

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As the American merchant fleet increased dramatically, from 355,000 tons in 1790 to more than 1.1 million tons in 1808, northern ship owners provided work for thousands of shipwrights, sail makers, laborers, and seamen.

Hundreds of carpenters, masons, and cabinetmakers in the major seaports of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia found work building warehouses and fashionable “Federal-style” town houses for newly affluent merchants.

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Even as they profited from the European struggle, Americans argued passionately over its ideologies.

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Most Americans had welcomed the French Revolution of 1789 because it abolished feudalism and established a constitutional monarchy.

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There was much less consensus, however, in 1792, when the French formed a democratic republic. Many Americans applauded the downfall of the French monarchy.

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Conversely, Americans with strong religious beliefs condemned the new French government because it rejected Christianity and closed many churches, instead promoting a “rational” religion based on “natural morality.”

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Wealthy Americans also condemned the execution of King Louis XVI, three thousand of the king’s aristocratic supporters, and fourteen thousand other citizens.

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These ideological conflicts sharpened the debate over Hamilton’s economic policies and helped to stir up domestic insurrection.

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In 1794, farmers in western Pennsylvania mounted the Whiskey Rebellion to protest Hamilton’s excise tax on spirits, which had raised the price, and cut the demand, for the corn whiskey they bartered for eastern manufactures.

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Like the Sons of Liberty in 1765 and the Shaysites in 1786, the Whiskey rebels attacked both local tax collectors and the authority of a distant government.

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They also waved banners proclaiming the French revolutionary slogan “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity!”

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To uphold national authority and deter secessionist movements along the frontier, President Washington raised an army of twelve thousand troops and dispersed the Whiskey rebels.

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Britain’s maritime strategy widened the political divisions in America. In November 1793, the Royal Navy began to stop American ships carrying French sugar, eventually seizing more than 250 vessels.

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Hoping to protect American property rights through diplomacy, President Washington dispatched John Jay to Britain.

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Jay returned with a controversial treaty that acknowledged Britain’s right to remove French property from neutral ships.

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The treaty also required the U.S. government to make “full and complete compensation” to British merchants for pre-Revolutionary War debts owed by American citizens who refused to pay them.

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In return, the agreement allowed American merchants to submit claims of illegal seizure to arbitration and, more important, required the British to remove their military garrisons from the Northwest Territory and to end their alliance with the Indians there.

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Jefferson and other Republicans attacked the treaty for being too conciliatory, but the Senate ratified it in 1795, albeit by the bare two-thirds majority required by the Constitution.

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As long as Hamilton and his Federalist allies were in power, the United States would have a proBritish foreign policy.

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