1793

 

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[France] “was now set upon by an unholy league of the monarchical powers of Europe, to overwhelm and destroy her, for her desire to establish institutions congenial to those of America.” 

William C. Rives, The Life of Madison. 

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April 22: President Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality – between England and France – is based, he explained, on “the duty and interests of the United States,” which necessitated a middle stance. 

Jefferson was horrified: 

The proclamation was in truth a most unfortunate error. It wounds the popular feelings by a seeming indifference to the cause of liberty. And it seems to violate the form and spirit of the Constitution by making the executive magistrate the organ of the “diplomacy,” “the duty” and “the interest” of the nation in relation to war and peace – subjects appropriated to other departments of the Government.

 

As Van Loon sees it, the French, our allies during the Revolution, had just cause for complaint: 

Now France was surrounded by enemies. And of course the Americans would hasten to reciprocate. But alas! The poor Frenchmen were to be bitterly disappointed. Nothing happened. The only gesture made in New York was a slight movement of President Washington’s right hand by which he signed a proclamation which bade all his subjects to maintain “a strict and absolute neutrality” during the present conflict between the French Directory and King George and not to take sides, either in word or deed. (124/256)

 

Andrews quotes William C. Rives’ Life of Madison: 

On one side the people saw a power [England] which had but lately carried war and desolation, fire and sword, through their own country, and, since the peace, had not ceased to act toward them in the old spirit of unkindness, jealousy, arrogance, and injustice; on the other an ally who had rendered them the most generous assistance in war, had evinced the most cordial dispositions for a liberal and mutually beneficial intercourse in peace, and was now set upon by an unholy league of the monarchical powers of Europe, to overwhelm and destroy her, for her desire to establish institutions congenial to those of America.

 

Andrews then weighs in: “The Federalists, destitute of idealism, proved to have been overawed by the prestige of England and to have underestimated the might which freedom would impart to the French people.” “Had we been still in France’s friendship, the two republics might have compelled England’s abandonment of that course which evoked the War of 1812.” (2/232-234)  

The American people are inclined to side with France, but the French overplay their hand. A new ambassador, Edmond-Charles Genêt, criticizes Washington. Suddenly: “his [American] friends, at first numerous and many of them influential, gave him the cold shoulder, and the ardor for France greatly cooled.”  (2/248) 

James Monroe, our minister to France, was victim of a “contemptuous speech” and his replacement, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was not only not received but ordered to leave the country. 

Ships carrying English goods, but not contraband, were seized by the French. American sailors, found serving on British ships, even by force, were treated as pirates. A belief spread “that France’s struggle was no longer for liberty but for conquest.” (2/251)

 

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August: A yellow fever epidemic overwhelms Philadelphia. Time-Life notes that entire families were swept away, and orphans roamed the streets. A third of the population, 17,000 people, fled to the countryside. 

Four or five thousand died. 

“When, in 1793, yellow fever desolated Philadelphia, one theory ascribed the affliction to the admission of the theatre.” (2/284-285)

 

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A town “so godless.” 

WASHINGTON IRVING is ten years old. Halleck describes the countryside where he lives: 

When Irving was a boy, the greater part of what is now New York City was picturesque country. He mingled with the descendants of the Dutch, passed daily by their old-style houses, and had excellent opportunities for hearing the traditions and learning the peculiarities of Manhattan’s early settlers, whom he was afterwards to immortalize in American literature. On his way to school he looked at the stocks and the whipping post, which had a salaried official to attend to the duties connected with it. He could have noticed two prisons, one for criminals and the other for debtors. He could scarcely have failed to see the gallows, in frequent use for offenses for which the law today prescribes only a short term of imprisonment. Notwithstanding the twenty-two churches, the pious complained that the town was so godless as to allow the theaters to be open on Saturday night.

 

Instead of going to bed after the family prayers, Irving sometimes climbed through a window, gained the alley, and went to the theater. In school he devoured as many travels and tales as possible, and he acquired much early skill in writing compositions for boys in return for their assistance in solving his arithmetical problems – a task that he detested. (30/113)

 

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October 28: Eli Whitney applies for a patent on the cotton gin. The following details are from Charles Coffin.

 

From the creation of the world down to the close of the last century nearly all the work of the world had been accomplished by muscular labor of men or animals; but in England and the United States men were discovering that machinery might be made to do the work of human hands.

 

In 1767, while Jenny Hargreaves, of England, was spinning one day, a thought came to her husband, James. Why not have several spindles moved by one wheel? He carried out the idea – put a large number of spindles in a frame and had them all turned by one wheel. He named the new invention the spinning-jenny. (72/69-70)

 

Eli Whitney was traveling in Georgia with the widow, Mrs. Greene, whose husband had been a hero in the Revolution. At dinner one evening planters were talking about the problems they had raising cotton. Savannah planters had sent eight bags full of cotton to England in 1784, 282 in 1788. The demand for much more was there. “If we could only separate the seed from the cotton we could make our fortunes, but it takes a negro a day to clean a pound,” said one of the planters.

 

Whitney, a Yale graduate, listened to their concerns, 

shut himself up in his room, and in a short time had a machine which would do the work of forty negroes.

 

The planters were delighted. He patented his invention, but the planters made machines of their own, cheating him out of his just dues. They were rich, and he poor; and they cared very little for the suits which he brought against them.” (72/75)

 

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December: General “Mad Anthony” Wayne orders eight companies of U.S. troops to go to the site of St. Clair’s defeat in 1791. According to A Popular History of Indiana, by Mrs. Thomas A. Hendricks, “Here a stockade post was built and aptly named Fort Recovery. Six hundred skulls were found on this spot, a ghastly testimony to the carnage enacted there two years before.” (91/81)