Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/352

320 Jays Treaty. [179&-6 New York City in 1783. She had discriminated against American commerce ; imprisoned American sailors ; declared paper blockades ; changed the meaning of contraband of war; and enforced the rule of 1756. To obtain redress for all these grievances was impossible. But Jay undoubtedly did the best that could be done, and in November, 1794, signed a treaty of amity and commerce, which the President and the Senate approved in July, 1795. The frontier forts were to be surrendered. The debts due to British merchants at the opening of the Revolution were to be paid by the United States. The damages suffered by American merchants under the Order in Council of November, 1793, were to be paid by Great Britain. The British West Indies were opened to American ships of not more than seventy tons burden. A Commission was to settle the Maine boundary. But nothing was said about search, or impressment, or paper blockades, or indemnity for the negroes whom Carleton took away in 1783. Disappointed in their hope that negotiations would fail and war with England follow, the Republicans attacked the treaty with fury. Jay was burned in effigy, guillotined in effigy, hanged in effigy, from Maine to Georgia. The press teemed with pamphlets, coarse, spiteful, and serious; and for months the chief newspapers gave up whole columns of each issue to attacking or defending the work of Jay. The democratic societies, the people at public meetings, the State legis- latures, denounced or praised the treaty. It is not surprising that it was bitterly resented in France. The time was drawing near for the election of a successor to President Washington ; and, that great man having declined (September, 1796) to serve a third term, the Federalists nominated John Adams, and the Republicans Thomas Jefferson. The canvass was hotly contested; and in the midst of it Adet, the French .minister, not deterred by the fate of his predecessor, Genest, who had been dismissed for intriguing against the government, openly espoused the cause of the Republicans. He even went so far as to write to the Secretary of State, and to make public through the press, a letter in which he stated the grievances of France and threatened war. If the policy of the government were altered that is, if Jefferson were elected and the Republicans put in power the complaints of France, he said, could easily be satisfied; but if the policy of the government were maintained, America might expect the worst. Adams was elected President, and the French government retaliated. Monroe, whose lack of spirit in explaining and defending the treaty with Great Britain had offended Washington, had been recalled from Paris in 1796, and Charles C. Pinckney sent to France in his stead. But the Directory now refused to receive Pinckney, and expelled him from France. When news of this act reached the United States, Adams, who had just been inaugurated, called a special session of Con- gress to put the country in a state of defence. War, however, was to be