Episode 5.4 Of Diplomacy and Duels

[Transcript]

Hello, and welcome to America’s First Ladies. I’m your host, Risa Weaver-Enion.

Episode 5.4 Of Diplomacy and Duels

We left off last week in early 1795, just after Adrienne de Lafayette was released from prison thanks to the efforts of Elizabeth Monroe. 

Meanwhile, James still had all his regular business to attend to. At the end of 1794, he succeeded in negotiating a treaty of amity and commerce with the French, but he was constantly having to dodge tricky questions from the French government about what John Jay was doing in Britain.

He also was having much difficulty actually getting his dispatches to Secretary of State Randolph. As we’ve learned in past seasons, it took at least a month for letters to cross the Atlantic. And correspondence from one party often crossed paths with correspondence from the other party, making it exceedingly difficult to actually carry on delicate governmental business.

It didn’t help diplomacy that newspapers often crossed the Atlantic much faster than official correspondence. The newspapers would be sent on fast packet ships that traveled more quickly than the lumbering vessels used for mail and passenger traffic.

Although James had made his speech to the National Convention in July 1794, and sent his report to Randolph in August, he didn’t receive a response from Randolph until February 1795, and in previous letters from Randolph, it was clear that he hadn’t yet received James’s dispatches. The response in America to James’s address was mixed, based, unsurprisingly, on partisanship. 

Republican John Brown of Kentucky wrote, “Your address to [the National Convention] has been read with enthusiasm…by every friend to the Rights of Man, as breathing the genuine sentiments of Republicanism.” 

But according to Randolph, the speech had “been the Subject of some criticism. … The President so much regrets and disapproves. … When you left us, we all supposed that your reception, as the minister of the United States, would take place in the private Chamber of some Committee." Apparently, Randolph had not received the letter where James explained how and why his address to the Convention had come about.

He complained of this to Madison, who wrote that news of Monroe’s speech had first reached America via English newspapers, who were entirely biased against the French.

James’s next set of letters from Randolph arrived after Randolph had finally received James’s August dispatches. He was more complimentary this time, writing that these reports were exactly what he and the president were looking for. He wrote, “The president approves your conduct.”

James was getting mixed messages, and not entirely convinced that he was getting the full story from either the Secretary of State or the President. Rumors of Jay’s negotiations with the British kept crossing the Channel to France, and it seemed that the Americans were ready to make a deal with the British at the expense of the French. James started sending copies of all his official dispatches directly to James Madison, which was a violation of his duties as a diplomat appointed by the executive branch, but was no less than John Jay was doing. Jay was in secret correspondence with Hamilton and Rufus King throughout his negotiations in Britain. As usual, things were a hot mess.

As Tim McGrath put it in his book, James Monroe: A Life, “Washington had send a partisan Federalist with British sympathies to London and a partisan Republican with French sympathies to Paris in the hopes they would keep both governments happy. Instead, both governments protested to their respective American ministers, creating more problems instead of resolving them. By the spring of 1795, both Jay and Monroe were mixing their politics at home with their missions abroad.”

Despite all this diplomatic drama, the Monroes decided to purchase a home in Paris, rather than continuing to live in the building that Gouverneur Morris had vacated and they had moved into upon their arrival in Paris. It’s unclear to me if the previous building had been rented or was purchased on behalf of the U.S. government. But the new home, called La Folie de la Bouexiere, was purchased with James’s personal money. He still had some funds from selling his lands in Kentucky, which they spent on the house and furnishings. Harlow Giles Unger writes that James assumed the U.S. government would later purchase the home from him to use as the official embassy.

The house was six rooms all on one floor and was surrounded by overgrown gardens. The Monroes spent a great deal of money they didn’t really have repairing the inside of the home and bringing the gardens back into their former glory. They added five more servants to the two they had brought with them, and Elizabeth bought a number of furnishings that had been confiscated from aristocrats who met their end at the guillotine. I assume these items were being sold at some sort of government auction, the way the seized assets of criminals are auctioned by our government today.

She bought beds, tables, Louis XVI chairs, sofas, mirrors, a pianoforte, and Limoges china. James furnished the library with a mahogany desk with a marble top and plenty of books. One wonders if they gave any thought to how expensive it would be to transport all these items back to America. 

Elizabeth was also tasked with purchasing some items for James Madison and his new wife, Dolley. I mentioned in season 4 that James Monroe had purchased items for them while in France and shipped them to America for the Madisons, but it was really Elizabeth who did the purchasing. When Madison wrote to Monroe asking for assistance with the furniture, he tactfully requested “the aid of [Mrs. Monroe’s] counsel.”

Their house was full of guests once it was refurbished and properly furnished. Visiting Americans of all political stripes were always welcome. Mary Pinckney, wife of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, wrote a thorough report of the house after visiting:

“Mr. and Mrs. Monroe have behaved with great politeness to us. … Their house is a little temple…laid out in terraces and alleys. After ascending a high flight of steps of great length you enter a vestibule & then straight on a small eating room ornamented with large bronze statues. On one side is a beautiful octagonal saloon, profuse with gilding, painted ceilings & compartments over the windows, & the finest glasses. Mr. Monroe’s furniture is handsome…beyond the saloon on one side is the bed chamber & beyond the other a study—in keeping forward from the entrance & beyond the small eating room is a large octagon dining room.”

Note: when she says “saloon,” she really means “salon” - she’s talking about a sitting room, not a Wild West tavern.

On July 4, 1795, the Monroes hosted an elegant Fourth of July reception at their new home. This is one of the few times we have a report of what Elizabeth wore: a fluffy, white chiffon dress with a blue silk sash at her waist. A white chiffon scarf was draped over her shoulders and arms, worn like a shawl. There was nothing ostentatious about Elizabeth Monroe.

The year 1795 had a lot of other stuff going on, which I will try to summarize as best I can without getting bogged down in minutiae. There are events in both France and America that unfolded somewhat in tandem, but due to the long lag in communication, I can’t go through everything strictly chronologically.

As we know, John Jay was in Britain, trying to negotiate a treaty of commerce with the British. We’ve briefly discussed this in past seasons as well. The treaty was signed in November 1794, but of course it didn’t get to Congress until spring 1795. The Senate debated the treaty in secret, and after much debate and hand-wringing, ratified it in June 1795 by a vote of 20-10, the bare minimum required to ratify. They intended to keep its terms secret for as long as possible, knowing it would cause an uproar in the American public.

But one of the senators leaked the treaty to a Republican newspaper, the Aurora. As expected, its terms caused a furor. Jay had little negotiating leverage with the British, and most of the issues the treaty was supposed to resolve were still an issue a decade and more later. Remember our discussion of impressment from last season? One of the main causes of the War of 1812? Well, it goes all the way back to this point. 

The Jay Treaty didn’t do anything about impressment, and didn’t address some of the Americans’ grievances about British non-compliance with the terms of the 1783 peace treaty ending the Revolutionary War. But it did grant the U.S. most favored nation status with regard to trade, which was really important. Most favored nation status means that the countries in the agreement will give their trading partner the same terms as other favored nations. It’s more about leveling the playing field than it is about granting favors, so the name is a little misleading. 

Britain was the United States’s biggest trading partner, and a good deal of government revenue came from the duties imposed on incoming British goods. The Americans—as they later found out under President James Madison—could not afford not to trade with the British.

Just before the Fourth of July 1795, America was in an uproar over the treaty—mobs surrounded the President’s House in Philadelphia, angry crowds threw rocks through the windows of the British ambassador’s house, Alexander Hamilton was pelted with stones while trying to publicly defend the treaty, and so many effigies of John Jay were burned that he joked he could travel across the country at night using the light of the fires to guide him.

Incredibly, the United States minister to France had no idea what was in the treaty. He didn’t learn about it from John Jay. He didn’t learn about it from the president or secretary of state who had sent him to Paris in the first place. He didn’t even learn about it from Madison. He read it in the paper.

For reasons that remain unclear to me, the treaty’s terms did not reach France by crossing the English Channel, but by crossing the Atlantic. I really don’t understand how this could have happened, because it was dramatically faster to get news across the Channel than the ocean, but it is what it is. James learned about the Jay Treaty along with the rest of France when a ship carrying American newspapers finally reached France late in the summer.

Now we have to back up to the spring of 1795, because there was a sudden change in the French government that will soon become relevant. If you’ve ever studied anything having to do with the French Revolution, you know it was a real mess. And trying to wrestle it into a coherent narrative is a Herculean task. There were so many factions, coups, counter-coups, etc., that it’s nearly impossible to keep track. And at one point, the government tossed out the calendar and declared that it was Year One and renamed all the months. Thankfully, this didn’t last long, but it makes following the chronology of the various governments and their rise and fall all that much harder.

Long story short: in April 1795, after another year of bad harvests, the people of France were starving, the price of flour was outrageously high, and there was unrest throughout the country and in Paris. Although the government was able to put down the unrest, they decided a government overhaul was necessary. They drafted a new constitution that put executive power into the hands of five men, known as the Directory, as opposed to the Committee of Public Safety. The Directory officially became the government of France in October 1795. By then, the terms of the Jay Treaty were widely known. 

In February, 1796, Charles-Francois Delacroix, the Directory’s minister of foreign affairs, summoned James to his office and informed him that the Jay Treaty between America and Britain had severed ties between America and France. The alliance formed in 1778 during the Revolutionary War, was officially dead.

Thanks to some skillful diplomacy by James, he was able to prevent the Directory from making an official break with America by severing diplomatic relations. But the relationship between the two countries was frayed, and most of the detente James had managed to accomplish in his time in Paris had now been undone by the Jay Treaty. It left him feeling a little betrayed by President Washington and his cabinet.

The year 1795 also brought about some changes in Washington’s cabinet. Most important for our purposes is that the Republican Edmund Randolph had been replaced by the High Federalist Timothy Pickering as Secretary of State. Pickering was a confirmed Anglophile, and hostile to the French. This left Monroe as the only Republican in the Washington Administration.

The Monroes attended a Fourth of July party in 1796 instead of throwing one, and it turned into a disaster. The party was attended by a large group of Republicans who were hostile to President Washington. It was typical at events hosted by Americans to offer a toast to the President, but none was planned for this party, which offended and alarmed James. When another attendee did raise his glass to Washington, Monroe and a few others stood to join the toast, but the other Republicans began to hiss in a very rude, obnoxious way. A shoving match ensued, spilling wine and food all over the place. The French in attendance were privately delighted by this characteristic display of American uncouthness. 

By the end of 1796, relations between France and America were strained to the point of breaking. In September, the French recalled their minister to the United States, Pierre Adet. He was to be replaced not with another minister, but with a Chargé d’Affaires, which was a lower title. The Directory also authorized the seizure of American ships carrying goods to or from Britain. 

Also in September 1796, Secretary of State Pickering was drafting a letter for President Washington’s signature to recall James as minister to France and replace him with Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, a reliable Federalist. Even though Washington had always tried to keep himself out of the Federalist-Republican in-fighting, by surrounding himself with a Cabinet full of Federalists, he inevitably gave them the upper hand in the U.S. government.

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney arrived in Paris with James’s recall letter in November 1796. Unlike his own unhelpful reception by Gouverneur Morris, James was determined to leave Pinckney feeling taken care of as he began his new position. Despite James’s best efforts though, the Directory refused to meet with the new American minister.

James didn’t want to subject his family to the risks of crossing the Atlantic in the winter, so he, Elizabeth, and Eliza went to Holland until spring. They departed for Philadelphia on a ship called Amity sometime in late May, arriving back in the U.S. on June 27, 1797. They had entirely missed the election of 1796, won by John Adams, which was by design. Pickering had delayed recalling Monroe until he knew it would be too late for Monroe to come home and have any effect on the election.

And now I need to tell you about the time that James Monroe and Alexander Hamilton almost fought each other in a duel, but it was prevented by none other than Aaron Burr.

In 1797, a man named James Callender published a book titled The History of the United States for 1796. If the name James Callender is familiar to you, you might be remembering it from season 3 when he became the first person to publicly declare that Thomas Jefferson had fathered several children by his slave, Sally Hemings. By then he had become disillusioned with Jefferson, but at this point in our story, he’s a devout Republican and Hamilton-hater.

Within his book, he published a narrative of the Maria Reynolds affair, including verbatim quotes from letters Hamilton had sent to Maria, her husband James, and his co-conspirator, Jacob Clingman. These were the same letters that Hamilton had given to Monroe, Venable, and Muhlenberg back in 1792 when they thought he was embezzling from the government. If you recall, Monroe gave a set of the documents to John Beckley, clerk of Congress, to copy and send back to Hamilton. Monroe also gave a copy to some “friend in Virginia,” presumably Jefferson. Beckley kept a copy for himself.

But Hamilton didn’t know any of this, so he assumed that the papers had been shared with Callender by Monroe, Venable, or Muhlenberg. Hamilton sent letters to all three, accusing them of breaking their promise of confidentiality. James was on the cusp of leaving Philadelphia to visit New York with Elizabeth and Eliza, so they could see her family for the first time since 1794. Therefore, he did not reply to Hamilton’s letter.

A few days later, when Hamilton learned that Monroe was actually in New York, just down the street from him, he sent Monroe this note:

“Mr. Hamilton requests an interview with Mr. Monroe at any hour tomorrow forenoon which may be convenient to him. Particular reasons will induce him to bring with him a friend to be present at what may pass. Mr. Monroe, if he pleases, may have another.”

This was all gentlemanly coded language indicating that a duel was in the offing. James replied, setting a meeting for 10 o’clock the next morning. Hamilton arrived with his brother-in-law John Church; Monroe had his friend David Gelston present. Hamilton reiterated the accusations from his first letter, namely that Monroe had broken his word and his promise of confidentiality and released the documents to Callender. 

James explained that he had given a copy of the documents to a friend in Virginia for safe-keeping, that he had no knowledge of them being shared or published, and that he would be happy to discuss the matter with Venable and Muhlenberg upon his return to Philadelphia. According the Gelston’s later account of the meeting, the following exchange then took place:

Hamilton: This, as your representation, is totally false!

Monroe: Do you say I represented falsely? You are a scoundrel.

Hamilton: I will meet you like a gentleman.

Monroe: I am ready; get your pistols.

Hamilton: I shall.

It was at this point that Gelston broke in between them and called for calm to prevail. Hamilton agreed to give James time to confer with Venable and Muhlenberg to confirm that none of them had released the documents. They agreed to meet again in a week. Church suggested that the “unguarded expressions” should be buried and Hamilton agreed that “any intemperate expressions should be forgotten.” It’s important for you to know that calling someone a scoundrel in this time period was the height of insults.

In the interim, Oliver Wolcott, who had also been present on that night in 1792 when Hamilton had related the whole sordid affair to Monroe, Venable, and Muhlenberg, told Hamilton that he thought John Beckley was the likely culprit. It’s not clear how Wolcott could have known this, but he was correct. Beckley had recently been fired as the clerk of Congress, and he was out for revenge against Hamilton and all Federalists.

Monroe and Muhlenberg signed a joint letter to Hamilton confirming that neither of them had betrayed his confidence. Venable was in Virginia and had sent Hamilton a separate letter. But Hamilton refused to back down, and refused to accept the possibility that Monroe was not responsible. He wrote to Monroe: “You have been and are actuated by motives towards me malignant and dishonorable, nor can I doubt that this will be the universal opinion, when the publication of the whole affair which I am about to make shall be seen.”

Monroe replied, “Why you have adopted this style I know not. If your object is to render this affair a personal one between us, you might have been more explicit. … I have stated to you that I have no wish to do you a personal injury. The several explanations which I have made accorded with trust. … If these do not yield you satisfaction, I can give you no other, unless called on in a way which…I wish to avoid, but which I am ever ready to meet.”

James chose his friend Aaron Burr to be his second in the seemingly inevitable duel. He told Burr that if a duel were to take place, he would need about three months to get his affairs in order, writing that “in case of accident I should leave Mrs. M. almost friendless in Virginia.” Note to James Monroe: fighting a duel is a completely voluntary (and stupid) thing to do. There’s nothing accidental about it. Maybe have a little more regard for your wife before letting your idiotic pride get in the way. Hamilton was no better. In fact, his wife was pregnant during this whole escapade. These men claimed to love their wives, but they never stopped to think what their bull-headedness would do to their wives if they were killed in a duel, which of course Hamilton was in 1804, at the hands of Aaron Burr.

But Burr encouraged James to send a last conciliatory letter to Hamilton, which he did. He wrote, “Seeing no adequate cause…why I should give a challenge to you, I own it was not my intention to give or even provoke one. … If, on the other hand, you meant this last letter as a challenge to me, I have then to request that you will say so.”

Burr then convinced Hamilton, with whom he was still on cordial terms, to accept the olive branch from Monroe. Hamilton wrote to Monroe that, “any further step…would be improper.” And that was the end of that. It’s just another weird example of how the lives of all these men intersect and collapse into one another over this period of years.

Hamilton wasn’t the only person Monroe almost duelled. He was also in a bit of a battle with Secretary of State Timothy Pickering. Upon returning to America, James had waited for Pickering to ask to meet with him, and had finally ended up sending Pickering multiple requests for a meeting. James wanted to know the reasons why he had been recalled as minister to France. Pickering’s recall letter had hinted at some misconduct on James’s part, but James wanted details. The Federalist press was lambasting James and practically charging him with treason over his conduct in France. James suspected that Pickering was behind all the attacks.

When Pickering did finally reply, it was only to tell James that diplomats serve at the pleasure of the president, and the president has the right to appoint and recall them for any reason at all. This was hardly satisfactory to James. When it came to his honor, he was as stubborn and hard-headed as Hamilton. 

James went so far as to accuse Washington and Pickering of sullying America’s good name abroad by treating the French disrespectfully and bending over backwards to accommodate the British. Much like his mentor and hero Jefferson, James seemed to think he owed some sort of loyalty to France, forgetting that his job as minister was to represent America’s interests, not his own, and certainly not France’s.

James made copies of all the correspondence between him and Pickering, and then turned it over to the Republican press for publication. The Monroes returned to Virginia in August 1797. They finally had a house on their Charlottesville property that was practically adjacent to Jefferson’s land. After settling in, they made a visit to Monticello, and then the Madisons came to visit them. It was the first time Elizabeth and James had met Dolley Madison. Elizabeth and Dolley were very different sorts of women, but by all accounts, they became friends.

Unable to walk away from the battles with Pickering, and by extension, the entire former Washington Administration, James gathered copies of all the documents from his time as minister to France and published them as a 100-page pamphlet with a 30-word title. Brace yourself. It was called “A View of the Conduct of the Executive, in the Foreign Affairs of the Unites States, connected with the mission to the French Republic, during the years 1794, 5, and 6.” 

In it, he blamed Washington and his cabinet, and most of all the Jay Treaty, for his failure in France. President John Adams described it as “a studied insult to the government of my country…by a disgraced minister, recalled in displeasure for misconduct.”

It was not a good look for James, and although the View was well received by his fellow Republicans, it was predictably dismissed as sour grapes by Federalists. Among George Washington’s private papers a copy of the View was found, with many, many notes and comments written in the margins. Washington, cool-headed as always, never responded publicly to any of the accusations leveled at him in the View. James resolved to focus on his private law practice and try to forget about his battles with the government.

James and Elizabeth spent 1798 living at their Charlottesville home, which was still under construction, but liveable. They were both deathly ill during the autumn, but no one says what ailed them. In May 1799, Elizabeth gave birth to their second child, a son they named James Spence Monroe. Eliza was 12 ½ at this point, which is a very long time to go between children, especially in this time period. It’s unknown whether there were other pregnancies in between that ended in miscarriage.

In December 1799, James was elected governor of Virginia by the state assembly. The Virginia governorship was still lacking in actual powers and responsibilities. As Harlow Giles Unger writes in The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness, 

“Fear of executive tyranny had induced the authors of the state constitution to limit the governor’s powers to summoning the Council, or executive body, and serving as commander in chief of the state militia when the Assembly called it into action. Otherwise the governor had no powers—no power to veto, make appointments, or even propose legislation. He presided over but could not vote in the Executive Council, although he had to implement its directives, including hosting the costly annual Governor’s Ball on a date of the Council’s choice.”

James traveled to the capital of Richmond and was sworn in as governor on December 19, just days after George Washington died. Although James had no real powers as governor, he did do a lot of talking at the Executive Council meetings, and he managed to harangue the Council into making some much needed improvements to the state: a state-funded public education system and network of public roads, and better training of the militia being a few examples.

James spent the summer of 1800 working to get Jefferson elected president in the coming election. There also was an outbreak of smallpox in Richmond, prompting him to send Elizabeth and the children back to Charlottesville. But then baby James, who was just over a year old at this point, fell ill with a cough. The doctor, thinking it might be a teething problem, lanced the boy’s gums. When the lancing unsurprisingly did not work, the doctor diagnosed it as whooping cough. 

After a few days, baby James seemed to be getting better, so James returned to Richmond to deal with a yellow fever outbreak in Fredericksburg. But the following month, September, baby James was worse, so Elizabeth brought him to Richmond to see a doctor there. He continued to languish, and on September 27, baby James died.

James wrote to Madison, “An unhappy event has occurr’d which has overwhelmed us with grief. At ten last night our beloved babe departed this life after several days sickness. … I cannot give you an idea of the effect this event has produc’d on my family, or my own affliction in being a partner and spectator of the scene. Many things have occurr’d my friend, in these late years that abated my responsibility to the affairs of this world, but this has roused me beyond what I thought possible.”

Elizabeth was so grief-stricken that she herself became ill and spent months recuperating. A private funeral service was held at St. John’s Church, which was famous for being the site of Patrick Henry’s “give me liberty or give me death” speech in 1775.

We’ll end on this sad note and pick back up next week with more political drama, but no more threats of duels. And the Monroes will once again sail to France in service of their country.

Thanks for listening to this episode. It was produced by me, and the music is by Matt Dull. Please share the podcast with someone you know who loves history. Thanks!