Proclamation of Neutrality by the United States in 1793
In the United States' proclamation of neutrality in 1793 , the American President George Washington declared the United States to be neutral in the First Coalition War on April 22, 1793 . The only officially as A Proclamation ( "A Proclamation Statement") published was a confrontation in Washington's Cabinet ahead of the Francophile as prorepublikanische to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson and the anglophile as conservative Finance Minister Alexander Hamilton faced.
chronology
News that France had declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands on February 1, 1793 , reached America in the first days of April. Given the dangers this new foreign policy situation posed to the United States, President Washington suspended his Mount Vernon vacation and returned to the capital, Philadelphia , where he arrived on April 17. On the one hand, it was necessary to clarify how the expansion of the war to the oceans, as it seemed inevitable after Britain's entry into the coalition, would affect American foreign trade; on the other hand, to what extent the trade and assistance treaties that the United States had concluded with France in 1778 during the war of independence should be interpreted in the new situation. He immediately sent his four ministers a questionnaire with 13 questions to which they were supposed to work out answers by a cabinet meeting on April 19. Among other things, Washington wanted to know whether the United States should make an official declaration of neutrality, which should include it, whether the Congress should convene a special session and whether the ambassador of the French Republic should be received.
In the subsequent dispute between Jefferson and Hamilton, the foreign policy position of the United States was hardly concerned, as both sides agreed that the country must be kept out of the conflict at all costs and that neither France nor the coalition would enter the war Time was up for debate. Rather, internal political and ideological rifts became clear in the dispute, which would become clearer in the further course of the year with the emergence of the first party system. These crystallized in the different assessments of the French Revolution: While Jefferson, always well-disposed towards France, welcomed the Girondins' takeover of power in France and the proclamation of the republic, Hamilton saw the radicalization of the revolution as a danger to the stability of the United States. In the larger cities of the country, democratic clubs based on the French model had formed, which showed solidarity with the French revolutionaries and propagated an egalitarian, if not radical democratic attitude in the United States as well. Jefferson, Madison, and other political leaders who consolidated themselves into the Democratic Republican Party over the next several months and years were explicitly behind these clubs. In order not to duped his followers, Jefferson initially spoke out against a declaration of neutrality. In addition to the question of content, he also questioned the legality of a presidential proclamation, since the United States Constitution only gave Congress the right to declare war. The three remaining cabinet members, in front of Hamilton, however, overruled Jefferson's objection. In fact, the proclamation set a precedent that would sustainably strengthen the power of the executive in American foreign policy. Finally, a compromise was reached: the proclamation was published, but the draft was not assigned to Jefferson, in whose portfolio this task actually fell, but to Attorney General Edmund Randolph ; In addition, the proclamation should avoid the word "neutrality" if the careful choice of words ultimately only had a symbolic meaning.
After the proclamation was issued, the domestic dispute continued in the press: Hamilton and James Madison debated the declaration in a pamphlet war under the pseudonyms "Pacificus" and "Helvidius;" and in the pages of the Republican National Gazette , the Washington declaration became in harshly criticized some high-profile polemics signed by Veritas, possibly authored by Philip Freneau . The American policy of neutrality was also affirmed by Jefferson in the course of the affair surrounding the new French ambassador, Edmond-Charles Genêt . The disapproval of the intervention of American citizens in foreign wars, already formulated in the proclamation, became law with the Neutrality Act 1794.
Web links
- Text of the proclamation on the pages of the Avalon Project at Yale Law School
literature
- Henry Ammon: The Genet Mission. WW Norton, New York 1973, ISBN 0-393-05475-6
- Alexander DeConde: Entangling Alliance: Politics & Diplomacy under George Washington . Duke University Press, Durham, NC 1958.
- Stanley Elkins, Eric McKitrick: The Age of Federalism. Oxford University Press, New York et al. 1993, ISBN 0-19-506890-4 .