764 Chapter XXXI
posed to democrats everywhere, he befriended Thomas Paine and Wolfe Tone in
Paris. He was so eager to please the French that he sometimes failed to put the
policies of his own government in their proper light. He believed that Jay in Lon-
don was betraying him; he was so opposed to an American rapprochement with
England that the French thought he must be deceiving them; and he seems not to
have known, or to have been unconcerned, about French designs on the region
west of the Alleghenies. Washington finally recalled him, and the ensuing uproar
formed another stage in the differentiation of Federalists and Republicans. Mean-
while Jay negotiated his famous treaty, with Alexander Hamilton secretly working,
through the British minister in Philadelphia, to satisfy the British in a way that
even Jay thought too extreme. The British conceded practically nothing except
evacuation of the Northwest Territory. They refused to moderate their position on
the impressment of sailors, or on matters of contraband, search, and seizure at sea
in wartime; they refused to pay for American slaves taken off during the War of
Independence (a sensitive matter to southern Republicans); and they refused to
open their West Indian islands in a useful way to American commerce. The best
that could be said in America for the treaty was that it prevented war with En-
gland. Undoubtedly such a war at this time would have been ruinous to the new
republic, both from the impact of British power, and the effects of internal dispute
and break- up within the United States. Politically, however, the argument was not
a strong one; it sounded too much like appeasement.
It was in the controversy over the Jay treaty that the democratic movement grew
into a Republican party, and that the Federalists closed ranks to obtain the good-
will of Britain, which was necessary both to their practical program and to their
view of life and society. When Washington and the Senate ratified the treaty, de-
bate raged in the House on measures for putting it into effect. The treaty became a
question between government and opposition, or Federalists and Republicans. It
raised also, above the prosaic problems of debt and taxation, and above localized
grievances such as the excise on spirits, a question on which people of all kinds,
throughout the country, could form an opinion and become emotionally aroused.
The question was seen, and strongly felt, as a choice between England and France,
between two sides in an ideological war, between the old forces and the new in a
contest without geographical boundaries, between monarchy and republicanism,
Anglomen and Gallomen, men of substance and Jacobins—and between those
who wished to move forward with a continuing American Revolution, and those
who wished to restrain or qualify the implications of that event. On this basis the
treaty was attacked and defended in the newspapers. Political leaders had an issue
on which they could ignite public opinion, form connections with interested local
groups, bring out the vote, and offer candidates for election on a basis of continu-
ing principle, not merely of momentary issues or personal or passing factional
groupings. The decisive bill to implement the treaty passed the House in April
1796 by a narrow margin, 51 to 48, on a clear party division. The two parties, Fed-
eralist and Republican, then girded for the presidential election of that year, which,
with the retirement of Washington, was the first contested presidential election.
Both contenders for the office of President of the United States, in 1796, were
denounced as the tools of foreign ideologies and foreign powers. Both parties pre-