opositions to any immediate
decision, but showed no solicitude to avoid a rupture.

The war cry, however, is too obvious a means of popular excitement to
be readily given up. Busy partisans saw that the feeling of the
populace was belligerent, and every means were taken by the press and
the democratic societies to exasperate this feeling; according to them
the crisis called, not for moderation, but for decision, for energy.
Still to adhere to a neutral position would argue tameness--cowardice!
Washington, however, was too morally brave to be clamored out of his
wise moderation by such taunts. He resolved to prevent a war, if
possible, by an appeal to British justice, to be made through a
special envoy, who should represent to the British government the
injuries we had sustained from it in various ways, and should urge
indemnification.

The measure was decried by the party favorable to France, as an undue
advance to the British government; but they were still more hostile to
it when it was rumored that Hamilton was to be chosen for the mission.
A member of the House of Representatives addressed a strong letter to
the President, deprecating the mission, but especially the reputed
choice of the envoy. Hamilton, aware of the "collateral obstacles"
which existed with respect to himself, had resolved to advise
Washington to drop him from the consideration and to fix upon another
character, and recommended John Jay, the chief justice of the United
States, as the man whom it would be advisable to send.

Mr. Jay was the person ultimately chosen. Washington, in his message,
thus nominating an additional envoy to Great Britain, expressed
undiminished confidence in the minister actually in London. "But a
mission like this," observes he, "while it corresponds with the
solemnity of the occasion, will announce to the world a solicitude for
a friendly adjustment of our complaints and a reluctance to
hostility." The nomination was approved by a majority of ten Senators.

The French government having so promptly complied with the wishes of
the American government in recalling citizen Genet, requested, as an
act of reciprocity, the recall of Gouverneur Morris, whose political
sympathies were considered highly aristocratical. The request was
granted accordingly, but Washington, in a letter to Morris, notifying
him of his being superseded, assured him of his own undiminished
confidence and friendship. James Munroe was appointed in his p