My primary objects, to which I have steadily adhered, have been to preserve the country in peace, if I can, and to be prepared for war if I cannot, to effect the first, upon terms consistent with the respect which is due to ourselves, and with honor, justice and good faith to all the world.

Mr. Jay (and not Mr. Jefferson) as has been suggested to you, embarked as envoy extraordinary for England about the middle of May.  If he succeed, well; if he does not, why, knowing the worst, we must take measures accordingly.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Ford, XII, 436.  Mount Vernon, June 25, 1794.]

Jay reached London early in June, 1794, and labored over the treaty with the British negotiators during the summer and autumn, started for home before Christmas, and put the finished document in Washington’s hands in March.  From the moment of his going enemies of all kinds talked bitterly against him.  The result must be a foregone conclusion, since John Jay was regarded as the chief Anglo-maniac in America after Hamilton.  They therefore condemned in advance any treaty he might agree to.  But their criticism went deeper than mere hatred of him:  it sprang from an inveterate hatred of England, which dated from before the Revolution.  Since the Treaty of 1783 the English seemed to act deliberately with studied truculence, as if the Americans would not and could not retaliate.  They were believed to be instigating the Indians to continuous underhand war.  They had reached that dangerous stage of truculence, when they did not think it mattered whether they spoke with common diplomatic reticence.  Lord Dorchester, the Governor-General of Canada, and to-day better known as Sir Guy Carleton, his name before they made him a peer, addressed a gathering of Indian chiefs at Quebec on the assumption that war would come in a few weeks.  President Washington kept steady watch of every symptom, and he knew that it would not require a large spark to kindle a conflagration.  “My objects are, to prevent a war,” he wrote to Edmund Randolph, on April 15, 1794, “if justice can be obtained by fair and strong representations (to be made by a special envoy) of the injuries which this country has sustained from Great Britain in various ways, to put it into a complete state of military defence, and to provide eventually for such measures as seem to be now pending in Congress for execution, if negotiations in a reasonable time proves unsuccessful."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Ford, XIII, 4-9.]

The year 1794 marked the sleepless anxiety of the Silent President.  Day and night his thoughts were in London, with Jay.  He said little; he had few letters from Jay—­it then required from eight to ten weeks for the mail clippers to make a voyage across the Atlantic.  Opposition to the general idea of such a treaty as the mass of Republicans and Anti-Federalists supposed Washington hoped to secure, grew week by week.  The Silent Man heard the cavil and said nothing.