Even while he wrote, the general war that he anticipated, the war between France and England, had come.  The news reached him at Mount Vernon, and in the letter to Jefferson announcing his immediate departure for Philadelphia he said:  “War having actually commenced between France and Great Britain, it behooves the government of this country to use every means in its power to prevent the citizens thereof from embroiling us with either of those powers, by endeavoring to maintain a strict neutrality.  I therefore require that you will give the subject mature consideration, that such measures as shall be deemed most likely to effect this desirable purpose may be adopted without delay.”  These instructions were written on April 12, and on the 18th Washington was in Philadelphia, and had sent out a series of questions to be considered by his cabinet and answered on the following day.  After much discussion, it was unanimously agreed to issue a proclamation of neutrality, to receive the new French minister, and not to convene Congress in extra session.  The remaining questions were put over for further consideration.

Hamilton framed the questions, say the historians; Randolph drafted the proclamation, says his biographer, in a very instructive and fresh discussion of the relations between the Secretary of State and the Attorney-General.  It is interesting to know what share the President’s advisers took when he consulted them on this momentous question, but the leading idea was his own.  When the moment came, the policy long meditated and matured was put in force.  The world was told that a new power had come into being, which meant to hold aloof from Europe, and which took no interest in the balance of power or the fate of dynasties, but looked only to the welfare of its own people and to the conquest and mastery of a continent as its allotted tasks.  The policy declared by the proclamation was purely American in its conception, and severed the colonial tradition at a stroke.  In the din then prevailing among civilized men, it was but little heeded, and even at home it was almost totally misunderstood; yet nevertheless it did its work.  For twenty-five years afterward the American people slowly advanced toward the ground then taken, until the ideas of the neutrality proclamation received their final acceptance and extension at the hands of the younger Adams, in the promulgation of the Monroe doctrine.  The shaping of this policy which was then launched was a great work of far-sighted and native statesmanship, and it was preeminently the work of the President himself.

Moreover, it did not stop here.  A circular to the officers of the customs provided for securing notice of infractions of the law, and the task of enforcing the principles laid down in the proclamation began.  As it happened, the theory of neutrality was destined at once to receive rude tests of its soundness in practice.  The new French minister was landing on our shores, and beginning his brief career in this country, while the proclamation was going from town to town and telling the people, in sharp and unaccustomed tones, that they were Americans and not colonists, and must govern themselves accordingly.