the importance, came
to the front. Monroe was not an aggressive agent. Perhaps very
few civilized Americans could have filled that position to the
satisfaction of his American countrymen. They wished the French to
acknowledge and explain various acts which they qualified as outrages,
whereas the French regarded as glories what they called grievances.
The men of the Directory which now ruled France did not profess the
atrocious methods of the Terrorists, but they could not afford in
treating with a foreigner to disavow the Terrorists. In the summer of
'96, Washington, being dissatisfied with Monroe's results, recalled
him, and sent in his place Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, to whom
President Adams afterwards added John Marshall and Elbridge Gerry,
forming a Commission of three. Some of the President's critics have
regarded his treatment of Monroe as unfair, and they imply that it
was inspired by partisanship. He had always been an undisguised
Federalist, whereas Monroe, during the past year or more, had followed
Jefferson and become an unswerving Democrat. The publication here of
a copy of Monroe's letter to the French Committee of Public Safety
caused a sensation; for he had asserted that he was not instructed to
ask for the repeal of the French decrees by which the spoliation of
American commerce had been practised, and he added that if the decrees
benefited France, the United States would submit not only with
patience but with pleasure. What wonder that Washington, in reading
this letter and taking in the full enormity of Monroe's words, should
have allowed himself the exclamation, "Extraordinary!" What wonder
that in due course of time he recalled Monroe from Paris and replaced
him with a man whom he could trust!

The settlement of affairs with France did not come until after
Washington ceased to be President. I will, therefore, say no more
about it, except to refer to the outrageous conduct of the French, who
hurried two of the Commissioners out of France, and, apparently at the
instigation of Talleyrand, declared that they must pay a great deal of
money before they made any arrangement, to which Charles Pinckney made
the famous rejoinder, "Millions for defence, but not one cent for
tribute." The negotiations became so stormy that war seemed imminent.
Congress authorized President Adams to enlist ten thousand men to be
put into the field in case of need, and he wrote to Washington: "We
must have your name, if you w