tes with the privateers at sea. He alleged that they were
armed and furnished by French residents in Charleston, were commanded by
French officers, or Americans who knew of no law or treaty to restrain
their action, and that they had gone to sea with the consent of the
governor of South Carolina. He argued, that as the treaty of commerce
secured to the parties the right of bringing prizes into each other's
ports, it followed that their right to the control and disposal of
prizes so brought in, was conceded to each. As the treaty of 1778 only
forbade each party allowing _enemies_ to fit out privateers in their
respective ports, it was fair to conclude that there was also conceded a
mutual right in the parties themselves to fit out privateers in the
ports of the other. He insisted that the Americans on board the
privateers had, for the time, entered the service of France and
renounced the protection of the United States, and that therefore they
were no longer responsible to their own government for their acts.

Notwithstanding the want of decorum in some portions of Genet's letter,
the president and his cabinet reconsidered the questions at issue in the
light of the minister's arguments. Their opinions remained unchanged,
and Genet was informed that the privateer then in the Delaware, bearing
his name, must forthwith leave American waters; that orders had been
sent to all the ports of the United States for the seizure of all
vessels fitted out as privateers, and to prevent the sale of any prizes
captured by such vessels; and also for the arrest of Henfield and
Singleterry, two Americans, who had enlisted on board the _Citizen
Genet_ at Charleston.

The decision and action of the cabinet made Genet very angry, and he
resolved not to acquiesce in it. He was led to believe that the great
body of the American people, grateful for what France had done in times
past, were ready to go all lengths in his favor, short of actual war. He
had heard clamors among the people, and read violent paragraphs in the
republican newspapers against the position of neutrality taken by the
government, and he resolved to encourage privateering, and to defend his
position before the American people by his pen. At that time, Freneau's
paper was assisted in its warfare upon the administration by another
called the _General Advertiser_, known afterward as the _Aurora_. It was
edited by a grandson of Doctor Franklin, whose French education caused
him