United States
being at peace with both, their situation was so new and unexperienced
by themselves, that their citizens were not, in the first instant,
sensible of the new duties resulting therefrom, and of the restraints it
would impose even on their dispositions towards the belligerent powers.
Some of them imagined (and chiefly their transient sea-faring citizens)
that they were free to indulge those dispositions, to take side with
either party, and enrich themselves by depredations on the commerce of
the other, and were meditating enterprises of this nature, as there
was reason to believe. In this state of the public mind, and before
it should take an erroneous direction, difficult to be set right and
dangerous to themselves and their country, the President thought it
expedient, through the channel of a proclamation, to remind our fellow
citizens that we were in a state of peace with all the belligerent
powers, that in that state it was our duty neither to aid nor injure
any, to exhort and warn them against acts which might contravene this
duty, and particularly those of positive hostility, for the punishment
of which the laws would be appealed to; and to put them on their guard
also, as to the risks they would run, if they should attempt to carry
articles of contraband to any. This proclamation, ordered on the 19th
and signed the 22nd day of April, was sent to you in my letter of the
26th of the same month.

On the day of its publication, we received, through the channel of the
newspapers, the first intimation that Mr. Genet had arrived on the 8th
of the month at Charleston, in the character of Minister Plenipotentiary
from his nation to the United States, and soon after, that he had
sent on to Philadelphia the vessel in which he came, and would himself
perform the journey by land. His landing at one of the most distant
ports of the Union from his points both of departure and destination,
was calculated to excite attention; and very soon afterwards, we learned
that, he was undertaking to authorize the fitting and arming vessels
in that port, enlisting men, foreigners and citizens, and giving them
commissions to cruise and commit hostilities on nations at peace with
us; that these vessels were taking and bringing prizes into our ports;
that the Consuls of France were assuming to hold courts of admiralty on
them, to try, condemn, and authorize their sale as legal prize, and all
this before Mr. Genet had presented him