US Presidential Actions and Diplomatic Arrivals in 1793

Background. Washington was unanimously elected the first U.S. president by the Electoral College in 1789 and 1792, and on February 13, 1793, the Electoral College unanimously re-elected him president, with John Adams re-elected vice president by a vote of 77 to 50. Meanwhile, revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain in February 1793, though that news did not reach America until the first half of April.

Second Inauguration. Washington was sworn into office by Associate Justice William Cushing on March 4, 1793, in Congress Hall in Philadelphia, beginning the second term to which the Electoral College had returned him unanimously.

Neutrality Proclamation. On April 22, 1793, after the French Revolutionary Wars broke out, Washington issued a proclamation declaring American neutrality in the conflict between revolutionary France and Great Britain. It threatened legal proceedings against any American providing assistance to any country at war, and the cabinet unanimously agreed to forbid citizens from taking part in hostilities at sea on behalf of or against any belligerent power.

Genêt's Arrival and Challenge. Edmond-Charles Genêt, the French envoy appointed by the Girondins during the French Revolution, was dispatched to the United States in 1793 to promote American support for France's wars with Spain and Great Britain. His actions on arriving endangered American neutrality, which Washington had pointedly declared in his Neutrality Proclamation of April 22, and led Washington to ask the French government to recall him.