The United States now became his asylum.
He acquired citizenship, married a daughter of Governor Clinton of New York, and settled down to a useful and respected career as a country gentleman devoted to the improvement of agriculture.

He died at his home, Schodak, New York, in 1834, after having founded an American family.
At the time when Genet, favored by the exasperated state of Western sentiment over the navigation of the lower Mississippi, was promoting an attack upon the Spanish posts, the Administration had already been engaged for a long time in efforts to secure "full enjoyment of that navigation," as well as a settlement of the southwestern boundary.

In December, 1791, Washington nominated William Carmichael, charge d'affaires in Spain, and William Short, then charge d'affaires in France, commissioners to make a treaty.

Their efforts proved unsuccessful, and in 1794 the Spanish commissioner in the United States gave notice that they were not acceptable personally, and that it "was hoped that some other person would be appointed, with full powers, to settle this treaty, and graced with such a character as became the royalty to which he was accredited." Washington then nominated Thomas Pinckney, at that time minister in London, as minister plenipotentiary in Spain.

When Pinckney arrived on the scene he was met with the dilatory methods then characteristic of Spanish diplomacy, and finally he had to bring matters to an issue by demanding his passports.