Neutrality, the strictest neutrality, between England and France was therefore the only rational course; but the American partisans of these rivals did their utmost to render this unachievable.

Much of Washington's second term see-sawed between one horn and the other of this dilemma.

The sardonic aspect becomes more glaring if we remember that the United States were a new-born nation which ought to have been devoting itself to establishing viable relations among its own population and not to have been dissipating its strength taking sides with neighbors who lived four thousand miles away.
In the autumn of 1793 Jefferson insisted upon resigning as Secretary of State.

Washington used all his persuasiveness to dissuade him, but in vain.

Jefferson saw the matter in its true light, and insisted.
Perhaps it at last occurred to him, as it must occur to every dispassionate critic, that he could not go on forever acting as an important member of an administration which pursued a policy diametrically opposed to his own.