The Life of John Marshall (Volume 2 of 4)

The next developments of the French uprising and the appearance of the Jacobin Clubs, however, alarmed some and gave pause to all of the cautious friends of freedom in America and other countries.

Edmund Burke hysterically sounded the alarm. On account of his championship of the cause of American Independence, Burke had enjoyed much credit with all Americans who had heard of him. "In the last age," exclaimed Burke in Parliament, February 9, 1790, "we were in danger of being entangled by the example of France in the net of a relentless despotism… Our present danger from the example of a people whose character knows no medium, is, with regard to government, a danger from anarchy; a danger of being led, through an admiration of successful fraud and violence, to an imitation of the excesses of an irrational, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody, and tyrannical democracy."[20 - Burke in the House of Commons; Works: Burke, i, 451-53.]

Of the French declaration of human rights Burke declared: "They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the rights of man, in such a pedantic abuse of elementary principles as would have disgraced boys at school… They systematically destroyed every hold of authority by opinion, religious or civil, on the minds of the people.[21 - Ib.]… On the scheme of this barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings," exclaimed the great English liberal, "laws are to be supported only by their own terrours… In the groves of their academy, at the end of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows."[22 - Reflections on the Revolution in France; ib., i, 489. Jefferson well stated the American radical opinion of Burke: "The Revolution of France does not astonish me so much as the Revolution of Mr. Burke… How mortifying that this evidence of the rottenness of his mind must oblige us now to ascribe to wicked motives those actions of his life which were the mark of virtue & patriotism." (Jefferson to Vaughan, May 11, 1791; Works: Ford, vi, 260.)]

Burke's extravagant rhetoric, although reprinted in America, was little heeded. It would have been better if his pen had remained idle. For Burke's wild language, not yet justified by the orgy of blood in which French liberty was, later, to be baptized, caused a voice to speak to which America did listen, a page to be written that America did read. Thomas Paine, whose "Common Sense" had made his name better known to all people in the United States than that of any other man of his time except Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and Henry, was then in France. This stormy petrel of revolution seems always to have been drawn by instinct to every part of the human ocean where hurricanes were brooding.[23 - Paine had not yet lost his immense popularity in the United States. While, later, he came to be looked upon with horror by great numbers of people, he enjoyed the regard and admiration of nearly everybody in America at the time his Rights of Man appeared.]

Paine answered Burke with that ferocious indictment of monarchy entitled "The Rights of Man," in which he went as far to one extreme as the English political philosopher had gone to the other; for while Paine annihilated Burke's Brahminic laudation of rank, title, and custom, he also penned a doctrine of paralysis to all government. As was the case with his "Common Sense," Paine's "Rights of Man" abounded in attractive epigrams and striking sentences which quickly caught the popular ear and were easily retained by the shallowest memory.

"The cause of the French people is that of … the whole world," declared Paine in the preface of his flaming essay;[24 - Writings: Conway, ii, 272.] and then, the sparks beginning to fly from his pen, he wrote: "Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government… It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished… The instant formal government is abolished," said he, "society begins to act; … and common interest produces common security." And again: "The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has it for government… It is but few general laws that civilised life requires."

Holding up our own struggle for liberty as an illustration, Paine declared: "The American Revolution … laid open the imposition of governments"; and, using our newly formed and untried National Government as an example, he asserted with grotesque inaccuracy: "In America … all the parts are brought into cordial unison. There the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged… Their taxes are few, because their government is just."[25 - Writings: Conway, ii, 406. At this very moment the sympathizers with the French Revolution in America were saying exactly the reverse.]

Proceeding thence to his assault upon all other established governments, especially that of England, the great iconoclast exclaimed: "It is impossible that such governments as have hitherto [1790] existed in the world, could have commenced by any other means than a violation of every principle sacred and moral."

Striking at the foundations of all permanent authority, Paine declared that "Every age and generation must be … free to act for itself in all cases… The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies." The people of yesterday have "no right … to bind or to control … the people of the present day … in any shape whatever… Every generation is, and must be, competent to all the purposes which its occasions require."[26 - Writings: Conway, ii, 278-79, 407, 408, 413, 910.] So wrote the incomparable pamphleteer of radicalism.

Paine's essay, issued in two parts, was a torch successively applied to the inflammable emotions of the American masses. Most newspapers printed in each issue short and appealing excerpts from it. For example, the following sentence from Paine's "Rights of Man" was reproduced in the "Columbian Centinel" of Boston on June 6, 1792: "Can we possibly suppose that if government had originated in right principles and had not an interest in pursuing a wrong one, that the world could have been in the wretched and quarrelsome condition it is?" Such quotations from Paine appeared in all radical and in some conservative American publications; and they were repeated from mouth to mouth until even the backwoodsmen knew of them – and believed them.

"Our people … love what you write and read it with delight" ran the message which Jefferson sent across the ocean to Paine. "The printers," continued Jefferson, "season every newspaper with extracts from your last, as they did before from your first part of the Rights of Man. They have both served here to separate the wheat from the chaff… Would you believe it possible that in this country there should be high & important characters[27 - Compare with Jefferson's celebrated letter to Mazzei (infra, chap. vii). Jefferson was now, however, in Washington's Cabinet.] who need your lessons in republicanism & who do not heed them. It is but too true that we have a sect preaching up & pouting after an English constitution of king, lords, & commons, & whose heads are itching for crowns, coronets & mitres…

"Go on then," Jefferson urged Paine, "in doing with your pen what in other times was done with the sword, … and be assured that it has not a more sincere votary nor you a more ardent well-wisher than … Tho

Jefferson."[28 - Jefferson to Paine, June 19, 1792; Works: Ford, vii, 121-22; and see Hazen, 157-60. Jefferson had, two years before, expressed precisely the views set forth in Paine's Rights of Man. Indeed, he stated them in even more startling terms. (See Jefferson to Madison, Sept. 6, 1789; ib., vi, 1-11.)]

And the wheat was being separated from the chaff, as Jefferson declared. Shocked not more by the increasing violence in France than by the principles which Paine announced, men of moderate mind and conservative temperament in America came to have misgivings about the French Revolution, and began to speak out against its doings and its doctrines.

A series of closely reasoned and well-written articles were printed in the "Columbian Centinel" of Boston in the summer of 1791, over the nom de guerre "Publicola"; and these were widely copied. They were ascribed to the pen of John Adams, but were the work of his brilliant son.[29 - Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 65-110. John Quincy Adams wrote these admirable essays when he was twenty-four years old. Their logic, wit, and style suggest the writer's incomparable mother. Madison, who remarked their quality, wrote to Jefferson: "There is more of method … in the arguments, and much less of clumsiness & heaviness in the style, than characterizes his [John Adams's] writings." (Madison to Jefferson, July 13, 1791; Writings: Hunt, vi, 56.)The sagacious industry of Mr. Worthington C. Ford has made these and all the other invaluable papers of the younger Adams accessible, in his Writings of John Quincy Adams now issuing.]

The American edition of Paine's "Rights of Man" was headed by a letter from Secretary of State Jefferson to the printer, stating his pleasure that the essay was to be printed in this country and "that something is at length to be publickly said against the political heresies which have sprung up among us."[30 - Jefferson to Adams, July 17, 1791; Works: Ford, vi, 283, and footnote; also see Jefferson to Washington, May 8, 1791; ib., 255-56.Jefferson wrote Washington and the elder Adams, trying to evade his patronage of Paine's pamphlet; but, as Mr. Ford moderately remarks, "the explanation was somewhat lame." (Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 65; and see Hazen, 156-57.) Later Jefferson avowed that "Mr. Paine's principles … were the principles of the citizens of the U. S." (Jefferson to Adams, Aug. 30, 1791; Works: Ford, vi, 314.) To his intimate friend, Monroe, Jefferson wrote that "Publicola, in attacking all Paine's principles, is very desirous of involving me in the same censure with the author. I certainly merit the same, for I profess the same principles." (Jefferson to Monroe, July 10, 1791; ib., 280.)Jefferson at this time was just on the threshold of his discovery of and campaign against the "deep-laid plans" of Hamilton and the Nationalists to transform the newborn Republic into a monarchy and to deliver the hard-won "liberties" of the people into the rapacious hands of "monocrats," "stockjobbers," and other "plunderers" of the public. (See next chapter.)] Publicola called attention to this and thus, more conspicuously, displayed Jefferson as an advocate of Paine's doctrines.[31 - Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 65-66.]

All Americans had "seen with pleasure the temples of despotism levelled with the ground," wrote the keen young Boston law student.[32 - Although John Quincy Adams had just been admitted to the bar, he was still a student in the law office of Theophilus Parsons at the time he wrote the Publicola papers.] There was "but one sentiment… – that of exultation." But what did Jefferson mean by "heresies"? asked Publicola. Was Paine's pamphlet "the canonical book of scripture?" If so, what were its doctrines? "That which a whole nation chooses to do, it has a right to do" was one of them.

Was that "principle" sound? No! avowed Publicola, for "the eternal and immutable laws of justice and of morality are paramount to all human legislation." A nation might have the power but never the right to violate these. Even majorities have no right to do as they please; if so, what security has the individual citizen? Under the unrestrained rule of the majority "the principles of liberty must still be the sport of arbitrary power, and the hideous form of despotism must lay aside the diadem and the scepter, only to assume the party-colored garments of democracy."

"The only genuine liberty consists in a mean equally distant from the despotism of an individual and of a million," asserted Publicola. "Mr. Paine seems to think it as easy for a nation to change its government as for a man to change his coat." But "the extreme difficulty which impeded the progress of its [the American Constitution's] adoption … exhibits the fullest evidence of what a more than Herculean task it is to unite the opinions of a free people on any system of government whatever."

The "mob" which Paine exalted as the common people, but which Publicola thought was really only the rabble of the cities, "can be brought to act in concert" only by "a frantic enthusiasm and ungovernable fury; their profound ignorance and deplorable credulity make them proper tools for any man who can inflame their passions; … and," warned Publicola, "as they have nothing to lose by the total dissolution of civil society, their rage may be easily directed against any victim which may be pointed out to them… To set in motion this inert mass, the eccentric vivacity of a madman is infinitely better calculated than the sober coolness of phlegmatic reason."

"Where," asked Publicola, "is the power that should control them [Congress]?" if they violate the letter of the Constitution. Replying to his own question, he asserted that the real check on Congress "is the spirit of the people."[33 - Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 65-110.] John Marshall had said the same thing in the Virginia Constitutional Convention; but even at that early period the Richmond attorney went further and flatly declared that the temporary "spirit of the people" was not infallible and that the Supreme Court could and would declare void an unconstitutional act of Congress – a truth which he was, unguessed at that time by himself or anybody else, to announce with conclusive power within a few years and at an hour when dissolution confronted the forming Nation.

Such is a rapid précis of the conservative essays written by the younger Adams. Taken together, they were a rallying cry to those who dared to brave the rising hurricane of American sympathy with the French Revolution; but they also strengthened the force of that growing storm. Multitudes of writers attacked Publicola as the advocate of "aristocracy" and "monarchy." "The papers under the signature of Publicola have called forth a torrent of abuse," declared the final essay of the series.

Brown's "Federal Gazette" of Philadelphia branded Publicola's doctrines as "abominable heresies"; and hoped that they would "not procure many proselytes either to monarchy or aristocracy."[34 - Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, footnote to 107."As soon as Publicola attacked Paine, swarms appeared in his defense… Instantly a host of writers attacked Publicola in support of those [Paine's] principles." (Jefferson to Adams, Aug. 30, 1791; Works: Ford, vi, 314; and see Jefferson to Madison, July 10, 1791; ib., 279.)] The "Independent Chronicle" of Boston asserted that Publicola was trying to build up a "system of Monarchy and Aristocracy … on the ruins both of the Reputation and Liberties of the People."[35 - Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 110.] Madison reported to Jefferson that because of John Adams's reputed authorship of these unpopular letters, the supporters of the Massachusetts statesman had become "perfectly insignificant in … number" and that "in Boston he is … distinguished for his unpopularity."[36 - Madison to Jefferson, July 13, 1791; Writings; Hunt, vi, 56; and see Monroe to Jefferson, July 25, 1791; Monroe's Writings: Hamilton, i, 225-26.]

In such fashion the controversy began in America over the French Revolution.

But whatever the misgivings of the conservative, whatever the alarm of the timid, the overwhelming majority of Americans were for the French Revolution and its doctrines;[37 - A verse of a song by French Revolutionary enthusiasts at a Boston "Civic Festival in commemoration of the Successes of their French brethren in their glorious enterprise for the Establishment of Equal Liberty," as a newspaper describes the meeting, expresses in reserved and moderate fashion the popular feeling: —"See the bright flame arise,In yonder Eastern skiesSpreading in veins;'T is pure DemocracySetting all Nations freeMelting their chains."At this celebration an ox with gilded horns, one bearing the French flag and the other the American; carts of bread and two or three hogsheads of rum; and other devices of fancy and provisions for good cheer were the material evidence of the radical spirit. (See Columbian Centinel, Jan. 26, 1793.)] and men of the highest ability and station gave dignity to the voice of the people.

In most parts of the country politicians who sought election to public office conformed, as usual, to the popular view. It would appear that the prevailing sentiment was influential even with so strong a conservative and extreme a Nationalist as Madison, in bringing about his amazing reversal of views which occurred soon after the Constitution was adopted.[38 - It is certain that Madison could not possibly have continued in public life if he had remained a conservative and a Nationalist. (See next chapter.)] But those who, like Marshall, were not shaken, were made firmer in their opinions by the very strength of the ideas thus making headway among the masses.

An incident of the French Revolution almost within sight of the American coast gave to the dogma of equality a new and intimate meaning in the eyes of those who had begun to look with disfavor upon the results of Gallic radical thought. Marshall and Jefferson best set forth the opposite impressions made by this dramatic event.

"Early and bitter fruits of that malignant philosophy," writes Marshall, "which … can coolly and deliberately pursue, through oceans of blood, abstract systems for the attainment of some fancied untried good, were gathered in the French West Indies… The revolutionists of France formed the mad and wicked project of spreading their doctrines of equality among persons [negroes and white people] between whom distinctions and prejudices exist to be subdued only by the grave. The rage excited by the pursuit of this visionary and baneful theory, after many threatening symptoms, burst forth on the 23d day of August 1791, with a fury alike destructive and general.

"In one night, a preconcerted insurrection of the blacks took place throughout the colony of St. Domingo; and the white inhabitants of the country, while sleeping in their beds, were involved in one indiscriminate massacre, from which neither age nor sex could afford an exemption. Only a few females, reserved for a fate more cruel than death, were intentionally spared; and not many were fortunate enough to escape into the fortified cities. The insurgents then assembled in vast numbers, and a bloody war commenced between them and the whites inhabiting the towns."[39 - Marshall, ii, 239.]

After the African disciples of French liberty had overthrown white supremacy in St. Domingo, Jefferson wrote his daughter that he had been informed "that the Patriotic party [St. Domingo revolutionists] had taken possession of 600 aristocrats & monocrats, had sent 200 of them to France, & were sending 400 here… I wish," avowed Jefferson, in this intimate family letter, "we could distribute our 400 [white French exiles] among the Indians, who would teach them lessons of liberty & equality."[40 - Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph, May 26, 1793; Works: Ford, vii, 345.]

Events in France marched swiftly from one bloody climax to another still more scarlet. All were faithfully reflected in the views of the people of the United States. John Marshall records for us "the fervour of democracy" as it then appeared in our infant Republic. He repeats that, at first, every American wished success to the French reformers. But the later steps of the movement "impaired this … unanimity of opinion… A few who had thought deeply on the science of government … believed that … the influence of the galleries over the legislature, and of mobs over the executive; … the tumultuous assemblages of the people and their licentious excesses … did not appear to be the symptoms of a healthy constitution, or of genuine freedom… They doubted, and they feared for the future."

Of the body of American public opinion, however, Marshall chronicles that: "In total opposition to this sentiment was that of the public. There seems to be something infectious in the example of a powerful and enlightened nation verging towards democracy, which imposes on the human mind, and leads human reason in fetters… Long settled opinions yield to the overwhelming weight of such dazzling authority. It wears the semblance of being the sense of mankind, breaking loose from the shackles which had been imposed by artifice, and asserting the freedom, and the dignity, of his nature."

American conservative writers, says Marshall, "were branded as the advocates of royalty, and of aristocracy. To question the duration of the present order of things [in France] was thought to evidence an attachment to unlimited monarchy, or a blind prejudice in favour of British institutions… The war in which the several potentates of Europe were engaged against France, although in almost every instance declared by that power, was pronounced to be a war for the extirpation of human liberty, and for the banishment of free government from the face of the earth. The preservation of the constitution of the United States was supposed to depend on its issue; and the coalition against France was treated as a coalition against America also."[41 - Marshall, ii, 249-51.]

Marshall states, more clearly, perhaps, than any one else, American conservative opinion of the time: "The circumstances under which the abolition of royalty was declared, the massacres which preceded it, the scenes of turbulence and violence which were acted in every part of the nation, appeared to them [American conservatives] to present an awful and doubtful state of things… The idea that a republic was to be introduced and supported by force, was, to them, a paradox in politics."

Thus it was, he declares, that "the French revolution will be found to have had great influence on the strength of parties, and on the subsequent political transactions of the United States."[42 - Marshall, ii, 251-52.]

As the French storm increased, its winds blew ever stronger over the responsive waters of American opinion. Jefferson, that accurate barometer of public weather, thus registers the popular feeling: "The sensations it [the French Revolution] has produced here, and the indications of them in the public papers, have shown that the form our own government was to take depended much more on the events of France than anybody had before imagined."[43 - Jefferson to T. M. Randolph, Jan. 7, 1793; Works: Ford, vii, 207.] Thus both Marshall and Jefferson bear testimony as to the determining effect produced in America by the violent change of systems in France.

William Short, whom Jefferson had taken to France as his secretary, when he was the American Minister to France, and who, when Jefferson returned to the United States, remained as chargé d'affaires,[44 - Mass. Hist. Collections (7th Series), i, 138.] had written both officially and privately of what was going on in France and of the increasing dominance of the Jacobin Clubs.[45 - Typical excerpts from Short's reports to Jefferson are: July 20, 1792: "Those mad & corrupted people in France who under the name of liberty have destroyed their own government [French Constitution of 1791] & disgusted all … men of honesty & property… All the rights of humanity … are daily violated with impunity … universal anarchy prevails… There is no succour … against mobs & factions which have assumed despotic power."July 31: "The factions which have lately determined the system … for violating all the bonds of civil society … have disgusted all, except the sans culottes … with the present order of things … the most perfect & universal disorder that ever reigned in any country. Those who from the beginning took part in the revolution … have been disgusted, by the follies, injustice, & atrocities of the Jacobins… All power [is] in the hands of the most mad, wicked & atrocious assembly that ever was collected in any country."August 15: "The Swiss guards have been massacred by the people & … streets literally are red with blood."October 12: "Their [French] successes abroad are unquestionably evils for humanity. The spirit which they will propagate is so destructive of all order … so subversive of all ideas of justice – the system they aim at so absolutely visionary & impracticable – that their efforts can end in nothing but despotism after having bewildered the unfortunate people, whom they render free in their way, in violence & crimes, & wearied them with sacrifices of blood, which alone they consider worthy of the furies whom they worship under the names of Liberté & Egalité!"August 24: "I sh

not be at all surprized to hear of the present leaders being hung by the people. Such has been the moral of this revolution from the beginning. The people have gone farther than their leaders… We may expect … to hear of such proceedings, under the cloak of liberty, égalité & patriotism as would disgrace any chambre ardente that has ever created in humanity shudders at the idea." (Short MSS., Lib. Cong.)These are examples of the statements to which Jefferson's letter, quoted in the text following, was the reply. Short's most valuable letters are from The Hague, to which he had been transferred. They are all the more important, as coming from a young radical whom events in France had changed into a conservative. And Jefferson's letter is conclusive of American popular sentiment, which he seldom opposed.] Perhaps no more trustworthy statement exists of the prevailing American view of the French cataclysm than that given in Jefferson's fatherly letter to his protégé: —

"The tone of your letters had for some time given me pain," wrote Jefferson, "on account of the extreme warmth with which they censured the proceedings of the Jacobins of France.[46 - Almost at the same time Thomas Paine was writing to Jefferson from Paris of "the Jacobins who act without either prudence or morality." (Paine to Jefferson, April 20, 1793; Writings: Conway, iii, 132.)]… Many guilty persons [aristocrats] fell without the forms of trial, and with them some innocent:… It was necessary to use the arm of the people, a machine not quite so blind as balls and bombs, but blind to a certain degree…

"The liberty of the whole earth," continued Jefferson, "was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated.

"Were there but an Adam & an Eve left in every country, & left free, it would be better than as it now is," declared Jefferson; and "my sentiments … are really those of 99 in an hundred of our citizens," was that careful political observer's estimate of American public opinion. "Your temper of mind," Jefferson cautions Short, "would be extremely disrelished if known to your countrymen.

"There are in the U.S. some characters of opposite principles… Excepting them, this country is entirely republican, friends to the constitution… The little party above mentioned have espoused it only as a stepping stone to monarchy… The successes of republicanism in France have given the coup de grace to their prospects, and I hope to their projects.

"I have developed to you faithfully the sentiments of your country," Jefferson admonishes Short, "that you may govern yourself accordingly."[47 - Jefferson to Short, Jan. 3, 1793; Works: Ford, vii, 202-05. Short had written Jefferson that Morris, then in Paris, would inform him of French conditions. Morris had done so. For instance, he wrote officially to Jefferson, nearly four months before the latter's letter to Short quoted in the text, that: "We have had one week of unchecked murders, in which some thousands have perished in this city [Paris]. It began with between two and three hundred of the clergy, who would not take the oath prescribed by law. Thence these executors of speedy justice went to the Abbaye, where the prisoners were confined who were at Court on the 10th. Madame de Lamballe … was beheaded and disembowelled; the head and entrails paraded on pikes through the street, and the body dragged after them," etc., etc. (Morris to Jefferson, Sept. 10, 1792; Morris, i, 583-84.)]

Jefferson's count of the public pulse was accurate. "The people of this country [Virginia] … are unanimous & explicit in their sympathy with the Revolution" was the weather-wise Madison's report.[48 - Madison to Jefferson, June 17, 1793; Writings: Hunt, vi, 133.] And the fever was almost as high in other States.

When, after many executions of persons who had been "denounced" on mere suspicion of unfriendliness to the new order of things, the neck of Louis XVI was finally laid beneath the knife of the guillotine and the royal head rolled into the executioner's basket, even Thomas Paine was shocked. In a judicious letter to Danton he said: —

"I now despair of seeing the great object of European liberty accomplished" because of "the tumultuous misconduct" of "the present revolution" which "injure[s its] character … and discourage[s] the progress of liberty all over the world… There ought to be some regulation with respect to the spirit of denunciation that now prevails."[49 - Paine to Danton, May 6, 1793; Writings: Conway, iii, 135-38.]

So it was that Thomas Paine, in France, came to speak privately the language which, in America, at that very hour, was considered by his disciples to be the speech of "aristocracy," "monarchy," and "despotism"; for the red fountains which drenched the fires of even Thomas Paine's enthusiasm did not extinguish the flames his burning words had lighted among the people of the United States. Indeed Paine, himself, was attacked for regretting the execution of the King.[50 - "Truth," in the General Advertiser (Philadelphia), May 8, 1793. "Truth" denied that Louis XVI had aided us in our Revolution and insisted that it was the French Nation that had come to our assistance. Such was the disregard of the times for even the greatest of historic facts, and facts within the personal knowledge of nine tenths of the people then living.]

Three months after the execution of the French King, the new Minister of the French Republic, "Citizen" Genêt, arrived upon our shores. He landed, not at Philadelphia, then our seat of government, but at Charleston, South Carolina. The youthful[51 - See Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 151.] representative of Revolutionary France was received by public officials with obsequious flattery and by the populace with a frenzy of enthusiasm almost indescribable in its intensity.

He acted on the welcome. He fitted out privateers, engaged seamen, issued letters of marque and reprisal, administered to American citizens oaths of "allegiance" to the authority then reigning in Paris. All this was done long before he presented his credentials to the American Government. His progress to our Capital was an unbroken festival of triumph. Washington's dignified restraint was interpreted as hostility, not only to Genêt, but also to "liberty." But if Washington's heart was ice, the people's heart was fire.

"We expect Mr. Genest here within a few days," wrote Jefferson, just previous to the appearance of the French Minister in Philadelphia and before our ignored and offended President had even an opportunity to receive him. "It seems," Jefferson continued, "as if his arrival would furnish occasion for the people to testify their affections without respect to the cold caution of their government."[52 - Jefferson to Madison, April 28, 1793; Works: Ford, vii, 301.]