FOOTNOTES:

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 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 influenceon the strength of parties, and on the subsequent political transactions of the United States."[42]

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]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 aschargé d'affaires,[44]had written both officially and privately of what was going on in France and of the increasing dominance of the Jacobin Clubs.[45]Perhaps nomore 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]... 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 machinenot 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'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]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]

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]

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]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 thepeopleto testify their affections without respect to the cold caution of their government."[52]

Again Jefferson measured popular sentiment accurately. Genêt was made an idol by the people. Banquets were given in his honor and extravagant toasts were drunk to the Republic and the guillotine. Showers of fiery "poems" filled the literary air.[53]"What hugging and tugging! What addressing and caressing! What mountebanking and chanting! with liberty caps and other wretched trumpery ofsans culottefoolery!" exclaimed a disgusted conservative.[54]

While all this was going on in America, Robespierre, as the incarnation of liberty, equality, and fraternity in France, achieved the summit of power and "The Terror" reached high tide. Marie Antoinette met the fate of her royal husband, and the executioners, overworked, could not satisfy the lust of the Parisian populace for human life. All this, however, did not extinguish American enthusiasm for French liberty.

Responding to the wishes of their subscribers, who at that period were the only support of the press, the Republican newspapers suppressed such atrocities as they could, but when concealment was impossible,they defended the deeds they chronicled.[55]It was a losing game to do otherwise, as one of the few journalistic supporters of the American Government discovered to his sorrow. Fenno, the editor of the "Gazette of the United States," found opposition to French revolutionary ideas, in addition to his support of Hamilton's popularly detested financial measures,[56]too much for him. The latter was load enough; but the former was the straw that broke the conservative editor's back.

"I am ... incapacitate[d] ... from printing another paper without the aid of a considerable loan," wrote the bankrupt newspaper opponent of French doctrines and advocate of Washington's Administration. "Since the 18th September, [1793] I have rec'd only 35¼ dollars," Fenno lamented. "Four years & an half of my life is gone for nothing; & worse (for I have a Debt of 2500 Dollars on my Shoulders), if at this crisis the hand of benevolence &patriotismis not extended."[57]

Forgotten by the majority of Americans was the assistance which the demolished French Monarchy and the decapitated French King had given the American army when, but for that assistance, our cause had been lost. The effigy of Louis XVI was guillotined by the people, many times every day in Philadelphia, on the same spot where, ten years before, as a monument of their gratitude, these same patriots had erected a triumphal arch, decorated with the royal lilies of France bearing the motto, "They exceed in glory," surmounted by a bust of Louis inscribed, "His merit makes us remember him."[58]

At a dinner in Philadelphia upon the anniversary of the French King's execution, the dead monarch was represented by a roasted pig. Its head was cut off at the table, and each guest, donning the liberty cap, shouted "tyrant" as with his knife he chopped the sundered head of the dead swine.[59]The news of the beheading of Louis's royal consort met with a like reception. "I have heard more than one young woman under the age of twenty declare," testifies Cobbett, "that they would willingly have dipped their hands in the blood of the queen of France."[60]

But if the host of American radicals whom Jefferson led and whose spirit he so truly interpreted were forgetful of the practical friendship of French Royalty in our hour of need, American conservatives, among whom Marshall was developing leadership, were also unmindful of the dark crimes against the people which, at an earlier period, had stained the Monarchy of France and gradually cast up the account that brought on the inevitable settlement of the Revolution. The streams of blood that flowed were waters of Lethe to both sides.

Yet to both they were draughts which produced in one an obsession of reckless unrestraint and in the other a terror of popular rule no less exaggerated.[61]Of the latter class, Marshall was, by far, the most moderate and balanced, although the tragic aspect of the convulsion in which French liberty was born, came to him in an especially direct fashion, as we have seen from the Morris correspondence already cited.

Another similar influence on Marshall was the case of Lafayette. The American partisans of the French Revolution accused this man, who had fought forus in our War for Independence, of deserting the cause of liberty because he had striven to hold the Gallic uprising within orderly bounds. When, for this, he had been driven from his native land and thrown into a foreign dungeon, Freneau thus sang the conviction of the American majority:—

"Here, bold in arms, and firm in heart,He help'd to gain our cause,Yet could not from a tyrant part,But, turn'd to embrace his laws!"[62]

Lafayette's expulsion by his fellow Republicans and his imprisonment by the allied monarchs, was brought home to John Marshall in a very direct and human fashion. His brother, James M. Marshall, was sent by Washington[63]as his personal representative, to plead unofficially for Lafayette's release. Marshall tells us of the strong and tender personal friendship between Washington and Lafayette and of the former's anxiety for the latter. But, writes Marshall: "The extreme jealousy with which the persons who administered the government of France, as well as a large party in America, watched his [Washington's] deportment towards all those whom the ferocious despotism of the jacobins had exiled from their country" rendered "a formal interposition in favour of the virtuous and unfortunate victim [Lafayette] of their furious passions ... unavailing."

Washington instructed our ministers to do all they could "unofficially" to help Lafayette, says Marshall; and "a confidential person [Marshall's brotherJames] had been sent to Berlin to solicit his discharge: but before this messenger had reached his destination, the King of Prussia had delivered over his illustrious prisoner to the Emperor of Germany."[64]Washington tried "to obtain the powerful mediation of Britain" and hoped "that the cabinet of St. James would take an interest in the case; but this hope was soon dissipated." Great Britain would do nothing to secure from her allies Lafayette's release.[65]

Thus Marshall, in an uncommonly personal way, was brought face to face with what appeared to him to be the injustice of the French revolutionists. Lafayette, under whom John Marshall had served at Brandywine and Monmouth; Lafayette, leader of the movement in France for a free government like our own; Lafayette, hated by kings and aristocrats because he loved genuine liberty, and yet exiled from his own country by his own countrymen for the same reason[66]—this picture, which was the one Marshall saw, influenced him profoundly and permanently.

Humor as well as horror contributed to the repugnance which Marshall and men of his type felt ever more strongly for what they considered to be mere popular caprice. The American passion for equality had its comic side. The public hatred of allrank did not stop with French royalty and nobility. Because of his impassioned plea in Parliament for the American cause, a statue of Lord Chatham had been erected at Charleston, South Carolina; the people now suspended it by the neck in the air until the sculptured head was severed from the body. But Chatham was dead and knew only from the spirit world of this recognition of his bold words in behalf of the American people in their hour of trial and of need. In Virginia the statue of Lord Botetourt was beheaded.[67]This nobleman was also long since deceased, guilty of no fault but an effort to help the colonists, more earnest than some other royal governors had displayed. Still, in life, he had been called a "lord"; so off with the head of his statue!

In the cities, streets were renamed. "Royal Exchange Alley" in Boston became "Equality Lane"; and "Liberty Stump" was the name now given to the base of a tree that formerly had been called "Royal." In New York, "Queen StreetbecamePearl Street; andKing Street, Liberty Street."[68]The liberty cap was the popular headgear and everybody wore the French cockade. Even the children, thus decorated, marched in processions,[69]singing, in a mixture of French and English words, the meaningof which they did not in the least understand, the glories of "liberté, égalité, fraternité."

At a town meeting in Boston resolutions asking that a city charter be granted were denounced as an effort to "destroy the liberties of the people; ... a link in the chain of aristocratic influence."[70]Titles were the especial aversion of the masses. Even before the formation of our government, the people had shown their distaste for all formalities, and especially for terms denoting official rank; and, after the Constitution was adopted, one of the first things Congress did was to decide against any form of address to the President. Adams and Lee had favored some kind of respectful designation of public officials. This all-important subject had attracted the serious thought of the people more than had the form of government, foreign policy, or even taxes.

Scarcely had Washington taken his oath of office when David Stuart warned him that "nothing could equal the ferment and disquietude occasioned by the proposition respecting titles. As it is believed to have originated from Mr. Adams and Mr. Lee, they are not only unpopular to an extreme, but highly odious.... It has given me much pleasure to hear every part of your conduct spoken of with high approbation, and particularly your dispensing with ceremony, occasionally walking the streets; while Adams is never seen but in his carriage and six. As trivial as this may appear," writes Stuart, "it appears to be more captivating to the generality, than mattersof more importance. Indeed, I believe the great herd of mankind form their judgments of characters, more from such slight occurrences, than those of greater magnitude."[71]

This early hostility to ostentation and rank now broke forth in rabid virulence. In the opinion of the people, as influenced by the French Revolution, a Governor or President ought not to be referred to as "His Excellency"; nor a minister of the gospel as "Reverend." Even "sir" or "esquire" were, plainly, "monarchical." The title "Honorable" or "His Honor," when applied to any official, even a judge, was base pandering to aristocracy. "Mr." and "Mrs." were heretical to the new religion of equality. Nothing but "citizen"[72]would do—citizen judge, citizen governor, citizen clergyman, citizen colonel, major, or general, citizen baker, shoemaker, banker, merchant, and farmer,—citizen everybody.

To address the master of ceremonies at a dinner or banquet or other public gathering as "Mr. Chairman" or "Mr. Toastmaster" was aristocratic: only "citizen chairman" or "citizen toastmaster" was the true speech of genuine liberty.[73]And the name of theGreekletter college fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa, was the trick of kings to ensnare our unsuspecting youth. Even "Φ.Β.Κ." was declared to be "an infringement of the natural rights of society." A college fraternity was destructive of the spirit of equality in Americancolleges.[74]"Lèse-républicanisme" was the term applied to good manners and politeness.[75]

Such were the surface and harmless evidences of the effect of the French Revolution on the great mass of American opinion. But a serious and practical result developed. Starting with the mother organization at Philadelphia, secret societies sprang up all over the Union in imitation of the Jacobin Clubs of France. Each society had its corresponding committee; and thus these organizations were welded into an unbroken chain. Their avowed purpose was to cherish the principles of human freedom and to spread the doctrine of true republicanism. But they soon became practical political agencies; and then, like their French prototype, the sowers of disorder and the instigators of insurrection.[76]

The practical activities of these organizations aroused, at last, the open wrath of Washington. They "are spreading mischief far and wide," he wrote;[77]and he declared to Randolph that "if these self-created societies cannot be discountenanced, they will destroy the government of this country."[78]

Conservative apprehensions were thus voiced by George Cabot: "We have seen ... the ... representatives of the people butchered, and a band ofrelentless murderers ruling in their stead with rods of iron. Will not this, or something like it, be the wretched fate of our country?... Is not this hostility and distrust [to just opinions and right sentiments] chiefly produced by the slanders and falsehoods which the anarchists incessantly inculcate?"[79]

Young men like John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts and John Marshall of Virginia thought that "the rabble that followed on the heels of Jack Cade could not have devised greater absurdities than" the French Revolution had inspired in America;[80]but they were greatly outnumbered by those for whom Jefferson spoke when he said that "I feel that the permanence of our own [Government] leans" on the success of the French Revolution.[81]

The American democratic societies, like their French originals, declared that theirs was the voice of "the people," and popular clamor justified the claim.[82]Everybody who dissented from the edicts of the clubs was denounced as a public robber or monarchist. "What a continual yelping and barking are our Swindlers, Aristocrats, Refugees, and British Agents making at the Constitutional Societies" which were "like a noble mastiff ... with ... impotent and noisy puppies at his heels," cried the indignant editor of the "Independent Chronicle" of Boston,[83]to whom the democratic societies were "guardians of liberty."

While these organizations strengthened radical opinion and fashioned American sympathizers of the French Revolution into disciplined ranks, they also solidified the conservative elements of the United States. Most viciously did the latter hate these "Jacobin Clubs," the principles they advocated, and their interference with public affairs. "They were born in sin, the impure offspring of Genêt," wrote Fisher Ames.

"They are the few against the many; the sons of darkness (for their meetings are secret) against those of the light; and above all, it is atowncabal, attempting to rule thecountry."[84]This testy New Englander thus expressed the extreme conservative feeling against the "insanity which is epidemic":[85]"This French mania," said Ames, "is the bane of our politics, the mortal poison that makes our peace so sickly."[86]"They have, like toads, sucked poison from the earth. They thirst for vengeance."[87]"The spirit of mischief is as active as the element of fire and as destructive."[88]Ames describes the activities of the Boston Society and the aversion of the "better classes" for it: "The club is despised here by men of right heads," he writes. "But ... they [the members of the Club] poison every spring; they whisper lies to every gale; they are everywhere, always acting like Old Nick and his imps.... They will be as busy as Macbeth's witches at the election."[89]

In Virginia the French Revolution and the American "Jacobins" helped to effect that change in Patrick Henry's political sentiments which his increasing wealth had begun. "If my Country," wrote Henry to Washington, "is destined in my day to encounter the horrors of anarchy, every power of mind or body which I possess will be exerted in support of the government under which I live."[90]As to France itself, Henry predicted that "anarchy will be succeeded by despotism" and Bonaparte, "Caesar-like, subvert the liberties of his country."[91]

Marshall was as much opposed to the democratic societies as was Washington, or Cabot, or Ames, but he was calmer in his opposition, although vitriolic enough. When writing even ten years later, after time had restored perspective and cooled feeling, Marshall says that these "pernicious societies"[92]were "the resolute champions of all the encroachments attempted by the agents of the French republic on the government of the United States, and the steady defamers of the views and measures of the American executive."[93]He thus describes their decline:—

"The colossean power of the [French] clubs, which had been abused to an excess that gives to faithful history the appearance of fiction, fell with that of their favourite member, and they sunk into long merited disgrace. The means by which their political influence had been maintained were wrestedfrom them; and, in a short time, their meetings were prohibited. Not more certain is it that the boldest streams must disappear, if the fountains which fed them be emptied, than was the dissolution of the democratic societies of America, when the Jacobin clubs were denounced by France. As if their destinies depended on the same thread, the political death of the former was the unerring signal for that of the latter."[94]

Such was the effect of the French Revolution on American thought at the critical period of our new Government's first trials. To measure justly the speech and conduct of men during the years we are now to review, this influence must always be borne in mind. It was woven into every great issue that arose in the United States. Generally speaking, the debtor classes and the poorer people were partisans of French revolutionary principles; and the creditor classes, the mercantile and financial interests, were the enemies of what they called "Jacobin philosophy." In a broad sense, those who opposed taxes, levied to support a strong National Government, sympathized with the French Revolution and believed in its ideas; those who advocated taxes for that purpose, abhorred that convulsion and feared its doctrines.

Those who had disliked government before the Constitution was established and who now hated National control, heard in the preachings of the French revolutionary theorists the voice of their hearts; while those who believed that government is essential to society and absolutely indispensable to the building of the American Nation, heard in the language and saw in the deeds of the French Revolution the forces that would wreck the foundations of the state even while they were but being laid and, in the end, dissolve society itself. Thus were the ideas of Nationality and localism in America brought into sharper conflict by the mob and guillotine in France.

All the passion for irresponsible liberty which the French Revolution increased in America, as well as all the resentment aroused by the financial measures and foreign policy of the "Federal Administrations," were combined in the opposition to and attacks upon a strong National Government. Thus provincialism in the form of States' Rights was given a fresh impulse and a new vitality. Through nearly all the important legislation and diplomacy of those stirring and interpretative years ran, with ever increasing clearness, the dividing line of Nationalism as against localism.

Such are the curious turns of human history. Those whom Jefferson led profoundly believed that they were fighting for human rights; and in their view and as a practical matter at that particular time this sacred cause meant State Rights. For everything which they felt to be oppressive, unjust, and antagonistic to liberty, came from the National Government. By natural contrast in their own minds, as well as by assertions of their leaders, the State Governments were the sources of justice and the protectors of the genuine rights of man.

In the development of John Marshall as well as of his great ultimate antagonist, Thomas Jefferson, during the formative decade which we are now to consider, the influence of the French Revolution must never be forgotten. Not a circumstance of the public lives of these two men and scarcely an incident of their private experience but was shaped and colored by this vast series of human events. Bearing in mind the influence of the French Revolution on American opinion, and hence, on Marshall and Jefferson, let us examine the succeeding years in the light of this determining fact.

FOOTNOTES:[1]"That the principles of America opened the Bastille is not to be doubted." (Thomas Paine to Washington, May 1, 1790;Cor. Rev.2: Sparks, iv, 328.) "The principles of it [the French Revolution] were copied from America." (Paine to Citizens of the United States, Nov. 15, 1802;Writings: Conway, iii, 381.)"Did not the American Revolution produce the French Revolution? And did not the French Revolution produce all the Calamities and Desolations to the human Race and the whole Globe ever since?" (Adams to Rush, Aug. 28, 1811;Old Family Letters, 352.)"Many of ... the leaders [of the French Revolution] have imbibed their principles in America, and all have been fired by our example." (Gouverneur Morris to Washington, Paris, April 29, 1789;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 256.)"All the friends of freedom on this side the Atlantic are now rejoicing for an event which ... has been accelerated by the American Revolution.... You have been the means of raising that spirit in Europe which ... will ... extinguish every remain of that barbarous servitude under which all the European nations, in a less ... degree, have so long been subject." (Catharine M. Graham to Washington, Berks (England), Oct. 1789;ib., 284; and see Cobbett, i, 97.)[2]See vol.i, chap.viii, of this work.[3]Marshall, ii, 155. "The mad harangues of the [French] National Convention were all translated and circulated through the States. The enthusiasm they excited it is impossible for me to describe." (Cobbett in "Summary View"; Cobbett, i, 98.)[4]Jefferson to Humphreys, March 18, 1789;Works: Ford, v, 467.[5]Jefferson to Madison, Aug. 28, 1789;ib., 490.[6]Boston Gazette, Sept. 7 and Nov. 30, 1789; as quoted in Hazen; and see Hazen, 142-43.[7]Gouverneur Morris to Washington, Paris, April 29, 1789;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 256. Even Jefferson had doubted French capacity for self-government because of what he described as French light-mindedness. (Jefferson to Mrs. Adams, Feb. 22, 1787;Works: Ford, v, 263; also see vol.i, chap.viii, of this work.)[8]Morris to Washington, July 31, 1789;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 270.[9]Lafayette to Washington, May 25, 1788;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 216. Lafayette's letters to Washington, from the beginning of the French Revolution down to his humiliating expulsion from France, constitute a thermometer of French temperature, all the more trustworthy because his letters are so naïve. For example, in March, 1790: "Our revolution is getting on as well as it can, with a nation that has swallowed liberty at once, and is still liable to mistake licentiousness for freedom." Or, in August of the same year: "I have lately lost some of my favor with the mob, and displeased the frantic lovers of licentiousness, as I am bent on establishing a legal subordination." Or, six months later: "I still am tossed about in the ocean of factions and commotions of every kind." Or, two months afterwards: "There appears a kind of phenomenon in my situation; all parties against me, and a national popularity which, in spite of every effort, has been unshakable." (Lafayette to Washington, March 17, 1790;ib., 321; Aug. 28,ib., 345; March 7, 1791,ib., 361; May 3, 1791,ib., 372.)[10]G. Morris to R. Morris, Dec. 24, 1792; Morris, ii, 15.[11]Ib., i, 582-84.[12]Louis Otto to De Montmorin, March 10, 1792;Writings: Conway, iii, 153.[13]Ib., 154-56.[14]Morris associated with the nobility in France and accepted the aristocratic view. (Ib.; and see A. Esmein, Membre de l'Institut:Gouverneur Morris, un témoin américain de la révolution française, Paris, 1906.)[15]Marshall, ii, note xvi, p. 17.[16]Recent investigation establishes the fact that the inmates of the Bastille generally found themselves very well off indeed. The records of this celebrated prison show that even prisoners of mean station, when incarcerated for so grave a crime as conspiracy against the King's life, had, in addition to remarkably abundant meals, an astonishing amount of extra viands and refreshments including comfortable quantities of wine, brandy, and beer. Prisoners of higher station fared still more generously, of course. (Funck-Brentano:Legends of the Bastille, 85-113; see alsoib., introduction.) It should be said, however, that thelettres de cachetwere a chief cause of complaint, although the stories, generally exaggerated, concerning the cruel treatment of prisoners came to be the principal count of the public indictment of the Bastille.[17]Lafayette to Washington, March 17, 1790;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 322.[18]Washington to Lafayette, August 11, 1790;Writings:Ford, xi, 493.[19]Paine to Washington, May 1, 1790;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 328. Paine did not, personally, bring the key, but forwarded it from London.[20]Burke in the House of Commons;Works: Burke, i, 451-53.[21]Ib.[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.)[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 hisRights of Manappeared.[24]Writings: Conway, ii, 272.[25]Writings: Conway, ii, 406. At this very moment the sympathizers with the French Revolution in America were saying exactly the reverse.[26]Writings: Conway, ii, 278-79, 407, 408, 413, 910.[27]Compare with Jefferson's celebrated letter to Mazzei (infra, chap.vii). Jefferson was now, however, in Washington's Cabinet.[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'sRights of Man. Indeed, he stated them in even more startling terms. (See Jefferson to Madison, Sept. 6, 1789;ib., vi, 1-11.)[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 hisWritings of John Quincy Adamsnow issuing.[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.)[31]Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 65-66.[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.[33]Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 65-110.[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.)[35]Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 110.[36]Madison to Jefferson, July 13, 1791;Writings; Hunt, vi, 56; and see Monroe to Jefferson, July 25, 1791; Monroe'sWritings: Hamilton, i, 225-26.[37]A verse of a song by French Revolutionary enthusiasts at a Boston "Civic Festivalin commemoration of theSuccessesof their French brethren in their glorious enterprise for theEstablishmentofEqual 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. (SeeColumbian Centinel, Jan. 26, 1793.)[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.)[39]Marshall, ii, 239.[40]Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph, May 26, 1793;Works: Ford, vii, 345.[41]Marshall, ii, 249-51.[42]Marshall, ii, 251-52.[43]Jefferson to T. M. Randolph, Jan. 7, 1793;Works: Ford, vii, 207.[44]Mass. Hist. Collections (7th Series), i, 138.[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 thesans 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 ofLiberté&Egalité!"August 24: "I shḍnot 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 anychambre ardentethat 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.[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.)[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 theseexecutors of speedy justicewent 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.)[48]Madison to Jefferson, June 17, 1793;Writings: Hunt, vi, 133.[49]Paine to Danton, May 6, 1793;Writings: Conway, iii, 135-38.[50]"Truth," in theGeneral 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.[51]SeeWritings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 151.[52]Jefferson to Madison, April 28, 1793;Works: Ford, vii, 301.[53]For examples of these, see Hazen, 220-45.[54]Graydon, 363.[55]Freneau'sNational Gazettedefended the execution of the King and the excesses of the Terror. (Hazen, 256; and see Cobbett, iii, 4.) While Cobbett, an Englishman, was a fanatic against the whole democratic movement, and while his opinions are violently prejudiced, his statements of fact are generally trustworthy. "I have seen a bundle of Gazettes published all by the same man, wherein Mirabeau, Fayette, Brissot, Danton, Robespierre, and Barras, are all panegyrized and execrated in due succession." (Ib., i, 116.) Cobbett did his best to turn the radical tide, but to no purpose. "Alas!" he exclaimed, "what can a straggling pamphlet ... do against a hundred thousand volumes of miscellaneous falsehood in folio?" (Ib., iii, 5.)[56]See next chapter.[57]Fenno to Hamilton, Nov. 9, 1793; King, i, 501-02. "The hand of benevolence &patriotism" was extended, it appears: "If you can ... raise 1000 Dollars in New York, I will endeavor to raise another Thousand at Philadelphia. If this cannot be done, we must lose his [Fenno's and theGazette of the United States] services & he will be the Victim of his honest public spirit." (Hamilton to King, Nov. 11, 1793; King, i, 502.)[58]Cobbett, i, footnote to 114. Curiously enough Louis XVI had believed that he was leading the French people in the reform movement. Thomas Paine, who was then in Paris, records that "The King ... prides himself on being the head of the revolution." (Paine to Washington, May 1, 1790;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 328.)[59]Cobbett, i, 113-14; and see Hazen, 258. For other accounts of the "feasts" in honor ofliberté, égalité, et fraternité, in America, seeib., 165-73.[60]Cobbett, i, 113.[61]For instance, the younger Adams wrote that the French Revolution had "contributed more to ... Vandalic ignorance than whole centuries can retrieve.... The myrmidons of Robespierre were as ready to burn libraries as the followers of Omar; and if the principle is finally to prevail which puts the sceptre of Sovereignty in the hands of European Sans Culottes, they will soon reduce everything to the level of their own ignorance." (John Quincy Adams to his father, July 27, 1795;Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 389.)And James A. Bayard wrote that: "The Barbarians who inundated the Roman Empire and broke to pieces the institutions of the civilized world, in my opinion innovated the state of things not more than the French revolution." (Bayard to Bassett, Dec. 30, 1797;Bayard Papers: Donnan, 47.)[62]Freneau, iii, 86.[63]Marshall, ii, 387.[64]Austria.[65]Marshall, ii, 387.[66]"They have long considered the Misde lafayette as really the firmest supporter of the principles of liberty in France—& as they are for the most part no friends to these principles anywhere, they cannot conceal the pleasure they [the aristocracy at The Hague] feel at their [principles of liberty] supporters' being thus expelled from the country where he laboured to establish them." (Short to Jefferson, Aug. 24, 1792; Short MSS., Lib. Cong.)[67]Cobbett, i, 112.[68]Ib.When the corporation of New York City thus took all monarchy out of its streets, Noah Webster suggested that, logically, the city ought to get rid of "this vile aristocratical name New York"; and, why not, inquired he, change the name of Kings County, Queens County, and Orange County? "Nay," exclaimed the sarcastic savant, "what will become of the people named King? Alas for the liberties of such people!" (Hazen, 216.)[69]Hazen, 218.[70]J. Q. Adams, to T. B. Adams, Feb. 1, 1792;Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 111-13.[71]Stuart to Washington, July 14, 1789;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 265-66; and see Randolph to Madison, May 19, 1789; Conway, 124.[72]See Hazen, 209-15.[73]Ib., 213.[74]See Hazen, 215.[75]Cobbett, i, 111.[76]For an impartial and comprehensive account of these clubs see Hazen, 188-208; also, Marshall, ii, 269et seq.At first many excellent and prominent men were members; but these withdrew when the clubs fell under the control of less unselfish and high-minded persons.[77]Washington to Thruston, Aug. 10, 1794;Writings: Ford, xii, 451.[78]Washington to Randolph, Oct. 16, 1794;ib., 475; and see Washington to Lee, Aug. 26, 1794;ib., 455.[79]Cabot to Parsons, Aug. 12, 1794; Lodge:Cabot, 79.[80]J. Q. Adams to John Adams, Oct. 19, 1790;Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 64.[81]Jefferson to Rutledge, Aug. 29, 1791;Works: Ford, vi, 309.[82]See Hazen, 203-07.[83]September 18, 1794.[84]Ames to Dwight, Sept. 11, 1794;Works: Ames, i, 150.[85]Cabot to King, July 25, 1795; Lodge:Cabot, 80.[86]Ames to Gore, March 26, 1794;Works: Ames, i, 139.[87]Ames to Minot, Feb. 20, 1793;ib., 128.[88]Ames to Gore, Jan. 28, 1794;ib., 134.[89]Ames to Dwight, Sept. 3, 1794;ib., 148.[90]Henry to Washington, Oct. 16, 1795; Henry, ii, 559.[91]Ib., 576.[92]Marshall, ii, 353.[93]Ib., 269.[94]Marshall, ii, 353-54.

[1]"That the principles of America opened the Bastille is not to be doubted." (Thomas Paine to Washington, May 1, 1790;Cor. Rev.2: Sparks, iv, 328.) "The principles of it [the French Revolution] were copied from America." (Paine to Citizens of the United States, Nov. 15, 1802;Writings: Conway, iii, 381.)"Did not the American Revolution produce the French Revolution? And did not the French Revolution produce all the Calamities and Desolations to the human Race and the whole Globe ever since?" (Adams to Rush, Aug. 28, 1811;Old Family Letters, 352.)"Many of ... the leaders [of the French Revolution] have imbibed their principles in America, and all have been fired by our example." (Gouverneur Morris to Washington, Paris, April 29, 1789;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 256.)"All the friends of freedom on this side the Atlantic are now rejoicing for an event which ... has been accelerated by the American Revolution.... You have been the means of raising that spirit in Europe which ... will ... extinguish every remain of that barbarous servitude under which all the European nations, in a less ... degree, have so long been subject." (Catharine M. Graham to Washington, Berks (England), Oct. 1789;ib., 284; and see Cobbett, i, 97.)

"Did not the American Revolution produce the French Revolution? And did not the French Revolution produce all the Calamities and Desolations to the human Race and the whole Globe ever since?" (Adams to Rush, Aug. 28, 1811;Old Family Letters, 352.)

"Many of ... the leaders [of the French Revolution] have imbibed their principles in America, and all have been fired by our example." (Gouverneur Morris to Washington, Paris, April 29, 1789;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 256.)

"All the friends of freedom on this side the Atlantic are now rejoicing for an event which ... has been accelerated by the American Revolution.... You have been the means of raising that spirit in Europe which ... will ... extinguish every remain of that barbarous servitude under which all the European nations, in a less ... degree, have so long been subject." (Catharine M. Graham to Washington, Berks (England), Oct. 1789;ib., 284; and see Cobbett, i, 97.)

[2]See vol.i, chap.viii, of this work.

[3]Marshall, ii, 155. "The mad harangues of the [French] National Convention were all translated and circulated through the States. The enthusiasm they excited it is impossible for me to describe." (Cobbett in "Summary View"; Cobbett, i, 98.)

[4]Jefferson to Humphreys, March 18, 1789;Works: Ford, v, 467.

[5]Jefferson to Madison, Aug. 28, 1789;ib., 490.

[6]Boston Gazette, Sept. 7 and Nov. 30, 1789; as quoted in Hazen; and see Hazen, 142-43.

[7]Gouverneur Morris to Washington, Paris, April 29, 1789;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 256. Even Jefferson had doubted French capacity for self-government because of what he described as French light-mindedness. (Jefferson to Mrs. Adams, Feb. 22, 1787;Works: Ford, v, 263; also see vol.i, chap.viii, of this work.)

[8]Morris to Washington, July 31, 1789;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 270.

[9]Lafayette to Washington, May 25, 1788;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 216. Lafayette's letters to Washington, from the beginning of the French Revolution down to his humiliating expulsion from France, constitute a thermometer of French temperature, all the more trustworthy because his letters are so naïve. For example, in March, 1790: "Our revolution is getting on as well as it can, with a nation that has swallowed liberty at once, and is still liable to mistake licentiousness for freedom." Or, in August of the same year: "I have lately lost some of my favor with the mob, and displeased the frantic lovers of licentiousness, as I am bent on establishing a legal subordination." Or, six months later: "I still am tossed about in the ocean of factions and commotions of every kind." Or, two months afterwards: "There appears a kind of phenomenon in my situation; all parties against me, and a national popularity which, in spite of every effort, has been unshakable." (Lafayette to Washington, March 17, 1790;ib., 321; Aug. 28,ib., 345; March 7, 1791,ib., 361; May 3, 1791,ib., 372.)

[10]G. Morris to R. Morris, Dec. 24, 1792; Morris, ii, 15.

[11]Ib., i, 582-84.

[12]Louis Otto to De Montmorin, March 10, 1792;Writings: Conway, iii, 153.

[13]Ib., 154-56.

[14]Morris associated with the nobility in France and accepted the aristocratic view. (Ib.; and see A. Esmein, Membre de l'Institut:Gouverneur Morris, un témoin américain de la révolution française, Paris, 1906.)

[15]Marshall, ii, note xvi, p. 17.

[16]Recent investigation establishes the fact that the inmates of the Bastille generally found themselves very well off indeed. The records of this celebrated prison show that even prisoners of mean station, when incarcerated for so grave a crime as conspiracy against the King's life, had, in addition to remarkably abundant meals, an astonishing amount of extra viands and refreshments including comfortable quantities of wine, brandy, and beer. Prisoners of higher station fared still more generously, of course. (Funck-Brentano:Legends of the Bastille, 85-113; see alsoib., introduction.) It should be said, however, that thelettres de cachetwere a chief cause of complaint, although the stories, generally exaggerated, concerning the cruel treatment of prisoners came to be the principal count of the public indictment of the Bastille.

[17]Lafayette to Washington, March 17, 1790;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 322.

[18]Washington to Lafayette, August 11, 1790;Writings:Ford, xi, 493.

[19]Paine to Washington, May 1, 1790;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 328. Paine did not, personally, bring the key, but forwarded it from London.

[20]Burke in the House of Commons;Works: Burke, i, 451-53.

[21]Ib.

[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.)

[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 hisRights of Manappeared.

[24]Writings: Conway, ii, 272.

[25]Writings: Conway, ii, 406. At this very moment the sympathizers with the French Revolution in America were saying exactly the reverse.

[26]Writings: Conway, ii, 278-79, 407, 408, 413, 910.

[27]Compare with Jefferson's celebrated letter to Mazzei (infra, chap.vii). Jefferson was now, however, in Washington's Cabinet.

[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'sRights of Man. Indeed, he stated them in even more startling terms. (See Jefferson to Madison, Sept. 6, 1789;ib., vi, 1-11.)

[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 hisWritings of John Quincy Adamsnow issuing.

The sagacious industry of Mr. Worthington C. Ford has made these and all the other invaluable papers of the younger Adams accessible, in hisWritings of John Quincy Adamsnow issuing.

[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.)

[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.)

[31]Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 65-66.

[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.

[33]Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 65-110.

[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.)

[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.)

[35]Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 110.

[36]Madison to Jefferson, July 13, 1791;Writings; Hunt, vi, 56; and see Monroe to Jefferson, July 25, 1791; Monroe'sWritings: Hamilton, i, 225-26.

[37]A verse of a song by French Revolutionary enthusiasts at a Boston "Civic Festivalin commemoration of theSuccessesof their French brethren in their glorious enterprise for theEstablishmentofEqual 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. (SeeColumbian Centinel, Jan. 26, 1793.)

"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. (SeeColumbian Centinel, Jan. 26, 1793.)

[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.)

[39]Marshall, ii, 239.

[40]Jefferson to Martha Jefferson Randolph, May 26, 1793;Works: Ford, vii, 345.

[41]Marshall, ii, 249-51.

[42]Marshall, ii, 251-52.

[43]Jefferson to T. M. Randolph, Jan. 7, 1793;Works: Ford, vii, 207.

[44]Mass. Hist. Collections (7th Series), i, 138.

[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 thesans 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 ofLiberté&Egalité!"August 24: "I shḍnot 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 anychambre ardentethat 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.

July 31: "The factions which have lately determined the system ... for violating all the bonds of civil society ... have disgusted all, except thesans 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 ofLiberté&Egalité!"

August 24: "I shḍnot 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 anychambre ardentethat 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.

[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.)

[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 theseexecutors of speedy justicewent 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.)

[48]Madison to Jefferson, June 17, 1793;Writings: Hunt, vi, 133.

[49]Paine to Danton, May 6, 1793;Writings: Conway, iii, 135-38.

[50]"Truth," in theGeneral 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.

[51]SeeWritings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 151.

[52]Jefferson to Madison, April 28, 1793;Works: Ford, vii, 301.

[53]For examples of these, see Hazen, 220-45.

[54]Graydon, 363.

[55]Freneau'sNational Gazettedefended the execution of the King and the excesses of the Terror. (Hazen, 256; and see Cobbett, iii, 4.) While Cobbett, an Englishman, was a fanatic against the whole democratic movement, and while his opinions are violently prejudiced, his statements of fact are generally trustworthy. "I have seen a bundle of Gazettes published all by the same man, wherein Mirabeau, Fayette, Brissot, Danton, Robespierre, and Barras, are all panegyrized and execrated in due succession." (Ib., i, 116.) Cobbett did his best to turn the radical tide, but to no purpose. "Alas!" he exclaimed, "what can a straggling pamphlet ... do against a hundred thousand volumes of miscellaneous falsehood in folio?" (Ib., iii, 5.)

[56]See next chapter.

[57]Fenno to Hamilton, Nov. 9, 1793; King, i, 501-02. "The hand of benevolence &patriotism" was extended, it appears: "If you can ... raise 1000 Dollars in New York, I will endeavor to raise another Thousand at Philadelphia. If this cannot be done, we must lose his [Fenno's and theGazette of the United States] services & he will be the Victim of his honest public spirit." (Hamilton to King, Nov. 11, 1793; King, i, 502.)

[58]Cobbett, i, footnote to 114. Curiously enough Louis XVI had believed that he was leading the French people in the reform movement. Thomas Paine, who was then in Paris, records that "The King ... prides himself on being the head of the revolution." (Paine to Washington, May 1, 1790;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 328.)

[59]Cobbett, i, 113-14; and see Hazen, 258. For other accounts of the "feasts" in honor ofliberté, égalité, et fraternité, in America, seeib., 165-73.

[60]Cobbett, i, 113.

[61]For instance, the younger Adams wrote that the French Revolution had "contributed more to ... Vandalic ignorance than whole centuries can retrieve.... The myrmidons of Robespierre were as ready to burn libraries as the followers of Omar; and if the principle is finally to prevail which puts the sceptre of Sovereignty in the hands of European Sans Culottes, they will soon reduce everything to the level of their own ignorance." (John Quincy Adams to his father, July 27, 1795;Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 389.)And James A. Bayard wrote that: "The Barbarians who inundated the Roman Empire and broke to pieces the institutions of the civilized world, in my opinion innovated the state of things not more than the French revolution." (Bayard to Bassett, Dec. 30, 1797;Bayard Papers: Donnan, 47.)

And James A. Bayard wrote that: "The Barbarians who inundated the Roman Empire and broke to pieces the institutions of the civilized world, in my opinion innovated the state of things not more than the French revolution." (Bayard to Bassett, Dec. 30, 1797;Bayard Papers: Donnan, 47.)

[62]Freneau, iii, 86.

[63]Marshall, ii, 387.

[64]Austria.

[65]Marshall, ii, 387.

[66]"They have long considered the Misde lafayette as really the firmest supporter of the principles of liberty in France—& as they are for the most part no friends to these principles anywhere, they cannot conceal the pleasure they [the aristocracy at The Hague] feel at their [principles of liberty] supporters' being thus expelled from the country where he laboured to establish them." (Short to Jefferson, Aug. 24, 1792; Short MSS., Lib. Cong.)

[67]Cobbett, i, 112.

[68]Ib.When the corporation of New York City thus took all monarchy out of its streets, Noah Webster suggested that, logically, the city ought to get rid of "this vile aristocratical name New York"; and, why not, inquired he, change the name of Kings County, Queens County, and Orange County? "Nay," exclaimed the sarcastic savant, "what will become of the people named King? Alas for the liberties of such people!" (Hazen, 216.)

[69]Hazen, 218.

[70]J. Q. Adams, to T. B. Adams, Feb. 1, 1792;Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 111-13.

[71]Stuart to Washington, July 14, 1789;Cor. Rev.: Sparks, iv, 265-66; and see Randolph to Madison, May 19, 1789; Conway, 124.

[72]See Hazen, 209-15.

[73]Ib., 213.

[74]See Hazen, 215.

[75]Cobbett, i, 111.

[76]For an impartial and comprehensive account of these clubs see Hazen, 188-208; also, Marshall, ii, 269et seq.At first many excellent and prominent men were members; but these withdrew when the clubs fell under the control of less unselfish and high-minded persons.

[77]Washington to Thruston, Aug. 10, 1794;Writings: Ford, xii, 451.

[78]Washington to Randolph, Oct. 16, 1794;ib., 475; and see Washington to Lee, Aug. 26, 1794;ib., 455.

[79]Cabot to Parsons, Aug. 12, 1794; Lodge:Cabot, 79.

[80]J. Q. Adams to John Adams, Oct. 19, 1790;Writings, J. Q. A.: Ford, i, 64.

[81]Jefferson to Rutledge, Aug. 29, 1791;Works: Ford, vi, 309.

[82]See Hazen, 203-07.

[83]September 18, 1794.

[84]Ames to Dwight, Sept. 11, 1794;Works: Ames, i, 150.

[85]Cabot to King, July 25, 1795; Lodge:Cabot, 80.

[86]Ames to Gore, March 26, 1794;Works: Ames, i, 139.

[87]Ames to Minot, Feb. 20, 1793;ib., 128.

[88]Ames to Gore, Jan. 28, 1794;ib., 134.

[89]Ames to Dwight, Sept. 3, 1794;ib., 148.

[90]Henry to Washington, Oct. 16, 1795; Henry, ii, 559.

[91]Ib., 576.

[92]Marshall, ii, 353.

[93]Ib., 269.

[94]Marshall, ii, 353-54.

Back to Index Next