Even had the French rulers been perfectly honest and simple men, the American envoys would have had no easy task. For American-French affairs were sadly tangled and involved. Gouverneur Morris, our first Minister to France under the Constitution, had made himself unwelcome to the French Revolutionists; and to placate the authorities then reigning in Paris, Washington had recalled Morris and appointed Monroe in his place "after several attempts had failed to obtain a more eligible character."[560]
Monroe, a partisan of the Revolutionists, had begun his mission with theatrical blunders; and these he continued until his recall,[561] when he climaxed his imprudent conduct by his attack on Washington.[562] During most of his mission Monroe was under the influence of Thomas Paine,[563] who had then become the venomous enemy of Washington.
Monroe had refused to receive from his fellow Minister to England, John Jay, "confidential informal statements" as to the British treaty which Jay prudently had sent him by word of mouth only. When the Jay Treaty itself arrived, Monroe publicly denounced the treaty as "shameful,"[564] a grave indiscretion in the diplomatic representative of the Government that had negotiated the offending compact.
Finally Monroe was recalled and Washington, after having offered the French mission to John Marshall, appointed Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina as his successor. The French Revolutionary authorities had bitterly resented the Jay compact, accused the American Government of violating its treaty with France, denounced the United States for ingratitude, and abused it for undue friendship to Great Britain.
In all this the French Directory had been and still was backed up by the Republicans in the United States, who, long before this, had become a distinctly French party. Thomas Paine understated the case when he described "the Republican party in the United States" as "that party which is the sincere ally of France."[565]
The French Republic was showing its resentment by encouraging a piratical warfare by French privateers upon American commerce. Indeed, vessels of the French Government joined in these depredations. In this way, it thought to frighten the United States into taking the armed side of France against Great Britain. The French Republic was emulating the recent outrages of that Power; and, except that the French did not impress Americans into their service, as the British had done, their Government was furnishing to America the same cause for war that Great Britain had so brutally afforded.
In less than a year and a half before Marshall sailed from Philadelphia, more than three hundred and forty American vessels had been taken by French privateers.[566] Over fifty-five million dollars' worth of American property had been destroyed or confiscated under the decrees of the Directory.[567] American seamen, captured on the high seas, had been beaten and imprisoned. The officers and crew of a French armed brig tortured Captain Walker, of the American ship Cincinnatus, four hours by thumbscrews.[568]
When Monroe learned that Pinckney had been appointed to succeed him, he began a course of insinuations to his French friends against his successor; branded Pinckney as an "aristocrat"; and thus sowed the seeds for the insulting treatment the latter received upon his appearance at the French Capital.[569] Upon Pinckney's arrival, the French Directory refused to receive him, threatened him with arrest by the Paris police, and finally ordered the new American Minister out of the territory of the Republic.[570]
To emphasize this affront, the Directory made a great ado over the departure of Monroe, who responded with a characteristic address. To this speech Barras, then President of the Directory, replied in a harangue insulting to the American Government; it was, indeed, an open appeal to the American people to repudiate their own Administration,[571] of the same character as, and no less offensive than, the verbal performances of Genêt.
And still the outrages of French privateers on American ships continued with increasing fury.[572] The news of Pinckney's treatment and the speech of Barras reached America after Adams's inauguration. The President promptly called Congress into a special session and delivered to the National Legislature an address in which Adams appears at his best.