"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 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.