To Marshall's brother James, who had offered his services as an aide-de-camp, Washington wrote that the French "(although I conceive them capable of anything that is unjust or dishonorable)" will not "attempt a serious invasion of this country" when they learn of "the preparation which [we] are making to receive them." They have "made calculations on false ground" in supposing that Americans would not "support Independence and the Government of their country at every hazard." Nevertheless, "the highest possible obligation rests upon the country to be prepared for the event as the most effective means to avert the evil."[809] Military preparations were active and conspicuous: On July 4, New York City "resembles a camp rather than a commercial port," testifies Troup.[810]
The people for the moment believed, with Marshall and Washington, that we were on the brink of war; had they known what Jefferson knew, their apprehension would have been still keener. Reporting from Paris, the French partisan Skipwith tells Jefferson that, from motives of "commercial advantage and aggrandisement" as well as of "vengeance," France will probably fall upon America. "Yes sir, the moment is come that I see the fortunes, nay, independence, of my country at hazard, and in the hands of the most gigantic nation on earth.... Already, the language of planting new colonies upon the ... Mississippi is the language of Frenchmen here."[811] Skipwith blames this predicament upon Adams's character, speech, and action and upon Marshall's and Pinckney's conduct in Paris;[812] and advises Jefferson that "war may be prevented, and our country saved" by "modifying or breaking" the Jay Treaty and lending money to France.[813]
Jefferson was frantic with disappointment and anger. Not only did he see the Republican Party, which he had built up with such patience and skill, going to pieces before his very eyes; but the prospect of his election to the Presidency as the successor of Adams, which until then appeared to be inviting, now jeopardized if not made hopeless. With his almost uncanny understanding of men, Jefferson laid all this to Marshall; and, from the moment of his fellow Virginian's arrival from France, this captain of the popular cause began that open and malignant warfare upon Marshall which ended only with Jefferson's last breath.
At once he set out to repair the havoc which Marshall's work had wrought in his party. This task was made the harder because of the very tactics which Jefferson had employed to increase the Republican strength. For, until now, he had utilized so thoroughly the deep and widespread French sentiment in America as his immediate party weapon, and made so emphatic the French issue as a policy of party tactics, that, in comparison, all other issues, except the central one of States' Rights, were secondary in the public mind at this particular time.
The French propaganda had gone farther than Jefferson, perhaps, intended it to go. "They [the French] have been led to believe by their agents and Partisans amongst us," testifies Washington, "that we are a divided people, that the latter are opposed to their own Government."[814] At any rate, it is certain that a direct connection, between members of what the French politicians felt themselves justified in calling "the French party" in America and the manipulators of French public opinion, existed and was made use of. This is shown by the effect in France of Jefferson's famous letter to Mazzei of April 24, 1796.[815] It is proved by the amazing fact that Talleyrand's answer to the memorial of the envoys was published in the Jeffersonian organ, the "Aurora," before Adams had transmitted that document to Congress, if not indeed before the President himself had received from our envoys Talleyrand's reply to Marshall's statement of the American case.[816]
Jefferson took the only step possible to a party leader. He sought to minimize the effect of the disclosures revealed in Marshall's dispatches. Writing to Peter Carr, April 12, 1798, Jefferson said: "You will perceive that they [the envoys] have been assailed by swindlers, whether with or without the participation of Talleyrand is not very apparent.... That the Directory knew anything of it is neither proved nor probable."[817] On June 8, 1798, Jefferson wrote to Archibald Stuart: "It seems fairly presumable that the douceur of 50,000 Guineas mentioned in the former dispatches was merely from X. and Y. as not a word is ever said by Talleyrand to our envoys nor by them to him on the subject."[818] Thus Jefferson's political desperation caused him to deny facts which were of record, for the dispatches show, not only that Talleyrand had full knowledge of the disgraceful transaction, but also that he originated and directed it.
The efforts of the Republicans to sneer away the envoys' disclosures awakened Washington's bitter sarcasm. The Republicans were "thunder-stricken ... on the publication of the dispatches from our envoys," writes he, "but the contents of these dispatches are now resolved by them into harmless chitchat—mere trifles—less than was or ought to have been expected from the misconduct of the Administration of this country, and that it is better to submit to such chastisement than to hazard greater evils by shewing futile resentment."[819]
Jefferson made no headway, however, in his attempts to discredit the X. Y. Z. revelations. Had the Federalists stopped with establishing the Navy Department and providing for an army, with Washington at its head; had they been content to build ships and to take other proper measures for the National defense, Adams's Administration would have been saved, the Federalist Party kept alive for at least four years more, the Republican Party delayed in its recovery and Jefferson's election to the Presidency made impossible. Here again Fate worked, through the blindness of those whose day had passed, the doom of Federalism. The Federalists enacted the Alien and Sedition Laws and thus hastened their own downfall.
Even after this legislation had given him a new, real, and irresistible "issue," Jefferson still assailed the conduct of Marshall and Pinckney; he was resolved that not a single Republican vote should be lost. Months later he reviews the effect of the X. Y. Z. disclosures. When the envoys were appointed, he asserts, many "suspected ... from what was understood of their [Marshall's and Pinckney's] dispositions," that the mission would not only fail, but "widen the breach and provoke our citizens to consent to a war with" France "& union with England." While the envoys were in Paris the Administration's hostile attitude toward France alarmed the people; "meetings were held ... in opposition to war"; and the "example was spreading like a wildfire."
Then "most critically for the government [Administration]," says Jefferson, "the dispatches ... prepared by ... Marshall, with a view to their being made public, dropped into their laps. It was truly a God-send to them & they made the most of it. Many thousands of copies were printed & dispersed gratis, at the public expense; & the zealots for war co-operated so heartily, that there were instances of single individuals who printed & dispersed 10. or 12,000 copies at their own expense. The odiousness of the corruption supposed in those papers excited a general & high indignation among the people."