Thus, declares Jefferson, the people, "unexperienced in such maneuvers," did not see that the whole affair was the work of "private swindlers" unauthorized by "the French government of whose participation there was neither proof nor probability." So "the people ... gave a loose [tongue] to" their anger and declared "their honest preference of war to dishonor. The fever was long & successfully kept up and ... war measures as ardently crowded."[820]
Jefferson's deep political sagacity did not underestimate the revolution in the thought and feelings of the masses produced by the outcome of the French mission; and he understood, to a nicety, the gigantic task which must be performed to reassemble and solidify the shattered Republican ranks. For public sentiment was, for the time being, decidedly warlike. "We will pay tribute to no nation; ... We shall water our soil with our blood ... before we yield,"[821] was Troup's accurate if bombastic statement of the popular feeling.
When the first ship with American newspapers containing the X. Y. Z. dispatches reached London, they were at once "circulated throughout Europe,"[822] and "produced everywhere much sensation favorable to the United States and hostile to France."[823] The intimates of Talleyrand and the Directory were "disappointed and chagrined.... Nothing can exceed the rage of the apostate Americans, who have so long misrepresented and disgraced their country at Paris."[824] From the first these self-expatriated Americans had flattered Gerry and sent swarms of letters to America about the good intentions of the Directory.[825]
American diplomatic representatives abroad were concerned over Gerry's whimsical character and conduct. "Gerry is yet in Paris!... I ... fear ... that man's more than infantine weakness. Of it you cannot have an idea, unless you had seen him here [The Hague] and at Paris. Erase all the two lines above; it is true, but it is cruel. If they get hold of him they will convert him into an innocent baby-engine against the government."[826]
And now Gerry, with whom Talleyrand had been amusing himself and whose conceit had been fed by American partisans of France in Paris, found himself in sorry case. Talleyrand, with cynical audacity, in which one finds much grim humor, peremptorily demands that Gerry tell him the names of the mysterious "X., Y., and Z." With comic self-abasement, the New Englander actually writes Talleyrand the names of the latter's own agents whom Gerry had met in Talleyrand's presence and who the French Minister personally had informed Gerry were dependable men.
The Federalists made the most of Gerry's remaining in Paris. Marshall told them that Gerry had "suffered himself to be wheedled in Paris."[827] "I ... rejoice that I voted against his appointment,"[828] declared Sedgwick. Cabot denounced Gerry's "course" as "the most dangerous that cou'd have been taken."[829] Higginson asserted that "those of us who knew him [Gerry] regretted his appointment and expected mischief from it; but he has conducted himself worse than we had anticipated."[830] The American Minister to Great Britain, bitterly humiliated, wrote to Hamilton that Gerry's "answer to Talleyrand's demands of the names of X, Y, and Z, place him in a more degraded light than I ever believed it possible that he or any other American citizen could be exhibited."[831] And Thomas Pinckney feared "that to want of [Gerry's] judgment ... may be added qualities of a more criminal nature."[832]
Such sentiments, testifies Pickering, were common to all "the public men whom I had heard speak of Mr. G."; Pinckney, Gerry's colleague, tells his brother that he "never met with a man so destitute of candour and so full of deceit as Mr. Gerry," and that this opinion was shared by Marshall.[833] Troup wrote: "We have seen and read with the greatest contempt the correspondence between Talleyrand and Mr. Gerry relative to Messrs. X. Y. and Z.... I can say nothing honorable to [of] him [Gerry]. De mortuis nil nisi bonum is a maxim as applicable to him as if he was in his grave."[834] Washington gave his opinion with unwonted mildness: "Nothing can excuse his [Gerry's] secret negotiations.... I fear ... that vanity which may have led him into the mistake—& consciousness of being duped by the Diplomatic skill of our good and magnanimous Allies are too powerful for a weak mind to overcome."[835]
Marshall was on tenter-hooks for fear that Gerry would not leave France before the Directory got wind "of the present temper" of the American people, and would hint to Gerry "insidious propositions ... not with real pacific views but for the purpose of dividing the people of this country and separating them from their government."[836] The peppery Secretary of State grew more and more intolerant of Gerry. He tells Marshall that "Gerry's correspondence with Talleyrand about W.[837] X. Y. and Z: ... is the finishing stroke to his conduct in France, by which he has dishonoured and injured his country and sealed his own indelible disgrace."[838]
Marshall was disgusted with the Gerry-Talleyrand correspondence about the names of "X. Y. Z.," and wrote Pickering of Gerry's dinner to Talleyrand at which Hottenguer, Bellamy, and Hauteval were present and of their corrupt proposition to Gerry in Talleyrand's presence.[839] Pickering urged Marshall to write "a short history of the mission of the envoys extraordinary," and asked permission to show Marshall's journal to President Adams.[840]
Marshall is "unwilling," he says, "that my hasty journal, which I had never even read over until I received it from you, should be shown to him. This unwillingness proceeds from a repugnance to give him the vexation which I am persuaded it would give him." Nevertheless, Adams did read Marshall's Journal, it appears; for Cabot believed that "the reading of Marshall's journal has compelled the P[resident] to ... acquiesce in the unqualified condemnation of Gerry."[841]