The issues precipitated by the French Revolution had everything to do with American politics—inevitably so. There were sentimental reasons for the popular enthusiasm for the nation that had served America with men and money; and there were economic reasons for the opposition in the fact that the great merchants operated on English credit. But the political significance of the divisions soon to appear have been persistently written down, where they should be written up.

With some exceptions the Hamiltonian leaders were hostile to the purposes of the French Revolution from the beginning. Here was a rising of the people with a claim to power, and the keynote of Federalist policies was distrust of the people; here was defiance of ‘authority,’ and they were sticklers for constituted authority; here was a challenging of privilege, and they honestly believed in privilege; here was democracy, and they hated it. They were against it, just as Burke was against it, because it was an iconoclastic movement, a trampling on tradition. The death of the King, the slaughtering by the guillotine, the stupidity and infamy of Genêt, the intemperance of the American ‘Jacobin clubs,’ the defiance of Washington’s proclamation—on these they were to seize to neutralize or destroy the popularity of the Revolution, but it was the proclaimed principles of the Revolution that they hated.

In the Senate, where the Hamiltonians were dominant, this was evident from the beginning. As early as December, 1790, when the resolutions of condolence adopted by the National Assembly on the death of Franklin were submitted to the Senate, Adams, in reading the letter from the President of that body which accompanied them, referred sarcastically to the writer’s titles, apropos of the action of the Assembly in abolishing titles of nobility.[751] A few weeks later Oliver Ellsworth and Rufus King, the ablest Federalists in the Senate, openly denounced the French, and ridiculed their claims upon American gratitude, and when Maclay made indignant protest, Ellsworth, taking snuff, pretended not to hear, Adams talked audibly with Otis the secretary, and other Senators gathered in groups to talk aloud. As early as February, 1791, the Hamiltonians in the Senate were in no mood to listen to a defense of France.[752] Even the concession of a constitution by Louis XVI was resented by the senatorial fathers of the Federalist persuasion. The more democratic House adopted a reply praising ‘the wisdom and magnanimity’ shown in its formation and acceptance, but when it reached the Senate, George Cabot objected to the word ‘magnanimity,’ Ellsworth supported him, the Federalists voted accordingly, and it was stricken out. ‘Too many Frenchmen, like too many Americans, panting for equality of persons and property,’ grumbled Adams as early as April, 1790.[753] ‘We differed in opinion on the French Revolution,’ wrote Adams in retrospect to Jefferson many years later.[754] Adams and Hamilton, King and Ellsworth, Cabot and Ames, Jay and Bingham, looked with mingled cynicism and alarm upon the Revolution from the moment it began to take on a popular character and to aim at the destruction of privilege.

Jefferson was just as ardent in its support. He knew the miserable state to which the feudalistic institutions of the Bourbons had reduced the masses of the people. He had seen justice bought and sold in France on the auction block, the operations of the hideous game laws that threw open the peasants’ fields to the trampling of the horses of the aristocracy, the bestial poverty of the poor, the insulting of their wives and the debauching of their daughters, with justice open-eyed and leering. He knew the wantonness of Versailles, the drunkenness of the King, the profligacy of the Queen, and he had no illusions as to the dignity of the law or the righteousness of the authority in France. He had sat at the table with some of the noblest minds in that country planning the regeneration of a society that was rotten to the core.

But, more important to him, he was persuaded that the fate of the American experiment was bound up with the success of the French Revolution. From this opinion he was never to deviate one hair’s breadth.[755] In January, 1792, he had instructed the American Minister in Paris that, if circumstances forced an expression as to the French Government, it should be ‘in conformity with the sentiments of the great mass of our countrymen, who, having first in modern times taken the ground of government founded on the will of the people, cannot but be delighted at seeing so distinguished ... a nation arrive on the same ground and plant their standard by our side.’[756] A little later he reminded the American Minister in London that ‘we certainly cannot deny to other nations that principle whereon our government is founded, that every nation has a right to govern itself internally under what forms it pleases, and to change these forms at its own will.’[757]

Thus, Jefferson was in sympathy with the purposes of the French Revolution, and the Hamiltonians were hostile. To Jefferson it meant republicanism, democracy, the end of privilege—and he wished it well; to the Hamiltonians it meant democracy—and they wished it ill. When the despots of Europe combined to crush it and force a degenerate king and court on the bowed backs of the people, Jefferson’s heart was with the untrained boys rushing to the defense of the frontiers; the heart of the Hamiltonians was with the combination of the kings. And because the masses of the American people were in sympathy with the French, Jefferson rode on the crest of the wave in the closing days of 1792.

III

With the execution of the King, the political enemies of the Revolution, simulating shock, ventured into the open. Fenno eagerly seized upon the more graphic stories of the execution in the London papers and published them in full, and soon he was printing sympathetic poems on the event.[758] But the friends of the Revolution were not easily moved to compassion, and one of the theaters in Philadelphia revived the play ‘Cato’ to the noisy acclaim of frenzied partisans. The actors appeared before the curtain to sing ‘La Marseillaise,’ and the audience rose to join lustily in the chorus. Night after night this was repeated. The Pittsburgh ‘Gazette’ published a brutal pæan under the caption, ‘Louis Capet has lost his Caput,’ and this was copied throughout the country.[759] But these more savage bursts of glee did not meet with general approval, for when the news of Louis’s fate reached Providence the people ‘fell into an immediate state of dejection, and in the evening all the bells of the churches tolled.’[760] Many put on mourning, and ‘Cordelia’ announced her purpose to wear, in mourning for the martyred King, a black rose near the left breast, and ‘entreated her dearly beloved sisters ... to follow her example.’[761] For a time the reaction was so pronounced as to threaten the popularity of the Revolution, and it seemed that half the Nation had turned monarchists overnight.

The Democrats were infuriated to find that the reaction was not confined to the fashionable houses, but extended to the people in the streets. Even from New Bedford came the protest that ‘the advocates of monarchy’ and ‘crocodile humanity defenders’ were insisting that ‘the succors from France ... proceeded wholly from Louis,’ and that he had really wished Frenchmen to be free.[762] A citizen of Charleston was disgusted to see how ‘the death of one man’ could ‘so affect the generality of the people’ of his city. ‘They burst forth in the most vehement invectives ... against the whole French nation—forgetting the thousands that said king had directly or indirectly been the cause of their death.’[763] An ‘Old Soldier’ in Philadelphia was shocked to find that ‘beer houses, taverns and places of public resort are filled with panegyrics upon the measures of the British administration, and our good allies, the French, are branded with every felonious epithet.’[764] And why all this fuss? Had not letters been received from one who had witnessed the execution with the assurance that ‘everything was conducted with the greatest decency,’ and had not the writer, traveling over France ‘found the people quiet and generally approving of the public measures?’[765] Thus the debate raged in drinking-places, on the streets, in the highways, in the counting—and drawing-rooms—the enemies of the principles of the Revolution perking up and taking heart and seeming in the ascendant for a few days.

Meanwhile what of the leaders?