To this wild riot of tumultuous and spectacular enthusiasm an effectual check was soon to be given. With the execution of Louis XVI, in January, 1793, the admiration of the more thoughtful observers of the Revolution, who had accustomed themselves to pass soberly but apologetically over the earlier excesses of the revolutionists as unavoidable concomitants of a struggle necessarily desperate in its character,[175] received a rude shock.[176] The brutal death of a monarch whose personal services on behalf of their own cause during the days of deep necessity had been considerable, brought home to American citizens their first clear conviction respecting the excessively bloody and relentless spirit of the forces in control of the Revolution. The day of disillusionment had dawned. Leaders of thought made no effort to conceal their sense of mingled horror and regret. The amount of popular sympathy for the cause of the Revolution was still too great to allow anything approaching a general condemnation; but none the less a decided chill was felt.[177]
The murder of the king soon enough appeared to Americans a mere incident in a wild orgy of unbridled violence and blood-letting. A stream of information concerning the swift march of events in France, mostly having to do with enormities and excesses which gave all too patent proof of the fury of the currents of passion upon which the participants in the Revolution were being tossed, began to pour its waters through the channels of public utterance and discussion in America. The atrocities of the Reign of Terror brought fully home to the American public, to the conservative-minded particularly, the conviction that the Revolution had become diverted from its original principles and aims, and had descended to the plane of brutal despotism, reprehensible both in principle and practice above anything the eyes of men had ever beheld.[178] The leaders of the Revolution clearly were not the high-minded patriots and emancipators their admirers on this side of the ocean had adjudged them to be. The terms “assassin,” “savage,” “monster,” “regicide,” began to be employed as the only fit terms whereby to characterize the leading figures in an awful spectacle of butchery and rapine.[179]
But not until the religious aspects of the French Revolution are considered, is the deep revulsion of feeling which took place in New England completely laid bare. This feature of the situation had been regarded with deep solicitude from the beginning;[180] and as time went on through the cloud of confusion raised by the dust and smoke of the political developments of the Revolution, it became increasingly clear to the conservative class in New England that an alliance between the forces of anarchy and impiety had been effected. What else could explain the rapid development of a fierce reforming spirit, which in turn, within the space of not more than two or three years at the most, stood forth as a spirit of overt persecution in the handling of all ecclesiastical affairs? The vociferous affirmation of deistical and atheistical principles on the part of Revolutionary leaders in the councils of clubs and in sessions of the National Assembly, the reiteration and growing boldness of the demand for the elimination of the ancient system of religious faith, the successive efforts to supplant that system, first with the cult of Reason and later with the cult of the Supreme Being,—how were these to be construed other than as the expressions and performances of men who were bent upon the utter abolition of the Christian faith? There was wanting in New England, of course, intimate knowledge of the true state of French religious affairs and of the reactionary spirit displayed by the higher clergy and their devotion to the cause of monarchy. Little was known of the growing sense of resentment felt by a people who had begun to contemplate frankly the burdens which had been imposed upon them under the ancient régime, the multiplication of religious offices and establishments, the absorption of the land into vast ecclesiastical estates, and the indifference of the spiritual guides of the nation to private and public distress. It was hardly to be expected that spectators as far removed from the scene as the shores of New England would be able to interpret correctly the essential spirit of a people who had grown weary of the abuses of a religious system in whose principles and purer forms they still believed, despite the momentary violence of their leaders.[181]
By the year 1794 the belief that the revolutionists in France had added atheism to their program of anarchy was well established in New England. The difficulty of weighing this opinion exactly is greatly enhanced on account of the political handling which the situation received. Over the question of foreign alliances the Federalists and Republicans had split violently in 1793. The war which had broken out between England and France, regarded from any point of view, was of vast consequence in the eyes of the citizens of this young nation, just beginning to cope with the problems of diplomacy and international relations. The outbreak of hostilities between the two European nations with which the United States had had and must continue to have its most intimate and important intercourse forced an alignment among its citizens so sharp and decisive as to constitute the outstanding political feature of the country for years to come.[182] For reasons which we shall not now pause to consider, Federalists championed the cause of England in the European conflict, and Republicans the cause of France. Seizing upon the issue of “French infidelity,” Federalist editors were disposed to see in it the gravest peril by which the American people were threatened. The anti-religious spirit of the French Revolutionary leaders represented a danger-point of infection against which every citizen must needs be warned. On the other hand, Republican editors felt it incumbent upon them to do their utmost to minimize the genuineness and importance of all such damaging views of the case.[183]
But considerations of party advantage fall far short of furnishing a full explanation of the general sense of alarm the people of New England experienced on account of the open hostility to religion which they saw manifest in France. Out of France came a series of reports which taken together were calculated to raise their fears to the highest pitch. The confiscation of the property of the church, the abolition of religious vows, the promulgation of the “Civil Constitution of the Clergy,”[184] the banishment of non-juror priests, the infamy of the Goddess of Reason, the abolition of the Christian Sabbath, the secularization of festivals[185]—here were evidences of impiety as shameless as they were shocking.[186] Such principles and measures appeared as so many deadly thrusts at the Christian faith. It was difficult, if not impossible, for the most sympathetic admirers of France to find a way to explain this ominous cast of events.[187]
How thoroughly the fear of “French infidelity” had gripped the imaginations of men in New England will appear more clearly if the following considerations are weighed. The presumption that the intimate relations which Americans had been having with the people of France had produced a serious blight of morals and religion among the former, seemed to find its justification in the currents of skepticism and irreverence which, by common consent, had set in among the youth of the land. This phase of the situation as reflected in conditions within the colleges was held to be particularly deplorable. It was the settled conviction of President Dwight of Yale that “the infidelity of Voltaire and his coadjutors” had a special attractiveness for youth, for reasons which do not impress one as being highly charitable, to say the least:
Youths particularly, who had been liberally educated, and who with strong passions, and feeble principles, were votaries of sensuality and ambition, delighted with the prospect of unrestrained gratification, and panting to be enrolled with men of fashion and splendour, became enamored of these new doctrines. The tenour of opinion, and even of conversation, was to a considerable extent changed at once. Striplings, scarcely fledged, suddenly found that the world had been involved in a general darkness, through the long succession of the preceding ages; and that the light of wisdom had just begun to dawn upon the human race. All the science, all the information, which had been acquired before the commencement of the last thirty or forty years, stood in their view for nothing…. Religion they discovered on the one hand to be a vision of dotards and nurses, and on the other a system of fraud and trick, imposed by priestcraft for base purposes upon the ignorant multitude. Revelation they found was without authority, or evidence; and moral obligation a cobweb, which might indeed entangle flies, but by which creatures of a stronger wing nobly disdained to be confined.[188]