New England and the Bavarian Illuminati

by Vernon Stauffer

The damage which American commerce sustained at the hands of French privateers is rendered appreciable when the following circumstances are taken into account. Within the year following the publication of the extraordinary decrees against the commerce of neutral nations, which the French Directory promulgated, beginning with June, 1796, something over three hundred American vessels had been captured. The crippling blow to American commerce was by no means the sole consideration in the case. In numerous instances the crews of captured vessels were treated in such an outrageous and brutal manner as to inflame and gall the American spirit beyond endurance. On account of abuses which American shipping and commerce had suffered previously, by virtue of methods adopted by England and France to gain control of the seas, the strain imposed upon the nation had been severe; but now that a sweeping and utterly ruthless policy of commerce-destruction had been inaugurated by the French, forbearance was no longer possible. In his maiden speech in the national congress, Harrison Gray Otis, Massachusetts’ gifted young representative, put the case with dramatic eloquence:

If any man doubted of the pernicious measures of the French nation, and of the actual state of our commerce, let him inquire of the ruined and unfortunate merchant, harassed with prosecutions on account of revenue, which he so long and patiently toiled to support. If any doubted of its effects upon agriculture, let him inquire of the farmer whose produce is falling and will be exposed to perish in his barns. Where … are your sailors? Listen to the passing gale of the ocean, and you will hear their groans issuing from French prison-ships.[272]

It was not to be expected that a deeply injured people, to whose just sense of wrong and indignation the youthful Federalist orator had given such exact expression, could long be restrained from acts of reprisal and war.

To the sense of injustice was added the burden of fear. The idea began to take possession of the minds of leaders of thought in America that France had darker and more terrible purposes in her councils than the blighting of American commerce in retaliation for the treaty-alliance which had recently been concluded with Great Britain; she sought war, war which would supply to her the opportunity to visit upon this nation the same overwhelming disasters which her armies had heaped upon the nations of Europe. The French, it was believed, were busy with schemes for employing the world in their favor and were drunk with the vision of universal dominion.[273] The true explanation of French violence and arrogance was to be sought in her aims at universal empire.[274] Her ravenous appetite could not be satisfied; she had resolved to make of the United States another mouthful.[275] What reason had the citizens of this country to claim exemption from the general deluge? Having fastened the chains of slavery upon nation after nation in Europe, the generals of France were now planning fresh triumphs; with our armies of the Mississippi and Ohio, of the Chesapeake and Delaware, her forces would contest the field on American soil.[276] Had not her geographers already partitioned the country according to the new system of government which would here be imposed?[277] Did not her agents and spies fill the land, constantly exerting themselves to thwart the purposes of the American government and to render fruitless its policies of administration?[278]

Such fears may not be brushed aside as silly and chimerical, in view of the steady stream of information which came across the Atlantic, announcing the downfall of one nation after another as the result of French intrigue and the prowess of French arms.[279] Besides, there was probably not a solitary Federalist leader in the United States who did not believe that French ministers and agents were in secret league with influential representatives of the Democratic party.

The bullying treatment which the French Directory accorded the ministers and envoys of this nation added much to the heat as well as to the dark suspicions which characterized public feeling in America. A government which boldly assumed to treat with impudent indifference and coldness one accredited minister of the United States, while at the same time it lavished the most extravagant expressions of friendship upon another whose disappointed executive had reluctantly summoned him home,[280] was obviously pursuing a course so high-handed and insolent as to stir the last dormant impulse of national honor. But the hot flame of public indignation which burst forth in this country when it became known that its Minister Plenipotentiary, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, after months of painful embarrassment and hazard, marked by neglect, evasions, and threats of arrest, was returning home, defeated in purpose, was as nothing to the lava-like stream of infuriated anger which swept through the land when it became known how treacherously the three envoys of the national government, Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry, had been used.

By common consent the publication of the X.Y.Z. despatches, early in April, 1798, put the top sheaf upon a long series of intolerable actions which this nation had suffered at the hands of the government of France. Like a flash it was made clear that not mere whimsicality and offended hauteur were at the bottom of the unsatisfactory dealings which our ministers had had with the French: we had sent our ambassadors to negotiate with men who knew how to add bribery to threats. Though the government of France might seek to save its face on the pretext that the mysterious French emissaries had acted without proper warrant, yet back of the negotiators was Talleyrand, and back of Talleyrand the Directory. The revulsion of feeling in the United States was complete. All innocent delusions were shattered; all veils torn away. What the French government desired in its negotiations was not political sympathy, not commercial cooperation, not a fraternal alliance between two sister republics in order that the flame of liberty might not perish from the earth; what it desired was money—money for the pockets of the Directory and its tools, “for the purpose of making the customary distribution in diplomatic affairs,” money for the public treasury that the Directory might find itself in a position to give a “softening turn” to certain irritating statements of which President Adams had delivered himself in his message to the Fifth Congress.[281]

The passion for war with France became the one passion of the hour. Only abandoned men, men whose desire for “disorganization” was the one yearning of their hearts, were unresponsive to the spirit of militant patriotism which swayed the people’s will:[282] such at least was the confident and boastful view of Federalist leaders, and for once they were able to gauge accurately the depth and power of the currents of popular sympathy. That hour had passed when men could say, as Jefferson had but a brief day before President Adams turned over to Congress the astounding despatches, “The scales of peace & war are very nearly in equilibrio.”[283] The heavy weight of the despatches had sent the bowl of war to the bottom with a resounding thud.

So it seemed at the moment; and yet, though there has seldom been an hour in our national history when all purely factional counsels were more effectually hushed and when the war fever mounted higher, an amazing period of uncertainty and of conflicting impulses and passions immediately set in.