HIS “Many Who Wandered in Darkness”

8/13/2019 HIS Many Who Wandered in Darkness

1/50


2/50

Many Who Wandered in DarknessThe Contest over American National Identity, 17951798

M AT T H E W R A I N B O W H A L EMississippi State University

On May 1, 1798, a correspondent from Albany wrote to the PhiladelphiaGazette of the United Statesregarding the impact of the XYZ Affair.1 The cir-

cumstance, noted the author, has thrown light in the paths of many whowandered in darkness with respect to the views of the French towards Amer-icahas united numbers of the wavering, to the standard of Governmentand has wrought a favorable change in some who were in opposition to themeasures of administration.2Written less than a month after President JohnAdams first disclosed the content of American diplomatic negotiations withFrance, the Albany correspondents remarks testified to the shift in Americanpublic opinion sparked by the release of the XYZ documents. Astonished by

the insolent behavior of French diplomatsincluding repeated personalinsults, threats to the United States, and demands for bribes and forcedloansAmericans from every state rallied together to express their patrioticindignation. Setting aside their bitter partisan differences, at least temporarily,diverse groups of citizens pledged to support Adamss administration in itsresistance to French belligerence. The Gazettewriters characterization of thespring of 1798 as a turning point in American history was thus largely accu-rate. From that date forward, Franco-American relations would never be thesame because the light of the XYZ Affair was so bright and the change

resulting from it so dramatic.3

1. I thank David Hackett Fischer, Jane Kamensky, James Kloppenberg, JenniferRatner-Rosenhagen, Dan Richter, Brendan McConville, Martha Rojas, and the par-ticipants in the McNeil Center for Early American Studies Seminar (May 4, 2001) forhelpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay.

2. Cited in Gazette of the United States, May 15, 1798.3. For the diplomacy of the XYZ Affair, see William Stinchcombe, The XYZ Affair

(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980); and Alexander DeConde,The Quasi-War:

The Politics and Diplomacy of the Undeclared War with France, 17971801 (New York:

Early American Studies(Spring 2003)Copyright 2003 The McNeil Center for Early American Studies. All rights reserved.


3/50

Early American Studies Spring 2003128 |

The Albany correspondent also underscored, albeit implicitly, the struggleto define American nationality and its place in a world of international revo-lutionary turmoil. For although they were couched within a narrowly anti-

French rebuke of misguided Francophiles, the Gazettewriters references tosome who were in opposition, numbers who were wavering, and manywho wandered in darkness pointed toward the difficulty all Americans expe-rienced in their attempts to come to grips with the consequences of Jays Treaty(1795).To begin with, the persistence of the pro- and anti-French controversyup till the XYZ Affair made clear that Jays Treaty helped perpetuate theintense popular contest over American nationality that had erupted in early1793. The Anglo-American pact of 1795 alleviated a severe crisis and

prompted an official shift in American international relations, but it failed toundermine the essential characteristics of the previously dominant under-standings of Americanness. At the same time, Jays Treaty complicated therigid pro- and anti-French polarity by prompting ambiguous and paradoxicallysimilar alterations on each side of the political cultural divide. Those modifi-cations served on one hand to reinforce the bitter conflict at the heart of effortsto delineate American nationality, while on the other seemed to presage theeventual displacement of that conflict. Indeed, perhaps the most significantlegacy of the diplomatic accord of 1795 was that it contributed to the emer-gence of a distinctive Americanness separate from both the pro- and anti-French versions of the same. Jays Treaty by no means established a firmfoundation which a triumphant American national identity could instanta-neously burst forth. Yet in helping to break down the previously dominant pro-and anti-French polarity, it marked the accelerated pace with which a distinc-tive Americanness took shape in the mid-1790s.

Emphasis on the impact of Jays Treaty brings into relief the unavoidablecentrality of transatlantic currents in the career of early American nationality.

Recent studies of the early republic have restored the contested and ratheramorphous nature of popular political culture, but more work remains to bedone on the external, rather than internal, sources of Americans struggle todefine their nationality.4 In particular, the impact of the French Revolutionary

Charles Scribners Sons, 1966). For the fervent response to the XYZ Affair amongdiverse groups of Americans, see Thomas M. Ray, Not One Cent for Tribute: ThePublic Addresses and American Popular Reaction to the XYZ Affair, 17981799,Journal of the Early Republic3 (1983): 389412 and John Kuehl, American National-ism and the Popular Resolutions of the 1790s: A Quantitative Analysis, CanadianReview of Studies in Nationalism 2 (1974): 7090.

4. See David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of AmericanNationalism, 17761820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997),


4/50


5/50


transatlantic affairs. From week to week and year to year, newspapers carefullytraced the effects of a bewildering series of surprises, rumors, lulls, and turn-ing points. In so doing, they documented in rich detail how big, diplomatic

events like Jays Treaty and the XYZ Affair provoked various degrees of changeand continuity in ill-formed political cultural conceptions of American nation-ality.

Close examination of newspapers, as well as selected alternative sources,thus makes clear how the time from the ratification of Jays Treaty to the dis-closure of the XYZ Affair represented a pivotal period in the career of earlyAmericanness. As much as the international incident of April 1798 redirectedthe course of American nationality, the years leading to that point also wit-

nessed crucial developments.The light shed by the XYZ Affair was certainlyilluminating, but its brightness should not obscure the historical significanceof the darkness that preceded it.

THE LOGIC OF LIGHT AND HEAT :

BACKGROUND TO A TREATY, 179395

After the republicanization of France and the outbreak of the French Revolu-tionary Wars in 1792, and more particularly, after the execution of King LouisXVI and Britains entrance into the European war against France in early1793, many Americans linked the cause of France to that of the UnitedStates.6 Viewing a strong bond between France and the United States as crit-ical to the future of the Western world, pro-French Americans claimed thattheir independence necessitated interdependence with France. As one citizenproclaimed in a toast during a pro-French festival in Philadelphia in May1794, May [the] Union [between the United States and France] be as incor-

porate as light and heat and their friendship as lasting as time.7In practical terms, the language of Franco-American interdependence cut

two ways. On one hand, events in France afforded Americans a chance to con-gratulate themselves for their own successful revolution. Having established amodel for protests against tyrannical oppression, Americans inspired and

6. The following summary of developments between 1793 and the ratification ofJays Treaty in 1795 is drawn from Matthew Rainbow Hale, Neither Britons nor

Frenchmen: The French Revolution and American National Identity (Ph.D. diss.,Brandeis University, 2002), chap. 2, wherein more thorough documentation and analy-sis is provided.

7 Boston Gazette, May 19, 1794. For an earlier use of the light and heat phrase, seeNational Gazette, July 17, 1793.


6/50

Hale Many Who Wandered in Darkness | 131

according to somepractically started the French Revolutionary movement.The fortunes of the United States and France were inextricably connectedbecause French Revolutionaries were doing their very best to approximate the

achievements of their American counterparts. The French Revolution legiti-mated its American precursor.

On the other hand, increasing numbers of Americans from 1793 onwardlooked to France as the exemplar of revolutionary liberty. Frances stature asone of the most powerful and populous nations in the Western world gave theFrench Revolution a grandeur and global significance that surpassed theimport of American Revolutionary events. In addition, some believed thescope of change in Revolutionary France outdistanced related developments in

the North American mainland. Frances progress since 1789, in other words,left the American republic behind and compelled all those interested in revo-lutionary change to set up France as the appropriate model for attitude andconduct. The logic of light and heat revealed that Americans still had workto do.

Anglophobia represented a critical component in pro-French Americansattempts to secure Franco-American interdependence. Throughout the two-year period leading to the Jay Treaty of 1795, Francophiles sought to measuretheir differences from Britons by repeatedly insulting British society. Interwo-ven with almost all the pro-French celebrations of the era were emphatic con-demnations of Britain. When Bostonians in January 1793 celebrated theFrench victory at Valmy, for example, they displayed a lantern, with a view ofthe Bastille demolished and the British Lion lying on the ground.8

In addition to their reliance on Anglophobic commentary, Francophilespromoted positive possibilities for what an American nationality based onFranco-American unity might look like. More specifically, pro-French citizenspushed for an Americanness characterized by democratic egalitarianism, fra-

ternal diplomacy, millennial cosmopolitanism, and support for RevolutionaryFrances military conflict against Britain.To be sure, each of those interrelatedstrains had gained the support of various enlightened Americans at some pointprior to 1793. Nevertheless, calls for their adoption enjoyed renewed vigor andpopularity beginning with that date. Whether expressed in the formation ofDemocratic-Republican Societies, use of terms like brethren of France andsister republic, denunciation of national prejudices, or a willingness to serveon French-commissioned privateers, advocates of French and American inter-

dependence testified to the revolutionary fervor with which they articulated anew version of American nationality.

8. Columbian Centinel, January 26, 1793.


7/50


Indeed, Francophiles not only sketched new possibilities for what Ameri-canness might mean, but called into question the relevance of nationality itself.In their fervor for a democratic, fraternal, cosmopolitan, and martial Ameri-

can political culture that naturally gravitated toward an ascendant French Rev-olutionary regime, pro-French individuals envisioned a mode of politicalidentification that bypassed the nation. Loyalty may have been fused throughthe United States, but it ultimately focused on a transnational revolutionarymovement.

Lingering ambiguities regarding the nature of eighteenth-century national-ity made possible the paradoxical fusion of Francophilic American nationalismand transnationalism in the mid-1790s. Recent scholarship has rightfully

emphasized the early modern origins and considerable strength of national-ism, but it should still be remembered that Anglo-American nationalismdeveloped in anxious, though not necessarily antagonistic, relationship with apowerful transnationalist strain that downplayed national loyalties.9 In an erawhen soldiers regularly served in the armed forces of foreign governments andwhen British-born Thomas Paine took a seat in the National Assembly ofRevolutionary France, nationality had not yet acquired the more exclusive,provincial, and ethnocultural characteristics frequently associated with post-Napoleonic trends.10

9. For strong treatments of developing British and Anglo-American nationalism inthe eighteenth century, see Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 17071837(NewHaven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992); Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People:Politics, Culture, and Imperialism in England, 17151785(Cambridge, England: Cam-bridge University Press, 1995); Gerald Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism: ACultural History, 17401830 (New York: St. Martins Press, 1997; orig. published,1987); Eliga Gould, Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the Amer-

ican Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); and Breen,Ideology and Nationalism.10. See, for example, Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York:

Oxford University Press, 1976), 153251; Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism;Gould, Persistence of Empire, 3031; Yehoshua Arieli,Individualism and Nationalism inAmerican Ideology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), 5089; RuthBloch, Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought, 17561800 (New

York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 15086; Seth Cotlar, In Paines Absence:American Popular Political Thought in Trans-Atlantic Context, 17871804 (Ph. D.diss., Northwestern University, 2000); Robert F. Durden, Joel Barlow in the French

Revolution, William and Mary Quarterly8 (1951): 32654; Thomas J. Schlereth, TheCosmopolitan Ideal in Enlightenment Thought: Its Form and Function in the Ideas of Franklin, Hume, and Voltaire, 16941790(Notre Dame, Ind.: University Press of NotreDame, 1977), esp. 12627 and 13236; Alan D. McKillop, Local Attachment andCosmopolitanismThe Eighteenth-Century Pattern, in Frederick W. Hilles and


8/50


That French Revolutionary War pressures would eventually expose thenationalist-transnationalist tension inherent in the concept of Franco-Ameri-can interdependence seems obvious with two centuries of hindsight. But in the

mid-1790s, American Francophiles could not (or would not) recognize thatfact. Nationalityespecially American nationalityremained inordinatelyfluid, ill formed, and contingent, making it possible for many to believe thatloyalty to the United States did not necessarily preclude service to anothernation. Rather, from the pro-French point of view, American patriotism fre-quently dictated direct involvement with the affairs of Revolutionary France.

Quite naturally, pro-French efforts to establish an American nationalitybased on Franco-American linkage provoked a heated response from the anti-

French community. In the first place, Francophobic commentators criticizedthe philosophy behind the notion of French and American oneness, assertingthat true independence negated the possibility of interdependence. Franco-phobic writers also assaulted the four strains of American nationalitydemo-cratic egalitarianism, fraternal diplomacy, millennialist cosmopolitanism, andsupport for French military effortsthat the concept of Franco-Americanunity seemed to recommend by raising the specter of anarchy, French infiltra-tion, and another devastating war with Britain. Moreover, Francophobes con-nected the French Revolutionary spirit to any troublesome foreign or domesticoccurrence, including the Reign of Terror, French dechristianization cam-paigns, the Haitian Revolution, the Whiskey Rebellion, French militaryexcesses, and Citizen Genets disrespectful conduct toward the United States.If Francophiles were determined to promote an American nationality based onan intimate association with Frenchness, Francophobes were determined todisplay the costs of that association.

Harold Bloom, eds., From Sensibility to Romanticism: Essays Presented to Frederick A.Pottle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 191218; Sophia A. Rosenfeld,Universal Languages and National Consciousness During the French Revolution, inDavid A. Bell, Ludvila Pimenova, and Stphane Pujol, eds., Eighteenth-CenturyResearch: Universal Reason and National Culture During the Enlightenment (Paris: Hon-or Champion diteur, 1999), 11931; Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study inIts Origins and Background (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1944), 263325;Hans Kohn, Prelude to Nation-States: The French and German Experiences, 17891815(Princeton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1967), 1317; K. R. Minogue,Nationalism (New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1967), 3338; and Yvon

Bizardel, The First Expatriates: Americans in Paris During the French Revolution (NewYork: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972). For a cogent study of the way in which theFrench Revolution exposed the transnational-national tension in British thought, seeEvan Radcliffe, Revolutionary Writing, Moral Philosophy, and Universal Benevo-lence in the Eighteenth Century,Journal of the History of Ideas54 (1993): 22140.


9/50


Perhaps most importantly, anti-French Americans between 1793 and 1795countered the notion of Franco-American interrelatedness by proposing theirown formulation of nationality. Repeatedly noting that we are neither Britons

nor Frenchmen, but Americans, Francophobes staked out a rhetorical middleground. By placing citizens of the United States in negative relation to theirEuropean counterparts while simultaneously positing the existence of a uniqueAmericanness, Francophobes provided a reasonable alternative for theirnationality.

The intensity with which Francophiles and Francophobes struggled over anationality derived from Franco-American oneness revealed the degree towhich French Revolutionary War issues absorbed and redirected the Ameri-

can Revolutionary heritage from 1793 onward. Caught in the middle of aglobal struggle between the two most powerful nations of the western hemi-sphere, it became impossible, as the Charleston, South Carolina, ColumbianHerald observed in late 1793, in these times of wars & rumors of wars, toremain an unaffected observer; or not to give to one or the other of the con-tending parties our best wishes.11 Immature, factional groupings previouslyfocused on Federalist and anti-federalist notions of political economy quicklyassumed new meaning and coherence as the French and British parties.Partisanship still remained relatively ad hoc, in large part because neither sideaccepted parties as legitimate political institutions, but its sudden ubiquitous-ness and depth testified to the stimulus provided by international turmoil.Similarly, pro-French Americans redeployment of various political symbolsfrom the American Revolutionary eralike liberty caps and polescausedthem to be inextricably associated with Revolutionary France and thus asource of major contention. From 1793 onward, Americans were forced todecide whether the United States should support Revolutionary France and itsmilitary struggle against Britain, a decision that had everything to do with

defining the national identity of the United States.Perceptions of geopolitics played a critical role in shaping Americans opin-

ions about their nationality and its relationships with France and Britain. Mostimportantly, pro-French Americans between 1793 and 1795 offered detailedaccounts of British threats to American sovereignty. Francophilic newspapereditors never tired of describing Britains continued occupation of forts in theNorthwest Territory and its confiscation of American commercial ships. In

11. Columbian Herald, December 21, 1793. R. R. Palmer, The Age of the DemocraticRevolutions, vol. 2 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1959), is particularlystrong on the way in which French Revolutionary War issues forced citizens all overthe Western world to make decisions about their political identities, thus absorbing,extending, and reshaping previously contentious internal debates and social conflicts.


10/50


addition, pro-French Americans blamed Britain for the problems early repub-lican Americans experienced with American Indians, Spanish politicians, andAlgerine pirates. In the Francophilic mindset, Great Britain was mastermind-ing a vast international attack on the political integrity of the United States.

Without doubt, Francophiles frequently exaggerated the nature of thethreat and the motives behind British actions. Nevertheless, American claimsabout the dangers posed by Great Britain were not entirely wrong. Britainsactions toward the United States wereconfrontational. It occupied forts in theNorthwest Territory. It stepped up its attacks on American shipping. It pow-erfully influenced the anti-American actions of American Indians, Spaniards,and Algerines. And after entering the European military conflict against Rev-

Figure 1. The Allied Despots, or the Friendship of Britain for America(1794). Thehighly charged nature of transatlantic affairs is disclosed in this cartoon. KingGeorge III of England is seated on the throne at the center, motioning towardone man whipping another, as a band of American Indians attacks a group ofAmerican women and children in the background. Nearby, Turkish SultanMustapha IV points his sword toward a band of his countrymen, whipping otherAmerican prisoners. Courtesy Winterthur Museum, Library and Garden, reg.

#62.189a.


11/50


olutionary France, it moved closer toward war with the United States. Despitethe hyperbolic quality of Francophiles rhetoric regarding British intrigue andaggressiveness, their words contained an important element of truth: Great

Britain represented a tangible threat to the sovereignty of the United States.Pro-French Americans thus held a trump card in the heated debate over the

nature of American nationality. By repeatedly calling to mind the substantivegeopolitical abuses citizens of the United States faced as a result of Britishactivities, American advocates of the French cause sustained their offensiveagainst the anti-French community. Notwithstanding the clever cultural inno-vation represented by the terminology of neither Britons nor Frenchmen, butAmericans, Francophobes from 1793 to 1795 could hardly stem the appeal of

the pro-French version of Americanness, in large part because they did notaddress the very real British danger facing the new United States.A series of bold diplomatic strokes in late 1794 and 1795 dramatically

altered Anglo-American relations and the fortunes of the pro-French inter-pretation of American nationality. During that time, John Jay concluded a dealwith the British, while other ministers appointed by President George Wash-ington successfully negotiated treaties with American Indians in the North-west Territory, Spanish diplomats, and Algerine officials. Whatever else JaysTreaty, the Treaty of Grenville (with American Indians), Pinckneys Treaty(with the Spanish), and the treaty with the Barbary states did or did notachieve, they undoubtedly secured a general alleviation of British, AmericanIndian, Spanish, and Algerine geopolitical pressure. By the spring of 1796,pro-French Americans could no longer convincingly ground their argumentsabout American nationality in the idea that Britain posed a direct threat to thesovereignty of the United States.

The geopolitical advantages of Jays Treaty, however, benefitted Americansonly after a fierce debate over its ratification that began immediately after

terms of the Anglo-American settlement were first published on July 1, 1795.Determined to resist any political connection with the British, AmericanFrancophiles initiated a series of protests throughout the United States. Theirmost pervasive complaint, not surprisingly, had less to do with a specific arti-cle of the Jay Treaty than with the changes taking place within the Franco- andAnglo-American relationships. In the minds of the pro-French community,Jays Treaty would be an illegitimate diplomatic agreement by virtue of the factthat it promised to breach Franco-American harmony and make Americans

de facto British colonists. Francophobes, meanwhile, harped upon the likeli-hood of another devastating Anglo-American conflict should the Jay Treaty bedefeated.

Though pro-French Americans tried to dismiss Francophobes predictions


12/50


of war as a bugbear, proponents of Jays Treaty prevailed. In fact, pro-FrenchAmericans previous emphasis on geopolitical considerations quite often legit-imated many of the claims made by supporters of the treaty. As a result, Fran-

cophiles unintentionally contributed to the popular acceptance of thediplomatic pact they so violently opposed. While it was almost universallyassumed that Jays Treaty was not the best deal the United States could haveachieved, Americans reluctantly approved it because it was better than no dealat all.

THE AMBIVALENCE OF UNCERTAINTY:

THE CONSEQUENCES OF A TREAT Y, 179598

Subsequent to President Washingtons official endorsement of Jays Treaty onAugust 18, 1795, Francophiles clung tenaciously to the pro-French version ofAmerican nationality. Though they had already suffered a major defeat, Fran-cophiles continued to view the national identity of the United States in termsthat had been initially articulated between 1793 and 1795. In fact, what isimmediately striking about most pro-French American sentiment in the firstfew years after the ratification of Jays Treaty is the degree to which it faithfullyreiterated themes that had first been promulgated before that event.

In the first place, Francophiles continued to employ Anglophobic commen-tary as an essential ingredient in their version of American national identity. Inchoosing the pseudonym ANTI-BRITANNICUS , a writer for a January 1798edition of the Bennington Vermont Gazettevividly demonstrated the persistentimportance of Anglophobia in Francophiles attempts to delineate a distinctiveAmericanness.12 And as in the period leading to the Anglo-American pact of1795, pro-French individuals made clear their belief that Americanness didnot, nor should it ever, resemble Britishness.

Drawing on the persistence of Anglophobic sentiment, Francophiles in the

House of Representatives refused to accept the legitimacy of Jays Treaty, justas they had hinted before its ratification. Convinced that the accord brokeredby John Jay was an attempt to make the United States an ally of Britain at theexpense of France, pro-French enthusiasts mounted a campaign to undermine

12. Vermont Gazette, cited in Boston Gazette, February 12, 1798. For other examplesof Francophilic Anglophobia, see Aurora, January 1, February 9, and May 14, 1796;Boston Gazette,January 2 and December 11, 1797; Daily Advertiser, July 7, 1797; City

Gazette, May 12, 1797;

Boston Gazette,March 5 and May 14, 1798; and

AuroraFebru-

ary 8, 1798. Not coincidentally, the Vermont Gazette article penned by ANTI-BRI-TANNICUS was a hopeful description of the possibility of a French invasion ofBritain and the way in which such an invasion would liberate the western world fromthe lawless domination of Britain.


13/50


Jays Treaty by withholding congressional funding. Though early predictionsby House Francophiles forecast the denial of funding, a popular outcry againstsuch an action moved enough Francophiles to reluctantly approve funding,

helping the appropriations bill to pass, fifty-one to forty-eight. Still, in theresourcefulness of their anti-Jay Treaty politicking, Francophilic representa-tives betrayed the persistence of their commitment to the pro-French versionof American nationality.13

Francophiles likewise maintained their attempt to bring into being a versionof Americanness interwoven with Frenchness. PostJay Treaty supporters of aconvergence of French and American political ideology, for one thing, per-sisted in their advocacy of democratic egalitarianism. Celebrants at a July 1797

Democratic Society meeting in New York lifted a glass to Thomas Paine, theRights of Man, and the Liberty of the World, while Carlisle, Pennsylvania,participants in a July 1796 festival toasted the ever memorable 14th of July,1789, when the Bulwark of Tyranny was overturned in the destruction of theBastile [sic].14 A number of Democratic-Republican Societies likewise reaf-firmed their belief that the people should play a role in public politics by con-tinuing to meet well into the late 1790s.15 Even after the ratification of Jays

13. Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick, The Age of Federalism: The Early AmericanRepublic, 17881800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 44449; and ToddEstes, The Most Bewitching Piece of Parliamentary Oratory: Fisher Ames Jay

Treaty Speech Reconsidered, Historical Journal of Massachusetts 28 (Winter 2000):122. For legislative opposition to Jays Treaty at the state level, see Thomas J. Farn-ham, The Virginia Amendments of 1795: An Episode in the Opposition to Jays

Treaty, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography(April 1968): 7588 and BostonGazette, January 11, 1796.

14. Daily Advertiser, July 7, 1797, and Carlisle Gazette, July 20, 1796. See alsoAurora,January 1, 1796; and Daily Advertiser, May 15, 1797.

15. SeeAurora, February 9, 1796, for a defiant toast celebrating all self-created soci-eties throughout the world, a not so subtle reference to President Washingtons con-demning characterization of the Democratic-Republican Societies. On the continuedexistence of the Democratic-Republican Societies, see Daily Advertise July 7, 1797;Philip S. Foner, ed., The Democratic-Republican Societies: A Documentary Sourcebook of Constitutions, Declarations, Addresses, Resolutions, and Toasts(Westport, Conn.: Green-

wood Press, 1976), 3839, 272; and Eugene Perry Link, Democratic-Republican Soci-eties, 17901800 (Morningside Heights, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1942),1315, 2034. For various post-Jay Treaty public associations and town meetings thatinteracted with and seemed to draw strength from the Democratic-Republican

Society movement, see Foner, ed., Democratic-Republican Societies, 3839; Link,Democratic-Republican Societies, 2045; Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood:Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 17301840(ChapelHill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), esp. 23536; John L. Brooke, AncientLodges and Self-Created Societies: Voluntary Association and the Public Sphere in the


14/50


Treaty, the powerful appeal of a French-inspired democratic egalitarianismcould not be casually dismissed.

In a similar fashion, efforts to solidify a familial relationship with the French

Republic demonstrated the lasting attraction of the concept of French andAmerican interrelatedness. Alongside satirical references to Britain as themother country and to the British kings fatherly kindness . . . for his quon-dam American subjects, Francophilic American newspapers continued toemploy terms like our brethren in France and sister republic.16 Supportersof French and American linkage also upheld both the custom of wearing lib-erty caps and French cockades and the use of French flags and revolutionarysongs like the Marseillaise, Ca Ira, and the Carmagnole.17 Through

rhetorical phrases, sounds, and visual symbols, the Francophilic desire for fra-ternal relations with the French Republic continued to make its presence feltin post-Jay Treaty American society.

Hopes for an enlarged version of enlightenment cosmopolitanism also per-sisted among adherents of French and American interconnectedness. Rede-ploying pre-Jay Treaty rationales about the inappropriateness of nationalbiases, a writer for a June 1796 edition of the PhiladelphiaAuroraargued that

Early Republic, in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., Launching the ExtendedRepublic: The Federalist Era(Charlottesville: Published for the United States CapitolHistorical Society by the University Press of Virginia, 1996), 273377, esp. 316; MarkAugust Smith, Crisis, Unity, and Partisanship: The Road to the Sedition Act (Ph.D.diss., University of Virginia, 1998), 192251, esp. 20917; and David Hackett Fischer,The Revolution of American Conservatism: The Federalist Party in the Era of JeffersonianDemocracy (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965), 11112.

16. For the mother country reference, see Boston Gazette April 10, 1797. For thefatherly kindness reference, see theNew-York Journal, as cited in Boston Gazette, Jan-uary 4, 1796. For references to brethren and sister republic and variations on those

ideas, see the following: Boston Gazette, July 11, 1796; City Gazette, July 22, 1796; CityGazette, April 15 and April 26, 1797; Boston Gazette, April 24, 1797; Daily Advertiser,July 7, 1797; Klines Carlisle Weekly Gazette, July 5, 1797;Aurora, January 31 and Feb-ruary 10, 1797.

17. Boston Gazette, April 25, 1796; City Gazette, April 26, 1797;New-Jersey Journal,July 19, 1797;Aurora, February 10 and March 18, 1797; and Newman, Parades and thePolitics of the Street, 12085. See Figure 2: In the form of the Goddess of Youth; Giv-ing Support to the Bald Eagle, an elegant, anonymous needlework based on a 1796engraving by Edward Savage, further exemplified the post-1795 desire for a fraternalbond with the French. The depiction of Liberty treading upon an English garter

demonstrated an underlying Anglophobia, while the liberty cap perched just above theAmerican flag testified to the overt mixture of French and American revolutionarymaterial cultures. The original Savage engraving does not exist, which is why I refer tothe needlework image. The exact date of the needleworks origin is unknown. (Win-terthur Museum, Library and Garden, registration #69.1790A.)


15/50


whereas biological instinct made the wolf the natural enemy of the lamb,nations could not be natural enemies, because a nation is no more than amember of that large family, the human race.18The ongoing participation of

Frenchmen in pro-French American activities seemed to legitimate theattempted eradication of national prejudices. Just as Francophiles before JaysTreaty celebrated Citizen Genets 1793 tour through the United States andmixed easily with various French officials and sailors, so Bostonians in Sep-tember 1796 gave a feast for Citizen Pierre Adet (one of Genets diplomaticsuccessors) and Norfolk, Virginia, residents in February 1798 celebrated theanniversary of the Franco-American Alliance together with the Consuls ofthe French republic.19 Well-wishes directed at revolutionary activity in

nations other than France provided still further evidence of the liberal cos-mopolitanism proponents of the French Revolution sought to embody.20

18. Aurora, June 1, 1796. See also Gazette of the United States, October 3, 1796;Boston Gazette, January 29, 1798; and City Gazette, March 5, 1798.

19. For the feast dedicated to Adet, see Gazette of the United States, October 10,1796. For toasts to Adet from Staunton, Virginia and Portland, Maine, see Aurora,February 13, 1796, and January 31, 1797, and Boston Gazette, January 23, 1797. ForAdets well-publicized presentation of a French flag to the Congress of the United

States, see Columbian Mirror, January 12, 1796;New Hampshire Gazette, January 23,1796; and Daily Advertiser, January 9, 1796. For the Norfolk, Virginia celebration, ofthe Franco-American Alliance and the participation of French consuls at that event,seeNew Hampshire Gazette, March 14, 1798. TheAuroraof February 20, 1797 noteda number of foreigners of distinction at a pro-French celebration in Philadelphia, butthe only official specified was the British celebrity, Dr. [ Joseph] Priestly [sic].

20. For references and toasts to various nations, see the following: Boston Gazette,July 11, 1796; Gazette of the United States, February 9, July 12, and October 3, 1796;Aurora,January 31, February 8, and February 10, 1797; City Gazette, February 15 andJuly 22, 1797; Daily Advertiser, May 15 and July 7, 1797; Klines Carlisle Weekly Gazette,

July 5, 1797;New-Jersey Journal, July 19, 1797; Boston Gazette, July 11 and December11, 1797; City Gazette, April 11, 1798. For accounts of the warm welcome received byPolish revolutionary rebel Thaddeus Kosciusko on his arrival in the United States in1797, see Gazette of the United States, August 19, 1797 and November 6, 1798. TheAugust 23, 1798 edition of the Gazette of the United Statescomplained about the fawn-ing attention given to Kosciusko.

Some Bostonians in the winter of 1796, meanwhile, were so eager to display theircosmopolitan spirit that they decked out Faneuil Hall not only with the American,French, Dutch, and Spanish streamers, but with a streamer representing the hatedAlgerines, a people with whom the United States had recently approved a treaty

(Gazette of the United States, March 4, 1796). The February 9, 1796, edition of theGazette of the United Stateslikewise reported a Philadelphia fireworks display let off incelebration of the peace concluded between the French Republic and the King ofSpain, the King of Prussia, the republic of Holland, &c, as also on account of the peacelately concluded by the United States with the Regency of Algiers and the Indians.


16/50


Figure 2. Liberty in the Form of the Goddess of Youth; Giving Support to the BaldEagle, an elegant, anonymous needlework based on a 1796 engraving by EdwardSavage, shows the post-1795 desire for a fraternal bond with the French. Thedepiction of Liberty treading upon an English garter demonstrated an underly-ing Anglophobia, while the liberty cap perched just above the American flag tes-tified to the overt mixture of French and American revolutionary materialcultures. The original Savage engraving does not exist. The exact date of the

needleworks origin is unknown. Courtesy Winterthur Museum, Library andGarden, reg. #69.1790a.


17/50


Thoroughly captivated by the broad-minded spirit supposedly embeddedwithin the notion of Franco-American unity, Francophiles did their best toperpetuate millennial cosmopolitanism as a major force in the United States.

Perhaps most importantly, adherents of the notion of Franco-Americaninterdependence did not allow Jays Treaty to dampen their enthusiasm for thetriumph of Revolutionary France in its military crusade against Britain. Fromlaudatory remarks about the French army to the perpetuation of civic festivalsheld in response to reports of French military victories, and from the republi-cation of Mathew Careys Seat of War maps to hopeful meditations on arumored French invasion of Britain in late 1797 and early 1798, Francophilesprovided ample evidence that they continued to follow the detailed American

newspaper coverage of European military events.21

In addition, celebrations ofthe anniversary of the Franco-American Alliance and the union of revolu-tionary republics lasted well into early 1798, conveying a persistent belief thata close political connection between France and the United States lay at thecenter of plans for an Atlantic community unaffected by British tyranny.22 Stillhopeful that Revolutionary France would subdue Britain, pro-French Ameri-cans after Jays Treaty heeded Frances progress on the battlefield and itsgeopolitical relations with the United States.

A number of Francophiles, moreover, declined to be satisfied simply root-ing for a French victory. As during the period leading to Jays Treaty, somewent so far as to promote the oneness of France and the United States bydirectly involving themselves in Frances geopolitical conflict with Britain.23 In

21. For laudatory references and toasts to French soldiers and their leaders, seeBoston Gazette, July 4 and October 3, 1796; Columbian Centinel, cited in Gazette of theUnited States, August 12, 1796; Carlisle GazetteJuly 20, 1796; Boston Gazette April 17,1797; City Gazette, April 21, May 24, July 22, 1797;Aurora, February 10, 1797; andDaily Advertiser, July 6, 1797. For the republication of Mathew Careys Seat of Warmap, see advertisements in Aurora, March 25, 1796; and Gazette of the United States,March 12, April 7, and April 12, 1796. For an example of a celebration sparked byreports of French military victories, see City Gazette, April 26, 1797; and for a com-ment on the praises of French valor sparked by news of French victories, see CityGazette, May 16, 1797. For the extensive number of pro-French American celebrationsof military victories, see Newman, Parades and the Politics of the Street, 136 and AlanBlau, New York City and the French Revolution, 17891797 (Ph.D. diss., City Uni-

versity of New York, 1973), 128. For joyous anticipation of a possible French invasionof Britain in early 1798, seeAurora, January 18 and February 9, 1798;New-York Jour-nal, cited in Boston Gazette, January 29, 1798; and Vermont Gazette, February 12, 1798.

22.Aurora, February 9, 1796; City Gazette, February 15, 1797; Daily Advertiser, Feb-ruary 6 and 18, 1797; andNew Hampshire Gazette, March 14, 1798.

23. Aside from the actions of William Tate, discussed here, post-1795 Americaninvolvement in French-commissioned privateers demonstrated the eagerness of some


18/50


early 1797, for instance, South Carolinian William Tate took part in a daringscheme to propel France forward in its revolutionary struggle. An AmericanRevolutionary War veteran who had been deeply entangled in Citizen Genets

plans to liberate Spanish territories in North America in 179394, Tate trav-eled to Paris in 1795. While in the French capital, Tate unsuccessfully lobbiedFrench officials for funds to launch a French invasion of British-controlledBermuda. After coming into contact with a prominent general in Napoleonsarmy, Tate fixed his eyes on a new plan of action that French leaders didapprovea French backed invasion of Britain, with Tate himself in charge.Subsequent to numerous logistical preparations, the newly commissionedFrench Republican officer, Chef de Brigade Tate, received orders to invade

Britain and a motley unit of twelve hundred soldiers to accomplish that mon-umental task. Successfully disembarking near Fishguard, Wales, on the after-noon of February 22, 1797, the invading army worked through the night thatfirst day, not only scaling a steep cliff, but also taking over a farmhouse calledTrehowell, which became Tates headquarters.

From that point on, however, Tate and his forces suffered irremediable set-backs. French soldiers skirmishing for food and supplies met with resistancefrom various Welsh citizens, proving that the British populace was neithergenerally discontented nor anxious for a French invasion. In addition, Irishofficers under Tate displayed an increasingly uncooperative attitude, especiallywhen they learned that the unit had landed in Wales rather than Ireland.Troop morale and discipline also began to suffer, a fact not alleviated by thedeparture of the French fleet that had transported the invaders. By the end ofthat second day, in fact, Tates soldiers seemed to give up entirely on the ideaof a British invasion, preferring instead to forage for liquor and drink its con-tents on discovery.

to involve themselves in the French military crusade against Great Britain. Thoughmost French officials ceased to commission privateers in American harbors after 1796,Americans could nonetheless take part in French privateering efforts by joining Frenchships stationed or commissioned in the West Indies. The Independent Chronicle ofOctober 3, 1799, records the September 26, 1799, Hartford court proceedings of theCircuit Court of the District of Connecticut, which involved an American named Isaac

Williams, who took a commission to serve on a French privateer while in Guadeloupein February of 1797. The official court record can be located as Williams Case, 29 F.Cas. 1330 (C. C. D. C+ 1799), (No. 17, 1708). See also Melvin Jackson, Privateers inCharleston: An Account of a French Palatinate in South Carolina, 17931796 (Washing-ton, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1969), 91110. New Yorker Stephen Thorn,meanwhile, promoted a French-sponsored plot to liberate British Canada. See T. S.

Webster, A New Yorker in the Era of the French Revolution: Stephen Thorn, Con-spirator for a Canadian Revolution, New-York Historical Society Quarterly53 (1969):25172.


19/50


In the meantime, local British military leaders mobilized their forces andsurrounded the invading unit. Reasonably daunted by the odds,Tate offered tonegotiate. British officer Lord Cawdor suggested unconditional surrender and

a reply by 10 A.M. the next day.Taking the entire night to decide,Tate acceptedCawdors terms and surrendered his troops in a military ceremony on Good-wick Sound, though not before some of his French soldiers made a decentprofit by selling their swords to their British counterparts. The would-be con-queror of Albion then became a prisoner of war, which continued to be his sta-tus until the following year, when British officials released Tate to France.24

In the audaciousness of their efforts, William Tate and others like him illus-trated the degree to which Francophilic passions continued to operate on some

Americans in the years after the ratification of Jays Treaty. In addition to avehement disdain for the Anglo-American accord of 1795, pro-French Amer-icans maintained a desire to make manifest the concept of Franco-Americaninterdependence. They also perpetuated their belief in an American national-ism that readily blended with a transcendent, transnationalist impulse. Thesame French Revolutionary issues that first inspired many Americans in 1793continued to fire Francophiles well into the late 1790s.

Francophobic Americans, for their part, countered Francophilic intentionsat every turn, just as they had in the pre-Treaty time period. When pro-Frenchmembers of the House of Representatives sought to withhold funding fromthe Jay Treaty, anti-French politicians mobilized a successful popular campaignto thwart that plan.25 American Francophobes also carried forward their attackon the notion of French and American linkage, reiterating the claim thatFranco-American interdependence stood at odds with American independ-ence. Was it ever intended by the Franco-American Alliance of 1778, askedAGRICOLA in a July 1796 edition of the Gazette of the United States, that oneshould make the cause of the other her own, and hold herself obligated to join

in her vengeance? If so, the two nations are but one; and let them hereafter beruled by one head.26 Criticizing those who attached the identity of the UnitedStates to that of France, anti-French Americans struggled to maintain the sov-ereignty of their homeland.

In addition, Francophobes criticized the four main traits of American

24. This account of William Tates adventures is drawn from John D. Ahlstrom,Captain and Chef de Brigade William Tate: South Carolina Adventurer, South Car-olina Historical Magazine88 (1987): 18391.

25. See Todd Estes, The Most Bewitching Piece of Parliamentary Oratory, andEstes, Shaping the Politics of Public Opinion: Federalists and the Jay Treaty Debate,Journal of the Early Republic20 (2000): 393422.

26. Gazette of the United States,July 18, 1796. See also Gazette of the United States,April 25, 1796.


20/50


nationalitydemocratic egalitarianism, fraternal relations with the French,millennial cosmopolitanism, and support for Frances martial struggles in theWestern worldthat the concept of Franco-American linkage seemed to

endorse. Antagonists of equality and liberty denounced the vulgar anarchyexhibited in pro-French civic festivals and Democratic-Republican Societies.27

Foes of familial relations with the French reproduced their pre-Jay Treaty com-plaints about the impropriety of donning emblems of French Revolutionaryfestive culture and mockingly described French naval assaults on Americancommerce as tokens of FRENCH FRATERNITY.28 Francophobes anxiousabout the dangers of liberal cosmopolitanism reiterated their 179395 warn-ings about fawning subservience and destructive French infiltration.29 Critics

of Francophilic support for the geopolitical ascension of France, finally,accused pro-French citizens of not only trying to undo the Jay Treaty and stirup a needless Anglo-American war, but of making foreign officials believe thata contingent of American allies would fight for France should a Franco-Amer-ican war ever take place.30 In their desire to undermine the Francophilic inter-pretation of American nationality, Francophobes employed the same types ofarguments that they had first manipulated in the time period leading to JaysTreaty.

Anti-French Americans after 1795 also mirrored their pre-Treaty actions bylinking the notion of French and American interdependence to any new orongoing development that seemed to reflect poorly on the French Revolu-

27. Gazette of the United States, March 10, July 14, September 5, and November 11,1796; Farmers Weekly Museum, cited in Carlisle Gazette, August 3, 1796; ConnecticutCourant, January 9, 1797; and Gazette of the United States, April 20, 1797.

28. Boston Gazette, March 20 and 27, 1797; Providence Gazette, July 8, 1797; Gazetteof the United States, November 4, 1797; andNew Hampshire Gazette, March 21, 1798.

29. Gazette of the United States, June 26, July 7, August 26, and September 26, 1796;Daily Advertiser, January 8, 1796; Gazette of the United States, March 4, 1797;AlbanyCentinel, cited in Gazette of the United States, August 3, 1797; Daily Advertiser, July 6,1797; Baltimore Federal Gazette and Daily Advertiser, cited in Gazette of the UnitedStates, February 19, 1798; and Daily Advertiser, February 17, 1798. See also Seth Cot-lar, The Rise and Demise of Popular Cosmopolitanism, 17901800 (Paper presentedat the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic Annual Conference,Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, 1998), for an illuminating discussion of the anti-foreigndiscourse in American society.

30.Museum, cited in the Gazette of the United States, September 25, 1797; Gazette ofthe United States, January 19, July 15, and August 12, 1797;Albany Centinel, cited inGazette of the United States, August 3, 1797;New York Gazette, cited in the Gazette ofthe United States, October 4, 1797;andNew Hampshire Gazette, July 18, 1797. For a cri-tique of Francophilic American celebrations of French military victories, see Gazette ofthe United States, May 18, 1797.


21/50


tionary cause. Attacks against the Haitian Revolution and a rumored French-sponsored plan to liberate American slaves continued to circulate.31 So too did

Figure 3. The Times: A Political Portrait.This anonymous 1795 caricature dis-closes the political animosity in the new nation. President George Washington isshown driving the carriage of state, surrounded by federal troops. Beneath theboots of the troops lies the body of editor Benjamin Franklin Bache, one of thechief executives most strident critics, while Thomas Jefferson tries in vain toattack the carriages wheel. Courtesy Collection of the New-York HistoricalSociety.

31. Rachel N. Klein, Unification of a Slave State: The Rise of the Planter Class in theSouth Carolina Backcountry, 17601808(Chapel Hill: University of North CarolinaPress, 1990), 23435; Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American AttitudesToward the Negro 15501812 (Baltimore: Penguin Books, Inc., 1968), 38291; George

D. Terry, South Carolinas First Negro Seamen Acts, 17931803, Proceedings of theSouth Carolina Historical Association (1980): 7893; George D. Terry, A Study of theImpact of the French Revolution and the Insurrections in Saint-Domingue uponSouth Carolina, 17901805 (MA. thesis, University of South Carolina, 1975),46131.


22/50


23/50


the United States in a slave uprising, religious infidelity, cooperation with amilitary tyrant, and French-sponsored schemes to disrupt the internal politi-cal order of the United States.

Aside from making war against the pro-French communitys promotion ofFrench and American unity, postJay Treaty Francophobes reemphasized thealternative to American nationalitythe concept of neither Britons norFrenchmen, but Americansthat they first proposed between 1793 and1795. I am neither a Frenchman nor an Englishman, but a real native Amer-ican, stated AMERICANUS in a 1797 summer edition of the WilliamsburgVirginia Gazette.34 A Boston militia captain sounded a variation of that themein May of the same year by scolding his listening brethren in armsFellow

soldiers, the English have treated us damnd badlythe French have used us adamnd deal worseNow let us take the field and drive them both to hell.35 Con-vinced that many Americans had gone too far in their enthusiasm for theFrench, Francophobes after Jays Treaty continued to stress the neitherBritons nor Frenchmen, but Americans formulation as the most promisingbasis for American nationality.

That the Francophobic opposition, as well as the Francophilic initiativesthat sparked it, mirrored patterns established in the preJay Treaty period tes-tified to the continuing strength of the events that first shook the UnitedStates in 1792 and the winter and early spring of 1793namely, the republi-canization of the French Revolution, French regicide, the onslaught of theFrench Revolutionary Wars, and Britains entrance into those wars. DividingAmericans along pro- and anti-French lines, events culminating in anotherAnglo-French war forced Americans to confront the problem of nationality inan atmosphere of international crisis and geopolitical upheaval. Passage of JaysTreaty directly addressed that problem by making it possible for the UnitedStates to occupy a more favorable position in relation to Britain, at the expense

of Revolutionary France. It did not, however, instantly overturn the terms ofdebate that had taken shape in the heated, three-year struggle leading up tothat point.

In fact, an examination of the first few years after 1795 suggests that Jays

34. Virginia Gazette, cited in the Gazette of the United States, August 2, 1797.35. Cited in the City Gazette, June 21, 1797. For other uses and variations of the

neither Britons nor Frenchmen, but Americans theme, see Gazette of the UnitedStates, January 5, 1797; Daily Advertiser, January 28, February 6 and 20, 1797; and CityGazette, November 28, 1797. For Francophilic complaints about Francophobic Amer-icans incessant use of the neither Britons nor Frenchmen formulation, see Aurora,November 5 and December 13, 1796;New-Jersey Journal, August 23, 1797; andNew-York Gazette, cited in Gazette of the United States, September 12, 1797.


24/50


Treaty prolonged, if not reinvigorated, the controversy that had momentarilyclimaxed in its adoption. Despite the substantive reorientation in formal diplo-matic relations that Jays Treaty set in motion, the Anglo-American pact of

1795 did not immediately produce a parallel reorientation in cultural attitudesregarding American nationality and its relationships to Britishness andFrenchness. Since the most ardent pro- and anti-French loyalists could stillviably perceive post-Jay Treaty developments in the light of viewpoints setforth in the preratification period, neither group, understandably, chose to giveup their central claims and affinities. As a result, both Francophiles and Fran-cophobes quite instinctively drew upon pre-Jay Treaty themes and reappliedthem to the post-Treaty situation. The persistent concern with the Jay Treaty

demonstrated one of its biggest shortcomings: an inability to move the contestover American nationality beyond the main lines of division that brought itinto existence in the first place.

Still, exclusive emphasis on the continuation of the rigid pro- and anti-French formulations of American nationality risks overlooking the profound,albeit subtle, impact Jays Treaty did have on the development of Americannationality, not only in the long-term, but in the first few years after its ratifi-cation. If Jays Treaty did not fundamentally alter the essential polarity in thebattle for American nationality, it did create space in which that polarity couldbe reworked. More particularly, the Anglo-American pact of 1795 facilitatedsignificant modifications in the relative influence of each side and the ways inwhich they articulated their views of American nationality.

To begin with, the pro-French cause emerged from the Jay Treaty strugglesomewhat weakened.36 No longer grounded in the tangible threat posed byBritains direct assaults on the political sovereignty of the United States, post-1795 Francophilic arguments lost a degree of persuasiveness and urgency. Pro-French Americans, as has been shown, continued to assert themselves well

after the Jay Treaty, but they were nonetheless less vocal, less numerous, andless influential. The concept of Franco-American linkage remained central toFrancophiles attempts to define American nationality, but it could not com-mand the same degree of popular, fervent attention that it did before 1795.

In contrast, anti-French sentiment gained strength from the Jay Treaty. Buf-feted by the sense of relief that peace afforded, Francophobes forcefullyclaimed that the actions of Washingtons administration preempted Fran-

36. This paragraph and the next are based upon my reading of American newspa-pers from the early 1790s to the end of that decade. Let me stress that the argument Iam making about the waning of postJay Treaty Francophilic sentiment and thestrengthening of postJay Treaty Francophobic attitudes is concerned with relative

waning and relativestrengthening when compared to preJay Treaty circumstances.


25/50


cophiles efforts to lead the United States into a calamitous war. In addition,anti-French individuals authoritatively declared that adhering to their ideasrepresented the best hope for steering the United States through international

turmoil. Defining American nationality in the postJay Treaty era stillinvolved grappling with the concept of Franco-American interdependence,but Francophobic conceptions of Americanness assumed a currency, boldness,and catalytic power that they had not previously possessed. Indeed, during thefirst few years following Jays Treaty, anti-French Americans increasingly tookthe initiative in the contest over American nationality.

The development of a more openly pro-British stance exemplified oneaspect of the Francophobic communitys burgeoning confidence after 1795. To

be sure, a substantial portion of Americans had retained (despite themselves,at times) fond feelings for Britain since the end of the American Revolution.Yet Britains entrance into the French Revolutionary Wars in 1793 caused suchindividuals to use extreme caution in publicly expressing their ideas. In thewake of Jays Treaty, however, Anglophilia reemerged.When Staten Island res-idents gathered for a Fourth of July celebration in 1797, they toasted Great-Britain and the blessings of her constitution.37 In October of that year, awriter from Walpole, New Hampshire, declared that if we must choosebetween the Gallick cockade and the British emblem, let each individualclaim that The British Lion is my sign, / A roaring trade Ill drive on; / RightEnglish usage, right divine, / Americans may thrive on.38 Boosted by therenewed sense of pride that Jays Treaty imparted, a number of anti-Frenchindividuals more freely expressed their attachment to Britain. FrancophobicAmericans, in that sense, were no longer just anti-French; they were increas-ingly pro-British.

37. Daily Advertiser, July 14, 1797.

38. Walpole writer cited in City Gazette, November 28, 1797. For additional, openlyAnglophilic statements, see Columbian Mirror, May 28, 1796; Gazette of the UnitedStates, September 10, 1796; John Jays letter of January 19, 1796, cited in the Gazette ofthe United States, February 16, 1796; Gazette of the United States, March 10, 1798; Con-necticut Courant, February 5, 1798. For more guarded pro-British statements, seeNew-York Gazette, cited in Gazette of the United States, October 3, 1797;New-London Oracle,cited in Gazette of the United States, November 18, 1797; City Gazette, cited in Gazetteof the United States, May 15, 1797; and Boston Centinel, cited in City Gazette, April 21,1797. For Francophilic critiques of the reemergence of openly Anglophilic commen-tary, seeNew-York Journal, cited in Boston Gazette, January 29, 1798; and the VermontGazette, cited in Boston Gazette, February 5, 1798. For positive comments regardingBritains naval policies and treatment of American seamen, see Gazette of the UnitedStates, December 26, 1797; City Gazette, January 5, 1797;Maryland Gazette, Novem-ber 2, 1797; andMinerva, cited in Daily Advertiser, July 20, 1797.


26/50


Anti-French individuals public praise of Britain coexisted, curiouslyenough, with a growing emphasis on patriotism. Astonished by Francophilespersistent devotion to France, Francophobes assaulted the transnationalist

nationalism advocated by the pro-French community. It seems by the Jacobinpapers, argued a Boston writer in the New York Daily Advertiser, that Patri-otism consists in belittlingevery thing American.39 Anti-French Americansalso sought to more fully define their own ideas about patriotism. As a sum-mer edition of the 1796 Boston Columbian Centinelsuggested by printing ananonymous poem, the truest form of patriotism consisted in steadfast loyaltyto a nation not just because of its virtues, but despite its faults. I love mycountry, good HORATIO; the epigraph began, And were it but a nest of

viprous serpents, / Id draw my tongue forth, reeking from its root, / Ere Iwould speak one word to her disgrace.40 Disturbed by their fellow citizensdepiction of a political identity beyond nationality, Francophobes stressed theneed to adopt a more exclusive patriotism.

Anti-French activists built upon this call for greater patriotism by cultivat-ing an increasingly bold, though still somewhat underdeveloped, nativism.Some lobbied for laws restricting emigrants voting rights and for stiffer natu-ralization procedures.41 Others employed the term NATIVE AMERICAN as away to distinguish themselves from foreigners.42 Still others conveyed anxietyabout the supposed impurity of American political discourse by using phraseslike mongrel breed, our language, pollute the nation, and heterogeneous

39. Daily Advertiser, August 12, 1796, also printed in Gazette of the United States,August 12, 1796. See also Gazette of the United States, March 28 and August 5, 1796;and the Virginia Gazette, cited in Gazette of the United States, September 21, 1797.

40. Columbian Centinel, cited in Gazette of the United States, August 24, 1796. Seealso Gazette of the United States, June 29, 1796 andNew York Gazette, cited in Gazetteof the United States, October 3, 1797. For a Francophilic critique of the principle of loy-alty, or an unqualified attachment to government, seeNew-London Bee, January 31,1798, cited inAurora, February 7, 1798.

41. See, for example, Gazette of the United States, September 2 and 9, October 19,1797; Carlisle Gazette, September 20, 1797. See also Edward C. Carter II, A WildIrishman Under Every Federalists Bed: Naturalization in Philadelphia, 17891806,Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography94 (1970): 33334; Michael Durey,Transatlantic Radicals and the Early American Republic(Lawrence: University Press ofKansas, 1997), 24849; and Rogers M. Smith, Constructing American NationalIdentity: Strategies of the Federalists, in Doron Ben-Atar and Barbara B. Oberg,ed., Federalists Reconsidered (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998),1940.

42. For examples of authors using the term NATIVE AMERICAN, see CarlisleGazette, September 20, 1797; and Gazette of the United States, September 22, 1797.


27/50


source of adulterated opinions.43 No matter how it was expressed, nativistsentiment came to occupy a greater role among Francophobes.

Anti-French individuals also used the momentum provided by Jays Treaty

to co-opt Francophilic arguments about Indians and Spaniards. Turning ontheir head claims made during the preJay Treaty era, Francophobes con-nected threats posed by Indians and Spaniards to the French, not the British.In November 1796, a Hartford Connecticut Courantwriter argued for the rel-evance of colonial Anglo-American paradigms by reminding readers thatDURING the seventy years of war, with which New England was so terriblescourged, the French supplied not only arms, but gospel missionaries to directthe use of them.44 A 1797 Columbian Centinelauthor, meanwhile, declared

that the French had not only tampered with the Indians on the frontiers, buthad instructed the Spaniards to withhold the posts contrary to the [Pinckney]Treaty.45

Led by John Fenno, printer of the Gazette of the United States, Francophobesalso began turning around old claims about Toryism. Incessantly battered byaccusations of Toryism in the mid-1790s, Fenno responded in the latter partof the decade by laying the very same charge at the feet of Francophiles.There is a much nearer likeness between the Jacobins and the Tories of 76,Fenno stated in an August 1796 edition of the Gazette of the United States.The tories said at that day, America cannot govern herselfshe must bedependent on Britain to protect her. The Jacobins parody this sentiment andexclaim forever, draw close and closer the bands of brotherly union withFrance.46 Occasionally reprinting variations of this argument throughout thenext year and a half, Fenno sketched a paradoxically dynamic category of dis-loyalty, in which pro-French individuals were implicated through their simi-larity to the most vilified pro-British Americans.47

43. Gazette of the United States, December 22, 1796; Pittsburgh correspondent citedin Gazette of the United States, October 7, 1797; Gazette of the United States, July 22 andSeptember 2, 1797.

44. Connecticut Courant, November 30, 1796, cited in Gazette of the United States,December 30, 1796 and reprinted in the City Gazette, January 2, 1797. See also Con-necticut Courant, cited in Gazette of the United States, August 12, 1797; and the corre-spondent from Kaskaskias, Ohio, cited in Gazette of the United States, October 7, 1797.

45. Columbian Centinel, cited in Gazette of the United States, December 5, 1797. Seealso Gazette of the United States, July 19, 1797;New-Hampshire Gazette, July 18, 1797;

Connecticut Courant, cited in Gazette of the United States, August 12, 1797; and the cor-respondent from Kaskaskias, Ohio, cited in Gazette of the United States, October 7,1797.

46. Gazette of the United States, August 2, 1796.47. For Fennos variations on the claim that Francophiles were similar to Tories, see

Gazette of the United States, January 30, 1797 and March 9 and 10, 1798.


28/50


By imparting a renewed sense of confidence to anti-French citizens, JaysTreaty thus spurred the articulation of a more extreme and more creative ver-sion of Francophobic American nationality. Accurately sensing that the pro-

French community was not as strong as it used to be, anti-French citizens wenton the offensive. In so doing, they hoped to crush the annoyingly persistentFrancophilic movement once and for all.

Yet if anti-French Americans took the opportunity afforded by Jays Treatyto promote a more strident Americanness, they concurrentlyand contradic-torilysketched a more moderate type of Francophobic nationality. Eager toplace the bitter conflicts of the mid-1790s behind them, anti-French citizensbegan to mitigate the relatively inflexible positions that had defined their cause

for the last few years. Jays Treaty, in this view, did not prolong the bitter con-flict between pro- and anti-French causes; it opened the way for a reconcilia-tion. If one strain of Francophobic activity in the late 1790s highlightedAmerican nationalitys differences with Frenchness, another sought to movetoward an amicable middle ground.

To begin with, some Francophobes adopted a moderate cosmopolitan per-spective that included a mild well-wish for France. In February 1796, the First

The Daily Advertiserof April 24, 1797 presented another vivid depiction of the sim-ilarity between American Tories of the American Revolutionary era and AmericanFrancophiles of the late 1790s by comparing the situation of Anglo-American relationsin 1774 to Franco-American relations in 1797:

. . . But the haughty government of Britain But the proud Directory, intoxicated with(puffed up with their late conquests, and the late successes of their armies, and misleddeceived by wicked and designing American by the artifices and falsehoods of wickedtories in the colonies as well as in London American Jacobins in the United States and

with artful tales of American pusillanimity, Paris, by whom they were taught that theand of the great numbers in the colonies American people preferred the interests ofdisgusted with their proceedings, who would France to those of their own country, and aimmediately join the British standard, and great majority of whom they declared wouldrelying on her invincible army and navy), join the tri-coloured banner in case of ancontemptuously spurned at the application invasion, would not even listen to theirof the colonists, would not even listen to messenger of peace, but considering himtheir vindication, but, treating them as the merely as the agent of a feeble andpitiful rebellious subjects of a justly unsupported government, threatened himoffended and powerful nation, sent out her with imprisonment and expelled him out offleets and armies to punish, correct and France, relying that the terror of their arms

restore them to a proper sense of their would force submission to their supremefilial duty and to the enjoyment of their will, and, by compelling the Americanformer happiness. government to return to itself, restore that

to a proper sense of its duty to France, andthe good American people to the fraternalembrace of their dear and good allies.


29/50


Troop of Philadelphia Cavalry toasted not only Francophobes John Adams,John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton, but also the Republic of France and hernew Constitution.48 Portsmouth, New Hampshire, residents at Mr. Waldens

hotel likewise coupled their February 1796 celebration of George Washing-tons birthday with support for the French nation and the Rights of Man.49

No longer finding it necessary to pummel the pro-French cause with invective,a number of Francophobes made an effort to view France and its revolution ina more positive light. Perhaps it was time for Francophobes to lose their Fran-cophobia.

A parallel move to distance the United States from European quarrels alsotook hold among Francophobes in the period following 1795. A 1796 Fourth

of July notice in the Daily Advertiserdownplayed the trivial embarrassmentswe have experienced as a nation by contrasting them to the tremendous con-vulsions which are still agitating the European world.50 George Washingtons1796 Farewell Address, of course, was the most famous attempt to consoli-date the gap between the United States and Europe. Warning Americansabout interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, Washingtonurged people to eschew excessive partiality for one foreign nation and exces-sive dislike of another.51 With the Jay Treaty having solved the pressingAnglo-American war crisis of 179395, anti-French citizens like Washingtoncalled for a national character that viewed American interests as fundamentallyseparate from European affairs.

They also deployed light-hearted humor as a way to defuse the tension sur-rounding American nationality. Caustic satires and acerbic insults continued

48. Gazette of the United States, February 25, 1796.49.New-Hampshire Gazette, February 27, 1796. For other examples of mildly pro-

French sentiments in generally Francophobic newspapers, see Gazette of the United

States, February 16, March 1, June 28, and July 23, 1796; Daily Advertiser, July 7, 16,and 29, 1796; New-Hampshire Gazette, May 28, 1796; Gazette of the United States,March 7, 1797; Daily Advertiser, March 8 and July 14, 1797; Connecticut Courant, July10, 1797; and Columbian Centinel, August 6, 1796, cited in Gazette of the United States,August 12, 1796.

50. Daily Advertiser, July 4, 1796.51. George Washington, Farewell Address, cited in Felix Gilbert, The Beginnings

of American Foreign Policy: To the Farewell Address(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer-sity Press, 1961; reprinted in New York by Harper & Row, 1965), 14445. For otherexamples of the trend marking differences between the United States and Europe, seeCity Gazette, July 3, 1797; Gazette of the United States, January 26, April 8, June 29, July7, July 29, and July 30, 1796; the Pennsylvania Legislature debate cited in Gazette of theUnited States, March 1, 1796; New Jersey District Grand Jury Foreman James Ewingscomments, cited in Gazette of the United States, April 8, 1796; and theJersey Chonicle,cited in Gazette of the United States, January 13, 1796.


30/50


to appear, but they did not overwhelm the field of American nationalityhumor. The FrancophobicNew-Hampshire Gazetteprinted an ANECDOTEin late May 1796 that poked fun not at Jacobins, liberty caps, or egalitarian-

ism, but at George Washingtons image and the debate over Jays Treaty. Inthe beginning of the late treaty fever, the Gazette story noted, an honesthearted, blunt, careless fellow was met by an old man, who in a solemn toneexclaimed, is it possible? and still shaking his grey locks, said, they do sayGeneral Washington is a going to sell his country -. Undoubtedly expectinga rebuttal or a look of astonishment, the old man received a rather surprisingresponse: Well who has a better right returned the wag, It is a country of hisown making - he has suckledand nursedand tendedandfattedit, till faith I am

not afraid to trust him with it in any market under heaven!52

Printed less thana month after the House of Representatives approved appropriations for JaysTreaty, the anecdote, especially its reference to the late treaty fever, revealeda yearning to bury the divisiveness of the mid-1790s in the past. Making lightof the blind allegiance commanded by Washingtona subject that hadrecently been the source of heated exchangesand caricaturing the formerpresident as a speculator and the mother of his country, the Gazettestory, aswell as others like it, suggested that folksy joking could assuage the woundscaused by pro- and anti-French battles.53 Despite the fact that they continuedto couch their argument within the terms of debate established in the pre-JayTreaty era, a number of anti-French Americans nonetheless dared to suggestthat discussing the problem of American nationality within a pro- and anti-French framework might soon become a thing of the past.

Underneath the general agreement, therefore, regarding continued opposi-tion to the notion of Franco-American interdependence, a degree of ambiva-lence about the implications of Jays Treaty for the future of Americannationality became increasingly evident among post-1795 Francophobes. On

one hand, they seemed willing to promote a much harsher form of Franco-phobic Americanness that not only embraced Anglophilia, exclusive patriot-ism, and nativism, but also redefined pre-1795 ideas about Indians, Spaniards,

52.New-Hampshire Gazette, May 28, 1796.53. For other examples of late-1790s light-hearted humor relating to issues of

American nationality and its interactions with Britain and France, seeNew-HampshireGazette, February 13, 1796; Gazette of the United States, October 12, 1796; City Gazette,March 13, 1797; and Isaiah Thomas, Isaiah Thomass MA SS AC HU SETTS, CONNECTI-CU T, RHODE-IS LAN D, NEW HA MP SH IR E & VERMONT ALMANAC, With an EPHE M-

ERIS, for the year of our Lord. 1798 (Worcester, Massachusetts, by Isaiah Thomas, 1797),which includes an anecdote Between an Englishman and an American. For thedebate over the the allegiance owed to Washington in the Jay Treaty struggle, see ToddEstes, Shaping the Politics of Public Opinion; 40911.


31/50


and Tories. At the same time, they showed a desire to temper formerly rigidviews by adopting less critical assessments of France, by defining the UnitedStates against Europe rather than Britain or France, and by employing humor

to defuse the intensity of previous debates. The former position interpretedJays Treaty as the opening blow in a more aggressive assault on Francophilicnotions of American nationality, while the latter perceived it as the ground-work for the gradual supersession of both the pro- and anti-French alterna-tives. Unambiguous in their approval of the Anglo-American accord of 1795,Francophobes nonetheless betrayed an internal tension about the exact conse-quences of that pact for the direction of Americanness.

A similar type of tensionthough not nearly as pervasive or culturally cre-

ativealso existed within the pro-French community in the years after JaysTreaty. One strain of Francophilia experimented with a more extreme attackon Francophobes by redirecting Reign of Terror insults. Not unlike Franco-phobes manipulation of tory rhetoric, Francophiles after Jays Treaty associ-ated the horrors of French Revolutionary violence, which had previously beenused to bludgeon Francophiles, with anti-French leaders. Francophobes havebecome Robespierians[sic], and have introduced a system of terror, into theUnited States, reasoned a Philadelphia correspondent in a May 1796 issue ofthe Boston Gazette. They have not as yet erected a Guillotine, but they havehinted at something like it.54 Benjamin Franklin Baches November 20, 1797,edition of theAurorareinforced that very same conclusion. Relating the storyof a Haitian slave who mistook John Adamss presidential entourage for a pro-cession to the guillotine, Bache emphasized the need to view things as theyare not as they affected to be.55 Not very subtly linking American Franco-phobes to the French Reign of Terror, one segment of post-Jay Treaty Fran-cophilic commentary made it possible to admit a damning assessment ofFrench politics only to turn that assessment against anti-French American

leaders.Simultaneously, however, another strain of post-1795 Francophilia seemed

to hint at a more moderate version of pro-French advocacy that mirrored itsFrancophobic counterpart. A writer in the February 8, 1797, edition of theElizabethtownNew-Jersey Journal, for instance, emphasized the wide distinc-tion between the United States and Europe. When we . . . seriously considerthe consequences of war and desolation spreading among the nations ofEurope, theJournalauthor stated, we may congratulate ourselves on the hap-

54. Boston Gazette, May 9, 1796.55.Aurora, November 20, 1797.56.New-Jersey Journal, February 8, 1797.


32/50


piness which we are permitted to enjoy in America.56The January 22, 1798,edition of the Boston Gazette, meanwhile, printed two light-hearted anecdotesthat sought to ease the tension surrounding the debate over Americanness and

its relationships to Britain and France. The first told of an Englishman whocalled his wife a bch so often that a visiting Frenchman thought it washer proper name. The second recounted the experiences of a young Americanwho, on attending a British theater and hearing American Revolutionary Warsoldiers derided for their shoddy appearance, defended his compatriots with aspontaneous shout of Great-Britain beaten by taylors and coblers [sic]!Huzza!57 Both stories signaled a desire to leave behind the bitter wrangling ofthe mid-1790s in favor of a less divisive approach to nationality. If one strain

of postJay Treaty Francophilia began forming harsher weaponry to useagainst Francophobes, another hinted that moderation might be the appropri-ate course of action.

Ambivalence regarding the implication of Jays Treaty for the developmentof American nationality, therefore, found its way into Francophilic, as well asFrancophobic, commentary. Although clearly less acute and less common thanthat characterizing Francophobic discourse, the internal tension within pro-French sentiment nevertheless suggested two alternatives for the ongoing dif-ficulty of defining Americanness in the years after 1795. One began gropingtoward new means of intensifying the assault on Francophobic opponentswhile the other made allusions to the eventual alleviation of pro- and anti-French conflict. Digging beneath the Francophilic communitys widespreaddislike of Jays Treaty revealed mutually conflicting opinions about the specificimpact of that diplomatic agreement on the development of American nation-ality.

The first few years after 1795 thus represented a peculiar moment in thecontest over Americanness. While still framed within the stark pro- and anti-

French polarity that had been established in 1793, the debate over Americannationality also assumed a more complicated, contradictory, and even confus-ing aspect. Deeply divided over the legitimacy and value of Jays Treaty, Fran-cophobes and Francophiles nonetheless shared a willingness to experimentwith both more strident and more moderate versions of American nationality.No single version was compelling enough on its own to consolidate the diver-gent strains in either pro- or anti-French discourse, never mind Americanpublic opinion more generally. But viewed collectively, the experiments with

new formulations of American nationality pointed to the common territorywithin which they took shape. At the same time Jays Treaty strengthened the

57. Boston Gazette, January 22, 1798.


33/50


previously established pro- and anti-French cultural divide, it united Franco-phobes and Francophiles in ambivalence and indecision.

In one sense, the common difficulties experienced by pro- and anti-French

forces in their efforts to define Americanness revealed the impressive force ofsomething quite old: Anglo-French imperial warfare.Though Americans werenow citizens of the United States rather than subjects of the British empire,they nonetheless betrayed a stubborn affinity for a vision of American politi-cal culture derived from a colonial British American framework. In particular,Americans in the mid-1790s responded to the French Revolutionary Wars byimagining their nationality in terms of a stark juxtaposition of Britain andFrance. The rhythms of political cultural development in the new American

republic remained dependent on patterns established during the precedingcentury; the odd congruities produced by the disintegration of a bifurcatedapproach to American nationality testified to the impact of yet another roundof Anglo-French military conflict.58

Nevertheless, the subtle, paradoxically similar tensions plaguing the pro-and anti-French interpretations of nationality in the first few years after 1795also pointed toward the emergence of something quite new: a distinctiveAmericanness. Still perceiving American interests as necessarily interwovenwith those of France or Britain, Francophiles and Francophobes nonethelessimplicitly broached the possibility that a third way, an American viewpointunfettered by association with France or Britain, might gain a foothold in theUnited States. That inchoate American position took shape haphazardly andincompletely between 1795 and early 1798, by no means a product of deliber-ate planning and by no means resting on a stable foundation. Still, it spoke tothe incredible force of the external pressures bearing down upon the UnitedStates. The unities among postJay Treaty Francophiles and Francophobesremained in the shadows of the ongoing pro- and anti-French rivalry, but they

showed how French Revolutionary War pressures had begun driving Ameri-cans toward a belief that no other nation had American national interests as itstop priority.

Though other factorsincluding domestic partisanship, regional tensions,and newspaper rivalrieswere involved, international instability lay at the bot-

58. See W. A. Speck, The International and Imperial Context, and John Murrin,Political Development, in Jack P. Greene and J. R. Pole, eds., Colonial British Amer-ica: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-

versity Press, 1984), 384407, 40856, for the critical importance of cycles ofAnglo-French war in colonial British American political culture. See also Colley,Britons; Wilson, Sense of the People; Newman, Rise of English Nationalism; Gould, ThePersistence of Empire; and Breen, Ideology and Nationalism.


34/50


tom of Americans ambiguous interpretations of Jays Treaty and their unde-veloped intimations of a distinctive Americanness. On one hand, the Anglo-American accord of 1795 seemed to aggravate tensions between France and

the United States to such an extent that a Franco-American war seemedimminent. Put off by the terms of Jays Treaty, France assumed a hostile pos-ture toward American naval commerce, seizing numerous ships in the yearsafter 1795.59 In addition, French foreign ministers in the United States con-tinued to interfere in American politics, with Citizen Adets advocacy ofThomas Jeffersons 1796 presidential candidacy representing the most egre-gious example.60 France also continued to aggravate the United States bysponsoring intrigue along the American frontier and by pushing Spain to

relinquish its North American territories to its Gallic neighbor.61

Taking note of these aggressive French actions, Fr

Documents

HIS “Many Who Wandered in Darkness”