Cosmopolitan Patriots: Americans in Paris in the Age of Revolution

Chapter 5. The End of a Beautiful Friendship: Anti-Cosmopolitanism, Anti-Americanism, and Public Diplomacy, 1796–1799

111 5 The End of a Beautiful Friendship anti-cosmopolitanism, anti-americanism, and public diplomacy, 1796–1799 In “Political Reflections,” an essay published anonymously at the height of the Quasi-War between the United States and France in February 1799, James Madison wrote that recent events in the French Republic could not “be too much pondered and contemplated by Americans who love their country.”1 Of course, there were those who sought “to caricature the scene as to cast an odium on all Republican government.” But even among republicans there was sharp disagreement about what lessons should be drawn from reports, whether true or not, that the French executive body, the fiveman Directory, had “erected itself into a Tyranny, actuated by its own ambitious views, in opposition to the sentiments and interests of the nation.” Madison’s own interest lay in ascertaining “the true causes of the abuses in France, as so many rocks to be shunned” by the American republic. The Federalists, however, appeared to him engaged in the “strange endeavor” of inferring “from the vices and usurpations charged on the French government , the propriety of a blind and unqualified reliance on the infallibility of our own.” If the real or exaggerated exigencies of war could turn the French Republic from a representative government with separate powers into a dictatorship dominated by the executive, what would prevent the same thing from 112 Cosmopolitan Patriots happening in the United States? For Madison, the true lesson of the French example was “that in no case ought the eyes of the people be shut on the conduct of those entrusted with power.” The Federalists, on the other hand, in the name of defending America against French tyranny, were adopting the exactsamemeasures—increasingthepoweroftheexecutiveandthemilitary, curtailing civil liberties, and branding any dissent as unpatriotic—that had corrupted the Directory. But if there was one universal truth in the “whole field of political science,” it was that “the fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defence against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad.” For all its sagacity, Madison’s essay was as much a product of the political battles of the time as the Federalist policies it condemned. But it suggests an overlooked irony of the confrontation between the administration of John Adams and the Directory: the similarity in attitudes toward popular politics between the two regimes. Both distrusted popular politics but ambivalently tried to use them to their own ends. Both tended to conflate their own rule with the very principle of republican government. Therefore, they had little tolerance for organized, legal opposition and considered public criticism as an attack on the republic itself. As repressive as the Alien and Sedition Acts were, the Directory went much further in stifling and persecuting all opposition , most notably in the coups d’état of 18 Fructidor (4 September 1797) and 22 Floréal (11 May 1798). The two regimes’ common insecurities also expressed themselves in their fear of the subversive presence of foreigners. One group that attracted the suspicion of both regimes, and that therefore allows us to explore these parallels, were Americans in Paris. In 1798 there were more Americans in Paris than ever before. In 1791, William Short had celebrated the Fourth of July with fewer than twenty Americans. The outbreak of war in Europe in 1792 had drawn increasing numbers of merchants, speculators, and adventurers to the French capital. In 1795, close to a hundred Americans attended James Monroe’s elaborate Independence Day fête. By the end of 1797, the number of Americans had grown to more than two hundred and fifty. Most were merchants from New England who sought to take advantage of the food shortages in France and Saint-Domingue, demand redress for ships and cargoes impounded in French harbors or seized by French privateers, sell American lands, speculate in French currency, or buy real estate.2 While war among Europeans was good for American business, open 113 The End of a Beautiful Friendship conflict between the United States and France was not. Therefore, Americans in Paris witnessed the deterioration of Franco-American relations with great concern. Since Monroe’s recall in 1796, diplomatic negotiations between the two republics had completely broken down, and had been replaced by undeclared warfare on the high seas. The Directory had refused to receive Monroe’s successor, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and hundreds of...