The Life of John Marshall (Volume 2 of 4). Beveridge Albert Jeremiah
are in the U.S. some characters of opposite principles… Excepting them, this country is entirely republican, friends to the constitution… The little party above mentioned have espoused it only as a stepping stone to monarchy… The successes of republicanism in France have given the coup de grace to their prospects, and I hope to their projects.
"I have developed to you faithfully the sentiments of your country," Jefferson admonishes Short, "that you may govern yourself accordingly."47
Jefferson's count of the public pulse was accurate. "The people of this country [Virginia] … are unanimous & explicit in their sympathy with the Revolution" was the weather-wise Madison's report.48 And the fever was almost as high in other States.
When, after many executions of persons who had been "denounced" on mere suspicion of unfriendliness to the new order of things, the neck of Louis XVI was finally laid beneath the knife of the guillotine and the royal head rolled into the executioner's basket, even Thomas Paine was shocked. In a judicious letter to Danton he said: —
"I now despair of seeing the great object of European liberty accomplished" because of "the tumultuous misconduct" of "the present revolution" which "injure[s its] character … and discourage[s] the progress of liberty all over the world… There ought to be some regulation with respect to the spirit of denunciation that now prevails."49
So it was that Thomas Paine, in France, came to speak privately the language which, in America, at that very hour, was considered by his disciples to be the speech of "aristocracy," "monarchy," and "despotism"; for the red fountains which drenched the fires of even Thomas Paine's enthusiasm did not extinguish the flames his burning words had lighted among the people of the United States. Indeed Paine, himself, was attacked for regretting the execution of the King.50
Three months after the execution of the French King, the new Minister of the French Republic, "Citizen" Genêt, arrived upon our shores. He landed, not at Philadelphia, then our seat of government, but at Charleston, South Carolina. The youthful51 representative of Revolutionary France was received by public officials with obsequious flattery and by the populace with a frenzy of enthusiasm almost indescribable in its intensity.
He acted on the welcome. He fitted out privateers, engaged seamen, issued letters of marque and reprisal, administered to American citizens oaths of "allegiance" to the authority then reigning in Paris. All this was done long before he presented his credentials to the American Government. His progress to our Capital was an unbroken festival of triumph. Washington's dignified restraint was interpreted as hostility, not only to Genêt, but also to "liberty." But if Washington's heart was ice, the people's heart was fire.
"We expect Mr. Genest here within a few days," wrote Jefferson, just previous to the appearance of the French Minister in Philadelphia and before our ignored and offended President had even an opportunity to receive him. "It seems," Jefferson continued, "as if his arrival would furnish occasion for the people to testify their affections without respect to the cold caution of their government."52
Again Jefferson measured popular sentiment accurately. Genêt was made an idol by the people. Banquets were given in his honor and extravagant toasts were drunk to the Republic and the guillotine. Showers of fiery "poems" filled the literary air.53 "What hugging and tugging! What addressing and caressing! What mountebanking and chanting! with liberty caps and other wretched trumpery of sans culotte foolery!" exclaimed a disgusted conservative.54
While all this was going on in America, Robespierre, as the incarnation of liberty, equality, and fraternity in France, achieved the summit of power and "The Terror" reached high tide. Marie Antoinette met the fate of her royal husband, and the executioners, overworked, could not satisfy the lust of the Parisian populace for human life. All this, however, did not extinguish American enthusiasm for French liberty.
Responding to the wishes of their subscribers, who at that period were the only support of the press, the Republican newspapers suppressed such atrocities as they could, but when concealment was impossible, they defended the deeds they chronicled.55 It was a losing game to do otherwise, as one of the few journalistic supporters of the American Government discovered to his sorrow. Fenno, the editor of the "Gazette of the United States," found opposition to French revolutionary ideas, in addition to his support of Hamilton's popularly detested financial measures,56 too much for him. The latter was load enough; but the former was the straw that broke the conservative editor's back.
"I am … incapacitate[d] … from printing another paper without the aid of a considerable loan," wrote the bankrupt newspaper opponent of French doctrines and advocate of Washington's Administration. "Since the 18th September, [1793] I have rec'd only 35¼ dollars," Fenno lamented. "Four years & an half of my life is gone for nothing; & worse (for I have a Debt of 2500 Dollars on my Shoulders), if at this crisis the hand of benevolence & patriotism is not extended."57
Forgotten by the majority of Americans was the assistance which the demolished French Monarchy and the decapitated French King had given the American army when, but for that assistance, our cause had been lost. The effigy of Louis XVI was guillotined by the people, many times every day in Philadelphia, on the same spot where, ten years before, as a monument of their gratitude, these same patriots had erected a triumphal arch, decorated with the royal lilies of France bearing the motto, "They exceed in glory," surmounted by a bust of Louis inscribed, "His merit makes us remember him."58
At a dinner in Philadelphia upon the anniversary of the French King's execution, the dead monarch was represented by a roasted pig. Its head was cut off at the table, and each guest, donning the liberty cap, shouted "tyrant" as with his knife he chopped the sundered head of the dead swine.59 The news of the beheading of Louis's royal consort met with a like reception. "I have heard more than one young woman under the age of twenty declare," testifies Cobbett, "that they would willingly have dipped their hands in the blood of the queen of France."60
But if the host of American radicals whom Jefferson led and whose spirit he so truly interpreted were forgetful of the practical friendship of French Royalty in our hour of need, American conservatives, among whom Marshall was developing leadership, were also unmindful of the dark crimes against the people which, at an earlier period, had stained the Monarchy of France and gradually cast up the account that brought on the inevitable settlement of the Revolution. The streams of blood that flowed were waters of Lethe to both sides.
Yet to both they were draughts which produced in one an obsession of reckless unrestraint and in the other a terror of popular rule no less exaggerated.61 Of the latter class, Marshall was, by far, the most moderate and balanced, although the tragic aspect of the convulsion in which French liberty was born, came to him in an especially direct fashion, as we have seen from the Morris correspondence already cited.
Another similar influence on Marshall was the case of Lafayette. The American partisans of the French Revolution accused this man, who had fought for us in our War for Independence, of deserting the cause of liberty because he had striven to hold the Gallic uprising within orderly bounds. When, for this, he had been driven from his native land and thrown into a foreign dungeon, Freneau thus sang the conviction of the American majority: —
"Here, bold in arms, and firm in heart,
He help'd to gain our cause,
Yet could not from a tyrant part,
But, turn'd to embrace his laws!"62
Lafayette's
Jefferson to Short, Jan. 3, 1793;
Madison to Jefferson, June 17, 1793;
Paine to Danton, May 6, 1793;
"Truth," in the
See
Jefferson to Madison, April 28, 1793;
For examples of these, see Hazen, 220-45.
Graydon, 363.
Freneau's
See next chapter.
Fenno to Hamilton, Nov. 9, 1793; King, i, 501-02. "The hand of benevolence &
Cobbett, i, footnote to 114. Curiously enough Louis XVI had believed that he was leading the French people in the reform movement. Thomas Paine, who was then in Paris, records that "The King … prides himself on being the head of the revolution." (Paine to Washington, May 1, 1790;
Cobbett, i, 113-14; and see Hazen, 258. For other accounts of the "feasts" in honor of
Cobbett, i, 113.
For instance, the younger Adams wrote that the French Revolution had "contributed more to … Vandalic ignorance than whole centuries can retrieve… The myrmidons of Robespierre were as ready to burn libraries as the followers of Omar; and if the principle is finally to prevail which puts the sceptre of Sovereignty in the hands of European Sans Culottes, they will soon reduce everything to the level of their own ignorance." (John Quincy Adams to his father, July 27, 1795;
And James A. Bayard wrote that: "The Barbarians who inundated the Roman Empire and broke to pieces the institutions of the civilized world, in my opinion innovated the state of things not more than the French revolution." (Bayard to Bassett, Dec. 30, 1797;
Freneau, iii, 86.