America 763
thirds of the democrats in America, said Cobbett, were foreigners who had landed
since the war. Their very language had an alien flavor: “The word citizen, that
stalking- horse of modern liberty men, became almost as common in America as in
France.”^25 Others took up the cry; the altogether native American, Joseph Hopkin-
son, declared it to be a “notorious” fact, in 1798, that “the bulk of opposition to our
government,” by which he meant the Republican party, “is composed of these for-
tune hunting foreigners.”^26 The Republicans were also “vile organs of a foreign
democracy.”^27 The word democracy became so controversial that Jefferson preferred
to avoid it, and the opposition adopted the less offensive name of Republicans.
That either the clubs or the word “democracy” were a foreign growth in America
was untrue. It was as false as Cobbett’s preposterous allegation that Genet had
spent 20,000 louis d ’ors to set up the Pennsylvania Democratic Society. The demo-
cratic societies arose from native causes, and the word itself, in a favorable sense,
was used in America before Genet arrived. Patrick Henry had so used it in the
Virginia ratifying convention. At another center of indigenous traditions, Plym-
outh, Massachusetts, on January 24, 1793, there was a public meeting “to celebrate
the victories of the French Republic.” The Congregationalist minister, Chandler
Robbins, who was considered to be a fairly strict Calvinist, pronounced a eulogy
on the French Revolution, with copious quotations from the Bible. An ode was
written for the occasion by Mr. Joseph Coswell in four stanzas one of which read:
See the bright flame arise
In yonder eastern skies,
Spreading in veins.
’Tis pure Democracy
Setting all nations free,
Melting our chains.^28Genet, as the vivacious young envoy of an embattled republic, probably had a stim-
ulating effect on American democrats; but it was not Genet, nor foreign intrigue,
that brought a democratic movement into consciousness of itself at this time.
The American popular democrats, though not Jefferson and the Republican
leaders, might if left to themselves have welcomed, or even forced, another war with
England (as in 1812), especially in view of the uncompromising demands of the
British, which at times filled even Hamilton with dismay. John Jay went to England
to negotiate a treaty. At the same time James Monroe went as minister to Paris, to
maintain good relations with France while Jay tried to deal with England.
Monroe, an enthusiastic republican, arriving just after the death of Robespierre,
was very partial to the French Convention and to the Directory after it. Well dis-
25 Ibid., 22, 25.
26 What is our situation? and what our prospects? A few pages for Americans (Philadelphia, 1798), 22.
27 Quoted by J. C. Miller, Crisis in Freedom: The Alien and Sedition Acts (Boston, 1951), 32, from
the Pennsylvania Gazette for October 18, 1797.
28 Coswell’s Ode to Liberty is bound with Chandler Robbins, An Address Delivered at Plymouth on
the 24th day of January, 1793, to the inhabitants of That Town, Assembled to Celebrate the Victories of the
French Republic Over its Invaders (Boston, 1793).